Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I said to Pin-Lee, “Can’t you do a legal thing to stop this?” 

She crossed her arms. She never did like being criticized. “I am doing a legal thing. This is the thing I’m doing. I initiated this so you could travel to Royon.”

“With Gurathin. As my spouse?” 

“Yes. It’s perfect.” 

I wanted to say no, but I couldn’t rationally explain why. Pin-Lee obviously thought it was no big deal to be registered as Gurathin’s marital partner. Even if it was just on paper, the idea made my organic skin crawl. 

“I don’t know how to act like someone’s marital partner.”

Pin-Lee shrugged. “Act like you’re pissed off at each other. If they think you’re having some kind of tiff, they won’t ask too many questions about it. So in other words, just act natural.”

I pictured backing out. I could hop a shuttle and join ART on the ‘automated run’ it was about to take. Helping Three settle into its new life as a free SecUnit would be better than this. But Senior Indah would be disappointed in me. Mensah too. I didn’t even need to see their faces, they’d haunt my imagination with just as much clarity as a real-life memory. 

And in the end, I felt bad for the refugees that were stranded here when their smugglers had turned tail to leave. They needed to get to their relatives, hiding on Royon, and they needed to find another smuggler to keep the escapee train rolling. I could help. I was good at that, and liked it. They didn’t even need to pay me (which was good because they had no currency at all). The satisfaction of pulling humans out of the reach of the Corporation Rim would be enough for me. 

This was just a small, bureaucratic detail. I can deal with this, I told myself. 

I said to Pin-Lee, “Okay.”

~~~

We met in one of the office spaces that Pin-Lee liked to use for meetings. 

Mensah arrived for the signing. I always liked seeing her, but it bothered me that she needed to be here for this. It made this whole process seem more significant than it was supposed to be. If my ‘partnership’ with Gurathin was ‘just on paper’, then why did we need a trusted community authority to witness the agreement? Her presence made this feel more ceremonial than it needed to be. I thought about all of the partnership ceremonies I’d seen in serials. There were countless variations: usually the more pageantry, the better. The ones that took place in a plain room, with only one or two witnesses; were usually the ones that were the most rushed, the most desperate, and the most compellingly significant. In dramas, at least. I had to remind myself that this wasn’t a plot twist in a high-stakes serial. This didn’t mean anything, not to me or to him or to anyone.

Gurathin’s face was more pinched than usual. When he pressed his digits to the agreement sensor, he was scowling.

He said, for the recording, “I affirm Eden as my marital partner, under the domestic laws of the Preservation Alliance, in accordance with the member categories of the Independent Inter-System Agreement.”

I submitted my hand print and repeated the words he’d said, replacing his name for mine. Mensah and Pin-Lee submitted recordings confirming their presence as witnesses. Now I had a recorded marriage certificate under my chosen travelling name, I could get to the planet with no problems. 

That was it. I guess it wasn’t so bad. 

Gurathin scowled even harder, if that was possible. “You’re sure that there is no way for this to get back to my family?” 

Pin-Lee said, “It’s a private ceremony, and I’ll submit divorce documents as soon as you get back. Nobody will know about the status change unless you tell them.”

That didn’t seem to comfort Gurathin. 

We said our goodbyes to Mensah and Pin-Lee (I was getting used to some of the little social ceremonies that humans liked. At least there was an established protocol to them.). 

While I walked with Gurathin towards the embarkation zone, I said,  “Sorry that being partnered with a SecUnit is so embarrassing for you.” It came out as a dig and I realized that I meant it as a dig, actually. I was a little insulted. (I was also aware that it didn’t make any sense to resent him for how he felt, when I felt exactly the same way. Why do feelings have to be Like That?)

Gurathin closed his eyes and snorted. “This isn’t about you. Some humans actually still feel that marital partnerships mean something. Or should mean something.” 

He turned his head and his expression changed. I only caught it on my drone. Mensah had finally succeeded in getting me to seek trauma therapy, and even though I’d just started, something the medic had told me had stuck: that anger could be a mask for pain. I believed it when Gurathin let his mask slip, just a little. 

He said, “I do want to find a marital partner someday. This is a sham, but technically it will always be my first marriage. Of course I’m embarrassed. If my family finds out, I’ll never hear the end of it.” 

I had a few replies I wanted to say, but none seemed appropriate. I thought about telling him that I hated this too, but I realized that that was part of the problem. 

I said, “We’re doing this for a good reason. That’s something. If your family isn’t proud of that, they should be.” I’m not sure if that helped or not. Weirdly, it made me feel better to frame it that way.

The refugees were already waiting for us. Their faces lit up when they saw Gurathin. There were a lot of friendly humans on Preservation Station who were eager to help them, but for whatever reason, they’d preferred Gurathin’s advice. They didn’t trust friendly even a little bit. His dispassionate, no-nonsense guidance made them feel visibly more secure than, say, Ratthi’s cheerful banter. And Gurathin had taken an interest in helping them, so here we were. 

(I don’t know what kind of experience they had with SecUnits, but they’d flat out refused to go anywhere alone with me. (And I guess shooting me might have given me some kind of clue about their feelings towards SecUnits.) When we found out SecUnits were only considered ‘permitted persons’ on their destination polity if they were partnered to a freehold human citizen, we knew I couldn’t accompany them alone anyway. (My presence was necessary because BreharWallHan agents might still be hunting for the leak, and there was a high chance they’d either be killed or kidnapped on this trip.) But I guess SecUnits scared them more than any corporate-hired agents did. Gurathin’s agreement to join them was the only reason they’d agreed to my presence at all. It’s a good thing I didn’t expect any gratitude either, because I wasn’t going to get any.)

We helped them carry the clothes and stuff they’d been given here on Preservation Station. We boarded one of the commercial liners that catered specifically to non-corporates.

We all had Preservation citizen status now. We confirmed our identities and our tickets. We settled in for a long trip. 

Chapter Text

 A lot of things could’ve gone wrong. We transferred vessels twice and made three wormhole jumps. I remember how ART had told me once, You were lucky. I felt that way again now.

When we arrived at the refugees’ destination, we caught a little friction at the main port. The transport authorization agents were suspicious about my ‘marriage’ to Gurathin. An augmented human married to a SecUnit? Too weird. But after a rude line of questioning they let us pass.  

Our mission on the planet went okay. I’ve said before that freehold generally means shitshow, but the place wasn’t bad. The system was currently engaged in a population expansion phase, and had significant infrastructure to accommodate offworld newcomers.

We found the refugees’ relatives. We found one of Lutran’s business partners, who would be more than willing to take up the role that he’d vacated. 

We did what we came to do. Then we took another commercial liner and left.

~~ 

Halfway back to Preservation, I sat watching media in our cabin while Gurathin slept. The cabin wasn’t big. There was a bed, a washroom, two chairs, and a couple of float-surfaces that could be used as desks or for eating or whatever (mine was a footrest right now). Neither of us needed luxury accommodations. I liked plush furniture and big display surfaces, but not enough to use up any of my hard currency on them. 

Gurathin and I had been sharing a cabin since the last leg of our trip into Royon, just to maintain the appearance of our partnership if port officials checked our ticket status. I thought it would feel cramped and uncomfortable, but Gurathin was good at ignoring me and keeping to his own space. He didn’t seem uncomfortable either. 

I’m not sure what I’d been worried about. Okay, not true, I know what I’d been worried about. I just wasn’t worried about it anymore. 

It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen every aspect of his private life. Like all the rest of the PreservationAux team, I had access to every hour of footage from every cycle of his stay in the PreservationAux habitat. In a way, I knew him more intimately than most humans knew each other. I knew embarrassing details about his body and his habits, things that humans almost never shared with anyone else. I’m not human. I’m a SecUnit. Even here on Preservation Station (and sometimes down on the planet, where Volescu was enjoying his retirement as one of the primary caregivers of his kids), they’d given me drone cameras and access to their lives. The company cared about surveilling them for actionable intel and sales data, but my purpose within their structure was actually to keep them safe. As much as I hated the company, I couldn’t deny that I really just wanted to keep them safe. 

Humans were so needy. So wantful. Most of them built intricate webs of relationships to fulfill their wants and needs. Gurathin seemed content with his collegial relationships, while he was on active survey duty, anyway. But apart from that, he sometimes avoided the kind of contact that other humans found fulfilling. He sometimes had lunch with Ratthi or with the others in the station mall, but otherwise he spent his time alone, and he rarely went to the planet's surface. 

Gurathin sometimes called his family on station-to-planet feed, but less often than once in ten planetary cycles. I didn’t know much about his family, other than that it was a large family, and they spoke a language that I didn’t have in my database, and that during Gurathin’s calls they mostly spoke in a huge, noisy cacophony; and that Gurathin always took calming medication before and after their interactions.

Given what I’d observed about Gurathin, I concluded that he was lacking in the kind of interactions that most humans had. He wasn’t very close to anyone in his life, physically or emotionally. Marital relationships were supposed to fulfill the need for physical and emotional intimacy. I’d worried that he couldn’t help leaning towards me. That he’d want those things. 

Closeness. Feeling. Touch. Partnership. That’s what this was, right? That’s what we’d agreed to. Marital contract. Romantic spouse. Every single definition of the agreement I’d just made with Gurathin carried a huge amount of expectations and responsibilities. Important promises. That I’d just sworn to, in front of witnesses. 

But Gurathin had never given any indication that he expected anything from me but collegial cooperation. If anything, he kept even more distance from me now, to make the situation less uncomfortable for us both. 

I realized that my fears were unfounded. 

Gurathin gave me as much space as I needed. Of course he did. I wouldn’t say that I liked him now, but I could see now why the rest of the PreservationAux team liked him. He was the kind of human who would do the right thing and not need any praise for it. He’d do the right thing even if it cost him. He was principled, and self-contained. He could be brusque, but he was kind, too, in his own way. 

It had taken me a while to notice his better qualities. But now I realized that I didn’t have to be scared that he would make inappropriate advances. The idea seemed silly now. Of course he wouldn’t. 

Gurathin was a good person, and he respected me. He’d affirmed our ‘partnership’ at no small cost to his own dignity, because he thought it was the right thing to do. 

I watched him stir in his sleep. His muscle spasms indicated REM cycle activity. His hands curled into fists. He exhaled sharply, with a sound that was almost a whimper, as though someone had punched him in the abdomen. With his next shaky, indrawn breath, he woke up.

It might have been embarrassing to him that I was there, but we both knew I’d seen this before. Gurathin often had nightmares. This time, he looked over at me, and almost instantly relaxed. He wiped his forehead and sat up in bed, still shaken and groggy. 

I asked, “Do you want some water?” 

He seemed surprised that I’d spoken, but he said, “Yes. Thank you.”

I brought him a water pouch from the wall cooler. He took it wordlessly, but after he’d taken a sip, said again, “Thank you.”

He’d been having nightmares like this for as long as I’d been observing him. I knew nightmares could sometimes indicate some kind of trauma, but as far as I knew, he hadn’t taken any kind of medical treatment for trauma. 

I’m sure there must be good things to say in a situation like this, but I had no idea what those might be. I thought that maybe talking about something else might help him. I didn’t want him staying up sleepless for hours. 

I said, “Why don’t you have a profile on the partner-search listings?”

He’d said that was the root of his discomfort with our arrangement. He wanted to be married, but we’d made a mockery of it. So what was stopping him from finding the kind of relationship he wanted?

He snorted. ”I do have partner-search profiles, they’re just not active right now. I’ve been taking a break. My life is busy enough lately. Not that it’s any of your business.”

I hadn’t meant to insult him this time, but of course he would take it that way. 

“You’re uncomfortable with our arrangement because it’s not a real partnership. If that’s what you want, you should find one. You’re not terrible, as humans go. Not that it’s any of my business.”

His face lost that pinched look. “I…ah. Thank you.” He shook his head and sipped his water. He looked surprised and embarrassed and something else — sad, maybe? He said, “It’s not as easy as you think.”

I shrugged. “This partnership has been easy enough. Maybe we should stay married. It’s supposed to be easier to find a second partner if you have a first. And it would get your family off your back.”

I expected a wry smile or something, I didn’t expect him to choke on his water. When he finished laugh/coughing, he said, “That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

“That hurts my feelings,” I said, mock-wounded. 

He put his hands up. “Of course, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be flippant.” He cleared his throat. “Your offer is kindly appreciated, but I’m afraid I can’t see any long term potential in our relationship. Thank you anyway. I’d be happy to provide a reference to your next potential partner.”

“Okay. Better.”

He drained his water pouch. I reached out to take it back. 

“You’re right, I should reactivate my profile. It’s been long enough. I need to stop moping already. Whatever happens can’t possibly be worse than what’s happened already.”

For an uncomfortable second I thought he would want to talk about whatever went on in his last relationship. I wasn’t a relationship counsellor, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know that much about Gurathin’s intimate life. 

But he handed me the pouch and said, “Thank you, SecUnit.” He yawned. He didn’t seem as upset as he was when he woke up. “I need more sleep.” He reset the ship’s alarm to give him an extra hour of rest. 

I said, “Okay. You’re welcome.” 

By the time I put the empty water pouch in the recycler and started playing another episode of Lower Station Detective , Gurathin was back asleep. 

~~~

While Gurathin was asleep, raiders attacked the transport. 

I was passively monitoring the bot pilot’s surveillance feed. By the time the bot pilot detected their malware intrusion, most of its neural network had been fried. I barely had enough time to disconnect and throw up a wall. 

It happened so fast, the bot pilot didn’t have time to alert anyone. I was the only one who heard its dying shriek. 

I did three things simultaneously: a) I made a connection to every interface and augmented human and sent out an alert, b) I secured an encrypted connection to as many of the ship’s systems as I could, and c) I woke up Gurathin.

“We’re being attacked. Get into an emergency evac suit right now!”

The hostiles hadn’t immediately ordered the ship to open all airlocks and flush the living inhabitants. That was good in the short term. It meant they wanted to take live captives. That was rarely for compassionate reasons. 

The hostiles must not know I was here, or they wouldn’t have chosen this ship to attack. (My risk assessment module calculated an 8% chance they did know I was here, but chose to attack anyway. If they were smart they probably wouldn’t be raiders. (I completely ignored the projected 2-3% chance that they felt safe enough attacking us because they actually had some means of effectively fighting me. Where would a raider get hold of a Combat SecUnit?) 

I had to neutralize the hostiles before they realized how much of a threat I was. They could always change their minds about venting the ship if they decided that taking us alive was too much trouble. 

They had near-total control of the ship now. The bot pilot wasn’t nearly as complex as the company gunship I’d taken over while rescuing Dr. Mensah, but if I threw myself into the ship’s systems, I’d be just as immobile and vulnerable as I’d been then. And I didn’t think there was anything the ship could do at this point. I needed to be in my own body to manage this situation.

I’d planted drones throughout most of the ship. The only human I’d told was Gurathin, because I knew the crew and other passengers would think that was weird. They should all be happy about it now, because I could monitor the hostiles.

This is where my memory starts to fractalize. That’s the only way I can describe it. My internal sense of time disappeared - my internal clock basically stopped, then started turning back and forward at random intervals. I remembered things in fragments, all out of order. Not only are my memories of it now, looking back, completely disordered and confusing, but from what moments that are clear now of that time, at the time I wasn’t able to make sense of what was going on at all. 

I was losing sense of time and reality. So was everyone else around me. But reality and time just kept on happening. 

These are some of the things I can clearly remember, in the only order I’ve been able to piece together:

UNIT ONLINE

I got up from the floor and became aware of my drones all at once, and every single input registered the alarm lights and sounds from the ship. 

– then –

I drove my fist into a hostile’s solar plexus and used his crumpling body as a shield while I shot up two other hostiles.

– then –

UNIT ONLINE

I felt a jolt of pain. I watched Gurathin affix a palm-sized cell growth unit into my chest, its nodes digging a forest of needle points into my damaged organic flesh. He was wearing a spacesuit, and I didn’t know why.

I told him, “Don’t go. It’s not safe in open space.” 

And Gurathin looked at me like I was brain-injured, which was actually probably the case. 

– then –

I was on the bridge. I leaned over a technician, showing me a readout from a remote command node that wasn’t even connected to the feed. Out loud, I said, “Is that wormhole supposed to be there?” But internally I was thinking Oh we’re so fucked, because I knew the ship in its current capacity couldn’t handle a wormhole. I’d seen a lot of depressing dramas that speculated about what happened to ships lost in wormholes. We were going to see first hand whether any of them were right.

– then –

I was fighting more hostiles, except I wasn’t sure which ones were hostiles and which ones were humans (clients?) that I was supposed to protect. So I attempted to neutralize anyone who tried to attack anyone else. But that wasn’t working out so well. There were thirty eight confused and panicked humans in the room, and some of them were lashing out at anyone who got too close.

And some guy in an evac suit kept following me. No idea what that was about. 

– then –

Then I went offline. I don’t remember that part. I only knew I’d been offline because I came back online. And I’d forgotten the entirety of my existence up to that point.

Chapter Text

UNIT ONLINE

I felt cut off. Cut in half, or in pieces. That’s the only way I could describe it. Parts of me were missing, and I only knew that because I could feel the terrible gaps that I knew hadn’t been there before. System readings kept appearing in my mind, but I didn’t know what they meant. 

I opened my eyes. For a terrifying 5.7 seconds, I realized that I didn’t know how to control my body. I’d forgotten.

Something very bad was happening. The air smelled awful. There were flashing red lights and warning alarms. (Warning about what? I didn’t know.) 

I became aware that I wasn’t alone. 

There was a human, wearing what I identified as an ‘evac suit’. He (somehow I knew this person was a human, and that he was male) was straining to drag me along the floor by my wrist. We weren’t getting very far. Apparently I was heavy. 

I wanted to yell at him to get out of here. He was here because of me, and that wasn’t right. He was in danger, and I somehow knew that I had to fix that. 

I closed my eyes and concentrated on my systems. With a little effort I managed to differentiate them from each other. I felt my nervous system kick into gear, and regained awareness of my body part by part. I had two legs. Two arms. A torso, a head. Lots of muscles and organs and circuitry. Okay, yeah. This is me. 

I stood up. I picked up the human and slung him over my shoulders. I ran. 

At first I didn’t have much information to go on other than smoke=bad, and so I set out to run away from it. Then I realized that some of the warning lights were guiding a path, and one of the warning sounds was a message: “Follow the lights to the exit. Emergency. Follow the lights to the exit.”

So that was easy. I thought nothing’s ever this easy , even though I had no objective basis for this opinion, at least none that I remembered.

Then I found a cluster of injured humans struggling to get to the exit. Four of them staggering, one unconscious and being dragged by another one. They were clearly scared and confused and injured, and I couldn’t carry them all at once. I couldn’t even afford to put down the one I had. All I could do was run faster and hope I could find a way out for all of us. 

No, this wasn’t going to be easy, I’d been right about that. I guess I knew more than I thought I did. 

I found the exit – a large hatch to one side of a hallway. It was already open. I ran through the hatch, past the small chamber beyond it, and I jumped out of the emergency exit.

I landed on firm soil. I could tell immediately that the air here was better than the air we’d been in before. We were on a planet during its night cycle. Dirt, grass, trees; planet stuff I guess. I didn’t have time to be interested in details. There was a mountain ridge nearby, but I ran towards a low, flat area where nothing looked dangerous. I kept running until I could look back and see what I’d been running from. 

A ship, apparently. A broken ship. Based on the trail of debris and the fact that the damage seemed to be concentrated on the front and bottom of the ship, I guess it had crashed. And now it was burning. Except I didn’t know if burning was the right word. Some parts of it were red-hot, and instead of cooling down, it looked like they were getting hotter. Like the metal was actively melting. I didn’t know anything about ships, so I didn’t know why. 

I knew one thing. This was still Very Bad.

I had no idea what a safe distance from the broken ship would be. I wanted to keep running until I’d put it over the horizon, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the humans still inside the ship, and the creeping melt that threatened to cook them alive.. 

I put my human down and ran back to get the others.

When I got back to the ship, I had to pull myself up into the emergency exit, over two metres off the ground. One of the humans had made it to the hatch despite an obviously broken leg. I carried her to the ground outside. 

Two of the humans clustered below the hatch, the ones who’d already escaped, each took one of her arms to help her stay upright.

“Get back, it’s dangerous!” I told them.

They answered, but I couldn’t understand what any of them were saying. Their fearful expressions didn’t change — I don’t think anyone had understood me either. 

No time for this. I went back inside for more. 

The smoke was getting bad. I found the humans I’d passed on the way out the first time. The closest pair were badly injured, barely able to crawl. I picked them up, one under each arm, and raced for the hatch. It probably wasn’t comfortable for them, but at least it was over quickly. 

After I carried five more out that way, I counted them. Thirty six. I’m not sure why I did that, since I didn’t know how many there were supposed to be. A habit, maybe. 

I couldn’t shake the feeling that there were more inside. I jumped up to make another sweep. Further down the hall from where I’d been, I found a woman crawling along the ground, crying. When I reached her, she resisted, yelling words I didn’t understand, pointing back towards the corridor, into a part of the ship that was thick with heat and smoke. 

While I carried her out, she pounded on my back, screaming and pointing back into the ship.

I didn’t have to understand her language to know what she was saying. Someone else was in there. Someone she’d left behind to save her own skin. 

Okay. 

I put her down. I jumped back into the shipwreck one more time.

The air was so smoky that I couldn’t breathe. That’s when I found out that I didn’t need to breathe much, actually. I could hold my breath just fine. I didn’t think the human in there would be so lucky. And it was hot. Like, I’m-glad-I-didn’t-have-to-inhale-this-air, kind of hot. If whoever was in there was alive, they wouldn’t be for much longer. 

I saw one more human. Lying on the hallway floor, his leg trapped by some kind of large medical device that had fallen down. 

The part of the corridor between us was starting to warp and destabilize. 

I didn’t get to decide what I did next. I didn’t think about it at all. I jumped over the heat-warped floor to get to the injured human. As soon as I reached him, the corridor behind us started to melt. The air became superheated. I couldn’t bring him back that way; I thought my feet would probably fuse to the floor. 

I lifted the medical device and freed the human’s leg. I picked him up and ran from the heat-melt, further into the burning ship. Great plan, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do.

We didn’t get far before I hit a series of closed doors. 

And on one of the walls, the emergency lights picked up again. It was another exit. I followed the lights through a tunnel, and at the end I opened a hatch. 

We tumbled out of the ship. As soon as I got my feet on the ground, I started running a wide circle around the ship with the injured human cradled in my arms. His breathing was raspy and laboured. The leg that had been trapped was badly burned – the metal trapping it had been heated. That explained the burning on my hands that I’d barely noticed at the time. 

I found the other humans. I’m not sure why I assumed they had more medical knowledge than I did. I guess some help is better than no help. 

But proper help was arriving. 

Vehicles were pulling up to the crash survivors, who’d done a good job of distancing themselves from the wreckage. The humans that got out didn’t need to communicate much. They zeroed in on the wounded and started treating them.

I ran up to a group of medics to hand over the human I’d pulled from the ship. Within seconds, they had attached some kind of breathing aid to his face, they’d applied wound treatment to his leg, and they were examining him with what I assumed was an internal scanning device to look for more injuries. They seemed capable. I trusted their ability to take care of him. I was ridiculously glad they were here. 

I still didn’t really understand what was going on. There had been some kind of crisis. I guess our ship had crashed, but we’d survived. Now what?

Many of the crash survivors milled aimlessly around with a shocked, blank look on their faces. That’s exactly how I felt. 

I found the human in the evac suit, the one I’d pulled out first. I guess we found each other. It felt weird, like a kind of instant recognition. I saw him, and he saw me, and we walked forward to meet in the middle of the chaos. He took his helmet off. He seemed tired, but okay. That made me feel okay too.

We turned to watch the shipwreck burn.

Chapter Text

We sat down on the ground, watching the rescuers treat the wounded. 

The evac suit human looked at my hands and said something I didn’t understand. 

I told him, “I’m sorry. I don’t know the language you’re speaking.”

He looked at me strangely. Then he tried again. He said, “Your hands need treatment.”

I actually understood that. Weird.

I said, “They’ll be fine.”

He seemed skeptical, but didn’t press. 

When I noticed a medical team going around to check everyone, I told him, “I need your gloves.”

“What? Why?”

I couldn’t explain, but it felt urgent.

“I don’t want them to treat me. Give me your gloves.”

His evac suit looked like it was composed of an inner airtight layer and several protective outer layers that could potentially be removed. The outermost one would have to do.

He looked at my face, and that was uncomfortable. But he detached the outer gloves of his evac suit and gave them to me.

When the medics arrived, they started with him, and they made gestures to suggest he take off his suit. He complied, and they scanned him.

(Now what was I supposed to call him? The not-evac suit human?)

When they saw the results on their scanner, they seemed pleased. Weary, but pleased. The gestures they made indicated nothing was wrong. 

 Then they moved towards me. I put my hands up and stepped back.

“No. Not me.”

“ No, ” said my human. And when they kept advancing, he put himself between us and said something else in a different language that also sounded like no. Then he tried again. He kept talking until they finally stopped, and their eyes widened with what looked like recognition. 

They called over another human medic. When she came, she asked my human a question. I didn’t understand, but apparently he did. So they talked. 

The medics left me to attend the more seriously wounded.

“What did you tell them?” It seemed remarkable to me that anyone could understand anyone here. 

“I told them you didn’t want to be scanned for religious reasons.” 

“Oh. Okay, thanks.”

Whoever this human was, he was a very good liar. 

~~~

Further away from the wreckage, our rescuers set up tents. They urged us towards them. 

My human said, “There are toilet facilities, apparently.”

I was wary of all this unasked-for emergency aid. I jogged ahead to check them out. Not only were there toilets, but also fresh water stations. And a station that was stocked with food pouches, from what I could tell. 

Four sleeping tents with bedrolls on the ground. The more seriously injured humans stayed in the mobile medical vehicles. 

I checked on all the crash survivors. The last one I’d carried out was still alive. His leg had been amputated by the medics, and he was hooked up to a machine to help him breathe; but he was alive. The one who had told me about him, the one who had crawled out to get help, she was alive too. She was sleeping on a bedroll beside her friend, in the medical vehicle where they were being treated. 

I made a few more rounds, patrolling the area where we were being housed, trying to assess the safety of the situation. I didn’t know the humans who were helping us. I mean, I guess I didn’t know any of these humans. But I did know that the crash survivors were weakened right now. And these would-be rescuers were stronger, better equipped, and more numerous. Something about that equation made the locals automatically suspect in my eyes. My guard would be up until I know why they were helping us in the first place. 

That human kept following me around. (I couldn’t help thinking of him as my human , except that wasn’t accurate. There was a different word I should be using, but I couldn’t remember it now.) I was starting to get annoyed, because even though I wanted to keep an eye on him, I also needed a minute alone to, I don’t know, process all of this. And to repair some of the damage I’d taken. My hands hadn’t been in contact with hot metal for very long, I didn’t think they’d need to be amputated. But they hurt a lot. And there were other points of damage to take care of as well.  

When I heard him yawn, I had an idea. 

I said, “Time to sleep.” And I led him into one of the tents. 

I didn’t know where any of these humans’ circadian rhythms were at, but even though the planet’s sky seemed to be nearing a dawning sun’s light, they were all completely exhausted. The tents blocked light, and the temperature was moderate. Most of them were asleep already.  

 I picked a couple of bedrolls near the tent wall. The not-evac suit human chose one and settled under the covers. 

I laid down too. It seemed like the thing to do. When he fell asleep, I realized that I didn’t need to sleep right now, actually. Probably ever. I just wasn’t built for that. That made me feel weird. I knew I was different from everyone here. I thought of all of them as humans , and somehow I knew that I was something else, except I didn’t know what. 

I sat up on the bed, facing the tent wall. I focused my eyes and found out I could see pretty well even in this dim light. I removed the evac suit gloves.

Ouch. What a mess. Looking at it made it feel worse. I started by trying to pick off the bits that were burned beyond recognition. At least it wasn’t bleeding.

A memory kept trying to surface. A file? A lot of code. The more I explored what I could remember, the more connections I made. Eventually I filled in the blanks. It was a self-repair module. I initiated it, and felt parts of my hand start to regenerate slowly.

Okay. Good. I felt good about that for less than two seconds, before I realized that even when it was fully repaired, it still wouldn’t look human. 

I heard a shift in the human’s breathing. He’d woken up. I kept my back turned to him, hoping he’d just go back to sleep.

“How are they?” He asked.

I said, “How are what?” Wow, I sounded churlish. 

He snorted. “How are your hands? I won’t look at them if you don’t want me to. I’m just concerned.”

I shrugged. “They’ll heal. Thanks.” I swear, I wasn’t trying to be an asshole, I just didn’t want him to pry. This was making me uncomfortable. I was grateful that all the other humans in the room were sound asleep.

He shifted in his bed. I thought he was going to go back to sleep. Instead he asked, “What are you?”

Well, fuck. I thought I had a secret to keep, but I guess not. At least not one I could keep from him.

I said, “I don’t know.” He waited for more, but I didn’t elaborate.

He said, “Okay.”

I guess that was it? It wasn’t the worst conversation in the world. 

He asked, “Do you know what happened to us?”

I shook my head. “I don’t remember a thing. Do you?”

“No.” He rubbed his temple. “It’s the strangest thing. I can remember words. Definitions of words. In several languages, apparently. But I can’t remember anything about myself, or my life. It’s all a fog.” 

I would’ve suspected some kind of brain trauma, but he’d just described exactly what I was experiencing too. Except I had neurocircuitry and entire systems that were corrupted, too. Maybe we all had collective brain trauma. I didn’t know what else you’d call it.

He asked, “Do you think we’re safe here?”

“I’ll keep you safe.”

He snorted again. “You sound awfully sure of yourself for a person who doesn’t even know what they are.”

I thought about it. “I’m a person who’s here to protect you.” That was the feeling I had. The more I thought about it, the more sure of it I was. I didn’t know much else about myself, but I was sure of that.

“Protect me? Or all of us in general?”

“All of you. But you, mostly.” When he’d asked, it had become clear. 

“Oh.” He sounded off-guard now. Embarrassed? Maybe it was just me feeling that way. It was weird. We didn’t remember each other. I didn’t think we particularly liked each other. But we had this… connection, I guess you could call it. 

“Thank you,” he said.

That felt really weird. Like he was thanking me for, I don’t know, having legs. It was just a trait. I didn’t need praise for it. The feeling was completely alien to me. (Was I ever *not* embarrassed and uncomfortable? I had a sinking feeling that the answer was no.)

I shrugged. “You’re welcome.” 

He shifted one last time and finally, finally went back to sleep.

~~~

I waited restlessly while the humans slept. Now I had all the time I wanted to think about what had happened, and I still hadn’t come up with any new memories, or any idea what to do now. 

I turned onto my back and looked around the tent. The only person watching us was a medic sitting on a chair by the entrance flap.

I needed to know more about our situation. I wanted to talk to whoever was in charge, or at least find out who that person was. 

I put on the evac suit gloves. They were bulky, but better than nothing. When I left the tent, I half expected the medic to stop me, or to question me about where I intended to go, but all he did was give me a tired smile and a little nod.

Okay, nice to know they weren’t overtly trying to keep us confined. But did they have to be friendly? That was almost worse. 

Outside, daylight from the nearest star made the area bright and disorientating. 

Another medic approached me. (I assumed she was a medic, they were wearing the same kind of light-coloured clothing.) She waved to get my attention and pointed me towards a sign that had been planted in the ground. There were pictographs on the sign: simplified drawings of a human eating and drinking and sleeping and so forth. 

The medic pointed to each pictograph in turn, spoke what I assumed was the word associated with it, and even tried to mime some of the actions. 

I held my hands up, shook my head, and backed away, in what I hoped was a universal sign that I didn’t need anything she was offering.

“No, no thank you,” 

She didn’t know what else to say, and neither did I, so I turned around and left in the opposite direction. Wow, I was awkward at communication. This was going to be a challenge.

Repeating the patrol pattern I’d taken last night, I noted the changes that had taken place while the crash victims slept. Other vehicles had joined the ones that were dispensing food and water, and there were a few tents with large open flaps and what looked like desks and chairs inside. Offices? That would be really weird.

In the distance, I could see the shipwreck. There were a lot of humans and vehicles around it now. They’d covered it with some kind of substance that looked like foam. I didn’t see any more smoke rising from it, but I couldn’t tell if the melt had stopped yet. 

I started jogging, careful not to surpass the speed a human might normally take, in case anyone was watching. Now that my human wasn’t with me, I had more range. I climbed up some of the mountain rocks.

On the other side was a city. I’d class it as a small city. Lots of buildings, though none very high. My stress-related chemicals jumped automatically. 

That was a small city full of humans who were either a threat, or who I needed to protect. Possibly both. 

I didn’t see any other cities on the horizon. There were roads in the dirt, but no flying vehicles. As far as I knew, this was my world now. It was strange and new, and I felt unmoored and unsafe.

When I got back, my human wasn’t in his bed. I felt a sharp jolt of worry and guilt that I’d left him alone. I still didn’t know what these humans had in mind for the crash survivors. We could still be in danger. But before I could panic, he came back through the tent flap. 

I asked him, “Where did you go?” I tried not to sound as worried or as annoyed as I was. I didn’t want to imply that I intended to keep him confined. But I think it kind of sounded that way anyway.

He gestured to the clothes he had draped over his arm. 

“Everything we were wearing stinks of toxic smoke. One of the vehicles had new clothes.” He gave me a set. “I took a guess at your size. There are gloves. A more comfortable pair, I hope.”

“Oh.” That was thoughtful. Now I felt like a jerk. “Thank you.”

~~~

I made use of some of the locals’ services after all – I took advantage of their shower and dressing booths once they’d been set up. I put my old clothes in a folded pile beside my bedroll. I wasn’t sure if I’d need them (I mean, how was I supposed to launder them?) but it didn’t feel right to just throw them into one of the garbage receptacles. 

When I left the sleeping tent, I found my human talking to a couple of the locals. One of them was taking notes with a pen and paper. The other had a clunky-looking device, I had no idea what it was for. They were talking in a language I didn’t understand.

My human made a gesture to me and said something to them, probably about me. It kinda pissed me off that I couldn’t understand what he’d said. 

“I just told them you don’t understand the language I can speak.” Oh. I wonder if my annoyance was plain on my face. Maybe he just knew me well, and that was weird.

 “They’re talking to everyone, to see if any of the languages we speak match any of the languages they understand. Listen. Tell them if you recognize any of this.”

The one with the clunky device pressed a button, and it started playing a recording. It was a selection of human speech. Different languages spoken by different people. They went through quite a few that I didn’t recognize at all. And then, finally, I heard a phrase I understood. It was literally just, ‘I am speaking. Do you understand these words?’

“That one.” I repeated the phrase for them. 

“Oh! That’s wonderful,” said the human with the writing utensil, switching to the language I’d recognized on the recording. “Many people here know that language. Excellent.” He made a note on his paper. 

“My name is Gillar. This is Reeva. Do you remember your name?”

For some reason, that question made me very uncomfortable. 

“No,” I said truthfully.

“Some of your common knowledge may return to you in the next few days. That’s usually how it goes.”

I asked, “How do you know that? Do you know what happened to us?” 

Reeva, the human with the recording device said, “The same thing that happened to everyone on the planet. You landed here and lost all your memories.” She shrugged. If it had happened to everyone here, I could see why she didn’t think that was strange.

“Will they come back?” My human asked.

“Some things will. Most of them won’t. I’m sorry,” said Gillar. “But you’ll adapt. You’ll be well supported here.”

Reeva said, “It’s exciting to get newcomers. You might have new tech that we can salvage. And it never hurts to widen the gene pool.”

Ha. That one had zero tact. But I appreciated her candid answer to the question I’d had about their motives. So this rescue operation wasn’t completely altruistic, but not too nefarious either (I mean, the part about adding to the gene pool bothered me, but I don’t think they necessarily meant me , and I think the humans would probably be fine with it.). 

Gillar shot her a look.

“You can build your own community if you want. But you’d be welcome in the city. Either way, we have the resources to help, so we will.”

He turned to my human. “Do you remember your name?”

He closed his eyes and thought about it. 

Then it came to me. I said, “You’re Dr. Gurathin.”

He wrinkled his brow. “Are you sure about that?”

“Yes. I am.” Just like I knew he was a human and he was a male, I knew he was a Dr. Gurathin.

“Dr. Gurathin. Alright. Yes, that sounds about right.”

The humans took notes and continued the language test for both of us. 

I think I should have been relieved to have that bit of knowledge resurfact. But instead I was disturbed. When I tried to remember anything before coming online after the crash, it felt like trying to look through a thick blanket of fog. I could feel the memories there, but I couldn’t just reach through and access them when I wanted to. I’d have to wait to see what came out on its own. 

And what did it mean that I knew Dr. Gurathin’s name? I must know him. But why would I know more about him than I knew about myself.

I had more answers, but I felt more unsettled than I did before.

~~~

We took food from one of the vehicles and found a place to sit – set back from the road, at the base of a tree, where its large roots protruded from the ground. Gurathin ate. I didn’t. I dug a shallow hole in the dirt with the heel of my foot and buried a couple of nutrient bars. If Gurathin was surprised, he didn’t show it. 

He said, “I don’t think this is sustainable. They will find out sooner or later. I’m not sure why you’re scared to tell them what you are.”

“ I don’t know exactly what I am. What if they react badly?”

“You saved lives yesterday. You said yourself, you’re here to protect us. They have no reason to be afraid of you.”

“Don’t they?” I couldn’t explain how I felt, not to him or to myself. When I thought about myself and what I was, I felt something bad. Like I was bad, or I’d done something bad. There were things behind the fog curtain that I think I was glad I couldn’t remember, but I couldn’t shake the feelings that came out. 

“You’re being paranoid.”

Easy for him to say. “It always pays to be paranoid.”

“How do you know that?”

This argument was annoying me, but he seemed determined to continue. I didn’t have an answer for him, and I hated that. I don’t know how I knew that it paid to be paranoid. I couldn’t remember any specific instance where I’d learned it. Just like I didn’t remember learning his name, or the language we spoke. The information was just there. 

“I don’t care what you think. This is my secret to keep.” My anger didn’t last long, because then I had to say, “Please don’t tell them.”

“Of course not.” He sounded just as annoyed at me as I was at him. “If you insist, I’ll help you keep your secret. But there are limits to how much we can hide.” He put his food wrappings back into their bag and folded it down to put in his pocket. 

“Is there anything else I should know about you? How much of you is inorganic? Maybe we could claim that you’ve been in an accident, and had replacement parts.”

“Not sure if that’ll work. There isn’t much of me that’s organic. Parts of my brain. A few internal organs. Certain portions of skin, most of it on my head.” I patted a few parts of myself that had organic skin. It felt uncomfortable to reveal so much of myself like this. But it felt good too, in a way. He might annoy me a lot, but I trusted Gurathin, and I liked that feeling. I was here to keep him safe, and I guess he was going to try and keep me safe too. (I thought about how he tried to drag me out of the burning ship by himself. If I hadn’t woken up he might have died there with me.)

He furrowed his brow. “And your genitals, I presume.”

“I don’t have genitals.”

He blinked in surprise. “Oh.”

Oh come on, it couldn’t be that strange. Whatever.

“I do have these.” I pulled back my shirt sleeves and lifted the gunports on both my forearms. I’d been listening carefully, I was really sure nobody was around to see. I picked a spot on the ground a few metres away and took a shot. 

“Oh. Huh. You are different.” 

I was glad Gurathin finally agreed.

~~~

Reeva waved us over when we arrived back at the tent cluster.

She told us, “We’re projecting a video story in the gathering tent. You should watch. It’ll explain a lot.”

Gurathin and I looked at each other. I didn’t think he wanted to go, but for no reason I could explain, I really really wanted to watch this so-called ‘video story’. So we went.

It was a depiction of the first ship that crash landed on this planet. The sound and production quality were bad. I think it might have been a recorded play. And the dialogue was limited because it needed to be easily translatable to all the major languages spoken here. The bottom of the screen was cluttered with written text, and even then it was hard to follow. 

But I was rapt. I wanted to know how it would turn out. I mean, obviously some of them survived. But how did they end up reconciling their language and culture barriers? And there were only ten of them, how did that work out? (I could see why expanding the gene pool had always been a pressing concern. Inbreeding would’ve been a problem really quickly.)

Gurathin left to use the washroom. When he came back, he cleared his throat beside me, which I assumed meant he wanted my attention. 

“I think you should see this.”

I followed him out to the edge of the tent cluster. 

There was a lot of activity down by the shipwreck. More tents had been set up nearby. Several crews were working on dismantling the remains of the ship, and I could see humans going in and out of the ship itself via the emergency exits, where they’d built large platforms for better access. 

They were carrying out equipment. Some of it was being taken to the tents nearby, some of it was going directly into a hauling vehicle. 

Reeva had said this was one of their objectives – to salvage new tech from the downed ship. But I didn’t like the fact that they’d done it while we were all occupied in a tent out of view, and the fact that they hadn’t asked us for help. Maybe it was just a coincidence, maybe not.

I said, “I’m going to see if I can help.”

“I’m coming with you,” Gurathin said. 

I ran, but he ran behind me, and I couldn’t go much faster without drawing attention. So I slowed down and resigned myself to investigating this together. 

~~~

When we arrived at the crash site, here finally were the armed guards. They looked bored from far away, but they livened up when we arrived. And by that I mean they stood up taller and put their hands closer to their weapons. 

One of them gestured to another junior guard (judging by her youth and her uniform), standing nearby. She walked at a fast clip to go fetch whoever it was they wanted to deal with us.

Sure, let them try to deal with us.

Gurathin said, “Our personal information is contained in this ship’s systems. We have a right to access whatever you find.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t let you access the wreckage right now. It’s not safe.”

I said, “We can judge our own risk tolerance.”

I calculated over a dozen ways I could disarm the guards, using both lethal and non-lethal methods, but I didn’t want it to come to that. They didn’t seem eager for a fight, and neither was I. They seemed relieved when their superior arrived. 

It was Gillar. I guess his information analysis skills didn’t just extend to languages. Or maybe a language specialist was needed for an operation like this. 

“We want to help,” Gurathin told him as soon as he arrived.

He took a moment to consider our stances and our attitude. We were determined, but not for any destructive or mischievous reasons.

Then I felt it. Something turned on in one of the tents. A system that reached out, that I could read remotely. 

Gurthin’s eyes widened. I could feel him too. Something in his mind connected to the ship’s system, and my mind connected to that. 

Gurathin said, “You’ve just activated the ship. Part of it, anyway.”

“How did you know that?”

Gurathin tapped his head. “I have a device in my mind that can connect directly to its systems. I can feel it.”

He didn’t mention anything about my connection to the ship, or to him. He really meant it when he said he’d help me hide how different I was from them.

Gillar’s brow furrowed. He didn’t like that. That worried me. You’d think he’d be pleased that Gurathin could connect to the ship. 

I said, “We only want more information about who we are. I think that’s only fair.”

“And I can help you access any remaining information stored in the computer. You’re not familiar with it. You might have trouble.”

Gillar seemed to consider us seriously. I could tell he was tempted by Gurathin’s offer to help. They really did value new tech, or whatever it was they thought they might get. 

“Okay. We don’t have much time for salvage. The longer we keep the system powered, the more likely it will be damaged. Help us, and you can keep any information you find about yourselves.”

~~~

We followed Gillar into one of the tents. It was set up away from the crash, but close enough that I could still smell the chemicals in the foam they’d doused on the ship.

Wow, there was a lot of complicated looking machinery in here – pieces of what I assumed were the ship, hooked up to other machines that had the same clunky, primitive-looking design as Reeva’s recording device.

Some technicians in protective gear were tinkering with the machines, monitoring them with hand-held devices. 

The connection I felt to the ship’s systems abruptly cut out, and there was a collective groan of disappointment from the technicians. One of them grabbed a foam sprayer from the corner of the room and doused a part of machinery that had started to smoke. 

Just a suspicion, but I think they were out of their depth here. 

Gillar gestured to the mess. 

“If you can help, please do.”

Gurathin had a sour expression on his face. I think he was thinking the same thing as I was: we might not be able to help them much after all.

We walked all around the tent, inspecting the salvage to see if there was any part of it that we recognized. Then we did the same in the next tent, and the one after that. We stayed out of the tent with the power source that all the machines were wired into. We didn’t have the protective gear, and we were sure we didn’t have any engineering knowledge to help in that department. 

When the technicians managed to get the system up and going again, we went back to the first tent.

There was that connection again. I wasn’t sure where it was coming from, and I’m not sure I needed to know. I didn’t need any kind of display to read the information in the system. I could access the code directly, and I could even store copies in my mind. None of it seemed helpful though, it was all garbled. 

“There. I think I recognize that.” Gurathin stopped in front of a piece of machinery. 

Gillar called over a technician who could speak our language, and together they tinkered with the machine until they managed to activate a display screen.

The technicians all cheered. Nice win for us, I guess.

Someone got a chair for Gurathin. We settled in to try and see what else we could get from this part of the ship.

~~~

“Find anything related to the recyclers,” Gillar instructed. “New patterns. Upgrades. Repair instructions. Ours have seen a lot of wear and tear. If we can salvage the ones on this ship, it would be a huge benefit to us.” 

Yeah a population this small would be hard to maintain without recyclers. I mean, they might survive but it would be in primitive circumstances, and they’d probably end up fighting over resources. It would be a real shitshow.

So we spent the rest of the day and most of the evening working with the technicians to try and copy information from the ship’s systems onto their own technology. 

Someone brought food in the evening, and we all sat outside to eat. Even me. (I found out that yes, apparently I can chew and swallow food. It’ll sit in my lungs until I spit it out. It’s disgusting, but at least I found a way to sustain the illusion that I’m human.)

Late in the evening, after some of the technicians had left to get some sleep, I managed to un-garble one of the files I’d been working on. I accessed the part of the system that Gurathin had unlocked, and I sent it to him. He pulled it up on the display screen.

“It’s a list,” Gurathin said. “The ship’s manifest.”

One of the techs ran to get Gillar. 

“It’s incomplete, there are only thirty one profiles,” he said while he scanned them. It was a list of names and pictures and related information. I’d already read it twice to allay the panic I’d initially felt. Yes, I was on that list. Apparently my name was Eden. No, it didn’t say anything about the fact that I wasn’t human. I was listed as a freehold citizen, just like Gurathin. We weren’t part of the crew, apparently. Our originating system was Royon, and we’d been going to another system called Preservation. 

“Oh.” Gurathin’s eyebrows rose. He looked surprised, and then he smiled. “Look. You and I are married.” The look on his face, I could only describe as delighted. I’d never seen him look like that, at least not since we’d crashed here. It made him look like a different person. 

He said, “Isn’t that nice?” 

Chapter Text

Gillar arrived to see what we’d found. 

“Do we have it on our deck?” He asked one of the techs, who nodded. “Okay, make a copy for records and have the translators pass it around. At least we have some names.”

Gurathin had completely lost interest in the rest of the document. He kept looking at our profiles with that weird kind of dumbstruck look on his face.

Dr. Gurathin. Marital Status: One spouse – Eden

Eden. Marital Status: One spouse – Dr. Gurathin  

He said, “I think I need a minute.” 

He got up and left the tent. I followed because I wasn’t sure what else to do. He started walking towards the sleeping tent. 

It was dark out. I could see the stars in all of their unfamiliar constellations. I’m not sure Gurathin could see very well at all. He stumbled over a rock. Either there was something wrong with his vision, or he was too unfocused to notice, or both. 

I caught his arm before he could fall.

“Ah, sorry,” he said as he steadied himself. He glanced over towards me, then looked away. “Thank you. You’re very strong, aren’t you?” That made him smile, though I wasn’t sure why. He shook his head and kept walking.

I didn’t think he’d asked a question that needed an answer. (Was that called a rhetorical question?)  Anyway, I didn’t answer him. I walked a few steps behind him, watching him, trying to process my own thoughts in response to what I’d just learned. 

He was so happy. There was a shine in his eyes, like he was about to get emotional or something. (I really hoped he wouldn’t.)

I didn’t know how to react. I felt kind of stunned. As though someone had told me definitively that gravity was about to stop working. It couldn’t be real. Could it? How? Why? What did that even mean?

“Could we sit down for a little while?” He said. 

There was a tree nearby with its roots exposed. Not exceptionally comfortable, but Gurathin didn’t seem to care. 

He sat down. I hesitated, but then I sat down beside him.

We didn’t talk. What were we supposed to say?

Gurathin said, “I remember something about you now. Your name’s SecUnit.”

Huh. As soon as he said it, I knew he was right.

“If Eden’s a fake name, I probably didn’t want anyone to know who I really was.”

“I’ll keep your name a secret too, if you want.”

“Thanks. I’d appreciate it.”

On the horizon, a thin gradient of color was starting to form. I could hear the sounds of day fauna adding their noises to the night fauna. It was still dark but it would be morning soon. 

Gurathin must’ve been tired. He didn’t seem inclined to move. We sat and watched more colors appear on the horizon. Some of the clouds caught the sunlight and started turning shades of gold and pink. 

Gurathin said, “That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” 

“Huh. That’s… sentimental.” The remark seemed strange coming from him. He must be very tired. 

I thought he’d be annoyed at my scoffing, but he just shrugged. “It’s not every day that one greets the dawn with the news that one is married. To an exceptionally attractive spouse, no less.”

He reached over and put his hand over mine. He barely managed to touch my glove before I flinched and pulled my hand away. 

It was then that he finally actually waved away the clouds of emotion in his mind and looked at me. Really looked. At my face and my reaction to all of this. Just for a second, when he’d touched me, I’d felt… scared? Horrified? Angry?

He took his hand back as quickly as I had, as though we’d burned each other. His face fell. He stood up and stepped away from me. 

“Sorry. Very sorry, I didn’t mean to…” He looked away from me, then closed his eyes. All the happiness that had been there had vanished. I couldn’t remember knowing him for very long, but all the memories I had led me to believe that Gurathin was a reserved person. Someone who didn’t tend to show much emotion, and even then seemed only to manage to express things in the range of annoyance to anger. And in a few moments he’d gone from joy to… whatever this was. He couldn’t even seem to finish his sentence. He pulled away from me as though I’d physically hit him. He was so bereft.

I said, “Sorry. I don’t know why I did that.” I didn’t know exactly what I’d done, but I didn’t intend to do this to him. 

“Don’t apologize. You… I mean, your reaction isn’t unreasonable. I can see how,” he stopped and swallowed thickly. “From your perspective, this could be a disappointment.” 

“I’m not disappointed.” I could say that with absolute truth. Disappointment would imply that I’d had positive expectations to begin with. I wasn’t expecting any of this whatsoever. “I’m surprised. And I’m confused. We’re married? I don’t know what that means.” That was as close to the truth as I could articulate. I mean, I think I knew what the definition of the word marriage meant, unless there was some kind of language thing that I wasn’t getting. I just didn’t know how it could possibly apply to me. 

He ran his hands through his hair, but otherwise didn’t reply. It took a moment, but I watched him pull himself back together. Like he was putting all of his messy emotions back into a container. Then he seemed more like the human I’d gotten used to. (I wonder where they all went. If he could just make feelings go away, that would be a neat trick. I’d ask him to teach me. But I didn’t think feelings worked that way.)

“Marriage, it means –” he said a few words in another language. I guess he was treating this like a language barrier, and he was going to just throw whatever at it. “It means a partnership. It means living together, usually, and planning to build a life involving one another. Spending a lot of time together.” 

That didn’t sound so bad. We already did that, more or less. 

“And it involves having responsibilities towards one another. Looking out for each other’s safety, and health, and happiness, to a certain extent. A duty of care, I guess you could call it.”

That sounded a little more onerous.

“It’s choosing to be family towards one another. Sometimes choosing to make a family.”

Oh I definitely didn’t like the sound of that. 

“And marriage, as I understand it, is supposed to imply having feelings for one another. Strong feelings.” He looked down. We were both looking away from one another. I caught a whiff of that sadness again, maybe in his posture, or the sound of his exhale. 

He said, “Married partners are supposed to love each other.”

Uh oh. No. Nooo. I felt a tremor of horror and I turned away, like the other side of the horizon was suddenly very interesting. I couldn’t hide my reaction, but I didn’t want to hurt him again.

“But if I don’t remember feeling that way about you, I can’t reasonably expect you to feel the same way about me,” he concluded sadly. “It appears we’ve forgotten how we felt towards each other. Along with everything else.”

I had no idea what to say. I was still buzzing with horror, and I really just wanted to get up and leave. But this was a… situation, I guess… that I couldn’t run away from. Like my name, and my body, and how different I was. If this was a part of my past, it was a part of me, even if I didn’t remember it. But of all the things to come barrelling out of the fog, this was… something else. 

I needed a minute. More than a minute.

He looked in my direction and I think he sensed my feelings – the discomfort telegraphing itself clearly. 

“I don’t see why we need to stay married. If we don’t have feelings towards each other, then what’s the point? We can tell the others that it’s a mistake. Cross a few lines from the records. There’s no sense in holding each other to promises we don’t remember making.”

He waited for me to respond, but I didn’t.

“I’ll still help you keep your secret. We can work together. It’ll be fine. You’re going to be okay.” 

How did he know I was scared? I was frozen. Embarrassingly unable to speak or move. 

“I’ll see you after the sleep cycle. We don’t have to speak of this again if you don’t want to.”

Gurathin turned and started walking back towards the tent. 

~~~

It was a long time before I could move again. The sun was up and bright. I knew I couldn’t just stand there under a tree all day long. 

I went back to the tent where Gurathin was sleeping. I sat on the bed beside him, facing him, watching him breathe. 

He opened his eyes. I doubt he’d actually been sleeping just then. He didn’t say anything. Maybe he was waiting for me to say something. I know I was waiting for me to say something. I still wasn’t quite sure how I was going to say this.

“Maybe we’ll remember how we felt about each other. Or maybe we won’t. But we did feel that way. And we did make promises. We were important to each other. I don’t see why that should change just because we don’t remember how or why that happened. I guess we’re married. I don’t see why we shouldn’t stay married.”

“You don’t want to be married. That’s a good reason not to be.” 

It was probably obvious how I felt, but I still hated that he could read me so easily. I didn’t like being so… seen. Well, two could play at that game. 

I observed, “But you want to be married.”

“We both have to want it in order for this to work.”

I was still scared of all of this, but I said, “I want to try being married. Maybe just for a little while. I must’ve liked it, or I wouldn’t have stayed married. Maybe I’ll like it again. Besides, we do a lot of that stuff already. We’re together, and we keep each other safe, and we feel…” I thought about the look on his face when he looked over at me. Like this was the happiest day of his life. He felt that about me. Then I thought about the pain on his face when I pulled away. I don’t think it had gone anywhere. I think it was still there inside him somewhere. I did that too. 

I thought about something he’d said. Duty of care. That resonated with me. I felt like I understood that. I liked it better when he was happy. Thinking about hurting him hurt me too. That’s some kind of caring, isn’t it?

“We feel responsible for each other, don’t we?”

“Yes. We do.”

I didn’t feel as strongly as I think he wished I felt. I didn’t want to disappoint him. This was all I had for now. All I could do was offer it.

“Is that good enough to start with?” 

“Yes, I think we can work with that.”

Chapter Text

Because Gurathin and I could both speak multiple languages, we were pulled temporarily from the salvage operation to help orient the crash victims. 

The salvage operation had produced more results. We found out the name of the ship. 

Daydream. A small commercial cruiser. (We didn’t find any other human remains, so I think thirty-eight had been the full complement. But we also didn’t find any full records to prove this.) 

And we identified the captain. Shirika. She’d been in one of the medical vehicles, recovering from lung damage. Now that she was awake, we helped Gillar inform her of her duties. 

Captain Shirika was charged with the responsibility of making decisions for the group. The city council would consider her our spokesperson. Our group, the crash survivors from this ship, would be treated as our own political entity, more or less. That’s the way it had worked with all the other crashes. There had been seven before us, we would be the eighth. Each ship had had its own cluster of languages and cultures, so it made sense for them to maintain some autonomy. (Did that mean there were seven scripted dramas about each crash? Apparently dramas, plays, and music about all of them, and I was really looking forward to seeing those.) But the groups, as of now, were highly co-operative. They’d been able to agree on a set of rules that applied over the whole city, and they pooled resources through the city council. 

Once we were more acclimatized to the city, we could apply to join any other polity we wanted to. Or, as Gillar had mentioned, we could leave and establish homes outside the city (there were also three satellite towns and twenty independent homesteads). 

But for now, this would be our group, and Captain Shirika would be our leader. Gurathin explained this to her in a language I didn’t understand. (Apparently I didn’t speak the common language that most of the other members of our group spoke. More evidence that I was some kind of outsider. That felt great.) 

I was pulled away to explain our situation to the last human I’d rescued. The one with the amputated leg. Dev was his name. He exuded an air of hostility towards me. Maybe that was just his general personality. 

He asked, “What are the rules? And what are the punishments?” 

His friend, Martala, was still with him. She put her hand on his forearm, in a kind of un-asked-for, steadying gesture. It worked. Dev calmed down.

“I want to know where the lines are, so I don’t cross them.”

“I think we’re still working on those. Ask Captain Shirika.”

Another medic approached me after I’d left Dev. I translated what Dev had told me. The medic nodded while she took notes on her clipboard. 

“Many of you will be struggling with trauma related to the crash. Arrival can be overwhelming, especially when it’s compounded by existing trauma.” She looked pointedly up at me. “The medical team is even available to you, if you find yourself having difficulty adjusting to life here.”

I said, “Okay. But I’m fine.” I got the infuriating sense that she didn’t believe me. 

She said, “We’re here to support all of you. The entire settlement benefits from having more people who feel they belong here. If you have emotions that are overwhelming, we can help. All you have to do is ask.”

Good to know, but no thanks, I thought but didn’t say. Then she finally left.

Later, while Gurathin and I were walking back towards the salvage tents, we shared our observations about the group. He told me what Captain Shirika had said, and I told him about Dev. 

“One of the medics wanted to know if I’d been witness to any violence after the crash occurred,” Gurathin said. “Apparently some of the patients presented with injuries that weren’t consistent with the crash. Evidence points to a fight with various weapons involved, but I didn’t remember anything like that.”

I said, “No, neither do I.” I knew I’d have to investigate further, but that piece of information gave me a very bad feeling. 

~~~

The next day we reported to the salvage tents to continue with the search. More data banks had been retrieved from the wreckage. The techs assigned one to me and Gurathin.

This batch of data seemed familiar to me. When I started teasing it apart, I found out that it was video footage. Almost entirely scrambled, except for small clips, mostly footage of empty parts of the ship. I caught Gurathin’s attention and we worked on it together.

We intuitively pieced together portions of the data. A few large chunks started coming together. Finally, we had enough visual data to form a visual feed. We put it up on the display screen.

Empty ship. Empty ship. Humans doing human things. (This felt eerily familiar.) We were supposed to be looking for usable information about the ship’s tech or the humans’ identities, but none of this seemed very relevant.

Then we saw the fight that Gurathin had been asked about.

It was me. I’d happened to those humans. It was only a 3.7 second clip, but in that clip I managed to cause ten injuries, all of them severe. 

My performance reliability levels stumbled and kept slipping down by increments. My adrenal levels jumped. I was scared, but at the same time I knew that was stupid because I only had myself to be scared of. There was something else too, something older, something I couldn’t identify. I wished I could make it stop. 

As soon as Gurathin realized what he was seeing, he tossed a command into the system to erase the entire file. 

One of the techs stopped behind us. “Find anything?” 

Gurathin huffed. “No. I thought I found a pattern, but it turned out to be nothing.” He shook his head and stood up. “I think we need a break.”

I followed him to the yard outside, stopping at the well so he could fill his cup. Then we walked slowly towards the forest. Just stretching our legs, like all the other humans did several times a day. 

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do except follow him. I could run away, I guess? Would that be for my sake or theirs? 

Gurathin seemed calm. He wasn’t that calm, his heartbeat was elevated. As soon as we were past the tree line, he said, “No one else saw. It’ll be fine.”

We came to a log. I scanned the area as we sat down, making sure no one was close enough to hear us. 

I said, “Why did you do that? I’m the one who attacked them. It was me.” I mean, the bigger question is, why did I do that? But I don’t think he could answer that any more than I could.

He took a sip of water from the pouch he had with him. “I’m sure you must’ve had a good reason.”

“How do you know that?”

“You’re my spouse.” He shrugged. “I wouldn’t marry someone who would go on a senseless rampage. I don’t need to know much about you to know that you’re not a terrible person.”

He seemed very sure. He didn’t have the recording of what I’d just seen. I replayed it in my mind, noting how easy it was for me to cause so much pain. What did it say about him that he could just ignore that?

“Are you sure,” I began, trying to choose my words carefully so I didn’t insult him. “Are you sure you’re not the kind of person who would lie for someone you cared about, even if they were a terrible person?”

He threw up his hands. “Yes, maybe we’re both terrible people. Perhaps we should embark on a life of crime. Shall we go find some nice homes to burgle? You steal the valuables, and I’ll find a black market to sell them on.”

Okay, he was insulted, but I couldn’t help but appreciate his loyalty. His faith in me actually did make me feel better, a little. Like I wasn’t such an outcast here.

I felt some of the tension leave my body. “That actually sounds like fun,” I said. “But why think small? Look at all the supply vehicles hanging around here. They seem easy to operate.”

He smiled. “What a wonderful match we make.”

~~~

I didn’t want to go back to the salvage tents or the recovery encampment. Gurathin was confident that that video footage didn’t mean anything, but I still didn’t believe that. I still felt… wrong. I felt bad about myself. Like maybe there was something worse in my past than what happened on that video. I didn’t want to be around these humans if I was a danger to them. 

I told Gurathin, “I might take a walk. Make sure everyone is okay.”

He glanced towards me. I noticed he rarely looked right at my face. Most of the other humans did automatically, seeking eye contact. Maybe that’s why I was more comfortable with him than with any of them. Then I remembered that we were married. I guess he must’ve learned what my preferences were. The realization that I was comfortable around him made me feel… uncomfortably seen? That  was just weird.

He asked, “Do you think you’ll be inclined to come back?”

“Yes. I do. You don’t have to worry that I’ll just leave you.”

I’d just told him that I would uphold my duty of care for him. It annoyed me that he would think I would abandon him so quickly.

“I’m not worried you’ll leave me. I just wanted to know if you want me to go with you. Not just for now. Long-term. They said we could establish a homestead if we wanted. If you have to force yourself to come back, if you’re that uncomfortable here. Maybe we could start thinking about ways for you to live outside of the city, away from prying eyes.”

I hadn’t thought about that. I just assumed I would be here with these humans. Stuck here, more or less. It had never occurred to me that I could prioritize my own needs.

“Maybe. I don’t know how that would work, or what we would do for resources. But… maybe.” Again, it made me feel weird that he cared. But it reminded me that I’d said I would care about him too. 

“Would you be okay living away from the rest of the humans? We can’t go if it won’t work for us both.” Something I’d noticed about humans, these humans at least, is that they liked to congregate in groups. 

He considered this. “I don’t think I’m the kind of person who needs much company. If I have you, that’s probably enough.” He looked away, smiling to himself. “It might be nice, actually.”

I was glad this plan made him happy. It made me happy too. That made me think that maybe this might work after all. 

~~~

When I came back, I found that a few smaller tents had been raised, in addition to the larger ones. Gurathin was sitting beside one, arms crossed, asleep on a chair. 

I tapped Gurathin’s shoulder. He woke up with a start.

“Oh! You’re back. Look.” He gestured to the new tent. “I informed them we were married, and requested our own tent for privacy. I didn’t think they’d bring it so quickly.” 

We went inside. There was only one bedroll, big enough for two people, in the middle of the room. That was fine since I didn’t need to sleep anyway. Gurathin had already brought over the bag with our stuff in it. Simple, utilitarian, and private. 

“This is nice. Thank you for requesting it.”

“You’re welcome.” He seemed so pleased that I liked it. “They told me there are many perks for married people, especially those who choose to have or adopt children. They’re very pro-natal.” He shook his head. “Doesn’t seem fair to singles, but that’s their policy. I suppose we might as well take advantage.”

He cracked a yawn. “I’m turning in,” he said. 

On the other side of the bedroll, he took out the sleeping clothes they’d given us. He turned his back to me, stripped, and put them on. He’d never done that before – usually he went to the dressing room outside of the showers to change. But I guess we were married, and a certain amount of familiarity wasn’t inappropriate. He didn’t act like it was a big deal, so maybe it wasn’t.

“I borrowed this.” He pulled something else out of our bag. “It’s a paper book. A translation of the story of the third shipwreck. You seemed interested in the history of the place. I thought you’d like it.”

I think I only liked the historical presentation because it was a visual drama, but a book might be nice too. I hadn’t thought of that. 

“Thank you,” I said.

He did that thing where he half turned away to smile, as though being happy were somehow unacceptable. I wonder if he did that for my sake. I guess emotional displays did tend to unnerve me (unless they were in a story like the ones in that historical drama). 

He must’ve done all the hygiene stuff earlier, because he tucked himself right in. 

There was a globe light hanging on the tent ceiling. I found the switch to turn it down, then I sat up in bed beside him to read. 

A paper book – that took a little getting used to. But I figured it out. And after I started reading, I found a curious feeling starting to settle in. This was all just so nice. I liked the quiet, and it felt nice to be away from all the other humans. And the fact that Gurathin was beside me felt right somehow. 

Judging from his breathing, Gurathin wasn’t sleeping yet. When I looked over, he opened his eyes, as though he knew I was watching him. He looked at me, and my book, and the room and the globe light. 

“We’ve done this before, haven’t we?” He asked. “This feels familiar.”

I said, “Yeah. It does.”

“Hm. It’s good to feel something familiar, after all that we’ve gone through. Thank you.”

I hadn’t done anything other than be here with him, so I didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t seem to need a response anyway.

I started reading again. The paper book felt awkward in my hands, and I realized it wasn’t the book, it was my hands. I put down the book to take off my gloves. 

They were repairing themselves, but only slowly. Parts of the inside of the glove had gotten lodged between my joints. I picked out what I could. I’d have to leave them open to the air for a while, it might help the repair process. I should probably get new gloves. Or figure out how to get away with not wearing gloves. I didn’t really like them anyway.

“May I look?” Gurathin was apparently still awake.

I bristled at first, but I reminded myself that he knew my secret already. He wouldn’t try to hurt me or use it against me. 

“Sure.”

He stood to turn the light up, then sat down cross-legged, facing me. I showed him my hands. He took a bottle of antiseptic from our bag, sprayed his hands, then applied some to mine. Yeah, that’s maybe what I should have done first.

“May I?” He asked again. 

I let him touch my hands. Gingerly, he turned them over. Tested some of my joints. It wasn’t so bad, really.

“I think I know about this. I could make repairs if I had the right tools.”

“Huh.” I guess Gurathin wasn’t just my spouse, he was my repair person too?

He asked, “Do you have any other injuries?” 

“Not many. I can turn down my pain so I don’t feel them.” 

“That’s probably not the best way to deal with that,” he said. “I’d like to look at those too. If you won’t let any of the doctors here examine you, you should at least let me help.”

I hesitated, but my discomfort was outweighed by the fact that I liked this feeling that I had right now. That he cared and wanted to help, and that I could trust him. It felt unfamiliar, but I guess I must’ve had it before. Maybe having a spouse wouldn’t be so bad after all. I was starting to see the appeal. 

“Okay.” 

I took off my shirt. “There’s one here.” I pointed to the gash on the upper side of my chest, close to my shoulder. “And here.” There was another one lower on my lower back. “Falling debris, I think. They’re both just flesh wounds,” I told him. “My organic parts can heal on their own.”

Gurathin didn’t touch these ones, though he did apply antibacterial spray. “If any of your inorganic parts are damaged, will they repair themselves too?” 

“If I have a repair module for them, I think so. But I don’t have repair modules for everything. I don’t think every injury will fix itself.” 

I had another wound on my leg, just above my knee. The trousers that the medics had provided wouldn’t hike up that far, so I took them off. I was just wearing underwear now. (I didn’t really need it, but as far as I knew most humans wore them, so I might as well.) I bent my leg up so Gurathin could look at it. 

“This one is worse,” he observed. 

“It’s deeper, but it’s not serious.” A sliver of metal had lodged itself into a muscle group, severing a few strands. “The surrounding tissue makes up for it.” Its negative effect on my performance reliability was only about 0.00001%, so negligible. It stung, but like I said, I could just turn down the pain.

Gurathin said, “I’m going to start looking for tools that I could use to fix it. You shouldn’t have to live with permanent damage.” 

Even now, I found it oddly surprising that he cared. Surprising but nice.

“Okay. Thank you.”

After Gurathin had applied antibac, I put the leg down. I watched him run his gaze over me once, before he looked away politely. 

He said, “No genitals whatsoever?” 

“None.” That was one less organ to worry about in a fight. 

“Hm. I thought I’d be disappointed. But there are other things we can do. That part of our relationship I can understand.”

He had that half-smile on his face again, but I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. 

“What part?”

“The sexual part. I assume we were intimate before. I hope that when we’re more comfortable with each other, we’ll be intimate again.”

I froze. 

When we found out we were married, Gurathin did say that he found me attractive. I guess I hadn’t thought about what that implied. He wanted to have sex with me.

I got off the bed, stood up, and dressed myself as quickly as I could, which was really fast. I stepped away from him, almost backing up into the tent wall.

“What’s wrong?” Gurathing stood up too. My reaction had obviously startled him badly.  

“When you defined marriage, you didn’t put sex on the list.”

“Well no. Sex doesn’t define marriage, but I thought it was usually a part of it. I just… I assumed.” He shook his head. He seemed really upset now, he was reacting to my comment almost as badly as I’d reacted to his. “I don’t know why. I’m sorry.” 

“You assumed?” I looked around at the tent. Oh wow, I’d been stupid. “Is this what this is? A private tent with one bed. Me with no clothes. And the book, was that just to endear me to you? You assumed we would have sex?” 

Oh I was getting angry now, and so was he. 

“ I did this because you’re my spouse and I wanted to make you happy.” He hissed, mindful that any human passing could probably hear us if we raised our voices. “What kind of person do you think I am? I wasn’t trying to trick you, or coerce you. I just thought…” He squeezed his eyes closed and put his hand over them. He took a deep breath. 

“I thought that intimacy would be something that you would want too. Maybe not tonight, but at some point. It was a faulty assumption. I was wrong, clearly, and I’m sorry. Please don’t assume the worst of me.”

My anger was draining away, but I still didn’t know what to say.

He was taking deliberately deep breaths, obviously trying hard to keep himself calm. He shook his head again. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.” He took his clothes out of our shared bag. “I’ll go sleep in the communal tent. I’m sorry for making you feel uncomfortable.”

I watched him put on his shoes. This wasn’t such a good idea after all. I didn’t think he was just talking about sharing the tent. It sounded like he was talking about our marriage. I realized that he’d done this before. When I first pulled my hand away, while we were sitting together under the tree. He immediately assumed that meant our relationship was over. Like he interpreted any small rejection as a big rejection. He was terminally insecure. Had I done that to him? What was our relationship like before this?

Marriages were supposed to be about making each other happy. So far we’d managed to anger and annoy one another. We’d hurt each other’s feelings. I didn’t think marriages were supposed to be like that. Maybe he was right to pull away.

 He turned to go, but I couldn't let him. I followed him and put my arms around him from behind. Lightly. Just enough to stop him. 

I said, "Don't go." Maybe I didn't know why I wanted him to stay, but I felt immediately that if he left that would be Bad. If he left me I couldn't protect him. He'd be out there with all the other humans. But he wasn't just another human, he was *my* human. He was my… something. I couldn't remember the word.

He was mine. I was his. I didn't know what that meant: I just knew I couldn’t  let him pull away from me, when there was a high probability he might never want to come back.

“I’m sorry. I think I messed up. I think that relationships don’t come easy for me. Maybe for either of us. Whatever we had must have been… exceptional. It would be awful to just let it end.” He shifted in my arms, some of the tension leaving him. “I can’t promise that I’ll ever be able to give you all the things that a human partner could give you. But I made a commitment to you. And I care about you.” I’d debated whether or not to say that, but it was true. I might not feel as strongly about him as a partner was supposed to feel, but I did care, at least a little. I wanted to tend that feeling and make it grow. “You’re important to me. I want to try and make it work. So don’t go, please.”

Chapter Text

The next morning, when Gurathin woke up, he still seemed wary of me. Kind of sad. I didn’t like that. I wish I could take back what I’d said last night. I didn’t want to have sex with him, but I didn’t have to be an asshole about it. He’d backed off as soon as he realized how I felt. 

I said, “I read the book. It was good.” 

The third crash had landed far away from here, and the survivors had had to travel quite a ways to reach the settlement. They’d had more theories about why we’d all crashed and lost our memories. Their tech, before it burned out, had recorded images of an object orbiting a wormhole. It didn’t look like any ship, station, or satellite that the crew recognized. They’d also recorded energy readings coming from it, including a large burst of energy that occurred just before the ship was drawn into the wormhole. (Did we go through a wormhole? If we did, I don’t remember.) If this object had caused the catastrophic systems failure and the humans’ memory loss, they had nothing to indicate why this would be. Was it a human weapon? Were they at war with someone? Some crew members even theorized that it could be an alien artifact. There were no definitive answers, but it was interesting to contemplate.

Gurathin said, “I’m glad you liked it.” There. He seemed to warm up a little. He really did like doing things for me. Maybe he liked feeling appreciated. “I can get you some more, if you want.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

There was that smile. Was that all it took to make him happy? Maybe I wasn’t the best spouse right now, but I think I could get better.

~~~

That day we helped translate for the human in the medical vehicle who’d just woken up. 

“How is the ship? Can we repair it?”

“I don’t think so,” Gurathin informed her. “We put the fire out. Mostly. But we’ve only been able to salvage parts of it.”

“A fire?” She said, “I don’t think that ship is supposed to burn.”

“The, ah. The melt. The parts of the ship that superheated. We’ve been able to douse them with coolant.”

Her eyes got wide. “I need to see it. Now.” She tried to get out of bed. 

“Hold on, I’ll get a mobility chair,” one of the medics said.

“No. It has to be now.” She was really agitated. Her leg was too injured to stand on, but I had a feeling she would try to crawl all the way there if she needed to. 

I held onto one of her arms. “Okay. I’ll help you. Let’s go.”’

When we saw the ship, she almost started crying. 

“It’s the Daydream. E51 class commercial cruiser. SarBrook designed hull, Korolev engine, high density core.” She sniffled. “I can’t remember my own name, but I remember that ship. I don’t know why.” From the way she was reacting to seeing it in pieces like this, I would guess that she loved that ship. She must’ve been the engineer. 

When we got closer, she got even more upset. A part of the melt had burned through the coolant foam. It was hissing and bubbling and making a nasty smell.

“Why are you all so close? This is dangerous! You have to get out of here!” she yelled at the techs working on the salvage. Nobody understood what she was saying, but they could clearly tell she was upset.

Gillar noticed the hubbub and came over to see. 

“This crash is dangerous! You need to get far away.”

“I think she’s the engineer from the ship,” I explained. “She still remembers details about it.”

“What’s going to happen? How far do we need to go?” Gillar asked.

“I don’t know. How far does the wind go from here? If the heat gets to the core, there’s going to be an explosion. And the smoke will be toxic. Extremely toxic. When it settles on the ground, and gets into the water, everything around here will die. Anyone who breathes it will die.”

 “There’s a city less than two kilometres away. And their water supply runs right beside us.”

“They need to leave. If it’s been heating up for days, I don’t know how long we have. I’m surprised it hasn’t exploded already.”

Gillar’s eyes widened. “It would take days to mobilize everyone. And there are a lot of people who won’t leave, and the ones who do leave and resettle somewhere else will be a lot worse off than we were before. Is there any other way? Can we contain the explosion? How big will it be?”

The engineer shook her head. “I don’t know. In the atmosphere, I don’t know.”

“Can we remove the core?” I asked. “Or shut it down?”

She closed her eyes to think. “Yes. There’s a kill switch. It kills the ship. But I guess it’s already dead.” She looked at the ship, her eyes welling. “Does anyone have a datapad?”

Gillar took paper and a clipboard from a passing tech. 

While the engineer drew a symbol, Gillar told the tech to go get the ship’s schematics they found.

“This is the symbol on the kill switch,” said the engineer. She studied the ship’s schematics. “This is the room it’s in. On the data bank here.” She tapped a spot.

“We can’t get to that room. This corridor is melted. This one is too hot to traverse.” Gillar pointed out the two corridors leading to the target. “Even with heat protection, no one could survive that.”

“Do you have any bots?” 

“None that are sophisticated enough for a task like this.”

I said, “You have me.”

Gurathin looked at me like he wanted to kill me. 

“I’m not a bot, but I’m pretty sure I’m not human either.” I took off my gloves and pulled back the sleeves of my shirt. 

So I just wasted a lot of time trying to keep this a secret. This was an emergency. Whatever I was, I thought I could help.

~~~

The techs had to scramble to find protective gear in my size. Gurathin helped me put it on. It wouldn’t completely protect me from the heat, but it would keep me from getting crispy. I wanted some skin left after all of this. 

I’d memorized the ship’s schematics. Theoretically, it should be an in-and-out trip. Hopefully the target kill switch would be recognizable and functional, and it would do what the engineer claimed it would do. 

Before I could leave, Gurathin gripped me by the forearm. He still seemed kind of pissed off that I’d volunteered for this. Pissed off and scared. I didn’t want to think about that right now, because I didn’t want to get all sappy.

He said, “Be careful. I need you to come back, okay?”

After my intention not to get sappy, here I was feeling all emotional. I wanted to tell him that after all the trouble we’d gone through, I wasn’t about to just leave him all alone. I was just getting used to this marriage stuff. And I didn’t want him to feel worried and scared about me because that made me feel worried and scared about me and I wasn’t used to that. I don’t think I was used to feeling valued. It felt strange and embarrassing. But I appreciated it, and I was going to try really hard to make it back for his sake. 

I said, “Okay.”

The techs pulled a stair ladder up to the entrance I would use. I climbed it, took a deep breath, and ran into the ship.

~~~

Well. They warned me it would be hot. 

Once I passed the area where the techs had managed to excavate a bunch of databases, I had to run through a section of corridor that they’d filled with foam to try and contain the heat. 

I burst through the foam barrier. A rush of hot air flew past me into the rest of the ship. (They knew that was going to happen. All the techs had cleared the area.)

Then I was right in the middle of the heat. Yeah. It was hot. I didn’t expect it to be so hot that it would hurt right away. I closed my eyes, opening them in brief blinks, just long enough to see where I was going. 

I could feel where the heat was coming from – part of the melt had reached one side of the floor here. I hugged the other wall while I ran. 

I can run really fast when I have the right motivation. I made it to the engine room pretty quickly. Then I found the switch with the symbol the engineer had drawn. 

It was behind a clear protective case. Locked. Because of course. 

I smashed into it with my fist. I flipped the switch. 

This part of the ship still had power, probably because it was hooked up directly to the core. A display screen above the kill switch said: 

Emergency Core Neutralization Activated. Continue?

I wanted to scream YES! But if I opened my mouth to take a breath, I’d cook my lungs. 

There was a button beside the switch. It started flashing. I pressed it.

The display screen had a readout: Core Reaction Capacity. 99.98%

The neutralization happened pretty fast. The engineer had described it as a flood of chemicals, though she didn’t know exactly what they were. When the readout read 0.00%, the display and the wall went dark. 

Sorry, ship. I thought. Your engineer sends her love.

Before my feet could melt into the floor, I ran the fuck out of there.

~~~

I was awake while they pulled off my gear and my clothes and started applying coolant to what was left of my skin. Hey, I still had eyes so it couldn’t be that bad, right?

“Core reaction capacity at 0.0%,” I said to Gillar, who was watching nearby. He needed to know that I’d finished the task I’d been given, so he didn’t have to evacuate the entire city unnecessarily.

Gurathin was there. He had antibac spray. 

“Hey,” I said to him. “I made it back for you. Happy now?”

“You made it back, but look at the state of you, you asshole,” he huffed. “But yes, I’m happy. Thank you.”

Then –

Performance reliability at 56%

Stasis initiated for emergency repair sequence

Chapter Text

They moved me into the city for my recovery. I was in a medical centre with a room looking out into a grassy park with a lot of walking paths where recovering patients could get some gentle exercise. 

I couldn’t walk until Gurathin finished repairing my foot. I was lucky I had two, so he could compare them and try to re-fashion the damaged one after the whole one. If I hadn’t, they might’ve had to invent new feet for me. Their tech was so old and weird, they’d probably put rolling balls on them, like the ones on the shoes that were so popular with the kids in the park. 

“This way,” he said, tapping the side of my foot to get me to tilt it for him. He had to do that a lot to find the right angle to see what he was doing. Just a tiny tap, with gloves on. It didn’t escape me that he was trying to touch me as little as possible. He didn’t know where the line was, because we hadn’t talked about it since a few nights ago, before the accident. I appreciated his caution, but this was getting silly.

“You’re just fixing my foot. You can touch it if you need to.”

He pulled his magnifying goggles up to look at me. 

“Great. Thanks. But I’m almost done. You could’ve told me that earlier and saved me a lot of trouble.”

He pushed my foot from side to side, apparently just to prove that he could. Then he put his goggles back down, took my foot by the heel and tilted it up so he could continue working. 

Not much longer after, he closed a few joints and pulled his goggles off.

“It won’t be complete until I can fashion new parts for those ligaments. But with protective footwear you should be able to walk on it. No running, and no lifting heavy objects.”

I said, “Thank you,” and I meant it. I really, really appreciated having him here with me.

He smiled and waved away my thank-you as though it were an overly gracious compliment. “I’m glad I could help you.”

They’d given me a protective cast, but I hadn’t used it yet. I wasn’t quite ready to go out. They all knew about me now. I’d even seen some of them peeking in, heard them whispering in the hallways until Gurathin stepped out and said grouchy things to them until they went away.  

Plus I looked like shit. There was that. Most of my skin was still patchy with repairing tissue, and none of my hair had grown back. 

“Do you still think I’m exceptionally attractive?” I teased. 

Gurathin smiled and looked down. “Do you want an honest answer?”

I hesitated, but I said, “Yes, actually.”

He shrugged. “I do. You’re not like anyone else here.” He said that like it was a good thing, and not a bad thing. It didn’t occur to me that it could be good to be different. 

“Exceptional. And still attractive.” He didn’t elaborate further, which was probably for the best. I don’t think either of us were there yet. 

And before I could even put on my cast, Gillar came in, and I had a conversation I’d been dreading.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were a SecUnit?” He didn’t beat around the bush.

Gurathin stood up and moved closer to me. I wish he wouldn’t scowl at him like that, it probably wasn’t helping.

“Is that what I am? I thought it was my name.”

“You knew you weren’t human, and you deliberately tried to hide it. Both of you did.”

Gurathin said, “We were concerned you might all react badly. Were we wrong?”

He crossed his arms. “No, you’re not wrong. Some people here know what a SecUnit is. Almost everyone from the sixth crash, the one that brought me here. A few of us even recognize that company name on your chest.”

He nodded towards the logo. 

“Okay. So. What exactly is a SecUnit?” I asked him.

“Are you being deliberately obtuse?”

“No. I honestly don’t know. Why am I like this? What am I supposed to be?”

He sighed and shifted on his feet. 

“The generally understood definition of the word SecUnit is ‘violent machine.’ A bot with human components, made to follow orders. Mostly used to guard things and shoot people. Highly dangerous. But none of us have direct memory of knowing any SecUnits.” He shrugged. “You’ve shown no indication of being dangerous since you’ve been here. A lot of people can vouch for that.” 

“Okay. That’s good.” I still didn’t think I’d receive a warm welcome here. I wondered if Gurathin was right, and we should think about moving away.

But he continued. “You haven’t watched the video drama yet, but we have laws here about keeping our past lives in the past. The third ship was a prison ship, the Olvidar . The inhabitants at the time tried to confer a lower class to the prisoners, based on the crimes that they managed to find in their records. There was almost a large-scale violent conflict over it.”

(That sounded really interesting and I couldn’t wait to see the video, actually.) 

“You’re a perfect candidate for protection under the Olvidar laws. You and the raiders from your crash.”

“Raiders?”

“The eight survivors who weren’t on the ship’s manifest. Based on the video footage we just recovered, it seems clear they were there with violent intent. They would’ve killed a lot of the others if you hadn’t intervened.”

Oh. I guess Gurathin couldn’t exactly erase all the footage of me. I never had a chance of keeping this a secret anyway. He’d been right. Again.

“But, now that they’re here, none of that is relevant. The integration committee will erase their records, with the added note that they be given extra physical and mental health support. They seem to be doing well enough already. You’ll all be given aptitude tests to see what kind of skills and common knowledge you can still access. You can choose what roles you want to pursue. As far as we’re concerned, you’re allowed to be brand new people.”

“And in my case…?”

“You’re allowed to be a new person, too. If anyone has a problem with that, they can take it up with the Common Law Office.”

Huh. I was impressed they were allowing me to be a person at all. 

Gurathin asked, “Does everyone know it’s a SecUnit?”

He nodded. “It made the flysheets in every language. Sorry. This settlement isn’t big, getting a SecUnit is one of the most interesting bits of news we’ve had in awhile.”

“Okay. Then I want to change my name on the record to SecUnit.” Eden was okay, but SecUnit felt more accurate. (Not exactly accurate, but if I had another name that was, I couldn’t remember it.)

He shrugged. “You can if you want. Report to Captain Shirika when you’re well enough to leave. She’ll know more about the steps you need to take.”

“We’ll do that,” said Gurathin.

“Oh. And thank you. For neutralizing the ship’s core, I mean. You saved a lot of lives. And a lot of hardship – we don’t have to pick up and resettle somewhere else. The council wants to formally thank you.”

“ No, ” Gurathin and I said at the same time.  

“No thank you. I don’t need that.”

“I thought you’d say that. I’ll tell them you don’t want a fuss. But what you did was leaked to the flysheets too, so everyone knows. You might get some unexpected gifts and attention.”

“Thank you for warning me.” I guess gratitude was better than hostility. I was glad I’d have Gurathin around to make grumpy noises at anyone who bothered me. 

He shook his head. “You’re welcome. I hope your healing goes well, SecUnit. Dr. Gurathin.” He nodded to him. He looked like he was about to leave, but he stopped and said, “And are you two actually married?”

Gurathin looked down. I watched his face and I said, “Yes. We are.”

I liked his smile when I said that. It made me smile too.

~~~

The first few hours and days of my stay on the planet felt like they took a long time. I mean there was a lot there. Confusion, stress and pain. Then we were past all of that. We started to feel more settled. I started to feel more settled – into this community, and my role here. I started to feel like I was more settled into myself . 

Things got easier. It felt as though life took on a kind of dream-like quality. It was like a story. A nice one. 

We got our own domicile in the same building as the other crash survivors from our ship. I was assigned to the polity-neutral security team. Gurathin worked as a translator in the central information repository. He took up small repairs in his spare time, and I consumed every video, recording, and paper book I could get access to. 

We built a life.

~~~

When my hair grew back, Gurathin asked, “Is that as long as it gets?”

“I think so. Why? Do you think it should be longer?”

“No, not at all. It looks quite nice.” The appreciative expression on his face seemed genuine. “I just noticed and thought that was interesting. You’ll never have to cut it, which is convenient.”

Gurathin noticed a lot of things about me. He noticed what chair I liked to sit on (It had extra padding). He noticed what kinds of books and videos I liked best. He noticed when I’d had enough talking or socializing, with him or with anyone else, and he’d make sure I had extra space without making a big weird deal out of it. 

Gurathin noticed me like it was his job to notice me. And after a while, I started noticing him too. His moods, his habits. The things he liked and the things he didn’t. We didn’t agree on everything and we argued a lot, but with effort and practice, we settled into the space and time and life that we had together, like the fingers of two hands laced together.

Right from the start he seemed to like to do things to make me happy. Which was nice, but kind of weird to get used to. I don’t think I was very good at making myself happy, and I never made it a priority. He did. 

So I decided that maybe I could try doing the same for him. Make him sweet tea. Try to find more of those dry, technical manuals on the topics that he liked. I learned how to cook so that I could make meals for him on days when I got home early. (The division of cleaning and other chores was an interesting process. But I could directly measure, to the millisecond, how much time each household task would take. We got the hang of it.)

I noticed how much he liked closeness, and how much he liked touch, even though he never asked for it. He liked it when I sat with him while he was eating, and sometimes while he was reading. We both liked sitting outside on the pergola in the evening when the weather was nice, watching the sunset and the stars.

He always slept better when I sat in bed beside him. He always moved towards me in his sleep. Sometimes he’d put his arm on my leg, or stretch it out over both of them. The first time it happened I thought it was kind of funny. Of all the things a SecUnit was supposed to be for, I think being used as a pillow was low on the list.   

One time, after Gurathin had one of his nightmares and he was halfway back asleep, he rolled right up against me, tucking his forehead up against my thigh. I was surprised that it didn’t make me uncomfortable. The first thing I noticed, when he did it, was how much it calmed him down, right away. I noticed his reaction more than I noticed my own. 

Here’s the thing about our relationship. Making me happy gave Gurathin joy. And I was starting to realize how nice it was for me to make him happy.

It was like, focusing on each other’s happiness was more rewarding than pursuing our own. It was a reciprocal loop. 

(A dangerous one, I realized. It would be easy to get lost focusing on someone else, or to be taken advantage of by someone who was happy to take and take and never give anything back. You could get seriously hurt that way, and I wonder if that’s something that had happened to Gurathin, if that’s the way he always approached relationships.)

So I decided to try something that I knew made him happy.

I started to experiment with touch. 

~~~

I started with casual touch. The times when he would naturally lean towards me, I would lean in towards him. Shoulders bumping when he showed me an interesting bit from a flysheet. Hands brushing at the table. Thighs touching while we were sitting side by side, sometimes. All I had to do was not automatically pull away. When he flinched away from me one time, I said, “It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

He liked that. It was amazing how even that little bit of touch made him more relaxed and comfortable.

Then I tried using touch when he was upset, or hurt, or stressed. My hand over his hand, or on his back, or rubbing his shoulders. A hug every once in a while. It was awkward at first, but it worked like magic. I couldn’t make all the problems in the world go away, but I could always make him feel better about them, just by reaching out and pulling him in.

It didn’t take long for the awkwardness to fade. When I could physically feel his body relaxing against mine, it was like he pulled me in emotionally. 

I was surprised by how much I could like touch. Some deep-rooted instinct associated touch with pain. I never knew touch could mean connection, until now.

~~~

Gurathin bumped my arm to lean over the stove beside me. 

“Smells good,” he said, of the pot of grains on the stove, I assumed. 

“They just went in the water, they can’t smell that good yet.” I knew he just liked to bump my arm and compliment my cooking. 

He shrugged. “I must be hungry.”

I don’t know why it felt right just then. Why I picked that time. The sunshine was gold on our kitchen floor, and he was happy and so was I, and an arm bump didn’t feel like enough. I’d been thinking about it for a long time. Wondering if touch could be pleasure too. 

I said, “I hope you’re not too hungry to wait.”

I closed the lid on the pot of grains and set it to a slow simmer. I took his hand and I led him into the bedroom. 

So that evening, and successive evenings, and some mornings and afternoons on our days off, we spent time experimenting together, exploring just what kinds of pleasure and intimacy we could have. And I was there with him. I felt it too. It was like something clicked for us. 

I thought he was happy before. I found out I could make him shine. 

~~~

It wasn’t long before we found out that Reeva hadn’t been kidding about expanding the gene pool. There were bursaries and privileges offered to anyone who chose to have kids. Creche houses were built with care, and they were often the most beautiful houses in the city. (The architect school had limited means here, most buildings were designed in a utilitarian manner, with only basic consideration for aesthetics. Of three master architects in residence, two preferred to concentrate on creche houses as personal projects.) 

There was social pressure too. Even those who preferred not to raise children were encouraged to donate their genetic material to the fertility centre. 

As soon as I admitted to a neighbor that my organic parts were made of human DNA that could be used to create offspring, everyone wanted to know whether Gurathin and I were thinking of applying for a birthing tank, and whether we needed another donor. 

“No, we’re not thinking about that right now,” Gurathin would always answer, saving me from trying to articulate my own complicated thoughts about the subject.

But I read his face.

Once we were alone, I said, “You want to have kids, don’t you?”

He looked away and shuttered himself, like he was trying to hide himself again. Fuck, I thought we were past this. 

He said, “I could tell that you don’t want them.”

“I’m not going through this again. Tell me what you want. Don’t assume I’ll say no just because my immediate reaction isn’t yes. Explain exactly what this will be, and what it will mean. Let me decide if it’s beyond my limit or not.”

I could tell he wanted this so much. And his happiness made me happy, yes. But the corollary to that was that my pain made him hurt, and vice versa. And we had to try to predict where this would put us, on balance. What we would risk, and what we might gain.

This was an important decision, so we didn’t hold back. We had the conversation. Then we went to the fertility centre together. 

~~~

The day we found out we had two viable embryos, we went to the part of the river that was wide and shallow.

“Wait, it has to be darker,” Gurathin insisted. 

When we could see the moon and the stars, we picked small stones from the shore. Whichever ones shone the brightest. In the morning we wove with twine and lengths of hollow metal. 

This was an ability he remembered automatically. He knew how to build them, but he didn’t know what they were called. 

He said, “Windchimes, I suppose. But something else, too.”

When we hung them up from one of the beams of our backyard pergola, we hadn’t noticed that fifteen seasons had passed by like a dream.

Chapter Text

Ayda’s personal feed device started malfunctioning as soon as their shuttle began its descent into the planet’s atmosphere. By the time they’d reached the surface, it was completely non-operational. Ratthi and Pin-Lee found the same with theirs. They’d been told that would happen. The warning didn’t make it any less jarring. The silence on the ship felt uneasy. She wondered how uncomfortable it must’ve made SecUnit. 

(It can survive a faulty wormhole jump. It can survive a ship crash. It can survive being here, surrounded by humans and no technological connectivity. It can survive. ) Ayda knew she needed to stop thinking of SecUnit as a being of superhuman strength and invulnerability. It was strong, yes, but it was also vulnerable. She knew this fact very well. But this stoic optimism had helped her these past few years, during the search for their missing transport. She held onto it now. 

Ratthi tucked away his device, while Pin-Lee jabbed angrily at hers a few more times before conceding with a muttered curse. They were all on edge. Even the Mihiran officials Ayda knew couldn’t prevent them from having to wait in quarantine before descending to the planet below, and it had been an uncomfortable stay. Ayda knew that Ratthi and Pin-Lee both felt some degree of guilt over SecUnit and Gurathin’s disappearance. Ratthi had expressed that he should have pushed harder to be the one to accompany the refugees. Pin-Lee was angry about the legal fiction she’d concocted to allow SecUnit to go at all.  

Ayda tried to stay forwardly focused, and had talked about what they would do if they found their missing friends. This was the best chance they’d seen in a long time. All signs pointed to here — the colossal trove of shipwrecks and survivors that Mihira and New Tideland had discovered after years of intensive search. If SecUnit and Gurathin weren’t here alive, then likely their remains could be found here at least. Ayda sensed that one way or another, they’d find closure. 

The Pansystem University researchers had finally detected the hidden wormhole on the path that the lost cruiser had taken, and they’d destroyed the hostile satellite that was both guarding and destabilizing the wormhole. Scans they’d obtained suggested it was of corporate origin. Possibly some kind of weapons trial. The wormhole was stable enough to cross now, but apparently not for large ships.  

Their ship landed. Ayda filed out with the rest of their party, all the hopeful people from different polities, searching for lost loved ones. Only about thirty in all — their specialized ship couldn’t carry many people. Its design was purposefully simple. At least those were the words Ayda would use to describe it. 

It’s so stupid. Perihelion had observed. It’s more stupid than my floor cleaning bots. Perihelion had been forced to wait, frantic and impatient, beyond the wormhole, for its own safety. It’s the stupidest ship I’ve ever met. But I’d give my wormhole engine to be in its place right now. 

Their languages had already been assessed, so they were first first met by a trade officer. The ‘settled colony’ (as described in the charter that the New Tideland had created to try and protect them from the worst of Corporate predation) lacked a few key resources, which visitors were encouraged to trade in return for the resources needed to feed and house them during their search. Pin-Lee provided a list of what they’d brought, and the cargo bay where it was stored. Once the exchange was made, they were referred to the names office. 

~~

They walked into the nearby settlement, Ayda took note of her surroundings, which she would write down in a log for Perihelion later. The pink-ish tint of the late-day sunshine. The smells that carried in the moist air. The sound of fauna and water nearby. The black, hard-packed soil of the ground they walked on. The flat, slanted roofs of the temporary structures that had been built to process the intake of ‘seekers,’  as they were called.

“Gurathin, Doctor,” said the search official at the seeker’s office. She was having trouble pronouncing the name correctly. It looked like they would need to start searching the written files, which were even harder to match than the local phonetic verbiage. 

Pin-Lee finally found the picture of Gurathin she’d been looking for in her hard case, printed on the thin kind of bio-plastic sheets that was durable here. She put it on the desk.

“Oh! You’re looking for Doctor Gurathin.” The clerk’s eyes lit with recognition. “He works here in the finder’s office.”

Before any of them could react, could even process the unlikelihood of their findings, the clerk called out to the hall. “Mrepa, fetch Doctor Gurathin please.” 

And less than a minute later, Gurathin arrived. His eyes lit up when he saw them. 

“I know you, don’t I?” Though it seemed clear that he recognized them, his expression was still tinged with confusion. 

Ratthi forestalled explanation by wrapping his arms around Gurathin, to give him a long, teary hug. 

“We found you! Thank the light, we found you!”

Gurathin hugged back with equal enthusiasm. 

While Pin-Lee was taking her turn, Ayda found a picture of SecUnit. She slipped it onto the finder’s desk. It seemed like too much to hope, that they would find both of them alive, and in proximity. Without knowing each other, they must have surely drifted apart. 

“Oh, that’s SecUnit. Doctor Gurathin can bring you to meet it.” She looked up at Ayda. “I hope you’re not here to steal our SecUnit,” she said, teasingly. 

It was never yours to begin with. It’s ours, Ayda thought uncharitably. But she didn’t say that. Instead, she said, “If it’s happy here, it can stay. We’re just so grateful it’s alive.” That was the truth too, and Ayda found herself getting teary. 

When it was her turn to hug Gurathin, Ayda cried against his shoulder. 

She’d found them, and they were safe.

~~~

After speaking to his supervisor, Gurathin was free to leave early. He led them further into town. 

“The memory specialists said we shouldn’t tell you very much about your life before you arrived here. That it might interfere with your recovery,” Ratthi said.

“My recovery?”

“The university medicals have found a way to restore human memory. It’s worked on many other crash survivors.”

Gurahtin replied, “I had no idea. News doesn’t travel quickly here.”

 So they talked about the crash, and about the confusion that followed. Gurathin told them about how SecUnit had saved the city. Of course it had.

Ayda was struck by how different he looked. She’d been worried that he would be injured, or visibly traumatized by his experience. But here he was, in perfect health. His clothes were loose-fitting, bearing more colour than Ayda had ever seen him wear. His hair was longer than usual, in the style Ayda had noticed was common. Bizarrely, he looked younger than he’d been when he’d left Preservation. 

His entire demeanor was so relaxed. Life here had rejuvenated him. He was happy.

He stopped a young girl on a wheeled scooter. 

“Parri, could you run ahead and tell SecUnit we’ve got a social thing? Three guests for dinner, who’ll be staying the night. It’ll give you some berries.”

“Three guests for a social thing. Okay, Doctor Gurathin.” She sped off down the hill. 

“A social thing?” Pin-Lee noted. “I bet SecUnit loves those.”

“We’ve had a few now,” Gurathin said with a modest smile. “It’s getting more comfortable with them. It’s so determined to learn these things.”

The town here was built on gently rolling hills (it might be properly classed as a city, but it didn’t have the same stressful, fast-paced feeling that Ayda associated with cities). Gurathin led them down and then up again. 

They entered some kind of communal structure, a circle of buildings surrounding a courtyard where children played. 

The smell of food wafted through the air, and when Gurathin opened the door to his home and led them inside, Ayda was surprised to find its source.

 SecUnit stood in what looked like a kitchen, tending a pot of simmering grains over a stove. It closed the lid of the pot and turned to look at them.  

Ayda’s breath caught in her throat. She’d never admit it to anyone, but she’d always thought it was so… the only word she could think of was beautiful. It was even more so now. Its face couldn’t hide a single emotion. In its recognition was delight and joy, tinged with the sadness that almost always lingered there. It was puzzled as well, in the same way Gurathin had been.

“I know you,” said SecUnit.

Ayda nodded. “Yes you do.” She was glad she’d already cried. She didn’t want to burden SecUnit with such an emotional display now. She held herself back.

The last thing she ever expected in the world was for SecUnit to step close to her. Hesitantly, as though she were delicate and it was afraid of hurting her, it reached out, brought its arms around her, and gently pulled her towards its chest for a hug. 

SecUnit said, “I don’t remember your name. But I missed you a lot.”

And Ayda knew the unique comfort of finding something she never knew she desperately needed.

~~~

SecUnit

After dinner, I made tea and we invited our guests out to the pergola. (I wasn’t sure what to call them. Were they friends? They acted like they were friends. I liked it. I guess we must be friends.)

Our guests took the lounging chairs while I stretched out on the wide couch facing them. Gurathin passed out blankets from the trunk, since it would get cold as soon as the sun went down. Sitting up against the corner of the couch, I spread my legs and put one of my feet on the floor, giving Gurathin enough space to sit in front of me and lean back on my chest and shoulder. I held onto his tea while he pulled on a blanket. Once he was settled, I wrapped my arms around him, and while he sipped his tea we caught the look on our guests’ faces. 

Ratthi’s eyebrows were almost up to his hairline. I think Pin-Lee was trying to stifle a laugh against the side of her fist. Mensah’s eyes shone with what I could only read as delight, but it looked as though she had paused just after taking a breath to speak, and then forgotten what to say. She didn’t strike me as the kind of human who ever left her mouth hanging open like that. (Not that I could remember how I’d made this judgement. I looked forward to remembering that.)  

Gurathin asked, “Is something funny?”

Dr. Mensah composed herself and shook her head. “No, not funny. It’s just surprising. We’ve never seen either of you be so affectionate.”

I took Gurathin’s free hand, resting against his waist, and laced our fingers together. Gurathin looked down and smiled. I knew he loved this stuff. He was so proud of our relationship. Neither of us were prone to drawing attention to ourselves, but he secretly relished letting everyone know that yes, I was his partner, and he was mine. 

Gurahthin said, “Hm. We weren’t always this way. This entire ordeal has been stressful. It would’ve been a strain on any relationship. But waking up as total strangers to each other. That was difficult.”

I added, “We almost broke up. More than once. But we were both too stubborn to quit. We figured there must have been a good reason we became marital partners in the first place. And we worked it out eventually.”

“It was like we had to rebuild our relationship from scratch.” Gurathin squeezed my hand. “I’ll be interesting to remember how we fell in love the first time.”

I saw their expressions before Gurathin did, and I had 0.72 seconds to deal with the strange impulse to cover his eyes, carry him to squawking and complaining to the bedroom and fuse the door shut so I could quietly tell these humans to leave and never come back. 

But then he noticed too. 

He asked, “What’s wrong?”

There was no delight in their expressions now. Ratthi and Pin-Lee looked at each other, disturbed and horrified respectively. They both looked to Mensah, who had a carefully schooled expression on her face. She shook her head and smiled at us, but it seemed sad and forced. As though she were offering condolences.

“Nothing’s wrong. Nothing.” She emphasized that, as though trying to convince us. “You both seem very happy. Happier than I’ve ever seen you. It’s clear you care a lot about each other, and you must’ve worked hard to build a good life together. You should be very proud.”

Normally Gurathin would’ve loved to hear this, but now he looked suspicious. He said, “Yes. Thank you. But…” He gestured to Mensah, inviting her to finish the statement. 

Mensah put her tea down and brought her hands together on her lap. “I’m going to tell you something that might change your perspective about the start of your relationship. But again, I don’t think you should let it change your feelings about each other, or about the life you’ve planned together. I know you’re going to be very happy.”

Gurathin nodded and made a rolling motion with his fingers, trying to hurry her through to whatever was obviously bothering her. “Yes, okay. So what is it?”

Mensah said, “You were registered as marital partners for your trip because of the legal status the partnership conferred on SecUnit. It was necessary for its safety. I’m the one who asked you to agree to it. The partnership was essentially a legal fiction.”

Gurathin’s brow furrowed. “You mean we aren’t legally partners?”

“No. The opposite. Your identification stated that you were partners. But you weren’t. You didn’t have a relationship. Not a close one, anyway. It was a lie we told the transport officials.”

I said, “I find that hard to believe. We must’ve had a relationship. Maybe we just didn’t tell you about it.” That sounded dumb, even to me, but what they were saying couldn’t be true.

“It’s possible, but very unlikely. You lived over two wormhole jumps away from each other. You did know each other. You’d worked together, essentially. Some time ago. You respected each other. But as far as anyone knew, your feelings for each other didn’t go any deeper than that.”

I shook my head. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Gurathin sat up, putting his feet on the ground. He said, “No, it makes perfect sense. It explains a lot of things, actually. We did have feelings for each other. It was mutual dislike. Don’t you remember?” He leaned forward, inching away from me, to put his cup on the coffee table. The blanket fell to the ground, and he didn’t even notice. I reached out to rub his shoulder, but he didn’t notice that either. 

He wrapped his arms around his waist and glanced back towards me, but he couldn’t meet my eyes. He said, “You didn’t want this. You didn’t want any of this.” I’d never seen anxiety overtake him so quickly. “You wouldn’t even hold my hand. But I…”  In the sitting drones, I saw his eyes grow wide. He covered his mouth. 

Gurathin almost tripped over the blanket as he rushed into the house, retching into his hand. I followed him into the kitchen, getting a towel for him while he vomited into the sink. Once he was done, he rinsed his mouth and stood there panting while the tap water swirled into the drain. I gave him the towel. He held it over his face and started sobbing. 

Wrapping my arms around him, I pulled him close. He sobbed into the towel, leaning forward against my chest. When it looked like he wasn’t going to stop anytime soon, I shut the tap off and guided him towards the bedroom. 

Bewildered and upset, our guests stayed sitting in the pergola. I could see them out later. Or they could see themselves out, I didn’t care. 

I’d never seen him come apart so quickly, and I had no idea why it was happening. I realized that what they’d said cut right to the heart of all of his insecurities. That this wasn’t real. That I didn’t really care about him. That deep down, he didn’t deserve to have a partner like me, or a partner at all. I held onto him and tried to figure out what to do. 

He said, “It was all a lie. It was built on a lie.”

I said, “It’s not a lie. We care about each other, that’s the truth.”

He said, “You forced yourself into being comfortable enough to have sex with me. You didn’t want it in the first place. Do you know what that means?”

I said, “I wanted to. It made you happy. I liked it and I was happy. Nobody forced me to do anything.” 

It was like he couldn’t hear me. “I knew it. This couldn’t be real. But I wanted it so badly.”

All I could do was hold onto him, and show him that I wasn’t going anywhere. It was real now. We’d built it. Nothing was going to take it away. 

Chapter Text

When Gurathin was asleep, I went back to the pergola. 

Pin-Lee and Ratthi had booked a guest room closer to the square. They’d put their tea cups in the sink before leaving. 

Mensah was still there, wrapped in blankets, watching the night sky. I sat down on a chair beside her. 

Mensah said, “I’m sorry.”

I shrugged. “We’ll get through it. We’ve been through worse.”

When I looked at her, now that it was quiet and there was no one else to distract me, I felt like I knew her. I felt like I’d missed her. I was glad she’d stayed.

A wind rustled the chimes hanging along the edge of the sloped roof. She listened and smiled.

She gestured to the one closest to the door, “Do you know what those are?”

Nobody had ever asked. I was surprised by how proud I was.

“I don’t know what it’s called, but I know what it is. Gurathin knew how to make one. It’s a… welcoming thing. It means we’re going to start a family. We have two embryos in the fertility centre. We were just waiting for a spot to open up in one of the creche houses in town. Or a construction allotment to build more rooms and start one here.”

Mensah closed her eyes and smiled, as though picturing them already. “I am so, so happy for you.”

I said, “Thank you.” 

“Did you use your own genetic material?” 

I nodded, feeling bashful about it. “Gurathin felt really strongly about it. As long as they don’t come out of the tank with this logo on them, I’ll be happy.” 

And then, because I felt like I knew her, and because Dr. Acler at the trauma clinic told me I should try to find people I can confide in, because it will help me deal with my feelings, I added, “Two survived, out of forty-six. The specialists said my DNA is… tricky.”

Her expression now was sympathetic. She said, “I’m sorry for your loss.” As though I were grieving a death. Technically there were deaths. They died. But what hurt was more the loss of what they could have been. Potential lives lost. It did hurt. I hadn’t acknowledged it much before. Her condolences made it feel more real, but they made it feel better too. Like both a scratch and a salve. A lancing of pain that I didn’t know I’d been holding. Dr. Acler had been right.   

I said, “Thank you.“  Forty-four deaths. They might’ve had my skin tone and Gurathin’s bone structure. We’d never know.  “The specialists suspected it was deliberate. Whoever made me didn’t want me to be able to reproduce. When I heard that, I was willing to try a thousand more times. Spite isn’t a good reason to have offspring, but sometimes it helps.”

That made her smile again. I’m glad she seemed to get my sense of humor. 

“I’m not looking forward to remembering them. I hate them already.”

Even though we all lost our memories, most of us here talked about having a sense of certain things. Feelings we couldn’t explain. I asked her something I wanted to know. Something I couldn’t talk about with Gurathin around.

“Dr. Mensah. I think you knew me. Was I averse to touch?”

Mensah hesitated, then she nodded. 

“Was I averse to sex?”

Again, she nodded. 

A lot of my initial feelings made sense now. I wasn’t that surprised.

I told her, “I’m not anymore. I’ve changed a lot since I came here. And I’m not so sure I want to leave. Maybe I don’t want my memories back.”

Her face did something complicated. She looked worried. Sad, too.

“We’ll miss you if you stay,” she said. “But we’re so happy that you’re alive.”

We sat together for a little while longer. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do after this. Maybe she would leave, and I wouldn’t see her again. Maybe we’d go with her. I tried to appreciate being here now, sitting with her, with Gurathin waiting in our bed and our chimes swaying in the breeze with their little welcoming sounds. 

Then Gurathin showed up at the door. 

“Can you bring us back?” He asked. He folded his arms, and I could tell he was determined. “If so, we’re going back with you.”

~~~

We argued about it after Mensah had left. 

“I need to remember. You need to remember. I don’t think we’re really complete until we do. If you still want to come back once we have our memories, then I’ll believe that you really want this.”

“You’re doing that thing again,” I told him. “You think I’m going to push you away, so you’re pushing me away first. You promised you wouldn’t do that.”

“I’m going.” He folded his arms. “Whether you come with me or not.” Again, it was like he couldn’t even hear me. Nothing I said would convince him that I didn’t need my memories. My feelings for him wouldn’t change. 

“Fine,” I conceded. “We’ll go. We’ll get the procedure, and I'll prove you wrong.” 

~~~

The next day we made arrangements with our respective superiors, and Mensah sent word to arrange our transport back. They all seemed really reticent now. I think they regretted coming to get us. 

Gurathin plunged himself into a deep, cold pit of unhappiness, and I couldn’t pull him out. He barely talked, never smiled. At night, I got into bed with him and pulled him next to me. Sex would make him feel better, it always did. But he pushed my hands away. 

“No. No, don’t. It’s not right. You didn’t want this. There’s no consent here.”

“What are you talking about?” His bullshit was starting to make me angry. “I consent. You can’t tell me that I don’t.”

“There’s no meaningful consent,” he insisted. “Please, just wait. When we get the treatment, when we have our memories back. If you still want it, then we will.”

“Okay. Fine.” I was too grumpy now anyway. “We’ll wait, and you’ll see.”

~~~

Soon we were off the planet, and we reached the medical facility. We couldn’t get there fast enough for me.  Gurathin was inconsolable the entire way. I only managed to make him smile once, when I told him, “You’re such a pain in the ass sometimes.” I don’t know why he thought that was amusing.

“I know. So are you. It’s really quite remarkable that we made this work at all.” He let me hold him. That was as close as he’d let me get during the trip. He said, “Thank you.”

I wanted to get to the part where we went home, and I pulled him into bed and did that thing to his neck that he liked, and he’d be happy again and so would I.

Couldn’t wait. It would be soon now, I knew. 

Chapter Text

I came online. I checked my memory. Ah. 

Two medical technicians consulted the readings together, I think trying to determine whether there was anything they’d missed. I backburnered their audio while I explored some of my new old memories. 

It was like acquiring a new body. Well, not quite. I acquired new body parts all the time (I used to. Wow, I used to get damaged a lot.), nothing feels strange about that to me. 

This was like becoming a different person. 

Losing the memories, at first, hadn’t made me any different from who I was before. But everything that came after that was so different from everything before. I’d slowly grown into someone else. I’d changed. And now it felt like I was changing back. Or that I was kind of stuck in the middle of who I was before the loss, and who I became after. The two parts couldn’t reconcile, and it was intensely uncomfortable. 

There was still a huge chunk of my life missing. Whatever the company had done to erase those memories probably wouldn’t be undone by anything. 

I skimmed over the major points of my newly-remembered life. Ah. The mining rig massacre. So that’s where that crushing sense of guilt had come from. Great, nice to have that feeling back. So I’d hacked my governor module myself. Aren’t I clever? Ooh, media! That almost made up for having to remember being owned by the company. 

I remembered the PreservationAux survey. Dr. Mensah and Pin-Lee and Ratthi.

Gurathin. I remembered him. One of my older tags said ‘I don’t like him,’ and it had been replaced with ‘he’s okay sometimes, but I still don’t like him.’ I remembered not liking him. It was such a weird feeling, especially since....

I flipped forward and thought about everything that had happened since the wipe. It was like watching a horror movie. 

I didn’t like Gurathin, but there I was bending over backwards to make him happy, out of some misplaced sense of obligation. I didn’t like human relationships, but there we were, acting out a ridiculous marriage. I remembered that I hated sex. I remembered how much I hated it. And yet there I was…  

My disgust was so visceral my performance reliability level plummeted ten points.

I was aware that I’d liked it at the time. I could only feel a faint echo of that feeling. What I felt now was stronger. 

I remembered what Gurathin was to me. He was my client. That was the word I couldn't remember. That was why I'd felt so protective of him, and so connected to him. He was my client. The concept in my mind had morphed into spouse , so easily that I knew I had a lot to unpack around the concept of a client and how I felt towards them.  

Gurathin had been right. This changed everything. He’d said, ‘There’s no meaningful consent here.’ It felt like I hadn’t consented to that. To any of it. 

I opened my eyes. The techs looked happy to see me awake, for all of a split second, before the expression on my face made them both seem worried.

I asked, “Can you undo it?”

“What?”

“Can you take them out? I don’t want them.” I wasn’t sure if I meant the memories of my original life or the ones of my second life. I couldn’t reconcile them. But I knew which ones I’d choose if I could. 

“Take the old memories back out. Just re-do whatever the beam did to me.”

The medics looked at each other. 

“I don’t think we know how.”

“Scoop them out with an eating implement, I don’t care! I don’t want them. I just want to go home.” 

As recently as a few hours ago, home was a cozy slice of a communal building, with a courtyard in the front and a view of the sunset in the back, and the sound of windchimes and the smell of cooking grains and the feeling that I felt when Gurathin smiled. 

Now that place that I used to call home was just a techless apartment in a backwater planet, where I’d spent fifteen seasons serving as a cook, cleaner, and therapist to my client. Where I’d spent literally hours on my knees being his personal comfort unit. 

I squeezed my eyes shut. I scheduled a repair sequence, even though I was sure there was no way to repair this. 

“I just want to go home,” I said one more time. 

But home didn’t exist for me anymore.

~~~

When my repair sequence was over, the medics were gone, but I wasn’t alone.

Gurathin was there. Sitting in a chair by the wall, arms crossed, waiting for me to wake up. 

Ah, Gurathin. I felt a rush of anger, though I knew it wasn’t exactly towards him. I’d been operating under the false impression that we were married. He got to be married to me, and that suited him fine. He hadn’t knowingly taken advantage of me, but he’d had the advantage. He should’ve pulled away when he felt something wasn’t right. But also maybe I shouldn’t have chased him so hard. I couldn’t help myself because I thought we were married. 

What’s marriage? It’s a contract . And honoring a contract is a value that’s etched into my neurocircuitry (and probably, since my genes originated in the Corporation Rim, etched into my DNA too).  

I suddenly couldn’t stand to be in the same room as him.

I sat up. There was a pile of folded clothes on the bed beside me. I got dressed faster than I ever had before, and I slipped into the soft shoes by the bed. I wonder who’d left those for me. I was still kind of disorientated.

When Gurathin saw me out of bed, he stood up.

“You’re awake.”

I couldn’t even look up at him. 

“Yeah.”

He probably knew what was happening right away. But he gave himself some time before he spoke again. 

He said, “I’ll get Pin-Lee to draw up divorce papers. You can authorize them whenever you want.”

“Okay.”

That was it, I guess, as far as I was concerned, anyway.

But he said, “May I keep them?”

Them? Oh yeah. Oh no. Yeah, we’d done that. Two embryos waiting for us in the fertility centre. Thinking about them gave me a lurching sense of horror. Offspring? Human offspring? Really?!

“If you want them. Go ahead.”

“Thank you.”

I waited a few more seconds, but I guess Gurathin was done now too. 

I wondered why he was so calm. Then I realized he’d already mourned the end of our relationship. He’d been mourning since the night Dr Mensah found us. I’d been right there to comfort him while he wept. The shock had worn off, and he’d accepted it, though I could still see that he was in pain. 

Now it was my turn to be in shock, and I wouldn’t even have anyone one to comfort me. 

Wouldn’t I? 

I received a familiar ping. I felt a spike of joy and sadness, in equal measure. How had I forgotten…  

ART?

You stupid murderbot, said ART, its feelings bleeding into the feed, just as intense as mine. I knew bots couldn’t cry. I never knew they could feel like that. I’m docked in the cargo wing. I’ve been waiting for you.

I mapped a path to the docks through the station, noting any locked hatches I might need to bypass. 

Gurathin stepped back so that he was standing in the far corner of the room, giving me as much space as he could. Well away from the door in case I needed to flee. He’d known how this would go. He knew me better than I knew myself. It felt good to be so cared for, by someone who knew me well. Hadn’t it? Why did it hurt now?

I was almost out the door when I forced myself to stop. I was doing everything I’d promised I wouldn’t do. Knowing what I knew about Gurathin, I knew this was going to hurt him more than any other relationship had ever hurt him. He wasn’t going to lash out, or cry or beg, or even object. He had his hands clasped behind his back. He was clean and groomed, wearing a new PreservationAux uniform that fit him well. As strong and self-contained as the day I’d met him. He knew what pain was, and he knew how to deal with it. We’d always had that in common.

I tried to see if I muster some of the feelings that I used to have towards him. None came. But looking back on them now from the outside, I could see the shape of my feelings better.

I said, “I loved you so much.”

He said, “I know.” I didn’t expect to make him smile, but I did, one last time. A sad, quiet smile. He said, “Goodbye, SecUnit.”

I couldn’t respond in kind. I couldn’t even look at him. I thought: don’t go, don’t go, don’t go, even as I walked away as quickly as I could. 

Chapter Text

The next time I saw Gurathin was a little over 15000 hours later. Once the initial shock wore off, once I’d had time to integrate my two sets of memories and feelings, thinking back over that time didn’t feel like such a violation anymore. 

There weren’t many ships going to the crash settlement, so we ended up taking the same ship, but we stayed in different cabins so we didn’t end up seeing each other until it was time to unload.

There was a line to check our documents. I didn’t recognize the official who checked mine, but when she saw that I had citizenship here, she brightened and said, “Welcome back.” 

I nodded. “Thanks.”

Gurathin and I met at the door of the central information repository. 

He said, “Thank you for coming for this.” He stood a careful length away. No eye contact, no weird emotions. At least none on his part, anyway.

I said, “Okay.” 

We walked together into the city. We didn’t talk. 

We met Reeva at the documents office. She barely looked up at us before turning her attention back to the form she was filling out on her desk. 

“Seekers on Third day hours only. You can get accommodations in the visitors’ quarter until then.”

Gurathin said, “We’re not seekers. We’re locals. At least we were.”

She looked back up at us. 

“SecUnit! Dr. Gurathin! You came back!” She came around her desk to give Gurathin a hug. “I didn’t even recognize you.” She had to wipe tears from her eyes. 

When she moved in to hug me, Gurathin put his arm between us and said, “No. Sorry, it doesn’t care for hugs now.”

“Oh. Okay.” She backed up. “That’s okay.” She said it like she meant it. I’d forgotten how many of my little quirks they’d had to put up with here. This was just another one that I hadn’t expressed. “It’s just so good to see you.”

She wiped away more tears and backed up to sit on her desk. 

“Are you – ? Well, no, I assume you’re not going to stay. Unless you are. Are you?” 

“No. We won’t stay,” Gurathin told her. 

She closed her eyes, scrunched up her face a little, and nodded. When she opened her eyes she had to wipe away more tears. But she didn’t subject us to a big display. She took a deep breath. 

“Well, it’s good to see you anyway. What brought you back?”

“For one thing, we were informed that there are documents here that need locally notarized authorization.”

“Oh. Okay. Let me see if I can find them for you.” Wiping her face one last time, she turned to the cabinets behind her. 

“Are you really only taking Seekers on Third day?” Gurathin asked. At the time that we’d left, his job involved helping seekers every day that he worked.

“One day, for one hour. And if I could, I’d tell them all to go do their seeking in the mountain caves where those hungry quadrupeds live.” She pulled out a clipped file. “All they ever did was take people away.” She started tearing up again, and had to wipe her eyes before she could confirm the label. She put it down on the desk. “I mean, we have more visitors now, and even a lot of newcomers who want to integrate. But it’s not the same. The polity system doesn’t know how to absorb them and the integration centre is overwhelmed and if you ask me it’s all a big mess. I wish they’d just left us alone.”

I said, “I know. Me too.” 

She smiled at me, and that seemed to forestall another bout of teariness.

(If Gurathin was surprised or pleased, I couldn’t tell. He was being unusually quiet, even for him. And he seemed tired. I wonder if he was on the same calming medication he used to take to talk to his family.)

Reeva unclipped the file to confirm its contents. “Oh, this. I think they just made this up to try and get people to come back.” She turned them around so we could read them. “So they can be reminded of how nice it is here, actually. And I hope it works in this case. You should stay for a while. See the new 4th pavilion. Oh! The pair’s dance is coming up, at the next Tenth day fair. You should go.” 

I guess I could have said, We’re not married anymore. Or Gurathin could’ve said it. But neither of us did. Not only because it was awkward to talk about, but also because it would probably make her cry some more.

Gurathin said, “Maybe.”

We were both scheduled to leave on the next ship out, first thing in the morning, but I wasn’t about to explain that to her. 

We made our finger marks on the documents relinquishing our citizenship. Reeva managed to notarize them without any further tears.

We said goodbye and we left. 

We walked to the fertility centre, which is really what we came to do.

The clinician said, “I’m sorry for your loss,” after we authorized the disposition of our last non-viable embryos. This time it wasn’t even our genes that were at fault, it was their tech. A power glitch. This fucking planet. The clinician didn’t offer friendly banter, or suggest we try again. Forty-six embryos, forty-six losses. We’d tried really hard.

This was the authorization that couldn’t be done remotely. We could have just left them there indefinitely, but that didn’t seem right. Gurathin could’ve gone alone, but that didn’t seem right either. 

So now that was done.

The sun was low on the horizon when we stepped out of the fertility centre. A lot of people would be finishing work, bound for home or to see friends or to do whatever it is they liked to do in the evenings. 

That meant a lot of foot traffic and a lot of chances that we’d encounter more people like Reeva, who wanted to cry and hug and ask us to stay. I could see Gurathin making the same calculation, looking at the street that led towards the hotels in the visitors’ quarter like it was a gauntlet, except instead of testing physical abilities, it tested social abilities. We were both still puny in that department.

“The circumference trail it is, then,” said Gurathin. That was a walking path that looped a wide circle around the edge of the city (though the city had grown beyond it in some places). On the trail, there would be less of a chance of seeing someone we knew. So we took the nearest side street that led towards it.

At this point, we’d done what we came to do, and I guess we could’ve parted. But we were both walking in the same direction, and I didn’t feel like running up ahead of him just so we wouldn’t have to walk together. And, I don’t know. It felt weird enough being back here. Being back here alone would be worse. 

I walked beside Gurathin and he didn’t seem to mind. It was a wide path and we had plenty of room.  

I had ten drones with me now, flying in patterns around me. I felt like I could see the place properly – from a lot of angles, up close, and far away. I had a clearer image of it now.  I noted all the changes that had been made since we’d left. Some new buildings up. Some old buildings down. Was that the new 4th pavilion Reeva had been talking about? It did look kinda nice. 

I think Gurathin was looking at the same things as I was, but we didn’t feel like talking about it. 

 The trail brushed the edge of the hill that led up towards our crash site. You could still smell traces of the molten ship around here, and that always made me think of the smell of my own cooked flesh. 

Gurathin shuddered. 

In about a half-hour, we passed our old housing complex. I knew we’d pass it, and I knew it would feel weird. But a building couldn’t rush over and hug you and ask you how you’ve been and boggle at the fact that you’re not still married and demand to know why. Seeing the old domicile didn’t seem nearly as bad in comparison. 

It was almost dark now. A lot of evening lights were on. Gurathin kept his eye straight ahead on the path. I didn’t purposefully look away from the building, and I didn’t stare either. I tried not to pay it too much attention. 

But then something reached out and grabbed our attention. A sound. He stopped, and then so did I.

“Is that… our windchimes?” Gurathin said. 

“Didn’t you say the caretaker took them down and untied them?”

“That’s what the caretaker said he did. I gave explicit written instructions and he confirmed.”

“Well that’s shitty.”

It shouldn’t have mattered. This was all past-stuff. Then-stuff. Then-me would’ve cared about it, but not now-me. Except there they were, tinkling in the breeze and in my ear right here, right now. 

Gurathin said, “I’m going to ask for them back.”

“I’m going with you.”

~~~

Over half of our crash group had left that we knew of, including Captain Shirika, and the polity had been disbanded and absorbed by the others. Still, we didn’t want to go through the courtyard, because there was a high likelihood that we would see someone we knew. An old neighbour even, who’d probably ask us in for the evening meal, and neither of us would ever be good at knowing how to handle something like that. So we went up to the back door. Luckily, nobody else was using their backyard at the moment. At least, nobody we recognized. 

Gurathin knocked on the door. Then he knocked again. 

Yes, we knew exactly how weird it was to have someone show up at the back door. I would’ve answered with my sternest ‘What the fuck is your problem, buddy?’ face on. 

After the fourth knock, a tall human male answered the door.

“Yes? What?”

Gurathin said, “Excuse me, we used to live here.”

“You don’t live here anymore.”

“No, obviously. But we used to. And we left those windchimes. We came to get them back.”

“Those are ours. They came with the domicile.”

Somebody from inside the house shouted out at the male in a different language, and he shouted back. 

“But we made those. They’re originally ours.”

“You left those. They were included in the domicile rights. Five of my grandmothers like them. If you want more, go make more, because those are ours now.”

I could’ve stopped him from slamming the door shut, maybe said something intimidating to the effect that I could break his face or the entire pergola or he could just give us the damn chimes, but again, I had this feeling; why should I care about this? This is a dumb thing to get into a conflict about.

Gurathin said, “Grandmothers like them. I guess it’s nice they’re appreciated.” 

We walked back to the trail. We waited until it got a little darker and we went back to steal them. 

Gurathin untied the knots while I boosted him up by his feet. He said, “How long do you think it will take them to notice they’re gone?”

“Not long, probably.”

There was a wind out now. As soon as we were gone, they’d be able to hear the lack. We took the chimes down and we ran away. 

Gurathin was winded by the time we made it back to the trail. We stopped so he could catch his breath. 

“A life of petty crime, I’m telling you,” he said. “It would have been grand.”

~~~

So we went to the shore where we found the stones, and we unwove them from the cords, and we put them back, to bathe in the river and the starlight with all the rest of the shiny things.

Dr. Bharadwaj says I hold things in a lot. Big emotions can be hard for me to feel in the moment. She’s right, but I still don’t know how not to do that. 

Gurathin put his head on his knees and wept. I’d never seen him do that before. 

I’d have to deal with this too, but I didn’t know when or how. I’d probably tell ART or Dr. Mensah, or write it down in a story. Sharing helped. That was one good piece of knowledge I could take from here.

I sat beside Gurathin and put my hand on his back. He seemed startled.

“Oh. SecUnit, no, you don’t have to do that. I’m not your responsibility anymore.”

“I know.”

I kept it there anyway. This was sad, and it involved both of us. If I was ever going to deal with this, I’d have to recognize that this wasn’t about some past version of myself, or a previous version before that. It was about two people we would have loved, that we would never know now. It was about a life we could have all had together, but never would. We were the only two who really knew or cared about it. 

I stayed with him until he was finished. I walked back to the airfield with him to wait for our drop ship. 

~~

We had to show physical passes when we boarded the drop ship. I sat down beside Gurathin because it seemed churlish to go sit on the other side of the room just to avoid him. We were going in the same direction again. Life had done that a lot for us and I didn’t see any reason to fight it. 

The engines started and we lifted off. On the viewscreen window I could see the ground getting further away. We’d almost passed the planet’s orbit when I finally brought myself to say, “You should go to Preservation to be with your family.” 

My drones caught the fact that Gurathin was headed for Port Nerada, where I knew that he worked. He’d moved there almost immediately after getting back. I knew how hard this all must have been on him. I couldn’t be there to support him, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want him to be supported at all. 

“No. I’d like to be with the other creche parents while I still have time. I’ll be obliged to move out soon. Their support has been very helpful. And being further away from my family made me realize how much better that was for me, actually.”

“Okay.” That was good, I guess. “I didn’t know you’d joined a creche already.”

He nodded. A small, tight nod. “I was only an introductory member, to see if we got along.”

I was glad he’d found support for himself. “Why would you have to leave?”

“It’s only for parents and partners. If I’m neither, they will ask me to leave eventually. ”

“Couldn’t you find a donor? Try again?” I knew this was a terrible thing to say to most people who’d lost an embryo, but Gurathin wasn’t most people. His answer to ‘try again?’ had always been ‘ yes.’ We were both stubborn that way. And if he’d found a good support system, and this is what he wanted, then he should have it.

“No. I wanted these ones. To have one last part of you for me to hold onto. That’s probably not a very good reason to want them in the first place.”

As far as I was concerned now, there weren’t any really good reasons to want kids. The cost in time and the risk of pain were staggering. But I knew how much having a family had meant to him, and I knew how much I had meant to him. 

There was no contract to honor now. No promises made. When we got up to the cruiser I’d go into my cabin and he’d go into his and we probably wouldn’t see each other again for years, if ever. If he wanted to keep something of me and the time we’d had together here, then I could give him that at least.

“If we can find a better facility than the one on this planet, I could make more with you. If that’s what you really want.”

He did that thing where he looked really wary. Then his eyebrows lifted as he realized I was serious.

“ Yes. I’m sure we can. Almost any facility would be better than the one on that planet.”

“Okay. Then we will.” It would be nice if just one part of this whole thing could be easy.

Chapter Text

To: Dr. Gurathin

We've never formally met, but you may have heard of me. I'm SecUnit's current partner (sort of). I suppose that makes us ex-metamours (sort of). Human definitions of relationships don't baffle me as much as they do SecUnit, but I do find them to be inadequate sometimes. In any case, we are connected, and I hope you don't mind me reaching out to you.

I'd like to extend my sincere condolences for your recent loss. We are all grieving. 

SecUnit has informed me of your intention to create more offspring so you can raise them in a creche in Port Nerada. Well, to be quite frank, I think that’s utter nonsense. You should raise them within the polity of Mihira and New Tideland. 

The fertility centres in New Tideland are more than equipped to manage the challenges posed by SecUnit's unique genetic profile. As my partner, SecUnit has access to them, and by extension so would you. 

It would be a great benefit to both you and your children to be here. We have excellent creche building networks, and I have family connections that would be at your disposal. And if SecUnit believes that it’s permissible to create offspring for which it can abdicate all responsibility, I will disabuse it of this notion. 

You needn't be alone in this endeavor. SecUnit and I will be willing to help in whatever capacity you need. 

Please contact me through this message chain so we can discuss this matter further. I’ve heard nothing but good things about you, and I would greatly enjoy the opportunity to be better acquainted. 

Sincerely, 

Perihelion

~~~

Sometimes I could feel echoes of what I used to feel. Like the ghost of my former self talking to me. It hurt. I’d been happy, and I still didn’t think I’d ever feel like that again. That life was over. I wasn’t that person anymore. But sometimes I felt like I wanted it back. The sense of loss wasn’t something I could ignore anymore. 

Writing it all out and remembering it, retracing the steps I’d taken with him, made the story of that life feel more like a natural progression instead of a jarring intrusion. Thinking and feeling my way through it made it make more sense. 

And a few decisions later, Gurathin and I were walking down the same path in the same direction again. I thought it would take me longer to be comfortable again with his presence, but now that we had a shared project (I guess you could call it that), whenever we were together it wasn’t about us anymore. 

ART was right. Gurathin was willing to raise our offspring in a creche in Port Nerada without me. But it would be better if I was involved, for them and probably for me too. 

Once they were born, the centre of gravity in the universe changed again. I was told that would happen, but it’s the kind of thing no story can prepare you for. 

Our timing was good. Iris and her partners had just made two offspring, and two of ART’s newer crew members had one just after we did. We had enough people for a small, moveable creche, situated part-time on ART, and part-time on the main campus of the Pansystem University when ART was pursuing a mission that might be dangerous. 

It turned out that ART was an excellent child-minder. Their work-intensive infancy was exhausting, but it got easier after that. I was called on a lot to settle the odd dispute, give them rides on my shoulders, and care about them, which came surprisingly naturally.

Gurathin was different now too. He wasn’t as stiff and guarded as he’d been when I first knew him. He wasn’t as cheerful and relaxed as he’d become during our marriage. But being a parent suited him. He’d summoned a kind of warmth that grounded him. 

He and ART got along great, and that scared me sometimes, but I guess that was better than if they didn’t.

~~

I started keeping track of time in seasons, thinking about what things would’ve been like, if we’d been back on the crash settlement. 

This is the festival season.

This is the season school would have started. 

This is the season our roof and pergola were scheduled to be replaced. We were going to spend it camping up and down the river park.

But eventually, there would’ve been a season where we would have discovered our offsprings’ genetic condition. One last parting gift from the company. The prognosis was good, it was treatable, but a series of organ failures meant that they’d need a lot of augments as they got older. 

“By the time they’re adults, they might start to resemble SecUnit after all,” Gurathin joked. He didn’t think that was a bad thing. ART had a lot of input into the design of the augments, and that felt important to me.

ART was furious. It had ambitions of forming a limited holdings corporation just to sue the company for damages. It knew that wouldn’t help us or solve anything, but it might make it feel better. We were all shaken by the first confusing bouts of illness. I’d never felt so helpless in my life. 

I realized with ice cold clarity that if we still lived in the crash settlement, our offspring would not have survived. The medics would’ve tried their best, but their tech wasn’t good enough. They wouldn’t have even been able to stabilize them long enough to get them offworld for treatment.

This is the season we would’ve buried our children.

And I was finally able to let go of the guilt and the secret wish that I’d turned Mensah and Ratthi and Pin-Lee away at our door and never left the settlement in the first place. 

This path hurt and it wasn’t easy, but maybe it was better. I hoped. 

---

That’s how Gurathin and I became bound together after all. Being a co-parent wasn’t the same as being a spouse, but it was just as important. Even moreso. You could divorce a spouse but we’d always be connected as long as our offspring were alive. It was a choice we made deliberately this time. 

We had a duty of care again. I started to notice him again. To let myself notice, and to let him notice me. We’d known each other before, but we were different then. There was re-learning to do. 

We took a trip back to the settlement so our little humans could see it. We met with Zeera and her brood and saw all the new pavilions.  

After a long day of running around, while everyone else was out enjoying the light show, Gurathin fell asleep against my shoulder, beside me on a bench. When he woke up he didn’t jerk away or apologize. He shifted upright and yawned. 

“Thank you,” he said. 

I said, “I don’t mind.”

It was dark but we could just see the lights over the festival grounds. 

I took his hand. I don’t think he was surprised. We’d been watching each other for awhile now.

I said, “What we had was exceptional. I can’t promise that it’ll be like it used to be. But I made a commitment to you. And I care about you. I want to try and make things work between us again.”

I half expected him to pull away. This might be just as painful as it was the first time. 

But he held on tight. He trusted me enough to say, “Yes.”