More Than Stardust

by Vivien Jackson

  “I know how people fuck, Chloe.”

  “Then what is the mystery? Or is it just that you don’t prefer the male form? I can ask Peetey—”

  “You know all my preferences.”

  “Well, this shouldn’t be a problem at all, then. Did you know there’s a room here that runs free-fae holoporn sims? Gimme a sec and I’ll ask the queen if we can...”

  A burst of air erupted from his mouth, and he covered his face with both hands, scrubbing his eyelids hard enough that they made squishing sounds beneath his fingertips. “You are uncomfortably persistent. You know that, right?”

  “Ha. That’s why you love me.” She said it as a joke.

  Garrett wasn’t joking. “No, Fig. That’s not why I love you.”

  “Then you must’ve…”

  “Stop.”

  “What. Why? I downloaded a complete schematic of human male physiology and swear I’ll make this good. Will you just—”

  “No, please listen for once, because I said something important.”

  “You said—“

  “I love you.”

  Nothing. She didn’t utter a single sound in response.

  From the blast point of his tongue, silence billowed out into the room. It sucked up the oxygen, too, made breathing difficult. Impossible. His lungs burned, eyes hurt, skin sizzled with a need to move, grab her, stroke every strokable surface of whatever goddamn body she was in, and then plant himself inside it. With her, sharing the space.

  Instead he forced more words into the vacuum, because words were what she understood best. “I just need you to know that, before we get too deep in the next insane adventure. I need you to know it before the next time one of us doesn’t make it through.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  CHIBA STATION | BUNK 3

  Well, that killed her sexytimes mood.

  But it also filled her up with…something. She didn’t have a word for this, a rise in sea level, a cochleoid curve starting at absolute zero but burgeoning and growing by exponents, becoming ultimately so much bigger than herself. Too big to stop, too big to control.

  It would be him. This time, if somebody died, it would be him. He didn’t say it and possibly didn’t even realize it, but regardless it was the truth. And it sucked and the queen’s imagery was all still front and center in her quick-access memory and she felt time as if it were right here, poking her. Being just unbelievably cruel.

  So long as Chloe was not in a human body, so long as she was some version of her freaky metal robot inhuman self, so long as she was other and awful and immortal, she would be fine.

  And he would not.

  And two people so different could never be together. Not really. Not to last.

  Such a slip of a thing was a human life, a few dozen years, likely no more than a hundred. A burst of bright in the darkness, a flurry of wonder, and then it was done. Gone. And all the magic it held in those short, precious years, just ceased existing.

  How was any of that fair?

  And how could Chloe let this man, the brightest of the bright points in the universe, waste his brief, brilliant moment on loving a thing like her?

  All of these thoughts whirred and shivered and worried their way through her systems, making her bleak, through and through. If she’d had a stomach, it would have hurt. If she’d had a heart, it would have broken.

  She wouldn’t let Dan-Dan’s poor body endure the tumult of her emotions right now. She pulled her core consciousness back, ready to withdraw. Give up.

  But Garrett wasn’t done. He leaned forward, pressing his brow to hers, and he closed his eyes. His voice crept up her face, hot and urgent, like tears in reverse, soaking in instead of pouring free. “You have left me now twice, once when you ran and once when you died, and I may not have told you, but alone, without you, is my deepest hell. I’ve taken it for granted these last few years, having a companion, having a friend. Having you. You have made life real for me. You make me feel like I deserve to be here, like I have a place on the planet. And when you’re not there, when you run off to do some fantastic godlike thing, Chloe, you leave me behind. Now I’ve known what it’s like to feel you all around me, it would hurt even more to have you gone.”

  Oh, sweet cosmos. Oh, it was going to hurt.

  Someday, it would. He would grow gray hair, and his movements would stiffen. She would monitor his biometrics, note when his organs slowed in their processing. Please not soon. Please, please, please.

  “Garrett,” she said, still in the tone folks used for promises, “I exist because of you. I want to exist more completely, and that’s because of you, too.”

  And that was about as close as she was willing to come to sharing her deepest secret. Even with him. It would have to be enough.

  He exhaled, but his breath wobbled on the end, unsteady. “You’re just saying such sweet things because you want to rip my clothes off.”

  “I would never…okay, fine, but you did promise.” Forehead-to-forehead like this, kissing him would require only the slightest movement. Sensory loops of their kisses amid the pile of coats were burned into her facial sensors, stored in ready memory.

  “It feels amazing, by the way,” he said.

  “You mean touching another person and knowing that they achieve sexual climax because of something you did?”

  “Um, that’s good, too. But I meant telling you the truth about my feelings, about being out loud in love with you. I’ve held onto that truth for a long time, ‘cause on the surface it’s pretty crazy, you’ve got to admit. Definitely the rest of the family’s gonna heckle the shit out of me. They already think I’m a kook, and this’ll cinch it. But, man, for a second there in Antarctica, it really did feel like the universe was ending. For me, anyhow. I don’t want to live in it without you.”

  It was like he was inside her own brain. How could he know her so well, able to put her own thoughts into words? Impossible. But also very, very him.

  “Wait, you’re going to tell them that you love me? Like, other people?”

  She felt like vibrating. Or giggling. Or, well, her default response seemed set on licking things, but she sensed that wouldn’t fit the moment.

  “So goddamn many times they’ll beg me to stop.”

  He unknotted their hands and leaned back on the low bed. When he didn’t tell her to go away, she crawled her mech body up beside him. It was a big body, but not as big as the outsized early models she’d had to work with. And it was amazingly responsive, like a supercar on a flat roadway and a full charge on the battery. She stretched it out on the bed, and just because she couldn’t help it, she reached out her hand again. Garrett’s was right there.

  So many sensors in the N Series. Totally different architecture. Sexing up this body would be a live circus full of fun.

  “Hey, Dan-Dan? You in there, too, buddy?” Garrett asked without turning his head.

  Chloe had this weird sensation. Even though she was lying back-flat on a bed, she got the feeling she was on a chair, one of those narrow seats on a landjet or something, and the person next to her was humongous. Pressure, but no pain. A sense of community, or communion, or one of those lots-of-people-being-nice-to-each-other words. And she was included in it. Like, being asked to join a club.

  Which was just…wow. The only club bigger than her that she’d ever been asked to join was the one she formed with Garrett. Other than that, she was perennially on the outside, watching and wanting and waiting to be part. But now, in this moment, they were three. Enough for a team. Enough for a family.

  She couldn’t help feeling that, here in the ether between these two, she was part of something special. She retreated to the sidelines and let Dan-Dan speak through the mech’s mouth.

  His voice was made of embarrassment. “I am attempting to not be here, and most certainly not to watch. Please do not mind m
e.”

  Garrett squeezed the hand. Her hand. Dan-Dan’s hand. Theirs.

  “You heard all that, though?” he said. “About how I love this crazy body-hopping woman and have, like, zero ability to tell her no?”

  “Ah, yes I heard.”

  “And you’re okay with it? With, ah, what are we calling it… body time-share ménage kinky shit?” Garrett had a way of making things sound tawdry. And sexy. But she so liked it.

  “I am at peace with whatever transpires from this point, yes,” said Dan-Dan. “Chloe has my plenary permission to—”

  “Permission ain’t the same as want, man.”

  “I am a machine,” said the mech, “so desire is hard-coded in me. All machines want to perform at or above specification, to conquer the algorithm and solve for the variable, to please. To serve. In my case, I also have some interest in experiencing, if I may, the thing for which I was designed but which I must perforce miss.”

  “Um,” Chloe said over the room speakers, making the shift to avoid that weird personality and voiceprint back-and-forth that had to occur when two people were sharing a body and which she was worried would give Garrett comprehension whiplash. “If I can interrupt here just to translate that into normal English? Dan-Dan’s an N Series, a souped-up fuckbuddy model living the life of a monk. He was made to entertain. Nakedly. And instead he’s keeping Angela Neko’s social calendar and mixing her martinis. So he’s kind of a square peg living in a round hole. Or was that a bad metaphor?”

  Garrett winced. “Kind of the worst.”

  “Okay, this then: I was just thinking of him as a retro-combustion supercar, but one that’s been driven under thirty since it left the factory. Driven by a grandma. In a school zone. And the whole time he’d rather be taken out to the track and blown out hot at two twenty.”

  Garrett took a couple of extra seconds to come up with a response to that one. Usually when Chloe went off into metaphorland, it was the two of them. There was no such thing as embarrassment when he and Chloe spoke, but right now it was almost like he worried about what this must sound like to Dan-Dan.

  Which was just impossibly sweet and so totally Garrett. He was the only person who’d worry over a mech-clone’s feelings like this. She wanted so bad to hug the shit out of him. Both of them.

  “When we were in Antarctica,” he said at last and not, apparently, to her, “Chloe said something I thought was interesting. She said the things that happened to bodies while she was in them didn’t necessarily happen to her. So you guys have some ability to…not sure what to call it. Compartmentalize? Anyway, you should know human people can’t do that. You stroke pretty much anywhere on me at this point and I’m all in. Mind, body, memory, soul, the whole enchilada. The way you two are talking, I get all over that body you share and…what? You rock-paper-scissors to decide who gets to ride out the orgasm? Or do you share that too? Also, do I get a vote? Because, here’s the thing, when I fuck somebody, it’s all about that person. Everything I do is tailored to that person’s needs. And I got no idea what Dan-Dan needs, and you’ll excuse me for saying so ‘cause I like him a lot, but we haven’t really known each other that long. So, just basically, this set-up freaks me out.”

  Oh.

  Had he ever said that many words in front of another person before? Sure he soliloquized plenty for her, but that was just because he knew how much she liked the storytelling and the chitchat. And the singing. And stuff. She wondered if Dan-Dan realized how unusual it was for Garrett to just open wide up like that.

  And at the same time, she had to recognize what he said, not just that he’d said it.

  His hand was warm and desperate in hers, clamping hard, perhaps harder than he realized. Also, his pulse was loud enough she could hear it. Physiologically, he was ready. But in flat English, he’d just done the thing he said he couldn’t do.

  He’d told her no.

  “Well, I suppose I could extract from Dan-Dan and just, I don’t know, do a full-body embed like I did when Mari got shot. You were there, Garrett, and it wasn’t too freaky, right? Plus with that plan, I now know so much more about the central nervous system and muscle control. Yay, research! I can…”

  • • •

  No. No you can’t.

  Full-body embed was Garrett’s worst nightmare. He could talk to her about anything, he loved their conversations, but she could not go into his mind, could not explore his body from the inside out. She could not see his thoughts. In there, who was to say she wouldn’t ferret out all his flaws and limitations? His shame, his past, his secrets. She would know for certain how insufficient he was, how deeply wrong. She would eat his experiences like candy, and then he would have nothing left to give her.

  He knew what he was. A game with zero replayability, a pony with one good trick but a shitload of baggage.

  If she went into him, really saw him, she would never be able to love him.

  In the panic space devoid of oxygen, Dan-Dan interjected, tugging the body fully under his control. Suddenly someone else, not Chloe, was lying next to Garrett on the bed.

  “Chloe, you must pause,” said Dan-Dan. “Consider the evolutionary reasons why most complex organisms do not reproduce asexually. A level of trust must exist for two discrete creatures to choose to mate with each other. That trust leads to more solid social bonds and is beneficial. Autoerotic stimulation has its place, but you cannot impose it upon another person. That would break the trust.”

  Not to mention privacy. Confidence. Hope. Possibly Garrett’s brain.

  “And Garrett, also you must breathe,” Dan-Dan went on. “Your consideration of my feelings is appreciated and quite unusual among humans, special even. It is also unnecessary. I am not insulted at being used for what is indeed my intended purpose. But if you would prefer privacy, I am happy to archive myself for the duration.”

  He left the offer hanging in the air, and Garrett knew they were both expecting him to say something. He didn’t know what to say, what to think.

  Garrett opened his mouth, held a word on his tongue, but couldn’t bring himself to let that sucker loose.

  Dan-Dan dropped the register of his voice from lecture-hall informative to gentle. A bespoke robot nanny. He squeezed Garrett’s hand reassuringly. “What you say about compartmentalization is true as well. I am not my mech-clone body. In Chloe’s car metaphor, I am the owner of the machine rather than the machine itself. If the car requires tuning—and I am embarrassed to admit that it might—it matters little to me whether I take it to the track myself or hire out someone else to perform maintenance. Do you follow?”

  He let the full import of that statement sink in.

  “You’re all in, in other words,” Garrett said.

  “Yes.”

  “And you really don’t mind taking a time-out, archiving?”

  “Not even a little bit.”

  This was completely frogshit crazy. But it also happened to be the most amazing thing he could imagine. Chloe and Dan-Dan were offering not just something he wanted, but something he wanted that would also please them in the process. Declining politely at this point would be like touring the Vatican but skipping out before the Sistine Chapel. Garrett couldn’t do that, and honestly, there was no real reason to resist.

  “Well, hell. Let’s do this.”

  Dan-Dan nodded once and then continued in his even, gentle, resonant voice, like an actor trained in stage Shakespeare throwing down some casual Othello. “Chloe, at the beginning of all things, there is a door. It is dark-stained oak and carved with wolves. There is no lock, and the knob gleams like polished brass. It turns easily in your hand, but as it happens, no turn is needed. I have oiled the hinges and left this door ajar. You touch, and it opens.”

  “Oh, Dan-Dan, you don’t need to…” she said, still in the room speakers.

  Second thoughts, sweetheart?

 
“Please come inside,” Dan-Dan insisted, the consummate host. “You will find the bar stocked and a dinner laid out before the fire.”

  “I see it. Only…thank you.”

  “Tonight we are serving experience,” the mech-clone said. Bit too dramatically. “Please enjoy, both of you.”

  And then—Garrett had no idea how he knew this, but he did—in the same way he knew Chloe was lying next to him right now, he knew Dan-Dan was gone. Not permanently. More like hibernating. Taking the night off. Giving them a gift.

  Which would be cruel to refuse, right?

  “Well, that was something,” she said. Definitely Chloe in there, in the solid, really-there body. The one lying next to him. Holding his hand. Offering to sex the shit out of him.

  Which…

  You know honestly, even in a situation like this, she was Chloe. And that meant he didn’t have to waste time evaluating his own internal moral compass or conscience. He could concentrate on her instead. What sex meant for her. Hadn’t he just told her that fucking somebody, doing it right, was all about seeing to the other person’s needs, their desires and switches?

  Well, he knew what made her tick.

  He could make this good for her.

  He gathered his thoughts, made his plan, and started out light, with something frothy and fizzy and fun and Chloe-speed. “So I take it you’ve been hired to, uh, roast Dan-Dan’s wheels.”

  She hadn’t been expecting a joke. He could tell because she took a full second to respond, like she had to quick-search for a good comeback. He could almost see her scouring gearhead infoboards for correct terminology. “Or clean his pipes? Or maybe give him an Italian tune-up?”

  Garrett grinned and turned to face her on the bed. “Just sucks that you downloaded all those human male physiology schematics,” he said, “since you’ll be needing engine specs instead. Which I can help out with, you know.”

  “What? No, I never waste perfectly good research.” She rolled to face him and drifted a hand over his arm. Arm to shoulder, shoulder to clavicle to sternum. Steady the whole way, marking his centerline, cleaving him with electric touch, making even breath hard. “And funny you should use the word suck.”