by Meg Ripley
“But it’s exceedingly rare that a cyborg without an empathy board can experience spontaneous phantom emotion. Unless you’re planning to give yourself a bunch of powerful electric shocks, I wouldn’t worry, Ada.” And with a pat on her head, he’d dismissed her and her concerns from her office.
But it hadn’t completely dismissed her concerns. Twenty years later, she’d started to experience those seemingly random bursts of strong sensation beyond her scope of knowledge or control---and it seemed like it was only getting worse. Over the last three years, swarms of energy---the tingling, warm kind she got around Pili, Jada, Nat or her old partner, Tod; the confusing and dizzying kind that seemed like an amplified version of what she felt during her occasional, almost mechanical sex with Tod; and the icy, piercing kind, like the sort of feeling she got before missions when she imagined pressing her palm to the activation screen of her ship and seeing it flash red before the transport tube turned and launched her, terrified and screaming, toward the massive star in the sky. She couldn’t shake the feeling that the “for their own good’ rationale was wrong---even if she was decaying past the point of functionality, she would still feel the crushing grip of fear as she was hurtling to her death. It was the only reason she hadn’t brought her fears up to Jada and Nat; as understanding as they were, they were bound by law to report any suspicions of a lost Pathos---or a decaying cyperson.
Ada shook her head roughly, snapping herself back to the present as the unsettling feeling she thought to be fear faded away. She stretched her palm out and touched it to the cool red door. She didn’t flinch as the microneedles stabbed at her skin to sample her DNA and confirm her identity, pulling up her mission as it electronically called her pod to the bottom of the transport tube. She heard the sphere lock into place just before the doors opened and showed her the inside of her familiar elevator vehicle. Ada knew that her ship was being rotated through the vehicle carousel above the dorm, picturing the disc shaped ship locking right into the top of the long transport cylinder. She could picture it so clearly because of years of watching Tod take off on the same route, rising up the slim cylinder until his pod connected with the floor of his ship. Ada saw him take the trip hundreds of times, until the day he was moved to Earth to train as a safety officer. She’d felt her heart rend as they’d said their last goodbye, but a single glance in his eyes told her he was feeling a sadness far more distant than hers. She’d been 27 then, and that had been the first sign that something was wrong.
Ada climbed into the pod and started to buckle herself in as a voice spoke to her from the speakers in the ceiling. “Welcome, Ada from Level Twenty-Five. Your mission objective is to repair a force field that has been damaged by debris outside an alien-controlled planet. Conditions are described as optimal, but wildlife may be present. Be mindful of the shock you may receive while repairing the force fence, and remember to report any out-of-the-ordinary sensations. Do you have any questions or comments?”
“No,” Ada replied, fastening the last snap from her shoulder to her waist. The material automatically shrank, pressing into the firm curve of her breast.
“Excellent. Thank you and have a safe mission.” A low tone sounded, and the doors closed in front of the pod. Ada couldn’t feel the motion of the vehicle, but after a moment, she saw the enormous pearlescent sides of her dormitory building zipping past her. It only took a few seconds to move past all twenty five floors, and then the huge, spherical hub of their command center was visible, as well as the three other dorms connected to the sphere by horizontal transport tubes. Finally, Ada saw the curving face of Earth stretching below the floating hubs. It always filled her with an indescribable feeling, like someone was reaching into her chest and gently squeezing her heart as it beat. Fear chased the feeling, because she knew it wasn’t normal, but this sensation was too overwhelming to be extinguished by her panic. It eclipsed her fear of being rejected by her equipment, her fear of her lies being discovered by her parental units and siblings, and the fear of a fiery, airless death. She’d read about feelings once in a human magazine she’d found in a trash bin, and looked up some of them in one of the libraries during a trip to the main hub. Her favorite was a word she’d never seen before---awesome; inducing an overwhelming feeling or reverence or fear. That certainly came close to what she thought she was feeling, so she often repeated the word as she gazed at Earth on the way to her ship. Awesome.
****
All too soon, her pod bumped against the bottom of her ship. The ceiling opened to show her the access panel, and a fresh burst of apprehension flooded her blood stream. She raised her palm and watched her hand press against the glass floors, holding her breath and waiting for it to screech and turn red. Instead, it blinked green like it always did, and the same voice from before filtered into the pod.
“Cyborg recognized: Ada, Level Twenty-Five. Access Granted.”
The ship’s bottom access doors parted and a heavy silver bar dropped before her eyes. Ada unbuckled herself from the cushy seat and gripped the steel bar, bracing herself as it quickly rose and pulled her into the ship. The floor reformed under her just as the bar disappeared into the ceiling, and she gently floated toward the floor. The artificial gravity wasn’t on yet. She looked around the circular room, gazing at the flat black panels that would only light up at her touch. Ada was filled with a warm, fuzzy feeling of happiness---distant and hard to capture. The feeling was supposed to be the limit of cyborg emotion, and it was startling to realize that most cypeople were so placid. She reminded herself that until a few years ago, she’d been placid, too.
“Take off in sixty seconds,” the cool voice of the ship informed her. “Trip will take approximately four minutes. Ready to proceed?”
“Yes.” Ada strode over to buckle herself into yet another chair--- this one tall and slim, and situated in front of two delicate steering handles. There was a wide window in front of the control bay, and she could see the velvety stretch of space for miles in either direction. Ada poked the panel, and an image of her destination popped up---a huge laser fence surrounding a tiny, rocky planet she knew was called Oro, for its golden color. There was a section of the fence that was down---completely darkened compared to the neon red glow of the rest of the structure. Two poles were responsible for projecting the force field, and Ada figured one of them was malfunctioning. It was an easy enough mission, but an inexplicable feeling of foreboding filled her as she gazed at the planet on the video screen.
“Take off initiated,” the ship intoned. “Please hold on.”
There was no perceptible movement as they shot upward into space; only a faint tug at her limbs that she supposed would be more pronounced if she were a human, or a weaker cyborg. It didn’t make sense to her that her body was so much tougher than the others, yet her mind seemed to be crumbling away---she had no other explanation for what she assumed were the phantom emotions her medical tech assured her were so rare. She held out hope that she was a Pathos, though that would be even more rare. Ada knew that lost Pathos were usually lost due to human error---transposing the numbers on a growth pod, for example--- but they were discovered when they were ten or twenty years old, and Ada was now thirty. She supposed whatever mutation made her skin stronger might also have mutated her tiny emotion center, too. It was the only thing she could think of that quieted her internal anxieties.
Ada looked down at her deep purple suit as she steered. Unlike most other cypeople, she had an unusual preoccupation with color--- another simple mutation, her assigned technical medic told her. This was one was far more pleasant, though; she enjoyed feeling moved, however slightly, by different hues and shades. She liked seeing Pili’s tawny skin against Adofo’s brilliant white, and enjoyed the varied tones of the jumpsuits automatically left in her sleeping quarters by the laundry androids. She favored the eggplant ones, and had started to consider it a good sign whenever she wore them, even though she knew it was generated randomly.
“Thirty seconds to landing.”<
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Ada brought her eyes up to the window to see the tiny golden planet drawing nearer and nearer to her ship. They were zooming toward the docking hub just above the field, and Ada knew she would have to use a protection bubble to get down. Bubbles were temporary fields of energy that encased their bodies and carried them safely through flames, debris, and even laser fields, but they could only be used once. She opened her storage panel and grabbed three bubble pods, pushing them into a pocket on the side of her suit. Her eyes moved over the planet, trying to find any signs of life, like a plant or a pool of water. Pili would expect her to bring something back, and she hated to disappoint her. She spotted a cave protruding from the uneven surface of the planet, but its mouth was closed off with what looked like sheets of reinforced aluminum. There was a yellow symbol painted across it, but the ship touched the landing pad, and the partially enclosed area hid the mark from view.
“You may now disembark,” the cool voice told her. Ada unbuckled her straps and stretched her long, heavily muscled legs briefly to prepare to drop one hundred feet from her ship and onto the ground below. A frisson of energy moved through her body--- a whirling, heart-pounding energy that felt like a burst of adrenaline, something she’d experienced artificially after her body reacted to an allergen and the tech was forced to clear her airways with medicine. She ignored the sensation and slipped a bubble from her pocket, waiting for the ship’s floors to spread open. When they did, she squeezed the tiny pink disc and held her breath as the golden tendrils of repulsive energy wrapped around her body. Ada started to float toward the ground, and an icicle of terror pierced her heart as she passed through the neon field---she half expected to be fried despite her protective measure. When nothing happened, she exhaled heavily and waited for her boots to touch the soil, touching her suit to make sure she was still all there. Something dropped from her suit, and she looked down to see a bubble. She was unnerved; she thought she’d zipped her suit. The chilly calm that replaced her terror unnerved her more, and Ada realized it was because her internal stillness was growing more scarce than her periods of strong emotion. Focus, she thought. One thing at a time.
****
The sky here was nearly the same shade of violet as Pili’s suit, and Ada wished she could take a chunk of the color with her. She allowed herself to gaze at the unbroken space for a moment before starting to walk the remaining hundred yards to the tall silver pillar projecting the fence. The soil on Oro was springy, and little orange plants were bursting from the golden surface. She tried to remember which alien race owned this rock; the Azurans? The Hyppo? A violent, nameless species responsible for the decision to cordon the planet off from the rest of the galaxy? Ada was happy then that she hadn’t been sent on a more physical mission in a while; she’d seen some of the toothy things that warranted being held back by a laser fence in the past. Once had been a time too many.
Finally, Ada’s light strides brought her to the pillar. She pressed her palm to the surface, and its electronics panel opened for her immediately. Ada scanned the wires and circuit boards, feeling her brain whir through schematics and facts that had been beamed into her mind years before. The answer came to her after a moment; a rock had knocked one of the connecting bridges loose, and power wasn’t getting where it needed to be. Ada used the long, steely nail of her pinky finger to pry open some of the circuits and shuffle around the wires and data. As usual, it felt vaguely wrong---she was looking and poking at something whose guts were a precursor to her own, after all. Ada knew most cypeople didn’t feel this way, but most cyborgs also wouldn’t think of the parallel in the first place.
A low buzzing noise told Ada she’d succeeded; she looked up, and sure enough, she could see a glowing grid in place of the void she’d seen when the power was down. She lifted her wrist to her mouth, tapping the microcom sewn into the sleeve with her middle finger.
“This is Ada, prime directive has been achieved. Returning to ship.”
“Thank you Ada.” A human’s voice came over her com, probably Adam, the director of her dorm. She couldn’t always tell them apart. “Proceed to your ship.”
She turned on the spot, taking much larger strides now that her mission was finished. She felt lighter, more free; a soft ripple across her face told her that there was a breeze on this planet, and she let herself enjoy the sensation. Her body was made so that it would acclimate to most temperatures, but the cool breeze was still pleasant for her. Ada reached behind her head and tugged on her ponytail, letting her dark curls spring into place around her shoulders as she leapt across the ground. Another successful mission, and she hadn’t turned unrecognizable to her ship yet: Awesome.
Something caught the corner of her eye, and it made her stop bounding across the soil. She turned in her heavy boots to the right, gazing at the cave she’d first seen as the ship descended onto the planet. Ada saw that the cave was much bigger than she’d realized---its mouth was forty feet across, at least, and it stretched a few hundred feet back. It was only about twenty feet tall, so Ada knew the massive, tree-like Azurans were probably not utilizing this particular rock. The barricade across its opening was indeed a shiny aluminum, but Ada felt compelled to examine it further. Her ship could wait; mission control would come looking after a few hours, if at all.
As soon as she got about fifty feet from the cave, she saw why her attention had been so drawn to it. There was a hole on the far right corner of the aluminum, big enough for a creature slightly larger than her to push into. She could see a soft glow emanating from the hole, flickering like firelight. Ada held her breath automatically, not wanting to give whoever--or whatever--it was any more notice than necessary. The air was silent around her, and not even her footfalls were heavy enough to make a sound. Ada was aware of her own heart pounding in her ears, and she cursed her mutation--or impending decay. She dropped to her hands and knees as she approached the hole, trying to see as far inside as she could as her head crossed the threshold.
She saw two things as her eyes adjusted to the light---a huge wall made of something cool and pearlescent, and a figure at the back of the cave, shrouded in darkness. A third thing was rushing toward her, brown, furry, and about the size of her own head. A single clear thought was able to complete itself before the creature collided with her---where’s the fear?---but it was wiped from her mind as the round, faceless ball of fur crashed into her, zapping her with a strong electric current while it emitted a high screech. Then there was only darkness.
****
Ada was aware of a gentle warming sensation growing ever-so-subtly more intense with each passing moment, outweighed only by the mind-shattering pain consuming her bones. It felt like there were a thousand needles digging into the metal and mineral alloy of her frame and cracking her open to drain the fluid away; it felt like lava was seeping in through acid-eaten holes in her skin. She thought: this is what death is like. This is it. I’m burning in the sun. She couldn’t even locate a pulse in her chest, and the foam-fiber muscles wrapping her skeleton wouldn’t obey the signals in her brain. If they could, she would be shrieking, thrashing, trying to find some way to get rid of the energy slashing at her body and slowly shutting her down. Ada wished it would be quicker, at least, even if it wouldn’t be clean.
But then the agony started to recede, and Ada felt her body start to hesitantly reboot. Her back seized, and her heart started to pump; after a long, rattling gasp, she started to properly pull air into her lungs. Fire was still clawing at her skin and organs, but she felt the coolant in her artificial blood start to return her core to optimal temperature. The chaotic clanging in her brain quieted, and after a few stuttering attempts, her eyes flew open. Ada cried out--- the world appeared as though washed in a bright white light, and for a moment, she thought she really was on the sun. Then the color ran back into her vision, and she saw that the iridescent walls of the cave were merely reflecting the light of an electric lamp somewhere near her feet.
“Beautiful soul…please heal�
�”
Ada heard the voice before she realized she wasn’t alone. Her muscles still weren’t responding, so she could only open her eyes wide as she struggled to take in as much as she could from what she could see from her position on her back. Her head was propped up on something warm and somewhat soft, and she could see hands above her chest and stomach, presumably the owner of the voice. She stared at the palms, trying to figure out if her eyes were playing tricks; they were much bigger than her own, and humanoid besides their color---vibrant and continually changing. Though the skin on the palms was much paler than what she could see of the being’s fingers, Ada could pick each color out as clearly as her own emotions: a rich red the same shade as a human’s blood, a crisp green like Pili’s eyes, a violent orange, like the outside of her elevator pod. Her mind quieted as she focused on the changing colors, and after a long moment, the pain had completely faded from her body. Ada could tell the being was still talking, but while she focused on the light purple of its skin, she couldn’t discern a single word. Finally, the hands receded, and Ada felt her agency return as though a spell had been lifted; she sat up quickly, then threw her hands behind her as a wave of lightheadedness crashed over her.