by Elle E. Ire
“If you can do them right now, I’ll pay you double.”
“Done.”
TWO HOURS later—one hour of fittings and measurements, one hour of drinking handcrafted soda at one of the grocery stores that happens to have a soda fountain inside—I pick up the dinner jacket. Everything else I want I find in the more tourist-oriented formalwear shops, including a bow tie in the exact color I need.
Did you guide me there too? I ask VC1.
I noticed it when Lily was trying on her tuxedo.
VC1 can notice things I don’t. And predict weather. And read what remains of my biological mind, which I guess I always knew but hadn’t really thought about. Interesting.
It’s late evening, and I may have to find a room on the “mainland” for the night if no water taxis are running, but I can’t leave yet. I still need a gift for Kelly.
I head straight for the jewelry district—a gathering of about seven shops featuring rare gems from Infinity Bay, some uncut, others shaped and placed in elegant settings of imported gold, silver, and platinum used for rings, earrings, bracelets, and more. The most prized gemstones on display have been excavated from the planet’s ocean floor by deep-sea divers in their high-tech pressure-resistant gear. The oceans here are much deeper than those on Earth.
Even at this hour, the jewelry stores are crowded with tourists, many of them asking about pieces they saw earlier in the day, and I realize this might be the best time to buy this sort of thing. Store owners will be looking to make their daily quotas before closing time.
Haggling is also acceptable, I discover, hanging back to watch how things work. It involves a lot of posturing, flattering on the part of the salesmen, false smiles, fabrications as to the quality and rareness of the individual stones, along with some gesticulating, shouting, and threats to leave performed by the buyers, all the way to the point of some walking out the door only to be chased down by a clerk offering a lower price.
This is the last shop. If I don’t find anything, I’m resorting to making a necklace from twine and seashells. Which, knowing Kelly, she’ll ooh and ahh over to make me feel good. But I’m not five years old, and I want to give her something special.
I’m about to give up when bright green sparkles catch my attention from the corner of my eye. I meander over to the ring case, feigning disinterest while my heart pounds with excitement and more than a little terror.
It’s a ring, with a single diamond set in the center and a band of glittering green gemstones in Kelly’s favorite shade of the color. Judging from the styles of the other rings in the display, it’s an engagement ring.
No sooner do my palms touch the counter than a salesman swoops in offering to show me anything I like. I try to play it cool, asking to see several other rings and a couple of bracelets from another case before having him bring out the diamond-and-green number. One glance at the price tag and my breath falters.
Tell him you are a gem diver, VC1 says, cutting through my panic. You have the physical build for it, and I can feed you the proper terminology if necessary. Accordingly, you know what these should cost and this price is far too high. You would not be shopping here at all, but you are pressed for time because your girlfriend is on leave from the Fighting Storm and you want to propose before she goes back.
Right. Because partial truths are always easier to sell than outright lies.
Do I want to propose? I pretend to hold the ring up to the light to examine the quality of the stones while I stall for time.
Yes, VC1 assures me, more like my conscience or my heart than an AI in my head. You do.
Fifteen minutes later, I’m the owner of an engagement ring, at half the advertised cost. I’m also sweating and my heart is racing. Can I commit to her while still carrying all my emotional baggage?
I walk to the docks, where I find a water taxi operator willing to take me back to the resort island for an additional fee. A few other passengers have also paid extra, so I’m not alone, but there’s plenty of room to spread out and enjoy the pleasant night, the bright stars undimmed by man’s manufactured illumination, and the relative solitude. It’s a good time to breathe and contemplate the future and its possibilities. Marriage will make Kelly happy, because in her mind, it will prove my long-term intentions, make things official, maybe blot out my playgirl past, but it won’t really change anything between us from my perspective. I shouldn’t be so terrified. I pull out the ring box and, careful not to drop the thing overboard, open it and let the gems sparkle in the moonlight of the planet’s three moons.
I’m aware of someone moving to stand beside me, but don’t realize it isn’t any random passenger until he speaks.
“You wasted a lot of time and money tonight,” David Locher says. I can hear the smirk in his tone. “Oh, you can use your technology to fudge the documentation, but your marriage will never be official. You’re property, a machine with limited citizenship granted to you by the Storm and unrecognized by the moon’s legal system. And by Earth’s laws, you’re dead.”
Rage seethes inside me. I turn slowly, letting it all show in my eyes. His complexion pales in the moonlight. “You’ve been nothing but an asshole since I met you,” I say. “What is your problem? You’re part of the company that made me who I am.”
He takes a step back but doesn’t cower. Gotta admire that kind of bravery. Or stupidity.
“Not who you are. What you are,” he says. “And I’m looking out for Kelly’s best interests. She shouldn’t be romantically involved with an abomination like you.”
“An abomination your company created,” I remind him.
“A technological masterpiece, but an abomination of a human who has no concept of love or relationships.”
So that’s it. Jealous bullshit. It’s everything I can do to keep my hands clenched at my sides. Lowering my voice, I lean toward him. “I can throw you overboard and make it look like an accident. Don’t think that I can’t. I hear the sea life in these waters is very friendly.” To punctuate my statement, something dark and shadowy moves just beneath the surface, caught in the boat’s lights, then gone. “Get. Away. From me.”
He goes, retreating to the upper deck, his steps shaky as he ascends the stairs. But the damage is done. No matter what I do, what VC1 does, any marriage I enter into will never be real.
My mood plummets like a seabird diving after prey. Guess it matters more to me than I thought. I shake my head at my own personal bullshit.
I experience a few brief seconds of insanity in which I almost throw the ring as far out into the sea as my enhanced strength will allow, but machine-like practicality prevails and I close the box and slip it back into my pocket. Kelly will love it as unmeaningful jewelry, and I still need a gift.
For a few nervous but happy moments, I allowed myself to believe I was human.
I should have known better.
Chapter 30: Kelly—Mood Swings
VICK IS depressed.
Vick’s pain hits me when her water taxi is still over a mile out, and I leave the beach bonfire party, exchanging a quick concerned look with my empathic mother. She feels it too. It’s that strong. The anger and hopelessness hit moments later.
It’s full-on dark when the taxi arrives, moons casting everything in shadow including the faces of the boat’s passengers as they disembark. I do spot David Locher as he steps into the pool of brightness cast by the lightposts on the pier. His aura reads aggressive and a little nervous—an odd combination. Glancing over his shoulder, he seems like he’s afraid of something. Or someone. Given his earlier interactions with Vick, I make an immediate connection between him and her mood. He offers me a sexy smile on his way past, the same one he used to seduce so many students at the Academy. The same one he tried to use to get me into bed.
It didn’t work then. It doesn’t work now.
“What did you do?” I whisper, loud enough for only him to hear me. But he continues on, the smile never wavering, and disappears between a covered stan
d where guests can wait for the boats and a storage shed for various nautical supplies.
The minutes pass. Vick is the last passenger off the vessel, not so much walking as stalking across the deck, then over the connecting ramp and down the pier. She’s so wrapped in dark shadow, both the real and the Talent-perceived kind, I can barely make out her expression, but I don’t need to.
When she reaches me on the shore, I say nothing, but wrap my arms around her tense frame and hold on.
At first she tries to pull away, but I’m not letting go, and eventually she drops the shopping bags she’s carrying onto the sand and gives in to my embrace. Vick stands with me while the boat’s crew secures the water taxi for the night and passes us on their way to wherever staff are housed on the island. She’s trembling in my arms, not crying but seething, her head lowered, face pressed against my shoulder.
“I’d like you to let me do an emotion purge,” I say once I’m certain we’re alone, “but you don’t have to tell me what happened if you don’t want to.”
She raises her head, blinking at me in the murky light. “I don’t?” Vick’s voice is hoarse, like she’s been fighting tears for a while and is still doing so.
I shake my head. “You’re entitled to privacy. I promised I’d work on that. Just because I can read your emotions and we have a relationship doesn’t mean I’m entitled to know everything. If you want to tell me, I’ll listen, always, but I won’t press you.”
“I—” Vick lets out a breath, her shoulder muscles visibly untensing. “Thank you. I don’t want to go into details. If I do, I’m gonna break something. Maybe a lightpost, maybe my hand.” She offers a humorless smile. “Either way, it’s a bad idea. Let’s just say it all comes back to my lack of human rights preventing me from doing… anything.”
“I’m still working on that” comes my mother’s voice from the darkness between buildings. She’s walking toward us, her no-nonsense face firmly in place. When she reaches us, she gives Vick a hug of her own, then steps back to study us both. Whatever she sees satisfies her that things have improved, and when I glance at Vick, the darkness in her aura has gone gray. I wonder how long Mom was listening and watching us before she approached.
Mom moves between us, linking her arms with each of ours. Vick grabs her purchases with her free hand, and we walk together toward the cottages. She gives me a bemused look behind Mom’s back. Vick doesn’t quite comprehend this weird group manner of walking, but she’s going along with it. The resort is quiet. It’s late now, after eleven, and most of my friends and family have turned in for the night.
“I mean what I said,” Mom continues as if the conversation never paused. “During every open period, four times a year, I petition the One-World government to allow a reconsideration of Vick’s status according to Earth laws. I’ve been trying since you two first met, ever since Kelly told me what sort of situation you’re in, even before there was anything more serious between you.”
Vick shoots Mom a hopeful look as we crunch over the pathways of pebbles and shells. Night creatures scramble in the underbrush, but they don’t distract Vick now. “Any progress?” she asks once we’ve reached the front of my parents’ pale pink cottage with white trim.
My mother shakes her head. “I’m sorry. It’s complicated for many reasons. For one, your problem stems from multiple classifications. Earth sees you as nonexistent. On the Moon, you aren’t human and belong to the Storm. It’s really three separate requests. I’ve swayed a few of the governing body to my cause, and I can sense the sympathy of many others, but the majority don’t want to interfere with Girard Moon Base and their own laws. It’s a delicate situation. Many of the Moon’s settlers went there specifically for the rights to govern themselves. There’s a lot of warfare and bloodshed in that history. But I promise you,” she adds, releasing me and turning Vick to face her, “I won’t give up until you’ve regained your basic human rights. Kelly can tell you just how dogged I can be.”
I smile at a number of childhood memories when she went to bat for me. “You definitely don’t want to be on her bad side.”
Inside the cottage, the faint sound of a vid viewer spills from an open front window—Dad waiting up for Mom. She takes a few steps toward the front door, then pauses and turns back to Vick. “You know, I’m aware it’s a minor compensation for what you’re going through, but I might have better luck with a one-time request, a single dispensation…. It won’t make up for the injustice you’ve endured and continue to endure, but it would be something.” She fixes Vick with a piercing stare. “Is there one particular thing you’re trying to receive permission for right now?”
Silence.
Vick stares back at my mother, their gazes locked. It’s as if Mom knows what Vick wants, even if I have no idea. I’m stunned when Vick’s cheeks redden in the walkway lights. She breaks eye contact and looks away, running a hand through her salt-spray-dampened hair. “I… haven’t made a final decision. It’s just an option I’d like to have.”
“Well,” Mom says, letting the word drawl out, “when you make that decision, when you’re absolutely certain it’s what you want, come see me and Kelly’s father. We might be able to help.” She offers a warm smile, then turns and climbs the three steps to the cottage’s porch. Dad’s waiting in the doorway. They enter together, and the door swings shut.
I take Vick’s hand, and we head for our own lodgings. “You aren’t going to tell me what that was about, are you?”
She shoots me a plaintive look.
I shake my head. “It’s okay. I didn’t think so.”
“I want options, Kel. I want choices and I have none.” Her tone hardens. “Fight for the Storm, stay alive. That’s about all the leeway they give me in my working life.” When we reach our porch, she stops. “You know, the irony is, if I had a choice, I’d probably still choose to work for the Storm. I like what I do. And the Fighting Storm is the most moral and ethical merc outfit out there.”
“In every way except how they’ve dealt with you.” I can’t keep the bitterness from my voice. Vick’s treatment colors all my perceptions regarding the Storm. If it weren’t for her, I would have quit long ago.
“That was Whitehouse and his team. But they put me in play. Now I’m too valuable for them to risk losing.” She shakes her head. “And too programmed for success to throw a match, so to speak.”
“Brainwashed,” I correct her. “If you want the universe to consider you as human, you need to believe it yourself. That means you have to stop referring to yourself in machine terminology.”
“Sure. Fine. Brainwashed, programmed, the end result is the same.” She stomps the final steps to the door and uses the palm scanner to open it, then disappears inside.
I stand alone on the porch, breathing in the briny night air. I won’t ask Vick any more questions about what’s bothering her, but I have to admit to myself that I’m a bit irked. I know Vick better than anyone.
Why should my mother be privy to what’s going on in Vick’s head when I’m not?
Swallowing my curiosity, I follow her into the cottage.
Chapter 31: Vick—Work It Out
I AM fed up.
Kelly beats me to the bathroom in the morning. There’s a second half bath downstairs in the cottage, but I’m too tired, and my head is pounding too much for me to navigate stairs right now. I’ll wait.
What’s up with the headaches? I ask, pressing my fingers against my closed eyelids and double-checking that my suppressors are on high. They must be, or Kelly would be out here worrying.
I’m always in a minimal amount of head pain, but these intense migraine-like attacks have been coming on and off since the battle at the Alpha Dog. With the treatments I received from both Girard Base Medical and the Storm’s medical personnel, along with the drugs I got from Kelly on the yacht that brought us here, the concussion should be healed by now. This is something else.
The implants show me an image of my head with a bunch of firework
s exploding in different areas of my brain… which answers nothing.
A metaphor isn’t going to work for this. I need something more concrete. Talk. Unless she can’t. Sometimes when she’s overtaxed, she resorts to metaphors in place of speech. Most of the time, though, it’s pure snark on her part.
I heard that, she says. Though you might be correct in that assessment. As for the pain, are you familiar with cluster headaches?
Um, I’m a soldier, not a physician. And you should already know the extent of what I know.
I am being pedantic, she explains like that’s normal.
Maybe she thinks it is. Her interpretations of human behavior are just that—interpretations. They aren’t always dead-on accurate.
Cluster headaches are temporary but very painful headaches that come in bursts over days or weeks. However, from what I have extrapolated and compiled from a number of medical databases, your diagnosis would be rather more severe. I have termed them cluster migraines.
Lovely. And you’re performing medical diagnoses now?
I possess the knowledge. Why should I not pursue that knowledge to its conclusion?
Right. Of course. Why not? I suppress an eye roll, mostly because the action would probably hurt. Everything else in my head does. So what does that mean?
It means that your anxiety and stress cause an increase in blood pressure. That pressure in turn affects the blood vessels in your organic brain tissue. Wherever that tissue and I connect, you are experiencing intense pain.
Oookaaay. So what do we do about it?
You decrease the stress and anxiety.
Right. Because that’s so simple. They’re caused by outside factors. I can’t control those things.
You are better now than last night.
I consider that. Kelly purged the worst of my frustration through an emotional release before we went to bed. I try to separate the pain from the stress, analyzing the levels of tension in my body and mind.