The Way of All Flesh: Illusions Can Be Real

by Corey Furman

  “Come with me, please.” He got up from the table and walked towards the lift port, and she dutifully followed. When they got to the lift, he pulled the pod out enough so that she would be able to see through the small window. Pointing towards it he said, “have a look.”

  She had to climb up to do as she was told, but when she peered inside her eyes went wide. Without stopping to look away from the glass she said, “I don’t understand, you got another simulant?”

  “No – don’t you see?” he said triumphantly. “She’s not just any simulant, or even any Alpha from your bloodline. According to the letter that came with her, this is the Alpha you were with on Paradise Station.”

  Finally she did look at him with tears welling in her eyes. “Luna?” she breathed.

  “That’s right. Help me get this out and we’ll wake her.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” she said as they worked. “Did you bring her here?”

  “Not exactly. I tried to get the two of you at the same time, but I was told only you were available. I don’t know what changed, but here she is.”

  “It was probably one of Almeida’s games,” she said to herself, though angry and loud enough for him to hear.

  “Almeida?” he asked.

  “It’s nothing, Mr. Breylin. He was just the last bastard in our lives.”

  He took note of the oblique slight, but he let it slide. Instead, he got the pod out of the lift. When it was sitting on the floor, he keyed up the cycle to wake her, and the lid popped open. He said, “She’s been asleep a long time, Maré. She’ll need to drink and eat as soon as it can be managed. We have a few minutes – why don’t you get some water for her?”

  “Yes, Sir,” she said with happy tears – the first such he could remember – and she moved quickly into the house.

  When she came back she knelt next to the container, leaned in and smelled Luna’s hair. She smelled musty and unwashed, but Maré was sure now – Stars above, this is her! She was painfully aware of Breylin’s presence, but she put her arms under and around Luna anyway, crying into her neck and awkwardly rocking her.

  Luna made small noises down in her throat. When Maré heard it, she whispered into her ear over and over, “Luna, it’s me. I’m here, honey.”

  After a minute, she said with a throaty voice thick with sleep, “Maré…?”

  “That’s right, Chroma, it’s me.”

  Feebly she moved one of her hands up but let it fall back into her lap. With her face in Maré’s hair she took a deep breath, and her eyes fluttered open. “Maré?”

  She moved so that they could see each other. “That’s right, dear. We’re together again.” She drew her back into her embrace, and this time Luna did get her arm around her mate.

  Breylin stood there uncomfortably while the two girls held each other, the one crying with relief and the other drowsily. He decided to let it play on without interference. Still, it was affecting him – to his surprise. They obviously loved each other, somehow. From what Maré had told him, the two of them had been put to sleep together, meaning Luna had been asleep for nine long months. She would be out of it a long time, but even so she was clearly responding to Maré’s presence.

  Her reaction was much more pronounced. For months she had believed Luna to be dead, but now she was in her arms, and her relief was palpable. It got him to thinking about his parents, and then Riss… No. He fled from thinking about those things.

  His mind came back to the girls, and how happy they were. Are they really as happy as they seem, he thought, or are they acting according to some script? Is it possible? He was baffled to find that he couldn’t tell the difference. That line of thinking made him nervous, too, if less so.

  He was feeling quite strangely now, and a tear slid down his cheek. Not wanting them to see him so vulnerable, he quietly turned away and went into the house. When he sat down heavily on the sofa, the tears fell freely. It bothered him that the tableau in the lift port moved him, and he tried to figure out what was going on with himself. A memory started to surface, but once again he recoiled from it. What the hell is wrong with me? His pulse started to race, and he felt like he was starting to panic.

  He vainly fought it, but the memory that had started to tug at his consciousness was an insistent thing, and unbidden he remembered the night he had had to put his first set of twins down. Guilt coiled his insides into a tight knot, and he nearly emptied the contents of his stomach right there. It didn’t matter that their deaths would have happened in a worse way if he hadn’t intervened; they had been his daughters at one time, and he wept bitterly for the loss he had caused. Dammit, I thought I was done with this…

  He gave his emotions free reign for a few minutes, but he knew that Maré and Luna would be coming into the house at any time, so he pulled himself together. It took a couple of minutes of intense struggle, but once again the façade was in place.

  When Maré finally brought her Chroma in on unsteady legs, Breylin stood up, allowing her to stretch out on the couch. She laid down on her side facing into the room, and she was looking at him without expression. Maré sat on the floor next to her, and he wondered what she might have told him out of his hearing.

  “Hello, Luna – I am Mr. Breylin,” he said feeling better, but still out of sorts. “Welcome to my home. You were a long time in coming here.”

  “Yes, Sir,” she said. “Thank you for bringing me here and giving me back to Maré.”

  He turned to her, who was staring at Luna and smiling. “Maré,” he said. “You need to get some food into her right away.”

  This was one time she didn’t seem to feel like resisting him. “Yes, Mr. Breylin.” Turning back to Luna she said, “I’ll be back in a couple of minutes, honey,” and she went into the kitchen.

  Breylin said to her, “since we have a few moments, I’ll need to put your collar on you, Luna. I’ll be right back.” He withdrew into the bedroom and retrieved it. When he came back into the living room, he found that she had propped herself up on the cushions.

  Wordlessly, she held her hair up and out of the way. He moved close, slipped the thin black strip around her and fastened it, then he took the controller, tuned the collar and put the device away. She let her hands and hair fall.

  Hesitantly she asked, “Mr. Breylin? I know I just got here, but could I ask you for a small favor?”

  Curious now, he said, “what would you like?”

  “Could you retrieve a few holos of our parents?”

  He thought for a moment. Are they sentimental too? There wasn’t anything he could do about the past, but maybe he could work towards a better future. “I don’t know what’s available, Luna… but I’ll see what I can do.”

  Twenty One

  Maré brought Luna some hot, carbohydrate-laden cakes from the kitchen. She knelt back down on the floor beside her on the couch, split them with her fingers and offered her a piece. As she opened her mouth and wordlessly took the bite, she laid one of her hands on Maré’s shoulder.

  Breylin sat in a chair off in a slightly shadowed corner of the room and watched them interact without words, only touches. Something was conveyed even in the contact they maintained with their eyes. They didn’t break it, even when Maré would delicately place the small wads of nourishment on Luna’s tongue and she would lay her head down on the cushion to chew. Seeing them like this, alive, against the memory of the deaths he had caused… it was a strange contrast.

  They continued to amaze him, that they could be so natural, so lifelike. And these two, even more. They look just like the real Maré and Luna, but they’re more connected, he thought. Maybe it’s possible that they actually love each other.

  Ultimately it was his own reaction to the way they seemed to be acting that made him feel out of sorts, even with Luna’s muted responses. Maré used her thumb to slowly tuck a few tiny crumbs on her lips into her mouth, and it was gentle, intimate… maybe even romantic. In a way he couldn’
t explain, he didn’t like the added complication. It would be simpler if they were more machine-like. Still, he had obviously made the two of them very happy, and he did like that. Outwardly he was passive, but the conflicts pushed back and forth inside. This was a thing he might not be able to control, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to.

  “Maré,” he said, surprising her, as if she had forgotten he was in the room. She had stopped with a piece of cake in her hand halfway to Luna’s mouth.

  “Yes, Sir?” she said nervously.

  “I’m going to make myself something to eat. Please clean up the kitchen before the two of you go to your room, but you don’t need to deal with anything else tonight.”

  “I understand, Mr. Breylin.”

  He spoke softly. “You’ll need to show Luna how things are to be done around here. I’ve decided to try to be patient, but I’d like things to be back to business as usual quickly.”

  “Yes, Sir. Mr. Breylin?”

  He paused and turned back. “What is it, Maré?”

  “Thank you, Sir,” she said with brimming tears as she laid her hand on Luna’s leg. “For my Chroma.”

  He hardened himself, turned and spoke as he walked into the kitchen. “You can best show your appreciation by making sure that your work is taken care of.”

  Luna was still muzzy headed and had to lean on Maré as they walked into the bedroom. She sat down on the bed and looked around dazed. “It still seems like we were just with Almeida.”

  Maré snorted from their bathroom. “It seems like a lifetime ago to me.” Naked from the waist down, she came out stripping off her shirt, wadded her clothes together and threw them in the corner. She walked over to her, and started tugging her shirt up. Luna held her arms up and let her do the work.

  Maré pushed on her shoulders lightly and Luna went prone so Maré could pull the rest of her clothes off. Tossing them on top of the rest, she switched off the light and padded back to the bed, eased her way next to her Chroma, and drew her close. “I’ve missed you, Luna.”

  As she squeezed her, she could feel the tension in Luna’s muscles. “What is it?”

  “Just hold me.”

  “I won’t let you go. Now tell me.”

  Luna rolled to lay her head on Maré’s chest, feeling the light sheen of sweat in her cleavage. She cupped one of her breasts. “You’re much larger than you were. Do you like them?”

  “To be honest, I haven’t thought much about it. What do you think?”

  “Looks good on you.”

  Maré hugged her tightly again in reply.

  She craned her head up so she could whisper in her ear. “Does he hear or see us in here?”

  “I don’t think so, but keep quiet just the same.”

  “There’s a darkness in him.”

  Maré breathed her answer out. “Yes – he can be terrible. Sometimes he’s nice, a little tender even, but he’s whipped me a few times with a tube he keeps above our door. Yesterday I thought he’d kill me.”

  “He’s definitely off, but he doesn’t seem that bad now.”

  “He goes back and forth. He nearly apologized last night. It can be difficult to read his moods, and his treatment of me – now us – will follow those.”

  Luna laid back down and breathed her Chroma in, listened to her rhythms. “What matters is we’re together now.”

  She reached down, took Luna’s hand and put it back on her breast and covered it with her own. The gesture was a little strange, but she let it pass.

  Maré rolled slightly into her and used her leg to pull Luna closer. She said with a laugh, “you know I’m a little older than you now, right?”

  “Shit,” she said. “I liked being the older one…”

  The next morning, Breylin stood in the doorway of their room at five, and called out. “5AM, girls. Time to get started.” When they stirred, he walked out.

  Maré showed Luna where everything was before wrinkling her nose and dragging her into the shower. “Let’s go, Chroma. After being in that box for months, you need it desperately.”

  She made a face. “I’m exhausted, Maré,” she whined with exaggeration. “Wash me?”

  She smiled. “Of course I will, and I’ll dress you, too.” She hugged her fiercely. She did smell, but it was her. “I’m so glad you’re here…”

  Afterwards, as they passed through the living room, they could hear him in the shower. “Go into the kitchen and start looking around so you can get the feel for where things are. I’ll go find out what he wants for the day.”

  “Okay. Um, wait,” she said as she looked around. “Notice anything strange in here?”

  Maré looked around herself. There was the sofa with a glass top coffee table in front of it, the chair by the large window facing out front, the electronic consoles. The floor was the white, textured plastic that was everywhere else in the house. Another seldom-used chair in the corner. There were places where pictures had once hung…

  “Not really. You mean the nail holes where there must have been pictures hanging once?”

  “No – look at the furniture. You really don’t see it?”

  “Nope, a couch and two chairs. What am I –” She stopped, looking at something she hadn’t noticed before. “That chair is out of place.”

  “Yeah. The rest of the stuff faces inward, but that one faces out.”

  Now that Maré could see it, it gobbled up her attention. She’d never walk through this room again without seeing its oddity. Still… “I guess it isn’t that odd. I mean, yeah, it’s out of place, but he likes to sit and stare out the window. He probably moved it at some point so that it was more to his liking. In fact, I’d bet on it.”

  “Huh… I guess you’ve had other things on your mind than the furniture.”

  Maré nodded, but she was picking at the idea in her thoughts. What does he see when he looks out? Is it that horizon, or something else? Luna had spotted something important, something that sailed completely by her, but try as she would she couldn’t quite identify it standing there. There was something about how the chair had become the focal point of the room.

  “Okay, let’s get a move on,” she said to clear out her mind. “Head into the kitchen and I’ll be out in a minute.”

  Suiting her own words, she went towards his bedroom while Luna went in the other direction – but she made sure to skirt around the chair wide.

  Luna began to look through the cabinets, trying to take note of where the plates and cups were, the bland food packets and containers – does everyone everywhere eat out of these same generic packets? – and everything else. Pausing to go over things in her mind, she noticed the light coming through the window and decided to grab her first real look at the outside world. There were windows in their bedroom, but they’d been shuttered last night, and she didn’t have the chance to check the view. What she now saw surprised her.

  Everything was shades of burnished copper and hues of tan, even the scant tufts of desiccated grass in front of the house. Rocks of all sizes and low hills to the horizon. But the sunrise dominated everything, and it was breathtaking. Luna knew that stars were massive balls of nuclear powered light, but knowing the physical process was wholly unlike seeing it up close. The sunlight streamed through the air, catching the dust, and it looked as if it was making its triumphant entry into their world. I am here, it seemed to be saying to her. She’d seen the star of their home system, but because the station had been so far out by Jupiter, the star had only appeared to be a big dot – little more than an oddity when compared to the massive, colorful gas giant that periodically churned its surface and threw radio signals that filled the comm systems with uncanny, almost intelligent sounding static – but this was something else; though she could only see a small crest of it poked up above the hills, this sun was colossal, a thing not to be denied, master of its own domain. Its fiery, too-bright edge etched ghostly afterimages in her vision. Its appearance was the most magn
ificent thing she’d ever seen, pushing its way through a break in the clouds and hazing the air red with the fingers of its rays, and it came to her that she’d understood nothing at all of importance about them. It looked hot, primal, and forced an aridness so bleak as to be death for anyone unfortunate enough to labor beneath it, but it was also completely outside of her limited experience, giving it a surreal quality. And this must have been how Maré felt when I woke her up, she mused. This place is so… unexpected.

  Luna heard the soft pad of Maré’s feet behind her. She came up beside her, put her arms around Luna and laid her head on her shoulder. “What do you think of the view?”

  After a few seconds she said, “It’s pretty desolate out there, but it’s beautiful in a stark way. The sunrise is… I don’t have the words to describe it. It makes me feel something, though.”

  “I suppose. It never changes, you know.”

  Luna turned to look at her. “What do you mean?”

  “The sunset. It’s locked like that, so it’s always going down.”

  “Wow. I thought it was coming up. How do you know it isn’t?”

  Maré wrinkled her brow in thought. “Huh, that’s never occurred to me.”

  “Well either way, this is my first look at one, and it’s pretty spectacular. Earth’s sun is so far away from where we were that it’s just a bright spot with a lot of glare.”

  “I guess,” she said. “I don’t give it much thought. These walls are pretty much my world, and it’s often more than enough.”

  Luna nodded. “Do you think he’d let us go outside?”

  She felt Maré tense up against her. “I’m not sure.”

  “What is it?”