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“Agent York, I have an inquiry.”
York rolls over into the pillow, his wall illuminated green. From across the room, the temporary roommate mutters something and rolls away from the light. “Delta, it’s Why-the-Fuck-Are-You awake in the morning-”
“Four thirty-seven,” Delta corrects.
“That’s what I said.” He rubs his good eye and sits up in the bed as the AI continues his artificial standby whirr in his ear. “Alright, D, let’s take a walk.” He hears his homeless fellow apartment squatter stir in an appreciative manner.
Delta waits until the door to the shabby apartment building closes behind them. “Agent York, I am unsure how to categorize some things I have encountered during our integration.”
York drags his feet to one of the benches in the nearest park and collapses onto the cold metal, closing his eyes against the street lights flickering in disrepair. “Alright, do the movie thing.”
“You are referring to memory projection?” Delta confirms and waits for York to nod. His freelancer’s head bobs backward and his jaw slackens open and he growls a half-snore before snapping awake again.
“Yeah, that one. It’s easier than you just do that.”
“But my numerical and logical analysis is much more direct and-”
“Work with me here, D. I’m still half asleep. Just do the movie thing and I’ll explain.” York closes his eyes, leaning his neck back until he was facing the night sky.
“Alright,” Delta nearly pouts. “It’s the emotional response associated with some life events. I believe I don’t possess the necessary vocabulary to understand what they are.”
“Yeah, yeah, just show me.” He keeps his eyes closed and his mind blank as the AI projects an image so strongly that he can almost smell the sweat in the air.
He was pinning down South, the hot new recruit who just came on board with her twin brother eager to make a name for herself. Carolina had smirked when she suggested York as a sparring partner. Now she was full out laughing at York’s goofy smile and South’s muttered threats and excuses, claiming sore muscles and asshole tricks. “Fair and square,” York preened and Carolina laughed even louder, the sound filling the room.
“There is a strong emotional response to this memory string that I cannot categorize,” Delta’s voice says in an overtone that snaps York back out of the experience.
“You can’t categorize that one? D, this is going to be a long night if you need me to point out every time I’ve felt proud in my life.” He rubs his good eye again and pitches forward so he’s staring at the dark excuse for a green patch of grass and weeds.
“I was able to quantify the amount of pride associated,” Delta expands, “but there was another strong feeling that I am not used to.”
Carolina’s laugh is still echoing in his ears as he answers, “joy, Delta. That feeling is joy.” The AI whirrs in respectful silence. “It was the first time I’d heard her laugh on the ship. Not the first time she’d done it, I used to hear her and the pilot laugh on their morning meetings and I heard her laugh before the ship, when we... but the first time she did it because of something I was doing.”
“Joy,” Delta repeats to himself and catalogs it accordingly. “I have others as well, if you are ready.”
“Yeah, sure, roll it,” York says, leaning forward to place his elbows on his knees and closing his eyes again because it’s easier.
He was standing on a moon, unlatching his helmet as his boots sunk into the muddy road he was standing in. Wash was looking at him, head tilted slightly to the right like a curious cat. Connie stood by his side, mimicking the pose until Wash noticed and self-consciously stood up straight again. The helmet released and the moon air filled York’s lungs, the smell of wet roads, damp grass, and squelching dirt rushing in. “What are you doing?” Connie finally asked, hands at her helmet like she was considering joining in. “I missed the smell of rain,” York said as Carolina walked past him and muttered something about helmets being necessary equipment on this training mission.
“I can identify the longing you mentioned for the olfactory experience,” Delta voices over again and bends down to rip out a yellowed blade of grass at his feet. “There’s a strong but unclear connection to another feeling or thought that I can’t trace.”
“Home,” York explains, pinching the tip of the grass with his nail. “The woods after it rains, it always smells like home to me.”
Delta files the information away and then pauses, and York has a distinct smell stuck in his nose of an overworked dusty computer fan for half a second before Delta repeats, “home.”
“Let’s do a couple more and save the rest for later, okay D?” York casts the mutilated blade of grass back onto the ground, where it blends in with its equally yellowed brothers.
“Agreed. I have found this one hard to categorize as well, though that is perhaps because of your inebriated state at the time dulling the information retention.”
“I hope this is not a memory of me puking,” York says and immediately smells the stomach bile in the air, but wasn’t his.
He was standing in the back alley of the bar he had just ducked himself and Tex out of, and she was bent over recoloring his shoes with the remains of her last three drinks. “Carolina’s not gonna be happy you’re abandoning the fun to nurse me back to health,” she wheezed in between upheavals as York gingerly held her hair back, because that’s what movies had taught him. He shrugged. “Hey, we gotta look after our own,” he said as she went for another round, “you were hitting the stuff pretty hard back there. Did you lose a bet?” Tex stood, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Just testing my limits.” “Fourteen beers, six shots of tequila, and what I think was a white russian,” he provided, and she smirked at him, feeding her curly blonde hair over her right shoulder and opening the door back into the bar. “I didn’t say I was finished yet,” she grinned, motioning for him to go first. “I’ll buy you some new shoes tomorrow before we head back.”
“That was right before Carolina got her first AI,” York says in the present day, an expectant Delta in the back of his mind. “The last mandatory leave for the team.”
“Yes, the night continues to devolve from there,” Delta states and York chuckles from his shoulders. “But that moment had the spark of a feeling I can’t distinguish from the haze of toxins-”
“Yeah, yeah, let me save you the trouble. It’s friendship. That night was the first time Tex and I talked after the training room thing, with my eye.”
The AI remains silent for a pointed amount longer until York sighs and mutters something else.
“It doesn’t feel the same as our friendship because there’s also that moment where she smirked at me and I felt attraction. You know. Sexual.”
“But you were with-”
“Attraction is a human emotion, D. Everyone feels it, all the time. It’s what you do with it that matters.” He waves a hand like he’s chasing away a fly next to his cheek. “Come on, come on, next up.”
He was standing in the passenger bay of the Pelican when Carolina marched past him and his questions, her boots hitting the metal floor harder than necessary. “Did you get the-” York asked and she growled a “No!” over the radio before closing the cockpit door behind her. York lowered himself down and strapped himself in next to Wyoming, who was tapping his kneecap idly and staring straight ahead. “I guess that means she’s really gone,” York said to himself, and Wyoming grunted a laugh next to him. “She’s been gone for a while now, mate. Feeding information and shooting at us from the bloody shadows.” Wash was sitting across from them both, staring at the locked cockpit door. “Shut up,” he said quietly, and Wyoming shrugged. “If you want to remember Connecticut as some sort of saint, that’s your-” “The man said shut up,” York interjected, and Wyoming dropped the issue. Wash nodded at him from across the bay as the Pelican took off.
“There is clearly anger,” Delta says as York is still remembering the smell of blood caked on Carolina’s armor as she slammed it into her locker back on the Mother of Invention. “But there is another feeling that seems familiar, yet distant.”
“Loss,” York swallows hard. “It’s loss.”
“Ah,” the AI replies and waits until York leans back onto the metal bench again, letting his head roll back with him. York has a nagging feeling that he’s someone else, somewhere else, looking through a memory through a green stained glass and being told his name is Delta...
“One more, D, and we’re going back to sleep.” He smells fresh snow and jumps forward in his seat with a protest on the tip of his tongue, but the AI is already playing it.
Tex was half carrying, half dragging him from the small short range shuttle that she and Wyoming boosted off of the remains of the Mother of Invention. Wyoming had piloted the ship to the bottom of an ice cliff and buried it in a small cave, handing Tex a few instruments and what looked like the rest of a first aid kit before setting off on his own in the opposite direction. “Did you get it?” York asked through the haze of the Good Stuff, the painkillers Delta was readily administering for his shattered leg. “Did you get the Alpha?” Tex didn’t say anything, dragging his limping form under the crisp crunching snow. “No.” They hobbled on in silence towards the dim lights of a nearby town. “I couldn’t get Carolina to listen to me,” York said, bleary from the pain meds, “but I’ll try harder next time, she said, she said I couldn’t trust her, but she doesn’t get to make that decision, I choose who to trust and I think...I think she just needs it, you know, someone to trust in her again. I think it’ll help. And I do.” Tex stopped and grabbed York’s shoulder and pivoted him to face her, holding him up much more than either of his legs were currently doing. “York,” she said and he tried to focus on her face through both eyes. “Carolina’s gone.” He raised an arm halfheartedly and waved away her tone. “York,” she continued, “Maine threw her off the side of a mountain. He took her AIs and killed her.” He rolled his head to face his partner and clicked it down into place until his chin bobbed on top of his chest plate. “You don’t know that,” he said in a slow, lagging voice that matched his thoughts. Tex stumbled as his legs went out completely from underneath him and she was left as the only thing holding him up. “You don’t know that, she just, she needs... she just needs someone to trust in her, and I can, I can be that someone.” Tex moved back to under his arm, maneuvering him lightly as he continued to mutter, “you can’t say for sure, I mean, she always jump off of stuff, that’s - that’s Carolina, man, that’s her thing. You don’t know that.” “I do,” Tex said quietly to his stream of justifications, “I saw it.” “You saw wrong,” York said with more clarity and conviction than he’d had in months. Tex regarded her teammate before she continued, “I wish I did, but that’s...that’s just what happened. You need to go into hiding, Maine will come after you and Delta.” “Fucking let him try,” York said and then fell silent as they dragged themselves towards relative safety.
“I saw...denial,” Delta says delicately and York frowns.
“Whoa, whoa, didn’t I tell you not to use that word?” the ex-freelancer says and the AI nods in the background.
“I’m sorry, York. There’s another feeling that started in this moment, that’s been constant. I can’t categorize it, it’s a mixture of regret and loss and desire, but they form something new and unfamiliar but frequently present.”
York rubs at his bad eye with the palm of his hand, stretching the edge of his brow and his scars with a dry smile. “It’s called grief, Delta.”
“Grief,” the AI repeats, and York hears the artificial processing whirr speed up. “This feeling has persisted, even now.”
“Yeah,” York says, pushing himself off the bench in the early morning light. “Grief will do that. Because it’s a goddamn asshole.”
York starts back to his bed for the night, hands in his pockets, military tags clicking against his chest. The streetlamp above him finally gives up and plunges his path into relative darkness. “Does it ever end?” the AI asks like a whisper.
“God, I hope so,” York says to the lazy, rising sun.