“Will you be better now?” he asked, uncertainty such an odd thing coming from him.
“If that’s what the handheld suggested, I’m sure it’ll be better.” Clairy offered him a wan smile. “Thank you for helping me,” she murmured. “I’m sorry I’ve been short with you.”
Cydrin eyed her steadily. “I do not know to what you refer.” Yet something in him seemed to relax, and she wondered if she had really been so very horrid to him.
Inexplicably, the thought made her want to cry.
And that was the last thing she wanted to do.
So she retreated to the washroom and made use of the products he had given her, a little slip of paper tucked away inside giving instructions on how to acquire more in various ranges of emergency.
What interested her most was the code for the replicator. She had presumed that only foods could be produced there, but perhaps that was because of its location in the galley.
She stashed the paper away in her pocket, reminding herself that she would still have to endure the awkwardness of asking him to use it for her, but perhaps that would change the longer she was with him. He had been so adamant that she would not be speaking with her parents, yet now he somewhat regularly inquired if she would like to do so.
Things were certainly not as hopeless as she had first assumed, and she did not have to despair. Not yet, anyway.
She returned, feeling a little more like herself, and she assumed that was because of the medicine’s affects. She probably should have asked what it was, but it was a funny thing, trusting him as she was coming to do. Not in all things, certainly not, but she no longer wondered if somewhere underneath he truly wanted to hurt her.
And that soothed a great many of her more pressing concerns.
He was seated at the table, his eyes staring down at the datapad settled there, though there was an absence to his look that suggested he wasn’t truly seeing it. He blinked once when he heard her approach, and he gave her an inquiring look.
“I’ll be fine now,” she assured him, her smile a little more sure than she had managed before. She thumbed the paper in her pocket, wondering if she was ready to broach the subject of a bit more freedoms or if the trust being built was simply coming from her.
“Cydrin,” she began, cautious and worried that he would think she was beginning to take advantage. She had said she wanted them to be friends, and she meant it.
And he had promised to learn how to be one in return.
Surely that included allowing a friend more liberties, especially innocuous ones like access to the replicator.
There was a shift in his posture, straightening as if somehow that would improve his ability to listen. “Yes?” he prompted, and she huffed out a breath, wondering if this was already a mistake.
She remembered his long ago claim that he did not get mad, and she supposed this would test the point.
But she found that there was a coil of discomfort in her stomach that had nothing to do with her menses, but simply the nervousness that accompanied the prospect of upsetting him.
It wasn’t right, and she could not let that rule her interactions with him. She needed to speak her needs and not fear his reactions. Not, at least, if he wanted their friendship to be real and not simply pretend.
She pulled out the paper, not offering it to him, but holding it so he could see the source of her request.
“They give a code for the replicator,” she explained. “So I can get more when... when I need it.”
Cydrin was quick to give a nod. “You shall have anything that you need,” he promised, and she smiled at him, a little sadly.
“And I appreciate that,” she assured him. “But I... I was wondering...” She took a breath, trying to calm the tension flooding through her. He was looking at her expectantly, a hint of wariness perhaps there as well, and she could not blame him. She was often leery of him, especially when she could not anticipate the direction of his thoughts.
Better to speak quickly and have it done than to stand there making herself sick with worry. “I’m not asking for you to give me access to the computer systems,” she blurted out, hoping to assuage any of his immediate concerns before he felt need to give them voice. “I’m not trying to be sneaky or... or do anything you wouldn’t want me to.”
Cydrin was very still, but she could see a hardening in his eyes that she did not like. “Then what are you asking of me?” he enquired, his tone purposefully kept low and measured.
Chilling, in its way.
Clairy swallowed, closing her eyes briefly and admonishing herself for ever bringing it up at all. But she’d started, and she would finish it, and hope that the consequences would not be too difficult to navigate. “I was wondering if you would show me how to use the replicator,” she finished, and even to her own ears she sounded fairly miserable. Like those times when she had to ask one of her parents for something, already knowing that the petition would be soundly rejected.
Cydrin leaned back against the bench, and there was something calculated in the movement, though its purpose she could not guess. “Have you found my provision lacking?” he enquired, his voice that same, tight rumble of control.
“It’s not about you,” Clairy answered truthfully. “Or what you choose to make. It’s just...”
His rebellion against the Project might insist that he insinuate control over every part of his new existence, but that unfortunately meant he equally stripped it away from her. And, despite how she told herself that it was all right, that it was something she could cope with, in this moment it did not seem that way.
“I’m just asking to be able to do something for myself.” Clairy looked down at the floor, an ache in her chest. “Especially when it’s about something as personal as this.”
That part was particularly true. She did not like that he was involved at all, would have preferred to quietly care for herself, just as she had always done.
But that was not an option. Not here. Not when he insisted on invading every part of her thoughts and feelings.
She chewed at her lip, knowing she was being ungracious. He was trying, and she would give him credit for that. Tremendous credit given how little he had known before given his upbringing.
“If you had been able to replicate your required protections, then you would still have had to come to me for relief from your pains.” His head tilted gently to the left. “Why would it be preferable that you hurt?”
Clairy crossed her arms, any hint of defiance crumbling into a wallow of misery. She wanted her bed, wanted to curl up and ignore her circumstances for a time rather than weed through the strangeness of his mind, rational as he claimed it to be. “If you are just going to say no, please do so. I... I’d like to lie down for a while.”
Cydrin eyed her a while longer, and she very nearly abandoned him altogether in favour of resting and recuperating some of her civility, but he stood. “If this model ever came with a menu of available selections, it has since been reprogrammed. You must have the correct code or it will produce nothing at all.”
He crossed over to the machine and Clairy was too surprised at first to follow. When he gave her a look she hurried over, excited to finally be able to do something.
“So, you’re saying that I can’t get up in the middle of the night and make myself something,” she confirmed with a nod, only slightly disappointed that was not a possibility.
Cydrin’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “Have you not been receiving the nutrients you require?”
Clairy chewed at her lip. “I’m not saying that,” she hedged. “But sometimes you wake up and you’re... just... hungry.”
That happened a great deal more when she lived on her homeworld than it ever had... since she left. But the memory was still there, of lying awake, wondering if sleep would take her again or if she could somehow justify sneaking in to plunder something from the family’s often meagre rations.
Too often she fell asleep again pondering the choice.
&nbs
p; Cydrin appeared distinctly troubled at the idea, and she wished she hadn’t brought it up at all.
“If you have been without something you require, I would... prefer that you come to my room and wake me so the matter may be rectified.”
Clairy swallowed, uncertain she could do that. They had their distinct areas, and other than when outfitting their respective spaces with new furnishings, neither had ventured into the other’s dwelling.
It was a silent agreement, and one she needed—most especially since her own room lacked a door.
“Really, Cydrin, it isn’t important.” She smiled at him, trying to smooth things over so she could go back to her lesson, but he seemed too intent on her previous point.
“You are permitted to ask me for things,” he insisted. “It was not my intention to make you believe that you could not.”
He was growing more agitated, the demeanour strange enough for her to take immediate notice. This wasn’t her intention, not at all, and she admonished herself thoroughly for having spoken without more care. “You are very generous,” Clairy soothed, uncertain if she should reach out and touch him or simply let him be. “And you haven’t been neglecting me, if that’s what you’re worried about. Some things are just... old habits of mine, and don’t reflect anything about you or how we live now.”
It was odd to use we, but applicable. It suggested a familiarity, consent to the venture that she was unsure she intended to give, but that did not make it less true. He denied her nothing that he provided for himself.
Except freedom to access the computers.
He calmed, if only slightly.
“You were hungry?” he pressed, eager for clarification. Since she had been the one to cause his upset, she could hardly refuse to give it.
No matter how begrudgingly.
“We lived in a farming colony, in a family of eleven. Yes, I was often hungry.” She did not want to discuss it further, not when she knew how it sounded. She loved her parents dearly, but with the last few pregnancies, even she had begun to wonder how they would all manage with another to share in their often inadequate supplies.
But then Camter had come of age, and he was reassigned to his own household. And Clairy...
She cut that thought off before it could grow. She wasn’t going to think about that, not now and hopefully never again.
“I cannot say that was a tactic often used upon me,” Cydrin offered, and she glanced up at him in surprise. He was willing to talk about the Project, yes, but often in the abstract, of their purposes as a whole. Not the specific tortures inflicted upon him personally. “Our physical condition was of utmost importance, so it was imprudent to make starvation a frequent punishment.”
Clairy shook her head, the ache spreading when she thought of what he had endured instead. “Mine wasn’t about punishment. There just wasn’t enough to go around.”
He did not touch her, but from the way he looked at her, eyes bright and full of commanding certainty...
She almost felt as if he had.
“It is not like that here,” he insisted. “And if you are hungry, I would have you tell me.”
There was no place for her pride, not when he looked at her that way, when he spoke so adamantly, no hint of manipulation in his words. He wanted to provide for her because he did not want her suffering, and she could not fault him for that.
Even if it meant he could not always trust her as fully as she would wish.
“All right,” she affirmed. “But truly, you do take very good care of me.”
And sometimes guilt tried to spoil that, gnawing and pressing at her until she managed to shove it all away and simply be grateful that he seemed to care for her at all.
Cydrin gave a quick nod of his head. “Good.”
And then quickly diverted his attention back to the replicator.
It was a simple device, one that did not truly require a great deal of instruction, yet excitement over learning it made it far more momentous than it should have been.
The string of digits suggested a host of possibilities for what it might produce, and she remembered the treats he traded away. She would have liked to taste them, to see if such finery was too her liking, especially since her only exposure to such fascinating delights had come from a place that now made her stomach roil at the memory.
But unless she was willing to input random numbers and eat whatever resulted, she was going to have to be satisfied with whatever Cydrin decided to procure for them.
A part of her wondered if he might consider allowing her into the datapad on her own, to research recipes and codes that interested her. But that was likely beyond any trust he was willing to give, because to access such systems would also include contacting her family on her own.
She wished he believed her when she said it would do them no good to know the full truth. At least not until she could be back with them, alive and well, ready to tell of her ordeal in its entirety. For now, she was alive for them, and that was enough.
But how much longer? She glanced at Cydrin, unable to conjure the worries that often sprung on her unawares, that he was simply biding his time and would certainly end her whenever he realised her lack of usefulness.
It simply felt... wrong.
But she remembered the blaster fire at the last facility, the streaks of light bolting across the spaces between them, her ears ringing either from panic or the sound, she still did not know.
If he took her with him to this next facility, she could just as easily be shot there. Killed there. Would Cydrin bring her body with him, or leave her there to be a part of the rubble? What hope she had instilled for her family suddenly a falsehood.
Her mouth was dry. “Can we start with a cup of water?” she asked quietly, Cydrin unaware of the turn of her thoughts and the worry that had nestled there. “Certainly.”
He waited to ensure she was watching carefully, and input a string of six numbers. She wished she had a datapad, or at the very least a scrap of paper so she would not have to rely solely on her memory.
She glanced downward, realising that she did have paper, already boasting a critical code.
Something to write with, then.
But she’d seen nothing, and if the replicator had the specifications stored away, there would be no way to know.
“This seems inefficient,” she observed, surprised to find it so. From what she had learned of the Project’s true intentions, they seemed to place great importance in what was rational and reasonable. This seemed merely excessive.
“Expound,” Cydrin ordered as the water began to materialise, the cup matching the specification of the amount he had programmed.
“I assume they removed the searchable menu so that you would rely on the codes they provided you. But you also had access to the computer systems, so you could just as easily look up whatever you wanted and input it anyway. So why bother trying to control this? Just... leave it unlocked and let people eat and drink what they’d like.”
It seemed reasonable to her, but Cydrin was giving her a dry look, as if she had overlooked something terribly obvious. “This vessel keeps logs of every activity. Every search, as you say, every product that this machine constructs. If one strayed from the approved nutritional guidelines, there would surely be consequences.”
Clairy chewed at her lip. “Then they must not have trusted you very much,” she commented, wincing as she did so. This was a foolish thing to discuss, especially since it rarely ended well when she tried overly hard to understand the people she had once worked for. She always ended up feeling stupid and slow, and Cydrin grew frustrated, regardless if he denied it or not.
He blinked once. “I suppose that has merit. For if they believed we could follow the command to keep to our approved articles, there would have been no danger in allowing us access to the full databank.”
Clairy gave a thin smile. “Exactly.”
Cydrin was quiet for a moment, before he gave a deliberate rise and fall of his sh
oulders. It looked utterly unnatural, another attempt to mimic some posture she had given, and she supposed she should be more careful with her gestures lest he begin to emulate all of them. “They were right not to trust me,” he rightfully observed.
Clairy swallowed, nodding her head. There was no point in denying that was true.
The water finished, and he reached forward, handing it to her. She took a sip, wondering how it decided the proper temperature, and wondered if perhaps she had missed a step when Cydrin pressed in his selection.
“Now, I believe it is your turn.”
It was ridiculous to feel such a thrill for so simple a procedure, but she did. She took another swig of water before putting the cup down on the counter, turning her full attention to the device itself.
She reached out slowly, looking to Cydrin, not fearing she would mistakenly damage it, but because she was waiting for him to change his mind, to rescind the privilege he was allowing her.
Evidently he misunderstood his intention. “It will not damage you,” he commented, his voice droll as if she was being absurd. Apparently she was. “There is no need to approach with such trepidation.”
She relaxed then and made quick work of inputting the appropriate numbers, only transposing two of them before realising her mistake. She had always done that, fumbled with numbers and letters, switching them around and thinking she had done well.
She could easily remember her mother’s exasperated sigh when trying to teach her, Clairy not understanding what she’d done wrong.
It had gotten better as she’d gotten older, not in always getting it right, but in recognising the importance of always checking to find what she’d done wrong.
Because inevitably, there would be something.
Confident that it had been done properly, she pushed the execute button and waited.
Matter appeared and fused, turning what appeared to be nothingness into the general shape of a box of products for her use.
She had done that.
Couldn’t understand a lick of how it worked, but she had ordered it to happen and now it was, Cydrin observing, yes, but allowing it.
Designation 261 (The Wholeness Project) Page 17