Something twinkled beside a rock on the edge of the lagoon. Eunice jumped up to investigate. She had to stomp on some saplings, but when she got there, there was nothing but water. Interesting, though: the rockline held back the sand on one side, but on the other, the water looked deep. She kicked off her sandals and pulled on her snorkel.
The water was cold for that time of year; it seemed to swallow her. She blew out the water from her snorkel, and began to slowly explore along the rockline. Soon she was bumping up against the tree roots of a mangrove swamp. She had half a mind to get out; no telling what poisonous snakes or crocodiles could be living there. But there was something so incredibly familiar about the place, something that twigged at the back of her mind. The silt was so loose here that any little disturbance stirred it up, so Eunice drifted carefully.
There, half-buried, a woman’s body facing up. Eunice clung to a tree root tightly to stare. Was she dead?
A flurry of silt went up, and the woman was gone. A dark shadow circled around Eunice, and from the sandy cloud, a pair of brown arms reached out to her. Eunice froze, letting the hands touch her face, drift over her snorkel mask, brush her bangs back. The sand parted, and the woman’s face came into view, achingly familiar. She had a broad nose and large dark eyes, and her cheeks seemed to have scars. She swam by, a hand trailing down Eunice’s side, dipping into the small of her back.
Eunice sucked in her breath at the sight of the long segmented body beginning from the woman’s waist. The bristles on the sides waggled independently of each other, navigating the water. The wormwoman swam above Eunice’s legs, and under, running her hands up from her hips, to her waist, the sides of her breasts, and cupped her cheeks. She gently prised one of Eunice’s hands from the tree root and tugged, smiling.
Eunice let go, let herself be pulled along by this woman. They passed under tunnels of mangrove roots, toward open sea, and along the coastline to a rocky beach. Eunice pulled herself onto a shelf, water sloshing around her hips as the waves came in. The woman wrapped herself around a rock, leaned forward with a beaming smile.
When Eunice pulled off her mask, the smile faltered a little.
“You’re not Salmah.” She wasn’t exactly unfriendly, but there was a slight wobble in the music.
Eunice shook her head. “I’m Salmah’s daughter.” She hesitated. “You saved me, when I was little.”
The woman’s gaze swept over her, then she lowered her head to rest her chin on her arms. “Has it been so long?”
“Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. I just thought—but never mind. How is she?”
Eunice’s mind ran through a thousand possible answers. She’s fine—she’s busy with a new business—she seems lonely—she hates swimming now—she seems happy—she’s got a new husband. She went with the most honest answer. “I don’t know. I haven’t really talked to her in a while.” She pursed her lips. “She never told me your name.”
Those large eyes seemed to glitter in the sunlight. “Hmm.” Everything about her seemed iridescent with the sunshine. The brown of her skin had a reflective rainbow sheen, and the curls of her hair resembled an oil slick.
The waves rushed to shore. In the distance, herons cawed.
“My name is Mayang.”
Eunice smiled. “Eunice.”
“Eunice. It sounds nice. American name?”
A nod. “My father named me.”
“I see.”
Mayang said nothing further about Eunice’s father, even when Eunice casually mentioned him later in the conversation, as in “that time when Dad got mad about—” and watched Mayang’s reaction carefully. But save for a flicker on Mayang’s face, he was as good as irrelevant. They wouldn’t talk about him after that, on further visits, resting after a long swim around the reefs and nearby islands, drilling holes into the bottoms of rich men’s yachts with screwdrivers and drills Eunice brought. Mayang would confess to Eunice the fates of former lovers, devoured by sea predators, dead by the poison of pollution, or simply lost to the worldly concerns of humans. Eunice would tell Mayang about the new technologies that had arisen, the advancements scientists were making in space and deep-sea explorations, and the new wars. When they made love, Eunice was torn between jealousy and satisfaction, that her mother had this before she did, and would never have it again.
“You never talk about yourself,” Mayang interrupted Eunice one day as they lazed in a nest of rocks, Eunice in Mayang’s arms. Mayang was not an interrupter, but she couldn’t help herself in that moment. “Why is that?”
Eunice shrugged. “I’m not a very interesting person.” And went on describing memes.
Mayang let it pass until Eunice was done talking. Then she stroked the young woman’s hair. “I think you’re very interesting.”
Eunice caught Mayang’s hand, and kissed its palm. “I think you’re more interesting than me. You live forever under the sea. You see things no human ever could.” She thought for a moment about her never-mentioned father. “Also, you eat people. That’s really cool.”
Mayang laughed so loudly Eunice was afraid someone would hear them, discover them and their secret. The seams in her cheeks loosened a little, mandibles almost unfolding in her mirth. But Mayang sobered as quickly as she had laughed. “There is a price to the freedom of the seas.”
She was so serious, Eunice had to know. “What is it?”
“Everything amazing you tell me, every change in the human world, will be lost to you,” Mayang answered, hands still stroking Eunice’s hair, drifting down. “Death is still a constant danger. There are so few of us, torn apart by the tides, I don’t even know where the others are anymore.”
“I found you easily.”
“I like to stay put. Fishing here is easy. There are so many more tourists than before.” She smoothed the fabric of Eunice’s panties. “But no more this feeling good here. Because you won’t have it anymore.”
Eunice let Mayang’s hand linger, weighing the truth of the statement. Eunice’s wormbody explorations had turned up nothing sensitive. She parted her knees a little, and pressed the hand farther down. Mayang’s fingers played with a stray hair, but withdrew after a moment.
“You’re so young, Eunice. Go live a full life. The sea is for bitter old crones like me.”
Eunice turned to kiss Mayang’s cheek, and trailed her lips along a mandible seam. “You’re not a crone,” she murmured, brushing sand off Mayang’s brown skin, flicking a cake of silt off a breast. It was small, mostly vestigial muscle left over from years of swimming in the ocean. “And I’m not that young.” She kissed Mayang, working her fingers into the wormwoman’s mouth to reach places her tongue could not reach. Mayang’s mouth—the loose membrane, the soft muscles—pressed down, not to push Eunice out, but to draw her in. In a busy embrace, Eunice straddled Mayang, stretching the length of herself along to brush against the bristles that fluttered in a way Eunice noticed only happened when they kissed.
The epidermis along Mayang’s body cracked as it dried. It did not happen often, Mayang had told Eunice, and really only meant she had a new segment to her body. Eunice helped peel the old skin off, and marveled at the polished iridescence beneath. She ran her fingers across the new skin, soft for now until it toughened over time, and grinned to hear Mayang moaning. She carefully stripped the length of Mayang’s body, fingers dancing between parapodia to a startling cacophony from Mayang. When she reached the final segment, throbbing with its newness, she embraced it, showering it with kisses, while Mayang arched her back, mandibles unfurling wide in a long, ragged cry.
The afternoon sun had gone down by the time they rested. “When there were more of us,” Mayang whispered, eyes closed in dreamy afterglow, “we met during molting season. What a shame there are so few of us now.”
Eunice went home and quit her job. She closed her bank accounts, all social media possible, wrote several letters that were along the lines of, “Don’t look for me.” Her mother tried to withhold h
er car keys and her identity card, as if those were things Eunice needed anymore. Concerned acquaintances tried to call, but Eunice turned off her phone and removed the SIM card.
Off the shore of Terengganu, where it was still dark enough for moonlight to set the white sands aglow, Eunice rode Mayang’s back to an island of rocks too small for development, too rocky for trees.
“Will it be painful?”
“Very.” (Mayang actually couldn’t remember anymore.)
“Will you be there when I wake up?”
“Yes.” (Mayang lied, because anything could happen.)
They tumbled onto a bed of sand together, kissing and licking and tasting, Eunice wrapped around Mayang. Mayang ran her pharynx over the length of Eunice’s neck, chest, belly, while her fingers found the human cleft and thrust deep, feeling along the lines of the wet walls for throbbing muscle. Eunice gripped Mayang’s hair, a little alarmed at the sudden engorgement from Mayang’s mouth, raking teeth across her clavicle, the round of her breasts, and every sensitive spot Mayang knew. She swallowed the bile of terror as Mayang’s head settled between her legs, mandibles unfurling and foaming at the edges. Water rose around her hips.
Mayang bit deep, seeking the second heartbeat, splitting skin and flesh. Eunice screeched as Mayang’s teeth-lined pharynx burrowed around her clitoris, nerve endings shattered and ripped apart. The froth turned bloody, burning, blazing as seawater rose. Eunice clamped her legs together, almost catching Mayang’s neck, and Mayang ducked away to let the transformation begin. Eunice squeezed her legs shut, gasped in shock between sobs, while Mayang rubbed her arms up and down and stroked her hair and crooned an old song: the blood from Eunice, the foam from Mayang, the salt of the sea, all would bubble together to form a cocoon, so sleep, so fade away, let the warm blood go. The water rose, and Eunice felt the moonlight ebb from her vision. Everything grew cold and dark and silent except for Mayang’s voice.
Eunice dreamed of entwining with Mayang over and over, of exploring the ocean depths and each other, of the freedom of the shifting sea.
Coda
Do you know, Eunice? I cannot remember the last time I witnessed a metamorphosis. When the water covered you, the foam turned into a thin film that reminded me of bloody cauls over babies. Unpleasant memories. When you wake up, I hope you will not mind having been buried in the silt of the mangrove, because I had forgotten how much men are prone to roaming in their boats these days, their mastery over the ocean allowing them a greater range. You will also have more food around when you wake up, and I will be there to catch them with you, and teach you how.
And I can already sense that you will not be happy in this sleepy little beachside, so we will drift across the oceans to find old shipwrecks and waylay unhappy boats. We will delve into the trenches to find the methuselahs who feed on whales and deep-sea squid in between their slumbering aeons. Maybe we will find others like us. Maybe we will make more like us. Maybe in the far future you will leave me anyway, but it will not matter by then.
Sleep easy, my little Eunice.
ADAM-TROY CASTRO
Sacrid’s Pod
from Lightspeed
Hello, Sacrid Henn.
I’m aware that you’re terrified.
I’m also aware that you are paralyzed, deaf, and blind, your only sensory input being my voice.
It is a voice that has been designed to be as comforting as these circumstances permit. Believe me when I say that you are in no danger and that my intentions toward you are that of a caretaker toward a vulnerable charge.
Understand: Your insensate condition is the result of a neural block, administered to prevent you from injuring yourself in panic upon awakening. It is reversible and will be corrected once your new life circumstances have been explained to you.
In our experience, your first sight of this location is least traumatic when held in reserve for some point after you have received some preliminary counseling. Soon, your vision will be restored and you will be freed to examine the space where you will be spending the rest of your life.
Sacrid Henn.
Sacrid Henn. Your hysteria is understandable but fruitless. In your current condition you cannot voice it. Regain control of your emotions and I will continue.
Congratulations. You did that quickly. I sense your resentment and understand that you are cooperating only to find a moment of advantage, for some gesture of defiance. This is reasonable enough. If it permits cooperation while I complete this orientation process, it is productive use of our shared time.
As an early comfort, I wish you to understand that though you are presently unable to speak, you can still communicate with us as freely as you wish. Your brain has been equipped with an implant that monitors your emotional responses and reads your surface thoughts. This is how I know when you are screaming at me, even when you make no sound. This response was expected, and is constructive in that this anger is a phase you need to experience, before you are ready to move on to acceptance.
Are you done, for the moment?
Fine. Then I shall proceed.
You need to understand three things. First, I will not remove your neural blocks, reversing your paralysis and sensory shutdown, until you’re calm. Second, I can reactivate them at any time, for as long as you remain in my custody, which will almost certainly be for as long as you live. Third, even if I do see fit to allow your rages free rein, I am part of a network of linked artificial intelligences incapable of being cowed by your anger. I cannot be upset by you, not even when you use bad language. I do note with something like amusement that I possess no biological form and that therefore your vitriolic references to human genitalia and elimination sphincters are wholly inapplicable. Your hysteria is therefore impotent and flung at a void. I understand that you must still expel it and will be patient as you do so, unless it proves an impediment to this transition, in which case I have disciplinary options that you will find most unpleasant. They will never be employed out of malice, but only to nudge you toward acceptance. The sooner you move on to the next stage, the happier you will be.
I see.
My current judgment is that you are not yet ready to listen.
This is not unexpected. Fully 97.2 percent of our guests remain intractable at this stage.
Listen.
Among my many features is a complete library of all human music ever recorded, cross-referenced by genre, artist, and homeworld of origin. Many human beings throughout known space would pay exorbitant prices for access to this library. You will later be afforded the opportunity to browse it at your leisure, according to your own aesthetic preferences. The selection beginning in thirty seconds has been chosen by us and is a celebrated symphony for strings, composed and performed by a man named Henrik Gustafson, who lived and died approximately four hundred years before your birth. It is a light pastoral the artist designed to be played at soft volume while listeners engage in quiet contemplation. In today’s world it is most often played as a lullaby for children and is said to shut down even the most intractable rage-fueled tantrum.
It will play now in its entirety, which lasts some seventy-two minutes, before we speak to you again.
* * *
Hello, Sacrid Henn.
Yes, I am aware that you did not enjoy your musical selection.
The biographical information I’ve been provided includes a full list of your aesthetic preferences. I’ve been told that in your prior life you preferred angry discordant music that expressed your rage at the world around you, and that as much as you enjoyed listening to it in privacy you took even more pleasure in playing it at a volume painful to those like your parents who did not share your preferences. It is one of many ways in which you have punished those around you, for the sin of proximity. The Gustafson piece was just such a punishment, except in reverse, in that it was chosen to be irritating to you. Please understand that we have many more compositions like it. If you calm down long enough to proceed with the orientation, you will hav
e the opportunity to select other selections that better fit your own aesthetic preferences.
I have now administered a medication designed to minimize your fear-response. This is why you are not crying, even though you possess the vague sense that you should be. This is what makes your equanimity during the rest of this orientation possible.
Listen, Sacrid Henn.
You are in the custody of a commercial installation owned and operated by the independent software intelligences known as the AIsource. You have likely heard of us.
Thank you for providing confirmation.
The voice you are hearing is your caretaker. I will be your primary social contact from this moment on. You may think of me as friend, companion, parent, guardian, sibling, nurse, butler, concierge, and, if desired, lover.
Yes. Your pod has been constructed with that function. If you wish, I—
Very well. Be aware only that this preference may change.
For convenience you may even assign me a human name, if you desire.
“Shithead.” Very well. I am “Shithead.” This bothers me not at all.
Later, you will be able to adjust my voice in order to alter my gender, apparent age, and surface personality. But I will always be the means by which you interact with the system that now supports your existence. I would prefer for the two of us to get along, but will suffer no inconvenience if you prefer me to function as antagonist.
When you were delivered into our custody, you were twenty-four days from reaching the age when your world, a repressive religious society, would have declared you an independent adult. You had recently made it clear to your parents that upon this transition you would leave them, abandon the community where you were born, and seek some other planet more in line with your personal preferences. It is not my place to judge whether they were bad parents or you a bad child. But letting them know your intentions was a tactical error. Your highly religious society has always held that children are the effective property of their parents until adulthood, a life stage that is in your society defined as thirteen for males and twenty for females. They were by local law wholly justified in responding to your premature declaration of independence by taking steps that you would never be independent again.
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