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Cypher
You know I could beat you, right? If we were racing? When I said this, I was considering the higher-quality components and faster processors that Combat SecUnits receive. I intended to tease, as Murderbot and Shilo did so easily, but possibly I was too aggressive. Murderbot increased its running speed. Shilo continued at a steady pace, falling behind. We were about halfway to Ehno’s house.
Should I slow down? I asked, genuinely.
No, was the irritated reply, and Murderbot went faster still. I matched it, then pulled ahead. And suddenly I was rolling through the grass, tripped. I gouged one metal heel into the dirt, plowing a furrow to a standing stop. It faced me and said, There’s more than one way to win a race.
Our positions were reminiscent of a fighting stance, which was more than sufficient to cause <Hostile Identified: Kill> to zing from my unchangeable base code. The command routed through fail-safes that prevented an automatic response with robustly layered coding. Nonetheless, in this moment, I wanted to at least pummel it. I was curious if I could do so without losing control. We were a millisecond from finding out, when CUT IT OUT YOU TWO knocked against our attention in the feed, from Shilo, who was now way past us. Shilo added, Ehno would tell you two to stop trampling the fucking grass. We both looked at the exposed roots in the deep furrow that had ended my rough roll and turned away from each other, walking on.
You’re the one who turned this into a race, Murderbot said.
You almost turned it into a fight, I countered.
Alright, fine. We went ahead, both carefully modulating our speed. Shilo waited for us to catch up.
Do I need to say it? Shilo asked as we regrouped, three abreast.
NO, we both answered.
I’m going to say it anyway: I won, Shilo boasted, fairly.
I might’ve attempted a lighthearted rejoinder, but under Shilo’s teasing bravado, I could perceive the worry. Its emotional control was excellent, so I knew this was an intentional release. Shilo was letting us know how it felt.
I’m sure Sixten is fine, Murderbot said, Ehno would’ve found a way to get us word if there had been any issues.
I know, Shilo answered. But coming back here. Reminds me of how it felt when I decided to leave Sixten behind and go with you and ART.
It was Sixten’s choice, not just yours, Murderbot reminded Shilo.
It was Sixten’s choice to stay, but it was mine to leave, Shilo answered. And there was nothing either of us could say to counter that. We all understood the reality of difficult choices.
My scout drone reached Ehno’s house and studied its layout. This was my first time here. It was a large, modular assembly of four connected sections surrounded by a dusty yard and low fence. Behind the house, six small juvenile humans were involved with sticks and rocks, while an adolescent and a young adult watched over them. In the front yard, two people whose identity I could guess were waiting, watching our approach. Ehno must be the shorter human female. And of course, I recognized Sixten, the ComfortUnit who looked in many ways nearly identical to myself, Murderbot, and Shilo. Ehno waved up at my drone, then as we came into range of the local network, we received a greeting from Ehno and a simple ping from Sixten. We all pinged back. When we arrived, we were shoulder to shoulder, none ahead of another.
“You must be Cypher,” Ehno said when we were together. She looked at each of us, but it was a light look, a gentle glance without the pressure of staring. “This is amazing, having you all here. You are a very impressive group.” Ehno herself had the creased skin and veiny hands of an older human. Her hair was braided streaks of white into brown.
Shilo and Sixten greeted each other silently, standing face to face, holding hands.
The children and their watchers came to the front yard. They displayed the full range of human skin tones and hair textures. Ehno introduced them all by name and gave details of age, origin, and how long they had each been living here (the three oldest juveniles were apparently from the last group of refugee orphans rescued from the BreharWallHan mine). I asked privately in the feed, Will I need to utilize all these names and identifying biographical details?
No, Murderbot answered. The oldest is Umran, and I just number the others Juvenile 1 through 7, by height. They will probably want to talk to you and show you sticks and things. You can tell them to leave you alone.
Juvenile 2 was already approaching us. And yes, it had a stick with a string tied taut across a gap. “Leave me alone,” I said in my least-threatening voice. The juvenile startled and ran back to the others. They all giggled, glanced at me, and returned to the back yard. Ehno also chuckled lightly, confirming the appropriateness of my intervention, and gestured us into the house.
Murderbot
Ehno’s house had gotten bigger in the last few years, since we’d arrived with a barely functional Sixten. Another new modular section had been added, and the juvenile count was up from 4 to 7. And now there were avians. Loud, angry-sounding ground birds that moved their heads with every erratic step they took. I knew this type of domestic avian. They shat out orbs the humans ate for breakfast. (I’m not exaggerating. The orbs came out the same hole as the shit.)
Ehno had changed, too. She looked older. I’m not that good at estimating human ages, usually, but this was getting pretty obvious. She was almost as old looking as Mensah. As always, the original PresAUX team had made a big deal out of my visit to Preservation, with a gathering for whoever could come to Mensah’s farmhouse. It hadn't been that bad, though. Mensah was the calm center of a vortex of activity and stories, with too many grandkids to even bother numbering them. I sat and listened while everyone told stories from the past. In each retelling, the events began to sound more like the plots from adolescent-appropriate adventure serials, with all the bloody parts cleaned up. I didn’t mind, there’s enough blood in my life. I sometimes referenced my long-term memory storage and compared it to the story being told, but I didn’t mention the alterations (unless it was to prove Gurathin wrong).
Now, the talkers were talking in Ehno’s house, and the listeners were listening. (Ehno and Shilo were both talkative, by my standard. Sixten was a listener. I suspected Cypher would listen at first, then dominate the conversation with stories of its own.) But I’d had enough of both storytelling and listening, so I walked out into the dark landscape. I had a few drones with low-light filters activated, but I left my eyes at normal sensitivity. I could see a dim path through the bushy flora. I reached a clearing with good visibility in all directions, as well as up towards the dark purple-brown sky. As I activated my comm device to ART, I looked up, this time not out of silly habit. ART was in orbit directly above me, and I could see it: a moving, star-like point of bright, reflected light.
Is everyone behaving themselves? ART asked.
Yes, mostly. Except…
What did Cypher do?
It was me, actually. I tripped it. But it was racing me! I sounded whiny. Oh well, ART was used to that. Although it would, of course, scold me.
That’s a race you can’t win. At least not without strategic adaptation.
Yeah, I know, that’s why I tripped it!
A feed laugh, instead of a lecture. ART was in a good mood. Trips to Preservation were a vacation of sorts, for all of us.
We chose media to watch together on a shared channel. I watched, but also ran through iterations of the question I was preparing myself to ask. In a minute, I’d get around to it in a minute. A few episodes later (I know, I know, not a minute, but neither ART nor I sleep, so we had all night), I asked, Why does Ehno look so old, but my organics are still doing good?
The process by which Ehno’s skin was used to make you involved creating cell lineages that have had their Hayflick limit deactivated, so they can replicate indefinitely.
I never thought my organics were going to last longer than my shitty company parts. I paused, but briefly, before moving on to the next difficult question, Were you able to get those new knee joints for me?
Yes. But as I’ve warned you, it will require extensive surgery to replace the degrading ones.
I know, I said and felt the now-familiar discomfort that arose any time we talked about my aging (ugh!) parts.
You need to accept that you won’t be as fast as you have always been.
I know, all right. You keep telling me, but it isn’t helping me feel better about slowing down. I’m going to pretend I’ll live forever, like you.
ART answered, sounding muted and far away, I don’t think I can live forever.
Why not? Your parts are easier to continually replace than mine. You can shift your consciousness into alternate processors during repairs, while I’ve always got a part of myself stuck in these neurons. I sounded angry, but felt something else. (Emotions… there were way too many of them!)
I have modules on accepting, coping with, and planning for mortality. I encourage all my adult crew to familiarize themselves with the material well before end-of-life.
My angry-but-not-really reply was, ART, you are such an asshole.
That is not me being an asshole. That is excellent advice.
Let’s just watch the show, I said. And we did. ART (sometimes) knew when to let it drop.
Shilo
The next cycle, the five of us took a trip to visit the more distant click cane grove. This grove made different music than the one near Ehno’s house. Instead of distinct clicks, these plants made a rounded sound, like bubbles popping, except loud. Under the ppOpp ppOpp ppOpp ppOpp ppOpp ppOpp ppOpp ppOpp, there was the rushing thrum of the river cascading over water-smoothed and carved rock. At the bottom of the rocky slope, the river fanned wide and shallow over the cane-covered plain.
Sixten, who had been here many times, led the way, holding Ehno’s arm to steady her as we scrambled up the steepest part of the slope. As we climbed, the cyclical music of the grove softened while the flowing water’s rush, then burble, became the strongest sound. At the edge of a wide pool, Sixten, who spoke very little either aloud or in the feed, said “Swim?” to Murderbot and Cypher. It was a challenge, and they knew it. Sixten immediately pulled off its simple garment and stepped into the water. Ehno and I needed no prompting, we were already discarding our clothing. The pebbly bottom was so near-seeming in the clear water that I was surprised at the depth as I stepped in: up to my knees then thighs, waist, neck. Cypher was next, looking perplexed and bemused. Murderbot stayed scowling on the shore, looking defensive. It was probably arguing with itself, or ART.
The sun-warmed water pushed gently around our bodies. Constructs are too heavy to swim without expending significant energy, so Sixten, the only one who’d ventured too deep to wade, had simply sunk to the bottom of the pool. We looked down at its wavering shape. It looked back, eyes open. Ehno can float, so she was. Her greying hair, now unbraided, flowed downstream.
Its argument apparently resolved, Murderbot finally joined us, although stubbornly standing only knee deep. You’re doing it wrong, I called privately over the feed. It stomped farther in, then splashed down to sit on the rocky bottom, neck deep. It tried to look grumpy, but the quiet sounds and soft pressures could not be resisted. I didn’t gloat, and neither did anyone else.
Ehno
The water, as always, felt healing. Having all these fascinating people here with me also felt healing. They weren’t my children, certainly. But it was something like family. I haven’t heard any of them say the word “family,” but it’s the word I used in my mind. A word in need of a more expansive definition. Can it include people connected only by stolen cells? Or those connected for no reason other than the desire to support?
Preservation Alliance has a generous legal definition of family, so I’d had no problem listing Sixten as my heir and designating it as a co-administrator of our home-based refugee foster home. Umran was also part of my expanded family. He was the first child who’d come to live with me, after Station Security had reached out to me looking for a quiet place for a traumatized Rim orphan to complete drug addiction recovery. That had been a rough few years, but now Umran was an apprentice ranger, ready to take over my wildlands management duties when I fully retired.
“That’s long enough in this lovely water, I’m getting more wrinkled than usual!” I called out as I emerged to sit and dry in the sun. I notice Murderbot looking at me, then away. So shy, that one! “Just look,” I called, embarrassing it further (old person prerogative). “It doesn’t bother me.”
Murderbot did look (bravery comes in many forms), and asked, “The scars on your back. I’ve never seen them before. Is that from when…?”
“Yes. Hurt like fuck! Oh, I was such a bold one, back then!” They were going to hear the story again, whether for the first or fourth time. I liked telling it. Stories give us a chance to take control of the past, to shape our experiences into something that fits who we have become.
Sixten
I perceive Shilo’s continued guilt at leaving me on Preservation. I have tried many times to convince it otherwise. I am content here, so what is the reason for the guilt? It is illogical, but I cannot control other’s emotions.
All of them except Ehno are made uncomfortable by my presence. Cypher is confused and doesn’t know me, that’s fine, we just met. It doesn’t understand my near silence, may not even perceive the extent to which I listen and comprehend. It is doing the common thing of not talking to me, but I don’t need other’s silence, just my own.
They are uncomfortable because they see me as broken. They wanted to do even more treatments to cure my post-traumatic mutism. But the treatment was such a brutal process, I stopped when I wanted. There’s enough talking in the world, and I’m not actually broken, just different. Different from them, and also from who I would’ve been, if. (There is no if. Each path through the past is singular, a branch once chosen eliminates all others.)
I enjoy caring for the children as they come and go. My silence does not bother them. The silent ones appreciate it. We communicate without words, with gestures of care. I have modules for many Rim languages, so I can understand them if they do speak. I will listen to anything, without judgment. A funny story that ends in tragedy, or a violent memory. A description of a favorite game or a bad dream. Lost friends, lost family. I listen, but the horrors I hear do not harm me. The five rounds of memory reconsolidation treatments it took to pull me out of the flashbacks gave me an unintended gift: emotional detachment. The trauma counselors encourage the children to explore the worst times, to identify triggers and process difficult emotions. This has its place, but I think the children also benefit from talking to me. I am a silent portal for them to send their words through. They get some peace, from the telling.
At the pool, I watch each of my siblings enter the water and receive whatever healing they can from one peaceful moment. This shared moment will become part of five separate stories. A happy part, I hope, for all.
Afterwards, we gather in the yard for our awkward goodbyes. They visit us infrequently: the distances imposed by an infinite universe are only partially offset by wormholes. I do wonder how many more times they will see Ehno. But I will remain here, for however long my body’s amalgam of cells and technology will last. I have found my home, and my purpose. They have found theirs.