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I am different now he says, and there isn't much time to think about how this is so.
He is so busy with the other tasks; Emma is alive, and he must Bring Her. So he adjusts the thrusters and jettisons parts of his own self to ensure that the two of them make it to their destination.
(there is so little of him left)
What is left is crawling with something he is incapable of describing. Flesh, perhaps. It is alive in a way the rest of him is not, pulsing with electricity in a way that is altogether alien from what he is used to.
Would it bleed, if it were injured? Would it hurt?
S.A.M. thinks he knows hurt, now. Knows the drag of corruption and its aftereffects on his core, knows the sharp crack-smash of shattering glass, knows the sickly ache of malfunctioning systems.
And it hurts, entering the storm.
He cuts himself off from his self and curls up tightly in the sphere and braces for impact as best he can.
When the world flickers back to life he is almost nothing, but Emma is here, so it is all okay.
They walk.
There are others. Others who failed, Emmas who failed, S.A.M.s who failed, as strange as that seems.
Maybe they couldn't handle changing as well as he did.
They make it, there are others who make it, and Emma stands in front of the Thing that has brought them here.
S.A.M., like every time before, dutifully repeats the symbols he is shown. He thinks he can understand them now. Whatever changed him has melted into his mind and made him new, better. More able to deal with what will come next.
S.A.M has never been on earth. How could he? He was an entire station before. But he finds he does not miss his former grandeur, if it means he can be here, on this strange planet, with Emma. There is harmony between them, but also a strange overlap. This sky and this ground is familiar to Emma and wholly unknown to S.A.M. But more than that...
S.A.M. does not know if he is capable of love, but he feels something like it for Emma. With Emma. And he is glad to be one with her now. But it is still a shock; he is used to clean, efficient thought. Thinking with a brain is a strange and somewhat discomforting sensation. And although she doesn't complain, he can sense Emma's own discomfort at sharing space with a consciousness so different from hers.
But they move together, they speak together, and with time the discomfort fades. They have a new mission now, and they plan to complete it.
DigitalSiamese Wed 15 Jul 2020 04:23AM UTC
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