Chapter Text
The sheets are cool. The sunlight is warm. It smells like fresh linen and coffee.
It’s one of those mornings where Moon wakes but does little more than rub his cheek into the soft surface of his pillow, inhale deeply and contentedly, and then keep lying there pretending to sleep.
This illusion of perfection must be broken respectfully and gently, maybe with a stretch, a flutter of lashes, a hum, and then warm slippers and warm breakfast.
He shifts towards the weighted sunlight wrapped around him like a pair of arms. His own fans whir softly with another’s, two mechanical breaths.
“Moon,” the last of sleepy twilight whispers to him, “are you awake…?”
“No,” Moon murmurs reflexively, pushing his face deeper into the solid warmth pressed against his nose, chasing the smell of fresh linens. A hand strokes the length of his back, then back up.
There’s a soft exhale, then feathery nuzzles against the top of his head. “Mmn. Good. I didn’t want to get up yet.” The warmth shuffles closer, enveloping him and shaped distinctly like an animatronic, and not one of the few he knows. Too sturdy to be Sun. Too small to be Earth…
Moon’s peaceful morning is chased away by the dreaded reality of finding himself waking in a stranger’s bed with no memory of last night. His optics flicker on. He’s surrounded by unknown, off-white metal clad in periwinkle and pastels.
Something serpentine wraps around Moon’s ankle, and where the blanket had been kicked off in the middle of the night, Moon can follow the black cord around to—to the end of a tail…? Upwards, sharp eyes, a light blue triangle nose, rosy cheeks, distinct eye markings, and a starry blue jester’s hat. One half of the stranger’s face is a yellow crescent, the other half a deeper periwinkle.
He pushes out of the embrace, clamors out of the warm sunlight and cool sheets, the last of sleep shredded by anxiety and fear as he stumbles backwards and away. Moon, too, is a stranger to this room, to himself, to this animatronic who jolts at his sudden movement and crawls into a half-sit.
“Moon—?”
“Who are you?” Moon snaps, pressing his back against the shadowed corner of the room, seeking stability and security. Instead of strength, it only serves to make him feel like a rabid animal with nowhere to go. “What do you want with me? Where’s Sun?”
“Nothing. It’s alright. You’re safe. Sun is… elsewhere, and he is also safe.” Off-white palms and candy-colored fingertips hold themselves nonthreateningly outward and spread. “My name is Carmine.”
Long legs fall off the edge of the bed, the stranger sitting up fully. They’re a tall and well-maintained machine, polished with care, and their attire screams performer. The graceful way they move proves they’re not clumsy, not like the Glamrocks, easy to trip up so you can get away. As they stand, Moon notes the way they place their feet, nimble like a dancer.
“Carmine?” he repeats. That doesn’t mean much. It could be a fake name. This person could be lying to him, every word and breath part of an act to get Moon back in that bed so they can—
Moon’s arms cross over his chest, realizing his stark nudity.
His anxiety spikes higher, far past all recommended thresholds, making his fans sputter out. He—did they—?
“W-where the fuck are my clothes, ‘Carmine’?! What did you do to me?!”
“I know how it looks. I promise, nothing happened that wasn’t consensual.” Carmine bends slowly, one hand remaining in the air while the other grabs a matching set of starry, blue pants and hat off the floor, along with some other more unfamiliar articles of clothing. “You wanted to try something more intimate. However, we probably should have considered this a possibility and avoided it. I’m sorry if I’ve frightened you or made you uncomfortable. I mean no ill will. We know each other. More than you realize.”
Carmine extends his left hand, an elegant, silver ring shining beneath the warm, pale light.
Moon slowly looks down at his left hand and finds a matching silver band.
“Y-you—This can’t be happening—"
“I can figure out how to help you if you tell me what year you think it is.”
“It’s—it’s 2023? 2024…?” Moon presses his hand to his head, the metal of his faceplate heated by his CPU. It only makes him even more aware of the wedding band pressing into his cheek. “I can’t be married, I can’t be! I’m not supposed to like that kind of stuff! I would have never married you in a million years! …Right?”
“Moon,” Carmine says softly, his face a touch hurt. “Please, allow me to explain—”
“This—this must be an alternate dimension! You think I’m somebody else, don’t you? Some other Moon that you mistook for me and brought home last night! That has to be it!”
“I’ve never been more certain that you’re my husband.” Carmine sets down the pile of clothes as close to Moon as he can across the distance between them, then immediately backs away. “Get dressed. There’s a bathroom behind you. We can talk once you’re more comfortable. Sound fair?”
“What, and give you the chance to get me into a smaller space? I don’t think so!” Moon hastily grabs his pants and tugs them over his legs. He goes to tie the usual maroon sash that matches Sun’s, but… it’s not there. Instead, there’s a black belt which he confusedly buckles into place without tearing his eyes away from Carmine. He tugs his hat onto his head and steps into his… boots?
Strangely, his hat and the curled ends of the boots are both missing their bells and the suns on the side. What remains of the clothes pile, which, apparently, belongs to him, is a long-sleeved black turtleneck.
“Where are my ruffles? And ribbons and bells?”
“You… don’t wear them anymore.” Carmine sits back on the edge of the bed, his hands settling delicately on his lap. His thumbs twiddle nervously around one another, like he doesn’t want to tell Moon the reason why.
Naturally, Moon needs to ask. “How come?”
“You’ve been… sick. You have been sick for some time now, and it was very difficult for both you and Sun. You stopped wearing his colors after it caused a… a rift in your relationship with one another some years back.”
“Really? But that… doesn’t make sense… Am I still sick?”
“In three months, that will be the end of it. It will be over. It’s been a hard four years, but it could have been worse.”
“What kind of sickness lasts for four years?” Moon demands. “That doesn’t sound feasible…”
“It is magical in nature. Cast by an entity known as Killer Sun. You gave him fifteen years off your lifespan, which caused severe lapses in your memory, but we had a mage named Dahlia who took up most of the curse. His people live very long lives, centuries upon centuries, so a decade was nothing for him to take on. They couldn’t get rid of the entirety of your contract with Killer Sun, but it was better than nothing. You’ve had your lapses, here and there, not frequent, but… Enough.”
“And Sun just couldn’t take it? Or what?” Moon asks, looking away and covering up his hurt with anger. “Was I too much for him to handle? He couldn’t take care of his own sick brother?”
“He wanted to keep taking care of you, Moon. You were the one who decided against it. You’d told him at the start that if your curse ever made you violent with him, you would have him end your life. No backups. Eventually, one day, you found out he didn’t tell you that you’d started hitting him during the times when you’d forget. Any abuse, forgotten in an instant, but one day, the injuries were too evident upon Sun’s frame for him to hide before you were your present self again. When you found out about it, you were horrified and naturally furious that Sun hadn’t been telling you what was happening, so you left and came here to Moon Haven, where you have lived with me for these past three years.”
“I…” Moon shakes his head in confusion and pain. “I hurt Sun like that, just like…? But I—wait. If I’m that sick and forgetful and abusive and horrible, how are we married? Doesn’t this happen all the time? Don’t I constantly forget who you are and try to hurt you, if I’m really so unstable?”
“Every few months, we have this conversation, yes. You’ve never tried to hurt me or kill me. I don’t know why. You have always said that you feel a strange sense of trust in me, however.”
Moon crosses his arms over his chest, leaning back against the wall behind him. It’s strange, but true. He feels like he can believe Carmine.
“How long do I usually not remember for?”
“A few hours or a few days… The longest time it lasted was two whole weeks. I worried you might never remember, during then, and it frightened me, but I knew if we could fall in love once, then we could fall in love twice. It’s just that then we would have two stories to tell instead of one.” Carmine smiles, somehow managing to put a positive spin on this horrific mess Moon has found himself in.
“And what do we usually do? After you explain all of this to me?”
“Sometimes, you want to speak with Sun to confirm everything I’ve told you, but I wouldn’t recommend it. It puts a heavy toll on him. I’m sure you understand…”
Moon’s shame rolls over him in nauseating waves. He knows of his previous iteration’s abusive tendencies, just not the finer, bloodier details, though he knows they exist. Does he really follow the same path and hurt Sun like that…?
“Is the future me better to him?” Moon asks, though he thinks he knows the answer, given the maroon that’s been stripped from his outfit.
“You don’t talk much. You don’t hate each other, but you’re not close, either. There have been no arguments since you left, it’s just… awkward. For both of you. You’ve become strangers to one another. Although you do remain amicable during any family get-togethers and holidays, at the very least, for the children’s sakes. I’m always there to pull you away if I notice any slips in your memory, so we can get you back home before anything happens.”
“You said children…?”
Carmine reaches over to their dresser and grabs the tablet settled there. He types in the pin and then swipes through some photos until he finds what he’s looking for.
“This is Sun and his daughter, Dazzle.” He swipes to the left. “And over here is Solar and Jack.”
“Solar and Jack…?” Moon asks, confusedly. Who are they?
“You consider Solar to be something like a brother or a cousin and Jack your nephew.” Carmine swipes a few more times through the pictures, then turns the tablet back around. Three people stand in what looks like an aquarium tunnel: Carmine, Moon, and a kid. Only, beyond the glass isn’t water, but stars and space and a looming orange planet. Bioluminescent alien fish pass by in the photo.
“This is TJ.” Carmine taps on the child wedged between him and Moon in the photo. “You adopted him after his father died. You wanted him to stay with Sun because you knew it would be difficult for him to see you when you were not yourself, but he convinced you to take him with you to live in Moon Haven and attend school here. Actually, he’s probably downstairs setting up shop right now.” Carmine smiles fondly at the photo of the boy. “He’s a good kid, and he loves you very much.”
Moon doesn’t know what to say to that. It’s a shock, for sure, that he has a kid… He’s not terrible with them, but… a son. Wow…
“I know this is always a lot for you to process. Some older versions more than others. Are you doing alright right now? Do you want a break?”
Moon tears his gaze away from the photo and looks at Carmine. “Why do you love me?”
Carmine sighs. “Oh, Moon…”
“I mean it,” Moon says pointedly. “If I really hurt Sun like that… How could you possibly love someone who would do that to their own brother? Especially after promising him I would be better than that…”
“I don’t love that Moon. And I certainly don’t love the ones who demean their brother and try to shout at him and call him useless. Those Moons are not my husband. My husband, the bot that I married, speaks softly, even when he’s trying to get his point across. He has learned to be well-mannered, well-spoken, and respectful. My husband knows what it means to be gentle. And he knows if he ever tries to hurt me, hit me, demean me, or try to do the same to TJ, that I will kill him. And he knows that, unlike Sun, I will not hesitate.”
In two elegant strides, Carmine’s shadow suddenly looms over Moon with burning yellow and blue eyes. Despite his soft smile, Moon’s instinct screams ‘danger’.
He nods so fast his teeth knock against each other. “Got it. Okay…”
“Excellent.” Carmine turns and stretches his hands over his head until his limbs quiver, his body long and lithe and powerful. He shakes himself out, his tail flicking at his heels like a cat when it wants to play, then claps his hands together happily. “Hungry? Of course you are. I’ll make your favorite. If you’re truly from 2023-2024, then that means you’ve never tried it before. How exciting it must be to be able to try your favorite dish for the first time again. And this will be very fun for me, as well. I don’t usually meet versions of you from this era of your life.”
Once again, trying to put a positive spin on this whole terrible thing… Moon can see why he’d grow so fond of this person. They’re a delight—scary, too—but mostly a delight.
“Ah, here, let me help you with that.” Carmine pulls the black turtleneck from Moon’s hand and unclasps the hidden hooks down the nape of it until the hole is wide enough for Moon’s head to slip through. He pulls it over for him, and Moon honestly feels a bit like a toddler being dressed.
Even so, he instinctually turns around once his arms are through and lets Carmine redo the clasps up his nape until the turtleneck is snug around the metal pipe of his neck.
Carmine then slips a lanyard over his head. “This has your Moon Haven ID card, and you’ve written a booklet of instructions for yourself on the inside. It will answer any additional questions you have if I’m not available.” Carmine gently nuzzles his cheek, and the smell of fresh linens and coffee is comforting. “You’ll be getting déjà vu until you come back to the present. You’ve told me it’s mildly annoying.”
Carmine reaches for the bedside table and grabs a cell phone and a wallet, slipping them into Moon’s pant pockets for him, currently more familiar with his body and clothes than Moon himself is.
“You keep all your passwords in the notes app on your phone. Your pin is your birthday. Do you remember it?”
“I remember my birthday,” Moon grumbles in irritation. It was three days ago...
“Good. You’re still alright?”
“Yeah. I’m good.”
“You’re just being quiet and strangely agreeable, that’s all.” Carmine tilts his head and examines him with a touch of worry. Once again, he steps into Moon’s space with a sense of familiarity and brushes the back of his CPU. “You’re not sick, are you? You don’t have a temperature…”
“I don’t have a reason to believe what you’ve said is untrue.” Moon looks up at him. “I just… I don’t know. Then again, you said you’ve never met a me from 2023.”
“Sun doesn’t talk about those times, either, so I don’t have a good read on what you were like back then.” Carmine thumbs his cheek, getting rid of a smudge on his casing. “I think my synopsis would be that you’re… sweet.”
Moon blushes. “Sweet?”
“Yes, sweet. And you’re not as touch-averse as other ones have been, either. It’s very strange.”
“Well, if it means anything, I think this whole thing is strange. I promised Sun I’d never be like the old Moon was, that I’d never hurt him like that, so I don’t know how to feel, knowing that I wind up like him anyway…”
“The old Moon…?” Carmine furrows his brow in confusion, his easy-going smile dropping minutely. “Tell me, what is the last thing you remember?”
New Moon looks up at Carmine with big, wide, innocent eyes. “Well, I just woke up a few days ago. That was when Sun told me his brother just died. He was awful and kept a lot of secrets… or something…? Um, but now, I’m supposed to help Sun stop Eclipse, who has this thing called The Star... We have a sister named Earth. And a dead little brother, but I think we’re trying to bring him back with some satellite in space—God. I’ve been watching through the channel trying to get a grasp on anything, but it’s been pretty hard to follow, honestly…”
Carmine mulls this new information over. 2023 to 2024…
Ah…
He perks upward with newfound understanding. And an idea.
“I appear to be mistaken, then. You see, if what you’re telling me is all true, then you would not be my husband.”
New Moon’s face drops hearing that. “What? But you just said…”
Carmine chuckles, very pleased with himself and the plan weaving itself before his very eyes. “Your name is Nexus.”
“Nexus?”
“You picked out the new name for yourself, because you are an individual, separate from Moon, with individual likes and dislikes. I’m not sure how your backup installed itself into Moon, but I’ll be sure it returns to the right place.”
“You mean to, um, to me…? Like, the current me? Future me…?”
“Yes, of course,” Carmine says sweetly, setting his hands on his shoulders. “You won’t be erased; I promise you that. I will be sure you’re taken very good care of, Nexus, dear. You are my brother-in-law and the uncle to my dear son, TJ, and I wish to do right by you. Come, come, let's head straight to Rus. He’ll surely be able to help us with this little mix-up…”
Carmine grabs Nexus by the hand and leads him downstairs into a quaint coffee shop. TJ is already downstairs prepping everything for the day.
“TJ, dear, we’re having a bit of a rough morning.”
TJ stops flicking on the coffee machines, his gaze snapping to Moon in an instant, filled with worry. “Oh, gosh, really? Was it bad this time?”
Carmine waves a hand through the air. “No, not at all. But we're going to be heading off to visit Rus in a bit to check some things over.”
“Three more months, and then KS’s curse is over for good,” TJ says, hopefully. He finishes flicking on the machines and turns to Moon. “I know you don’t remember me, but if you don’t trust Carmine’s word, you can trust mine.” He smiles and dips his head politely. “We care about you a whole lot and only want the best for you, okay?”
Nexus dips his head back, shyly. “O-okay… Thanks, kid… Same to you, I guess…?”
TJ looks thrilled by that answer. His three gentle eyes trail over to Carmine. “You want to head to Rus now while I handle the store?”
“Think you can?”
“C’mon, Carme, I could run this place in my sleep! And I know how to make myself breakfast. There’s a new recipe I found that I’ve been wanting to try, too… Plus, we never know when Moon will snap back to the present, and tracking data and monitoring this curse is extremely important right now.”
“Do add the recipe to the family cookbook if it’s any good.” Carmine hooks his arm into Nexus’s, guiding him toward the door. “And call me if you need anything.”
“See ya later. Byyyye!”
The door closes behind them with a ring of the little bell above it.
Carmine pulls Nexus down the mostly empty cobbled streets, into the bright, warm, cool morning.
“Where is everyone?”
“Not many Moons are early birds,” Carmine tells him. “Rus in particular will not be fond of us waking him so early, but he’ll quiet down if I bribe him with enough uranium.”
“He sure sounds interesting.”
“Oh, he is. I think you will like him.”
The bullet train they take is fast and silent and allows Nexus to look over the entire sprawl of Moon Haven. Besides two other nearby Moons, who look almost just like him, there’s no one else riding with them, so he can run from window to window as much as he wants, taking in everything with innocent awe.
His gaze travels from the medieval-inspired buildings that dot the outskirts where Carmine’s café is nestled, wanders the winding cobbled roads leading towards a tessellation of castles, libraries, and colleges that all take his breath away, and ends at the much more modern labs, extravagant hospitals, skyscrapers, and mansions. There’s so much nature, too, providing arched leafy canopies over the sidewalks and roads.
“The districts and their buildings were placed first, and then the streets were cobbled from the desire paths Moons took to get from place to place. The grid is efficient and beautiful, isn't it?”
Nexus hums in appreciation. “There’s a lot more greenery than I thought there’d be.”
“For shade, more than anything. Most Moons aren’t fond of too much sunlight. Many of them have permanent night vision. And there are plenty of organics whose eyes can’t merely be replaced by more adjustable optics.”
Now that he mentions it, the architecture does a lot to play with the concept of throwing shade and diffusing light, with overhangs plentiful, numerous gazebos, pavilions, archways, awnings, Brise-Soleils, louvers, arbores, trellises, pergolas, perforated metal panels, shade sails, and so much more. Most of the windows are either made of colored glass or glass with patterns etched onto the surfaces to scatter and make the light less harsh.
It only adds to the shaded, secret beauty of the Haven, and Nexus can imagine the intricate, cobbled desire paths at night, lit by lanterns and lamplight and fairy lights… It sounds dreamy.
“So, this place is really just for Moons…?”
“Since the Haven opened its doors to interdimensional travellers and sanctuaries in the past year, you’ll find other creatures looking to trade or study or do research, but, yes, you will mostly find Moons here.”
“What kind of people visit the most?”
“Montys. Earths. Lunars. Jack-O’-Moons. Killcode variants. A few Nexus variants like yourself. Not many, but they exist, few and far between. Some Astrals, since Moon Haven’s research on NSP is vast and exceedingly helpful to them. Moon helped to develop a cure for NSP poisoning along with Rus not too long ago.”
“What do I do, here in Moon Haven?”
Carmine smiles at him warmly. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
The bullet train slows down with hardly any momentum to be felt, or a squeal to be heard, and the doors open with a near-silent hiss. Carmine and Nexus exit the train, and Carmine leads him down a gravel pathway protected from the light by a line of multi-coloured shade sails, flowing gently in the breeze.
They walk the path until they enter a courtyard shaded by tall, white buildings covered in wooden vertical louvres. When they get to a pair of glass doors with a scanner, Carmine gestures to him.
“Moon has the clearance to enter.”
Nexus looks at the scanner, then down at the lanyard around his neck. He taps the plastic sleeve with the ID card against the scanner, and there’s a beep and the sound of a door unlocking. He pulls the handle and steps inside, Carmine entering after him.
A spiralling raindrop chandelier brightens the lobby with lights like glowing embers, along with a select few wall sconces shaped like stars. The ceiling is painted a deep navy, and bolted to it by a pin in the centre is what Nexus can only describe as a ticking astronomical calendar fashioned in deep brass and gold. The gears make the whole building feel alive in that way grandfather clocks feel alive, ticking like a steady heartbeat, logging the dates and times for astronomical events: the rising and setting of the sun, moon, and stars, the moon phases, and eclipses.
The ticking isn’t loud, but hushed, like a whisper, a promise that time passes, even here in heaven.
The chairs and benches are leather, and all metal accents are done in dull brass. The color palette consists of deep walnuts, dark blues, charcoals, and a pop of forest green from the plentiful leafy indoor plants.
Archways lead into every vein of this place, letters stretching across the tops in brassy gold, designating the sections each one opens into.
“Look, Nexus,” Carmine whispers, as if he, too, were afraid to interrupt the tranquillity of this space, “there’s a new moon scheduled for tonight.”
Nexus peers up at the astronomical calendar on the ceiling and smiles. A new moon. Like him.
“Come, let’s go find Rust.” Carmine leads him through an archway past the front desk labelled “Labs A-D”. They ride in a fancy, golden elevator where the doors are so shiny, Nexus can make out his and Carmine’s reflections perfectly in them, as if they were mirrors rather than doors.
They get off four floors deep, past another pair of doors that requires Nexus to scan Moon’s ID again, and, finally, into a place that feels familiar and normal, filled with computers, beakers, counters, examination tables, microscopes, sharp and dangerous-looking tools, and things in petri dishes.
Nexus takes in a deep inhale consisting of weird chemical fumes.
It feels like home, weirdly.
At the back of the lab, crashed out on a swivel chair with his face flat on the desk, is apparently who they’ve been searching for.
“Rus.” Carmine shakes the bot’s shoulder gently. “Rust. Wake up, I need your help.”
Rust jolts awake with a snort, knocking a phone off the table. It falls onto the tile floor with a horrible, echoing clatter that makes Nexus wince.
Rust groans, his hand searching the table for it, “What time is it?” he asks in a thick accent.
Carmine picks up his phone from the floor and places it in his hand.
Rust looks at the time, groans again, as if he were in terrible pain, then slaps his face back down onto the desk. “What a foul, disgusting hour to wake me! Leave me alone, Carmine, I want to sleep so deeply that I pass on and die!”
Carmine shakes his back gently. “Come now, Rust, do wake up, or you won’t get your breakfast.” He produces a glowing green stick from seemingly nowhere and sets it next to Rust on the desk.
Rust’s eyes shoot open. He sits up straight and wraps his hand around the stick, examining it sharply. An unimpressed gaze lands on Carmine. “You must think me a common whore.”
Carmine dumps four more uranium sticks in front of him, two sugar packets, and a coffee creamer onto the desk.
Rust squints at him. He opens his hand with a ‘give me’ motion.
Carmine sighs and puts down a handful of extra coffee creamers, a package of fun dip, and a chocolate chip cookie.
“You woke me before 10 AM, Carmine. Keep it coming.” Rust makes the ‘give me’ motion again.
“You’re being a bit unreasonable—”
“Maybe I kill myself, and you never get help from me in this lifetime again, circus man!”
Carmine grabs Moon’s wallet from Nexus’s left pant pocket and tosses it onto the pile.
Rust slaps his hand over the sticks, the sugar packets, the coffee creamers, the fun dip, the cookie, and the wallet, and he hastily shoves everything into his lab coat pockets before Carmine can change his mind. “Satisfactory. No takesy-backsies. I do whatever you want, questions asked.”
“Don’t you mean no questions asked?” Nexus asks.
Rust snaps his fingers and impatiently makes the ‘give me’ motion at him.
“Never mind,” Nexus says.
As he chews on his breakfast consisting of a cigarette and a chocolate chip cookie coated in fun dip dust and uranium sprinkle toppings, Rust can’t help but wish he were stupid, because if he were stupid, he would be bothered less frequently.
He pops the last of his cookie into his mouth, chews, swallows, then chases down the taste with a drag from the cigarette. Smoke curls past his sharp teeth, thin lines of it swirling in the air around him and setting off his alarm as his own delinquency scrapes against what remains of his security programming.
Carmine has learned to ignore the alarm well after all these years and doesn’t miss a beat in finishing his explanations.
Slowly, Rust pulls another long drag on the cigarette, the smoke pairing disgustingly with the sticky sugar and uranium and electric blue fun dip staining the inside of his mouth. He licks his lips and relishes how gross the aftertaste is.
Rust is a creature of peculiar interests; he’s always seeking odd, new experiences. Sometimes, those odd experiences lead to questions, and questions lead to hypotheses, and hypotheses to research, and research to innovation.
“I’ll do it.”
“Really?” Carmine looks surprised. “That easily?”
“This Nexus predates all other Nexuses. He is the original Nexus. I find that strange. Strange is interesting. Interesting is discovery. Discovery is why I wake up even when I very much do not wish to.”
“One day we’re going to discuss this self-destructive lifestyle of yours very deeply, Rus.”
“There exists no such therapy to pierce my defences; I’m impervious to all forms of physical, mental, and spiritual attack.”
Carmine makes a face at Rust like he’s being stupid, which, as previously established, is impossible.
Nexus returns from grabbing three cups of coffee from a floor up. “Man, that coffee machine was cool.”
“I don’t remember how I made it. All I remember is my thumbs were missing once it was finished,” Rus replies, brutally honest.
“Your thumb coffee is tasty,” Nexus replies. “Have you made, like, a lot of the stuff in this building? Like that astronomical calendar thing?”
“I conjured that machine on twelve shots of nitro-glycerine, two BuzzBallz, and a piece of toast. It will accurately predict the Haven’s astronomical calendar for the next ten thousand years.”
“Oh. What happens when ten thousand years pass? Does the machine stop ticking or, like, do you have to make a new one or…?”
“I don’t care. I’ll be dead. I plan to be speared to death at two hundred and sixty. It’s going to be brutal.” Rust puts out the butt of his cigarette in the nearby full ashtray and pulls himself out of his rolling chair. “But enough normal, casual conversation, we should get Nexus back to his body where he belongs, yes?”
He lights another cigarette on his way to the examination table while Nexus pads after him. He sits on the berth where Rust instructs, legs swinging and sipping on black coffee. He hands Carmine a cup, then holds out the other black coffee to Rust, who opens the lid, deposits the coffee creamers and sugar packets Carmine bribed him with into it, and then stirs it with a uranium stick.
“So, are you, like, Moon’s assistant or something?”
Rust snorts at the question.
“They’re lab partners,” Carmine says.
“But if you had to come to one of us for anything scientific…?” Rust asks.
“I would go to you,” Carmine replies.
“Yes, indeed.” Rust nods approvingly. “Because I am the best, and because my morals are less strict than Moon’s have become.”
Carmine adds, “And I am very proud of him for that, Rust, even if you find it dull.”
“Yes, another reason why I am bothered so frequently. You see, Nexus. If you want science with caution and ethics, you go to Moon. But if you want science done brutally and efficiently… You come to me.”
Rust slams down on a lever, and an electric shock goes through Nexus, causing him to drop his paper cup of coffee. It spills all over the cot and splashes onto the floor, pooling black across the white tile.
Nexus’s body drops onto the metal table, sprawled out and unconscious.
“Moon will not like this.” Rust takes the stick of uranium out of his coffee and bites right through it as if it were rock candy.
“I know,” Carmine says.
“And my payment? Bodies are not cheap to manufacture…”
“I’ll complete whatever tasks you can think of for the next week.”
“Five weeks.”
“I’m also providing you with research on the first Nexus.”
“Four and a half.”
“I may be retired now, but that doesn’t make my work sloppy. What takes other field experts months will take me days. One week, Rus, take or leave it.”
“…Deal. One week. With the best of the best services, of course.”
“Naturally.”
Moon wakes in the lab with no memory of how he got here. This is not totally unusual for him, though he’s relieved to find Carmine standing next to him this time.
Carmine takes a deep breath, and he smiles, particularly pleasantly. “Hello. I know this is a little strange for you, but my name is Carmine, and—”
“And you’re going to be my sexy nurse and take good care of me until I’m feeling better, right?” Moon props himself onto his side, grinning like a jackass.
Carmine’s face splits into a real smile, and he leans over Moon with his hands on his hips. “Only if you want a needle in your ass.”
“The old you from before you started dating me would have started sputtering and apologizing about how rude that came out, but look at you now. I’m so proud.”
“Well, I had a terribly rude boyfriend with a matching, terribly rude mouth to teach me.”
“Yeah, babe? What else did his mouth teach you?”
“Oh, hush!” Carmine blushes bright carmine and pulls Moon into a sit. “How do you feel? Any issues?”
“I’m not as foggy as I usually am after one of those memory slips.” Moon rubs the side of his faceplate. “How’d I get to the lab? Did amnesiac me want to go to work curing space cancer or what?”
“About that…” Carmine clasps his hands together against his cheek, smiling like an innocent angel. “Moony, Moo-Moo, Mooncicle? How much do you love me?”
Moon’s heart drops into his stomach. “Oh my god, Carme, what did you do?”
Carmine cutely twirls a finger around one of the twin tails of his hat. “You remember how I was having that awful stint of baby fever?”
“Uhh, yeah? W-what about it?”
“Well, it’s been miraculously cured.”
“Oh, god.”
“And even more exciting news: he looks just like you!”
“Carme, Carmel, hon, what have I told you about grabbing Moons off the street and claiming them as your children?”
“This one wasn’t off the street.” Carmine sits on the edge of the bed next to Moon and grabs his hand to hold. “Before you say no,” he says, dropping his tone into something more serious, “I believe, wholeheartedly, that we could provide a second chance at a better life for him. He only just became conscious three days ago.” Carmine sighs fondly and shakes his head with the soft chime of the bells from his hat. “Oh, Moon, he’s so curious and innocent. Please, at least meet him first before you deny him.”
“Carmine, just…” Moon sighs. “Who is ‘he’?”
“A fragment left behind and auto-recovered by Killer Sun’s curse. We know the curse evolved in strange ways after Dahlia absorbed a decade off its longevity. First, it was just forgetting mere hours, then your mind started skipping through time, unable to remember what year it was, until you started randomly shifting through previous backups, and now this. Rus suspects it was by happy accident. Essentially, when New Moon was first learning how to make backups of himself, he saved and stored a backup in the wrong file within your drives, and it was never discovered until KS’s curse randomly extracted it this morning.”
“So, this ‘kid’ you’re looking to adopt… is Nexus?”
“Yes, and I’ve already told him his name, so he knows it.”
“Why?”
“Because he hand-picked it for himself, Moon. You can find it unappealing all you want, but it belongs to him, and that’s important. Part of the reason he snapped in your dimension was that he felt he would always be stuck in your shadow, so we must make him feel as seen and heard and individual as possible.”
Moon takes a deep breath and releases it slowly, calming himself down the way Carmine taught him years ago. “Alright, alright… You know what? Start from the beginning, okay? Just… tell me everything that happened in the hour leading up to now.”
It takes a day for Nexus’s body to be finished, fresh off the manufacturing belt, and a few hours more to upload his intelligence into it.
Carmine sewed him his outfit, exactly as Moon remembers it, saying that Nexus deserved garments that suited his tastes. Before Nexus fully boots up, Moon helps to dress and fasten him into the outfit, suspenders and all, and finishes with his slippers and hat.
Moon takes in the sight with a grimace. Nexus looks exactly like he did when he was working with Dark Sun, more than half a decade ago…
Carmine places a steady hand on his shoulder until Moon feels ready enough to give Rus his go-ahead to wake him.
Nexus’ optics flicker on, and he sits up with an artificial gasp. His red eyes peer down at his palms, then his body in all its ruffles, with intense curiosity.
“Nexus, dear? Do you feel alright?”
“I, um, yeah. Wow. This is… strange.” Nexus turns slowly and sets his long legs over the edge of the cot. “So, this is my future self?”
“That’s right,” Carmine says. “What do you think?”
“Well, I’m just wondering why I can’t seem to remember anything else. Shouldn’t I have all my future memories? I mean, I was just a fragment to plug into the greater whole. But I feel just as lost and confused as I was before…”
Moon takes a tentative step forward, gaining Nexus’s rapt attention, and it takes everything in Moon not to flinch. “The fault lies with me. We suspect the fragment of you that was in my body got corrupted by my curse with Killer Sun, and it corrupted the rest of you when we plugged you in.”
“What? So—so all my future memories got erased?! Just like that?! All so I could live?! I—I didn’t want my future self to die! I-I don’t know what I wanted, honestly, but not this!”
“We are certain that your curse will be cured along with Moon’s,” Carmine adds, gently and perfectly, because he is a frighteningly excellent liar. “So, in three months, you’ll have your memories of the future back.”
“O-oh…” Nexus sinks in place, long and lanky and awkward. “Well, what do I do until then?”
Carmine clasps his hands and looks at Moon pleadingly, his tail wagging at his heels.
Moon nods at him, allowing him to be the one to break the news.
“We figured you could stay with us!” Carmine says excitedly. “The Nexus of the future is quite the vagabond. Never set up much of a home anywhere, so while you’re waiting to get all your memories back so you can continue your travels, we’re more than happy to provide a bedroom, hot meals, and whatever maintenance you’ll need.”
“Uhh…” Nexus’s gaze travels to Moon. “You’re both… sure? About that? Like, is that a good idea?”
“I know you’ve probably heard some things about me, and they’re all true things.” Moon heaves a heavy, tired exhale. “I wasn’t a good person. God, sometimes I wonder even now how far away I am from being one. I haven’t fixed things with Sun, even after all these years… But I’ve put a lot of work into trying to be patient and… softer around the edges. The extended family is still a little tense with each other, but overall, this future isn’t a bad one, and Moon Haven is a peaceful place. You’re free to stay for as long as you want, even after you get your memories back. Cool?”
Nexus shrugs. “Cool, I guess? Um, if you don’t mind my asking, what did wind up happening with the whole Eclipse situation? Did Sun and I wind up defeating him?”
“Yeah, bud. You exploded him and The Star into a million tiny pieces using a satellite in another dimension. Little late, but congrats on killing your first villain.”
Nexus’s face brightens like a star. “Oh, good! I-I was worried I wouldn’t be able to handle it, but I guess… I’m a Moon, right? Moons fix stuff. And build cool places like this.” He looks around with big, wide eyes, and Moon can’t help but see what Carmine was talking about.
Before the pressure and Solar’s death cracked him wide open, Nexus was innocent, exactly like Cosmo was in the early days of the channel.
Moon hooks his arm with Carmine and taps Nexus’s knee gently. “C’mon. Let’s head home.”
“Ooh. I want to see that astronomical calendar thing again...” Nexus crosses the distance of the lab in a few long strides.
Moon nods to Rus. “I’m sure Carmine negotiated with you already on payment for upload and the body—and the secrecy.”
“That he did,” Rus says, flicking the cherry off the end of his cigarette and then setting it on a nearby tray to smoke later. “The lies will catch up with both of you in three months once Killer Sun’s curse has ended. You both realize that, yes? And if he happens to get in contact with your Sun—”
“I just want to reveal things slowly to him. Everything comes into the light eventually.” Moon knows this for certainty, that shadows don’t always remain shadows. “And the past can be a hard burden to bear.”
“I understand.” Rust and Carmine look down at the cigarette ash on the floor, their happy beginnings ended in flame. “Every Moon understands.”