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The first times Aura Blackquill meets Metis Cykes, she does not notice. They pass each other in the hall, she waves without knowing the other woman’s name. She stops by HR, where the other woman works, because someone in this damn space center has to have a stapler. Metis doesn’t have a stapler, but she does have a hole puncher, and the thought is appreciated. Aura moves on until she finally finds a stapler and she doesn’t spare another thought to Metis.
The first time Aura Blackquill meets Metis Cykes - which, in reality, is the fifth or tenth or twentieth time she’s met her - is when Director Cosmos calls a meeting and asks for ideas he can take credit for - no relation to space needed. Aura, as she should, takes this as an invitation to suggest her passion for robotics, something almost wholly unneeded. Metis speaks up too, speaking of a similarly unneeded love for psychology and coding. Their eyes meet and Aura cannot tell what lies beneath them, but Cosmos seems to like what he sees, because the next day, they have their own lab and Metis is sitting at her desk, working away, and so Aura does the same.
The days pass. Aura and Metis work together. Aura stops counting how many times she has met Metis. Metis tells Aura about the passion she has for artificial intelligences, about her grand plans to create the world's first ever emotional AI, and Aura falls instantly. She knows her love is not requited, but she treasures it nonetheless.
One day, Metis, as cold and unreadable as ever, brings in a small child. Her name is Athena, she says, and she's my daughter. Aura didn't know she had a daughter. Athena eyes her curiously, and she glares back, and Aura goes back to welding and wiring and working.
Aura still gets more of Metis's time than the kid does, and even then, it's only ever discussing the LCD display of the 'face' or the versatility needed in the limbs. She learns precious little along the way; she learns that Metis has an interest in Japanese culture stemming from her ancestors, she learns that Metis values expression and emotion above all else, she learns that Metis thinks many things and expresses none of them.
Aura is not one to get emotional, and so she refuses to put a name to the broiling sensations in her chest. The lightheadedness when Metis compliments her work, the hot and bright feeling in her gut when Metis refuses to come out and just say something, the lonely sinking in her gut when Athena comes in to the lab and watches her mother work and it does not occur to Metis to spend a moment of time with her.
The Noh mask on the wall, a communication of bitter neutrality, mirrors its owner to a tee. Where Aura tries her best to be unemotional and fails so desperately, Metis is a blank slate that Aura knows she is never going to get to the bottom of. Metis is a light, blinding and burning, and Aura is the moth intoxicated by its holy glow.
The little princess is left on her own, and such a lonely being needs a knight. Where Aura acts as such for Metis, Simon is brought in to continue the family tradition of knighthood to the Cykes nobility. They both end up bound to the same lord, struck by the awe she inspires in them, but she answers back to Simon.
She teaches Simon about psychology, she asks him to play with Athena, and slowly, he is accepted into the folds of this little group.
The robots - P.O.N.C.O. and C.L.O.N.C.O. - wrap up production. The way they animate and emote and so clearly feel, it wins the space center some national robotics prizes and heaps of media attention. Director Cosmos is thrilled. Aura spends the entire awards ceremony staring at Metis, so brilliant and bright and the reason they are here.
Metis is unusually cheerful after she finishes the robots. We're mothers now, Metis says, in that tone that means she is joking, and Aura holds her tongue before she can say that Metis is already a mother. She forgets and lets herself revel in Metis's undivided attention as they celebrate, just the two of them, in their hotel room with matching glasses of wine and the TV on in the background and the dim night sky to watch.
Cosmos assigns them to more projects, hoping for lightning to strike twice. There are talks of branching out, making the robotics wing official. Through it all, Metis is there, unreadable and unknowable and oh so divine. She and Aura draw up blueprints, consider how they might be able to improve on Metis’s genius.
Then comes UR-1, a serial number which she didn’t learn until she was trying to petition for a retrial. Then comes the HAT-1 miracle, the one that left Starbuck traumatized and the one that left him the hot new heartthrob with a movie deal and talk-show interviews. Then comes the phantom, a titan brought to slay this goddess, this heavenly being.
Simon was accused of the murder. He didn't protest it; moreover, he committed to it, with that same villainous laugh that had made the little princess giggle whenever he had pretended to be the Evil Magistrate. He was led away laughing like he was on the verge of crying, and Aura was filled with a deep and guttural rage that her baby brother could be seen as this kind of animal. That he was the one showing the beastly and ugly rage which boiled slowly in Aura’s gut.
Metis and Simon were gone. She would never see them again, not that year and not the next and not the next after that. Her perceptions changed; she saw her brother for the fool that he was and Metis, Metis was given her proper deification.
Aura cursed Athena, the matricidal little princess, cursed her to an early grave and hoped that her death would be as violent as her mother's. (Deep down, she doesn't believe in the little princess's guilt, but there has to be some responsible party, and if not Simon and if not Metis and if not Ponco or Clonco or Starbuck, it must be the only fat she can cut. The part that will give her a happy ending if she only purges it.)
Cosmos gave her some paid time-off. She didn't take it. She was kept from her lab by the crime scene investigation. Her and Metis's latest project had been in there, something volleyed around that they had decided to build. She would never be getting it back. She shrugged it off and she relocated and she filled the empty space Simon had left with machinery and harsh noise.
Starbuck attempted to relate to her, to use HAT-1 as a bonding opportunity, and Aura pulled her fist back and clocked him hard in the jaw for it. Starbuck could never make Athena laugh as well or code as well or tease Aura as well as the people he was trying to replace.
Ponco and Clonco, those damned emotional beings that had reacted with shock but belief when they had heard Simon's guilty verdict, that were able to mourn Metis more completely than Aura ever would... they were nothing more than scrap metal. They were Metis’s creation, she had been the one to mould their minds and their processing and their wires, and yet they were still so easily swayed to believe these falsehoods. Their emotions got in the way of them being able to see the truth as clearly as Aura’s cold logic did, and so she learned to despise them.
(These feelings of rage were not given to the creator of these emotions, no, Metis is too holy for that, and her work is too important to sully, but the robots were expressive in a way that Metis had never been, and because of that, they had earned Aura’s wrath.)
But hey, life carried on, right? What did it matter that the little princess had been shipped off to some European country Aura hadn’t cared to take note of? What did it matter that her brother was rotting in some jail cell as he continued to stab himself in the throat? What did it matter that Metis, Metis, Metis, who needed no further explanation, was dead in the ground? So Aura buckled down and Aura continued building her robots and Aura seethed with a quiet rage that was getting louder and louder by the second.
When she met the little princess again, she saw an inversion of all that Metis was. Where Metis was calm and collected, the princess was loud and brash. Where Metis was selfish, the princess was selfless. Where Metis was dead, the princess was alive. Aura had suspected, always suspected, but she finally had proof.
Gloved hands dig through webs of wires, not caring what damage they do as they brutally force their way to the core of C.L.O.N.C.O. The Noh mask on the wall watches her as she overrides the interface, and Metis’s contributions to the robots that she is wholly removing are on some database somewhere, so it’s fine , really.
As she poises Ponco in the space center, readying herself for her plan, she tells herself why she is doing this. She is doing this for Simon and she is doing this for herself and she is doing this for Metis.
The knight raises her sword and readies herself to commit an act of divine regicide.