Theseus

As we approached orbit, the planet below almost looked cold, a white film covering parts of the yellowish planet. But I knew enough about the solar system to know that the surface was in fact a raging hellfire. There was no way to land safely on the world. There was probably no way to even break atmosphere without obliterating myself while I still had this hole in the ship. Thankfully, Venus itself wasn’t our goal.

It wasn’t until I was in proximity of the planet itself that my scans even began to pick up the colony. It wasn’t large, a space station made to house a few hundred at most, rather than the potential millions that called Luna home, and the countable billions on the outer colonies.

“We’re in comms range, Captain.” I signaled to Aisling, letting her know that she was free to send her plea for assistance.

And with that, the negotiations began. Just as Aisling had surmised, the Venusians weren’t very keen on allowing desperate passage for a fugitive vessel fleeing from a veritable army of Foundation personnel. Even the damaged state of our ship wasn’t enough to convince them that we needed to land. We needed to give reason for our visit and ‘just visiting’ wasn’t good enough, given Aisling’s lack of a worthwhile reputation on this world.

Aisling took a long hard look at their refusal and closed her eyes as she considered her options. I wanted to remind her that I was still on the table as a possibility, but what would be the best way to handle that?

Aisling sighed and leaned back in her chair to hit the intercom button with the side of her fist “Shaw, get up to the bridge. We need your… ugh, expertise.”

It took a few minutes, but soon, the still-limping Shaw and Mouse as his armed escort walked into the bridge, Shaw smiling that smug grin he had when we were reliant on him. “Why Captain, I thought that lowly creatures such as I weren’t allowed up here.” He flourished as if making a bow “How can I be of assistance, your highness?”

Mouse rolled his eyes, but remained silent, his hand tightening around the rifle’s handle as if he was tempted to level it against him.

“Can it, man, you’re embarrassing yourself.” Aisling said sharply “You said you have contacts here, right? So use them. Get us onto that station, because we don’t have the supplies to try to sneak back around that fleet to the outer colonies. This is our only choice to stop at.”

“Why certainly.” Shaw walked directly up to Aisling and cleared his throat, gesturing to the seat that he might take it.

Aisling glared up at him and reluctantly stood to give him room “Meryll, screen everything before he sends it.” She commanded, as if I wasn’t about to do that anyway.

Shaw sat down hard in the captain’s chair and smiled wide as he flexed his fingers over the keyboard, then began tapping away ‘I wish to get through to a client of mine. May I request connection to the local intranet?’ he typed in first. I pushed the message through. If he was going to speak to his contact directly, that might help us get around explaining the situation to the port authority.

There was only a short pause before a response came in ‘I cannot give free access, but I can alert your client so that they might open a connection to you. May I have the name of this client?’

‘Only a beautiful woman by the name of Dr. Fuller.’ He typed in. I groaned at his tone, but I allowed the message through regardless. I had no way of knowing if that was actually his contact’s name or not, so I just had to take his word on it. ‘Tell her that Dr. Arthausen wishes to speak to her.’ I had to admit, that was clever. If this Dr. Fuller knew what Arthausen Syndrome meant, that message would probably be alarming enough to at least open a channel asking for clarification.

“Sorry Meryll, I guess you’ll have to spend some time under the microscope while we’re here.” Aisling said as she looked over Shaw’s shoulder “It’s probably the only way we’re going to get access.”

“It’s fine, as long as we’re only trading for information with this doctor.” I wasn’t exactly happy about the prospect of being a lab rat. That possibility is what I was running from Foundation for in the first place, after all. But we knew this place didn’t have the kind of military force they would need to effectively detain me if the rest of the crew had anything to say about it. At least not on the ground, and shooting us out of space wouldn’t exactly do a whole lot for them.

It took the station a very long time to get back to us. I was beginning to worry that they’d gone radio silent after seeing the term and would simply pretend we didn’t exist at the threat of earning Foundation’s ire. But then another message finally came ‘I’ve forwarded your message to Dr. Fuller. She had some colorful words for the messenger, but she said that she’ll open a relay.’

Aisling huffed and leaned lightly against the wall, rereading the message several times. “Well… I suppose we’re waiting-“ as if to oppose her, another message popped up onto the screen.

It was from an anonymous user on board the colony’s station, and it simply read ‘I didn’t expect to be visited by a ghost tonight.’

Shaw typed out quickly into the new message ‘I knew that would get your attention. Shall I begin rattling chains?’ I hesitated to push that one through, but as someone who appreciated banter between comrades, I sent it along.

‘Arthausen isn’t a term most of my colleagues will recognize, but one doesn’t simply throw around something like this into a den of mad scientists like that.’ The contact started ‘You have information about them?’

Them? People with Arthausen Syndrome, I guessed? But it was phrased in such a strange way. Aisling had mentioned the syndrome, not the people.

‘I wish we had more information about the condition. Maybe you can glean something by letting us land and taking a closer look yourself.’ Shaw sent the message and looked up at the sensor array “See? I can play nice. Are you ready to be a bargaining chip?”

“This person definitely knows something then. Even if they don’t have all the details, they can give us something. I think this is worth way more to us than passage onto the colony.” I reassured her “I’ll be okay.”

The next message came after a short delay ‘You have one of the units? Which one? Is she contained?’

She. The contact already knew Shaw was referring to a woman. ‘Why yes, I’m inside of her right now.’ Shaw tried to send back, but I blocked that one. He looked up at me and gave a knowing shrug before he rewrote ‘Why yes, she’s piloting this ship.’

I began tracing the file, lifting the address from Shaw’s message and copying it into my own system, I knew what I had to do next. Even as Shaw quickly received the simple message ‘Bullshit’, I was already drafting my own message to the sender.

‘Not bullshit. This is Meryll. Or Theseus if you prefer. Nice to meet you. You gonna let me land so you can take a hopefully non-invasive peek at my brain or what? That’s my offer.’ I sent it quickly and warned the others “I’m already talking with them, don’t worry if they go quiet on you.”

Shaw shrugged “You don’t trust me with negotiating with my own client? Such distrust.” The sound of feigned insult rang heavy in his voice.

‘Meryll? That’s impossible.’ I received back, followed by ‘You’re grafted to a pirate vessel? And you’re not just here to kill everyone? I don’t buy this for a second. Send me five seconds of recent navigational data.’

Ah, a test. I grabbed the navigational logs from the pieces of the data stream that I’d set aside so they wouldn’t distract me and sent the last hour of our navigational data over the connection. Admittedly, it took a little bit longer than just a few seconds would have, but I wanted to emphasize the point ‘Happy? Let us land, I don’t know why you’d think I would want to kill anyone here, you people are probably my best hope of figuring out what the hell I am.’

There was a long pause. I wasn’t sure if the scientist was reading through the miles of accurate but practically useless data I’d just sent them, or if I’d just stunned them with some kind of revelation. Finally, a ping came to mine and Aisling’s computer almost simultaneously. Her’s was landing privilege data that I quickly started to follow, while the person’s direct message to me said ‘You don’t know?’

“Wow, nice job Meryll. You didn’t have to offer them anything specific?” Aisling asked.

“I just sent her some proof that I’m really a ship and that was enough I guess.” I was just as surprised myself, so I decided to keep talking to the scientist who’d just got us an in ‘I woke up a little over two weeks ago with a head full of fake memories and a ship getting crammed into my brain. So far, all I know is I’m some kind of Foundation weapon. Please tell me you have any kind of answer to all of this.’

‘One more thing first. How did you come to the conclusion that I know anything about it?’ she asked slowly.

‘We both have the misfortune of knowing an asshole that goes by Shaw. I don’t know his last name, but he’s with us.’

‘You brought that scumbag here? Don’t make me revoke those landing credentials.’

‘Oh, don’t worry, we hate him too. Captain even shot him.’

‘Well that’s a good start. Last question. What are your intentions? In general?’ the reply came back.

That was a really good question. What exactly did I mean to do with all of this when I hopefully eventually stopped them from chasing me down? Just sail the stars among pirates and wreak some havoc? Except that wasn’t what we did. Sometimes we hurt people, but it was never our intent. We were the good guys. Usually. And I really wanted to stick it to the corpos in general at this point. Especially some nebulous face that eluded my shrouded memory in particular. ‘My intentions are to help my crew help people. And if I can, to screw over the bastards that did this. Whatever it is they did to me.’

Another short pause, then a message lit up the data stream that finally gave me a sense that I was close to getting real clarity on my past ‘My name is Doctor Beatrice Fuller. You’ll have your answers.’