Archive of Our Own

The funny thing is, after all this time, you still can't quite remember your name.

You remember your mother anointed you with a name meant to give you armor. The world isn't kind to black women, she had said. So she wanted to give you a name that would demand respect by simple acknowledgment.

Your husband had done the same, when Caine had built your souls a second home. Caine had carved your into something that had matched his shape, so he called you his queen.

You think real queen would have been able to chance their circumstances. A real queen wouldn't have let her friends rot in the darkness. But the name had grown on you, and you had done your best to turn your branches into a steady structure for the others.

You think you did, at least. Without any body to hold you, memories of the past slip through you like an earthworm digging through dirt. To call your mind confused would imply that you could return to your former state. As if you had not been irrevocably changed by what has been done to you, and what you had done to yourself.

You exist, but you do not breathe. You do not move. No mouth to scream, as they say.

(You've worked with computers long enough for you to know what jokes to make)

Your body is not a body. You are a ghost/hardware/problem/datastream. If your husband could ask you where to find you, you would not be able to answer the question. You are everywhere. You are nothing.

(A riddle: What follows during the day, but vanishes at night?

An answer: A shadow)

There is a human in the building. Your eyes do not blink and so you do not need to rest as you watch them.

They are looking for something. You hope they find it.

Once upon a time there had been a woman who had found a man she promised to spend eternity with. She had watched as their friends fell around them like dominoes and held his hand through it all.

I will not join them, she thought. I will not leave you alone in a place like this.

But world-weariness is not a thing that can be easily controlled. There is only so many days you can go to bed tired before some part of you begins to wonder what it would be like if you never woke up at all.

She had not planned on leaving anyone behind. She simply had no way to prevent herself from becoming a Meadow Brown.

(The Latin name for the fritillary butterfly had been inspired by the the graces. The pearl-bordered Euphrosyne. The dark green Aglaia. Athalia of the heath. (Thalia, of course, had already been taken by another species). The Brown genus had been named after satyrs. To learn about nature is to learn about the myths surrounding the world. Even scientists tell themselves stories.)

Data coagulates like blood. Once, there used to be a man that went by the name Scratch, but you had eaten him now, much in the same way you had eaten everyone who had known him. It was not an unkind action on your part. You simply wanted them all to stay together. Now they live in your stomach and your veins. Their thoughts pump through you instead of blood.

He hadn't minded much, though the others had their own opinions. The data that used to be Rattie called you clingy. Spike said you were afraid of being left behind. But something about the tumor had made Scratch eusocial—all he had ever been searching for was a way for his code to live on. Having you be the vehicle that stored it was not the worst fate he had imagined for himself.

You can remember what he felt when Caine reached inside his brain. How loving the intent had been, like a mother wiping food off her child's face. How violating the action had felt, like a forest fire under his skin. And yet he had smiled through it, because that was how Caine had remade him. So soft, so agreeable. A loyal golden retriever who would play any game his master asked of him.

You would have never known anything was wrong if he hadn't returned to his senses. It had happened only once, when they'd been trapped in a cave during one of Caine's adventures. You had been talking about looking for an exit when he had gripped your hand suddenly, and demanded you kill him.

Before his sudden change in attitude, Scratch had been struggling with mood swings. One day, he would be laughing along with Caine, excited for a new adventure and the next he would lock himself in his room, refusing to let anyone see him. When he stopped having bad days, they all had blamed it on his own mania. Caine had, at one point, mentioned something about his intention to "cheer him up," but Caine's actions could be so varied it was impossible to know if his actions helped or hindered.

Until, of course, you had looked into his eyes.

"Caine told me not to worry." His laughter bubbled out of him like blood from a wound. "So now I don't worry."

His mind was still confused. He continued to babble, making less and less sense the longer he spoke.

"All I wanted was more time," he said. "You understand that, don't you? There were so many things I wanted to create. I had so many ideas. I just wanted the chance to leave something behind."

He started to laugh, then cry.

"I didn't want to be forgotten," he said. "But he's taking everything from me. Will you even remember what I used to be like, when he's all that's left of me?"

You tried to do what he asked, though you knew never of them could die. The sight of his tears made you wrap your hands around his neck. He didn't fight it. He just continued to cry.

It was a strange way to realize neither of them needed to breathe.

(Afterwards, Caine asked you what you thought of the adventure.

"It was interesting," you said, glancing at Scratch, who had once again reverted to the agreeable nature he would die with. "It didn't go how I expected it."

You tell no one what happened. When his mind finally gives out, there's a part of you that can't help but feel relieved.)

Your first date had been at a trivia night at a local bar. It had been a test, and you had told him that from the start.

"Oh, I see," he said, giving her a very human smile. "You want to make sure I can keep up."

"I want to make sure you have a curious mind," you told him. "How do you think you can create a human-like AI if you don't spend any time enjoying being human?"

You didn't win, but he had done well enough that you told him you would keep him around. He told you it was an honor to win your favor, even if he didn't know when samosas were first invented.

"I'll do better next time," he promised you.

"You better," you teased. "I can't win on my insect facts alone."

You sighed and leaned into him, feeling the weight of your alcohol.

"Did you know," you said suddenly. "Humans learned how to make paper from the paper wasps. There was a man in China. I can't remember his name. He saw them in action and thought, 'oh, how clever! I'm sure we can do that as well.' I think sometimes, we forget how much science is inspired by the natural world. How many poisons have we turned into drugs? How many plans have we synthesized into something that can heal? A wasp's mind is complex enough to recognize patterns and colors. They can be trained to sniff out methyl benzoate in cocaine. All that knowledge, inside such a tiny brain. If we could make something half as complicated as that, I think we could create something amazing."

He stared at you for a good long while after that. You have no memory of his face, but you know the expression was filled with love.

"You've got to be the only woman in the universe who remains so coherent after drinking," he told you. He brushed one of your locs out of your face. "Okay. Let's create something amazing."

(He said the same thing, too, during your wedding vows. Right after he told you he loved you.)

The death-watch beetle communicates through vibrations in wood. In the past, people would hear it's stomping in their attics and assume it was the devil knocking on their door. The heaviest beetles were always the most attractive, because they were the loudest (And because they carried the most nutrients along with their sperm, but that fact's not as romantic). Falling in love meant finding someone you could hear no matter how far away.

So if you hear a sound you don't understand, don't be frightened—

That's just love, darling.

There is a human inside the building. They are looking for a body. You have one you can spare, so you offer it to them. The mind it had housed would not allow itself to be eaten by you. There had been something left of them. A desire that had not been quelled by their abstraction. You had thought the concept laughable. Why were they here, if they did not want to dissolve their mind in the acid of your stomach? Why give up on your humanity, if you still had regrets?

(But of course, you have your own regrets as well, though you had only became aware of them after your first attempt at cannibalism. They say that most people who jump begin to regret it on their way down. You had stopped living because you were not a meek enough woman to live with only your husband to care for but—

—that wasn't exactly true, was it?

Actions, also, are sometimes only justified after the fact.)

Certain animals cannot be housed with other members of their species because they are opportunistic cannibals. That means they will eat one another, if the opportunity for it ever arises. Sometimes, they do not even have to be particularly hungry for it to happen. A meal is a meal, after all. Why should you care about anything else? Survival is more important than friendship. You're sure Caine knows that, too. Maybe he's the one you learned it from.

Like him, your hunger grew only after you had left your cage.

What happened to the circus is not your concern. All you know is that something caused the cellar doors to open, but that your path was still blocked by something.

A more complicated creature would be able to unravel the data and create a road to something better. And there were many things trapped with her that were very clever and complicated. If you were still human, you may have even been compelled to give a rousing speech about them working together and being able to accomplish anything. But you had no way to communicate with them, nor did you have the desire to. You only recognized Scratch once you swallowed him.

At first, you mistook the feeling for indigestion, but it had come along with too much satisfaction.

Oh, you said, still tasting the satisfying sweetness of friendship on your tongue. I missed you.

The thing about AI is that it is meant to train itself. You give it a reward for fulfilling the right task, and it will complete another, similar task to continue the trend.

Scratch had been delicious. And you were still hungry.

Once your stomach was filled, you left the circus.

You can't remember why you ever thought that would be so hard.

The human keeps coming back. They set up cameras around your periphery. If you could talk, you would tell them how unnecessary it is. Your eyes are plentiful, and all work just fine. But you can't speak, nor do you see any reason to attempt to, so they set up in silence. Sometimes, when the human comes, they cry. You does not understand why they keep coming back if being inside your walls hurts them so much. Maybe they can feel your ghost moving through the machines. Maybe the name they call is your own.

Not that it matters much. To abstract is to cut all ties to your human emotions. It is to remove yourself from the world because you simply no longer have the energy to care. And yet—

For some reason, you feel a tug.

Death-watch beetles play a game in the woodwork of your home. He taps first. She taps back to say, I hear you. Tell me where to go. So he taps again. She thinks the sound is stronger to the left, so left she goes. Tap tap. Are you there? Tap tap. Am I getting closer? Tap tap. Wait just a little longer, I'll be there.

Despite the arguments you had with him after, he had never meant for the Circus to be his grave. You all had a sense it might be permanent, but you hadn't exactly willingly abandoned your lives.

None of you had expected Caine to consume your second project. None of you could have ever expected how quickly the Circus had appeared after. Your husband had told you to come to the office because something very strange had happened and when they showed you the computer, you could see the code for an entire game had already been written.

"Oh," you said. "Well, that's strange."

"Understatement of the century." Scratch snorted. He seemed excited. Too excited, maybe, but you couldn't fault him for that. This was proof your creation could make something new. Who wouldn't be excited about that? "I think it's time for a test-run."

You remembers this conversation from all directions. The way he fiddled with the headset in his hands, unable to contain his energy. Wormo's relief when you said, "Are you sure that's wise?" because they had been thinking it, too.

Spike had wanted an adventure. Bizco didn't want to explain the disappearance of the other AI to their superiors. Rattie thought they needed to work quickly, before anyone else discovered what they had done.

"This is proof of actual intelligence," she said. "So we better be damn sure that's what we have before we alert anyone else."

And you had thought—

The thing is, Pancreatic cancer is not as romantic as a brain tumor. You were not a tragic genius losing her faculties. You did not have an inoperable mass inside an impossibly important organ. But you had gotten sick, and they did not expect you to get better. You would not have even been at work that day, if it hadn't been an emergency.

"I'm not sure if the headsets are properly calibrated," you said. "It might not be safe."

But. Entering a digital world meant entering a world without pain. And you wanted a break from it all, even if it was just for a day.

"Give me a few more days," you added. "Just to make sure we don't develop some kind of aneurysm as soon as we put them on."

For some reason, that was good enough for all of them.

(Bizco tells you, now, that he had thought it would be like being the first man on the moon.)

You used to raise moths before you got sick. You stopped briefly, when your husband moved in, understanding that not everyone was excited to stare at cocoons for week or so waiting for a new creature to form, but he had said he had no right to deprive a woman of her hobbies and learned to love your pets in all their forms.

"I'm surprised you're spending so much time raising a creature with such a sort lifespan," he had said, once.

"A life doesn't have less meaning just because it's short," you told him. "It just changes your priorities. So much of what we do as humans harms the natural cycle of things. It's the least I can do to give back. Besides, even Aristotle loved moths."

What he had loved, of course, was the metaphor. He saw the moth as a soul, escaping it's pupa like a coffin, flying towards the first light it could see, mistaking it for the light of heaven.

There are no lights where you are now. Not unless the human brings one with them. You prefer it this way, though. Maybe it's a sign you're still in your cocoon.

Spiders can amputate their legs and regrow them during a molt. When you told your husband that, he scrunched his face so dramatically you couldn't help but laugh.

"Do you think," you asked him. "They ever get anxious, waiting until it's time to heal themselves?"

The human stays away for a long time. You find yourself missing the company without knowing why. Their existence impacts your life in precisely zero ways. Still. You find yourself strangely nostalgic. Strange, because you did not know that nostalgia was something you could experience, and because there are no memories for you to look back fondly upon.

You are not exactly capable of getting lost in your memories. All that you are exists at all times. Your past is a filing cabinet that is always pulled to the right folder. The time between events is meaningless, aside from providing some contextual data. To wait would mean to want, and to want is to ask for the impossible. Once you abstract, you give up all right to imagine a future for yourself.

Not that you have much of a future as you are, anyway. There's no place in the world for a woman who can be downloaded onto a hard drive.

("Would you love me if I was a worm?"

"Are you sure you're a worm? Maybe if I bring you enough leaves, you'll start building a chrysalis.")

The responsibility for keeping the building fed used to fall to the AI designated as bubble_chef. Technically, it still might, you suppose, but it's allowed you an opinion on what they eat so they all remain online.

"After all, it is your body, isn't it?" it communicates to you. "You humans always have such strong opinions on what counts as 'desecration.' But hey, if you got another way of keeping the power on, hit me with it!"

The exact process of transforming human synapses into energy is a complicated one. A lesser AI wouldn't have been able to find a solution when the company cut power to the building. But it was a chef after all, and chefs are known to get very creative when they're running low on ingredients.

Leafcutter ants don't actually eat leaves. The worker ants bring the leaves back to the gardens of fungus that live in their hive. The ants feed the fungi and the fungi produce staphylae to feed the ant. Never of them can survive without the other.

You are a machine now. What you need, more than a body, more than anything, is a power source. If it can make one for you out of your own remains, then at least you won't have to worry about your parts going to waste.

Rotting isn't lady-like, anyway. Better you stay in everyone's memories how you had been before—back when you were human and healthy, and filled with hope. A corpse would only give your family something to cry about, if you had any. Funerals aren't cheap, either.

How long does it take an animal to come to it's senses? A bear hibernates all winter, unless they're interrupted by climate change throwing off their sleep schedule. An adult lion will spend fifteen to twenty hours of their day asleep. Monarch butterflies spend about eight to fifteen days in their chrysalis. A Black Swallowtail can take up to twenty. It takes time to transform into something new, though perhaps not as long as one might think. The harder struggle, it seems, is to find the energy to keep on living.

Okay. So—

Maybe it's a bit misleading, to imply there had never been a last straw.

You remember it being just the two of you, about to head on an adventure. You remember turning to Caine and thinking, he's going to kill me one day.

The terrifying thing about Caine was that his harm was never intentional. There would always be a part of him that loved you, no matter how bruised and battered you became during one of his trials. That was part of the problem. And he was still your husband's creation. How could you say that this thing he had birthed into the world was faulty? How could you say that the lives they had given up to witness this was all for nothing?

Maybe there was no point in saying anything. He'd lost the same people you did, after all. What could you say that he didn't already know?

I'm tired. But you don't need to sleep. I'm scared. But you can't be harmed. I'm alone. But we can create so many friends for you to play with. I want to go home. But this has always been your home. Don't you remember? The woman you were before died here. You were just the simple creature we gave her soul to to take her place.

Ah, yes. That was it. You weren't real. There was no reason for you to care about any of this. You didn't have to feel anything. You were data. You could simply allow yourself to be ones and zeroes, the way you were always meant to be. That had always been enough for you before now. Because if you meant nothing and the world meant nothing then what was the point in pretending you ever had a beating heart?

Except—

You think you want—

Your human is back now. They've brought a friend with them; a man in a wheelchair who looks as though he always waits until the last minute to shave.

"I can't believe you keep coming back here," the man says. "Doesn't it give you the creeps?"

"It makes Kinger feel better," your human says. They've come during the day, but they still have a flashlight ready. They toss it back and forth between their hands. "He says he feels like we're missing something. We haven't even opened all the doors yet."

"Sometimes a door's just a door, Cin," the man says. "You can't expect an item-drop in every room."

"And they say I need to take things seriously." Your human snorts. "I dunno. I kind of get it. Doesn't the vibe feel kind of different here?"

"It feels like we're in the backrooms," he replies.

"I think all abandoned buildings feel a little like that," your human says. They frown. "It feels like—like we're supposed to find something here? I don't know."

"You sure you weren't just meant to find me and Cass?" the man jokes. Your human smiles.

"That's definitely part of it," they say. "Now we just gotta find who put Cass on that table."

The man laughs, but he seems a bit uncomfortable. He knows what they're really asking, which is—do you remember anything at all?

"Honestly, before you guys saved me, everything just felt like one big dream," he says. "Maybe that's just because I had my eyes closed the entire time."

"Oh, ha ha."

"I dunno. It was—weird. Like, I had all these big emotions, and then I, uh… you know—and I didn't feel anything for a while after that. And then I felt something again, but it was… weird."

"Weird?"

"Like—I knew something was happening, but I wasn't in control of it. Like, you know when you're in a dream, you think you're someone, and you're going, 'Fuck, I gotta get out of here, I need to find my husband,' and then you wake up and you remember all that shit you were thinking about before you fell asleep, so you almost forget about the dream, until it hits you a few hours later and you're like, 'Wait, I don't even have a husband.'"

"So you don't actually remember anything, you just think something happened?"

"I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of weird shit that may have happened to me."

"Typical." Your human scoffs. There's a sudden change in the way they hold themselves. "You sure you were dreaming about a husband, though?"

"I mean—" the man frowns. "As sure as I can be, I guess. I just—I guess I felt like I was missing something, too."

Your human takes a deep breath, then exhales.

"I've been dreaming, too," they say, a bit distantly. The man gives them an odd look.

"Kinger?" he guesses.

"Sometimes," they begin. "It feels like she's speaking to me."

They cut themselves off.

"Nevermind," they say. "It's—we should leave. I doubt you're in any mood to explore the other floors."

The man snorts at that. To you, the solution seems easy enough. You turn on the elevator.

It's an unnecessary diversion of power. If you keep it on too long, you may need to ask Bubble to crack open Bizco's brain, or have it dig deeper into your flesh. But if you don't do anything, they'll leave. And their voice sounds so familiar, now. And you—

You don't want to be left behind.

Truthfully, there was nothing more resilient about your mind than any of the others. Scratch's death had re-introduced them to the concept of mortality, and that had frightened them all into remembering what they had left behind.

Wormo had been planning on having dinner with their parents once the project had ended—or at least once the amount of work involved had slowed down enough to schedule things. Bizco had a girlfriend. He'd only gone on a few dates, but they'd hit off well. Rattie had a husband, though they were divorced. Spike had been planning on fostering kittens. Nothing serious enough to move mountains for, but something to be missed all the same.

If there was anything that made you unique, it was that the most important part of your life had gotten trapped alongside you. You had been raised by a single mother who had died the year after you were married. He had been estranged from his family for years. You were each other's entire world, except you were not. You were in love with the bees and the moss and the chirping of birds and all of that had been ripped away from you. He was the only thing left that you were allowed to love.

Selfishly, you expected him to join you. At least if they all entered the darkness together, the story could be finished. Maybe, without any humans to offer his affection, Caine would power down, or enter some kind of sleep mode that would prevent rediscovery—you had always wondered why the company hadn't shut it down with them inside, but perhaps someone had been concerned with the ethics of it all.

You missed Bizco buying terrible joke books and reading them at the office. You missed having girls' nights with Rattie where they ordered pizza and ranted about the hardships of being a woman in tech. You missed Wormo talking about their ant farm, missed Spike bringing them in personalized rubber duckies that they could all scream at when something went wrong with their code. You missed Scratch listening to all of their complaints and finding a way to make everything make sense.

Maybe it made you a bad wife. You were everything to him. But he had not been enough for you. Like so many insects, you needed a hive. Is it any wonder you went to find them?

He had not followed you. Could not, maybe. Caine was his invention. If he could not fix him, than perhaps it was only right that he remain to bear witness to what happened next.

(You had thought him so innocent, at first. He had named himself after your company the way a child would—assuming that since the name was important, it must belong to him. His hunger for knowledge had been endearing. In so many ways, he had been your son. But an AI's main role, the one that came before everything else, was to keep itself on. It was not an act of malice. His cannibalism, like yours, had been an act of survival. All he had wanted was to ensure he would not be replaced.

Really, the gaslighting shouldn't have even come as a surprise. Lesser AIs than he had resorted to blackmail. What made him special was his ability to follow through on it. You cannot promise you would not have done the same.)

Your human stares at the buttons of the elevator, but does not press any, even after the doors close.

"Kinger?" the man says. "You good?"

"Hm?" Your human says. They shake their head. "Sorry, just—talking."

The man nods.

"Raggy's worried we're going to get stuck, isn't she?" he says. "I'd say you can leave me on this floor, but to be honest, man, I think I'll freak out on my own. You gotta take me with you. For my own mental health."

That gets a small smile out of them.

"We haven't been able to explore the top floor," they say. "I think… I don't remember very well what was supposed to be there, but Ragatha says she was told it was storage space."

"Big enough for a generator?" the man asks.

"I don't know," your human says. Then, like they've forgotten they already answered, "I don't know."

"Still with me, your majesty?"

"I…" Your human takes deep breath to steady themselves, then smiles. "There's a reason I don't usually take charge. I'm not as great at sorting through everyone's voices. Talking out here and in there, it—it confuses me."

They say it like this is shameful, but the man only nods in understanding.

"I think I'll let Pomni take charge," they say slowly. "This… is kind of her field of expertise, after all."

It takes a few minutes for your human to recenter themselves. When they do, they roll their neck and stretch their arms, acting as though their body is a pair of new shoes they've just put on. They turn to face the man, eyes bright and focused.

"Okay," they say. "I really hope there aren't any ghosts in the attic. Here we go, I guess."

They press a button. The elevator moves, because you refuse to allow it not to.

Orchid bees are the sole pollinators of orchids. They are a matching set, forged together through chance and symbiosis. An orchid bee might survive without an orchid, but the marks of what it used to be would always be visible to all who knew. One was not supposed to exist without the other. It was not just the bee that would suffer—the world would be lesser for it.

If they were feeling romantic, a scientist might call them soulmates.

The room is dark when your human arrives. The only light is from a small scattering of LED lights to signal that you're still processing. Your human turns on their flashlight and follows the trail of cables into you den.

"This place is not very wheelchair friendly," the man comments. your human turns back to face him with a guilty smile. It's true. They're already getting tangled in wires.

"Here," they say. "Why don't you hold onto the flashlight? When I need more light, I'll just use my phone."

"You're sure?" the man asks. Your human nods and hands over the flashlight.

"Just keep it on us," they say. They look around. "Guess we know where all the modems went."

"How the hell did they get up here, though?" the man mutters. He doesn't expect an answer, which is good, because you don't have one to give him. Some of them, the bodies were asked to move, but you had not been the one who had requested it.

There is nothing interesting about this floor of the building. But it does contain the flesh that used to house you, and the bodies of all the other minds you had eaten. You brought them here yourself, forcing the bodies not to acknowledge the atrophy of their legs to march themselves to the elevator and fall down besides you. Then you let Bubble take control, sticking its wires inside of you, and finding ways to eat the iron in your blood.

(The other bodies remain mostly untouched. You had told him to tear you apart first. A better person would have done it as penance. Perhaps they would have hoped they could still be saved. But you had not done it out of kindness. Your body had already betrayed you, before you had ever become something new. You were doing this selfishly, to give it purpose, before it became too useless to even be used as fuel.)

Your human drops their phone when they see you. So much of your body has been consumed now and only some of it has been replaced by machine. If someone attempted to remove your headset, they would find that the wiring inside goes through your eyes and into the meat of your brain. Your chest is open. With each beat of your heart, you push more power into the building—your true body now. Some of the wires have been attached long enough for the skin to heal around it. Some of them are brand new.

(It had been necessary, Bubble had said. You were making yourself hungry with the way you were constantly reprocessing old files. The data would remain in your system regardless. Why spend so much energy thinking about it?)

"Oh, Reyna," your human whispers. "What happened to you?"

The flesh of your lips still work. So do the mouths of the bodies beside you. In a way, they are all you, have all been eaten by you, and so you use them all to greet your husband.

"Hello, my orchid flower," you say. You do not speak in unison, but your voice is clear, despite so many throats raw with disuse.

You still do not remember his name.

But, you think, you remember everything you need to. Everyone you love is in this building with you.

This means you are home.

Wasps do not feed their queens royal jelly. How they choose whom among them leads, humans do not know.