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“Still feeling like shit?”
Your head feels heavier than it should. It takes a long time before you’re able to flop it to the side and look at Serafin standing in the doorway.
This heaviness… is it something that’s going to get worse? The flashes of pain that Bliss named glitches? You’ve only known this vessel in a state of constantly getting worse.
That’s not new to what Laine is doing to you, though. It’s what you were born for: working, deteriorating, dying, for someone else’s debt.
“There’s nothing for us here,” you make the mouth say.
“Are you saying we should leave?”
You don’t reply. You could, but there doesn’t seem to be a point. Why did they give you vocal chords, anyway?
“At least we know what’s up now,” Serafin tries. “It doesn’t feel like it, but it’s better than we were before.”
You look at nothing, vision unfocused. Serafin is a brown and pink and navy blue blur in front of you.
“Stay with me in the engine room for a bit,” he says. It’s said like an order but it is a request. You can say no, but for some reason you don’t want to. Or just don’t. You try to move your frame out of the bunk when he speaks again: “You won’t have to deal with all the strays. Except the cat.”
The memory sends a stabbing pain through your chest. Back when you were alive and human, or the person this memory belonged to was alive and human.
What happened to them? The warm glow of the sun and the warm fur of a cat and still…
They’ll be asleep forever, you’ll be a cheap copy in a broken body, until you die.
“Come on,” Serafin says. He must move your body, because it wouldn’t listen to you. You stand up, shaky, and stagger after him. The layout of the Rig feels unfamiliar. Your body feels unfamiliar. Serafin feels unfamiliar, somewhere between best friends and total strangers. Both best friends and total strangers.
“I don’t… want to… exist,” I mumble. Serafin turns around with a brief expression of panic on their face. “I’m sorry,” you say. You’re not even feeling anything, it’s just a reflex. “I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s… it's fine.” Serafin looks sad. Horribly sad. You stare at him, uncomprending.
“It’s not… that I want them to be awake,” you continue. “I wish both of us… never existed. Or stop existing. Starting now.”
“I don’t,” Serafin murmurs.
“What kind of person… keeps selling their fucking soul?”
You’re starting to feel something. Sad. Sadder than Serafin looks. Not the miserable and slow kind of sad you’ve been feeling, but the kind of sad that seems like anger if you don’t know what you’re looking for. But it’s sluggish, lost in the bog of your mind. You can show the very tip of it, can feel the rest somewhere inside your ribs.
“A desperate one?” Serafin tries.
You slide down against the ship’s wall, hunch into your knees. It’s so easy to die, you think. Then you think it again, but on purpose. It’s so easy to die.
“A person doesn’t,” you finally reply. “A person only sells their soul once.”
“You are a person,” Serafin snaps. They’re exasperated. Have you gone down this path before? Probably. “You’re my friend.”
“Not really. Not enough to mean anything.” You look at your hands. You work with machines, you dig in scrap, they should be calloused and scarred and rough. You use one hand to move the other into position. It’s in a circle, like you’re a doll who can hold things. You’re a doll who can hold things. Serafin has picked you up and decided that he can make you his friend.
“Yes, you are.” Serafin looks down at you. He’s so tired and so sad.
“I don’t remember you.” You imagine you’re holding a screwdriver, try to move it while keeping your hand in that fixed position. “All I remember is Laine. And… Essen-Arp. I was their doll. I’m yours now.”
“Don’t—” Serafin begins. “You remember me now. How many cycles has it been since you woke up?”
You shrug and tune him out again. Words come out of the mouth. Your words? Your mouth? “I’m… meaningless. Pointless. Built to die.”
“That’s the human fucking condition, Sleeper, welcome to the club.”
“It’s not… human. Them, sleeping, they’re the human condition!” your tongue is too heavy to speak as fast as you need to. “I’m… machine. Sleeper. Drone. Working, dying, no right to repair.”
“Repaired you anyway.” Serafin crouches down to your eye level. “Remember when I told you that you can leave if you just tell me first?” He gives space, but you can’t reply. Acknowledge. “I meant that. My friend or not, you being here is good. Being alive. Existing. If you had no one in the universe who loved you, it would still be better with you in it.”
“...Why?”
Serafin falls into a sitting position. “Because… life is good. All on its own. You, living, no matter what happens next, is good. You, existing is perfect. Even when you’re dying. Because you’re existing. Because we’re living. Even if we were still with Laine, you living is perfect.”
You look at them. They’re still so, so sad. Sad for you, maybe.
The two of you sit there, in the engine room, for a long time. You talk, stilted and slurred. He replies, calm and reassuring for you and nobody else.
You’re still dying at the end of it, or whatever’s happening to you. But you strap in to get some sleep, and he flies the Rig to another station. Delays the inevitable for three more cycles.