Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Come with me,” Tilda said.

“Tilda…”

Elisabet’s office looked shockingly empty, unless viewed through the eye of a Focus. The bare desks were piled high with holographic illustrations and folders, the physical lay-out little more than convenience and habit. The only bit of material data was a single folder buried below a set of flickering dates and times.

The holograms made the place look like a jumble. It was a wonder Lis could ever find what she needed, even with her Focus’s search function.

She waved a holographic map of the globe aside to get a clearer look at Tilda. There were dark circles under her eyes, a symptom of too many sleepless nights working on Zero Dawn, and exhaustion was writ heavily in just how she sat there.

“Please, Lis,” Tilda said. “Your alphas can handle this project without you, and I can get you a slot on the Odyssey. You can survive.”

“Not now, Tilda,” Elisabet said.

“When else?” Tilda said. “It’s very nearly too late. There’s no surviving if you stay here, you know that - I know that - and the Odyssey is the only way you have a chance.”

She stepped closer - her hand rested on the desk, distorting the blueprint for some sort of chamber - and she crouched slightly, looking imploringly into Elisabet’s eyes. Elisabet only looked back at her for a second, before she turned away.

“I don’t think Far Zenith makes for much better company than Faro’s machines, truth be told,” Elisabet said.

“Forget them,” Tilda said. “Would you rather spend your years locked up in Elysium on a dead world, or come to Sirius, with me? See a new world?”

Elisabet looked back at her, then at her desk, then back to Tilda. After a moment, she stood up at last, and leaned in; Tilda closed her eyes as their lips met. It was familiar, but somehow unpracticed, something they’d have to relearn.

“You. I’ll choose you,” Elisabet said.

Tilda smiled, relief etched into every line of her face.

And it all faded away. The dimly lit lab, the desk, the hologram, and last of all Elisabet herself. Pixels fell like raindrops and revealed the cold reality.

No cramped, grey, thrown-together lab. No old-fashioned holograms. No windowless walls. And no Lis Sobeck.

The Odyssey didn’t make for the most idyllic of surroundings. It had been refitted and prepared for this journey in a rush, function so much more important than form - the machine servitors, cutting edge when they’d left Earth and improved in the years since, had done what they could to keep it running and working, but it had soon turned into a Frankenstein’s monster of a craft.

The first year of the flight had been constant activity. When they’d started out, there was no guarantee that the ship would last the whole duration; they’d needed to modify it as they went, developing new technology on the fly. While most of the Far Zenith crew were better at claiming credit for work than for innovating on their own, they’d picked up enough geniuses to get it working.

Then there had been the medical developments. Living long enough to see the Sirius system was suddenly within reach.

Clashing technology had been fused into the basic systems of the ship, the developments of even ten years being of a radically different aesthetic. In amongst grey metal panels, Tilda sat on a sleek, curved white lounger. The VR tech was the newest addition, a modification to her focus allow complete submersion in some simulation.

With immortality within reach, the initial concerns about managing a generation ship had diminished. Now, they just had to fill their time as they made the three hundred year journey to Sirius. Fiction seemed the easier way.

Memories were the easiest things to program into VR; if she’d worn a Focus at the time, she could just flick back to the recording and the colony’s systems would project it for her, and extrapolate behaviours based on her desires. There were only a few memories Tilda wanted to revisit.

Even if she needed to modify some of them, to make the recollection bearable.

It had been fifty years since they’d left Earth. The machines would have over-run the place now. As much as she hoped Lis’s plan would work, it would be a long time before that bore fruit. The simple truth was that they were the last humans.

And all they’d known, the people and places and homes that they cared about, that all now only existed in their memory.

Sighing, Tilda closed her eyes and reclined back in her seat. There was nothing to do except wait and remember.

The network’s menu looked like a hallway. It was, so she’d heard, modelled after a hotel back on Earth owned by one of the colonists. Most doors were locked, of course; Tilda made sure hers was, and added a few extra layers of security every time she walked out.

She walked past rows of numbers and names, unsurprised to see that little had changed. Most rooms were occupied, and most were sealed. No one wanted intrusions on their little fantasies.

There was one exception of course. Tilda called up a map, and followed the signs plastered up on the hotel walls to one of the few unlocked doors. She pushed it open, and stepped inside…

And found herself in Vegas.

Everything was wreathed in light, not a single surface existing that didn’t have a holographic shimmer over it. The roulette wheel flashed red and black as it span, and the ceiling danced with fantasy creatures spiralling in among fireworks and drink advertisements. Slot machines whirred, with the slots themselves projected out from behind the glass. Dozens to hundreds of simulated people milled around, laughing and chatting and gambling as though all this was real.

In the middle of it all was a fountain, flashing a different colour every half-second, splashing water a little past the ornate bowl. As Tilda walked it, it flashed all the brighter for a moment, signalling someone at the bar to turn around.

The virtual Vegas was crammed full of people, but all of them were wearing more old-fashioned clothes, the styles garish but unmistakable earth-normal. Tilda hadn’t bothered to set her avatar to anything other than her usual appearance, so the Zenith modifications would’ve made her stand out - not that any of the guests were programmed to react. Blending in much more was the man at the bar, in a suit composed of smart grey pants and a flashy blue jacket, just eye-catching enough to blend in among the revelry. Still, he grinned and waved back to her.

“Tilda! Come on over,” he said.

“Stanley,” Tilda said, comparatively restrained. Still, she smiled as she approached.

“Let me get you something,” Stanley said. He waved to the robot behind the bar. “Drinks are on me.”

“Like it matters,” Tilda said.

“Hey now, don’t spoil the illusion,” he said. “You liked a red, right?”

“I’m impressed you remember,” Tilda said.

“I’m nothing if not a good host,” Stanley said. He beamed, then dropped his voice: “And to be honest, I don’t get as many guests from out there as you’d think. People love their own worlds too much to visit mine.”

“And yet you keep the doors open,” Tilda said.

“Well of course!” Stanley said.

He gulped down his glass as the mechanical waiter returned with Tilda’s wine. Tilda looked around the chaos, one eyebrow raised, glass in hand.

Stanley Chen. Honestly, she’d never actually visited his Las Vegas on Earth, and not much about this place had made her feel like she’d missed out on much. It wasn’t her style.

There was a ringing chime in the distance as one of the holograms won a jackpot, and all around them people cheered. The light-show projected against the ceiling suddenly switched to flashing coins and gaudy electric outlines.

Stiffly, Tilda sipped her glass.

She’d give Stanley one thing - no one had quite figured out how to simulate drink quite as well as he had. She let the taste linger in her mouth for a few moments, almost able to believe it was real.

“Do you ever think about Earth?” Tilda said, eventually.

Stanley snorted.

“I mean,” he said. He lifted a hand to gesture vaguely around them. “A little.”

“This isn’t Earth,” Tilda said. “You wanted to build this even when you were there. This is just your creation - you’d try to make it no matter where you were. Do you ever really think about we left behind?”

“Oh. This is going to be one of those conversations. One sec,” Stanley said.

He got up, and ducked behind the bar. When he stood up and emerged, he was holding a bottle in each hand; he poured one into a flute and gulped it down, before putting the glass down with a long sigh.

The mirrored wall at the back of the bar flashed with an advertisement, a cartoon dinosaur etched in neon walking across the reflected surface. Some primitive AI reacted to the image in the mirror, and he jumped onto the back of Stanley’s head, play-acting holding on to his short, dark hair.

It reached into his reflection’s ear and pulled out a silver coin - it flashed bright, in contrast to Stanley’s brown skin. Bemused, Tilda watched, as Stanley sat there, apparently oblivious to the antics in the mirror.

Eventually, after another glass, Stanley spoke.

“Yeah. Of course I think about it,” Stanley said. “My life’s work is back there. I don’t know if the swarm tore it apart, or if it’s still there, still sleeping. It’s not like I could bring a whole city with me, so I left it behind.”

He paused for breath, and another glass. It was hard enough to get drunk off of virtual alcohol, and even more so for their enhanced constitutions to feel much. Food and drink was more for the aesthetic than any practical purpose.

Still, Stanley was nothing if not dedicated to the aesthetic.

“And you?” he said. “What did you leave?”

“My art,” Tilda said, eventually. “They were priceless even before. Now they’re all that’s left.”

“Huh. Paintings,” Stanley said. “Have to be honest, I never got into that whole thing - I understand though. There’s no replacing what we gave up.”

“Art. Not just paintings,” Tilda said. She paused. “It was… a kind of immortality, I suppose, before all this. What the painter felt, what they wanted to express, set down onto canvas and surviving long after they did.”

“Nice way to look at it,” Stanley said.

He poured himself another glass, then offered Tilda another; she shook her head.

“What gets to me,” Stanley said, and grimaced, “And sorry, uncultured philistine here so I’m going to go for the famous one, but, take the Mona Lisa. Even I’ve heard of that. I never got the appeal. I’m sure she was well painted, but I have no idea who she is, you know? Whatever the painter, or commissioner, or whoever saw in her, I don’t know and you don’t know, none of us know her by anything except what she looks like. Whatever you can find captured in that, it probably wasn’t the intention.”

He paused, as if surprised he’d talked for so long. Then he shrugged, and sat back comfortably.

“Sometimes it’s like that,” Tilda admitted. “But, like so many things, art is about more than just what you see in front of you. What the artist intended is so often impossible to guess at, but I do like to wonder what on earth they could have been thinking - and that wondering is worth it, even if I’m wrong.”

“So it’s not about what they wanted?” Stanley said.

“Not primarily,” Tilda said. “There’s a little piece of the original in every one of their creations, but it’s what you see in them that matters the most to me. Even in the fakes. If a forgery can get the same emotional reaction as a work by a true master, what does that say about the fake, and what does that say about the original?”

“Huh,” Stanley said.

He nodded along. The robot bartender slid up closer to take an empty bottle, and squeezed past him.

“Nice way to look at it, I guess,” Stanley said. “Not sure it’s for me, but it takes all kinds doesn’t it?”

“Says the man sitting in a fake,” Tilda said. “It’s not so dissimilar.”

“Fair point,” Stanley said. He laughed, an raised his glass.

Tilda was quiet.

Las Vegas was noisy, and tacky, and crowded. There was none of the refinement she was used to, and she could barely think in the din that surrounded her as soon as she walked through the door.

Even so, she’d gone there. Maybe it was precisely because it felt so alien to her, it stood out alongside the controlled, regimented, programmed reality of the rest of her life.

Tilda exhaled.

“I miss someone,” Tilda said.

“Ah, now we’re getting to it,” Stanley said. “There’s always someone.”

“We… didn’t part on the best of terms,” Tilda said. “And I left her behind centuries ago, and I’ve been on an alien planet for ten years and I’m still thinking about her.”

“My advice?” Stanley said. “Try to forget.”

“Really?” Tilda said, skeptical. “That’s what you start with?”

Stanley shrugged. For a moment, his smile slipped, and he hid the melancholy by crouching down behind the bar again. When he stood back up, he had an expensive-looking bottle of red wine.

“When I think of Vegas, I imagine that it survived,” Stanley said. “It’s still on stand-by, waiting for that Zero Dawn project to come along and wake it up, and a new generation’s going to know all about the history, and celebrate it anew. Maybe in a few hundred years’ time, but it’ll happen.”

“What’s your point?” Tilda said.

“Your… disagreement,” Stanley said. “This person. Do you think they’d forgive you?”

“I wish I knew,” Tilda said. “She was… complicated.”

Another sip, another vain attempt to not think about Elisabet’s voice.

She hadn’t even been able to say goodbye, not really. Lis had hung up on her too suddenly, and that was the last she’d ever heard. No simulation quite captured her.

“Would you want her to?” Stanley said.

“Of course,” Tilda said flatly.

“Then she did,” Stanley said. He shrugged.

“How would you know?” Tilda said.

“How would you know any better?” Stanley said. “It’s light-years away, and it’s over and done with. There are worse things you can do than believe the best. Anything else, it’s better to forget.”

She hadn’t told anyone here about her relationship with Elisabet; she’d vaguely mentioned being acquainted, when she’d offered to help acquire the terraforming system, but no more than that. She liked her secrets - liked having something that was hers.

Offering more detail never occurred to her. The world had ended and she’d left Lis behind, and for all she knew Lis had died hating her.

She wished she’d picked up the skill of lying to herself.

“It’s been… good, talking, Stanley,” Tilda said, noncommittally.

She pushed herself to her feet, already walking away. She brushed past the holo-people, not buying into the illusion for a moment.

“Oh, well, bye!” Stanley said. He raised a glass behind her. “Door’s always open!”

Tilda didn’t answer, stepping out into the hallway and hearing the ruckus of the virtual Vegas snap to silence. The taste of the faux-wine lingered in her mouth.

The cafe was idyllic, oddly old-fashioned, despite the arch of metal that went overhead and sent out a rippling UV-shield. Tilda wore a wide-brimmed hat, and an elegant pale dress, and walked to a table near the edge of the seating area.

Opposite her was Elisabet, with a much more comfortable, casual looking pair of pants and shirt on. She’d made some vague effort to smarten up, but she was still Elisabet; she still so very clearly had other priorities.

“I’m glad you came,” Tilda said.

“What’s this about, Tilda?” Elisabet said.

“I wanted to say goodbye, properly,” Tilda said. “I don’t like how we left things.”

They’d been to this place before - it was a coffee shop not far from an old Miriam Technologies project. When they’d first gotten to know each other, it had been one of their more frequent haunts.

Tilda missed those days. It was… simpler, then.

“Ah,” Elisabet said. “I… can agree with that.”

“We have too much history to let our last talk be so adversarial,” Tilda said. “I don’t want you to remember me like that.”

“I’m happy for you,” Elisabet said. “I can’t say I think much of your company-”

“Trust me, you’re not the only one.”

“But if any humans were going to survive this, I’m glad you were one of them,” Elisabet said.

“And I wish you would,” Tilda said.

“My place is here, you know that,” Elisabet said.

“I know,” Tilda said. “Still, what you helped make - the APOLLO database - it’s incredible. You’re as talented as I remember you being.”

“Little late to try and butter me up, don’t you think?”

“I mean it,” Tilda said.

She tried not to think about how this cafe wouldn’t exist anymore - the Faro swarm had over-run it weeks before she’d even tried to steal GAIA, before her lie to and argument with Lis.

But it was a nice place, and she’d rather say goodbye to Lis somewhere familiar, in the light of the setting sun, not huddled away in a bunker or being surrounded by terrified people and enlistment posters.

They ate. They drank. They talked. They lived.

“I’ll miss you,” Tilda said.

“You’ll get over me,” Elisabet said. “Goodbye, Tilda. Good luck.”

And Elisabet smiled at her, a real smile - something so rare to see on her face. Tilda opened her mouth to reply, and her voice cracked, and instinct made her abruptly end the simulation.

Four hundred years and she was still thinking about her. Some days she needed the simulations, needed to relive the memories, even forged memories. Sometimes the fakes were better than the truth of it all.

She could take one moment, and do what she ought to have done. Maybe she’d be able to follow Stanley’s advice and forget her regrets completely, fool herself into thinking she hadn’t ruined things as thoroughly as she had.

She pushed herself up to her feet. Enough of this.

The room reshaped itself as she walked, the layers that wrapped around the walls when she was in VR receding, their sound-proofing no longer needed. She walked to the glass wall, waited for it to reconfigure into a door, and pushed it open.

She couldn’t keep living like this, apologising in a million different ways, imagining a billion more ways that things could have happened. What was the point in surviving the Earth if she stayed living in the past?

The grass was soft underfoot; it was Earth-imported, with minimal genetic tweaking to allow it to take root in this new soil. By now, it had mostly replaced the blue, moss-like ground that was native to the world. A narrow, neatly cut layer covered the winding paths between the dwellings; small machines crawled down the walkways periodically to keep it neat, and keep the greenery from overgrowing and climbing up the walls of any of the houses.

There wasn’t much to see. In the first couple of months, an attempt had been made to create some actual structure to the colony - create pathways and squares and cafes - but it had been abandoned quickly.

That was maybe the biggest problem with this whole endeavour; Earth’s richest gathered together to flee the dying world. None of them were exactly suited to life on the frontier. They liked cities, restaurants atop skyscrapers, jet-setting all around the world, conferences and planning: life on a planet with none of that wasn’t what any of them had wanted.

So most retreated to VR, and those that had wanted more in the real world had soon given up, seeing the lack of interest and not being all that invested in the intricacies of programming machines to build a city that would never be filled.

She’d have found the paradox funny if she’d been back on Earth. The people with the means to set out to begin a new civilisation on a new world, were the people least equipped to actually make one.

After five minutes of walking, Tilda reached the crest of a hill, and turned around to look back down. Scattered white boxes in a patch of neatly trimmed green, surrounded by a scattered handful of trees.

That was it. There was a shuttle a little further out, but if she turned away from the city, she saw over-grown grass slowly throttling the native vegetation. They didn’t maintain much outside of their view.

Machines had built more than any human; there were signs of them printing and assembling digital storage space, but most of it was automated. It was all so disappointing.

Tilda lifted her hand up; her personal shield flickered around it, facets catching the light. She barely thought about it anymore. Along with the modifications she’d received to prolong her life, that protection had been installed; she hadn’t given it a second thought at the time. Now, it was just another thing to keep her from feeling the wind on her face, or the grass under her feet.

Safe from everything. She closed her eyes. After a moment, she sent a thought to deactivate the shield.

They muted reality, distracted themselves from everything. But there, for a moment, Tilda forget her simulations, forgot her memories, and just felt the air against her skin.

Tilda looked out the window of the shuttle as she left the Sirius colony below her. She was alone, unsurprisingly; most people barely left their simulations even for meals. A trip to the Odyssey, still in orbit, would have been beyond their interest.

Her fingers dug into the seat below her as she was carried up through the atmosphere, the shuttle shuddering under the sheer force of its propulsion. It was old tech, but the machines maintained it, even if almost no one used it.

Not many people saw the point in going to orbit. You could see Sirius, see the stars, without leaving your chair if you wanted to. Tilda had done it herself, once or twice. She’d even rehearsed this a few times, just to be sure she didn’t mess up the docking procedure; the click as the shuttle fell into place against their main ship sounded exactly like the simulation.

Weightless, Tilda undid the belts that kept her in the chair, and pushed herself off the wall. The enhancements to her body had made the g-forces easy to ignore. She didn’t need to recover, and drifted lazily out through the airlock.

There was something almost thrilling about being up here. Down on Sirius, nothing could hurt her through her personal shield. Up here though, it was a billions-to-once chance that anything would malfunction with all the ship’s redundancies, but if the worst did happen, there’d be no protection from the void and the threat of re-entry.

She was completely safe, of course; the odds of anything going wrong with the Odyssey were absurdly low. Just the fact she could hypothesise a chain of errors though was, in its way, exciting.

Life was so… safe. Pedestrian.

“Ectogenic chamber,” Tilda said.

Doors automatically slid open. A dormant Specter activated, and skittered down the wall ahead of her, serving as a guide. Tilda floated through the dimly lit hallways, down into the depths of the ship.

The early plan had been a colonisation effort: they had all kinds of stored DNA and embryos with which to restart the human race on another world. They had everything they needed to create a viable population.

Then the life extension treatments had started - and who’d say no to that? - and it had delayed everything. Gerard of all people had pushed, in the early days, to use the chambers and go through their store of genetic material. Every member of Far Zenith, he’d argued, was a born leader - it only made sense to give them people to lead.

The proposal had thankfully been voted down (by a worryingly narrow margin), and then no one else had proposed using the chambers.

The charitable interpretation was that there was little need for a larger population when none of them were ageing. Some days, though, Tilda wondered what the original plan for the colony had ever been.

The last doors slid open, and the long-abandoned lights flickered on, illuminating a bay filled with glass pods. Tilda approached one, and waved her hand, calling up the holographic display interface.

She paused.

“Tilda van der Meer, grant access to personal effects,” she said.

The ship chimed its acknowledgement. She flicked through a few files, all greyed out, before finally reaching one marked as compatible. A DNA sample, ready for use with the ectogenic chamber.

She stared for a while.

That was one way to make something real, she supposed. Use a stored egg, use the sample as a template, and in a few months she could fly up here and…

And what?

Some days she’d praised her foresight in getting a genetic sample of Elisabet. It had been long before Zenith had made their move to take GAIA, when she and Elisabet had been on speaking terms, if not as close as they’d once been. It hadn’t taken much.

And now that string of genetic bases was all that was left of Elisabet Sobeck. It was a chance to see her reborn, to have her here, in the flesh rather than shallow code. To know that, in some way, she’d made sure Elisabet survived.

And then what?

She’d debated coming up here before, time and time again, and her thoughts always hit the same roadblock. She could make a clone, but what did that matter? Was she meant to raise her? It took time for clones to grow, to mature, and while Tilda was sure she could wait, she wasn’t sure what she was waiting for.

It was a stupid idea. A silly, romantic notion she’d come up with in a moment of desperation, when she’d been scared of losing Lis.

She didn’t want to raise a child. Even apart from feeling inappropriate, she’d hardly seen herself as the maternal type.

A scowl crossed her face, and she waved a hand, dismissing the menu.

“Access revoked. Close system,” Tilda said. “Prepare for return flight.”

The ship chimed its assent. Tilda turned back around, and pushed back down to the hallway, and to the shuttle.

It was a waste of time. There were some things reality couldn’t get her.

The Odyssey’s engines thrummed, and flew through the void faster than any human before them had ever gone, reaching an impressive fraction of the speed of light. Even knowing that though, it was easy to look out a window and think they were stationary. The stars hung still, pinpricks of white against the endless sky.

One advantage to zero-g was that the notion of a floor was mere suggestion. Tilda had moved her bed to the same wall as the door - the designers of the ship had made it on Earth, with more intuitive designs of a room, but she liked some variation. Now, the wall-spanning window that looked out into space had become a skylight.

(She didn’t think about the fact her room had never been this big, or the fact that the Odyssey had no windows outside of one or two shared spaces).

Beside her, Elisabet stretched out, smiling softly. The covers floated a couple of inches above them. Tilda reached out past them, long fingers trailing a path down Lis’s spine, touch lingering. It was hard to want to stop.

“You look beautiful in the starlight,” Tilda said.

“Stop it,” Lis said. A smile played at her lips as she batted Tilda’s hand, and rolled over to face her.

Tilda’s breath caught in her throat.

The light through the window was hardly bright, but it was all they needed just then. She could see everything she needed to: the light in Lis’s eyes, the way her red hair floated just slightly and tangled up in itself, the curl of her lips that was always so melancholy and yet so sure, and just her. Bony shoulders, the slight crease of age to her skin, a slight gangliness to her legs, and she was the most beautiful person Tilda had ever seen.

“I never thought I’d be in space,” Elisabet said, quietly awed. “I’m glad you convinced me. I’m glad to be here, even if I worry about…”

Lis stared at her; she leaned in slightly, and Tilda captured her lips in a kiss, one hand running up her arm and clinging so desperately onto her.

“Let’s not talk about that,” Tilda said. “Zero Dawn has just as much a chance without you. What matters is us, now, here.”

“Breaking new ground,” Elisabet said. She made a face. “Who’s at the front of the ship? Technically they’re the one setting all the records.”

“Probably Gerard,” Tilda said.

“Figures,” Elisabet said. “I don’t like him.”

“I’d rather not talk about him just now,” Tilda said, her hand still on Elisabet’s shoulder.

“That’s two topics you’ve put off the table,” Elisabet said. “We might run out at this rate, and we’ve got a long journey ahead of us. What do you want to talk about?”

Lis was playing with her; Tilda recognised that light note in her voice, that half-smile. Sometimes she liked to imagine it was a side of Elisabet only she got to see.

“You,” Tilda said.

“Really?” Elisabet said.

“I feel like I never got to know you, not as much as I wanted to,” Tilda said.

Elisabet’s expression slipped for a moment, but the gleam in her eyes never faded.

“Turn around,” Elisabet said. Tilda hesitated; Elisabet cupped her cheek. “It’s easier when I don’t have to face someone. People can be… hard.”

It was hard to stop touching Lis; she could feel the warmth of her under her hand, or in her arms. She so rarely felt anything close to that, these days; some of the modifications that were made to her body, for longevity, meant implants and replacements to nerves and skin. There were attempts to compensate, but it wasn’t the same. The texture alone was different.

But touching her with flesh, feeling her, lying with her with her body still as her body, there was something irreplaceable about that.

Still, Tilda shifted in bed, turning around. She felt Lis’s hand between her shoulder-blades for a moment, felt her lean in close. She shivered.

“I don’t like endings,” Elisabet said. “It’s… scary, sometimes, to think about. I don’t like sharing myself, feeling spread out, like that. I’m not good at this.”

“You’re you. That’s good enough,” Tilda said.

Faltering fingers rested on Tilda’s side. Tilda closed her eyes, blissful from that alone.

“Go at your own pace,” Tilda said softly. “What about, mm, the stars? Did you ever think you’d be up here?”

“What child didn’t imagine it?” Elisabet said. “Before I learned about the reality anyway. G-forces and travel time killed a lot of my interest for a while. I never wanted to be on one of those orbital flights.”

“I’m with you,” Tilda said. “I’ll stare at a picture someone took, but if I didn’t have to, I wouldn’t have ever left the atmosphere.”

“It was interesting, though,” Elisabet said. She hesitated, fingers unconsciously sketching out circles on Tilda’s bare skin. “Do you remember that old photo? The pale blue dot, a picture of Earth taken from the edge of the Solar System.”

“I remember,” Tilda said.

“I heard people talk about how it made them feel sad,” Elisabet said. “All of humanity, all of our history and culture, all of our lives, all of it took place in the space of one pixel.”

“Things were never as simple as it made them look,” Tilda said.

“No,” Elisabet murmured. She hesitated. “It was never like that for me. It was… inspiring.”

Lis was quiet for a moment. Tilda closed her eyes, content in her touch.

“I looked at it, “Elisabet said. “And I didn’t think about the Earth - I thought about the probe, the fact there was something that humans made, that we made, that was so far out that if it looked back, we were just that dot. That no matter what we did, something of us was out there, beyond anyone’s reach.”

Tilda stared into the shadows of the room, listening to Elisabet’s soft, half-whispered voice. Part of her longed to turn around, to look into those starlit eyes again, but she held off. Instead, gently, she rested her hand atop Elisabet’s.

“That’s a very you way of seeing it,” Tilda said. She laughed softly. “I like it. Finding a way to hope in the coldest infinity.”

“You never saw it like that?” Elisabet said.

“I liked it for what it was - the idea that all my troubles, all my pain, was contained within that one speck,” Tilda said. “It was a comfort, sometimes.”

“I like that too,” Elisabet said.

“Meaning in the art of a machine,” Tilda said. “Well. It was nice when it was true. Now all our pain goes much further.”

And on for much longer. Tilda tensed, for a moment.

Elisabet’s hand drifted up, fingertips ghosting over Tilda’s side, and shoulder, and through her hair.

“I can find other ways to help,” Elisabet said.

“Nothing hurts when you’re here,” Tilda said.

“I feel the same,” Elisabet said quietly. She paused. “I missed you.”

Tilda almost answered. Words failed a moment before she could, leaving her silent, laying still.

“Turn over,” Elisabet said, soft.

Tilda did, facing her again; she had Lis’s face etched in her memory so clearly, but being able to see her again still made her heart leap.

“Lis…” Tilda said. “I love you. I always will.”

“I love you too,” Elisabet said.

She leaned in again, closer, first her lips pressing against Tilda, and then more. Below the starlight, surrounded by blank metal and the aching, frozen void of space, Tilda lost herself in the warmth.

“I never meant to sign up for this, you know,” Stanley was saying.

He was gesturing vaguely at the casino below. They were on the upper floor of the resort, slim wooden tables looking out across a bevy of themed attractions with gambling machines filling the plaza immediately below them.

There was an open window, now, looking onto bustling lights out in the desert. The city had grown.

“When Song Jiao started talking about longevity, I thought it was just that,” Stanley said. “A little bit more health, and of course I wanted to still be young enough to enjoy this place when we got here. It was an alien world, and all that. And here we are, four hundred and fifty years later and I don’t feel a day older.”

Tilda didn’t leave VR so much these days. A vague effort had been made by machines in the actual colony, but she’d seen it all several times over by now. With a few more modifications, she could stay submerged in simulation for weeks at a time.

She’d lived better lives. Sometimes, on breaks, she wandered the hallways of the network; Stanley’s door was always open.

“I assumed there would be more to see, when we got here,” Tilda said.

“Same,” Stanley said. “There’s a world of difference between living long enough to enjoy a new world, and just… living.”

“I’m glad, though,” Tilda said. “If humanity has to survive, then it’s good that we can survive. We’re carrying a lot of memories. That’s all that’s really left.”

“If we’re still human,” Stanley said.

He downed his glass, and made a face.

“Well that got creepy. Nope, not going there,” he said.

“Don’t tell me you’re one of those no-modification people,” Tilda said. “Amazed you’d have been let on the flight if you were.”

“Oh, no, nothing like that,” Stanley said. He shrugged. “Just, what’s the point? If you’d have asked me what I was doing, back on Earth, I’d have said I was trying to make a better life for people. Strangers, future generations, whoever, I wanted to leave something behind for them.”

“And here, there’s no generations, there’s just us,” Tilda finished for him.

“You get it. It doesn’t feel the same,” Stanley said.

Tilda sipped her wine. Stanley had only gotten better at simulating tastes; she could feel a faint alcohol buzz, just slipping in through the safeguards around her virtual consciousness.

He’d given her the means to adjust her local volume, too. She muted much of the ruckus below, missing the semi-regular cheers of a jackpot and the flashing holo-signs on the level below. An illusory firework exploded metres from her face, and dancers contorted themselves silently on a stage.

“Do you think they’ll ever actually start the colony?” Tilda said. “All that genetic material is still in orbit. We could have a thriving city in a century.”

“I doubt it,” Stanley said. “Honestly, I’m not sure I’d want to. It’s a nice idea, but you’d just end up with a generation raised by us.”

“’Raised’ might be a charitable way of putting it,” Tilda said. Still, she nodded. “I suppose it’s for the best. It just feels like we could be doing more.”

“But why would we?” Stanley said. “When it’s just us, it’s just us - anything we do, is for our benefit, and nothing makes us happier than what we can do in VR.”

“It’s like we lost something,” Tilda said.

He grimaced, and waved a robot-waiter over to refill his glass.

The mechanical staff of the virtual Vegas had only been improved over the decades. Stanley had studiously avoided using the same class as the Specters, going for a more old-fashioned, less fluid design. They were grey, polished to be shiny, but always in fixed forms, rolling or walking elegantly from table to table.

It had surprised Tilda, at first, that Stanley hadn’t decided to just simulate human staff. It would have been easier. Then again, he wasn’t just making a place to unwind; he was trying to re-make a place from Earth.

“I thought I’d be over it, you know,” Stanley said, seeing Tilda’s gaze linger on the garish holographic displays. “I’d program a city, get it out of my system, and move on.”

“I can’t picture you doing anything else,” Tilda said.

“Yeah. That’s the problem,” he said. He sighed. “Don’t get me wrong. I love Las Vegas, I owe it everything, and getting the chance to rebuild it twice over has been a delight. But that means I’m on track to reach five hundred, a thousand, ten thousand… and nothing in my life has mattered more than something in the first fifty years. Kinda depressing if you think of it like that.”

“This isn’t life. It’s just stagnancy,” Tilda said.

“I’ll drink to that,” Stanley said.

Glasses clinked. Bombastic music thrummed below, the beat sending occasional vibrations through the chair Tilda sat on.

A robot refilled her glass, too. She barely had to gesture for it to oblige.

“I want to meet new people,” Tilda said. “Do new things, not just relive the same memories again and again. There’s just… nothing to do.”

“Nothing except remember,” Stanley said.

He glanced out. Sometimes, Tilda wondered how he felt about the fact barely anyone visited; as active as his world looked, she was the only real person in there just then. Stanley never talked about getting many other guests.

He’d programmed in more than just the world. There were games, of skill and of chance, dotted all throughout the faux-city. Below them, green card-tables were laid out, and past that were roulette wheels, and slot machines, and a whole city of entertainment stretched out past that.

Programming in the rules of a game took time, and Tilda knew Stanley well enough to say he’d have done it from scratch. Giving each person, each dealer, their own personalities and ways of playing, all of that took effort.

And she didn’t even play them. Quite apart from not being what she found enjoyable, she just didn’t see the point - there was no thrill of risk when she was only worried about virtual currency.

“So is this all you do?” Tilda said. “Just make Vegas bigger and bigger?”

“When I pick up a new hobby, I’ll let you know,” Stanley said. He shrugged. “Not much chance to do anything except double down, though.”

“Is that really the only thing you’ve done?”

“What?” Stanley said. “You’ve got just as much access to VR as I have. What do you spend your days on?”

Almost imperceptibly, Tilda faltered for a moment, and hid it behind a sip of wine.

Red hair. Earth. A confident, assured core wrapped up in someone who could look so unassuming. A genius who’d deserved better.

“Anyway,” Tilda said, quickly changing the subject. “Would you have done anything differently?”

“Ah, the big question,” Stanley said. He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. Who can say? I’d still have gotten on the Odyssey, I can tell you that much.”

“I… think I would, too,” Tilda said. She paused. “And the life extension treatments?”

“Oh, god yes,” Stanley said. “Don’t get me wrong, immortality has its problems, but it’s not like I want to die.”

“So if we could go back, we’d just make the same mistakes again,” Tilda said.

“Probably,” Stanley said. He laughed. “And you? Would you have done anything different?”

“Said better goodbyes,” Tilda said. She faltered. “Tried to bring someone. But otherwise… No, I’d still want to have survived, and I’d still want to live. We did all this to avoid death, not just give in to it when time proved too much.”

“Well said,” Stanley said.

If Elisabet were there. If Elisabet were with her, really…

She couldn’t help but wonder how different it would be. Elisabet could fix anything; that much, Tilda knew for sure. She’d been on a world overwhelmed by the Faro swarm, and she’d been the only person able to find a way to save it. If she were here, life on this colony would be more bearable.

It would be better than living in her memories, anyway. If only she had new experiences to balance them.

Stanley raised his glass; Tilda echoed the gesture, rolling her eyes in easy amusement. He was charming, there was no way around that. He was a good enough host that she kept coming back to this little oasis.

And the two immortals sat there, drinking, talking, as holo-people revelled in success and grieved at loss below them.

“Only one thing scares me more than the idea of dying,” Stanley said, eventually.

“And what’s that?” Tilda said.

“Not,” Stanley said.

The virtual reality system of the colony could re-construct any place from a picture or film, on top of having a decent variety of stock locations programmed in. One of the Zero Dawn facilities had been recorded in Tilda’s focus, so transferring it over had been easy. So had making Lis anew.

Picking a moment in the day was the hard part. Tilda cycled through times, until she found one that was quiet. No alphas working, but Lis still there, of course. She was always the last to leave.

And then Tilda stepped into the simulation. The sleek white and gold of her outfit morphed into more natural clothes, the formal yet practical wear of her earthly self. Despite herself, Tilda hesitated in the doorway.

It was all fake. All virtual. But when most of her life was spent in here, it started to feel as real as anything else, as though hurting a hologram’s feelings was hurting a real person’s.

At the sound of the door, Elisabet turned around. Her expression clouded slightly when she saw her.

“Tilda,” Elisabet said. “I thought I revoked your clearances.”

“Did you really expect that to work?” Tilda said. “You know what my field is.”

“I do,” Elisabet said. She sighed. “Tilda, I really don’t have time-”

“Please. Just let me say sorry,” Tilda said.

Lis’s eyes were firm. Some days, Tilda was so sure she’d be able to stand in front of the Faro swarm and just stare them down through sheer force of will. Tilda held her breath, unsure.

And Elisabet relented. She nodded, implicitly giving Tilda permission to stay, but drew back.

“I lied to you,” Tilda said. “I shouldn’t have, that shouldn’t have been how we said goodbye.”

“No. You shouldn’t have,” Elisabet said. She closed her eyes. “If you’re just going to rehash this, I don’t need the distraction right now-”

“I knew they wanted GAIA,” Tilda said.

She tensed, the words falling out in one breath. Elisabet was quiet.

“When I said I had no idea, that wasn’t… I knew,” Tilda said. “I just couldn’t bear you thinking of me like I was just another functionary.”

Lis wasn’t speaking. Tilda tried not to shake.

There were too many things that had been left unspoken. Things had ended so abruptly between them, first the drifting apart, and then the goodbye, that it was hard not to look back without regrets.

If she was going to list the things she was ashamed of, she might be there years. Some things stuck with her more than others, though.

“We needed it,” Tilda said. “I thought a copy of the terraforming system would help the colony. I was… complicit. I didn’t think it would matter to you as much as it did - taking a copy wouldn’t have affected you, it would just have made settling easier. Which, I recognise, isn’t how you would’ve seen it, and that was my mistake. I should have spoken to you.”

“She’s not just a system,” Elisabet said, after a moment.

Tilda hesitated.

“GAIA’s an AI,” Elisabet said. “You aren’t copying some file. You’re taking her. Whether or not there’s a version of her left, that’s what you’d be doing.”

“I… understand,” Tilda said slowly.

“Do you?” Elisabet said.

Tilda was quiet. Elisabet’s eyes lingered on her.

It was easy to see the look of betrayal in her eyes, and it wasn’t like Tilda could blame her. Tilda stood just inside the doorway, hand on the door-frame, aching to close the distance between them.

“God, how did we become this?” Tilda said.

Elisabet looked down.

“Do you remember Venice, after your reclamation project?” Tilda said.

“Dinner by the waterside,” Elisabet said softly. “I remember.”

“If you’d told me then that we’d be at odds like this, I’d never have…”

A ghost of a bitter smile crossed Elisabet’s face. She gestured, somewhat reluctantly, for Tilda to step inside. The door slid closed behind her.

“I didn’t want this,” Elisabet said.

“Neither did I,” Tilda said, moving closer with a momentary fervency. When Elisabet flinched, she stopped. “I’d understand if you hated me.”

“Hate you?” Elisabet said. “I couldn’t hate you, Tilda. I can hate the fact I don’t, but you, you were always…”

“You’re the most important thing in the world to me,” Tilda said. “The last thing I’d ever want to do is hurt you. I didn’t think that would be the end.”

“It’s not the end,” Elisabet said. She hesitated. “It doesn’t have to be.”

Then, she looked up. She fidgeted slightly, pushing uncut hair away from her eyes to look up at Tilda, unblinking. Tilda froze.

“I hated how things ended, before,” Elisabet said. “And I hate the idea of ending on a fight. I never stopped caring about you, Tilda, I’m just… not the best at it.”

“Lis…”

It was Elisabet who took a step closer. She looked at Tilda, as if testing the waters.

“You forgive me?” Tilda said, her voice uncharacteristically small.

“Forgive? I don’t know,” Elisabet said. “You should have told me. But it doesn’t outweigh everything else, not to me. If I think about everything else, if I think about cutting off contact with you again, that hurts more than the idea of Far Zenith taking a copy of GAIA.”

Her hand rested gently on Tilda’s fore-arm, and Tilda stiffened to feel her suddenly so close.

There was tenderness in Elisabet’s eyes, a real, genuine care deeper than almost any Tilda had known. It was everything she’d ever wanted, to know that Elisabet wouldn’t have died feeling betrayed, and to know Lis still cared for her as much as she did.

There was conflict, there was doubt, but Tilda could so easily look through to the good.

“I don’t want that to be our goodbye either,” Elisabet said. “I’ve missed you, so much.”

Her voice was gentle. Tilda’s breath caught in her throat; Lis was the only person who’d ever had that kind of effect on her. She could forget everything else, except that instant of contact, and…

And Elisabet, with messy, unkempt hair, and beneath them eyes that shone with hope and promise.

Tilda pulled away suddenly.

Elisabet hesitated, standing in place for a few seconds, as if processing. Baffled, she watched Tilda retreat all the way to the door, a scowl on Tilda’s face.

This was wrong. Maybe it always had been, but something suddenly made it stick in her throat like it never had before.

“This is ridiculous,” Tilda muttered.

“Tilda?” Elisabet said.

“Stop it!” Tilda snapped. “Is this supposed to be convincing? You’re dead. I know you’re dead.”

There was a computer screen to the side of the room; Tilda’s fist went through it before she even realised what had happened. The virtual shards of glass didn’t cause even a glimmer of pain.

Was she meant to get closure from this? Was this meant to feel like this mattered?

Elisabet jumped, backing away for a moment. Tilda didn’t even look at her.

“I don’t need a fake,” Tilda said. “End simulation. Forget this.”

The bunker faded away, and the scared eyes of Elisabet Sobeck were the last thing of all to vanish. Tilda was left behind, still in her chair, still in her room.

Nothing changed. Nothing ever changed.

And she was alone, again. Like she had been when she’d left Earth, like she had been when they’d arrived on this world, and like she had been for the last seven hundred years. Just her room, and whatever simulated memories she could conjure up. Empty copies.

Tilda closed her eyes, and sat painfully still.

Of all things, Tilda had a garden now. She’d ordered a few Specters to remake the front of her dwelling, and take some seed stock from where it was languishing, unused, on the Odyssey.             

She looked out through the glass wall. The grass of the colony was still well-mowed, and had spread further out across the planet. Most of the local vegetation had been eradicated in their vicinity by now.

Lining her door was a neat grid, two rows of flowers either side, all bright colours. She tilted her head, still deciding how she felt about it. It was nice to have a little more, she supposed.

Then she turned her head down. More beautiful than the garden, certainly, was the woman by her side.

“Lis,” Tilda murmured.

“This is… interesting,” she said, slowly. “Not what I expected.”

“It seldom is,” Tilda said. “It is nice to have you here. I’m glad you made it.”

Elisabet shifted, a little uncomfortably. She got up, moving forwards, looking out onto the alien world. Tilda was content to lean back and watch her.

It was quiet, of course; the other colonists had their virtual realities. Beyond the machines, nothing moved outside the window. Everything neatly ordered, maintained and utterly stagnant.

Elisabet was quiet.

“Is everything…” Tilda said. Elisabet shifted.

“I don’t know. It’s strange, you know it is,” Elisabet said. “Something’s bothering me.”

“What?” Tilda said. “Anything I can help with?”

“I don’t know what. That’s what’s bothering me,” Elisabet said.

She frowned; Tilda leaned in quietly, gently resting a hand on her shoulder. Elisabet flinched, and Tilda drew back.

“Sorry. Old habit,” Tilda said.

“It’s complicated,” Elisabet said.

“I know,” Tilda said.

“I know that we were… but I know that ended, before the Faro Plague,” Elisabet said. “I don’t remember us ever reconciling.”

“I understand,” Tilda said. “I’ll try not to make you uncomfortable, it’s just… unconscious, sometimes. I loved you more than you ever knew.”

“I… don’t know how I feel,” Elisabet said.

“It’s okay,” Tilda said. “I can wait until you’re ready. Or if you’re never ready, then I can live with that too. The important thing is that you’re here, and that you’re alive.”

Elisabet hesitated. Tilda’s gaze lingered on her.

“What is it?” Tilda said.

“I remember almost everything up to the start of Zero Dawn,” Elisabet said. “Everything after that’s a blank. That injury you said I had, the malfunctioning Specter… I don’t even remember agreeing to come to this place.”

“Those memories don’t matter,” Tilda said, firmly. “Don’t worry about them.”

“It’s frustrating,” Elisabet said.

“It’s nothing good,” Tilda said. “The world was… in a bad shape, then. It’s better not to know. Trust me.”

“I saw the recordings,” Elisabet said.

“You shouldn’t have,” Tilda said. “There are things I’d forget, if I could.”

It was always quiet on the surface of the colony. The Odyssey had the means to create pollinators and animals, to re-create a little piece of Earth; they’d decided against it. Animals meant unpredictability, meant power lines gnawed through or path markers slowly shifted.

Machines filled every role, kept the limited greenery alive and in position, and kept anything else from falling apart. When they weren’t active, the world outside was so very still.

It was nice to be out of virtual reality, for once.

“I don’t know why I’d have chosen this,” Elisabet said, quietly.

Something flickered across Tilda’s face, and she was beside Elisabet almost immediately. She rested her hand on the back of Elisabet’s, their modifications almost identical.

“To survive,” Tilda said. “To have hope.”

“I know. I must have thought something,” Elisabet said. She scowled. “I don’t like not knowing - I just want to know what I saw in this place, why I thought it was worth leaving Zero Dawn for it.”

Tilda moved in front of Elisabet, looking into Elisabet’s eyes, and for a moment faltering at just the fact she could. Her hand lingered on Elisabet’s, and Elisabet didn’t move back.

“Lis,” Tilda said, breathlessly, almost involuntarily. She hesitated. Then cleared her throat. “This place isn’t all I imagined it would be either. I admit that. But it’s better not to look at the things you’ve lost, when you could be looking at what you have.”

“And what do I have?” Elisabet said.

She raised an eyebrow skeptically, clearly expecting the cheesy answer. Tilda’s lip quirked.

“Anything you want,” Tilda said. “Everyone else is lost in their virtual fantasies, but we’re different. What we have is real.”

The virtual corridors stretched out ahead of Tilda, the faux-hotel network as vast and ordered as ever. She stepped out of her own server, and walked towards a door hidden behind a sheet of wallpaper; she opened it quickly.

Elisabet was still slightly standoffish. Tilda moved back, doing her best to give her space when she could. Things were complex, unsurprisingly, but she did what she could.

Elisabet walked forwards slowly, looking from side to side in quiet awe as she took in the simulated environment. Far Zenith had elevated the basic holo-tech far beyond anything it had been on Earth. The carpet felt real underfoot, and the wallpaper was peeling at the corners, a myriad tiny details that had been amassed over the centuries.

Still, she followed Tilda as she led the way through the hallways. At an unmarked door, Tilda looked back.

“Are you ready?” Tilda said.

She smiled, trying to be as encouraging as she could. Hesitantly, Elisabet nodded; she wasn’t nervous, she was never one to act skittish, but she could be withdrawn so much of the time.

Tilda had learned to accept that about her. Still, Elisabet was the one that had asked to see more of the colony, and once they’d exhausted the limited physical grounds, this was the only place to come.

They walked into Vegas together.

Even Elisabet smiled; she did a double-take at the flashes of colour and the shimmer of hologram, and her eyes caught on a robotic server as it slid past.

Ahead of them, faux-people were performing on a stage. Strobe lights flashed a dozen different colours, bombastic music as tangible as anything physical; Elisabet looked away, until Tilda showed her how to call up the volume control.

Elisabet hesitated before adjusting how it sounded to her. When she could focus again, she resumed quietly looking around the creation, seemingly bemused by the newly silent dancers. A figure in a top hat whirled around, hand-in-hand with a hologram, coat-tails lifting up as they span.

“Tilda! Always a pleasure!”

Stanley squeezed past guests, making his way across the casino floor with open arms. He beamed, halfway to a hug before pulling back and just offering his hand. Relieved, Tilda shook.

“And… Don’t know the face, so you must be, er, new,” Stanley said. He frowned, peering at Elisabet. “Wait a second.”

“Stanley. You know Elisabet,” Tilda said smoothly.

“I mean, I do, but…” he paused, then shrugged. “Sure, why not? All are welcome here. Sorry about the noise, you came during the afternoon show.”

“It’s okay,” Elisabet said. “Tilda showed me how to turn it down.”

“Turn it…” Stanley paused.

“Er. Do you mind if I take a look into one of your waiters? I have no idea how you’d make something that accurate in a simulation,” Elisabet said. “That one has a loose screw in the right knee - that exact wobble, I used to run into all the time. It’s well-made.”

Stanley blinked, slowly.

“A lot of time, that’s pretty much your answer,” he said. He hesitated. “Knock yourself out.”

“Thank you,” Elisabet said.

She nodded to him, and glanced to Tilda, before moving away. Stanley hesitated. Then, without a word, he went behind the bar, pulled out a bottle, and poured himself and Tilda glasses.

His eyes kept darting to Elisabet, who was shadowing a robot waiter with her brow knitted in curiosity.

“She’s not virtual,” Stanley whispered across the bar.

Tilda exhaled.

“No,” Tilda said. “She’s not.”

“Do I want to ask why you have a clone of Elisabet Sobeck?!” Stanley whispered, slightly more urgently.

Tilda sipped her wine.

“I took your advice,” Tilda said.

“I’m pretty sure I never advised you to clone…” he began. His voiced trailed off. “Wait, your mystery woman, she was Sobeck?”

Tilda said nothing. She looked across the virtual bar, a fond smile on her face - Lis had convinced a waiter to open up its chest-piece and was peering with impressed fascination at the virtual, intricate mechanisms.

“You made a clone?” Stanley said, still hushed.

“I wanted something real,” Tilda said.

“Still. A clone,” Stanley said.

“Raised in virtual reality on all the data I have from Lis’s Focus,” Tilda said. “She has her memories - well, most of them - and if she went off-script, it was corrected. She’s more than a clone. She’s a piece of Lis, saved the only way I could.”

Stanley was quiet. Elisabet, meanwhile, raised her eyebrows as she peered under a piece of circuitry.

“I don’t want to just waste away in simulation,” Tilda said. “If you could bring this Vegas into the real colony, wouldn’t you?”

“Don’t think I haven’t tried,” Stanley said. “Not enough people would go.”

“Well there you go.”

“She’s not a city,” Stanley said.

“No. She has more right to survive than this place,” Tilda said.

Stanley gave her a hard stare; she knew him well enough, after four hundred years, to guess at what was going on in his head. He was a good person, she knew, but also somewhat closed-off; the fact he was still at this casino after so long proved that.

But everyone at Far Zenith had their peccadilloes, and hers hardly compared to some of the others. The rare guests this Vegas got would have told Stanley that. You lived by the standards of the group you were in.

Stanley sighed.

“I’m not going to get in the middle of this,” he said.

“Thank you, Stanley,” Tilda said; she raised a glass. “I wanted her to have more than the slapdash reality. I thought she’d enjoy this sort of place.”

“People have brought their simulations here before,” Stanley said. “It gets… weird. No one’s made a whole person out in the real world.”

“That lot?” Tilda said. “I’d be surprised if most of them actually missed anyone they left behind.”

“A couple do,” Stanley said. He made a face. “Okay, yeah, not many.”

It said something about how detached the Zenith colony had become, that her little decades-long plan hadn’t even been noticed by anyone until now. On one hand, yes, she covered her tracks - but on the other, barely anyone looked around the real world anymore. VR was where all the entertainment was, and there was no need to wander when machines took care of every basic need.

Tilda hadn’t been present for much. Clones took time to grow, and the virtual environment ought to be complete enough to ensure she had the same memories as Elisabet - stopping a little way before the Odyssey left Earth. It was, so Tilda reasoned, better for her to not feel so attached to the Zero Dawn staff.

Let her believe she’d had some minor memory loss, and everything else was her. Tilda had run comparable virtual experiences sometimes, imagining how the colony would have been if Elisabet was actually there.

Even if things between them were never really rekindled, it was worth it just to see her across the bar. Elisabet drew back from the robot server, legitimately apologising to it like it was a person.

So like Lis.

“So this is really weird,” Stanley said.

“Being tired of only having a fake is weird?” Tilda said.

“And she’s not a fake?” Stanley said. When Tilda opened her mouth to reply, he lifted his hands placatingly: “Sorry, sorry, really not meaning to get in the middle of… whatever this is. Just don’t use my resort for some action hero fantasy where you slaughter half my guests, and I’ll shrug it off.”

Tilda paused.

“Erik?” she guessed.

“Who else?” Stanley said. He sighed. “I upgraded my bouncers just for him. Seems to be working, for now.”

Some days, Tilda had questioned herself. In the early centuries especially, leaning so far into simulations and fake pasts as therapy had felt uncomfortable. Then she remembered who she was out here with, and what they were using all this power for, and she stopped being able to feel quite so bad.

She smiled to herself, and then smiled warmly as Elisabet sat down next to them. The mechanical bartender poured her a drink.

“I looked at your staff,” Elisabet said, looking over to Stanley. “They’re well-made. It’s a lot of detail you didn’t need to include.”

“Right. Er. Thanks,” Stanley said.

He hid his stare, and looked away when Elisabet finished downing her glass.

“This… wasn’t what I expected,” Elisabet said, to Tilda. “Definitely not from you.”

“Is it not?” Tilda said.

“You know what I mean. You were always art galleries, and conferences,” Elisabet said. “All this…”

She waved her hand vaguely. A few feet away, a holo-ad flashed to dancing cavemen, and a fountain behind them rained champagne bubbles.

“Huh. I suppose,” Tilda said. “I wasn’t the biggest fan the first time I came here, to be honest.”

“Ouch,” Stanley said.

“I guess it grew on me,” Tilda said. “One of the few places that felt… different.”

“You’ve changed,” Elisabet said, neutrally.

Tilda blinked.

“I guess I must have,” Tilda said.

In the real world, in Tilda’s home, Elisabet sat on a stall. She stared at the wall; Tilda had printed two holographic displays, depicting the data of stored artwork. Woman Reading A Letter, and Woman Reading Music.

She looked between them, an odd look on her face. She was sat there for several minutes, as good as alone.

Tilda was behind her, but in the sleep-adjacent state induced by virtual reality, apparently back in Vegas. Elisabet had asked for a little time alone.

She’d wanted to improve the colony. How could she not? If she was here, she could hardly believe they’d had all these facilities and not done anything with them. This place looked so basic for a centuries-old, advanced settlement.

But there was only so much she could do with her own two hands. It was the machines that did all the real work here, which she was okay with, so long as she could plan out what to do. She’d looked up the colony’s capabilities, refreshed her memories of what she’d forgotten, and…

Elisabet sat there, still, looking at Tilda’s wall.

This was Tilda’s home, more than Elisabet’s - her rooms, every detail something she’d decided upon.

When Tilda at last stirred, Elisabet didn’t move. She watched the shadows as Tilda moved closer behind her, saw Tilda catch herself before she could rest her hands on Elisabet’s shoulders, and saw Tilda instead simply sit down near her.

“Lis. Made any progress?” Tilda said.

“I wouldn’t have left Earth,” Elisabet said.

"What?” Tilda said.

Elisabet turned to face her. There was something new in her eyes, a familiar, simmering resolve.

“I wondered why I couldn’t remember,” Elisabet said. “I wouldn’t have agreed to come here, not if it meant giving up on the Earth, on actual humanity.”

Tilda hesitated, but pushed aside a momentary flicker of worry. There was no point in assuming the worst. Things were better, now - had to be better.

“Why would you have chosen to stay on a dying world?” Tilda said. “Of course you wouldn’t have.”

“I saw the cloning log, Tilda,” Elisabet said.

Then, Tilda did falter. Elisabet didn’t blink.

“I just wondered about expanding the colony, and looked at the records of what you had,” Elisabet said. “I saw the ectogenic chambers, wondered why they’d gone unused, and I saw that oddity. You did a good job covering your tracks, Tilda, but I saw one account of use, saw how many years ago it was, and wasn’t that hard to piece together the DNA sample.”

Elisabet was looking at her, gaze set. It was unnerving how it was moments like this when she most resembled the original Lis. She was never quite cold, but she could come disconcertingly close at times.

Tilda paused. She didn’t let herself fall apart, not again; careful, measured, she thought through what to say.

“Always one step ahead,” Tilda said. She smiled. “Honestly, I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“I’m not her,” Elisabet said. “I’m not me.”

“Aren’t you?” Tilda said.

“You lied to me.”

“Your memories are your memories. Your actions are your own,” Tilda said. She smiled, almost fondly. “Thinking about it, I doubt this would have fooled her.”

“You lied to me.”

“You are Elisabet,” Tilda said. “A piece of her, made whole.”

Elisabet was looking at her; Tilda was almost disturbed by how used she was to that look of disgust. She’d seen it in memory after memory.

“I- She never came with you, did she?” Elisabet said. “That’s why you made me. A consolation prize because she- I- she wouldn’t choose this.”

Tilda flinched.

“You would have, if you’d had a proper chance,” Tilda said. She faltered. “If I’d been- It doesn’t matter. Regardless, now you didn’t need to choose to leave the Earth behind. You’ve done both - saved the world, and survived it.”

“Aren’t you listening to me?” Elisabet said.

“Of course I am,” Tilda said brusquely. “I’ve heard every word you’ve said, and every word you could say. I hid certain things from you, yes. Be angry if you must. It’s hard to keep up anger for centuries.”

Elisabet stood up sharply. There was something uncertain in her manner, a shaking Tilda couldn’t recall.

“You weren’t like this before,” Elisabet said. “You were never this… cold. I remember.”

For a moment, Tilda did hesitate. It was always hard to be sure if you changed; you lost your reference point, unavoidably. Logically, she supposed she must have, after so long.

And yet this felt too familiar.

“I’m not cold. I’m practical,” Tilda said. “With the perspective immortality brings, you start to see how small certain conflicts are.”

“Small?” Elisabet said. “I don’t even know who I am.”

“You are Elisabet Sobeck,” Tilda said, clipped and precise. “You have her body, her spirit, her mind, her experiences - if there is such a thing as a soul, then you have hers.”

“I’m not some redo,” Elisabet said.

“That isn’t-”

“Do you want to know what I remember?” Elisabet said. “I did care for you, but we wanted different things, so we stopped. And that’s just what I felt - I have no idea if it’s what she felt, and I have no idea what she did, but I know who I am and what I’d have done. Or I thought I did. Because you lied to me, about everything, for as long as I’ve even existed.”

Lis had a way of talking, a way of looking you in your eyes and making you listen.

Tilda faltered.

“I’m not perfect,” Tilda said, carefully. “I’ve spent centuries with nothing but megalomaniacs for company, I know that’s had an effect. Life changes us. It changed you.”

“You didn’t give me a choice.”

“I always gave you choices,” Tilda said. “I never made you-”

“How am I supposed to choose anything when all I have are fake memories?” Elisabet said. “Someone else’s memories, someone else’s lifetime. Nothing I have is actually mine.”

Tilda remembered when last she’d argued with Elisabet - she remembered it all too clearly, honestly. It hadn’t felt like this. Back then, every word had felt so cutting.

Now, it was like it was all happening on the other side of a pane of glass. She couldn’t help but think that Elisabet could move on. That was what immortality was for. It didn’t feel like an argument, or a confrontation; it was just a minor squabble.

The important thing was that they had time.

“And you’re alive,” Tilda said.

“Is that all you’re taking away from this?” Elisabet said.

“It’s all that matters,” Tilda said.

Elisabet closed her eyes for a long, painful second.

“Do you know what the worst part is?” Elisabet said. “I did care about you. I did like you. If you’d only been honest, I might have… I don’t know. That’s the problem, isn’t it? I can’t know.”

Elisabet turned around. She was most of the way to the door before Tilda sat up.

“Lis,” she said.

Elisabet opened the door, moving remarkably quickly.

“There’s nothing out there,” Tilda said.

And Elisabet walked outside, without answering. Tilda sighed, and sat back in her chair, and waited for her to come back.

Tilda Van Der Meer left Elisabet behind on a dying world for the second time.

The colony was little more than a smear of red, now; her breath was still coming faster, some instinctual response to the sudden panic. There were Specters being churned out of the printers, tearing one another apart just for some outlet, and tearing through what little colony they’d built. It had felt like almost everything had been over-run before they even knew what had happened.

Tilda had run. The rocket was the obvious choice - and Gerard had launched it as soon as he could. Getting away from NEMESIS as soon as possible, before it could crack the obsolete access codes to the Odyssey, was a priority. She understood that.

And Elisabet hadn’t come back to her.

It hadn’t been that long ago, all things considered. Lis had left her. After a few hours, she’d come back, but just for the shelter - Tilda hadn’t pushed. She was nothing if not patient.

Then Elisabet had spent a lot of time outside. She might even have been trying to put some of her plans into action, to make her mark on the colony and actually see it grow. Tilda hadn’t seen much evidence of that, but she knew how long planning could take.

And then NEMESIS had happened. Tilda barely even remembered that the damn thing existed, and it had over-run almost all their systems before she figured out what she was supposed to call it.

Lis hadn’t been home. Now there was just red light and torn, smoking metal.

Gerard was looking out of the shuttle’s one window; rather than despair, there was a grim triumph on his face, the thrill at surviving another world only slightly marred by fear. Tilda moved behind him, brushing past the scant handful squeezed onto the pod.

Of all the people to have survived… She grimaced, and hit a few keys on the core control console; other means of input had been disabled to limit NEMESIS’s avenues of attack.

“Tilda?” Gerard said.

“Beaming junk data to the Odyssey,” Tilda said. “Shouldn’t be in any position to process any messages from NEMESIS until we’ve manually changed the codes.”

“Hm. Good work,” Gerard said, like he had any idea what she meant.

She’d survived. Again. Losing a world got easier, apparently; this didn’t feel the same as losing Earth. Maybe it just hadn’t hit her yet, but none of it felt quite so raw, quite so meaningful as the loss of her first world had.

And there hadn’t been time to find Lis. That hurt her, more than leaving the colony behind did. That was twice she should have lived, twice that people so much less deserving of life had outlived her.

Well, Tilda promised herself, it was a mistake she wouldn’t make again.