“It might not have been him,” I said. “Maybe these rules are just the result of some ultra-cautious bureaucrats. And remember, powerful AIs are somehow connected to the delvers. You’re supposed to anger them. It might not have been you that anyone was afraid of—it might have been the dangers you could bring.”
“Still,” M-Bot said. “Spensa? What about you? Are you afraid of me?”
“Of course not.”
“Would you be if I could fire my own weapons, fly myself around? Copy myself at will? One M-Bot is your friend. But what about a thousand of us? Ten thousand? I’ve been researching Old Earth media. They certainly seemed frightened of the idea. Would you fear us if I became an army?”
I had to admit, it made me hesitate. I imagined that thought, turning it over in my head.
“You told a story,” M-Bot said, “about a shadow who took the place of the man who had created him.”
“I remember.”
“What if I’m the shadow, Spensa?” M-Bot said. “What if I’m the thing from the darkness that tries to imitate men? What if I can’t be trusted? What if—”
“No,” I said, firmly cutting him off. “I trust you. So why wouldn’t I trust you a thousand times over? I think we could do far worse than having a fleet of M-Bots on our side. It might get a little strange to talk to you all, but…well, my life isn’t exactly normal these days anyway.”
With all the proper parts removed, I scooted out from under M-Bot and rested my hand on his tarped-over wing. “You’re not some dangerous shadow of a person, M-Bot. You’re my friend.”
“As I am a robot, your physical and verbal reassurances are mostly wasted on me. I cannot feel your touch, and I find your simple affirmations to be the result of you reinforcing your desired worldview, rather than a fully evidenced examination of the topic.”
“I don’t know what you are, M-Bot,” I said. “You’re not a monster, but I’m not sure you’re a robot either.”
“Again, do you have any evidence of these suppositions?”
“I trust you,” I said again. “Does that make you feel better?”
“It shouldn’t,” he said. “Why are we pretending? I simply imitate feelings in order to better—”
“Do you feel better?”
“…Yes.”
“Proof,” I said.
“Feelings aren’t proof. Feelings are the opposite of proof.”
“Not when the thing you’re trying to prove is someone’s humanity.” I smiled, then ducked under the tarp—I’d left some slack near the cockpit—and pushed my way over so I could reach inside. “What do we do with the drone if you can’t program it?”
“I can program it,” M-Bot said. “It will simply have a basic, routine set of programs—no personality, no simulated emotions. A machine.”
“That will do,” I said. “Keep working on it.”
I gave Doomslug a scratch on her head and picked her up, then gathered the parts I’d taken off M-Bot and walked back down into my bedroom. M-Bot put my next task onto the screen there: I needed to combine the sensor unit, the holographic unit, and the jamming array into a single box he’d ordered. I set to work, following M-Bot’s instructions.
It took less time than I’d expected. All that was left was to wire it in such a way that we could attach it to the bottom of the drone. It would hang down like a fruit from a branch—not particularly elegant in design, but it would let the drone activate camouflage, record what it saw, and hide from sensor sweeps. Theoretically, I’d be able to let it loose in the bathroom of the Weights and Measures, then leave it to carefully make its way—invisibly—to Engineering and take some photos of the place.
M-Bot was skeptical that simple photos would be enough, and had insisted that we include an entire sensor unit to measure things like radiation. But I had an instinct, perhaps related to my abilities. I was close to figuring something out, a secret related to cytonics, and how the Superiority used them. If I could just see those hyperdrives…
“Spensa?” M-Bot said. “Someone is at the door downstairs.”
I looked up from my wiring, frowning. “Is it Chamwit? I’ll need to send her away—maybe tell her to go on vacation for a few days. We can’t risk Cuna finding out—”
“It’s not her,” M-Bot said, showing me an image from the door camera. It was Morriumur. Why were they here? I hadn’t even realized they knew where I lived.
“I’ll deal with them,” I said.
By now, I was starting to figure out dione facial expressions. For example, the way they would draw their lips to a line—showing no teeth—was something like a smile to them. It indicated they were pleased and nonaggressive.
“Morriumur?” I asked from the doorway. “Is everything all right?”
“Everything is well, Alanik,” they said. “As well as it can be, considering we aren’t flying. Didn’t you once say you hated the idea of days off?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I can’t prove myself when I’m not flying,” Morriumur said. “It leaves me worried. I don’t have much time left, but it isn’t like I want to have to be forced to fight a delver. Should I want something catastrophic to occur, just so I can prove I’m worth being me?”
“I think like that too,” I said, lingering by the door. “Like, I wanted so badly to fly on my home planet that I hoped some kind of attack would happen, so I could fight it. But at the same time, I didn’t.”
Morriumur gestured in agreement, then just stood there. I might have been learning their facial expressions, but dione body language was still hard for me to read. Was Morriumur nervous? What was this about?
“This is awkward, isn’t it?” they finally said. “Alanik…I need to talk to you. I need to know, straight out. Is this charade worth continuing?”
I felt a spike of panic. They knew. How could they know? I’d worried about Vapor seeing through my disguise, or maybe a confrontation with Brade, but never Morriumur. I wasn’t ready—
“Am I worth continuing to train?” Morriumur said. “Is it worth pretending that I belong in the flight? Should I just give up?”
Wait. Wait, no. They didn’t know about me. I stilled my nerves and forced myself to smile—an expression that made Morriumur wince. Right. Showing teeth was aggressive to them.
“You’re great, Morriumur,” I said, honestly. “Really. Considering how long you’ve been flying, you’re an excellent pilot.”
“Really?”
“Really,” I said. I hesitated, then stepped out of the building. I didn’t want to invite them in—not while I was in the middle of my secret project. “You want to talk? Let’s take a walk. You’re from the city, right?”
“Yes,” Morriumur said. They seemed more relaxed as they continued. “Both of my parents lived here all their lives. There’s an excellent water garden not far from here! Come, I’ll show you.”
I locked the door, then tapped a message on my bracelet, using DDF flight code, to explain to M-Bot. Going on walk. Nothing wrong. Back soon.
Morriumur drew their lips to another calm line, and I noticed that the right half of them was redder than it had been a few days ago. I wondered if that was confirmation that Morriumur was getting closer to being born. Though, was born even the right word?
They beckoned me with an understated wave of the hand, the palm up—a dione gesture distinctly different from the yell or wave that someone from Detritus might have used. I started along the walkway with them, entering the flood of creatures that were always moving along these streets. The constant presence of all these people made me feel trapped.
I’d felt the same way sometimes back in Igneous. That was part of why I’d fled into the caverns to explore. I hated always being surrounded by people, hated walking shoulder to shoulder. Morriumur barely seemed to notice it. They walked beside me, hands clasped behind thei
r back, as if trying very hard to be unassuming. Nobody on the walkway gave the flight suits much of a second glance. Back on Detritus, people noticed pilots and made way for them. Here, we were just two more strange faces in a sea of oddities.
“This is good,” Morriumur told me. “This is what friends do—go out together.”
“You say that like…it’s a new experience for you.”
“It is,” Morriumur said. “Two months of life is not so long, and…well, to be honest, I do not find the process of bonding to be easy. My rightparent is very good at it, making friends and talking to people, but that is not an attribute this version of me seems like it will inherit.”
“Scud,” I said. “I’m going to be blunt, Morriumur, the way you say that hurts my brain. You remember some things your parents knew, but not all of it?”
“Yes,” Morriumur said. “And the baby I become will remember the same: a mix of both parents, with many holes to fill in with my own experiences. Of course, that mixture might change, based on how many times we pupate.”
“You say that so…frankly,” I said. “I don’t like the idea of society modifying someone before they’re born.”
“It’s not society,” Morriumur said. “It’s my parents. They simply want to find a personality for me that will have the best chance for success.”
“But if they decide to try again, instead of having you, it’s kind of the same thing as you dying.”
“No, not really,” Morriumur said, cocking their head. “And even if it were, I can’t really be killed—I’m a hypothetical personality, not a final one.” They puckered their lips, a dione sign of discomfort. “I do want to be born. I think I would make an excellent pilot, and this program shows that we need pilots, right? So it’s not so terrible that maybe a dione will be born who likes to fight?”
“It sounds like something your people need,” I said, stepping around a flowing creature with two large eyes, but which otherwise looked like nothing so much as a living pile of mud. “See, this is the problem. If society is certain that unaggressive people are the best, only those kinds of children get born—and then they perpetuate that kind of thinking. So nobody ever gets born who contradicts the standard.”
“I…” Morriumur looked down. “I heard what you and Hesho said yesterday. On the Weights and Measures, while we were flying home?”
At first, I thought they meant the conversation about hyperdrives—and I panicked for a second—before remembering the earlier one where we’d complained about the Superiority and the diones. Their elite, snobby ways, presuming to be above us “lesser species.”
“I know that you dislike the Superiority,” Morriumur said. “You consider working with us to be a chore—a necessary evil. But I wanted you to know that the Superiority is wonderful too. Maybe we are too elitist, too unwilling to look at what other species give us.
“But this platform and dozens like it have existed for hundreds of years in peace. The Superiority gave my parents good lives—it gives millions of beings good lives. By controlling hyperdrives, we prevent so much suffering. There haven’t been any major conflicts since the human wars. If a species gets rowdy or dangerous, we can just leave them to themselves. It’s not so bad. We don’t owe them our technology, particularly if they’re not going to be peaceful.”
Morriumur led us down several streets, past a multitude of shops and buildings with signs that I couldn’t read. I tried not to be overwhelmed by it all, tried not to look like I was watching each and every one of these strange creatures. But I couldn’t help it. What secrets did they hide behind those faces that were trying, far too hard, to pretend to be pleasant?
“What about people who complain or don’t fit with your society?” I asked. “What happens to them? That person who was protesting out in front of the docks? Where are they now?”
“Exile is the fate of many who make trouble,” Morriumur said. “But again, do we owe species the right to live on our stations? Can’t you focus on all the individuals we’re helping, instead of the few that we can’t figure out how to fit?”
It seemed to me that the ones who didn’t fit were the most significant—the real measure of what it was like to live in the Superiority. Besides, I kept repeating to myself the most important fact: that these people had suppressed and tried to exterminate mine. I didn’t know the whole story, but from what Gran-Gran had said, my direct ancestors on the Defiant hadn’t taken part in the main war. They’d been condemned simply for being humans, and had been chased until they’d crashed on Detritus.
Brade hadn’t caused a war, but the Superiority treated her like cavern slime. It made it hard to think about the “good” the government did when I found the exceptions so very blatant.
We walked farther, and I kept my arms pulled tight at my sides, because if I bumped someone, they apologized to me. All this false kindness, hiding their destructive ways. All this strangeness. Even Morriumur themself was an example of it. They were two people who had…grown together by pupating, like a caterpillar. Two people, imitating a third person.
How could I hope to understand such a people as this? I was supposed to act like this was normal? We walked around a corner, passing two Krell. Even still, whenever I saw one of them the hair stood up on the back of my neck and a chill passed through me. The images of their armor had been used in Defiant iconography since before I’d been born.
“Can you feel them?” I found myself asking Morriumur as we passed the Krell. “Your parents?”
“Kind of,” Morriumur said. “It is difficult to describe. I’m made up of them. In the end, they will decide whether to give birth, or whether to pupate and try again. So they’re watching, and they’re conscious—but at the same time they are not. Because I am using their brains to think, as I am using their melded bodies to move.”
Scud. It was just so…well, alien.
We turned around a wall, stepping through an archway into the garden that Morriumur had been leading me to.
I froze in place and gaped. I’d been imagining some streams and maybe a waterfall, but the “water garden” was something far more grand. Enormous shimmering globs of water—easily a meter across—floated above the ground. They undulated and reflected light, hanging some two meters or more in the air.
Below, smaller globs emerged from spigots in the ground and floated upward as well, merging or splitting apart. Children of a hundred different species ran through the park, chasing the bubblelike chunks of water. It was like zero G, but only for the water. Indeed, when children would catch a glob of water and slap it, it would splash into a thousand smaller globs that rippled, catching light.
I ate lunch in the cockpit each day during training, and was quite familiar with how odd it could be to drink in zero G. I’d sometimes squeeze a glob of water out to hover in front of me, then stick my lips into it and suck it down. This was the same thing, only on an enormous scale.
It was gorgeous.
“Come!” Morriumur said. “It’s my favorite place in the city. Just be careful! The water might splash on you.”
We stepped into the park and followed a path between spigots. The children didn’t all smile and laugh—diones had their characteristic lax, nonthreatening expressions, while other species would howl. One very pink child I passed was making a hiccupping sound.
Yet, seeing them together, their joy was palpable. Varied though they were, they were all having fun.
“How do they do this?” I asked, reaching out and tapping a bubble of water as it passed. It shook in the air, vibrating, looking a little like the way the sound of a deep drum felt.
“I’m not sure, entirely,” Morriumur said. “It has something to do with specific uses of artificial gravity and certain ionizations.” Morriumur bowed their head. I was pretty sure that was a dione method of shrugging. “My parents came here often. I inherited a love of the place from
both. Here! Come sit. See that timer over there? This is the best part!”
We settled onto a bench, Morriumur leaning forward, watching a timer on the far side of the park. Most of this ground was a stone patio, without much ornamentation other than pathways of a light blue rock, lined with benches. When the timer on the far wall hit zero, all of the water bubbles in the air burst and came crashing down in a sudden rain, which made the playing children squeal and laugh, and excitedly call out to each other and their parents.
I found the sounds transfixing.
“My parents met here,” Morriumur said. “About five years ago. They’d been coming as children for many years, but it wasn’t until they were just out of training that they actually started talking to each other.”
“And they decided to pair?”
“Well, first they fell in love,” Morriumur said.
It was obvious. Of course the diones could love. Even though it was hard to imagine something as human as love existing between these creatures who were so strange.
A few Krell children ran past, wearing smaller suits of armor with two extra legs, perhaps to make it easier for the young crablike creatures to keep balanced upright. They waved arms wildly with excited joy. This…this is the Superiority…, I told myself. Those are Krell. They’re trying to destroy my people. Stay angry, Spensa.
But these children couldn’t lie. Perhaps the adults could keep up a charade like I imagined everyone here doing. The children killed that idea.
For the first time since arriving, I let my guard drop. Those children were just children. The people walking through the park, even the Krell, weren’t all plotting my destruction. They probably didn’t even know about Detritus.
They were people. They were all just…people. With strange carapaces or odd life cycles. They lived, and they loved.
I looked at Morriumur, whose eyes were glistening with an emotion that I instantly understood. Fondness. A person remembering something that made them happy. They didn’t smile—they made the dione thin-lipped expression—but it was the same somehow.
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