by Corey Furman
“So, like us, just not as smart?”
“Not really. Large parts of them can be thought of as fleshy machinery, but they definitely have gears and wires, and a large central processor. They can be programmed on the fly to acquire new skills as needed. Besides that, they don’t feel like we do. Some seem like they do, but it’s all a function of excellent programming.”
Luna stopped and she and Maré looked back at the oblivious man. “I could walk back there and strike him. It would register, and he would probably look at me, but then he would go about his mindless work. If what had happened registered strongly enough, it would only notify LabSys. Security androids are capable of aggression, but not by much, and even then only within narrow parameters.”
They descended further in the building, until they reached the bottom of a stairwell. They walked down a short hallway that opened up onto a small common room that had a few functional tables and chairs. Along one wall were several small appliances sitting on a counter top, above them a few cabinets.
“Welcome home, Maré. This is where we get to eat.”
Down here at the bottom of their world, everything was smooth white and beige plastic, as if style and color were unnecessary luxuries that had been ruthlessly torn away, leaving behind cold, unrelieved industry. Even the appliances that had been provided for their use seemed like they had been engineered to numb the mind.
Luna walked over to one of the wall mounted dispensers and said, “183 Alpha, morning rations, please.”
“You have drawn your quota for food today. Would you like to draw tomorrow’s?” the machine tonelessly droned.
“Can’t have me overfed, now can we, so yes, give me tomorrow’s.”
It made a couple of tones and a slot in the bottom of the dispenser clicked open. Luna pulled out four or five small, plastic containers.
“This way,” and Luna walked over to one of the other doors that opened into the common area. As she approached, the door chirped and recessed with a small pneumatic hiss. Maré followed her in, and the door closed behind her.
“LabSys, code the door to this room for access by 370 Bravo, please.”
“Acknowledged, 183 Alpha.”
“Is that computer everywhere?”
“LabSys? Yes. It controls just about everything around here – door access, file access, ration allowances, sample processing, you name it.”
Maré trudged over to the small bed and sat down on its wide lip, leaned over and put her head in her hands. She exhaled a big wind, as if she had been holding her breath and had to release the pressure. She followed it with a few scratchy coughs.
Luna put most of the containers down on a desk that was built into the wall, then she came and sat down next to Maré. She said, “drink some of this,” and handed her a flask of brownish, orange liquid. It had the word “juice” helpfully stenciled on its side.
She sat up, took the container, and flipped open the top. She took a sip and looked at it. She was glad that the packaging displayed the nomenclature of its contents; it was a little sweet, and it seemed to quiet the rasp in her throat, but if she’d had to guess solely based on its taste and viscosity, then she might have mistaken it for machine lubricant. She thought about complaining, but it seemed so very pointless. Instead, she gestured with her chin towards the flask, she said, “so, how long is this supposed to last us?”
Luna smiled weakly. “About lunch time tomorrow.” She dug out a couple of antiseptic wipes from a small box on a shelf next to the bed and used them to gently clean Maré‘s face. Her touch was light, and the pads left her skin feeling tight and cool. “Don’t be too worried about it. The others might be willing to chip in a little bit of their rations. We try to stick together more than the humans.”
“Others? You mean simulants?”
“Yeah, another alpha and a matched pair. We’ll meet them at first call.”
Maré nodded. “Wow, okay… so, why did he call you a ‘sentimental fool’?”
“Well, you heard him refer to the loss of other pairs, right?”
“A lot was flying over my head, but yeah I caught that. I didn’t like the sound of it.”
“I wasn’t involved – the others were – but destroying them bothered me anyway, and I sat by myself next to their empty pods those nights to eat my dinner.” A pause. “It’s been about a week since the last one – your Alpha.”
A lot of undigested questions seemed to hang in the air. After a couple of minutes, Maré whispered, “Why did you do it, Luna?” She turned to her. “Why did you save me?”
“It’s complicated, and I’m not sure I completely understand it yet myself.” Luna looked at her. “Listen… you look pretty beat up. Do you want more answers now, or take some time?”
She shook her head. “I… I need a little time. Maybe some rest.” Tears started rolling down her cheeks, but she didn’t notice.
“We’ll talk more when you’re ready. And I’m a little wrung out, too.” Luna put her arms around Maré and brought her close, and she allowed herself to be comforted.
“I’m overwhelmed, lost…” A nervous laugh bubbled out ofMaré. “Hell, I’m freaked out, I guess!” She paused to process her feelings, to find a way to verbalize them. “I can’t explain it, but the one thing that feels right is being close to you, Luna, as if it were normal. ‘Thanks’ seems like a stupid and small thing to say to someone who’s thrown you a lifeline, but thank you, and I mean it.“
Luna nodded. “I feel it, too. The truth is that chromanity, and our bloodline especially, were made to be in pairs, Maré. Like you, my paired chroma didn’t make it. It wasn’t detected until our inception.” She hesitated before going on quietly. The room was dim, and it seemed right to speak softly, but her voice still carried quite clearly.
“My Maré, 183 Bravo, was brought out of sleep with an apparently severe emotional disorder. I guess the memory imprinting doesn’t always take. She didn’t recognize me – tried to tear me apart. I didn’t know what was going on, or even that we were simulants. I couldn’t understand why she was hitting me, flailing at me with her fists… Anyway, it made her ‘unsuitable for intended purpose’,” she said with air quotes, “and she was sent to the organ farm. I have been alone since.”
She paused as she seemed to gather her thoughts. “Losing her that way was hard, but it wasn’t the worst of it – that came later. Once I understood what we were, the hardest part was getting past that her existence was so short, so devoid of meaning. It wasn’t long before I realized that my own life wasn’t so different – short, pointless, alone.” When she was done speaking, she snaked her arms back around Maré, drew her close, and laid her head on her shoulder.
Maré had been listening, and for a few seconds she had allowed Luna to pull her into the story, but that was done, and Maré found that it was just more difficult thing on the dog pile. She absorbed the words, but all of the words and concepts put together made an inscrutable avalanche. She felt her own identity, as miniscule as it was, subsuming beneath it. Into the silence she said, “I’m not sure I can make it, Luna. I’m really lost.” Exhale. “I’m not even sure what it means to be me.”
Luna pushed her away a bit so she could look her in the face. “You can make it, Maré. You weren’t born with your memories, but I have all of the ones they gave me. I remember you from when we were little girls helping each other dress. I remember you helping me do my homework in school, and I remember you helping me understand boys because you had dated one first. Even if you don’t remember, that’s the kind of person you are, strong. You are my Chroma, and it’s my turn to help you. But we have to do it together. Can you try?”
“Yeah. I’ll try. I’m scared, Luna, but… I get that it’s serious.”
“Serious, yes,” she replied. “I once heard our grandfather use the phrase ‘where the rubber meets the road’.”
“I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, but it does sound serious.”
“It means this is as real as it gets.”
“Yeah… And I know that you’ve put yourself on the line for me. We’re connected, right?”
Luna nodded.
“Tell me it’s going to be alright.”
“I’ll hold you and stroke your hair until you believe it.”
That night, the two of them slept the way they had come into existence, naked, and in each other’s arms, wrapped in darkness and floating in the lowered gravity of their clamshell bed.
Five
After graduating from college, Joss would have to serve in the colonial Marines for a term of equal length to his schooling: six years, a long time to be separated from a part of yourself. They gave him six days – one for each year – to wrap his life up and get his ass up on the line for deployment. Meanwhile, Larissa would return to Earth to work for her father’s company as a contractor in the South Pacific. It would be hard to be apart for so long, but hopefully between the meager estate his parents had left him, his small military salary and her wages they would be able to save enough to move to Greenland once his tour was up. The whole arrangement was an unfair inconvenience, and made him simmer with ire, but there was nothing to be done about it.
He’d never see it, but Joss had done the old man proud. Driven, he’d worked long, hard hours at his studies and achieved grades near the top, and it had been more than sufficient to guarantee that he wouldn’t have to pay it all back to the military – assuming he survived his commission.
Except for the select few who filled highly specialized jobs, all young lieutenants were sent outside of the Terran system, and Lieutenant Junior Grade Joss Breylin Jr. wasn’t any different. His first assignment was to quell a minor but potentially dangerous simulant squabble on Zarmina’s World, a small planet in orbit around Gliese 581 some 20 light years out towards Libra. If the incident hadn’t involved gabachos, the U.N. would have let the local corporate security wonks clean up the mess. As it was, the U.N. needed to protect the image of the simulant as a trustable perk to the off-world emigrant. So, they sent in the lads to keep things quiet and establish a small but important presence.
Breylin wouldn’t know it for some time, but his first deployment would evolve to establish a new Marine post, and he would remain stationed there for his entire career. Even with faster than light travel, the transit times involved were still quite long, taking months to move between the stars. The enlisted ranks were moved around a little more frequently, but Command had found relocating the officers fewer times between duty stations made for better uniformity. He suspected that moving the enlisted around figured into the development of junior officers, too.
Zarmina’s World, having been colonized nearly two hundred years earlier, was in a slow decline. Being relatively close to the system of human origin, it had been identified early on as a destination for dreamers and those looking for a fresh start. As it turns out, it had a few unusual qualities that made it seem more attractive to settlers than it actually was. First of all, it was tidally locked to its parent star, meaning that one face of the planet perpetually faced it. The current theories of the time had predicted that the natural properties of the planet might produce profound gas exhumation, most pronounced at the subsolar region, the point that received the greatest amount of solar radiation. A lot of it had depended on the thickness of the mantle and whether or not the planet still had a hot core. The first settlers wouldn’t know until after they had arrived.
The other romantic notion that surrounded Zarmina’s World was that, due to its tidal locking, it would have a narrow ring around it running north-south where the sun was seen to be perpetually rising or setting, depending on the viewer’s disposition. People had fawned over that idea alone, and quite a few had placed themselves on the waiting queue for emigration.
In practice however, the U.N. had been reluctant to marshal the resources to mount an expedition for simple gas mining rights, particularly since it was expected that only a small segment of the planet would be truly habitable. Even at that, it was expected that there would be strong winds flowing nearly constantly from the subsolar region towards the opposite side of the planet, where it was always cold and dark.
Not only had there been nearly ceaseless wind blowing through the so-called twilight strip, there had also been a regular but very long pattern of thunderstorms that robbed the planet’s inhabitants of the marvelous view most of the time.
The U.N. had punted: first rights had been given to a consortium of mining venture capitalists who would foot the entire bill and bear the entire risk. If it worked out, the U.N. would get its taxes; if not, then it lost nothing and the private corporations would write off the loses. Everyone wins.
LT. Breylin woke from hyper-sleep with the platoon he had deployed with only days before the transport had left Mars orbit. They were mostly a likable enough bunch to Breylin’s eyes – even those that had opted for enlistment in lieu of lengthy prison sentences – but he hoped the sergeants were as competent as he had been told by his aloof commander. They would have to be if the platoon was to be successful.
Gunnery Sergeant Azul was what one might expect from most platoon sergeants: gruff and hard, he possessed a formidable combination of competence, confidence and boldness. He was dominant in a gathering, and his men were fiercely loyal to him. Right away, Breylin could tell he was entering a family, and that he was the outsider who would have to prove his worth before he would be made a member. Regardless of rank, Azul was the head of that family.
When he first met him, he asked Azul what he could do to contribute to the mission. “I’m just a geologist, Gunny. You’ve done this before and you know what works. How do I fit in?”
Gunny nodded his head in agreement. “A lot of times we get these kids in – begging your pardon, sir – that want to make a lot of changes and do things that sounded good in the classroom, but don’t necessarily translate into operational fitness. If you’re serious about doing things right and taking suggestions, then we’ll keep our asses alive long enough to enjoy liberty.” It was no slip of the tongue – Azul said what was on his mind.
“I get it, Gunny. I’m smart enough to know that if I trust you, stay out of the way and help where I can, then it will be all right.”
He had earned Azul’s respect – a thing not easy done with an experienced soldier.
Six
As it turned out, the local civilian authorities had exaggerated, and conditions on the ground weren’t what they were told to expect. The disruptive simulants were only complaining about the conditions under which they worked; to be fair, the temperatures climb to nearly seventy degrees out in the star-ward side. Even though the engineered nature of the simulants reduced hot and cold to little more than annoyances, their labor was still intensely manual. What did they expect though? They were filling the jobs for which they were designed. And it wasn’t as if they had a choice; if they wouldn’t work, then the best they would be able to hope for would be abandonment and dealing with no food, shelter or transportation to a more hospitable area of the planet. The options quickly grew worse from there. Breylin didn’t necessarily disagree with their viewpoint, but, as tough as their lives might be, they had it better than those who remained in many isolated and less habitable parts of Earth. They should count their blessings instead of bitching.
Since most of the foremen of the various gas tap crews – humans, all – didn’t care if the simulants griped, everything was business as usual. Breylin’s platoon enjoyed an easy assignment that essentially consisted more or less of basic police work, general security and providing a face for the U.N. Though the area of settlement was fairly large, most settlers – only about 2,500 of them yet remained – were living in Twilight City.
For several months, life for the Marines consisted of daily readiness drills and conducting unscheduled patrols, even among the outlying settlements, for no reason other than to be seen. Occasionally, the platoon – or at leas
t the Marines that were on duty that night – would show up in the few watering holes and brothels in the city. The minor show of force was enough to deter serious issues.
There were very few incidents, and only one of consequence. LCpl. Styers, one of the grunts, had a little too much of the local moonshine one night, and made a pass at one of the males. A couple of the others tried to wave her off, things got out of hand, and she ended up pulling her Kabar on her squad leader. Sgt. Nakamura restricted her to the barracks for a week, but not before he thoroughly kicked Styers’ ass. She knew she’d screwed the pooch royally, though, so she took the beating no sweat and didn’t gripe once she’d sobered up. The jokes and harassment afterward were worse, anyway.
There were a few fights that grew out of boredom, stress and cultured rivalry, but the group was always tight knit. Azul knew his people and managed them well, leaving LT. Breylin free to do a little rock hounding in the mountains to the north. Everything was going well for the group. Even in the absence of a legitimate threat to confront, the platoon continued to focus on staying at peak readiness – and looked good doing it.
About six months after they arrived on world, five of the original simulant rebels had surprised their overseer, a woman named Ainsworth. Moving swiftly, they had apparently subdued her with a sizable electric shock. The gas taps were notorious for building up fantastic voltages as the gases were extruded from the ground. They had removed her environmental suit and tied her naked to one of the gas taps. The site was far out into the subsolar region, and she had died from exposure before anyone even thought to investigate why they hadn’t returned. It was a horrible way to go. By the time the Marines were summoned to check out the site, the simulants had taken the cargo lorry and were long gone. The only thing that they had left behind was a note scrawled on the back cover of a technical manual, sitting next to Ainsworth’s body and held down by a pitted rock. It had only three words: We are People!
