Work Text:
Amos Burton doesn’t wonder as to the nature of his existence. He’s aware that others do, but he was never concerned about what people made of him before he died, and he sure isn’t now. Amos is not a man devoid of curiosity —if he is a man, that is— but the question of what, exactly, he is doesn’t particularly compel him. But it seems to be taking up a lot of space in Xan’s mind as of late. The open partition in their home’s file storage must contain just about every essay, thesis and dissertation about what makes humans human that’s ever been written. At least those written on the planets, moons and stations around Sol. Maybe Laconians have already reached their conclusions about the humanity of their undead. Amos can’t imagine that there hasn’t been at least a few more corpses reanimated by the planet’s protomolecule not-dogs in the centuries since the rings were closed. He hasn’t seen any mention of it in any of the communications that have reached Sol. If he asked now, the question would only take a few decades to make its way to Laconia and back. Xan’s been worrying about the topic for about fifteen years, and Amos guesses he’ll be at it for a while.
Amos regards Xander and his older sister, Cara, with the protectiveness and care that all children stir in him, even though he knows that they are just as resilient, if not just as dangerous as he is. He doesn’t need to look hard for a way to rationalize it: Cara and Xander’s brains may contain more knowledge than most humans could absorb in a lifetime, and many lifetimes worth of lived experience too, but they are children’s brains, and can never change into anything resembling the brain of a human adult. That, their eternally youthful bodies, and the ever-present question of their humanity may very well make them just as vulnerable as any other child. It’s a perfectly reasonable explanation, sure, but it has little to do with the instinctive reaction Amos had the first time he became aware of Cara, back when she was only an echo of another conscience calling from somewhere in the back of his mind.
Time has allowed him the space to explore his own feelings in much more depth than he ever did in life, but Amos was already an old dog before he died. He doesn’t age, and he tends to think that there’s a limit to how much he can change. Sometimes he even stops to examine the question, goes over his memories trying to find ways in which he’s grown or changed. The sixty-something years of his life are blurry, nebulous, sometimes faded to the point of no return, but the centuries after his death were recorded and stored using better mechanisms, a stronger material. Amos remembers the day he left Laconia with the Captain and Tiny as clearly as the conversation he had with Cara earlier today, can recall every tactical map he saw during the Jovian armed conflict two hundred and forty seven years ago with as much precision as the specs of a Martian gunship’s water purification system. Sometime around the two hundred years mark he figured out that he didn’t get angry anymore, but he hasn’t found any other major change in himself since. He doesn’t think it makes him less human, or at least not any less human than he was before. As far as he’s concerned, he’s just very, very old.
At some point Cara decided to start celebrating her birthdays, and determined that her Laconian birth date had more or less corresponded with Earth's first of June. A directory in the open partition labeled “Cara’s birthday playlist” sparks something like amusement in him, but Amos’ vaguely smiling expression doesn’t change in any way. She’s got a little dinner party planned and Amos is just as content attending as he would be having dinner on his own. He just hopes Cara’s current music tastes aren’t as grating as the high-pitched, inconsistently-paced style she was into last year, which he gratefully hasn’t heard in a few months now. Whatever else she is, Amos has never doubted that Cara is a preteen girl. A boy of eleven, a girl of thirteen and an older teenager Amos only knows by name are invited over for dinner, all friends that Cara made at the local library in their current neighborhood on Luna. Two scientists whose research they all assist with and the medical doctor who specializes in their unique physiology are also attending, and Amos likes them just fine. He particularly enjoys talking to Bri’al, a young geneticist from Ganymede who reminds Amos of someone from before he died (more a sensation than a memory, he can’t put a name to the face) and has a talent for delivering jokes with a perfectly straight face that never fails to crack Amos up. Bri’al has sent them all consent forms that they need to sign and send back, and that’s what Amos is trying to find.
He finds the forms between two essays by Martian thinkers, both pre-protomolecule, but one on the nature of humanity outside the gravity well and the other about the personhood of artificial intelligences. It’s a question that’s currently being revisited. Bri’al is requesting bone marrow and gray matter samples for their work on neural decay. Amos thinks of Naomi’s fast and sharp decline during the last three years of her life, and indicates his assent with a gesture of his hand. He waits for the system to add his biometrics to the file, which already has Cara and Xan’s, and sends the forms back to Bri’al. Even before he learned the doc was funny, Amos was predisposed to like Bri’al from the moment he received the first request and learned about the subject of their research. He’s been alive long enough to see many friends die, many of them of old age. He knows most people would count themselves lucky to see their loved ones pass peacefully at home, but when he stops to think about it, he can’t help but see it as another piece of evidence that the universe has no sense of what is just or fair. He’s not sure that he does, either, but Naomi sure did. She would have known what to do with immortality. Amos can only conjecture as to what she would have done and do his best to follow what he believes would be her steps. Or Jim’s.
He thinks Jim wouldn’t have known what to do with immortality, but his fumbling through it would probably have been a million times better than the best Amos has to offer. He’s got an instinct for survival. Not heroics, or leadership, or martyrdom. He was good when he had them to follow, but he hasn’t had them in a very, very long time. Since then, he pretty much sticks to three simple directives: protect Cara and Xan, do what needs doing, survive. Figuring out what needs doing is always the hardest part, but there’s always one scientist or another who would like their collaboration in their research, and the requests are rarely more than a few non-invasive tests and some blood samples. Seventy years after the rings closed, he threatened the Martian government with denying all access to him and the kids as leverage to finally give mercy to the woman who hosted the last active protomolecule sample in Sol system, though her remains are still being held by the current administration as far as Amos is aware. He thought then that it was what Jim would have done, and he has yet to change his mind. He also told the then Prime Minister of Mars exactly what he would do to her or any of her successors if anything like Eros ever happened again, and there hasn’t been another protomolecule-based genocide since. But that hadn’t been something that Jim would have done, it was just something Amos did. He figures that, as long as the Solar system doesn’t explode under his watch, he’s probably doing a good job, and thinks that that’s a very Holden thing to think. Maybe humanity is better off without an immortal, near-unkillable James Holden, Amos thinks, and this thought does make his smile widen just a centimeter.
The system informs him that he’s got a new message. He expects it to be from Bri’al, but they’re here on Luna, and this comes from Earth. Amos searches through his memory, scanning from the most recent and moving backwards and, after a handful of milliseconds, identifies the name on the message as an Earth diplomat Amos finds vaguely unpleasant. He opens the message with a gesture, and the system projects the man’s image on a wall.
“Mister Burton,” the system captions the man’s German with a box of text close to his face, “I trust you are doing well.” A second to allow the pleasantry to settle, and then, ”I have an unusual request.”
“Who’s that?” a small voice asks from somewhere at Amos’ back. He pauses the message and turns to look at Xan. He’s wearing something loose and billowy with a pattern of greens that, along with his petrol-black skin and eyes, makes him look like a butterfly from some nature preserve on Earth. Amos thinks he should ask the kids if they want to go down the well again, but pushes the thought aside for the time being.
“Suit from the Earth government. Wanna watch?”
Xan shrugs, and climbs over the back of the sofa to drop himself at Amos’ side. With a movement of his hand, Amos re-starts the message. “I am aware that you have no interest in diplomatic or representative positions of any kind. I want to state beforehand that this is not that.” Amos raises his eyebrows at the image, and the diplomat clears his throat. Then proceeds to inform him that Earth is about to receive its first extrasolar visit in over a thousand years, and the President would very much like for him to be there. At its current speed, the extrasolar ship should be on the planet in a little under a month, but the suits want him there as soon as possible and are more than happy to facilitate some pretty fancy stays for the three of them.
The message ends, and Amos scratches the back of his head. He turns to Xander, who’s looking up to him with big, round eyes.
“Well, look at that. You up for seeing some open skies?”