by Marie Dry
They finished in silence and, when they rose from the table, he said, “You will sleep now. Hamurabi said you will be tired for several hours. I will come and escort you to dinner.”
Seeing the logic in this, she went and lay down on the bigger-than-king-size bed in their cabin. Again, she had the sense that he was puzzled by her. After staring at her for silent minutes, he left. She programmed her mind to sleep until seven and closed her eyes.
She woke precisely at seven Earth time. Staring at her watch, she considered her new circumstances. Maybe some of it would be good. She’d programmed her mind to wake her at seven, and now she sat up in bed at precisely the time she should’ve. No alarm settings or waking up groggy. Her mind was crystal clear.
When Balthazar entered the cabin, she was dressed and waiting for him. She’d considered wearing jeans and boots. It would make it easier to move fast when she stole a shuttle. In the end, she’d decided against it as it might alert Balthazar that she was up to something.
“You have to look at your Earth.”
He continued with his belief that she would wither and die if she didn’t look down at Earth at least once a day. Would she still get vertigo if she had to stand on that glass deck and stare down at the sheer drop beneath her feet?
“After dinner, please.”
They walked to the mess hall in silence, and still she had that sense that he was puzzled. Did he expect her to be the same as when she was human? They sat down in their usual spot, at the end of one of the long tables closest to the entrance. Marysol waved at her from the kitchen, and pretending to feel emotions, Aurora waved back.
She politely greeted the other tinners and looked down at her food. She had no appetite. She’d never eaten much, couldn’t when she didn’t know if Ter had to go to bed hungry. But at least, she’d tasted the little she ate. Shouldn’t she automatically eat food and do the logical thing without worrying about the fact that she couldn’t taste anything? Or was it because she used to be a human that she now still missed the taste of food?
“You are cold?” Balthazar said. He shrugged off his uniform jacket and placed it around her. “You should have worn warmer clothes.”
She looked down at the large jacket and absorbed the heat from his body still lingering on it. How could she react to the heat still lingering on his jacket, when she was a tinner? She took a bite of pumpkin and chewed while she considered this conundrum. It took a while for her to realize that she’d shivered with cold until Balthazar had given her his jacket. And now she tasted the pumpkin, and her stomach let her know it was hungry and wanted more. She set down the fork and curiously touched her stomach.
“Is anything wrong?” Balthazar asked, and several of the tinners turned to look at her. Everything about her fascinated them. She intercepted covert glances from them wherever she went on the ship. If they thought Balthazar wasn’t looking, they tried to touch her hair.
“It’s odd. I felt cold, and now I’m comfortable with your jacket around me, and I can taste the food and feel hunger.”
More cyborgs turned to face her.
“How is that odd?” Balthazar asked.
She shrugged. “I’m a tinner now. Why would I feel those sensations?” Dead silence descended, and every single cyborg in the room turned to look at her. They stared at her for a long time, and even odder than the cold shivers or the hunger pangs or taste of the pumpkin, was the unease that prickled over her skin. Could it be a vestige of the human she used to be? Like you miss an arm or leg after amputation? Aurora looked around and then turned to Balthazar. “What did I say?”
“You believe you are a cyborg?”
She frowned at him. “That was what the procedure was all about, wasn’t it?”
“Believing yourself a cyborg you still refer to us as tinners.” It was not a question.
Unexpected tears sprang to her eyes. “I’m sorry. Now that I’m a machine myself that cannot feel or taste anything, I shouldn’t use that word. I know now how it feels to be not human. To be without a soul. To not feel sensation, to not taste food.” Except she’d tasted the food, felt cold. The last vestiges of her humanity? No one said anything, but she knew quite a few conversations were held around her on their internal communications. “Why can’t I communicate on your cyborg channel?”
Balthazar turned to her. “You cannot hear us because you are not a cyborg.”
She stared at him, and the world turned dark. The only light was his face that seemed strangely contorted through the tunnel. “Then what am I?” Could she still be human? She’d tasted the food, felt the cold.
“Why would you think you have been changed into a cyborg?”
“You said you would change me to live as long as you do.”
“You were put into a pod capable of adjusting your immune system. We introduced our Bunrika technology into your body, a different level of the technology than what was used to create us.”
“What exactly will this Bunrika technology do to me?” If she was still human, she was stuck up here with no way to help Ter. She could try and bargain with the president with whatever the cyborgs put into her body, but she had no idea how to talk to him without Balthazar monitoring her.
“Your body has been adjusted to ensure that you never get old or sick. If the changes made on the cells in your body is not enough to ensure longevity, more of Bunrika’s technology will be introduced to assist your body in coping.”
Aurora stared at him through the roaring in her ears. “But I felt like a machine.”
“You were merely suffering the aftereffects of the procedure, which can lead to a loss of sensation for a few days, while your body adjusts to the changes made.”
“Oh.”
“We are not machines,” he said very gently.
She reached out and clasped his hand in hers. “I know. I’m sorry I called you that. I was just sort of hoping I’d be one now.”
“Why? I thought humans despised cyborgs.” He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles.
He always had a weird look on his face when he looked at her hands. She supposed she had the same look when she looked at his.
She shrugged, trying to appear casual. “I just thought it’d be cool, you know.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You said if I did this, you’d talk about peace with the president,” she said to get him off the subject.
“I will never tolerate the death of any of my people. If humans kill a cyborg, there will be consequences.”
“You can’t make up rules as you go. You said you’d talk about a permanent peace.”
“Without these consequences, humans will think they can kill cyborgs whenever the opportunity arises.”
“They would’ve been punished by the humans’ law. A person wouldn’t have killed them without a trial, Balthazar.”
“I have seen on your social media what your people do.”
“That’s a small group. The majority of people on Earth are decent and hard working.”
The other cyborgs sat as if frozen.
“We are decent and hardworking. None of my cyborgs will be harmed by these human.”
She’d never win this argument. Aurora got up. “If you’ll excuse me, I want to check on Marysol.” She needed to get away from the intense emotion coming from the cyborgs. The kitchen was close enough that Balthazar wouldn’t insist on coming with her.
She found them in the kitchen, Marysol cooking and the little girl happily making some pastry into odd-shaped cookies.
Aurora greeted them and then asked softly, making sure Tansyn couldn’t hear her. “Where is her father?”
Marysol grimaced. “He left when he heard I was pregnant. Haven’t seen him since.”
“I’m sorry.” Something about what Marysol said didn’t ring true. Aurora had the strong sense that it suited Marysol to be on an alien spaceship orbiting Earth. Who was she running from?
“Don’t be, the only good thing he did was to donate his sperm to give m
e Tansyn.”
They chatted for a while and then Aurora returned to the mess hall. Balthazar rose.
“You need to rest. We will return to our cabin.”
Now that he mentioned it, she realized how tired she was. “How long will I feel this weak?”
They walked to their room in silence, Aurora wondering why he hadn’t said anything more about the picos. He must still be furious that she tried to inject him.
“Approximately seventy two hours.” He stilled, which meant someone was communicating with him. “Your people are on the news,” he told her.
She turned to the wall. “News channel one.”
She and Balthazar watched as the news channel showed demonstrations in all the major cities. Most of the placards the protesters wielded said Aliens Go Home, or Death to All Tinners.
“I thought this might happen. You should have contacted the president when you arrived and established relations. Asked to send an ambassador to Earth to represent you.”
“I do not need to send an ambassador. If I wish, I will take Earth. I will not send more cyborgs down there to be wounded.”
“They shouldn’t have wounded Amelagar, not after you helped them get rid of the bombs. It’s a miracle they didn’t do more damage.”
“My cyborgs would have defended themselves.”
“This situation can’t continue, Balthazar. You have to talk about peace with the president before it escalates.”
“I do not care if it escalates.”
She sighed. “I just can’t seem to help anyone. I’m supposed to be humanity’s last hope,” she said.
“Living a long life is the best you can do for humanity.”
She frowned at him. “What do you mean?”
“If you died, I would have no reason to allow humans to live. I will exist for many more centuries, and if you died in a hundred and fifty years, I would stop being a person and become a monster.”
“No, Balthazar. Don’t put that much responsibility on my shoulders. You cannot punish humans for anything that might happen to me.” If she didn’t know he meant exactly what he said, she’d think him sweet for not wanting to lose her.
“I would destroy a world for you. For you, I have allowed humans to exist after they have killed my cyborg.”
“You can’t kill a whole race in retaliation for one death, Balthazar.”
“Go to sleep. We will talk of this another day.”
She wanted to argue about it now, but she was too tired. Her head had barely touched the cushion when she fell asleep.
She thought she heard him say, “I will destroy the universe if you are not in it.”
***
The next morning after breakfast, Balthazar escorted her to the infirmary and left her at the door. She sat down next to Amelagar. The thought of him lying there, having to wait who knew how long before he regenerated, haunted her. This was the work of humans who claimed to be peace loving and advanced. She smiled at that single eye following her every movement. “I have come to read for you.”
The eye blinked.
“You must be bored lying there, waiting for your body to heal. Books are wonderful inventions. It allows you to escape into imaginary worlds.” It would also give her time to calm down, get her away from the worry about Ter and the demonstrations back on Earth.
Again that slow blink.
She opened the book, but before she could begin to read Agrippa came to stand next to the tube and pressed some buttons.
“You’re not a prisoner anymore? Are you allowed to do that?” Aurora asked worriedly.
“I am a genetic engineer, and I have the knowledge to speed up his recovery. They monitor me, but I am allowed to help him.”
Aurora thought it might be her imagination, but it seemed as if the eye glared at Agrippa, not blinking.
“What is that?” Agrippa asked. She looked at the book as if it was the strangest object she’d ever encountered.
“It’s a book. Very few of them exist anymore. This is how books looked before everyone started to use readers. It was made of trees turned into paper.” One of the soldiers must’ve packed it when they grabbed her stuff. Of course, they didn’t grab her reader. “Did you have books on Tunria?” She’d love to know more about the cultures on the other planet, but Balthazar hated talking about them.
“Yes, but our books were all electronic.”
Agrippa settled down, and Aurora assumed she’d have an audience of two.
Aurora opened the book. “The case of the disappearing Martian by James Austen.” She’d grabbed her favorite book when she decided to do this. It was pure escapism and, hopefully, it would give the cyborg a short respite from his reality.
She read for two hours, until she was hoarse. That unblinking eye, never leaving her, broke her heart, and she couldn’t make herself stop. At last, she stood. “I will return tomorrow and read for you again.”
A slow blink.
Agrippa stood as well. “Thank you, I enjoyed your story.” She gestured to Amelagar. “I’m sure he did, too.”
The machine beeped, and shrill alarms echoed in the infirmary. The doctor came running, and Aurora got out of his way. Agrippa tried to get to the controls, but the doctor pushed her away with such force she slammed into the wall.
Balthazar was there, and he stood tense while the doctor pressed buttons on the machine until, at last, the alarm turned off.
The doctor turned and said something to Balthazar who walked up to Agrippa and grabbed her by the throat. “What did you do, Tunrian scum?”
Aurora ran to them and tried to get him to loosen his grip on Agrippa’s throat. “Balthazar, she didn’t do anything. I was reading to him when the alarms suddenly went off.”
His hand tightened, and Agrippa choked for air. She dangled from his grip with her feet in the air.
“Please, Balthazar, let her go, at least until we’re sure if she did something.”
“She changed the settings,” Balthazar said, looking like a snake about to strike.
The woman had programmed the machine before she listened to the story.
“Please don’t kill her, Balthazar. Let’s find out what happened first. We need to keep her alive so she can answer questions for us.”
Slowly, with obvious reluctance, Balthazar put the woman back on her feet.
Hamurabi tied Agrippa to the bed. He looked tempted to kill her.
Aurora didn’t dare focus on the woman and draw Balthazar’s attention to her. He was angry and scared, and he didn’t know what to do with the emotion. And, when he internalized emotion, bad things happened.
Cautiously she approached him. Put her arms around him, half expecting him to grab her by the throat too. “He’ll be all right, Balthazar. Your technology is amazing. The doctor will stabilize him, and we’ll watch over him.” Please let him be all right, she prayed silently. If he died, Balthazar would murder Agrippa, and Aurora didn’t think she could stop him.
She kept vigil with Balthazar until Amelagar was out of danger. Hamurabi worked tirelessly, ignoring Agrippa’s pleas to let her help. Aurora could’ve cried when that one eye briefly opened, looked at her and then at Agrippa tied to the bed, and then closed.
“Will he live?”
“We do not know.”
“He needs a reason to live. Can the doctor bring him to consciousness every day? Make it so that he can hear me. I would like to read to him some more.” She wanted to do something for these cyborgs, spend time with them. Trust them enough to give them a little piece of herself.
He cupped her cheek, stared into her eyes as if he saw deep into her soul. “You believe your books cure everything.”
“Maybe not everything, but it has been proven that people can be cured and come out of coma’s simply because someone had talked to them. It’s worth a try.”
“You may try this,” Balthazar said.
In the next few days, she read to the fragile being in the glass lung until she was hoarse. The doctor
assured her that Amelagar was healing faster since the third day of her reading to him, but apart from seeing his bones growing an inch every day, she didn’t see any improvement. Agrippa insisted that he’d be fully formed soon, but the cyborgs didn’t seem to share her faith. She’d been cleared of any wrongdoing and was allowed to assist in the care of Amelagar.
Then one day Aurora looked up, right into Amelagar’s open eyes. His face was almost fully formed, skin growing in patches on his cheek and forehead.
“I do not like that story. Read the other one, about the man with the ability to make giant beans.” His voice was distorted, his lips only half generated, but his voice box and throat must be fully formed if he could manage speech.
Hamurabi came over and fiddled with the controls of Amelagar’s medical lung.
“You can talk. That’s so wonderful, Amelagar.” Aurora smiled at him and obediently opened the requested book on her tablet. She’d only had that one book with her. When she told him why she wanted it, Balthazar had sent someone to collect her tablet. She’d have loved to see her assistant’s face. Samantha had told her when the aliens landed that she didn’t want to see an alien. That the thought alone scared her.
Amelagar stared at her with that disconcerting gaze. Aurora honestly didn’t know if she’d be able to look at him when he was only bones and muscles and veins without a skin.
She opened a book about an arranged marriage on a mythical planet.
Hours later she felt a tingle down her spine. She looked behind her and saw Balthazar in the doorway, an arrested look on his face. They’d stolen a cook the last time she’d seen that interested look on his face. She didn’t want to contemplate what he planned now.
“It is time for lunch.” He helped her up and they walked to the mess hall. “Tell me about human arranged marriages. The Tunrians had a similar custom prior to cloning.”
CHAPTER 19
Aurora put down the reader and smiled at Amelagar, who now had a full skull, the skeleton of an arm, and the beginnings of a second arm and femoral bone. His chest and stomach was almost fully developed. “I have to stop now, or I will be too hoarse to read to you tomorrow.”
