Theseus

I spent a long time at Lily’s side, comforting her, telling her more of what happened to me in the last few months, listening to her gripes about her treatment under Foundation’s control, discussing our sisters, and sometimes even just sharing more about each other. I wanted to know more of the kind of person she wanted to be now that she was free, and she likewise wanted to learn more of the person I had developed into after I was reborn in amnesia.

Our respective sensory sicknesses passed with little notice, and before we knew it, I was fully physically capable again. Unfortunately, Lily wasn’t so lucky. She thankfully had almost nominal control of her head and respiratory system, and with some effort, she was able to retain some small control of the muscles in her fingers. But that was all she could manage.

The loss of most of her motor functions hit her suddenly once it struck her that this was not some transient problem, like the sensory sickness. She would likely never be capable of moving her body as freely as she was accustomed to again. I spent a long time that night holding her as she mourned. I felt guilty about it. Despite everyone else that was to blame for the circumstances, I was the one who had pulled the trigger, after all. But eventually, she managed to comfort herself with the knowledge that she was free in so many much more important ways now. She was more than her body. And besides, Doc’s prognosis was hopeful; with physical therapy, she might learn to walk again, with considerable aid. And he was even more hopeful about her hands.

True to my suspicions, I found a similar backdoor to my own buried in the firmware of Lily’s implant, but since it hadn’t been activated, it was far easier to neuter the payload it held. I couldn’t fix what had already been done to mine, but I could spare Lily the nuisance of a permanently open private video feed for Foundation to exploit and the neurological attack vector I’d had to haphazardly barricade. I also found two different kinds of tracking devices and an electronic tag implanted beneath her skin, which Doc removed and destroyed, thankfully without terribly invasive surgery.

I didn’t return to the core module that night, but I still had to get us moving to our destination again. I was frightened, as I slowly pulled away from Lily’s ship, that she would feel a sudden sense of loss and discomfort being pulled away from the shell to which she was bound, but she only expressed relief that it was almost entirely out of her mind. The remains of the headache she had still been enduring had dwindled without the miniscule stream of data that I’d left between her and her own core module, and she even drifted off to sleep soon after.

I still refused to leave her side, operating Theseus without the core module so I could be there when she eventually woke up. I could easily function well enough to get us pointed toward Jupiter without sensory deprivation.

We lost track of her ship. I supposed it could have been possible to estimate where it was later by its velocity and heading when we left, but not with the kind of accuracy one would need to pinpoint and actually catch up to it again, and that accuracy would diminish quickly the longer we left it be. I think I lamented the ship being lost to wild space more than Lily did, though. It felt wrong, but if Lily was fine with it, I wasn’t going to force the issue any further.

After masking the hardware IDs on all our stolen equipment and Lily’s implants, I declared us technologically prepared to reenter controlled space and approach Jupiter without having to worry about giving ourselves away in relay proximity. Theseus was a physically distinctive ship, but as long as no one made the connection to its visual appearance alone, no one would look twice at me and think I was a very wanted ship.

Just as I thought he would, Mouse came to check on Lily after things had calmed down. He had a few curious questions about her newfound position as a machine core, but she was even less articulate about it than I had been.

Lily didn’t see the data stream with the kind of clarity and purpose that I did. It was actively harmful to her, and she had no idea how to navigate digital spaces. What she had managed on her ship had indeed been an exercise in madness. It was the digital equivalent of shoving your arms into unfamiliar heavy machinery and throwing it around with the hopes that it would translate into useful action while your limbs were crushed and torn. She was afraid to even try experimenting with it, and after her previous breakdown under its influence, I didn’t blame her. She couldn’t connect with machinery that didn’t belong to her with the ease that I did, and even with my guidance, it hurt her when she tried. The only thing she used her implant for after that was as a convenient way to communicate with me in private if my body happened to be elsewhere or if she wanted to say something she wasn’t certain should be broadcast to the rest of the crew. At least our direct connection seemed benign.

She wasn’t locked out of her abilities as a machine core entirely, but there was something different between us that kept her from utilizing it the way I did. It was a curious phenomenon, but we couldn’t nail down a reason for it. Perhaps it was indeed an error in the grafting process. Maybe the same neurological difficulty that rendered her incapable of processing simulated environments interfered with her ability to handle data as well. Maybe something else Foundation had done to her had traumatized her in some unforeseen way that made her unable to process the mental stress of utilizing a robust psychic network. Or maybe it was just something we hadn’t thought of. We didn’t really have a leg to stand on for researching it as we were. Ultimately, we just had to accept her limitations and hope we’d find answers later.

We ate mediocre packaged meals for the rest of the trip, but spirits were considerably higher now that we didn’t have to suffer protein powder rations any longer. I spent my meals up in my heart with Lily, helping her eat. She couldn’t come down to the mess hall, but I was happy to accommodate her. She kept expressing guilt at inconveniencing me, but I didn’t mind in the slightest. It was the least I could do after what I’d done to her.

The remainder of our trip was thankfully uneventful. As we made our approach a few days later, I did have to once more climb back into the void. I hadn’t spent that long outside of my core module since my implants were installed, and while I was glad to spend time face to face with Lily, I knew where I belonged, and I was happy to return to my favorite place of comfort and familiarity. I had spent more time than I was comfortable with divided from my shell, and I was relieved to feel whole again, even if it did mean I couldn’t offer the same intimate closeness to my sister that she preferred. She really must not have been able to understand what it meant to be a machine core the way I saw it, because I was still going to be right there with her.

Aisling chewed me out just like I thought she would once I was back in the core module and she could easily speak to me from the helm, knowing I had to be listening and Lily wasn’t there to feel guilty on my behalf. She told me I had to harden myself if we were going to survive with me in control of the ship. No more sparing a target in a life and death battle, at the very least. She told me she would be looking into seeing if there were sims that emphasized the emotional weight of combat and difficult choices when we had the chance, and I would be expected to make use of them. It sounded daunting, especially knowing that commercially, such sims would be unrelated to ship combat, but I didn’t have any other family like Lily that might drop in and make me feel that kind of hesitation again, so I conceded that I would do whatever training she needed me to do. I assured her this was a one-time problem, and she told me she’d make sure of it. I thanked her for being understanding about Lily after the fact, and she dismissed me. It went a lot smoother than I’d hoped. It almost felt like I got off too easy...

My third unassisted landing outside of a simulation went well, and we settled into the dirt at the edge of a work colony on Io. True to his word, Shaw had led us to a modest mining operation, infantile enough that the rule of law and regulations were still loose, but established enough that they had resources to deal to the public. We could remain relatively anonymous in a place offering the materials we would need to establish ourselves, resupply, and make repairs. It was a perfect hideaway for a group of fugitives looking to lay low and stay in operation. So much so that I was positive we weren’t the only ones taking advantage.

Of course, the first order of business now that we were back in a survivable atmosphere was Isabelle and the trapped captain, Morgan Collins. It wasn’t simple to open up the secondary core module. It hadn’t really been mounted in a position where the mechanism for opening it was easy to access. Ultimately, I had to disconnect it from my life support, and it had to be pried open.

When we did finally crack it, two limp figures spilled out of the opening onto the ground, both doubtlessly absolutely devastated by malnutrition and especially bad sensory shock after not only such a long time in the void, but also an incredibly rough expulsion from the module. Not that either could tell us.

We weren’t even sure the captain was alive at first. She was a middle-aged woman with shoulder-length blonde-gray hair. The woman was fairly short, and her build suggested she was stocky before her body started cannibalizing itself to keep her alive while she was stuck in the core module. She was completely unresponsive, but she’d expelled the lubricant and showed vital signs, so she wasn’t dead. The module also contained her shed clothing, so she was at some point at least cognizant enough to realize they would have caused irritation if she’d continued wearing them for the lengthy time she was immersed. Doc couldn’t tell if her apparent lack of agency, even after the sensory pressure sickness would have worn off, was a side effect of long-term exposure to the core module on a non-augmented human being, or if she was simply so traumatized by her experience that she’d given up and was no longer aware of reality.

Isabelle was as unresponsive as one would expect of a standard machine core. She had a small layer of close-cut black hair that probably only grew as much as it did while she was trapped and unmaintained in the preceding weeks. She had telltale tattoos from her manufacturer on her arms and thighs, but they’d all been blacked over; more aftermarket modifications by her owner to obfuscate her original purpose. Her amber eyes were dull and her expression as consistently flat and emotionless as the clones I’d seen in Agatha’s lab on Venus. Despite remaining as still as her master, she was communicative with me over our usual comms channel. She seemed entirely unbothered by her doubtlessly overloaded physical senses, and offered only the surface-level reports of her more urgent demands: She was hungry and in need of a routine medical checkup.

Unfortunately, though Captain Collins was clearly unresponsive, there was no way to transfer Isabelle’s ownership while she was still alive. Joel suggested we just put the captain out of her misery, but Doc insisted that she be kept under observation. He seemed certain that he could snap her out of her stupor, and he might be able to learn something about the long-term effects of continuous sensory deprivation from her. Unfortunately, it would be some time before anything came from the pair.

With the obvious issue tabled for the time being, it took a few more days for us to get the lay of the land, taking care to learn about our new temporary home before we engaged with it. The people were mostly hardy, simple, and honest folks who just wanted to do their work and be left alone. They didn’t share much love for the corps they worked for, which made establishing a rapport with them fairly easy.

Officially, we were an above-board fledgling mercenary company looking for whatever opportunities we could find on new land to establish ourselves. Shaw and Aisling pulled together some papers that looked official enough under light scrutiny to sell the illusion. They certainly wouldn’t pass muster in a more secure setting, but they were enough to fool the local officials that cared enough to look. Beneath that thin veneer, there was another layer made to get us into more criminal circles where we would get our real work: We were freelancers displaced by the revolution on Mars, and this seemed like a good place to lay low and start over. We were disgruntled at the revolutionaries for the failure of the conflict, and now we were just looking out for ourselves. The story painted us as criminals, but as the kind that didn’t hold any ideology or ambition that might get us any serious attention from higher authorities. We were masquerading as the kinds of villains who were too small and harmless to be worth the trouble chasing down. It was an all too common story in the system, even if it was rarer in the outer colonies.

We didn’t get much work at first. We got picked up for a few physical labor tasks that we took to get by while we established ourselves. It kept us fed.

It took a couple weeks until Aisling and Joel managed to engineer a believable ‘slip-up’ in earshot of a few people they’d nailed as local gangsters. After that, the criminal element came to us. We received an offer to do some light industrial sabotage. A simple test to ensure we weren’t plants, probably. We got the job done with ease, and lucrative work started trickling in when something underhanded needed doing in the small colony.

Once we started getting settled in, I started toying around with my damper to acclimate myself to it in earnest. It wasn’t as scary after I’d managed to use it in a productive way, cooperating with myself. Without a crisis of conscience, my two halves had become less communicative, but my emotional side was much calmer when isolated, and my logical side had begun to listen when my other half did have something to say, and ended the program when it was appropriate. Separating my mental functions was still an extremely bizarre experience, but it was no longer the nightmare it once was. Time dilation was a powerful tool to add to my arsenal, but I was completely incapable of moving my body itself in that state, and Doc warned me that overuse could cause unforeseen consequences to my brain chemistry, so it wasn’t a superweapon in every situation, but it was a powerful tool none the less.

Lily didn’t improve very quickly. She was trying very hard, though. I did my best to encourage her to keep going, but it was hard without much progress to show for it. By the time we’d gotten our foot in the door with real work, Doc had almost managed to help her become capable of sitting up, if someone helped her get into position first. She could lightly grip objects in her hand as well, but she couldn’t lift anything. It was promising progress for her spine and hands, at least. She still had a long way to go until she could even think to stand again, but Doc helped with manual leg exercises that would help keep her muscles from degrading entirely. She hated it, but it would help later on.

I wasn’t well-suited for much of the labor work we got, but that didn’t mean I didn’t help with the ground jobs. IT was not well-funded on the colony, so I picked up computer system management work where I could; usually when things went wrong and they didn’t have someone on staff with a particular expertise. I usually just tapped into machines directly through my psychic network to fix their problems, but I had to maintain the illusion that I was just a skilled professional and not that I was literally becoming a part of their machinery, so I still had to show up in person and pretend I was using terminals to fix their issues. It was funny how much more respect I got as a mercenary doing tech work than I did as a corporate IT specialist in the simulation.

Of course, my distinctive cybernetics were an issue in laying low. Normal human beings couldn’t use neural interfaces, after all. But I’d figured out ways to hide my augments. Aisling got me a few long-sleeved tops with high necks to hide my arm terminal and ports, and I wore baggy pants to keep my hardware case hidden. I’d wanted to get my hair cut short ever since I started my journey; my long brown locks only tended to get in the way while I was floating in the core module. But I conceded to necessity and kept my hair long on one side to hide my neural implant. I definitely looked like a weirdo, but I looked like a wholly human weirdo. It wasn’t that unusual for an off-the-grid tech specialist to be a bit eccentric anyway, so it wasn’t like I wasn’t playing the part.

I still liked to wear that old button-down tropical patterned t-shirt I’d become attached to in my first couple months around the ship, though. It was just more comfortable. I did appreciate having pants to go with it now, though.

After a couple upgrades to storage in my hardware case, I was able to leverage my newfound access to the colony’s computer systems and establish a robust psychic network throughout the area. Between that and the occasional tip from a certain precognitive psychic, the crew began having an uncanny tendency to show up where we were needed to establish our credentials with people we wanted to work with and to know when we needed to press our contractors when something big was about to happen.

It wasn’t a luxurious lifestyle by any means. We had to do some shady, sometimes harrowing, things to establish ourselves, but we weren’t being chased around the solar system anymore. I didn’t think we were causing many problems for the common folks either. They seemed to accept our presence well enough, and we tried not to get involved in work that would harm the populace.

As time passed, we started getting the materials we needed to fix and maintain Theseus, and we were mercifully able to buy real food again. Ray’s cooking never tasted so good.

I knew things wouldn’t stay this way forever, but for the time being, life become routine. I was surrounded by people I loved and trusted, and I felt fulfilled in my position as Theseus. At last, I got to understand some semblance of peace. I was content with my lot. For the time being, I could enjoy that comfort of normalcy.

But not false normalcy this time. Things didn’t feel quite as ideal as they did back in the simulation, but now it was real. Life was dirty, rough, and sometimes it was painful. But this was real, and that was better than false idealism.

There had been a lot of close calls, a massive pile of baggage to unpack, there were still mysteries that eluded me, and I’d had to acclimate to a new lifestyle I’d had to fight tooth and nail to hold on to, but I had for certain found my true place in this, the real world.

And Lily was right. Despite the hardships, I was happy.