Kinesis

by Irene Wendy Wode

But that had been the Cewri's fault. Not Okka's.

  And what did Waverly have, right now, to lose?

  He reached out, drew Okka to him, and it felt like cradling xir hand as xe held a razor-sharp scalpel, pulling the blade towards his heart.

  I'm yours. All that I am is yours.

  The blade cut deep.

  —burst tissues and gushing fluids and a paralyzing sense of different and alien—

  Waverly had the sense that he was looking at himself from the outside, that he was the alien in this scenario.

  That xe was Okka.

  Xe was Okka.

  But they were also Waverly. Both of them were. And Waverly was dying. They were dying! Waverly was Okka and Okka was Waverly and Okka was going to die right along with Waverly if they didn't fix their body right now!

  Fix it?

  Yes, we can fix it. We need to accept everything we are, and cherish everything we are, and once we have done that, we can change everything we are. Human, hurt, broken. We must see the damage, know the damage, and then we can fix the damage.

  Do I get to know you? he wondered eagerly.

  You must. We must remake both our selves, now, if we are to live. We are one, and we live or die together.

  Waverly realized that from where he stood, as one with Okka, he could know Okka as he knew himself. He reached for memories, and they came.

  Vivid, as if he'd lived them, he saw. The Mimica homeworld, and all its connections, vast and deep as this one. It was a utopia.

  But as much as Okka loved xir home, xe had searched the galaxy for something different. Xe was always on an undercover mission, the first to volunteer if anything new and interesting came up.

  Okka had never been sure what exactly it was xe was looking for. Something solid. A place to stand. A thing to build. A context from which to exert leverage, to shift worlds.

  Xir own shape. Because Okka longed to find xemself among all xir vast potential. One central core for all xir personalities to organize themselves around.

  Because Okka was everything. And therefore nothing. Okka was the galaxy, the universe, the great, eternal, yawning black void.

  But no, Waverly knew that blackness, he knew that substance of which the wide stretches of emptiness were woven. It wasn't emptiness. It was acceptance.

  Waverly needed acceptance. He drank it in like water. He drank in the essence of Okka.

  Okka was everything in its time. Okka was flux and mischief; Okka was laughter and resignation. All xir abilities hinged on xir acceptance of all those states. Xe had to accept what xe was in order to change it.

  "Acceptance" was such a small word for it, for what Okka was to xir body—embracing the potential in every cell, every single iota of xemself. Xe was the possibility of being male, of being female, of being many things that were neither, of being vertebrate, scaled, feathered, of being cephalopodic, chitinous, photosynthesizing. Every color and every shape and every way of being alive were all part of Okka, and xe embraced them all.

  Xe embraced the possibility of becoming human, of becoming one with a human, and in particular Waverly. Xir desire for Waverly was different than a human's libido, though xe contained the potential to feel that as well. Xe embraced the animals of Earth, the creatures of Avla and its ally worlds.

  Okka embraced xir ability to become likenesses of the Cewri, the race that had hunted and enslaved xir people, and would try to do the same to Earth and the whole of the protectorates. Okka cherished the knowledge and the possibility that xe might adapt to imitate the form of the insectoid Scythe, the parasitic Creepers, slaves of the Cewri.

  Okka cherished xir own potential to reverse the change xe had made in xir cells that kept Creepers from enslaving xem. Okka celebrated xir own impermanence. Xir potential for self-destruction.

  In the face of such profound acceptance, Waverly knew he could be himself, down to the last iota. But it was still hard to let go of all his masks and barriers.

  His body, Okka knew, inside and out, but the acceptance of everything that it was, every aspect of its capability, was eye-opening for Waverly. His whole immune system, his whole genetic code, was spread out like the guts of a computer, every circuit and every line of code, ready to be tinkered with. Cleaned and patched and brought back up to spec.

  Or better.

  Waverly accepted the damage he'd done himself over the years, and with Okka's help, set about healing it.

  Is that it? Waverly asked. Will we be okay now?

  I'd like to heal all your hurt, Okka replied. If you'll let me. Especially the hurt I have done you.

  That meant accepting everything that was Waverly. Body and mind. That would be (impossible—no)… hard.

  Otherwise, Okka would always hold the hurt that was Waverly's, that was now part of xem, as well.

  If they could heal that… even a little…

  Waverly would try.

  Waverly let go of his small secrets first. Secrets about what the tabloids speculated about him—who he slept with, who he had relationships with, how many of them he'd cheated on. The fact that there were many people who'd be shocked to learn that that last number was zero. The fact that he played up that flirtatious side of himself for the cameras intentionally. Keep expectations low. Then people would never be let down.

  There were so many ways to let people down, on this strange earth. So many ways to fail. And especially in the world of business, where everything was tension, everything was a tug-of-war to see who could get the most out of the other guy. There was no such thing as kindness, no such thing as selflessness. If it wasn't a calculated move, if it didn't help the bottom line, it was worthless.

  Either you disappointed people by failing to excel, or you disappointed the people who would rather have you adhere to whatever arbitrary ethical standard they personally believed in.

  David had always fallen on the side of his own ethics, and discord was common between his way of seeing things and the way Waverly had been raised—to chase success above all else.

  During one intense discussion, David had told him, "There's a difference between excelling and succeeding. Success is arbitrary, and you can define your own conditions for it. Personally, if I'm happy then I'm succeeding at life."

  "So you're going to business school because?" he'd asked in response.

  "Business runs the world, and I want to change the world."

  Waverly had fallen in love right then and there.

  After reliving that memory, Okka's own nature meant that from then on, xe would always be a little bit in love with David. Same as Waverly was. They both took a moment to accept and acknowledge that before moving on to the next thing that was part of Waverly.

  Waverly held on a little longer to the sexual stuff, the things he enjoyed that he thought of as perversions. The fantasies he'd had that he'd never found a way to enact. But Mimica didn't have the same kind of shame around sex. They barely had sex, as themselves. But intimacy and honesty were natural to them, and Waverly already felt naked in a way he never had before. What was another inch of metaphorical skin?

  After that came everything that was Toto. The intelligence was called Toto so people would underestimate him, think him only a pet the way the fluffball was. Toto had been a project for Boston Dynamics, but when he'd developed sapience, Waverly had gotten… attached. He'd bought out the whole kit and kaboodle from under them.

  It had been the right thing to do. Many people had called Waverly self-indulgent for it, but for once he'd been sure. Toto would be safest in his hands.

  He'd been absolutely certain he'd made the right choice there, for damn once.

  The memories attached to that sentiment were hard, even now, to take out and look at. Okka tugged, gently but insistently.

  After Waverly's dad had died, his mom had seemed okay. It had been hard to tell, from away on campus. But she had insisted that he continue with his studies.

  He'd been good at people, he'd thought. People liked him. He was charming.
A social butterfly, even.

  Then, his mom had overdosed. He hadn't known she'd ever touched a drug.

  Butterfly, meet windshield.

  That had led to all his doubts about people's motives, about his own ability to truly connect with people. To be what they needed.

  The fear that he'd needed to track down a shapeshifting alien to find someone who could adapt to any situation, just to find one person in the galaxy who could tolerate him.

  No. You are perfect for me, just as you are. No one else would do. I need exactly you.

  Wonder, a tinge of disbelief. Okka went rifling through all the boxes in his mind, digging up treasures to show xir Waverly.

  Okka shared anything and everything xe could find. Shared the loneliness xe had felt on Avla. Xe had no other children from all xir other lives—it tended to lead to complications, reproducing while undercover—but the isolation of the Collective's stillness must have driven Myrdu's need for family, because he had pursued a woman, treated the form's infertility, fathered a child. He had been an attentive father to Nifu, far more than the expectations of Avlan culture dictated, and they shared a bond that was in itself satisfying, if not anything resembling a true merge.

  Nifu's mother had drifted away with barely a regret.

  There were so many memories, in Okka's mind. Some older than Okka, but memories that informed so much of who Okka was.

  Old memories, memories of when, to defend themselves, Mimica learned to merge with someone, and if they could not convince their enemy to turn to their side, if their enemy would rather die than stop endangering the Mimica, then they would die. The whole combined being would die.

  It is what Mimica do. Convert, or kill. From a certain perspective, it must be frighteningly like what the Cewri do. We do not blame the Avlans for fearing us.

  Now we merge with aliens only in extreme emergency.

  I've always been fascinated with other worlds, with non-shapeshifters. I have feared that I would die that way. I have feared that when met with someone perfectly inflexible, wonderfully unique, unwilling to bend with me as Mimica do, that person would refuse me. When I found someone truly interesting, it would be my destruction, and theirs.

  But you are yourself, unrelentingly yourself, and yet you accept me. All that I am. All that I could be. You are what I have waited all these ages to find.

  I talked you into it, Waverly objected. I pressured you. Just like I do to everyone.

  You don't know how badly I wanted to be talked into it. I could have given you more context. I could have explained more. I could have told you what you wanted to know.

  Waverly gave Okka a mental squeeze of affection. No. You were all tied up in knots, and all I did was pull harder. It's no wonder you snapped.

  Well, it's over and for the best, now. Let's try our best not to blame ourselves anymore.

  They pushed on, exploring Okka's mind.

  There were… boxes, blocks of information they couldn't access. They belonged to Okka, in a sense, but they were not part of xem.

  Tools to be opened only in emergency, Okka told him, and together they read the labels. The flags that told xem exactly when xe could open the boxes and make use of what was inside. Each one represented a sacrifice, a Mimica soul who had closed the knowledge off from the rest of the Collective and then died to keep that knowledge safe.

  There were many memories of Okka's life with the Collective that xe joyfully shared. They were bittersweet, now, but Waverly's fascination and fresh experience of them made it well worth the pain.

  They didn't go that deep into every single memory—there were too many, what with Okka's millennia of lives—but they were all acknowledged, as a person acknowledges their own past without going digging through it.

  There were memories of Waverly's that he didn't ever want to relive that vividly, so he understood. It was the feelings around those memories that needed accepting most, anyway.

  Like ocean waves lapping away at the shore, Waverly/Okka lost their resistance to accepting what they were. Who they were. Choices, mistakes, triumph and grief.

  In time, they reached a state of equilibrium, where the rush to know and the hurry to heal had passed. Instead they simply were, one mind, idly picking through good memories like one might peruse a photo album, stopping now and again to delve into the tale behind one or another.

  They lingered a little on their memories of the sensation of flight. Okka had been many things that flew and had ridden many more. Waverly had only really flown Pegasus, but it was a particularly glorious sensation, all the same.

  Still, he was drawn in by Okka's memories, and by the rhythms of beating wings.

  Okka offered the memory of a Mimica dance, the visceral joy of changing shape while in sync with each other, of being first a pod of dolphins and then, a moment later, a flock of birds.

  Waverly shared the recipes he'd gotten from his grammy, and the memories that came with them, holidays and rainy days alike.

  Okka allowed him to share in the memory of what it was like to photosynthesize.

  Waverly eventually found time to prod curiously at the wall that now stood between the two of them and the Collective. How does that work? he asked. That you aren't in danger from the Collective anymore?

  Okka dropped the situation into his mind whole, the static mental frequency maintained in all Avlans via their diet, the fact that Okka had stolen the effect when xe'd first touched Atur after coming back to Earth. Then xe said, wryly, as if xe were speaking into Waverly's ear, I may not be authorized for an Avlan apple, but I can run an emulator just fine.

  The humor and joy of that ballooned in both of them like a bright flower blooming in time-lapsed footage.

  The fola was still there with them as well, and Waverly shared in the joy of saving the small life, of knowing it was healthy. I was thinking of giving it to Nifu, Okka thought. They could both use the company.

  They shared the rush of relief when Toto came back online in the building. Their beloved family member was safe. They'd accepted their anxiety over it, and their inability to help while they were healing. But there was better rest, now that that distress was gone.

  Waverly's body was stable now, stable enough to move, and with Okka around him, giving him perfect support and keeping track of every potential for re-injury, they could move around, slowly and carefully. But only together. As kind of a large, blobby humanoid creature with two heads.

  Toto came in search of Waverly around that time, and they both owed the bot more than to hide from him.

  "Hey, Toto," Waverly greeted. "Lookin' spry. Who fixed you up? One of the lab monkeys disobey me and come back to help?"

  It didn't take much to reassure Toto that Waverly was alive and well somewhere in this mess of body. After all, Toto was intimately familiar with the concept that the same personality could transfer between multiple sets of hardware.

  "No," Toto said. "It was a new friend I brought back. She had to go, but I'm sure she'll be around. Nifu helped. I see you're doing much better than when we parted, too."

  "We both are," they agreed. "But still healing."

  "I'll tell David. He's been worried. Should I let you rest?"

  "Actually, I want to get back to work," Waverly said. "As fascinating as this has been, I'm itching to do some coding."

  "Yes, let's," Okka agreed. Xe was curious what it would be like, coding while they were sharing minds, sharing everything. They both had backgrounds in programming, but in vastly different contexts. They'd blended through the words of cooperation in their projects together, but it must necessarily be even more stark and visceral in real time.

  It was pretty amazing.

  Waverly was used to there being a certain flow to his work, ideas spread out in front of him and a rhythm to his movements and thoughts. The first time Okka inserted a new idea into the flow of Waverly's work, it was jarring. Then he saw how it fit. It wasn't how Waverly would have done things.

  It was better. />
  The next time, the unexpected change in direction was exhilarating. In its own way, this was as good as flying.

  But what was almost more interesting was what happened the first time Waverly's phone rang.

  Waverly usually ignored his phone, and he gave a mental eyeroll at the sound, determined to do the same this time.

  Don't trouble yourself, Love. I've got this.

  Forming one of xir own arms, xe picked up the phone and held it to Waverly's ear. Xe took the burden of the focus on that ear, on the conversation, on what Waverly might say and what Waverly knew that might apply to the topic.

  Business was done quickly, efficiently, and painlessly. Okka loved chatting with people. Okka loved sorting through Waverly's knowledge for useful little tidbits. It didn't interrupt the flow of Waverly's work.

  Waverly grinned. I think this is going to be more beautiful than I could have ever imagined.

  When some newspaper called for an interview, Waverly even devoted some of his attention to that. But he let Okka help filter him, nudge him in the right direction.

  When they asked about his injuries, he said, "Looked worse than it was. You know wounds bleed more in real life than in Hollywood." He laughed. "I'll be back on my feet in a couple of days."

  "Why did you build Pegasus? Why now?"

  "I'm the king of adaptability," Waverly replied easily. "Who better to adapt to a threat of a kind we've never seen before?"

  "What was that that rescued you?" the interviewer asked.

  All he said was, "Sometimes heroes need other heroes."

  The warmth that came from Okka, hearing that, was like an embrace.

  Chapter Twelve

  There was a knock on the door, which could only be so many people, at this level of the Kemp building. Waverly guessed it was David, since Toto hadn't given them any warning. They opened the door, and, yeah, there was David.

  He was frowning, opening his mouth to speak, but his frown deepened as he peered at them, and then his eyes widened comically large.

  They did look like Waverly right now, didn't they?

  We look like your idealized self-image, actually, Okka told him.