Theseus

“I kinda get why core modules don’t usually have an electronic release. If you don’t give them the option, they won’t even consider using it and you don’t have to worry about them releasing themselves at the worst time, right? But this is just annoying.” Joel grumbled over comms. He and Mouse had taken on the responsibility of boarding Lily’s ship once I’d explained the mission of retrieving my sister to the crew.

“I’m only installing it because the mechanical controller is broken.” Mouse called back as he fumbled with some circuitry on Lily’s core module. “Not much here that’s not broken. Why don’t you put the supplies together?”

“I don’t want to leave you alone in here with miss crazy core. Why are we doing this again? Didn’t she just try to kill us?” Joel complained.

“Because Meryll calmed her down from murder-suicide, and now we could recruit a precognitive psychic to our cause.” Aisling called from the helm while she watched me downloading the small database of logs from the fighter and its deceased core into my own data storage. We were going to salvage everything of value we could from this ship. I was glad that Aisling had come around to the practical implications of bringing Lily on-board. “And we want to hang around for a while anyway while Meryll scrapes whatever info we can get from this ship we’re definitely going to see more of in the future. So why not?”

“Because... she tried to kill us?” Joel reiterated.

Shaw was nursing his wound in my heart after Doc patched his hand up again, but he chimed in just the same. “Come now, I tried to kill you too, and look how close we are now.”

“You’re not helping, Shaw.” I said, before returning my attention to my conversation with Lily. ‘I promise, they’re not going to hurt you. Joel’s intimidating and he can be kinda an ass, but his heart’s in the right place. And I know Mouse looks pissed off, but that’s just how he always looks. I know he’s going to be excited to talk to you once things settle down.’

‘It’s weird feeling like there’s people inside of me. And also right outside of this... place.’

‘I’ve been calling it the void.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s... empty?’ I smiled a little. It felt strange to talk to Lily so casually after all the conversations about trauma and pain, but I think she was starting to become numb from all the dramatic talk and had transitioned to observation about our shared condition as half-machines. ‘Isn’t it beautiful, in a way? I know it’s an illusion and there’s a wall like, less than a meter away, but it’s like you’re in another world, outside reality.’

‘I see it more like a canvas,’ she offered. ‘It might be empty, but I can see the potential everywhere. Patterns coming out of the white. Things moving in the corners of my eyes. I think I might be hallucinating.’

That was interesting. I hadn’t thought that maybe our brains would interpret it in different ways. ‘Maybe. Do you like it? Are you going to miss it?’ I asked.

‘I don’t think so. I mean, it’s scary, but also compelling. In the end, it’s just a novelty. I’d rather be away from this thing if I could help it. I’ve already had too many terrible memories here.’

I wasn’t sure if she was going to feel the same once she actually was away from it. The first time I was pulled out of Theseus’s field of influence, I was unconscious and going in for surgery. I was distracted enough by all the other weirdness happening when I woke up that the unease of my shell being so distant from me was just another thing thrown into the pile of discomfort. It was more disconcerting the first time I willingly walked away from my shell on Venus, but then I already knew what to expect.

But Lily was likely going to be fully aware of her ship slipping away when we left, and she had no idea the kind of longing it would bring her. I wondered if she would mourn that part of herself in hindsight.

‘I’m sorry about everything I’ve done, Meryll. For leading Foundation to you. For... trying to kill you, even though I knew you didn’t want to die. I was being selfish. I felt like the only way out was to kill myself, but I didn’t want to die alone. I kept telling myself that I didn’t want to leave you to suffer alone, but I really just wanted you to come with me.’

Guess she didn’t have all the drama out of her system yet. I sighed. ‘I already told you, I forgive you. You weren’t in control of yourself. You definitely weren’t in control when you led Foundation to me.’

‘I guess. They could see what I saw when I was hooked up to that machine. I couldn’t exactly lie and say I didn’t have a vision about you. But I still feel responsible.’

‘If it’s that important to you, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to make up for it now. We’re not going to force you to tell us anything like they did, but Aisling’s right. You could help us out a lot if you see something you want to share.’

‘I guess it’s my choice now.’ I smiled at those words. It was encouraging to see her embrace being in control of herself at last. ‘I still don’t understand what could possibly make this life worthwhile. But maybe I just need you to show me, like you said. Maybe I can feel something besides this awful hole in my heart. Do you think you can heal me?’

‘I can do anything.’ I claimed triumphantly, still riding the rush of confidence that came from taming my damper. ‘But speaking of healing, how’s your human parts?’

‘What a weird way to phrase that. I can still barely move,’ she admitted. ‘I can control my lungs, and I think I can move the muscles in my face and my neck. I can feel a little bit in my fingertips, but not my legs. I can see them, but it’s like they’re not there.’

I frowned and turned inward, tapping the intercom at my heart. “Hey Doc, is paralysis a possible effect of psychosomatic damage?”

“I don’t see why not.” Doc mumbled darkly while he wrapped a bandage around Shaw’s hand. “Is this about Lily?”

“Yeah. She says she can just barely move some of her muscles, but she can’t feel her legs. Be straight with me. Is this permanent?”

“I’ll have to take a look. But psychosomatic damage is largely a mix of psychological and neurological effects. There shouldn’t actually be much wrong with her spine or her nervous system, but it sounds like that’s where she was hit. Her mind just ‘thinks’ there’s damage there, and the effect is real. It may be a case of retraining her how to use those muscle groups correctly, or those pathways in her brain may just be fried. I’ll have to make a thorough examination.”

I sighed silently, resigning to the fact that my sister might not be capable of moving of her own accord anymore.

“There. Meryll, can you see the access panel on your end now?” Mouse asked over comms.

“Hang on, Doc. I need to brief Lily before we do this part.” I watched him give a knowing nod and return to monitoring my biometrics while I returned to Lily. ‘Okay, Lily. There’s one more tough thing you have to do before we can really let you rest.’

‘Oh no.’ I could practically hear her groaning through the text.

‘Do you remember how when you got into the core module, you had to let your lungs acclimate to breathing the lubricant?’

‘Yes. It was awful. I figured I did something wrong. I thought I was going to drown.’

‘Okay, so when you get out of there, you’re going to have to reverse drown.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Your lungs are used to breathing lubricant now. You basically have to rewire them to breathe air again.’

‘Please, no. Is it going to feel that awful again?’

‘I’m afraid it’s going to be worse.’ I just had to walk her through it ahead of time. At least she had someone to give her that, unlike me. ‘You see, when you’re in sensory deprivation, your body gets used to having no physical input. After a little while, the parts of your brain responsible for interpreting sensory information shut down. And when they start back up again, it’s kinda rough.’

‘When the void goes away, you’re going to feel everything, amplified, while your brain tries to make sense of it again. Sensory pressure sickness. Sight will be unbearable, so keep your eyes closed as best you can. And get ready for anything you hear to hurt. But worst of all is touch. Anything you touch is going to feel like a bunch of pins being pushed into your skin, and you’re going to feel every little thing way more intensely than you’ve ever experienced before. And you’re going to have to reteach yourself to breathe during that.’

‘Do I have to?’ She asked after a moment of consideration.

‘Yeah. Even if we could just take the whole core module with us, you’d eventually need to eat. Doc really needs to look you over as soon as possible, too. I know it’s scary, but it’s just once, then you never have to go through this again.’

‘Do you have to deal with this?’

‘Almost every day. It’s routine for me at this point. It’s never pleasant, but you get used to it. I remember the first week or so of it being brutal, though. I’m just letting you know so you can brace yourself.’

‘I don’t know if I can do this.’ She admitted.

‘I know you can. Come on, just once. Then you don’t ever have to deal with this again. I’m ready to open it up when you are.’

“Meryll? Is it working?” Mouse asked again.

“Yeah, I can see the switch. I’m just psyching her up for the depressurization.”

“Oh right, she’s gonna be all sick on us,” Joel whined.

“Sick and paralyzed. You’re going to have to pull her out, put her in the environment suit and carry her yourself.”

“Not it.” Mouse called quickly.

“Fuck. Fine.” Joel rolled his eyes.

“Just be gentle with her. It’s gonna be her first time dealing with sensory sickness, so she won’t have all the little tricks I have to make it easier. And no, Joel, she’s not going to freak out and hit you or something. She can barely move anything. She can breathe and maybe talk. That’s about it.”

‘Does he have to be the one to handle me?’ Lily asked. I guessed she still had enough awareness of her sensor array to listen in on the conversation.

‘Afraid so. Aisling wanted to stay on Theseus to keep an eye on me. Doc needs to tend Shaw’s wound and watch my biometrics. You definitely wouldn’t want Shaw handling you anyway. And Ray’s not cleared to do a spacewalk yet after an... injury. I guess I could ask if Mouse prefers to haul you or the cargo.’

‘The kid?’

‘Don’t let him hear you call him that. He’s got a temper about it. It’s best just to treat Mouse like a small adult. He’s not exactly any more innocent than the rest of us just cause of his age. And he’s strong enough. He carried me around when I was anesthetized once.’

‘I guess the big guy is probably better,’ she conceded after a moment of deliberation. ‘This is going to hurt, isn’t it?’

‘It won’t be as bad as what I pulled you out of already. I promise. It’s mostly just going to feel... weird. And it’ll pass in a couple of hours. The worst of it will be over in twenty minutes.’

‘Okay. Fine. If I have to.’

‘Are you ready?’

‘Yeah. No. Just do it.’

I guess that was the best agreement I was going to get for this. I sent the release signal, and the machinery in her heart began to whirr.

—

‘Focus on my words, Lily.’ I kept sending her text as if I was consoling a nervous child receiving a shot at the doctor’s office. ‘It’s going to be just fine. It’ll be over before you know it. You’re already breathing air again, and that’s the worst of it.’

‘I felt like I was going to throw up my entire body. Everything feels like it’s on fire. I can’t even feel my whole body, but it still feels like it’s burning. The air burns, my skin burns, the ground is on fire, I can hear their breathing. Their heartbeats. Everything’s somehow freezing, too. What is this hell?’

Ever since she’d come down from the panic that accompanied violently puking up two full lungs of fluid, somehow less gracefully than my first time, she’d been sending messages like that. I think she understood that if she occupied her mind, she’d be at least a little distracted from the sensory pressure sickness. I hoped it was working, and that I was helping.

‘Yeah, it’s unpleasant. You figure out little physical and mental tricks that make it easier on you once you’ve done it a few times, but I remember my first time being hell too. They gave me a towel for it, too. Trust me, you don’t want to feel what that’s like. Every little bristle dragging across your skin. It’s better to just stay wet until you can stand to brush the lubricant off.’

‘I don’t want them to touch me with anything. Please don’t let them touch me.’

Mouse and Joel were resting on the other side of the room, observing Lily from a distance. After she’d started breathing properly, I’d instructed them to give her some space so she could calm down again, but I suppose there was only so much room.

Joel had briefly left to gather the rations and supplies from the gore-filled storage room into one of the crates he’d brought into the airlock. Likewise, Mouse had taken his turn to leave the room and salvaged a few choice bits of electronics and equipment from the helm. He must have wanted to study the comms because the feed in the corner of my interface went dark after he’d salvaged something. This hadn’t taken either of them that long, however, and they were both back to observing Lily to ensure there weren’t unexpected complications.

True to what she said, Lily was completely limp when Joel pulled her out of the core module pool, and she had shown no signs of moving anything besides her chest since then. The most activity she’d shown at all had been quiet grunts and whines during the worst assaults on her senses.

“You sure she’s still in there?” Joel whispered to Mouse.

“She’s breathing.” He replied curtly.

“I meant like, mentally.”

‘They’re so loud,’ Lily complained.

I spoke up over comms, trying to keep the volume low. “I’m literally talking with her right now, and your voices are hurting her. You saw me the first time I went through this Joel, come on.”

Joel rolled his eyes, but he didn’t speak up again.

It had been ten minutes since the core module disengaged and Lily was thrust back into the physical sensory world. In another ten, she would still be sensitive, but it would start becoming comprehensible to her, and she’d be able to be moved. But for now, she just needed someone to walk her through it in a non-sensory space.

‘You’re halfway there. You got this far, you can do this.’ I told her.

‘You were right. This is nothing on the pain I was in earlier. It’s different, but it’s not nearly as bad. I just have to remember that. It’s not inside my head. I can understand it. It hurts, but it’s just my body.’

‘There you go. You’re stronger than you think, Lily. It won’t be too long and you won’t have to worry about it anymore. They are going to have to stuff you into an environment suit to take you back to Theseus, but Mouse takes good care of them, and he knows how to make sure it’s safe. You won’t have anything to worry about.’

‘My first spacewalk and I can’t move a thing. That’s scary.’ There was a momentary lull in the conversation and she said, ‘Meryll, talk to me. Please. Give me something else to focus on. Please.’

‘Right, sorry. Okay, well, I suppose I should let you know a bit more about the crew. The big guy there with you is Joel. Like I said, he can be kinda an insensitive jerk sometimes, but he’s not really a bad guy. He’s pretty strong, and he knows how to handle weapons really well. The other one is Mouse. He’s young, but he’s an engineering prodigy. Sometimes it’s almost like he knows more about Theseus than I do.’

‘Why’s he look so mad?’ She asked.

‘He’s really not. Just don’t mention his age or his arms to him and he won’t bother you.’ I hesitated for a moment and realized I probably shouldn’t elaborate. ‘I’m... not at liberty to say why he’s so temperamental, though. There’s kinda an unwritten rule on Theseus. We abandoned our pasts. Nobody really likes talking about where they came from here, and his personal history is really private personal information. I’ve heard a few of their stories now because I’ve earned their trust, but it’s not my place to repeat them.’

‘Abandoned their pasts? Can you really do something like that?’

‘I mean... sort of. Not completely, I guess. After all, mine is chasing me with a fucking armada. It has a way of catching up with you, no matter what, but we don’t let the past own us, and we keep it to ourselves if it’s not important to what’s going on in the present. That part’s been a little hard for me, considering I’m still trying to figure out what happened before I joined the crew.’

‘I can help fill in the gaps.’

‘Later, when you’re not dealing with this. Don’t think too hard, just listen. Back on Theseus, there’s the captain, Aisling. She’s... something else. She’s got this charisma to her that just makes me happy to follow her. She knows how to read people really well, and she knows how to make the right decisions in the worst situations. She knows her way around a battlefield and weaponry. She knows Theseus pretty well, too. Not as well as Mouse, but she’s got a wide range of talents that just make her a really good leader for a starship crew. And she’s nice. Has a strong moral compass, so I trust her decisions on the work we do too. She keeps everyone at arms length, but she’s a lot nicer than you’d think before you get to know her. And she’s beautiful on top of all that. She’s kinda got this intense tomboy aura to her, it’s kinda hot. But she can also be so sweet in private.’

‘Meryll... you sound like you have a little more than admiration for this captain.’

I bit my lip and reread the message I’d just sent. I was pretty much just gushing over her, wasn’t I? Had my attraction to Aisling always been that transparent? I guess I wasn’t instantly over her just because she’s unavailable. ‘Maybe. It doesn’t matter, she’s not interested.’

‘Wait, are you serious? So you’re a lesbian?’

‘I’ve really never mentioned that before? I’ve only ever been attracted to women, even as far back as in the simulation. Are you not? I mean, we’re clones.’

‘I don’t know. I guess I never really thought about it before. I guess it’s something I can consider now. So you’ve actually asked her out?’

‘Yeah.’ I wasn’t about to break Aisling’s trust any further than I already had today by revealing her secret, so I just left it at that. ‘Anyway, there’s Doc, who’s my caretaker. I’m pretty sure he’s writing a thesis on me or something, but he’s not creepy about it. He’s professional, kinda funny, really sensible. Reliable. He can be a little overly-serious at times, though. I think I can say we’re pretty close friends at this point.’

‘Doc? Mouse? Is anyone using their real names?’

‘I actually do know Doc’s real name, but that’s another thing I’m not at liberty to say.’ And I think he just didn’t like his name. I mean, who names someone Cornelius in the first place? ‘As for Mouse, I’m not even sure if he has a birth name.’ I shook my head. ‘That was probably saying too much.’

Lily overlooked me fumbling that detail of Mouse’s past and moved onto another question. ‘You said not to mention his arms?’

I took the opportunity she gave me to keep the conversation moving. ‘They’re prosthetics. They’re really good prosthetics, some kind of biomechanical thing, but once you get a good look at them, you’ll see. He doesn’t like talking about them. Sore subject.’

‘I see. And that’s your crew?’

‘There’s also Ray. You’re going to need to prepare yourself when you see her. Let’s just say that the definition of ‘human’ is a lot broader in the inner colonies.’

‘What?’

‘She’s an experimental offshoot of humans called Mammons. They’re like these... huge people with fur over parts of their body and they’ve got these massive beast-like claws on their arms and legs. You’ll have to see her yourself.’

‘That’s real? Sounds scary.’

‘She’s super strong and looks intimidating, but she’s a softy. A gentle giant, you know? She’s really sweet and sensitive. She’s a really good cook, she knows how to be comforting when you need it, and she can handle herself almost as well as Joel in a fight. I think she’s here more to take care of us than for her role as a combatant. I like to hug her sometimes cause she’s just so soft and cuddly.’

‘Meryll, are you crushing on all the other girls on your ship?’

I immediately flashed back to the night of drunken revelry back on Luna where I had apparently blacked out and very directly propositioned Ray. I was, wasn’t I? ‘I mean, nothing ever happened between us. It’s not like we’ve ever really... Look, I am... apparently attracted to powerful women, okay?’ I frantically typed out and sent in a small flurry of messages as my face undoubtedly went red and I tried to rationalize my suddenly troubling captivation with dangerous girls. I had to change the subject. ‘Anyway, Mammons aren’t well-known in the outer colonies. Most people would probably think she’s some kind of monster or a seriously augmented cyborg or something, so she’s going to have to stay on the ship after we land so she doesn’t cause a panic and draw attention to us.’

‘You really have changed so much since you escaped,’ Lily started. ‘I really can’t imagine the miserable girl you were before talking so casually about being attracted to anyone, and here you are getting all flustered over it.’

‘Is that a bad thing?’ I was curious about where she was going with this, and still a little caught off guard by my own hopeless attraction to the other women on the crew.

‘No. I like this new Meryll. She’s happier.’

I smiled at that. ‘Well... let’s work toward making a happier Lily next, hmm?’

I continued, figuring it best to brace her for the last person on Theseus. ‘I guess I should warn you about our guest, too. He’s not really part of our crew. He’s a prisoner, that by virtue of being chased by the biggest corp in the system while we were transporting him, has just been kinda forced to tag along with us. Guy named Shaw. He can be... off-putting. Creepy. And he’s got an implant that lets him do some weird, unpredictable stuff with this lump of metal he keeps on him; I can’t really explain it.’ I sighed and supposed I couldn’t completely berate him. ‘He’s clever. Man’s an info broker, and he’s good at it. He actually helped us out a couple times now, either by sharing his contacts or coming up with some... batshit insane plans that keep working somehow. And I don’t know if he’ll ever admit it, but I think he wants to join the crew.’

‘Sounds like you’re pretty torn about him.’

‘I kinda am. I mean, he’s been useful, and I get this gut feeling that he’s a good person underneath all the bullshit, but I also know he’s a manipulator. He plays this whole suave gentleman shtick, but he somehow also just feels like he’s trying to gross me out and piss me off whenever he opens his mouth.’

‘This sounds familiar. Didn’t you say something similar about Aisling? That she keeps people at a distance or something?’

I immediately started to type out a denial of that accusation, but stopped and had to think about it for a moment. When I first met Aisling, she was just trying to use me and keep me at an emotional distance until I agreed to join her crew. She even played it off like I was just a thing to her, a means to bring her ship into port and not a person. After I officially joined the crew, she started to become more open with me and showed me what she was really like. She defended me and consoled me. I’d never really considered it before, but was Shaw doing the same thing Aisling did before I signed on? Was I only excusing the same kind of behavior in Aisling because of my attraction to her? I didn’t really have a response to that when I started analyzing it.

‘I think it’s starting to feel better,’ Lily thankfully said in my unintentional lull in the distracting conversation. ‘Everything still feels really sensitive, but it’s not painful anymore. I barely noticed it was getting better until now. Thank you for talking me through this, Meryll. You were right. It is becoming more bearable. You helped a lot.’

I looked at my clock and smiled. I’d lost track of time, too. It had been twenty-five minutes, and Lily’s sensory inputs were probably starting to calm down. ‘Think you’re ready to get dressed by a large man and hauled through space like cargo?’

‘Why do you have to put it like that? No, I’m not ready for any of that, but those two must be getting impatient by now, and I want off this ship.’

‘Did I have no sense of humor back then or something?’ I laughed silently into the void. ‘Better start getting used to friendly banter.’

I turned back to comms and told the away crew, “Alright, she’s ready. And I’m watching. You better not grope anything you don’t have to.”

“What am I, Shaw?” Joel chuckled while he scoffed at my jab.

“I’m still on comms, you know!” Shaw chimed in with his characteristic faux cheerfulness. “Please, I’ve held Meryll before, and was I anything less than a perfect gentleman?”

“I’ll give him that; he didn’t cop a feel when he had me at knifepoint.” I bit back slightly when he failed to mention that part of the encounter. “He did hit on me, so he’s a creep and a hostage-taker, but he’s not a rapist.”

“Gold star for not violating someone.” Joel rolled his eyes. “I’ll be gentle with her.”