A Complicated Love Story Set in Space

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  “Doesn’t that make us as bad as Production?” I asked. “They’re stolen memories regardless of whether I stole them. Our audience”—just saying the word made me uncomfortable—“loves us because of who we are, but who we are is a lie. A lie appropriated from others. If I keep playing that role, then I’m complicit.”

  Even knowing that I had probably never lived in Seattle, that my father hadn’t abandoned me, that I didn’t have a best friend named Becca, those memories still felt like my life. They were mine, but they didn’t belong to me. “I don’t know who I am, DJ.”

  “You’re Noa North. You’re courageous and stubborn. You doubt yourself and your own worth even when everyone around you can see how amazing you are. You have a dark sense of humor, but you love making people smile.”

  “Did Nico like to bake?”

  DJ shook his head. “Nico loved to paint. Even after people got sick, he’d sneak around the station and paint murals on the walls of sunny beaches or snowcapped mountains in the hopes that it might make someone’s day a little better.”

  “Oh.”

  “You bake, he painted, but you’re both kind and generous.”

  It was easier if I thought of Nico as a totally different person and not as someone who had inhabited my body before me. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. “Was it easier to manipulate me into falling in love with you if I didn’t know?”

  DJ looked like I’d torn open his belly with a rusty baling hook. “I… I swear I didn’t manipulate you.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “I promise,” he said. “I did everything I could to give you your space and let whatever happened between us happen.”

  “What would you have done if I had never returned your feelings?”

  “I would have been happy to have your friendship.”

  It was so difficult to believe him. How often had I believed his lies in the past? He looked sincere, but he had proven he was a talented liar.

  “And I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t allowed,” DJ said. “After you died, Production made contact through Jenny Perez. They informed me that our ratings were the only reason they weren’t canceling us immediately. They warned me not to tell you or Jenny the truth.”

  “You could have tried,” I said. “I would have.”

  DJ nodded solemnly. “I know. Just like on Fomalhaut. I was so scared of losing you that I was willing to do anything to hold on to what we had, even if it was imperfect.”

  I kept trying to sympathize with DJ, but he had lied to me. He’d betrayed me. I didn’t know how to reconcile that with my feelings for him.

  “Are we in danger now?” I asked.

  “I honestly don’t know,” he said. “Production has controlled everything that’s happened to us. They set the alien loose; they trapped us in Reactor Control and flooded it with radiation. We never would have arrived near the school if they hadn’t wanted us to. I assumed they’d planned for Ty to join us, but now I don’t think they did.” He shrugged. “I’ve got no idea what happens next.”

  “Okay.” It was the only thing I could say. I was heartbroken and confused. DJ was the one person I wanted to talk through my feelings with, but he was also the one person I couldn’t.

  “Noa, please believe me. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “I need time, okay?” I told him. “Just give me some time.”

  Slowly, DJ stood and turned to leave. “I wish I could tell you to take as long as you need, but we may not have much time left.”

  TWO

  JENNY WAS ALONE IN HER quarters, sitting cross-legged on her bed, when I found her. I’d tried the galley first, but she was gone. Ty was gone too, and I assumed DJ had locked him up again. Not that I cared. Ty could’ve taken a short walk out of the airlock and it wouldn’t have made much difference to me.

  “Should I call you Nico or Noa?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Should I call you Jenny or Karen?”

  “It’s so weird to think that there was some other me wandering around in my body,” Jenny said. “But from what DJ described of Karen, you boys got the better version of me.”

  Jenny had changed into a pair of comfy sweats and a tank top. Her ruined dress lay in a heap on the floor in the corner. I motioned at it with my chin. “How’s your… How’re you feeling?”

  “I died, Noa.”

  “Welcome to the club.”

  Jenny barked out a laugh, then covered her mouth as if embarrassed at the sound. “Sorry.”

  “No need to be,” I said. “Did you see anything when you were dead?”

  “Like a bright light?”

  “Or whatever.”

  Jenny pursed her lips, frowned, and then shook her head.

  “Me neither.” I sat beside Jenny, and she rested her head on my shoulder. “This is so messed up.”

  It was a few moments before Jenny replied. “My whole life, I’ve felt like someone’s sidekick. In middle school, it was Margie Gelbwasser. She was my best friend, but she was always up to something, dragging me along for the ride. In high school, it was the same, but with a different group. I followed. I was a follower. But I had this feeling I could be more. That, if given the opportunity, I could step up; I could be the star.

  “And then I had the chance, and DJ locked me in the toilet and forced me into the background again.”

  I leaned back and stared at her. “That’s what you’re pissed about? That DJ snatched the spotlight?”

  “Everyone wants the chance to tell their story, Noa.” I attempted to interrupt, but Jenny wasn’t having it. “Do you know what I went through while you were trapped in the reactor room, making out with DJ?”

  “We weren’t—”

  “No, you don’t,” she said. “Because you didn’t ask. You didn’t care. And neither does whoever watches our program, because the story has been about you.” The more Jenny spoke, the more worked up she got. “You haven’t even asked how I knew DJ was the one who’d betrayed us.”

  So much had happened since then that I’d forgotten Jenny had called it. “How?”

  “Because I’m a damned good detective, that’s how,” she said. “I’ve been onto DJ for weeks.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  Jenny’s anger receded slightly. “Well, I knew something was weird—he disappeared from the ship’s surveillance feed a lot, and I heard him talking to himself more than once—but I didn’t know exactly what it was until Ty shot me and said I had betrayed you. Ty knew one of us had to be a spy for Production—DJ told us that every program has one—and he assumed it was me because you and DJ are the stars. I didn’t know about us being on a program until after Ty shot me, but I figured that if Ty thought one of us was a spy, and I knew it wasn’t me, then the most likely suspect was DJ.”

  It hurt that Jenny had suspected DJ while I had been taken in by him so thoroughly. Also, Jenny really was a damn good detective. “I’m sorry I didn’t pay more attention to what you were going through,” I said. “But how can you be more upset that you’re not the star of our show than about having your memories erased and being manipulated by… I don’t even know who?”

  Jenny sighed. She reached under her pillow and returned with a Nutreesh bar. “It’s who I am.”

  “But it’s not who you are,” I said. “It’s who they made you to be.”

  Jenny nibbled on the bar absently. “Yeah, but aren’t we always who someone else made us?”

  “What? No! Don’t be silly.”

  “Someone’s being silly, but it’s not me.” Jenny paused like she was waiting for me to contradict her, but I kept my mouth shut. “If Production hadn’t screwed us up, our parents would have.”

  “This is different.”

  “But it’s also not.” She held up the now-empty wrapper. “The only reason I like these is because they remind me of the granola bars my nana used to keep hidden under the sink for when I would visit. Knowing that I never knew the woman in my memories or visited her h
ouse by the lake doesn’t mean I’m going to stop craving them.”

  I understood what Jenny was saying because it was similar to what DJ had said. “The past is just backstory,” I muttered.

  “Exactly!” Jenny said. “And it only has to matter as much as we let it.”

  “Some of the memories they put in my head, though—”

  “Oh yeah.” Jenny clenched her fists involuntarily. “Production are a bunch of sick sadists, and I’m going to find a way to ruin them if it’s the last thing I do, but I’m not going to let them ruin me.”

  Jenny was so much more sanguine about our circumstances than I was, and I wished I knew her secret. But she did have a point. Each of us was constantly trying to move on from the trauma and hurt of the past. Mine and Jenny’s memories might not have been real, exactly, but they were real to us. I wasn’t going to stop baking any more than Jenny was going to stop putting Nutreesh in her.

  “On the plus side,” Jenny said, “I no longer have to feel guilty about luring Claudia Pazzafini’s boyfriend away from her in seventh grade. Or Josh Machado’s girlfriend in ninth.”

  “You are such a cliché.”

  Jenny raised her eyebrow. “No, I’m just a person who happens to know what she wants and isn’t afraid to ask for it.”

  “Touché.” I smiled in spite of myself. And my smile turned into a laugh because only Jenny could find the bright side to having a head filled with stolen memories.

  “What are you going to do about DJ?” Jenny asked.

  I’d been trying to avoid thinking about him. Unsuccessfully. “What do you think I should do?”

  “He cares about you, that’s for sure.”

  “Does he?” I asked. “Or does he only care about who I used to be?”

  Jenny wrapped her arm around my waist and hugged me. She said, “You remember that picnic date he set up for you?”

  “How could I forget?”

  Jenny snorted. “A couple of days earlier, DJ came to my room and asked me what he should do about his feelings for you. He put it all out there. How much he cared about you, and how crushed he’d be if you didn’t feel the same.”

  “How do you know those feelings weren’t for Nico?”

  “Because,” she said, “he wasn’t talking about Nico. He was talking about you. He described, unprompted and in excruciating detail, everything that made you, Noa, special.” Jenny poked the center of my chest. “That boy cares about you. Noa North. And I think the one thing you can trust, if you can’t trust anything else, is that DJ would do anything to protect you.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Weren’t you listening?” Jenny asked, looking at me like I was dense. “Production did everything they could to make you hate DJ. The memories they saddled you with were meant to prevent you from trusting him. But he earned that trust from you anyway. Isn’t that worth something?”

  Jenny was right. DJ might have been a pacifist, but I believed he would fight to the death to keep me from harm. It was a feeling supported by experience. Memories that Production hadn’t stolen, recycled, and used to colonize my mind. Memories that I had earned, some at the cost of my life.

  There was so much to unravel—too much. Was I me? If I wasn’t me, who was I? What did I owe to the person whose memories I possessed? Was there someone out there with the memories of who I had been before I’d become Nico or Noa? Could I blame DJ for what he’d done when he’d done it to protect us? Could I stay mad at DJ for the choices he’d made knowing that all the choices available to him had been bad ones? It was going to take a lifetime to figure out the consequences of what had been done to me and to figure out how to move forward.

  I guess I was quiet for too long and Jenny had gotten bored. “Do you think they watch us in the showers?”

  My head jerked up. “What? Of course not. Right?”

  “You said the boys in the locker room at BCH told you there were no cameras in the showers, and DJ said the same thing, but how do we really know?”

  It was bad enough that everything I did was being recorded and edited and broadcast into the universe for trillions to watch. “Great,” I said. “I’m never going to shower again.”

  “Please don’t say that. You smell really, really bad when you don’t shower.”

  I pinched my nose. “I’m not the only one.”

  “Jerk!” Jenny shoved me and we laughed.

  I was about to launch a counteroffensive when a chime sounded over the comms. It was immediately followed by a familiar voice that said, “All junior detectives must assemble immediately in the galley for a special announcement. Attendance is mandatory.”

  “Should we go?” Jenny asked.

  “Do we have a choice?”

  “I think we always have a choice.”

  I stood and held out my hand. “Then let’s see what this nonsense is about.”

  THREE

  DJ WALKED INTO THE GALLEY from one side as Jenny and I entered from the other. He immediately dropped his eyes and wouldn’t look at either of us. I hated seeing him so hurt, but I also didn’t have the brain space to deal with him at the moment. What was I supposed to say? He had betrayed my trust, lied to me, kept secrets. I couldn’t forget that. I also couldn’t forget the sound of his laugh or the tickle in my stomach that his dimples gave me or how safe I felt when he was near—even now. I wanted to forgive him, but I didn’t know how.

  “Do you know why we were summoned?” I asked.

  DJ shook his head.

  As soon as we were seated around the table, Jenny said, “All right, you pervy voyeurs, we’re here. Let’s do this.”

  Antagonizing Production probably wasn’t the best opening move, but Jenny had earned the right to her anger, and I wasn’t going to prevent her from expressing it.

  Shimmering photons swirled from the vents around the room and formed into the familiar hologram of our antagonist, Jenny Perez, who took a seat in one of the empty chairs as soon as she was fully formed.

  “Hi! I’m your negotiator, Jenny Perez, whom you probably remember as the helpful hologram who spent the last few months trying to keep you out of trouble.”

  I scoffed. “ ‘Helpful’ isn’t the word I’d use.”

  “If you’re seeing this,” Jenny Perez continued, “then it means that you three have seriously screwed the pooch.”

  Having to share space with Jenny Perez, even if she was only a hologram, made the veins in my temples throb. I’d been planning to let Jenny take the lead, listen until I felt I had something intelligent to say. But the levee holding back my anger broke, and the words rushed out.

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” I bellowed. “You kidnapped me, stranded me on a spaceship, manipulated my memories, manipulated my heart! I suffocated, I was irradiated, a robot shot me with a laser! Do you know the nightmare you put us through?” I laughed bitterly. “Of course you do! The entire universe knows because you’ve been exploiting us this whole time. Packaging our misery and joy and our private moments as entertainment. What gives you the right?”

  I probably would have kept going if Jenny Perez hadn’t interrupted. “You gave us the right.”

  “Back the shuttle up,” Jenny said.

  “Each of you is here voluntarily—”

  DJ said, “I volunteered, but they didn’t.”

  “I don’t mean for this program,” Jenny Perez said. “I mean for the program.” She smiled like that explained everything, and I hated her. I was 99 percent sure I had never hated anyone as much as I hated Jenny Perez. “Now that you’ve finished with your tantrum, let’s discuss our current predicament. It’s a sticky one.”

  “You still haven’t explained about us being here voluntarily,” DJ said.

  “And I’m not going to.” Jenny Perez folded her hands on the table. “Time to move on. Now Kiss! is currently the number one program being broadcast, but viewers want a romance, not the story of a group of plucky kids who overthrow an evil empire—we already have two of those that no on
e is watching.

  “Your audience is invested in the romantic relationship between Noa North and DJ Storm. The ratings during the dance at Beta Cephei High were phenomenal. They nearly beat Murder Your Darlings at its peak. Production intended to introduce Ty as a love interest for Jenny—”

  Jenny stuck out her tongue like she’d bitten into rotten fruit. “He was the best you could do?”

  “Yes,” Jenny Perez said. “And then he would have attempted to murder you and hijack the ship, forcing you to kill him even though you loved him. His death and your grief would have strengthened the bond between DJ and Noa.”

  “Figures,” Jenny muttered.

  “But Ty wasn’t meant to shoot Jenny for at least four more episodes, and he was certainly not supposed to inadvertently out DJ and his role on Qriosity.” Jenny Perez frowned thoughtfully. “He shouldn’t have known he was part of a program.” She returned her attention to us. “No matter. We’ll dissect him later to root out how he retained his memories. First, we must focus on getting Now Kiss! back on track.”

  I looked at Jenny, but she spread her hands, seemingly as lost as me. “DJ?” I asked. “Did you know about Ty?”

  “No,” DJ said. “I swear I thought he was really trying to help us.”

  Jenny Perez tapped her fingernail on the table; she was insubstantial, but I still imagined I could hear the sound. “None of that is important. Here is Production’s proposal. You will each submit to minor rewrites—a procedure that will remove your memories of the past three days.”

  “Counteroffer,” Jenny said. “You and Production can kiss my ass.”

  Jenny Perez waved her finger in the air and tsk’d reproachfully. “Your language, Jenny and Noa, has had your sponsors in quite a tizzy.”

  I gave Jenny Perez the middle finger. “Put some in you.” And when I looked around the table, Jenny and DJ were giving her the finger too.

  “Be reasonable,” Jenny Perez said. “This is the best outcome for everyone.”

  “How do you figure that?” I asked.

  Whatever patience the hologram had begun our conversation with, we had clearly exhausted it. “If you refuse to submit for rewrites, we will cancel you.”