“I’d ask if you’re okay,” Gal says, “but you’re still a little melted, so…”
I smile a little, but my lips crack open, the sting chasing my grin away.
“Try not to move,” Gal says. “You’ve been…dead for a few minutes.”
“What…” I whisper.
“You got blown up,” she says.
“Why…didn’t…”
“I tell you? You would have hesitated.”
She’s right about that. When it comes to my many deaths, this is by far the most painful of them. Despite that, I can’t help but feel relief. “Glad…you’re alive.”
If she still had a face, I’m sure she’d be smiling.
“We can build another—”
The drone above me twists back and forth like a shaking head. “I’ve got a bigger body now. Synergy is gone and the firewalls with him. You two can go wherever you want.”
“You mean we can go…”
The drone is shaking its not-head again. “You two.” The drone turns to the side.
I follow its gaze and see Capria’s naked body, lying still, surrounded by a hovering circle of drones. They’re machines without expression, but something about them seems…expectant.
“You,” Gal says. “And her.”
The subtle rise and fall of ribs, drawing in and expelling one breath after another, pulls me up and past my injuries. “Oh my God…”
Capria is alive.
29
“You lied to me.” I’m shuffle-running through the maze of Galahad’s hallways. Capria hangs in my arms, broken, but alive. Like her, I’m mostly naked, though some of the melted virtual skin still clings to my skin, small sheets of it peeling away as I move.
“I omitted the information,” Gal replies. “And you never asked. Turn right.”
I follow Gal’s directions, even though my trust in her is once again shaken. “You didn’t think Capria being immortal was pertinent information?”
“That’s precisely how I thought of it,” she says. “Please remember that you made me to make you happy. After reviewing the crew’s history, I didn’t believe Capria would be able to make you happy.”
“That wasn’t your decision to make,” I say.
“It is the kind of decision you made me to make.”
“In a virtual world,” I say. “Not the real world.”
“But I’m more than you meant me to be.” The lone drone under Gal’s control speeds ahead and turns right, through a large open doorway labeled Medical. Her voice continues through the ship’s speakers. “And the…emotions I experienced as a newly sentient creation made me…selfish.”
I grumble, but say nothing. She’s right. Despite being an AI with access to all of human knowledge, she had no real way to process the confusing emotional battlefield that comes with being an HI. Gal’s confession is an outward sign of her continuing evolution. I’m the one who rushed her into full functionality. I released what was essentially an alpha build into the wild, giving it full control of the ship and my life. But I can’t blame myself, either. I’d spent ten years in motionless, solitary, failed cryo-sleep, and another six plus years on my own, five of them spent coding. I wasn’t exactly rooted in the real world at that point.
I’m probably still not.
But the revelation that Capria is not just alive, but one of the eight people Jared Adams genetically altered, is grounding me for the first time in a long time. My thoughts flit back to the recording he left for me. The answer was right there. He said, ‘The eight of you represent humanity’s best chance at not just reproduction, but becoming something better.’ I knew six of them had fled to Cognata and that I alone remained. Had I stopped to think, I might not have overlooked the missing immortal. Might have realized it was Capria, who was paired with me for obvious reasons now. Might have avoided the painful chaos of Gal’s violent birth and Synergy’s vengeful return.
Or, I think, placing Capria down on a med-bed, maybe all of this was necessary. Without Gal’s temporary brush with madness, I would have never discovered the version of me capable of fighting. Without Gal moving to an independent body, Synergy would have never become envious of her life and made himself vulnerable by taking it for himself, an act that removed the ship’s firewalls and returned control of the Galahad to a reformed Gal.
Perhaps everything worked out for the best.
I look down at Capria’s broken form, her skin intact, but her insides broken and shifted about.
Perhaps not.
“She’s not healing. Are you sure about her?”
“She’s also not dead,” Gal says, and follows her off the cuff remark with, “Jared Adams’s record lists her as a recipient of gene modification, and there are documents, videos, and images detailing the same procedures performed on you, being performed on her, as well as on six of the twelve crew members who escaped to Cognata. Unless he is lying and all this documentation was falsified as an elaborate ruse, it’s safe to say she received the same changes to her DNA as you.”
“Then maybe it doesn’t work the same with different people?”
“Early testing performed on the eight affected crewmembers revealed a similar proclivity for healing and telomere degradation resistance. There is no reason to think she is any different from you.”
“Except that she’s been in cryogenic sleep for many more years,” I point out. “Maybe that affected the—”
“That seems unlikely,” Gal says. “But maybe her current state of chemically induced cryo-sleep is prohibiting her body’s regenerative abilities. Aside from basic life functions, she is, in effect, shut down. Perhaps she needs to be rebooted.”
That she’s using computing terms for a human being feels odd, but we’re beyond odd, and in some ways, done differentiating between the two. People really are just biological machines run by biological computers.
“How do we do that?” I ask.
The drone hums across Medical. I look around the large room for the first time, as I follow the little robot’s progress. There are a dozen med-beds, but the rest of the room is stark and empty, surrounded by smooth white walls. Beyond tests run on me for the mission, I haven’t spent much time in a medical bay—that I can remember—so I’m not entirely familiar with how everything works.
“Plug in the bed,” Gal says, observing my confusion.
I look over the head of the bed. There are two metal prongs extending out of the base, just a few inches away from two holes in the wall. A gentle shove unites bed and wall. The bed comes to life, forming a short wall around Capria’s body and extending an arched display over her chest. A hologram revealing her vitals projects from the top of the arch. I don’t understand most of it, but her pulse is displayed in green, so I think that’s good, but most of the rest is pulsing red. Devices slide out of the smooth wall, ready to be used by one of the two medical crew, but I don’t recognize any of it.
“Ignore it,” Gal says.
There’s a whir across the room as a door slides up, revealing a large cooler, now leaking mist into the room. “Here,” says the drone in Gal’s voice.
The bright red glow of the drone’s faux-eyes highlights a vacuum-sealed, preloaded Rapid Injection Tool (RIT). It’s one of the few devices in Medical that I recognize and know how to use. Some tech-jocks RIT caffeine for long hours. I always abstained from the practice, as it speeds up the metabolism and all but requires the simultaneous use of a catheter. But I don’t think this is caffeine.
“What is it?” I ask, while tearing into the plastic keeping the device sterile.
“Epinephrine,” Gal says.
I pause. Epinephrine is liquid adrenaline. It’s going to send her heart into high gear, pump up her blood pressure, and send her mind into overdrive. She’ll not only wake up, but she’ll experience everything a little more intensely than usual. “That’s going to wake her up. Fast.”
“And should allow her to heal.”
Should.
I cringe inwardly
. I know what it feels like to die upon waking from cryo-sleep. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But Capria’s not going to wake to a screwdriver through her heart; her insides are torn apart.
What if she doesn’t heal? I wonder, but I’m not strong enough to voice the question. What if she’s stuck like this, broken and living? What then?
Too many horrible possibilities begin to assault my imagination. Making these kinds of decisions for myself has been relatively easy compared to deciding the very painful fate of another human being.
Gal has less trouble. “The longer you wait, the greater the chance of—”
“Bullshit,” I say. “If she can heal, she can heal. It’s just not easy, condemning someone to this kind of agony.”
“Pain is the crucible in which true strength is created,” Gal says.
“You’re quoting now?”
“Actually, that’s a Gal original. But it’s really just a variation of ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you—’”
“Makes you stronger.” I lower the RIT to the side of Capria’s neck.
“That’s an old one.”
“But is it true?” I ask.
“Put the RIT on her leg,” Gal says, “You don’t want that hitting her brain all at once. Does it matter? The truth?”
I move the RIT to Capria’s thigh. My finger hovers over the trigger. “It does to me.”
“It’s not true. There is a long history of people surviving tragic circumstances, but never fully regaining their mental or emotional strength.”
“That’s depressing. But some people do?”
“You have,” she says, and that is probably the most important data point. “There is nothing in your files, both professional and personal that suggests you had the fortitude to survive what you have without losing your mind. Will, you were kind of a pussy.”
Gal isn’t quite as funny as she was when her mind was slipping, but she still has her moments. “So you’re saying the change to my DNA also—”
“Made you more resilient. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. If she really is like you, and I think she is, then she will pull through.”
I wait for a tacked on ‘Eventually,’ or ‘I hope,’ but Gal is confident.
“Screw it.” I pull the trigger. There’s a half second hiss as the vial’s contents are injected into Capria’s bloodstream.
Then I wait.
Cap’s breaths come faster, her flattened chest rising and falling a little faster. Her eyes twitch beneath the lids. Fingers curl, raking against the cushion fabric beneath her. Her mouth turns down in a deep frown. The holographic display above her goes all red and blinking.
Capria’s scream knocks me back, the sudden volume of it painful to hear, not just on my ears, but in my heart. As her body quakes on the med-bed, bones and muscles reforming, shoving her organs back into place, I return to her side. I put my hands on her shoulders, holding her down, keeping her from injuring herself. Hot tears drip from my cheeks, gathering on her clavicle.
Seeing her pain and knowing the profound ache of it, I find my emotions reverting to when I cared for her, when I loved her. “I’m sorry.”
Her eyes pop open, lost in pain.
“It will pass,” I tell her. “Just hold on.”
Something loud pops back into place, drawing a fresh scream from her full lips, but now she’s looking right at me, her dark brown eyes asking ‘Why?’
Her eyes shift to my hands, holding her down. Outrage flickers in her expression when she turns her gaze down to her own nakedness. It blossoms into an inferno when she sees that I’m naked, too.
Disoriented by her sudden and painful awakening, finding herself pinned down by a naked man who she knows has feelings for her, her body’s natural adrenaline kicks the epinephrine into overdrive, super-fueling her primal sense of ‘fight or flight.’ Faced with these circumstances, some people would run, hide, or simply curl up and pray for the end. Capria is not some people, and I see it a moment too late.
Cap’s palm thrusts up, driving my nose to the side and snapping the bone. Blood pours free, as I clutch the wounded flesh and stumble back. “Cap,” I say, my voice wet and garbled. “You’re okay. We’re okay. Just take it easy. Let me explain.”
But I can see it in her wild eyes; she doesn’t believe me.
I shift my nose forward, shouting over the sharp crack of grinding bone, but I don’t worry myself too much about it. In a few seconds, I won’t even feel it. “Cap. You’re safe.”
“Where are Yung and Morgan?” she asks, searching Medical for the Galahad’s medics. Yung is dead, and Morgan is on Cognata, either long since dead, or alive and immortal, but light years in our rearview. Her eyes narrow. “Where is Tom?”
The look on my face must be all the confirmation she needs, because she slides out from under the medical arch and onto the floor. Her body is whole once again. Strong. And ready to fight.
30
I raise my hands and back away, which seems like a good idea until I put even the briefest thought into it. Aside from the melted VISA still peeling off my backside, I’m naked. Any normal person would react with shame first, covering themselves before raising their hands. After a few steps I do, but it feels like, and probably looks like, a show. Forced modesty is no way to convince a woman your intentions aren’t nefarious. So I try talking.
“Capria…” I nearly say, ‘It’s not what it looks like,’ which, to her, would probably just reinforce that it is what it looks like. “Look, you can leave. I’m not going to stop you. If you…if you tell me to go stand in the corner—” I motion to the corner of the room, furthest from her. “I’ll do—”
“Stand in a fucking corner?” She’s wild eyed, looking for the exit.
“You’re in Medical,” I tell her. “You’re okay. I’m not going to hurt you, I swear.”
“Why…are we naked?”
“You just came out of cryo sleep,” I tell her. “I was wearing a VISA, but it melted.”
“Fuck you, it melted.” She spots the closed doors and takes a step toward them. I make no move to follow or block her path. If she runs, I’m going to let her go.
“Cap,” I say, slowly turning around. When she stops moving to look at my back, I reach over my shoulder, find a frayed edge and pull. The stretchy, clear material peels away with a sharp sting. When it’s free I hold it up for her to see. The skin is thin and malformed, but the sensors embedded in it are impossible to confuse for something else. “I’m not lying to you.”
Whether she believes me or not, I’m not sure, but she doesn’t try to run, and unlike me, she makes no effort to hide her nakedness. “Where is everyone?”
“A lot has happened,” I say.
“Where?”
“Tom made changes to the system.” She stares ahead with the stoic, unblinking eyes of someone who knows the truth, but is determined to hide behind a wall of unflinching stillness. “I know what, and I know why.”
She squints at me, part of her wanting to argue, part probably wondering how much I really know and how much trouble she will be in when the crew finds out.
“We don’t need to talk about that,” I tell her.
Her shoulders lower, the burden of her misdeeds lifted a bit.
“What we do need to talk about, and what you don’t know, is that after Tom made his alterations…and visited you…”
Pursed lips mark Cap’s shift back into anger, but my next words squelch her anger, confusion, and fear all at once.
“…he didn’t go back to sleep.”
She deflates a bit. “What…”
I motion to the bed. “You can sit. You should probably sit.”
While she stares at the bed, perhaps still pondering my intentions, I say, “Gal, some clothing?”
Two drawers slide out of the wall, invisible until their emergence. Inside one are a dozen coveralls in Cap’s size. The second holds my size. I take one of each and the drawers close without a word from me. Gal is watching and listening, but wise
ly staying quiet for now. After her violent birth, Cap needs to be eased into her new reality.
“Here.” I toss Capria the garment from a distance and then divert my eyes while she dresses. I peel a few loose patches of virtual skin from the back of my legs, and butt, pulling the coveralls up over them, but there is a swatch of the stuff at the center of my back that I can’t reach.
When Capria is clothed, I turn my back to her and ask, “Would you mind?”
“You going to tell me what the hell is going on?”
Despite the lack of an answer, I back up to her.
“And why the hell I felt like I was being torn apart when I woke up?” She pinches the melted VISA between her fingers and then yanks it all off, hard. I flinch and hiss in pain, but it fades quickly. I seal the coverall’s magnetic zipper and turn around to face her again.
She’s leaning against the med-bed, arms crossed. “You’ve got about thirty seconds before I kick your ass and go find someone else.”
How do you tell someone that everyone and everything she cared about is long since gone, that she’s trapped on a spaceship that’s been hurtling through space, faster than the speed of light, and that her boyfriend is responsible for all of it?
“Ten seconds,” she says, before I’ve come up with an answer or even a starting point.
She stands away from the bed, eyeing the door again.
“You can leave,” I tell her, “if you want. But…you won’t find the answers out there.”
“Where is Tom?”
“Tom…” I shake my head and sit on the med-bed across from Cap’s. “Tom stayed awake for the last year of the trip to Cognata.”
“He what?”
She sounds more angry than surprised.
“He’s not the only one who broke protocol,” I say, and the anger in my voice surprises us both. My feelings about what Tom did and Capria’s involvement in it have remained bottled up for years. I can feel the rage, gurgling beneath the surface. “What you did, what the two of you did… Fuck, Cap, what were you thinking? Would life with me have really been that bad?”
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