Goddess in the Machine

by Lora Beth Johnson

  A night wind fluttered past, and he pulled his sweater tight round himself. He covered his mouth and nose, but still choked on sand. A barn loft, or even a smallroom, imagined awfulish good anow.

  After a moment, she shrugged. “I don’t feel like sleeping.”

  Zhade turned toward her, sand shifting beneath him, and huffed out a dramistic long-suffering sigh. “Close your eyes, I’ll tell you a bedtime story.”

  The Goddess snorted. “Oh, this ought to be good.”

  “I’m a massive storyteller. What do you want to hear bout?”

  She groaned, looking up through the slats in the wagon. Her eyes narrowed, and Zhade followed her gaze. Nothing but a dusting of stars—the sandclouds had finalish cleared. She was quiet for a time and a half, and if Zhade hadn’t spent the last several nights next to her, he might have imagined she’d fallen asleep.

  “What do people say about me?” she finalish asked.

  Zhade stretched out, placing his hands behind his head, and held his voice low so as not to wake Wead. “That you’re massive at parties, but not someone you’d ask to care for small kidduns.”

  She huffed, but he was certz she was holding back a smile. “Are there legends about me? About me being a . . . goddess or whatever. My powers, my history?”

  For a moment, all he could do was watch her. She looked different in the starlight. Somehow both more and less. Her round cheeks were flushed, her dark eyes sharp and clear. She wore her hair short—not as short as Wastern women did, but much shorter than Eerensedians. It was a black and shiny, like the most expensive armor. He could see the goddess in her, but he could also see the fear. He turned back to the stars. “You’re the goddess of virility, and your powers are—”

  “If you’re going to be like that, we can go back to that village.”

  He knew she was bluffing. Whatever she was looking for, it wasn’t behind them.

  “Why do you want to hear your own story?”

  “Because,” she paused. “I don’t know it. I was asleep when my story happened. How on earth did I become a goddess?”

  Zhade frowned at the phrase, but he comped her meaning. “Certz, I would march forward with it.” He rolled the kinks out of his neck. “If people want to worship you, I say let them.”

  “But it’s dishonest. I’m letting them believe a lie.”

  “Who says it’s a lie?”

  “Um. Me.” She threw up her hands, almost smacking them against the cart, then dropped her voice when she realized she’d stopped whispering. “I do. I say it’s not true.”

  “Who are you to decide what’s true?”

  “Apparently, I’m a goddess,” she muttered.

  “Ha!” Zhade tossed a grin in her direction. When he caught her glowering at him, he shrugged. “You said it, not me.”

  The Goddess pursed her lips, obvish holding in a laugh, and rolled away from him. Moonlight streaked across her hair.

  “Once upon a time,” he started.

  “Zhade,” she groaned, turning back and nudging him. He wanted to laugh at the way she said his name—like she had the sniffs, or a mouth full of butterjam. He wanted to hear it again.

  “Do you want to hear this or not?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “Once upon a time, there were three goddesses agrave. They were charred and immortal and unchanging. For hundreds of years, the world waited for them to wake, and as time ran, humans grew more desperate for the goddesses to save them. Finalish, the First awoke, and with her, the ability to sorcer the angels. She created the gods’ dome and skooled us magic. When the Second woke, she was fiery and fickle and brought disaster. The people waited for the Third, but she vanished, never to be seen again. Evens—” He winked at her. “Til now. And the world grew darker and bleaker and it’s said that sole the Third Goddess can save us from the planet trying to kill us.” He paused, dropping the singsong quality of his voice. “But do you want to know what I imagine?”

  “Not really.”

  “Stop interrupting.” Another pause. “I imagine we did it ourselves. They blame the planet for not wanting us, but what’s a planet going to do, marah? It’s mereish a big chunk of rock and heat. We’re the monsters. We’re the ones with the power to destroy . . .”

  His voice drifted off. The power to destroy and create, his mam had told him, is a responsibility no one should be burdened with, yet everyone has. Then she’d given him a dagger and some jewelry and told him to save Eerensed.

  That was the last time he saw her. Right before they killed her.

  Right before Maret killed her.

  The Goddess tilted her head, looking up at him under her lashes. “This is starting to be a bit of a downer.”

  He almost smiled. She could be funny, his Goddess.

  “Who kidnapped me?” she asked, her voice drowsy. “And why?”

  “Kiddun’s naps? What?”

  “Who stole me? Why did I vanish from the palace?”

  “I told you, I don’t reck.”

  The Goddess let out a long sigh, then stilled, as though she were waiting for something. “That rhyme you said back in the village, about the First and Second . . . how did it end?”

  Zhade rolled his shoulders. Sand crept under his shirt. “The First was the goddess of knowledge and light,” he said slowish. “The Second brought us chaos and fright. The Third will rise to save us all, if sole mereish before the fall.”

  The Goddess was silent again, as though she were sorting through his words and choosing hers at care. “The other goddesses . . . they sent you to find me?”

  Zhade hesitated. “Firm . . .”

  “Does that mean yes?”

  “Spoze.”

  “You’re useless.” She turned toward him, resting her head on her hands.

  “Ah. You say that now.”

  She lifted a skeptical brow. “But I’ll change my mind when we get to Eerensed?”

  “Certz, probablish not.” He nudged her lightish with his elbow. “Now go to sleep, Goddess. You’ll need all your strength to save us.”

  She was bareish breathing. He’d grown used to the sound of her breaths.

  “Save you? By getting you into Eerensed?”

  “For starts,” he said.

  She huffed and turned away. After a moment, she murmured, “G’night.”

  “Dream well, Goddess.” He smiled in the dark.

  One more day, two at most, and he’d be home.

  Home.

  Listening to the hollow pitch of the time chimes. Walking next to the lazy flow of the River Sed. Eating hot, fresh butterjam dumplings under the shadow of the gods’ tower. He would do it all. Then the real work would begin. He had the Goddess, and he had a plan. Zhade would decide his fate before fate decided for him.

  FIVE

  requiem, n.

  Etymology: Latin re- + quiēs: rest.

  Definition:

  a hymn for the dead, a dirge.

  colloq.: the dreamless sleep experienced by those frozen in cryonic stasis.

  Night was different on the new planet. It wasn’t as dark as Andra thought it should be. The atmosphere on Holymyth must have been thinner than Earth’s: the stars felt closer. They glittered, peeking through the slats of the wagon, watching, waiting for her to go to sleep.

  They could keep waiting.

  She lay between Lew and Zhade—perhaps a bit closer to Lew than Zhade—huddled under a mound of rough-spun covers. She’d heard the desert got cold at night, but this was ridiculous. Even wrapped in layers of knitted clothing, she shivered.

  The blanket was rough against her cheek, the night unnaturally quiet. No traffic. No hum of electricity or the whir of security’bots. Not even animals calling in the distance or the wild moaning of wind as it wound its way through the desert. A soft snore rose from Lew’s sleeping f
orm. Zhade had quieted after telling her the ridiculous story of the goddesses, but it was impossible to tell if he was asleep without moving closer.

  She reached under her shirt and pulled out the holocket, her thumb tracing the clasp. Its contents were all that was left of her family. Of Earth. She held all of human history in her hand. Six random memories. The ’locket was cold against her fingers.

  She snapped her eyes open, not realizing they had drifted shut. She didn’t want to sleep. She’d already slept too long. Her body felt weird, tingly, like her soul was too big, trying to seep out. Her eyes tried to close again.

  No.

  When she’d gone into stasis, there’d been no active nanos in her system. If there had been, her ’implant would have saved her when she woke drowning, collecting nearby nanos into a ’swarm, the sole purpose to protect Andra. But there’d been no nanos to collect, either around her or in her body. Just before stasis, they’d been purged from her, the risks of frozen tech outweighing the benefits. No one had even considered nanos would be necessary to save someone from drowning in cryo’protectant, alone, a thousand years late.

  Andra hadn’t even been given a sedative. Any medical nano’bots roaming around inside her would have been frozen where they were, their tasks on pause. If she’d gone into stasis sedated, she’d have come out of stasis sedated, and that would have been disastrous. So Andra was awake when they froze her.

  She remembered.

  Remembered being in a box that looked like a coffin, alone, naked. Each roll of skin, the blotchy starburst birthmark on her collarbone, all on display for the cryo’techs and scientists surrounding her. She felt the saline flood the ’tank. It lapped against her body, higher and higher until it covered her, tickling at first, and then all she could think of was holding her breath, closing her eyes. She was submerged. Then, for a split second, she felt herself freeze.

  She felt herself die.

  Less than a second later—less than an instant—she was waking up again. Drowning in the same water that had just killed her. Somebody pressed the pause button on Andra’s life, and then someone else started her up again.

  But in the meantime, the world had kept going.

  Going and going and going without her for a thousand years.

  She was dead for a thousand years.

  Dead. Asleep. A matter of terms.

  ’Tank // Grave

  Magic // Technology

  Hell-mouth // Holymyth

  Teenager // Goddess

  Andra gasped awake, her heart pounding so hard it hurt. The stars winked at her. The rough texture of the blankets chafed her skin. She didn’t move, only listened to Lew and Zhade’s slow breaths, relieved they hadn’t noticed her wake. The holocket pressed into her chest, the metal smarting against her sweat-slick skin. She shivered, blinking, her mind refreshing.

  She stared at the sky, picking the sand from beneath her nails, counting her breaths.

  * * *

  Something was different. Something was just as it should be.

  Andra was at her mother’s office. At Lacuna Athenaeum headquarters. The sinking sun shone through floor-to-ceiling picture windows, the last rays escaping through the trees silhouetted on the horizon. Her mother’s eyes were glazed as she composed a report using her neural’implant, its attached crown gleaming on her forehead, curved around her ear, wired into her brain. Every once in a while she would correct something using the keyboard. She didn’t notice Andra slouched in the ergo’chair, clicking her ’locket open and shut. She didn’t even look up when Oz started laughing. He had a high, frenzied laugh. A giggle run amok. It was a normal day, and for some reason Andra couldn’t pinpoint, that fact filled her with relief. Relief and a strange sadness and the anticipation of disappointment.

  Just a normal day. Her family was alive.

  Of course they were alive. Why wouldn’t they be?

  “Oz, quiet down,” Mom said. “I have to get these files copied.”

  “The other kids got to go to the Vaults today,” he said. It wasn’t a whine, and somehow that made it more pitiful. He, out of all the Watts kids, resembled their father the most. Dark eyes, easy smile, round cheeks. It made people love him without exactly knowing why. People had the urge to avoid Isla Watts, but they had the urge to hug Auric Lim—a trait he’d passed to his son. “They said they played old vid-e-o-games.” He stumbled over the word. “Like sims, but you have to use a controller. With your hands.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Mom said, her eyes still out of focus. Her long, faded-red hair had fallen over one of them, but she didn’t seem to notice. It hid the jagged scar that ran along her cheek. The one too deep for doctors to remove. That didn’t stop her from trying, though she wouldn’t even listen to Andra complain about her birthmark.

  “One day I’d like to go.” Oz slumped into the chair in the corner, kicking his feet when they didn’t quite reach the ground.

  Mom didn’t bother to answer, and Andra suspected there was no real reason Oz couldn’t have gone with his friends. No good one anyway. Mom was just too busy. Too busy making final plans for the Ark passengers. Too busy running tests and sucking up to her boss. Too busy thinking of Holymyth. Her body was still here, but Andra’s mother had left Earth long ago.

  Andra stared out the windows overlooking the Riverwalk. An entire wall of her mother’s office was made up of windows with the best view of the city. She was pretty important at LAC. She had two doctorates: cryonic ethics, and astro-ecological theory. Plus, she was really good at computers. Well. Everyone was good at computers, but not everyone knew how they worked. Andra’s mother did.

  “And they have one room,” Oz was saying, “that’s all synth’trees, and another with cos’masks, and you can look however you want, and Raj pinged me a pic of him with a rhinoceros face. Do you know about rhinocerosi?”

  “Rhinoceroses,” Andra corrected.

  “I want to look like the Guardian, from ’Bot Wars.” He turned to his sister. “I always play him in the sims. If I had—”

  “Isla, I need you to come look at this,” a voice interrupted.

  Mom’s boss, Alberta Griffin—the Alberta Griffin—stood in the doorway. She looked just like she did in the holo’coms, except maybe taller, sharper. Her blonde hair was pulled into a fishtail braid, brow furrowed over her modded left eye. The eye that allowed her to perform calculations and identify variables and foresee probabilities. The eye that lingered on Andra just a little too long.

  Always recruiting, Andra thought. Only, Andra didn’t want to be recruited.

  Dr. Griffin stood tall and regal. Her neural’implant crown was the largest Andra had ever seen, silver and shining along her forehead, glinting from beneath her perfectly styled hair. Most crowns were just a slip of metal-coated tech embedded at the temple—little more than an accessory—but Dr. Griffin’s took up an entire hemisphere of her skull. The skin across the left side of her forehead and scalp looked like it was made of precious metal. It was ostentatious, Andra thought. And unnecessary, considering Griffin had an ’implant and it basically did the same thing. Crowns were usually worn by those with religious objections to ’implants or tech allergies, but people like Dr. Griffin and Andra’s mom used them to boost their own productivity.

  Dr. Griffin waited at the door with a girl with dark waves and a gap between her teeth. Andra recognized her as Rashmi Bhatt, Dr. Griffin’s intern, and Cruz’s new girlfriend. Friend? Girlfriend? All Andra knew was that Cruz was spending more time with Rashmi, and less time with Andra.

  “It’s almost time, Dr. Watts,” she said, her voice high.

  They’d never actually met, her and Rashmi, but Andra hated her on principle. She was living the life Andra was supposed to be living, working for LAC as the perfect golden child, and attached at the hip to Cruz Alvarez, the boy Andra had been enamored with since he started interning with her mom two years be
fore.

  Mom got up. “Andromeda, do me a favor. Take your brother home.”

  “I’m meeting Briella and Rhin. Last time before my appointment. Acadia can—”

  Mom was already halfway out the door. “I put credit in your account for a pizza. Make sure Osias is in bed by nine.”

  And then, she was gone, following Dr. Griffin and Rashmi out the door.

  “Let’s go home, Andra,” Oz said, and this time he did whine. “Piiizzaaaaaa.”

  Home.

  . . . home.

  Time skipped forward. Suddenly, Oz and Andra were leaving through the back door of Lacuna Athenaeum, which led directly under the statue of Alberta Griffin. It was built out of glossy white marble, her head gleaming with real silver. Her right arm was pointing to the stars, her gaze following. The statue was surrounded by a circle of pristine Corinthian columns, like this was some sort of national monument. Perhaps one day it would be—when she was long gone with the portion of the population that had made the lottery for the first colony.

  “Hey, Andra, watch this!” Oz cried, and she looked up to find him racing across the adjoining park, heading for the hover’swings.

  Andra laughed and pulled out her ’locket. She pressed play.

  * * *

  Andra jerked awake in a cold sweat, her breathing harsh, her lungs burning. The wagon slats came into focus. The sky was lighter. The sun was coming up. Andromeda is rising, she thought wryly.

  “Evens?” a voice said, and she turned to see Zhade kneeling, peering under the wagon. His blankets had already been gathered and it appeared he’d just given himself a shave.

  She nodded, trying to keep her face blank, her breathing steady. He gave her a look like he didn’t quite believe her, but just shook his head.

  “Time to go road-wise,” he said, and patted the side of the wagon before standing.

  Andra took a deep breath. There was something cold in her hand, and she looked down to see her ’locket clenched in her fist, chain broken. Her thumb was pressed against the top button—the one designated to play the first memory. She should have been surrounded by the ghosts of her family, cocooned in a holographic rendition of home, reliving her past. Her truth. But instead, there was nothing but cold, hard reality. A pile of blankets, a rickety cart, and sand everywhere.