Theseus

Having put my conversation with Fuller on pause until we could meet in person, I flew into the hanger once more on a rail to guide me on board the colony. I watched the door close behind me. We were locked down in the colony now. I’d need liftoff permission to leave again. It made me feel just a little bit claustrophobic, but it wasn’t like I had much of a choice. This was the closest approximation to safety we had for the time being.

As I connected to the colony’s network of utilities and shut down my redundant systems, I had to open my eyes and stare into the light, that sleepiness I expected now once again flowing over me. It was like I was dreaming. A nice dream, for once. I let my mind wander, and I thought of what Fuller could possibly have to tell me. No, I couldn’t let my mind wander too far. I shook my head. I had to focus. This was no time for rest, and I recalled that when my mind wandered in the void like this, I tended to end up missing time. I reached out and tapped the release button for my core module so I wouldn’t waste too much longer.

The lights turned off. The lubricant began to drain away, and I once again tried to stay within its comfortable embrace for as long as I could before the hatch above began to open up. I stared up through the thick liquid, longing for a world where I could just stay in there forever. But it wasn’t meant to be. I finally pulled together the drive to stand up and throw my hair back so it would be out of my eyes when I emerged. I retched up the contents of my lungs in what was becoming an alarmingly well-practiced function, and coughed a few times before being able to gasp the first air I’d taken in for almost a full day. It was routine at this point though.

The first thing I noticed when I opened my eyes was that with my redundant systems shut down, the emptiness that had plagued me since the cargo bay had been destroyed felt a little bit lighter. Being parked somewhere safe where the breach wouldn’t have the awkward strain of movement through vacuum placed on it anymore made it feel like a broken limb that had finally been given a chance to rest.

“About time.” Doc called “Ten minutes. That’s how long you took this time. Not your longest blackout, but you should still work on that.”

I replied, my voice still hoarse while my lungs tried to recover “You act like you’re such a morning person. Got a towel?” I asked.

“Can you take that already?” he asked, a note of surprise in his voice. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure. My sense of touch was always especially overwhelming for the first hour or so after I left the tank. But I was feeling brave.

“It’s only been a day. I think I’m getting used to it.” I said as I began to pull myself up out of the lubricant and walking to the rack of towels that Doc had begun setting aside for me “I should probably get moving anyway, I’m sure Dr. Fuller will want to talk to me as soon as possible.”

“Dr. Fuller, huh? Are you seeing another physician behind my back?” Doc gave a huff of dry amusement.

“Well, she’s certainly more my type.” I quipped back, starting to recover my voice as I pushed the towel into my face. That was a mistake. The sensation of the hundreds of little fibers moving across my skin made a shiver run up my spine that made me audibly whimper. It was like a carpet of soft little tickling needles, and I could feel each and every one of them individually sliding across the skin of my face.

“Not as used to it as you thought, are you?” Doc smirked and started to approach me “Sit down, I’ll look you over before you go, and you can get a chance to recover. Besides, captain’s having a word with the port authority about our stay here. I’m sure they’ll work something out, but it’s best we don’t go traipsing all over their colony right away.”

“Fine. Fine, I’ll let you look me over again, but I know there’s nothing wrong. There never is. I honestly don’t know why it’s necessary to check so often.” I shivered again as I slowly pulled the towel away from my head and let it fall to the floor, opting instead to just walk slowly to the medical bed, where I slowly laid back and closed my eyes.

I saw that I had another ping from Dr. Fuller. ‘I’m coming to the hangar. Do you think you can meet me or can I have permission to come aboard?’

I opened a draft as I felt Doc manipulating my limbs, my body shaking with anticipation with each touch, but at least it wasn’t hundreds of touches all at once. It still made it hard to type out a reply. ‘You must be as eager as I am for this meeting. I’d say yes, but I’m not the captain of Theseus. I can’t just give you permission to board. You’ll have to talk to Aisling for that. And my physician is insisting he take a look since I’ve been in the tank for more than a day.’

‘Captain Aisling, got it. I’ll see if I can’t have a word with her. It’s interesting that you’re subordinate to people. The other Arthausen units don’t work well with others, to say the least.’

‘So there are others then?’ I asked hopefully. Did I have kin? I hesitated for a moment when it dawned on me that any other people like me would probably be considered Foundation property. I followed up immediately ‘I can’t imagine they get the opportunity to work with others anyway if they’re a secret military research project.’

‘You really don’t know anything about what you are, do you? We’ll talk about it when we meet in person.’ I read it and my imagination started going wild. Were my assumptions incorrect? Was this not what I’d thought it would be?

I felt Doc push gently against my side “Turn over for me, would you? You’re busy with something in your head again, aren’t you?” he asked.

“You could say that. This Fuller person is gonna ask Aisling for boarding permission, since I’m gonna be busy with…” I turned over onto my side, pushing the bed’s paper cover back down when it tried to stick to my backside “Well, you know. Recovering.”

Doc recoiled slightly when I pulled the paper down, and I had to raise an eyebrow at him “What?” I asked, trying to hold still for him.

He tilted his head as he looked down at my abdomen “Looks like you got a nasty bruise on your lower back. Not sure how that happened.” I felt him brush his hand over the base of my spine and I let out a loud cry. The smallest brush against the spot sent me into a spasm of completely unexpected pain. “Well, I was going to ask if you felt that, but that’s pretty obvious now.”

“You think!?” I cried out “Ow! How did that get there? I didn’t feel anything before!”

“I’m… not sure.” Doc muttered, making me flinch when he traced his finger around a spot near the sensitive area “I won’t touch it again. I’m going to need another look once the sensitivity’s worn off though.”

The room grew uncomfortably quiet as Doc came around and looked me over more carefully this time “What now?” I asked.

“Just looking for anything I might have missed. But no, just the one spot. No core module until I figure out this bruise though. For all I know, it’ll irritate it.”

I rolled my eyes. I didn’t want to admit that he was right, but I did need to take a break from it. Looking down at my body, I could tell that I was beginning to grow pale and emaciated. I had been becoming more and more out of touch with my human self in the last week. An argument could be made that it had been a trend since I arrived on Theseus. “Fine. We’re docked anyway. Not more than a day away from it though. Even if it’s just to pop in for a few minutes to calm myself down.” I insisted. I needed sensory rest, after all.

“We’ll see.” Doc said, stepping away from me and letting me lie back down, now acutely aware of what must have been a terrible bruise in a spot that was mercifully at the curvature of my back. I didn’t need to apply pressure to it when I lied on my back. “Do you trust Dr. Fuller?” he asked suddenly.

“Huh?” I paused a moment to think. I wanted to trust her. She was the first person I’d met who actually felt like she knew something, ANYTHING, about what I was. But he had a point, she was still a stranger. My instincts made me doubt that this was a trap, but she was still an unknown actor. But I really, desperately, wanted her to be trustworthy. “Maybe. She’s not Foundation if that’s what you mean. I think… it’s worth it to talk to her at the very least. If she ends up being shady, we can just kick her off the ship, right?”

“I suppose meeting here might give us a little bit of a home field advantage, yes.” Doc nodded “Has she told you anything yet?”

“Not yet… other than the fact that there are others like me. And that she had expected me to be a violent loner, I guess.”

“That feels portentous.” Doc said as he sat back down at his console “Maybe if she’s seen other living cores, she’s had negative experiences with them?”

I wasn’t sure if that was right. It felt like his logic was backwards. “She called me an Arthausen Unit. So I have a kind. A… manufactured kind at that. What if my kind are predisposed to violence?” I briefly wondered if I was even technically human, but set that aside when I remembered that Ray was still basically human and was considered as such by those that knew about Mammons. At most, I was like her: a genetic offshoot. As much as I tried to justify it, though, I couldn’t help but feel dread hanging over me for the idea that I was something less than human.

“Perhaps. A predisposition doesn’t mean that you’re guaranteed to be that way, though. Having gotten to know you, I’d hardly call you violent. If anything, you’re a little more innocent than most who end up in this line of work. I wouldn’t exactly say completely mentally stable, but dangerous? No.” Doc took out his terminal and started logging what he had observed about the bruise on my back.

“Not completely mentally stable?” I repeated, debating my psychological state inside of my own head for a moment. He was probably right. “What’s your diagnosis on my mental health?”

“Right now, without a proper history? Uncertain.” He shrugged his shoulders “Diagnosing amnesiacs is a little difficult. A lot of your everyday experiences are still new to you, so your behavior could be chalked up to… well, novelty. I can say that you’re impulsive and reckless, but I think that’s hardly news to you at this point. And if you weren’t so impulsive and reckless, Shaw would probably have killed me.”

“Can you believe we’re just traveling with the guy now?” I muttered quietly, momentarily distracted from the conversation. “Sure, he’s useful, but he actually did almost kill several of us.”

“Any of us might have done the same in that situation. When we’re cornered, we do desperate things. Now that we’re not sending him to his death, we’re not the ones cornering him anymore. If anything, we’re protecting him, in his eyes. It wouldn’t make sense for him to try to kill us again.” Doc tried to rationalize it, but he still leaned back in his chair and muttered “You’re not wrong, though, it does feel disconcerting.”

We were getting off track, and I didn’t feel like having an extensive conversation about Shaw, so I brought the subject back to me “So what you’re saying is, I’m a quick thinker?” I smirked.

He let out a short laugh “’Thinking’ might not be the right term. You’re quick to act.” He smiled and took a quick swig from his water flask “I can’t really give you a reliable diagnosis of anything, but I can tell you my observations. You’re adaptive, you learn very quickly, you have an addictive personality, you have an alarmingly frail physical constitution… I’m actually surprised you haven’t fallen ill yet. It must be something about the self-cleaning nature of the core lubricant.”

“You think I’m that sickly?” I wondered why he told me that. It just gave me more justification to spend as much time as possible in the core module “Addictive personality… is this about that night at Shelby’s?”

“No, it’s about your attachment to the core module. It feels more and more like a psychological addiction… or dare I say psychic addiction? I’m not really certain how that works. My point is, you keep wanting to spend more and more time in there and less and less time out in the real physical world.”

“Is that a problem?” I shrugged. He wasn’t wrong, but it didn’t feel like there was much of a negative consequence to it beyond the minor inconvenience of sensory acclimation when I left the module. Maybe if I didn’t have Doc there to monitor my health and needs, it would be more challenging, but I did, so what was the issue?

Doc seemed like he was at a loss for words, pondering the question himself “I mean… it feels like it should be a problem, doesn’t it?” he started, but he went silent, not sure what else he could say about addiction in this case “Ordinarily, addiction would be a major problem, right? Except you don’t seem belligerent or uncooperative about being removed from it. And since you’re already so dependent on me for your personal care just by the nature of being the ship’s core, well… maybe addiction is just the wrong term.”

“Obsession?” I smirked, trying to be both helpful and humorous at the same time. “I don’t even know about that, though. I don’t know if you know this, but ever since I was grafted to the ship, the total sensory deprivation of the void has become an actual NEED. I see the data and can’t help but process it while I have my eyes closed, so being able to open them and see nothing, that’s the only break I get from my senses. That’s why I want to go back to it so badly. It’s like the other half of sleep for me.”

“That’s intriguing for sure. A psychic biological need. Huh.” He looked up from his work and leaned back for a moment. I think I’d struck a chord in his inquisitive mind that he needed some time to process.

I was happy when I closed my eyes and saw a message from Fuller though: ‘I’m with an escort, and I’m coming aboard.’