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Then she thought of her mother. What she would do when she learned of Chal’s disappearance? The worry and sorrow of another lost child. No. I can’t let that happen. Chal kicked her feet and drove herself up out of the water.
She pulled herself up, her legs shaking as they balanced her weak figure on the deck. She wrapped her arms tightly around the mast and closed her eyes, blocking out the world. Sobs racked her body and she curled herself against the metal of the boat. It was a shield against the softening wind, though it could not ease the ache of self-pity and loss that now swept through her. She gave herself a moment to grieve, but only a moment – she could not spare more if she wanted to survive.
She stiffened herself and spit out the saltwater in her mouth – god, she was already so thirsty. She reached up to the line and braced her feet against the mast, readying to pull. The storm was slowing down, and she would need to get the boat bailed out immediately.
“Chal!”
The voice came from right behind her, and she was so surprised that she lost her grip mid-pull, this time falling directly backwards into the water. Strong arms pulled her up so quickly that she did not even have time to register the danger. Alan was holding onto the side of the boat with one hand and her with the other, though he almost lost his grip when she threw her arms around his neck, hugging him breathlessly.
“Alan... Alan,” Chal said, her hand cradling his face. She did not know what to say now that he was alive and back.
“Up,” was all he said as he lifted Chal over the side of the boat, scrambling in after her. The water was to their knees and Alan quickly reached into the messy cabin for a bucket. It was true that the most effective bilge pump was a scared sailor with a bucket. Alan and Chal took turns bailing the water out with the bucket until they were both exhausted and the water was down to a less alarming level.
The cabin was secure, if a bit wet and chaotic, but the most important thing – their drinking water – was intact, and after some time Chal and Alan managed to get their bearings. The wind was gusty but manageable with the repaired sail reefed halfway up the mast. The skies were still gray with mist, but the GPS seemed to be functioning alright, at least as far as position went.
“Thanks,” Alan said. “It’s good to be back with you. He hugged her briefly with one arm, then pulled back, mindful of the nearness. Chal felt her body respond to his touch despite her best efforts to tamp them down. He was alive, after all. Alive!
“We’re three miles away from San Sebastian if these coordinates are correct,” Chal said. “If we go east, any shore we hit will be Catalonia, and we only have to avoid the central port traffic. We need to remember to keep close to the border.”
And I need to remember to keep my distance from you.
“Then we go east,” Alan said. “And anchor wherever we hit land.”
“Yes,” Chal said. “Let’s get off of this damn boat.”
***
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals – and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?” -William Shakespeare, Hamlet
***
It was not long before the skies began to clear and they found themselves sailing closer to the shoreline. The cliffs rose high and dark against the lightening sky. They had raised the keel and were coming in to anchor just offshore in a small cove when the sun’s rays broke through the clouds. Chal wrapped a blanket around her shoulders as Alan lowered the anchor. They were in Catalonia.
The sand was white, the water clear, and it was all Chal could do to keep from crying through her laughter as they dropped down into the waist-deep water and splashed up onto the beach. She threw down the blanket, collapsed on the sand, and closed her eyes, soaking in the sun’s warmth.
“I’ve never met anyone so ill-suited for overseas travel,” Alan said, dropping down to his knees by her side. He shook his head in mock disapproval.
“At least I stayed aboard,” Chal said. “Unlike some passengers.”
“I’m so sorry I worried you,” Alan said. He leaned over and pressed his lips against her forehead, and some tension inside of her unclenched. She felt the tears stream down her cheeks without any warning. So many tears.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” she said. She put her hand on his shoulder, so steady even after all they had gone through. He seemed as though he would always be steady.
“Well,” he said, rolling over onto his side next to her, “you’re home. Anything else you want?”
It was a second before she realized what he meant.
“Alan–” she began.
“I don’t like that tone,” he said, shaking his head. “Not one bit.”
Chal sat up and gazed out at the ocean, her arms hugging her knees. There was nobody around, maybe for miles. And yet she didn’t feel the loneliness that she had felt in California, surrounded by people.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t apologize, Chal,” he said. She shivered when he spoke her name.
“But I am,” she said, wiping at her damp cheeks. “I feel horrible for pushing you away.”
“Then stop pushing me away,” Alan said, laughing. His hand came up and traced the line of her arm. “You know you want me.”
“And?” Chal asked, lifting her chin stubbornly.
“And I want you. You’re the most wonderful woman I know, and I want you.”
“You haven’t ever met any other women,” Chal said.
“Not true,” Alan said. “I met Lucia.”
Chal shook her head in amused disbelief, but Alan’s arm came around her waist, pulling her toward him. She fell against his chest more willingly than she cared to admit.
“I must say, she was quite the temptation,” Alan said, nuzzling Chal’s hair. Chal laughed in spite of herself.
“Please, Chal,” Alan said, and this time his voice was serious.
She knelt over him on the blanket framed in white sand. His body was perfect, for that was how they had created him. And his mind – his mind was like hers. There were imperfections, to be sure, but those imperfections were what made him human. Her hand ran over his smooth skin, flawless except for the one cut which he had suffered in the escape. The skin had begin already to heal, though, knitting together pink and pale and shiny. She let her fingertips run lightly over the scar.
Alan watched everything she did, an attentive student paying close attention to a teacher who was more than willing. Chal bent down and feathered kisses over his cheek and down to his chin. His lips were hesitant to respond, and the uncertainty of it thrilled her for some reason unknown, but also gave her pause.
“Is this good?” she asked. She wanted him to be comfortable, wanted everything to be comfortable and perfect for him.
“Amazing,” he said, his eyes crinkling back into a smile. It was odd that of all the men Chal had ever found herself attracted to, this one would be the most genuine. Yet there he lay in perfect sincerity. No part about him was formed with pretention. It was, she thought as she kissed him again, one of his best qualities.
One of.
Her mouth pulled back in a smile. She sat back and unbuttoned her shirt, throwing it unceremoniously up toward the dunes. Her bra unhooked easily and went flying down along with her shirt. Her breasts perked at the cold of the ocean air, her nipples standing on end even as the sun’s rays beamed across her skin to warm them. Goosebumps rose on her skin and areolae, pink and nubbed. All the time, Alan watched, his eyes focused on one part of her, then the other. She watched his eyes sweep across her naked skin and imagined his hands moving on her skin in the same way.
“Touch me,” she said, bringing one of his hands up to her neck.
Alan stroked her skin from her collarbone down the side of her breast. Her heart pounded in her chest as he paused, t
hen let his fingers run lightly over her nipple. He caressed her breasts, softly at first, then with an increased possessiveness.
Chal’s eyes fluttered shut, and she leaned into his caresses. He was holding her, stroking her skin in long slow motions, and the waves of desire rolled through her with each new caress. Her hair hung down on her shoulders, and her skin was so sensitive that she seemed to feel every strand that tickled her back. She shook her hair out, indulging in the sensation.
Alan cupped his hands softly around her face and kissed her on the lips.
It was gentle, gentler than she had ever been kissed, but the softness was belied by the strength she felt in his arm as it came around and pulled her body closer to him. He pulled her in tightly and she felt his lips needing hers, her breath unable to move in her body under the pressure of the embrace. Every part of her body leapt to meet his, and when he arched himself against the bed she felt his hardness against her own body. When they broke apart she let out a small gasp.
He relaxed his grip, still supporting her weight. Chal thought it was a good thing that he was so strong. Her muscles had turned to jelly. He realized that she was helpless – of course he realized, he was perfectly observant – and before she knew it she was lying on the blanket and he had rolled over on top of her.
She could not help but laugh at his victorious grin, even as she felt her body respond to his weight. She ran her hands up his arms, aching for him.
Looking down, she considered their bodies as though from a distance: the quintessential lovers giving in to their bodily passions. For a second, she saw him as a robot, and herself as robot too, two structures grown with tiny building blocks. Her arm moved as a lever, tense with muscles and tendons. She felt her skeleton pressing into her skin at her elbow, her knuckles, and she doubted her own humanity. Then Alan brushed the hair back out of her face, and she was in her body again.
“I want you,” she whispered. He searched her face; for what, she didn’t know. Truth, maybe. He had it. She had never wanted any man more thoroughly than Alan. Right now she thought she would split into fragments if he were to leave her without giving her satisfaction.
That’s it. I’d just shatter into little tiny bits that would spill over the blanket and mix with the sand.
Every cell in her body was vibrating with desire. She was past doubt anymore. She wanted him to take her wholly, entirely. She wanted him to possess her in every way he wanted. Her hand came down and touched him there, guided him down to her entrance.
She was slick with desire but when he slid into her for the first time she gasped at the pressure. How big he was, how he filled her! Leaning her head back onto the softness of the sand, she felt her body relax, then clench itself again around him.
Alan moved slowly but with a confidence about him, as though he knew that he had complete control of her and could do whatever he liked. Chal’s fingers entwined themselves in the blanket as he rocked forward and onto her, pressing her in exactly the right place.
“Ohhh,” she moaned. Her hand came up and touched him on the face. She did not think that it was possible, that he was possible, that any of this was possible. That the universe had turned this way instead of that, what did that mean? Every piece of the world had led them to this moment. Every fiber of space threaded together to weave a story, and the story was this one. There could not have been another.
Her hand moved to the back of his head and she gripped his hair as he rocked forward harder, working his thickness deep into her body. She cried out.
“Are you alright?”
Chal almost laughed at Alan’s concern.
“More than alright.”
All of her attention was focused on that burning part of her that seemed to be rocking its way slowly to a climax. Every motion he made was carried through to her body and repeated, the passion echoing between them again and again. Each second she thought would be the last that she could hold out, and each second brought her closer, ever closer to unimaginable ecstasy. He moved faster against her, and drops of sweat stood on his brow. Their skin was damp with lust, moving slickly against each other.
“Yes, yes–” Chal cried, and then Alan was burying himself into her body with a passion she reflected. The orgasm shivered up from her stomach and rolled through her nerves, shaking her body with an electrical energy.
“Ohh!” she groaned, her hands tensed against his chest. She arched herself into him and felt him shudder against her. His face was a picture of surprise mixed with anguish, his brow knitted into pleasure as he released himself inside of her. His lips were parted and wet, and he jerked once again against her body before his body relaxed into hers. He was breathless, panting, and she caressed his hair so that it lay smooth.
He lay down beside her and she cradled him in her arms, pulling the blanket over his shoulders and cocooning them both in the fabric. Her fingers would not stop running through his soft dark hair. It was some moments before he spoke.
“That was wonderful,” he whispered.
“I think so too,” Chal said.
“Is it the same for you?” Alan asked. “How it feels?”
Chal paused. It was the same, in a sense. There were many studies which tilted toward the conclusion that the experience of orgasm was universal. There was no difference in heart rate, pelvic spasm, blood pressure, or breathing between men and women. Chal remembered a study proving that the levels of oxytocin produced by each gender were nearly identical. And to top it all off, in 1977, psychologists at Reed College had asked groups of men and women to describe their orgasms in words – even the semantic descriptions given were indistinguishable from each other based on gender.
And yet, Chal knew that no individual had the same experience as another, even given the exact same stimuli. Add to that the fact that Alan’s brain was digitally guided and had just recently developed, and who knew what he was feeling?
What mattered most was that they had escaped, at least for the time being. She could not predict what would come next, but she felt alive for the first time in a very long time. She felt curious again about the world, not about an abstraction. Abstraction had ruled most of her life, but as the sun rose and shone warmer on her skin, she felt her entire being shift towards the present world and all of its sensory pleasures. She smelled the warm sand, the salt of the surf and felt the sun’s rays play across her body.
“It’s the same,” Chal said. “Mostly, anyway.”
“Wonderful,” he repeated.
“So,” Chal said, a smile in her voice, “is this one of the skills you pick up immediately?”
Alan turned his head lazily.
“What do you think?” he said. His eyes sparked with mischief although he kept his mouth set in a solemn line.
She pressed a kiss against his temple and let herself dream about the sorts of ideas that might be wheeling around in his mind.
We never knew what our lovers were thinking, but we always guessed. We told ourselves that we knew what our loved ones would think. Whenever Chal saw a particularly stupid TV show, she would often think about her mom, and what her mom would think about the show, or what she would say about the characters. Sometimes it felt as though her mom was in the room, whispering her thoughts from the invisible place she occupied in Chal’s mind and memory.
Chal had read in a book somewhere that this was the only kind of immortality that existed. If your mind was replicated inside of someone else’s, you lived inside of them. She had never understood what it meant until now. She felt as though Alan was a part of her, and she a part of him.
“I love you,” Alan said.
“I love you too,” she whispered, and realized as she spoke the words that she had never meant them so truly.
Chal’s eyes mirrored his, and their breath drew from the same small space. But it was not the space that separated them. No, this was the mistake Chal had made before and would not make again. The air that hung between them was life itself, another part of the universe
that tied Alan and Chal together. They were inseparable for that reason alone, Chal thought. There was no difference between her and the rest of the world, no outer boundary that enclosed her, her person, Chal, whatever that was. Her consciousness.
Even now her skin pressed against his in something more than a tender embrace. There were pores and hairs that mingled, and molecules of water and air flowing in and out of these membranes of skin. The oxygen that was absorbed into her bloodstream, that was shunted to her brain. All this nourishment, all these cells living and dying and being consumed and transformed inside of her.
None of this was her, though. There was no single neuron that encased her being, no set of dendrites she could point to and say: “That. That’s me.” This, the hard problem of consciousness that had bothered her since she knew enough to be bothered, was no longer a real problem in her mind.
All of the academic questions left unanswered, the unfinished research – none of it bothered her anymore. Everything was happening exactly as it should, and her curiosity shifted to the current moment, to her experience, every nerve attuned to the world as it was.
She was part of him, part of everything. It was not enough to know that every interaction she had with the universe was bound up together, but now she felt it as well. Alan was not a person – but neither was she. They were both pinpricks of consciousness woven into the fabric of the universe, that was all.
That was enough.
***
THE END
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