by Cindy Zhang
Sabine sits down as soon as they're inside Ship, and the ramp rises.
"Go a little faster, sunbeam," Naomi calls to Ship as she runs back and forth between the cockpit, securing the supplies and storing them so they don't slide around and break open. "We'll be fine once we're out of eyesight."
"Pet names?" Sabine asks, and Eirlys notes that she might be a little drugged still, too.
"Oh man," Tel says, sitting down next to Sabine and Eirlys. "She only ever uses pet names when she's really stressed out." When it becomes clear that neither of her companions are up to the task of carrying the conversation, she continues, "you should've heard the wild-ass cover stories we came up with when we were being interrogated about you two. I'm pretty sure every sentence contradicted what someone else was saying."
"It didn't matter in the end, anyway," Sabine mumbles sleepily. "We got out."
"Yeah, kid." Tel smiles. "We did."
Chapter Seven
"Birth can happen one of two ways. A child can form as resonance bits collide and become attached to each other: a set formed this way starts with very little sentience but builds it up gradually.
As sets gather experience and learn traits, they expand. At a certain point, they develop split personalities and become separate sets. This is called a split, and children formed from splits come with almost full sentience and relationships already in place (associates, pairs).
Ceremonies and rites of passage form around these life events. They're listed below in rough approximation of chronological order.
Naming: A child sentient enough to form bonds is named and introduced to any relevant sets, usually the loved ones of their own loved ones. When held for a pair resulting from a split, the associates deem when this ceremony is necessary and the child is introduced to the loved ones of the associates. This serves as a mix between a baby shower and a birthday party.
Revelation: A vital piece of newly-discovered identity is announced/revealed to important people. A human comparison is coming out, though this set equivalent is much more broad.
Match Warning: A Match decides to try to form a relationship with each other, usually with the help of a Keeper, and they announce this to their loved ones and anyone in the vicinity. This is a combination of a wedding, the writing of a will, and a warning of collateral damage. The atmosphere tends to be reckless and bittersweet, emotions are high, and deaths are common.
Send-off: Death rituals vary depending on the manner in which the set departed.
1) Split: this ceremony involves telling stories to new pairs and old associates to best separate the idea of the old set from the reality of the new pair. The goal is to minimize the pain of loss and the weight of expectations. Usually new relationships are formed with associates here.
2) Death: either a good-riddance party or remembrance party is held. There is storytelling, disposal of the body if there is one, and discussion of revenge if necessary. There are also preparations for new children in the area who may form from the resonance of the dead set."
- Excerpts from The Unofficial Guide to Sets, Piper Patel, Chapter VIII. Life Cycle and Ceremonies.
About twenty minutes after Ship starts to slow down, and they're sure that they've lost their pursuers, Sabine gets up. She leaves Eirlys sitting by the wall, Tel on one side scolding her for trying to pull the wounded martyr and 38 crouched in front of her patching up her scratches and looking at her leg. She's in good hands.
Sabine knows that she shouldn't be doing anything right now, should be sitting and letting the shock and stress and drugs wear off like Eirlys is, but sometimes there's a thing that needs investigating and there isn't anyone else to look into it. She'd trust Naomi, Ship, and Ast to know what they're doing any other day, but Ship's lights are flickering every three minutes.
She opens the door to the cargo bay.
All three of the crew members she was looking for are here. Naomi stands with her arms crossed and her shoulders up, watching Ast from three meters away. Ast's collar plates are flipped down, exposing their thin wires and delicate metal supports in a gesture more defiant than vulnerable. Ship is—Ship is having problems. The lights flash all in unison in the wide-open space of the cargo bay, the centre belly section of Ship, and it looks like police sirens one moment and a dance floor the next. Sabine has to take a breath and remind herself that this is better than the sunlight. She has to remind herself what she's here for.
When she steps in, only Naomi looks at her.
"You can't do that next time." It's hard to say how Ast is doing that, putting so much anguish in their voice when there's not a lot of variance in tone to work with, but Sabine remembers that they're a set after all and this entire room is no man's land for emotional warfare. "I couldn't contact you, I didn't know what was happening to you, next time you have to leave."
"You were there," Ship protests plaintively, and for a second, the lights glow bright blue. They shatter.
"What can they do to me that you haven't already done?" There's a pause, in the darkness, and then Sabine hears Ast's collar snap up. "Ship—Ship, I'm sorry—"
"What do you want." It takes a second for Sabine to realize that Ship's addressing her, and she doesn't dare step forward any further because the glass from the light-bulbs lies scattered in her path.
"I wanted. I came to make sure." All the pretty words dry up in her throat. There's something here that she can never understand. "What's wrong?"
Naomi watches her very carefully.
"Maybe this isn't the best time," Sabine says, backtracking slowly. She stays where she is, though, and waits.
Ship is silent. Ast melts into the dark, even as Sabine's eyes adjust, until only the bronze lines on their body are visible.
"But if you can tell me, I'd like to know."
The lack of response goes on for so long that Sabine is seconds from turning away and hiding in her room, sure she's misjudged everything, but then she hears a soft "yes." It's not directed at her. Ast swivels their antennae like rabbit ears, and then they move forward. The glass crunches under their wheels.
"We'll tell you." Ast moves past Sabine and opens a panel on the wall labelled Backup Lights. "About Lleu. Maybe you can help us out of this corner we've painted ourselves into."
*~*~*
Sabine gets the information in pieces, straightforward as anything.
Ship had a Match, once. Ast was their Keeper, in charge of making sure they were both safe and not a danger to each other. They all three travelled here from the home planet—Ship because of an interest in Earth's biology and lifeforms, Lleu because he liked learning about different societies, and Ast because they didn't give a fuck where they were as long as they had their people.
Lleu died in one of the first human-set "miscommunications".
Ast is vague about this part, but they both had it pretty rough. Ship was already in a spaceship at that point, so they took odd jobs to get by. Naomi, disillusioned with her former government job and—ironically—looking to get away from situations of corruption, bought a license instead of a ship like she'd been planning to, and the three of them signed a contract. And that was that.
"I can't," Ship starts, having stayed silent for the whole story. "I can't deal with people being injured. I wasn't even there, but I can't stop thinking about what it must have been like."
"Hey." Ast turns the switch on, and it's set by default to a calming gold. Ship stops. Ast turns to Sabine. "So that's us. We never meant to drag Naomi into it, but she's with us now too."
"You signed on to a damn volatile vehicle." Ship laughs. "Want off the ride?"
"No." Sabine glances at Naomi, who's lost some of the helplessness that had been in her expression. "I don't mean to pry, but… have you had a Send-Off?"
"It's occurred to us," Ast admits, "but we never did. Ship wasn't up to it, and I didn't—I don't know how."
"Maybe we can try. After all this is over." Sabine feels like it isn't her place to suggest it, but she ca
n also see the careful balance between the three of them of trying not to talk about something that hurts. She thinks maybe they needed her to come in from outside and nudge things here and there.
"Maybe," Ast echoes, not quite agreeing.
"Maybe," Ship says, and it sounds like hope.
*~*~*
When the four of them leave the cargo bay again, Eirlys is already looking for them. Looking for Sabine, more specifically, and Sabine is quick to rush forward and check her over.
"She'll be fine," 38 says, and Sabine will believe it coming from her.
"Can I tell you what I found out?" Sabine whispers. She'd already gotten permission from Ast and Ship, and she doesn't want to leave Eirlys out of the loop. Eirlys nods. Sabine slips her fingers between Eirlys's, her one hand still gloveless, and she thinks about their story.
Eirlys blinks, dazed. "You've never had a Send-off?" She doesn't mean it to be accusing, but Ast is on edge again and Sabine only hears the genuine bewilderment because she's holding hands with Eirlys. She can feel the tension racketing up, emotional pressure growing, and she stops it the only way she knows how: she puts her fingertips on Ast's shoulder, without thinking.
The anger and defensiveness Ast was aiming at Eirlys bursts through that point of contact, runs through Sabine like she's a conduit, and trickles into Eirlys at a much more modulated pace. Sabine gets the filtered version of that blast back from Eirlys, in a form she can make sense of:
On the edge of this society, near the wilds of spaces empty because of history and not geography, a child wanders.
It's not that sets are more violent here—that's reserved for the true outskirts, or past them where violence had happened; it's that there are fewer bodies to live in, fewer other sets, the only plentiful resource a distinct lack of anything.
The thing is, when you have to live in one body for too long, things happen. Things that the child still wakes up in the night from, like dragging a half-rotted limb with heart pounding artificially, species-inbuilt adrenaline pumping fear through bleeding instincts. When you know you are one person but the body you're in won't let you be that.
It's hard to make friends, relationships, when you're tied to these bodies. You can't love someone when a part of you growing larger by the day insists that they'll eat you, crush you beneath their huge paws and crunch your bones.
You're familiar with death. Mutilation, too, and people get confused when they see you squeamish at injury but watch you take amputation in stride. Losing so much is old news, an old game you've played. You've lost the ability to recall everything you sacrificed to stay alive.
You never did Send-Offs in the borderlands, because more often than not no one would care enough. Or the party in question was in limbo, always, wandered off one day and never came back and you wonder if they wonder about you, whether you're dead to them. There is no control. There is only the backward process of becoming feral that no one ever talks about.
You actually built your entire current body yourself. You know every inch of it, and you can fix it so it never decays.
All that in the span of a second.
Sabine pulls away from both of them as soon as she realizes, but the damage is done. She's not supposed to know any of that, and she doesn't know what Ast was going to do, but this is a result none of them anticipated. "I'm so sorry," she blurts out immediately. "I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have touched you—"
"It's fine," Ast says, but they disappear back through the cargo bay doors. Ship follows, and the rest of them disperse back to their rooms.
"What was that?" Sabine demands, pacing through the tiny space of their room. One, two, three, turn, one two three. "What happened?"
"Sit down," Eirlys pleads. "You're making me dizzy."
Sabine sits, but she's not happy about it. "Tell me what just happened."
Eirlys sighs. "I don't know either. There isn't a lot of precedent for humans touching sets, but I'd guess that you managed to mediate somehow between me and Ast. Listen, it's a good thing you intervened because heightened emotions in close proximity can be dangerous for sets, but don't do it again. It could be dangerous for you, too. We're lucky none of us were torn apart by how fast that information download went through you into me."
"There's no mention about touching in the guide. Except don't do it." She looks at Eirlys, imploring. "What does it do?"
Eirlys sighs. "It's not widely talked about, but physical contact is one of the ways for sets to de-stress. It's a built-in function to make sure we stay a social species, I guess." She scrunches up her forehead. "It's like—if you're connected to the overall Network all the time, it's like being at a party constantly. There's just a lot of background noise, social interaction, you gotta keep your head up."
"That sounds exhausting."
"It is. When a set's current body makes enough contact with another set's—or a human's—body, a smaller network is created? Just between those two people. Or however many people are making contact at the same time. Often ceremonies involve groups of sets making a private network connection just for themselves, but it's, um." She stops.
"What?"
"It's considered pretty intimate, since you have access to the other person and nothing else, and vice versa. So that's why humans are advised to keep from doing it."
Sabine narrows her eyes. She tries not to think about the implications of intimate, so she goes to the next thing she noticed instead. "You say it's a de-stressing thing. How often do sets usually do this?"
"Just about." Eirlys squirms. "Every night?"
"And do you have someone to de-stress with?" Sabine presses.
"No. Look, I—" Eirlys stops again. "Wait, shh. Think quieter."
Sabine would accuse her of avoiding the subject, but she can hear something too.
There are raised voices in the kitchen.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Romantic
Partners: Sets who have formed a formal agreement to cooperate almost exclusively with each other for survival and mutual benefit. Can involve more than two sets.
(Human comparison: romantic couples, platonic life partners)
Safe Match: This term is viewed as a bit of an oxymoron. A set designated as the Keeper is tasked with making sure that two sides of a Match don't get too close so that they're in danger.
(No human comparison)
Supports: The primary goal of this relationship is to take care of or be taken care of. Sometimes this is reciprocal, but that is not necessary for a healthy and balanced support relationship.
(Human comparison: therapist, caretaker, friend)
Confidant: This set is a sort of "back up": someone who knows all the aspects of a set and can help to rebuild after a bad anchoring experience. (See Chapter VI.)
(Human comparison: best friend, therapist)
Annoyance: A set who is so fundamentally different that they're the safest person to be around, and there is a certain comfort in security. Their function is to be sought out when a set is emotionally unstable. These relationships are usually founded on dislike but settle into begrudging fondness after some time.
(No human comparison)"
- Excerpts from The Unofficial Guide to Sets, Piper Patel, Chapter III. Relationships and Romance.
Eirlys leads the way out of their room and down the hall. It's Tel and 38. They seemed okay when they were fussing over her, but Eirlys thinks that might have been the problem. They might have started talking, and with the kind of tension they have, there's no casual way to stop talking. Some part of her absently notes that Sabine's getting lighter on her feet, and she glows a little with pride.
They don't interrupt the argument, by silent agreement, deciding to see where it goes first. This isn't the kind of thing that can be helped with an outside influence. Ship and Ast and Naomi had been circling their issue for years, but 38 and Tel haven't talked to each other at all yet. It's best not to get in the way of an explosion.
"It keeps coming back to trust," Tel
snaps. "I don't know what the disconnect here is, but let me spell it out for you: when you keep lying to me about how much you trust me, it doesn't help me trust you."
"I don't know why you think I'm lying," 38 says, and Eirlys sees from the shadow she casts on the hallway wall that she runs her hand through her hair, frustrated. "You never tell me straight up why any of this even fucking happened in the first place!"
"You know what happened! I was 'straight-up' with you and you threw it back in my face." Tel's laugh comes out mean. "I gave you what I found out for free, and you didn't want it. You already knew."
"I don't know why—Why does that matter? Who my caretakers are is none of your business!" 38's shadow dances in a way that implies she shook her head and buried one hand in her hair. "I don't know why you're so—hurt, by all this."
"Of course it's never personal for you," Tel spits. "You only became a person about a year ago."
Silence.
Sabine tries to move, but Eirlys holds her back with a hand on her knee. Not yet.
She's starting to get snippets of memory, the emotion is running that high. 38's silent, a statue, her shadow an ink painting that dried decades ago. Her mind is turmoil, rolling like an earthquake. Tel asks you, once, if you've ever considered getting the problem looked at. You've been looked at your whole life, so you don't really understand the question?
Tel's a lot better at hiding her emotions. Uncannily so, for a human, but not quite as good at it as Naomi.
I think the problem is that you don't trust me, 38 thinks. But instead, she says, "I do trust you. I'll keep saying it as long as you want me to."
"I want you to stop," Tel says.
All the lights come on, in the kitchen and in the hallway. They're purple.
"The monster's approaching fast. Thanks for drawing it in, guys." Ship's voice holds a worrying note of exhilaration. They don't have a plan.
