by Scott Baron
Perfect vantage point to see what’s up, she decided, then set off at a lazy, loping jog to the rocky outcropping above Hangar Three.
Okay, let’s see what’s going on, Sis, she said as she settled in behind a small clump of dusty rocks.
“Looks like you’re down there doing something, Daze,” Sarah commented. “Can’t quite see what it is, though.”
I think this was when Fatima had me reorganize the salvage storage racks for no good reason.
“Though that did actually help a lot when they needed specific parts for the remote ships they sent to help during the San Francisco assault.”
True. Though there’s no way she could have known about that beforehand, Daisy noted. Just good old-fashioned serendipity. Damn, though. I’m kinda kicking ass, aren’t I?
“You’re just moving junk into piles.”
Well, yeah, but look at how well I’m doing it, she said with a fair dose of sass. Nobody can haul junk like I can!
“Har-har. Such a comedian.”
I try.
“So are you done watching yourself hauling trash? I should be ready to be pulled from cryo by now, and I’m more than a little anxious to get that done. One way or another, today is the day I either live or die.”
Morbid, Sis.
“But accurate,” she replied.
Okay, we can head back.
“Hey, Freya. I’m coming back to you. Are you ready to wake up your patient?”
“I am, Daisy. And, Sarah, I don’t want to jinx things, but I’ve been reviewing her vitals, and I think she, you––”
“Either one works.”
“I think that everything might just work out okay,” she finished.
“Great. Be back shortly,” Daisy said as she pushed off her rocky seat and rose to her feet.
The ground beneath her shifted and began to slide.
“Shit!” she cried out, throwing herself clear of the tumbling rocks.
Though she was not caught up in the main bulk of the minor rock slide, she nevertheless found herself riding a wave of flowing soil, carrying her right toward the sharp, rocky drop-off right above the hangar doors.
“Daisy, on your right!” Sarah shouted in her head.
She swung her arm wildly to the side as her sister instructed and felt her hand slap against something solid. Daisy gripped with all her strength, yanking her body from the sliding debris with a painful jolt.
“Holy shit!,” she gasped, flat on her back, sucking in deep breaths of air as she lowered her heart rate. “That was close!”
“Too close. You almost took yourself out.”
“I know. Thanks for that. You probably saved my ass just now.”
“You’re welcome, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Look down below.”
Daisy did as Sarah suggested. The rocks had scattered the neatly piled components as they fell, leaving a mess where Daisy had created a clean and organized area. She watched as the past version of herself rose to her feet and surveyed the damage.
“You saved my ass back then too,” she said. “Remember? Potential paradoxes be damned, I just can’t seem to stop stumbling into my own timeline, can I?”
“In ways that don’t change events, at least.”
“True, that,” Daisy said, cautiously climbing back to her feet and beginning the trek back to Freya’s waiting warmth. “I think that’s more than enough EVA time, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Most definitely.”
“Well, come on, then. We’ve waited long enough. Let’s go and wake you up.”
Chapter Twelve
The butterflies plaguing Daisy’s stomach would simply not go away. Given that in just a few minutes her sister would either miraculously come back from the dead, or stay that way forever, the sensation was understandable.
Freya had powered up all of the medical machinery at her disposal and had it standing by in preparation for the big event. Being an AI, she didn’t have butterflies in her electronic stomach, exactly, but a sense of nervous unease pervaded in her synapses just the same.
Lying in stasis within the safety of the cryo pod, Sarah looked almost peaceful in her unconscious state. From the outside, one would never guess that a thriving swarm of custom stealth material nanites were inhabiting her body, replacing the organs destroyed months prior.
Her right arm, however, was a dead giveaway.
The slender limb was identical in appearance to the one she had lost while being blown out of the Váli’s airlock, save the telltale matte-gray coloring of the nano materials that had constructed it. Eventually, Freya hoped the nanites would learn to mimic her natural body coloring, making the replacement limb appear human, despite its incredible strength.
All that remained was seeing if her body would accept the drastic additions when brought out of stasis, or if it would catastrophically reject them.
“You ready for this, Sis?”
“No, not really,” Sarah replied, more than a little hesitation in her voice. “But I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. How about you, Freya?”
“I am, Sarah.”
“You call it, Sis. This one’s all you,” Daisy said.
“Well, then.” The disembodied mind of a long-dead woman took a figurative deep breath. “Wake her up, Freya.”
The cryo pod gradually shifted from blue stasis lighting through purple, into red, and eventually, a warming golden glow. The woman inside the pod began to stir just as the lid slid open, exposing her to fresh air for the first time in months.
Sarah gasped her first breath with her new lungs, then set into a coughing fit.
“Freya, she’s choking!”
“She’s not choking, Sarah. Calm down,” Daisy said. “It’s okay. Look.”
Propped up on her elbows, Sarah’s coughing eased as she got the hang of breathing with her new lungs. Her eyes wet from the fit, she looked around the ship, utterly confused.
“Daisy?” she said as her gaze fell upon her friend.
“Hey, Sis,” Daisy replied.
“What happened? Are you okay? Someone’s been cutting onions.”
Daisy laughed and wiped the tears from her face as she leaned in and hugged her sister.
Sarah pushed up from the edge of the pod, crushing the material with her right hand as she moved to hug her back, but suddenly jerked away as she looked at the powerful limb where her flesh-and-blood arm should have been.
“Wait. What the fuck?” she said, wiggling the new fingers in amazement. “I was just in Starboard Pod Eight, Daisy. And I had my own arm. What the hell is going on? This isn’t the Váli. And this sure as shit isn’t my arm!”
“Sorry, Sis. A ton has happened since we last saw each other. Boy have you missed a lot.”
“Sis? And hang on, I just saw you, like, ten minutes ago.”
Daisy laughed, the constant pressure in her chest finally dissolving for the first time in months.
“Yeah, Sis. As in, sisters. The for-reals kind,” she said, smiling through her tears. “Like I said, you really have missed a lot.”
Sarah sipped a cup of cocoa in Freya’s compact galley space. A pair of crumpled ceramisteel mugs lay on the table in front of her. She was a quick learner, but it had taken a few minutes for her to really mesh with her new arm and hand.
“This tastes funny,” she said, still more than a little shell-shocked from the firehose of information Daisy had laid on her.
“Sorry about that, Sarah,” Freya said over her speakers. “It’s the first time you’ve interacted with actual food in nearly six months, and after the accident, the nanites had to replace parts of your tongue that were too damaged from the cold to be saved.”
“So everything is going to taste weird from now on. Excellent,” she grumbled.
“Oh, no, not at all. It just takes them time to adjust to your conscious mind and produce feedback that correlates to the flavor profile you’re expecting.”
“You saying she’ll be able to make things taste like other
things?” Daisy asked, intrigued.
“I suppose,” Freya replied. “Though I don’t know why anyone would want to do that.”
“It’s a human thing, kid,” Sarah replied. “I still can’t believe you have your own ship, Daze. And a stealth one at that.”
“Best thing that came from Dark Side Base was this amazing kiddo,” she said proudly, patting the bulkhead. “Freya’s one of a kind, and what she can do––well, you’ll see soon enough. You missed a hell of a lot, that’s for sure.”
“Yeah, it sounds like it. But damn, Daze, did you really blow Tamara out an airlock?”
“Hey, you had just been killed, and I didn’t know who I could trust or what the real situation even was. Can you blame me?”
“Oh, I don’t blame you. I’m just amazed she ever forgave you, is all.”
“That took some time,” Daisy admitted. “That, and I installed a captured power whip that I modified to tie into her arm.”
“A what, now?”
“I call it a power whip. It's kind of a whippy, smashy, sort of plasma coil thing.”
“Tamara with more destructive power at her disposal. Why does that worry me?”
“I know, right? And you missed the big fight too.”
“The first time around, that is.”
“True,” Daisy agreed.
“What was that?”
“I still don’t think she believes you about me, though.”
“I know, but she will.”
“You talking to the invisible me again?” Sarah asked, her doubting eyebrow held in a high arch.
“Told ya so.”
“But she’s real,” Freya interjected. “She’s you, Sarah. Well, not you, you, but you who has experienced what that other you hasn’t.”
She stared at Daisy disbelievingly.
“Do you guys really expect me to believe you have a little piece of me living in your head?”
“All of you, actually,” she replied.
“Bullshit.”
“No, for reals. Go ahead. Ask yourself something.”
“What, she’s listening with your ears?”
“Yeah, pretty much always.”
“Okay, then. What’s Finn’s favorite flavor of––”
“No,” Daisy interrupted. “Ask her something even I don’t know.”
Sarah thought quietly a long moment.
“Fine. But don’t get pissed,” she finally said.
“Why would I get pissed?”
“Well, about three months into the trip––this is after the impact and the fire, we’re talking, here––I was heading to get cleaned up after a shift in the Narrows and––”
“I saw Vince naked in the shower. He forgot to lock the door. That, or he was waiting for you.”
“What? You never told me that!” Daisy blurted.
“Hang on, what?” Sarah asked.
“You just told me you saw Vince naked in the showers. Why wouldn’t you tell me, Sarah?”
“I thought it would make things weird.”
“I thought it would make things weird.”
“Whoa. You both just said the same thing. That’s freaky.”
“Holy shit!” Sarah exclaimed, scrutinizing Daisy’s noggin. “I really am in your head! But how the hell could a neuro-stim do that? It shouldn’t be possible. Aren’t there supposed to be safeties and stuff?”
“There are. But because we come from the same egg, we’re genetically similar enough that it allowed an override.”
“So me, and a whole mess of other stuff, got dumped in your head in the process? And it didn’t kill you? Or make you a vegetable?”
“Precisely. Though it’s looking like it may have been me who put some of that stuff there in the first place, when I snuck on the Váli this time around.”
“How is that even possible? I mean, I get the time travel thing, as insane as that may sound, but just because you have precognition, you shouldn’t be able to alter events.”
“Paradoxes!” Freya blurted.
“Yeah, exactly, kid,” Sarah said. “You shouldn’t be able to change things. Doing so could tear apart time.”
“Oh, I totally agree with you, Sis.”
“Sis. Gotta get used to that in its new context.”
“Understandable. But what I was saying is, that after Freya and I intervened to save Fatima on the moon, it is looking like we may have actually been directly responsible for these things happening in the first place. It’s kind of like we can’t not do it because that’s what the past required of us.”
“That’s a real mind-fuck, Daze.”
“Oh, believe me, I know.”
“So what do we do now?”
“Now? Now we watch our own backs. Well, my back, anyway. You were dead for all of this.”
“So weird,” Sarah said for the umpteenth time, shaking her head.
“We’ll have to get you up to speed on current events, future events, captured tech, and anything else that might serve you well. We have a little bit of time, but pretty soon, I’m going to go chasing Vince down to the surface, and from that point, things are going to get really nuts really fast.”
“Why is he going alone? And why do you chase him?” Sarah asked.
“Awkward,” Sarah said inside her head with a little laugh.
Bite me, Sis.
“Yeah, but now there are two of me.”
Oh, the horror, Daisy replied with a silent chuckle.
“Well,” Daisy said. “That’s kind of a long story.”
“Sounds like we’ll have the time,” Sarah replied.
Daisy took a deep breath and sighed.
“All right. Let me fill you in.”
Chapter Thirteen
Sarah had been quick to adjust to her new reality. Being saved from death had quite a motivating effect on her as Daisy led her through an ever-growing series of drills and training scenarios. Having an onboard nanocloud also helped, allowing her to more rapidly assimilate information from Freya’s modified neuro-stim.
It wasn’t anywhere near Daisy’s deluge of data, but it was enough to give her an edge over pretty much any other human alive, aside from her sister, of course.
The training was intense. They would alternate between landing on desolate parts of the Earth to train in weapons and tactics, far from Ra’az scans or Bob’s flyovers, and the cold of space and remote stretches of the moon beyond Sid’s scanning range.
Several weeks after Sarah had been dragged back from the shores of the river Styx, the pair quietly watched from space as past Daisy stumbled upon Freya’s fabrication hangar.
Freya had particularly enjoyed watching her own creation, the unusual circumstances of her birth being a topic many traditionally birthed AIs had talked about often.
“Quite a kid, Daze,” Sarah commented.
“Yeah. She’s pretty cool,” Daisy couldn’t help but agree.
It was not long thereafter that Vince and Daisy had their arguments within the walls of Dark Side, causing him to make that fateful trip to Earth’s surface alone.
Freya’s ability to tap in to pretty much all of Dark Side’s monitors meant Daisy had to not only relive her assholeish behavior, but now with the extra fun of judgmental witnesses.
Vince had already traveled to the surface earlier that day, and Daisy had already followed, but the topic was nevertheless still a favorite aboard the ship.
“I hate to say it again––”
“Then don’t say it.”
“––But holy shit. You were being a total dick to him, Daze.”
“For the record, I agree,” the other Sarah said.
“Sarah says she agrees,” Freya informed them.
“And why is it Freya can hear her but I can’t? I mean, it’s me, after all, so you’d think I would be able to hear myself without needing you to relay or Freya to play a vocal simulation over her speakers.”
“Sorry, Sarah. It’s just the way the neuro-band functions,” Freya apologized.
“I haven’t been able to make a version that can transmit yet. I mean, I can upload neuro-stim data, of course, but real-time conversation of non-static files is a problem I haven’t solved yet. But I’m working on it.”
“Hey, that’s all I can ask, kid,” Sarah said.
“Yeah, thanks, hon.”
Daisy watched the monitors with great interest as Vince made his way to the surface with Alma’s people. Shortly, he and Daisy would run into one another, and from there, things would get interesting.
“We should get prepped to keep an eye on things down there,” Daisy mused. “My first run-in with the Chithiid is going to happen soon.”
“Playing guardian angel for yourself?” Sarah joked.
“You know it.”
“Okay, then. I’m in. Freya, how about you take us down to LA before Daisy goes and plays with the big bad aliens?”
“Happy to, Sarah,” the ship replied, then plotted the stealthiest reentry route to the city below.
Daisy and Vince had just recently begun their trek with Alma’s people to retrieve the comms device from his ship when Freya set down and dropped off her human cargo.
Daisy and Sarah, having foreknowledge of the events of the day, were several steps ahead of them, clearing the path of unforeseen hazards. So far, they had only needed to usher a small pack of coyotes along. Other than that, it had been relatively uneventful.
“Just over there is where I first met Craaxit. We were trapped in that lobby after one of Alma’s idiot followers ran directly into a Chithiid’s line of fire with a freakin’ bomb strapped to his back.”
“Wow. That’s fucking idiotic,” Sarah agreed.
“Yeah, tell me about it. I was damn lucky to survive.”
“So, shall we?”
“After you.”
The sisters jogged over to the entry doors through which Daisy and her team had beaten a hasty retreat all those months ago.
“Hey, it’s locked,” she observed.
Daisy pulled the wicked-sharp bone sword from her back and effortlessly sliced through the metal containing the locking mechanism. The door now slid freely, providing easy access into the lobby area.
