A Closed and Common Orbit

SIDRA

Sorting tech supplies was boring, but boring had become preferable. Boring meant there was nothing to worry about. Boring was safe.

Sidra logged inventory as she worked. Seven bolts. She placed them in their bin. Two tethering cables. She placed them in their bin. One regulator grid – or . . . wait. ‘Pepper?’ she called, craning the kit’s head toward the workshop door.

‘One sec,’ Pepper called from the front counter, shouting over her welding torch. The security shield around the shop had been flickering when they got in that morning. Probably just some wiring that wore out, Pepper said, but it bothered Sidra enough that her host had wasted no time in starting repairs. Over the past twenty-six days, Sidra had been particular about locking doors, closing windows, avoiding customers she hadn’t seen before. She felt it best to volunteer for boring jobs that kept her in the workshop, out of sight. Sorting supplies fit the bill, and it was a task that Pepper was always happy to relinquish.

The torch hissed quiet, and Pepper stuck her head through the doorway. ‘What’s up?’

Sidra showed her the part in the kit’s hand. ‘I don’t know what this is.’

‘That,’ Pepper said, squinting, ‘is an overload buffer.’

Sidra made record of that. ‘Where should I put it?’

Pepper looked over her hand-labelled bins. ‘Just toss it in with the other regulators. I’ll remember it’s there.’ She smirked at Sidra. ‘And so will you.’

The kit smiled as Sidra filed away the overload buffer’s location into her workshop storage log. ‘I will.’

There was a pause. ‘So,’ Pepper said, clearing her throat, ‘Blue and I were thinking about closing up shop and doing something fun tomorrow.’

Sidra didn’t reply.

‘They’re having an adults-only day at the Bouncehouse,’ Pepper continued hopefully. ‘Only takes an hour to get up there, and it’s real kick in the pants.’

Sidra knew of the Bouncehouse – a giant zero-g playground housed in a low-orbit satellite. She’d seen its designated shuttle port near the Undersea station at Kukkesh, seen the big flashing sign that pictured a laughing, multispecies group of youngsters diving through ringed obstacle courses and playing with globs of floating water. It did look like fun.

She’d already guessed what Pepper was going to say next: ‘You want to come with?’

Sidra picked up another part – an air tube – and put it in its bin. ‘I think I’ll just stay home,’ she said, forcing the kit to smile. ‘You two have a good time.’

Pepper started to say something, but she swallowed it, her eyes sad. ‘Okay.’ She nodded. ‘I’m gonna order lunch soon, do you want—’

‘Hello?’ a voice called from the counter.

‘Be right there,’ Pepper called back. She squeezed the kit’s shoulder, and headed out. ‘What can I – oh. Uh, hi.’

Sidra couldn’t see what was going on, but the shift in Pepper’s tone was palpable. All at once, Sidra’s pathways were on edge. Was there trouble? Was she in trouble? Pepper’s voice and the other spoke to each other in a hush, too low for Sidra to pick up. She leaned in, straining to hear.

‘. . . I told you,’ she heard Pepper say. ‘I’m not her keeper. She’s her own person. That’s totally up to her.’

Sidra’s curiosity overpowered her concern about the unknown, and slowly, slowly, she peeked around the edge of the door. A pair of eyes looked past Pepper as soon as she did so.

It was Tak.

‘Hi,’ Tak said, with an awkward Human-style wave of her hand. Her expression was friendly, but her cheeks told a different story. She was nervous, unsure. The sight did nothing to slow Sidra’s processes down.

Sidra looked to Pepper, who didn’t look sure about this, either. Her face was neutral, but unnaturally so, and a flush of tense red heated her skin. The Aeluon wasn’t the only one changing colour, and Sidra understood why. Pepper did not take kindly to situations she wasn’t in control of, and she knew Tak had a trump card in her pocket. This was Pepper’s shop, Pepper’s territory, yet here was someone whose lead she had to follow.

‘Sidra,’ Pepper said, her voice calm and tight, ‘Tak was wondering if she could have a word with you.’

The kit took a breath. ‘Okay,’ Sidra said.

Tak held her satchel strap tightly with one hand. Sidra could see the other trying not to fidget. ‘I was hoping somewhere private? A cafe, or—’

Pepper’s eyes snapped to Tak. ‘You’re welcome to step into the back, if you want.’ The words were nonchalant, but they weren’t an invitation.

Tak’s talkbox moved as she swallowed. ‘Yeah. Yeah, that’s cool.’ The uneasy reddish yellow in her cheeks deepened; this wasn’t how she’d pictured things, either.

What’s she doing here? Sidra thought. All her other processes were idling.

‘I’ll be right out here,’ Pepper said, as Tak made her way back. She was looking at Sidra, but the words were meant for everyone present. Sidra felt the kit’s shoulders relax, just a bit. Pepper was there. Pepper was listening.

Tak entered the workshop. Sidra didn’t know what to do. Was she a customer? A guest? A threat? She had directory after directory stuffed with different ways to greet people, but none of them applied. How did you treat someone whose intentions were unclear?

They stood facing each other. Tak had the look of someone with a lot to say but no idea where to begin. Sidra knew the feeling.

‘Would you like some mek?’ Sidra said. She wasn’t sure if that was the right way to start, but it was better than silence.

Tak blinked. ‘Uh, no,’ she said, with surprised politeness. ‘No, I’m okay. Thanks.’

Sidra kept searching. ‘Do you . . . want to sit down?’

Tak rubbed her palms on her hips. ‘Yeah,’ she said, and took the chair offered. She exhaled, audibly. ‘Sorry, I . . . this is weird.’

Sidra nodded, then considered. ‘Do you mean for you, or for me?’

‘For both, I’m sure.’ Tak went dusky orange, and pale green, too. Exasperated. Amused. ‘I . . . I don’t know where to start. I figured I’d know when I got here but . . .’ She gestured at herself. ‘Clearly not.’

The kit cocked its head. ‘I just realised something,’ Sidra said.

‘What’s that?’

Sidra paused, worried that she should’ve kept the thought to herself. Given Tak’s reaction the last time they’d been together, she didn’t want to draw attention to her synthetic nature – but there was no point in hiding it any more, either. ‘Neither of us is speaking with an organic voice,’ Sidra said.

Tak blinked again. A soft chuckle came from her talkbox. ‘That’s true. That’s true.’ She thought for three seconds, and gave a glance toward the door. Pepper was no longer welding, but she was doing something involving tools and metal. Something rhythmic and punctuated. Something you couldn’t ignore if you were in earshot. Tak shifted her weight. ‘There is no way I can say any of this without sounding ignorant. But . . . okay. Stars, I’m really trying to not . . . offend you.’ She frowned. ‘This is new for me. That’s a poor excuse, but I mean – I’ve never had a conversation with an AI before. I’m not a spacer. I’m not a modder. I didn’t grow up on a ship. I grew up down here. And here, AIs are just . . . tools. They’re the things that make travel pods go. They’re what answer your questions at the library. They’re what greet you at hotels and shuttleports when you’re travelling. I’ve never thought of them as anything but that.’

‘Okay,’ Sidra said. None of that was an out-of-the-ordinary sentiment, but it itched all the same.

‘But then you . . . you came into my shop. You wanted ink. I’ve thought about what you said before you left. You came to me, you said, because you didn’t fit within your body. And that . . . that is something more than a tool would say. And when you said it, you looked . . . angry. Upset. I hurt you, didn’t I?’

‘Yes,’ Sidra said.

Tak rocked her head in guilty acknowledgement. ‘You get hurt. You read essays and watch vids. I’m sure there are huge differences between you and me, but I mean . . . there are huge differences between me and a Harmagian. We’re all different. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since you left, and a lot of reading, and—’ She exhaled again, short and frustrated. ‘What I’m trying to say is I – I think maybe I under-estimated you. I misunderstood, at least.’

Sidra’s pathways latched onto that, hard. Was Tak here to apologise? Everything that had been said pointed in that direction, and Sidra switched gears as fast as she could. ‘I see,’ she said, still processing.

Tak looked around the workshop, at the bins, the tools, the unfinished projects. ‘This is where you work.’

‘Yes.’

‘Were you . . . made here?’

Sidra gave a short laugh. ‘No. No, Pepper and Blue are friends, that’s all. They take care of me. They didn’t . . . make me.’ The kit leaned back in the chair, more at ease. ‘I don’t blame you for the way you reacted,’ she said. ‘I’m not even legal, much less typical. And I really am sorry for what happened in the shop. I didn’t know how the bots would affect me.’

Tak waved the concern aside. ‘Nobody knows they’re allergic to something until they try it.’

Sidra processed, processed, processed. The metallic banging out front had missed a few beats. ‘This . . . re-evaluation of yours. Does it extend to other AIs? Or do you merely see me differently because I’m in a body?’

Tak exhaled. ‘We’re being honest here, right?’

‘I can’t be anything but.’

‘Okay, well – wait, seriously?’

‘Seriously.’

‘Right. Okay. I guess I have to be honest too, then, if we’re gonna keep this fair.’ Tak knitted her long silver fingers together and stared at them. ‘I’m not sure I would’ve gone down this road if you weren’t in a body, no. I . . . don’t think it would’ve occurred to me to think differently.’

Sidra nodded. ‘I understand. It bothers me, but I do understand.’

‘Yeah. It kind of bothers me, too. I’m not sure I like what any of this says about me.’ Tak glanced at the kit’s arm. Faint lines marked where the tattoo had been. Pepper said they looked like scars, but they weren’t, not in the way that organic sapients meant. ‘What are you made out of?’

‘Code and circuits,’ Sidra said. ‘But you’re asking about the body kit, not me.’

Tak chuckled. ‘I suppose I am. Are you – is your body . . . real? Like something lab-grown, or . . .?’

The kit shook its head. ‘Everything I’m housed in is synthetic.’

‘Wow.’ Tak’s eyes lingered on the pseudo-scars. ‘Do those hurt?’

‘No. I don’t feel physical pain. I know when something’s wrong, either with my program or the kit. It’s not an enjoyable experience, but it’s not pain.’

Tak acknowledged that, still looking at the synthetic skin. ‘I have so many questions I want to ask you. You’ve got me thinking about things I’ve never chewed on. It’s not comfortable, realising that you’ve been wrong about something, but I

suppose it’s a good thing to do from time to time. And you . . . you seem like you have questions, too. You came to me because you thought I could help. Maybe I still can. So . . . if you don’t think I’m a complete asshole, maybe we can try again. Y’know, being friends.’

‘I’d like that,’ Sidra said. The kit smiled. ‘I’d like that a lot.’

JANE, AGE 14

‘Jane?’ The lights came on in the most annoying way possible. ‘Jane, it’s long past time to wake up.’

Jane pulled the covers over her head.

‘Jane, come on. There isn’t that much daylight this time of year.’ Owl sounded tired. Whatever. Jane was tired, too. Jane was always tired. No matter how much sleep she got, it was never enough.

‘Turn off the lights,’ Jane said. She’d figured out a long time ago that Owl had to obey direct commands related to the ship.

She couldn’t see Owl’s face, but she could feel it: frowning and frustrated. Through the edges of the blanket, Jane saw the lights switch off. ‘Jane, please,’ Owl said.

Jane sighed, long and loud. Pulling the direct-command card was a jerk thing to do, and she knew it. Sometimes it felt good though, especially when Owl was being annoying. Owl was annoying a lot lately. Jane pulled the blanket off her face. ‘Turn the lights back on.’ The room lit up; Jane winced.

‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ Owl said.

Jane caught a glimpse of Owl. She looked hurt. Jane pretended to not notice, but she felt kind of bad about it. She didn’t say that, though. She shuffled off to the bathroom. Stars, she was tired.

She peed, not bothering to flush. The filtration system was going to fizz out soon, and until she could find a replacement (or something she could hack into a replacement), flushing was on the list of things she could only do when there was something other than pee to deal with. It was gross, but when you did the math, it was either that or not washing the dogs she brought home. There was no way she wasn’t washing the dogs.

She sucked in water straight from the faucet and swished it around her mouth, trying to get rid of the hot inside-out sock feeling. There had been dentbot packs on the shuttle when she’d first got there, but those had run out forever ago, and she hadn’t found more. She missed having teeth that didn’t hurt. Sometimes she thought back to the factory, where they’d had these bland little tabs they sucked on to get the fuzz off their teeth. Those had been good. Not everything in the factory was stupid. Most things. But not all things.

Soap. That was the other thing she missed. She showered as often as the water supply would allow, but she could still smell herself, sour and musky. The dogs were way worse, but they weren’t so different. Mammals smelled, Owl had said. That was just the way of it.

Jane hadn’t smelled bad when she was a kid. At least, she didn’t remember smelling bad. Her body had changed a lot, and Owl said it would keep changing for a while. Still, though, Jane hadn’t been changing in quite the way Owl had said – not like other Human girls did. She’d gotten taller, sure, and she had to make new clothes a lot. But she wasn’t all curves and circles like the pictures Owl had shown her of adult women. Jane was still as skinny as a kid, and she didn’t have big round breasts – just small bumps that ached all the time. Her hips were wider, kind of, but sometimes she thought she looked more like a boy (except for the whole between-the-legs thing, but that was just a big bunch of weirdness no matter which bits you had).

Jane hadn’t started bleeding, either, but Owl didn’t think she would. They’d figured out from her med scans a long time ago that Jane had a single chromosome, which was apparently one short from the usual. So, probably no bleeding, which was fine, because that sounded like the absolute worst thing ever if you didn’t have meds to shut that down, and she obviously did not. Oh, and she couldn’t make kids. Bleeding was a maybe, but kids was a definite no. Owl had been kind of cagey when she’d told Jane that, but it was hard to care about not doing something you didn’t know you could do in the first place. Jane had learned that she couldn’t make kids in the same conversation where she’d learned that making kids was a thing. She hadn’t been made the way most Humans were, which had weirded her out at first, but was no big deal, really. There’d been a stretch when she was a kid where she’d been real curious about how and why the Enhanced had made her the way they did. She and Owl had puzzled it out together then – Owl using what she knew about Enhanced Humanity societies, Jane telling her what little she could remember about medical stuff at the factory, both of them looking at samples of Jane’s spit on the little scanner. Jane didn’t have any huge tweaks, chromosomes and no-hair aside. She had a super-buff immune system, though, which was not a usual thing, and it also made Owl stop caring so much about getting the decontamination flash working. All in all, the Enhanced had probably cooked her up out of some grab-bag gene junk and pulled her out of a gooey vat, along with the other disposable girls. The Enhanced. What a bunch of fuckers.

Owl had given Jane access to sims meant for adults, and that was how Jane had learned about swearing. Owl had said it was important to know how swearing worked, and it was okay under the right circumstances, but that Jane shouldn’t swear all the time. Jane definitely swore all the time. She didn’t know why, but swearing felt fucking great. Owl only had eleven adult sims in storage, but Jane didn’t mind playing them again and again. Her favourite was Scorch Squad VI: Eternal Inferno. The best character was Combusto, who used to work for the Oil Prince but was a good guy now, and he also used to be a pyromancer in a previous life – which was true for everybody on the Scorch Squad, but let’s be real, Combusto was the one who took the oath most seriously before he was reincarnated – so he had visions of the past sometimes and his eyes caught fire when he got mad, which was all the time, and his ultimate attack was called Plasma Fist, which made bad guys explode. He also had the very best swears. Jensen, get your fucking helmet on before they blow your skull out your ass! Yeah, that was the stuff. She could play that sim all day.

Or, at least, she would play that sim all day if she didn’t have stupid bullshit she had to do instead. She’d noticed, in the sims, nobody else had to find scrap and eat dogs. Nobody else made clothes out of seat covers. Nobody else hauled around water in old fuel drums. She couldn’t wait to get the stupid shuttle working so they could get to the GC. There’d be people there, and toilets you could flush any time you wanted to, and food that wasn’t covered in buggy fur. The people were the thing she was looking forward to most, obviously. Owl always made her talk in Klip. They hardly ever spoke Sko-Ensk any more, to the point that Jane couldn’t always remember words. Sometimes, Owl put on different voices so Jane would get used to talking to other people. But Jane always knew it was really Owl. She wished she could talk to someone else.

The wall screen switched on as Jane picked at the stupid red bumps all over her face (Owl said those were normal, too). ‘Jane, you should check the light panel in the kitchen before you go out today,’ Owl said. ‘I think it’s got a damaged coil.’

‘Yeah, I know.’

‘How do you know? It just started flickering.’

‘I – ugh.’ Jane rolled her eyes and grabbed her pants from where she’d thrown them the day before. ‘All right, I’ll look.’ She was real tired of having to fix shit. She just wanted to get out of there.

Owl followed her down the hall and it was so annoying. Jane looked up at the kitchen ceiling. Yep. The light was flickering. Woohoo. She got herself a cup of water and threw some dog on the stove. While it sizzled, she checked her to-do lists.

The to-do lists were written on the wall with chalk rocks (Owl’s word for the white stones scattered all through the scrapyard dirt). Owl could’ve kept records of what Jane needed to fix (and probably did), but Jane liked being able to look at what still needed doing. There was so much that needed doing. A big list on the wall kept her from going crazy over it.

TO-DO

fix water filtration system (IMPORTANT)

rebuild aft propulsion strip

replace fuel lines

figure out what’s wrong with navigation

artigrav system – does it work? how to test?

repair cargo bay hull (rusty)

repair power conduits (hallway)

repair bedroom air filter (totally broken)

repair back left stove burner (not important)

repair fucking everything always always always

get off this stupid planet

make new pants

SHOPPING LIST

fabric (tough)

bolts bolts bolts all the bolts

new circuit couplers

motherboards (any condition)

gunk traps

tape/glue/something???

thick plex

cable coatings

T junctions (fuel)

wire that doesn’t suck

some kind of siding for the hull

WORK GLOOOOOOOVES

dogs (always)

mushrooms (always)

snap beetles (be fast!)

CHECKS

water filtration – going to break soon FIX IT

lights – good

heater – good

stasie – good?

Owl – good

hatch – good

decont. flash – broke

airlock scanner – going to break soon

med scanner – good

scrib – buggy

Jane rubbed her eyes. There would always be something on the list. It was never going to end.

She forked the meat onto a plate, and ate it even though she knew it was going to burn her tongue. In the sims, they always had such amazing-looking food. She didn’t know what any of it was or what it tasted like, but holy shit, she couldn’t wait to get some of that. She swallowed a burning mouthful of dog, which tasted like it always did.

‘Don’t forget to take food with you today,’ Owl said.

‘I know,’ Jane said, shoving more dog into her mouth.

‘Well, you don’t always know. You forgot yesterday.’

Jane had forgotten to bring food yesterday, and it sucked. She hadn’t realised until she got hungry, but she was an hour out from home by then and had her hands full of some really tricky circuits she’d ripped out of an old stasie, and she had to finish that before coming back, and by then, she was so hungry she could’ve eaten a dog without washing it first. But even though all that was true, Owl’s reminder bugged her. ‘I didn’t forget today,’ Jane said. She grabbed some jerky from the box on the counter, wrapped it in a cloth, and stuck it in her satchel. She gave the nearest camera a look. ‘There.’

‘That’s not enough for the whole day. You’ll get hungry.’

‘Owl, please, I know what I’m doing. If I take more than that, I won’t have any tomorrow.’

‘It would be a really good idea to make some more jerky soon.’

‘I know. I haven’t seen any dogs in a while.’ She pulled on her footwraps and filled her canteen. ‘See? Water, food, all good. Can you open the airlock?’

The inner hatch slid open. ‘Jane?’ Owl said.

‘What?’

‘The light panel?’

Stars. ‘I know, I’ll find something.’

‘You didn’t even open it up.’

‘Owl, it’s a light panel. It’s not a fucking pinhole drive.’

‘I really wish you wouldn’t talk like that.’

‘I said I’ll find something. Light panels are not that hard.’ She walked through the airlock to the outer hatch and picked up the handle for her cargo wagon. Owl’s face was real sad. Somehow, that made her all the more annoying. Jane sighed again. ‘I will. Seriously, I’ve done this before.’

She had. The scrapyard was as familiar to Jane as her own face. Probably more than that. She spent way more time looking at scrap than at herself. She’d thought once, years ago, about marking the piles she’d already combed through, but there was no need. She knew where she was. She knew where she’d been.

The piles in an easily walkable radius had stopped being useful a long time ago. Oh, there was a fuckton of scrap left, sure, but it was either too broken even for her, or things she couldn’t use, or buried so deep there was no point in bothering. Scavenging was a surface-level kind of job. You’d spend forever digging otherwise, and most of it was junk anyway. Still, though, she could never get over how much decent, fixable tech the Enhanced just chucked out. Did they not have fix-it shops, like they did in the sims? Was grease and gunk that gross to them that they had to dump it all half a planet away? She’d never seen an Enhanced – she hadn’t seen anyone since the factory – but she was pretty sure she’d hurt them bad if she did. Plasma Fist to the ribcage, just like Combusto.

She talked to herself as she walked, for company. Walking didn’t take much brain, and hers got away from her if she wasn’t working on something. Today’s selection was the first scene from Night Clan Rebellion, which was pretty good. It wasn’t as good as Scorch Squad, but she talked that one out all the time.

‘Chapter one: we open on a snowy forest, stained red with blood! There’s a big fucking monster wrecking a castle, and Knight Queen Arabelle is on a cool horse.’ She did a voice kind of like Knight Queen Arabelle. ‘Come, warrior! I need your assistance!’ She went back to her own voice again. ‘And so I go running in, and the monster takes out the tower with its tail – crash! – and so the Knight Queen gives me a cool horse, and she says, “We must hurry! Before the Evergard is lost!”’

Jane kept going. She got all the way through chapter two – the bit where you find out that the monsters actually have a good reason for wrecking shit – when the back wheel on her wagon started to wobble. ‘Ah, shit,’ she said, kneeling down to take a look. The axle had come loose. She dug through her satchel, got a tool, and sat down in the dirt to make repairs. ‘Come on, get back in there. You know where you’re supposed to be.’

She heard the dogs before she saw them – a scruffy pack of five, all watching her close. Jane wasn’t worried. She stood up real chill, and got her weapon ready. She sized them up, one by one. Taking a dog this early in the day wasn’t the best. Dragging around the extra weight sucked, and midday heat and a freshly dead dog wasn’t a great combo. But it wouldn’t spoil or anything, and she needed jerky. ‘Good morning, shitheads,’ she said, giving the weapon switch a quick flick. A little tongue of electricity slithered out. ‘So, which one of you guys am I gonna eat?’

One of the dogs hunched down and stepped toward her. A crusty old female, blind in one eye. She snarled.

Jane snarled back. ‘Yeah, come on,’ she said. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

The dog kept growling, but didn’t make a move. Jane had seen this one around before, slinking off in the distance. She’d never gotten close. Maybe this pack had come Jane’s way by accident, or maybe they were real hungry (lizard-birds and dust mice weren’t much for big carnivores to go on). If that was why they approached her now, well, too bad. They were leaving hungry. Jane wasn’t.

She picked up a rock, never taking her eyes off the female’s teeth. She switched the weapon into her left hand and, with a quick flick of her wrist, whipped the rock into the dog’s nose.

Killing it wasn’t even hard. The dog lunged, the zapper zapped, and the rest of the pack freaked out.

‘Yeah!’ Jane yelled, jumping over the heap of smoking fur. ‘Yeah, come on! Who’s next?’ She thumped her chest like Combusto. ‘You wanna go?’

The other dogs were pissed, but they backed off. They knew. They got it.

‘That’s right, I’m real scary!’ Jane said, turning her back on them. ‘Be sure to tell all your stupid friends, if I don’t eat you first.’ She grabbed the dead one by the legs and heaved it onto the wagon. It landed with a thud. Jane glanced over her shoulder, but of course the dogs were gone. Of course they were. She’d done this like a thousand times. She knew what was up.

‘We are the blessed warriors of the Night Clan!’ she said in her best justified-in-wrecking-shit monster voice. She gave the wagon axle a wiggle. All good. She dragged the now-heavy wagon behind her. ‘For a thousand years, we have waited for our hour of vengeance—’

Nothing else bugged her as she made her way. She saw a couple cargo ships fly by high up over ahead, full of new scrap to drop off. That was nothing new. They only made drops at the edge of the yard, which was days and days of walking from home, she guessed. She never saw them on the ground. And the wider the yard got, the farther the drop site was. Besides, she was pretty sure there weren’t any people on the ships, and they obviously weren’t scanning the ground or anything. The same was true of the collector drones, which scooped up mouthfuls of scrap to take back to the factories. They didn’t care about her at all. They probably thought she was a dog, if they could even think. She’d once wondered if the collectors would get to where the shuttle was before she left the planet, but Owl had calculated it, and given how often the drones made an appearance and how far away they were and how much scrap they appeared to take, it’d be another six years or so before they even got close. Six years. Jane couldn’t deal with that thought.

She walked and walked, until she got as far as she’d been the day before. She stopped to think. There were two ways around the pile in front of her – one that looked like it would involve a lot of climbing, and one that looked kinda rocky but relatively flat. She considered the stinking carcass on the back of the wagon and went for the easier choice.

Turned out, the easier choice was a better walk, but the destination was pretty crazy. Sometimes, it was easy to forget that she lived on a planet, with ecosystems and geology and all that other stuff Owl told her about. It made more sense thinking that the dirt and animals had kind of happened around the scrap, like they were little details added in later on. But then sometimes, she saw something like the place she’d come to, and it was obvious that nature was always there first.

There had been a cliff or something there once – a hill, maybe. Jane didn’t have much real-life experience with land left untouched (sims didn’t count), and she wasn’t always sure if she knew the right words for the things she saw. Anyway, there had been a lot of dirt and rock all stacked up at some point, but there’d been some water or wind or something, and now it was weird. There was a big hole in the ground – a big big hole, with lots of other little ones around – where the dirt had sunk in on itself. And while there was still a giant structure of dirt and rock off to the side of it, it had slumped over a scrap pile, almost like they had melted together. Jane could see scrap sticking out of the wall of dirt, like it was trying to pull itself out. It was a huge mess, and not great for scavenging at all. She would’ve turned right around if it hadn’t been for one thing: she could see half of a ship sticking out of it.

Not a big ship, of course – she’d never found anything much bigger than home – but intact vehicles of any kind were not an everyday thing. Whenever she found one, she cleaned it out right away, especially if there was decent fabric on the seats or bunks or whatever. Fabric did not get better with age, and if she found something that wasn’t all rain-rotted or chewed up from nesting things, that was worth grabbing super fast.

She chewed her lip as she looked at the wall of dirt. It would be a pain in the ass to climb, and it looked crumbly. She wiggled her toes against where her footwraps were wearing thin. If there was fabric in there, it was worth the climb. She could do it. She could do anything.

The smaller holes orbiting the big one weren’t as deep, but they were deep enough – maybe about half again as tall as she was. She skirted around them, and when they got too tricky to avoid, she left the wagon on a flat patch and continued toward the wall. The slope was steep, almost straight up in some spots. She put her foot against it. It was crumbly, for sure. She reached up and grabbed a hunk of metal firmly buried. It held. She held. Yeah, she could do this. She’d be fine.

She continued up and up until she was at the same height as the ship. She worked herself sideways, turning her feet weird angles, letting them sink into the crumbly dirt so it would hold her weight. ‘Boom! Boom! We’ll wreck your walls!’ she sang. ‘Bang! Bang! We’ll bust your balls!’ It was the song the Scorch Squad sang when they drank alcohol after they won a fight. She didn’t know what drinking alcohol was like, but the sims made it look real fun. ‘Slam! Slam! Get drunk and fight—’ Some of the dirt gave out under her foot, and her leg slid farther than was comfy. She looked at the distance between her and the stuck ship. Almost there, but she could hear pebbles tumbling down below her, and there weren’t a lot of good footholds between here and there. Maybe this was a bad idea. She thought about it. She sniffed. ‘You’ll die tomorrow, so live toniiiiight,’ she sang. She put her foot on the next big rock.

The next big rock broke into dusty pieces the second she let her weight down.

Jane fell. The dirt caught her. She slid, arms and legs flipping over in a tangle, hard things scraping her skin and ramming her body. Her weapon pack and satchel, still wrapped around her, added extra blows to the flurry. She clawed, trying to grab something, but she couldn’t make sense and couldn’t see straight. She tumbled and tumbled, out of control.

The ground went away, but she still clawed, even though there was nothing but air. Nothing but air until her body came crashing down.

For a moment, the entire world was loud and red – a bright, stinging red that filled her shut eyes and ringing ears. Her leg felt red, too, red and angry. She remembered how to breathe, and pulled in a hard lungful. She opened her eyes. The world was not red, and neither was her leg, but something was very, very wrong with it. There was no deep blood and nothing poking out, but when she tried to stand, she screamed. She saw the sky as she did so. It was further away than it had been before, a bright circle out of reach. She had landed in one of the holes.

My leg’s broken, she thought. She’d never had a broken bone before, but somehow she knew it all the same. ‘Fuck,’ she said out loud, her breath speeding up. ‘Stars, fucking . . . shit.’ She made ugly sounds as she tried to sit up, moaning and whining and choking. She looked up, around, all over. Even if she’d been able to stand straight and reach up, the hole was taller than her, and there was nothing to climb on – no rocks, no crates, nothing.

She was so fucked.

‘You’re okay,’ she said, her voice coming out wrong. ‘You’re okay. Come on. Come on, it’s okay.’ But it wasn’t okay. Her hands were scraped and bruised, as were her arms, her face, everything. And her leg – stars, her leg. She pulled off her satchel and the weapon pack – both looking entirely the wrong shape – so she could lie flat on the ground. She put her hands over her face, trying to breathe, trying to stop shaking. What the hell was she going to do?

For a long while, there was nothing she could do but lie there and hurt. Her mind had finally started to turn to can I even climb out of here with a broke-ass leg when she heard something – somethings – approach the hole. Jane held her breath. A dog came into view over the edge – a lean, sharp-eyed dog. There was a scrabbling sound behind it, a weirdly playful sound. Jane couldn’t believe it: two freckled pups, no longer than her arm from tip to tail. The big one had to be their mother. Jane had never seen pups up close. She knew better than to go into dog dens. They were too dark, too closed in. Jane and the mother stared at each other, neither making a sound. The mother broke her gaze first, looking at her paws, the sides of the hole, the drop to the bottom. She was figuring it out, just like Jane had been, trying to see if there was a safe way back up. Jane’s mouth went dry. All dogs were kinda scrawny, but she could see the ribs on this one. She could see the ribs on the pups, too. Where was their pack? Were they alone? Didn’t matter. This was a problem, a big fucking problem. Even if she could manage the climb out, she couldn’t pull herself up with her weapon in hand, and – wait. Wait. She thought back to the moment she’d hit the ground. There had been so much noise, so much crunching . . . She grabbed the weapon rod and hit the switch. Nothing happened. She hit it again, again. She could hear the soft click of the firing mechanism inside, but nothing. Nothing. Her leg wasn’t the only broken thing.

She let out a yell from the very bottom of her belly, clenching her fists against her face. She could hear the pups startle. She turned her head to them, sharp and furious. ‘What? You scared? Raaaaaah!’ She yelled again. ‘Go away! Get out of here! Go! Go away!’ She threw a rock; it didn’t make it out. The pups backed away out of view. The mother looked wary, but she stood her ground, ears laid back, fur bristling.

Jane grabbed her satchel, torn and dirty from the fall. She pulled out the jerky she’d packed that morning. ‘Smell that?’ she yelled, shoving the handful of dried meat in the mother’s direction. ‘Huh? You know what that is?’ Jane took it between her teeth and ripped out a messy chunk. ‘Mmm! That’s you! That’s your pups! You’re fucking delicious, did you know that?’ The words sounded good, but Jane shook as she said them. She thought about the empty click of the weapon. She thought about the shuttle, half a morning’s walk away. She thought about Owl.

She thought about Owl.

If the dogs could smell the jerky, they didn’t care. The pups rejoined their mother, who had sat down, muscles tight, head lowered into the hole. She was staying put. Jane was, too. She didn’t have a choice.

She and the dog stared at each other all day, despite more thrown rocks, despite Jane yelling until her throat was raw. They stared at each other until the sun went down. And even after that, Jane could see the mother’s eyes watching her in the dark, glinting green in the moonlight. Patient. Waiting. Hungry.

SIDRA

Sidra hadn’t been to the Aeluon district before. Their community on Coriol was less technologically up-to-date than their interstellar kin, but their neighbourhoods were a noticeable step up from Sixtop. The streets were well lit – rather to Sidra’s chagrin – and the buildings were clean, cared-for and, most importantly, aesthetically complementary. Everything was curved and domed, and the only colours beyond white and grey grew out of the ground.

Her quick-travel pod dropped her off outside the windowless establishment Tak’s location tag had steered her to. It didn’t look like much. There was no signage she could read, only a bright colour plate flashing soundless words on the wall. She started to make a note, then thought better of it. For a Human – even an ostensible one – recognising Aeluon emotions was a mark of cultural savvy. Understanding their language, however . . . that wasn’t something the average Human could do, and it was the sort of thing that could prompt questions. She closed her reminder list with a flicker of regret.

Tak was waiting for her. She stood in conversation with three other Aeluons, flashing their cheeks and looking congenial. She noticed Sidra approaching and called out: ‘Hey!’ The sound was startling in the silent street. She flashed something to the others, apparently bidding them farewell, then walked Sidra’s way. ‘Glad you could make it.’

‘Thanks,’ Sidra said. She glanced at the others. ‘Are we joining them?’ A quiet worry arose.

Tak smiled blue. ‘Nah, we just ran into each other. Some friends of one of my fathers.’ She leaned her head toward the nondescript building. ‘Come on, let’s get out of the cold.’ She hugged a woven sort of jacket around her torso as they went. ‘I should live in the Aandrisk district. They’ve got a hab dome heated warm enough for them to walk around naked – in this.’ She gestured to the stars that never set as they arrived at the outer wall. ‘So. I don’t know if you’ve been to one of these before,’ she said, pressing her palm against a doorframe. The wall melted to let them through.

‘One of—’ Sidra scrapped the sentence as she walked through the door. ‘Oh,’ she said softly, trying not to disturb the quiet within.

‘We obviously don’t have a spoken word for this,’ Tak whispered. ‘Klip just borrowed the Hanto for it: ro’valon. Direct translation is “city field”.’

The translation was apt. The large domed space was filled with rolling little hillocks, none taller than the kit, each covered with an inviting blanket of grass. Whatever framework rested below them had been sculpted to create leafy seats, living benches, private hollows to share secrets in, flat clearings to stretch out on. A few small trees were in there as well, creating subtle curtains and canopies. The curved walls surrounding everything were covered with projections of unending fields stretching outward, bright and clear as noon. It was realistic imagery, but the illusion had no effect on Sidra. She could tell that it wasn’t the real thing, which made it easy for her to know where to stop looking. For an organic sapient, though, she imagined the effect would’ve been quite convincing, and indeed, the people present seemed awfully content. They were mostly Aeluon, though Sidra spotted a few others (including an Aandrisk who had no qualms about lying spread-legged on his back, his discarded pants bundled beneath his head as he read his scrib).

‘It’s not as big as the ones you get on Sohep Frie,’ Tak said. ‘But it’s the best thing in the world after a busy day in a city.’

Sidra followed Tak to a sparse reception desk, where an Aeluon man sat working on a small pixel puzzle. He set it aside as they approached. Cheek flashing ensued. After a moment, he handed Tak a small rectangular device, which Sidra did not recognise. He waved at Sidra, then returned to his puzzle with interest. Tak caught Sidra’s eye and made a Human gesture – a finger against her mouth. Sidra understood, and said nothing as they ventured into the ro’valon. No one else was talking, either. It was the quietest place she’d ever been to. There was more noise in a spaceship than in here.

Tak looked around, searching for a free spot. She chose a secluded hollow with a sloping seat built into it, big enough for two people to lounge with plenty of space between them. She sat; Sidra made the kit do the same. The tended grass folded beneath them. Tak set the rectangular device down beside her and pressed her thumb to it. A soft beam of light shot up, then spread out around them in a wide, nearly-clear bubble, touching all the way to the ground.

‘I take it you’ve never seen a privacy shield before,’ Tak said, catching something on the kit’s face.

‘I haven’t, no.’ Sidra glanced over the kit’s shoulder. ‘Is it okay to talk now?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ Tak said, snuggling into the grass with relish. ‘The shield blocks all sound. It’s a courtesy thing when you’re in a place like this, but I figured it’d be doubly useful in your case.’

‘I appreciate that.’ Sidra looked around. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this.’

‘Yeah, they tend to be one of our better-kept secrets. I think we forget other species don’t have these.’

‘I meant a field, in general. I know it isn’t a real one, but . . .’

Tak blinked. ‘Stars, you’ve never been out in nature, have you?’

Sidra shook the kit’s head. ‘I mean, there are parks near where I live, but—’

‘Oh, no, that’s not the same, and neither is this. Wow.’ Tak mulled that over as she retrieved a packet of something edible from her jacket pocket. ‘I’d say you should travel more, but . . . can you do that?’

‘Sure. I don’t really want to, though.’

‘Why?’

‘Being outside is hard for me. My primary function was to observe all the goings-on within a ship. All the goings-on. If I don’t have boundaries, I don’t know where to stop processing.’

Tak opened the packet and shook seven pieces of candied fruit into her palm. ‘That sounds exhausting,’ she said, picking up one of the pieces between two fingers. She popped it in her mouth and chewed.

‘It is,’ Sidra said. ‘I prefer staying inside.’

‘Is there no way around that? Needing to observe everything, I mean.’

The kit sighed. ‘Theoretically, someone could alter my code to remove certain protocols. But Pepper and Blue don’t know how to write Lattice, and I can’t alter myself. It’s . . . a challenge.’

‘Like having to tell the truth all the time.’

‘Precisely. It’s one of the things I like least about being in the kit.’

Tak leaned back into the grass. ‘Why do you do that?’

‘Do what?’

‘“The kit”. You don’t say “my body”. You say “the kit”.’

Sidra wasn’t sure how to explain. ‘If you were talking to an AI installed in a ship, would you expect it to refer to the ship as its body?’

‘No.’

‘Well, then, there you go.’

Tak did not look as convinced as Sidra had hoped. ‘It’s . . . a ship, though. It’s not a body.’

‘It’s the same thing to me. I was housed in a ship. I’m now housed in a body kit. My place of installation changes my abilities, but it’s not mine. It’s not me.’

‘But the kit is yours. It’s . . . yours.’

The kit shook its head. ‘It doesn’t feel that way.’ She started to explain further, but something about the conversation thus far was making her uneasy. Everything had been about her. She felt the kit’s cheeks flush.

‘What’s up?’

Sidra tried to condense what she was feeling. ‘Pepper and Blue are my friends,’ Sidra said at last. ‘But they’re friends born out of circumstance. Pepper was there when I woke up, and she’s taken care of me since. Blue’s part of the package deal of being friends with her. But you – I’ve never made a friend on my own before. Just . . . gone out and picked somebody. I don’t know how this works. I don’t know where to start.’

‘Are you uncomfortable?’

‘A little.’

‘Why?’

Sidra processed. It wasn’t because Pepper and Blue weren’t there. It wasn’t because she was in a new place. It wasn’t because – oh, wait, yes it was. She looked at Tak. Even if she hadn’t been forced into honesty, she would’ve told the truth then. ‘I’m not sure why you want to be friends with me. Right now, I feel like I’m just some sort of curiosity to you.’

Tak chewed her candy thoughtfully, unoffended. ‘Tell you what. You ask me a question about myself, I’ll give you a straight answer, then we’ll flip it around. If I want to know something about your body – sorry, about the kit – then you can ask me something about my body in return. Anything you want to know. That’s how a friendship should work. It’s an even give and take.’

‘Can we ask questions about other things, too?’ Sidra considered her words. She knew what she wanted to say, but she didn’t want to sound arrogant. ‘There’s more to me than just the kit. And the same is true for you.’

Tak darkened into a happy blue. ‘Deal. And if you want, you can ask the first question.’

‘Okay.’ Sidra compiled a quick list and started from the top. ‘How long has your family been on Coriol?’

‘My fathers moved here a little over thirty standards ago.’ Tak smirked. ‘They say it’s because they knew there would be a lot of demand for parents in a place where travellers stop off, but I know it’s partly because none of them fit in well on Sohep Frie. They’re ah’ – she scratched her throat with an amused look – ‘a bit politically vocal. Anti-war, to be precise. They don’t mesh well on the homeworld.’ She plucked another candy from the packet. ‘Okay, my turn. I know you read books and watch vids and stuff. Do you have a particular genre you like?’

‘I like folktales, mythology, and non-fiction. Mysteries are fun, too.’

‘You mean Human-style?’ Tak made a face. ‘I can’t get into those. They make me anxious. I don’t find bad things happening to people to be particularly entertaining.’

‘I personally enjoy trying to find all the clues, but I’ve spent a lot of time considering the broader appeal.’

‘And?’

‘I think it has to do with the fear of death. All organics are afraid of it, and there’s nothing that can be done to prevent bad things from happening sometimes. My guess is that there’s an odd sort of comfort in imagining that even if something horrible happens to you or someone you love, the ones responsible will always be caught, and the people who figure it out will do so in style.’

Tak laughed. ‘You make a good case. All right, your turn.’

‘How do you know when it’s time to switch sex? What does it feel like?’

‘It’s like an itch. Not a literal itch – though you don’t know what that feels like, do you?’

‘No.’

‘Hmm. Okay. It’s a . . . an irritation. An urge. But it doesn’t last long. The implants kick in, and I change fully within three days. That part’s fine. It doesn’t hurt or anything. A little achy, maybe, but it’s not bad. Much better than it would be without my implants.’

‘How would that be?’

‘Incredibly unpleasant.’

‘Because you couldn’t change.’

‘Exactly. That’s how you find out you’re shon. It hits during puberty. You wake up with this itching, aching feeling, and your body isn’t getting the right hormonal input to be able to respond the way it should.’

‘Because you don’t live in segregated villages any more.’

‘Right. Biology-wise, shifts are supposed to occur within a single-sex environment, which we obviously no longer have. So, you start to get sick. Your hormones don’t know what to do. I got my implants within a day of Father Re realising why I’d been dizzy and achy all morning. He took me to the clinic right away, and they fixed me up.’ Tak pointed at herself, indicating it was time for a question of her own. ‘What – how to phrase this – what do you have in there?’ She made a circular motion with her palm toward the kit’s torso.

‘Lots of things.’ Sidra touched the upper chest. ‘To begin with, false lungs and heart. Do you want to listen?’

Tak’s face lit up, but her tone remained steady. ‘Are you comfortable with that?’

‘Yes.’

Tak leaned forward, pressing her ear to the kit. Sidra took a deep breath. ‘Wow,’ Tak said. ‘That’s incredible. But they don’t do anything?’

‘The lungs, no, not really. They just suck air in and out to give the appearance of breathing. The heart actually behaves like a heart. It pumps fake blood throughout the kit. But the blood isn’t a vital system function. You could remove the heart and I’d still be fine.’

‘That’s . . . grimly poetic.’

Sidra continued down the kit. ‘There’s a false stomach as well, which stores anything I ingest.’

‘I was wondering how you ate. You drank mek at my shop.’

The kit nodded. ‘But again, it doesn’t provide fuel. It’s just for show. I’ll spare you how I get rid of it, if that’s all right.’

Tak put up her palms. ‘That’s not a pretty thing in most species, so, yeah, that’s fine.’

Sidra placed the kit’s hands on the kit’s abdomen. ‘The core is in here, as well as the battery and the main bulk of processing circuitry.’

Tak blinked. ‘You’re saying your brain is in your belly. Sorry, the kit’s belly.’

‘In a manner of speaking, but only part of it.’ She tapped the kit’s head. ‘Memory storage and visual processing is up here. Remember, if I were in a ship, I’d be spread all through it. I’m not limited to one processing unit.’ She touched the kit’s thighs. ‘Kinetic energy harvesters are laced all through the limbs and skin. Whenever I move the kit, it generates more power.’ Her turn for a question. ‘Have you ever had children? Either as a father or a mother?’

‘No. I have no interest in changing my career, and I’ve never been fertile when female. I’d like to, though.’ She grinned. ‘Besides, old folks will tell you that kids with a shon parent are lucky. So: have you ever been swimming?’

‘No. Why do you ask?’

‘Because you said you can’t breathe, and I’m jealous. You could walk around the bottom of the ocean.’ Tak’s eyes went wide. ‘You could spacewalk without a suit!’

‘No, I couldn’t.’

‘You absolutely could!’

‘That’d be an amazing way to get caught.’ Sidra looked around the ro’valon as she considered more questions. The nude Aandrisk man had fallen asleep, scrib on his face. A pair of young adult Aeluons were lying on their backs beside each other, close as public politeness would allow. ‘You said your fathers are anti-war. Are you?’

Tak rocked her head. ‘Less than they’d like. I think war is an idiotic way to spend resources and the precious time we have, but I don’t think we’re ready to just dismantle our gunships yet. Look at the Rosk, for example.’ She flicked her inner eyelids. ‘I don’t think even my fathers can argue that one.’ She balled up the empty candy packet in her palm, and slipped it back into her pocket. ‘Are you afraid of getting caught?’

‘All the time. But . . .’ Sidra paused for one second. ‘I think I could get away with more than I do now.’

‘How do you mean?’

Sidra looked at the kit’s hands, and paused for two seconds more. ‘Pepper doesn’t like it when I want to do things more in line with my intended capabilities when we’re not at home. The Linkings, for example. I’m capable of processing dozens of lines of thought at once. I often feel bored, or stuck inside my own mind. In a ship, I’d have Linking access at all times. I don’t in here. Pepper says it’d be dangerous to install a wireless receiver in the kit.’

‘She’s probably right, but there must be a way to deal with that.’

‘She doesn’t want me to do things that make it clear I have different abilities. She’s afraid someone will notice.’

‘Are you afraid of that?’

Sidra processed. ‘No. I could hide it. I would be careful. I’m frustrated with what I am now. I’m capable of so much more.’

Tak reclined into the grass, folding her hands over her flat chest. ‘I know it’s your turn to ask a question, but . . . let’s stick with this a bit. Maybe we can think of a solution Pepper hasn’t hit on.’

‘Like what?’

Tak shrugged. ‘I have no idea. But if we can go to space and invent implants and learn how to talk to other species, surely there’s a way to help you. I get that you have to be careful. But you’re . . . you’re not like the rest of us. No offence.’

‘None taken. It’s true.’

‘I mean, we’re all sapients, right? Me, you, those goofballs over there.’ She gestured vaguely toward the youths, who were staring at each other with lovestruck eyes. ‘But say . . . say I moved to Hagarem. Say, by some stroke of luck, I was the only Aeluon in a whole city of Harmagians. Would I respect their ways? Yes. Would I adopt their customs? Yes. Would I ever, ever stop being Aeluon? Hell no.’ She drummed one set of fingers against the other. ‘I get that it’s a different thing for you, but that doesn’t mean you have to abandon what makes you unique. You’re supposed to own that, not smother it.’ She rocked her head, cheeks brown and determined. ‘Where do you feel most comfortable? What kinds of places do you like?’

‘I have a different answer for each of those questions.’

‘Okay.’

‘I’m most comfortable at home. It’s safe, and I can use the Linkings, and Pepper and Blue are there with me.’ The kit’s mouth scrunched up. ‘But I like parties best.’

Tak raised her chin. ‘Really?’

‘Really. I love parties. I love lots of crazy things happening within a set of walls. I love trying new drinks. I love watching people dance. I love all the colour and light and noise.’

Tak grinned. ‘When was the last time you went to a party?’

‘Six days before the . . . the thing that happened at your shop. A birthday party for one of Blue’s artist friends.’

Tak thought for a moment. ‘That’s thirty-eight days since your last party.’ She gave a sharp nod. ‘That’s the first thing we’ll fix.’

JANE, AGE 14

Nobody was coming for her.

This should have been an obvious thing. There was nobody else there. There had never been anyone to help her, not when she hurt her hands or fought off dogs or anything. But now, shivering in the dark at the bottom of a hole, she really got what having no one meant. Nobody was out looking for her. Nobody would miss her if she died. No one would notice. No one would care.

The mother dog paced up above. One of her pups was snoring. Jane shivered. She leaned back against the dirt wall, pulling her arms and her good leg in, trying to keep warm. The night was biting cold, and her clothes weren’t meant for it. Her butt was numb from sitting, but there were only so many ways she could sit without her leg shrieking back at her.

This was her fault. If only she’d stepped different. If only she’d not tried to get to the stupid ship. If only she’d gone left instead of right. Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid. Bad girl. Bad behaviour.

‘Stop,’ she whispered to herself, holding her ears. ‘Don’t do this. Don’t do this. Stop.’

But familiar thoughts were creeping in now, and there were no projects or lessons or sims to shut them up. She had been bad. If she hadn’t climbed the wall, this wouldn’t have happened. If she hadn’t gone left. If she had just thought for a second, instead of being so clumsy and bad and off-task—

‘Stop, stop, stop,’ she said, rocking back and forth. ‘Stop.’

She’d been bad. And bad girls got punished.

She thought of the factory, which was never cold and never lonely. She thought of her warm bunk, with Jane 64 cuddled close. I don’t think we should, 64 had said. But Jane had made her. She’d made her go do something bad, and that good little girl had died for it.

She thought about what that meant – dying. Just . . . ending. Lights out. The end. What if this – this night – was it? What if the last thing she ever felt was being cold and alone and afraid? What if the last thing she ever saw was a pair of hungry eyes staring at her in the dark? Maybe the lizard-birds would find her. They stuck to mushrooms, usually, but she’d seen them nibbling at dead dogs and dust mice sometimes, unwilling to let food go to waste. She remembered how those dead things looked. She imagined how she’d look if she were dead. How she’d look as other things ate her. ‘Stop,’ she said, louder. ‘Jane, stop it. Stop it.’

She whimpered at the bottom of the hole, her leg hurting more every time the cold made her shiver too hard. The dogs at the top moved restlessly. Jane 64 was dead. Jane 23 was probably dead, too, because she’d been stupid and careless and nobody was coming for her. Nobody cared. Nobody except Owl, and she’d never know what happened. Another stupid Human had left her alone, and nobody would be able to tell her why.

Jane clutched her face, rocking and rocking. This, all of this, was her punishment. And she deserved it. She deserved every bit of it.

The dogs ate the old dead female on Jane’s wagon sometime in the night. Jane didn’t know dogs ate other dogs, but protein was protein, and she guessed they’d given up on her. She couldn’t see them feeding, but she heard it, all right. The pups were excited. She almost thought they sounded happy.

She slept, kind of. It wasn’t a real sleep, just a confusion she dipped in and out of until she heard the flutter of lizard-birds overhead, which meant the sun was coming up. She had to get out of there. She had to do something. She wanted to go home.

Come on, get up, she thought. Get up get up get up get—

She tried to stand, and regretted it immediately. ‘Fucking dammit,’ she hissed, slamming her head back against the dirt wall.

A handful of dirt crumbled down to her shoulders.

Of course. Of course. It was so obvious. The ground had collapsed and made the hole. What if . . . what if she made it collapse a little more?

She dragged herself around so she was facing the wall. Even though her eyes had adjusted to the dark, it was so hard to see. But she could feel. She ran her palm over the dirt, packed tight but pliable. She got a tool out of her satchel – a small prybar, good for unsticking stuck scrap. She paused. If she made a way up, the dogs could get down. She listened. She hadn’t heard them at all since the eating sounds stopped. They had probably moved on, but there was no telling how far, or if they were still hungry. She got her knife out of her satchel and stuck it in her pocket. It was something. It was better than just fading out down there, anyway.

She slammed the prybar into the dirt, making a hole. A hole in a hole. She dug. She dug, and dug, and dug. She dug as the night faded away. She dug as the air warmed up (finally). She dug even though her fingers ached and her leg hated her for it. And as she dug, sections of the dirt wall came falling down, little by little. When it got in her eyes, she brushed it out. When it got in her mouth, she spat it away. If a big bunch fell down, she’d pull herself up on top, then dig some more, until finally – finally! – enough of the dirt had fallen into the hole that it made a sort of ramp back up. She pulled herself with her arms, groaning loud and mean. If the dogs were still around, they had to know she was coming. She pulled out her pocket knife and crawled with it in hand, satchel and busted weapon dragging awkwardly along behind her. At last, there it was – the wagon, on the flat ground where she’d left it the day before. She wanted to laugh, but instead shut her mouth tight. The dogs were still there, asleep together next to the half-eaten carcass of the one Jane had killed. She clutched her knife hard. The mother looked up, belly fat and fur stained red, her eyes hazy with food. She and Jane stared at each other. The mother growled, but it wasn’t a hunting growl. This was quieter, lower. The mother’s pups snuggled close to her, fat and messy as she was. One rolled onto its back, little bloody paws stretching into the air. The mother folded her head over her young and growled again.

Jane didn’t need to be told twice. She dragged herself the opposite way, toward a small scrap pile. The mother, at last, laid her head back down.

Jane found a length of rusty pipe in the pile, almost as tall as she was. It would do. She pulled herself up with it, trying to stay as quiet as she could. She bit her lip hard. Her leg trembled. She’d been hurt before, but not like this. Nothing had ever hurt like this.

She kept her leg up off the ground as best as she could, putting her weight against the pipe. She took a shuffling step forward, using the pipe like a walking stick. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the mother move. Jane cried out, nearly falling back down in fear. But the dog had just rolled over. Jane tried to get a hold of herself, tried to breathe normal. She was useless right now. She couldn’t run. She could barely drag herself forward. She’d gotten lucky with the dogs snoring away by her wagon – there was no way she was getting that back – but it would take her hours to get home at this speed, and if there were other packs between here and there . . .

But she had to get home. She had to. She couldn’t stay here. She had to get home.

SIDRA

There was a lot going on at the Vortex that night – three dance pits! a Harmagian juggler! grasswine on tap! – but Sidra hadn’t missed the fact that something was bothering Tak. He was doing all the things organic sapients did in social places late at night. He’d been drinking and talking – and flirting, which had been fun to watch. But though there was nothing outwardly wrong, something was needling him, all the same.

‘What is it?’ Sidra asked, pushing her voice through the music and chatter.

Tak blinked. ‘What’s . . . what?’ His words were clear, but slower than usual. Alcohol didn’t make Aeluons slur, of course, but thinking through what words to run through the talkbox took as much effort as trying to speak through a tipsy mouth.

Sidra took a sip of her drink. Moonlight streaming behind a graceful white spider, weaving strand after strand of clear, strong silk. She savoured the image, but never took her gaze off her friend. ‘Something’s bothering you.’

Tak shrugged, but the yellow in his cheeks told a different story. ‘I’m . . . good.’

The kit raised an eyebrow.

The Aeluon sighed aloud. ‘Are you . . . having fun?’

‘Of course I am. Aren’t you?’

‘I am, but . . . I’m having . . . fun . . . without you. We came here . . . together.’

Sidra attempted to process, but came up short. ‘We are here together.’ She gestured at the table. ‘We are literally here together.’

Tak rubbed his silver scalp. ‘You do this . . . every time . . . we go out. You find a corner table and sit . . . with your back to the wall. You . . . order a lot of drinks . . . no . . . two of them . . . the same. You watch . . . everybody else . . . having fun. Sometimes, if you’re feeling fancy . . . you switch it up and find . . . a different corner table.’ He went brown with thought. ‘Do . . . other people . . . make you nervous? Is that it?’

‘I don’t understand the question.’ What was he getting at? ‘I’m having a really good time.’

‘But you’re just . . . observing. You never . . . participate.’

‘Tak,’ Sidra said, keeping her voice as low as she could. ‘You understand why that is. I don’t require participation in order to be enjoying myself. Company and interesting input. That’s all I need.’

He stared back at her with a gravity rarely achieved by the sober. ‘I . . . get that. But you are more . . . than what they programmed you . . . to be.’ Tak threw back the remainder of his drink in one go. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’re . . . getting you . . . some different . . . input.’ He took the kit’s hand and led her away from the table.

Other people did not make Sidra nervous, but this turn of events did. The comfort of the corner was gone, and the direction Tak was leading her in gave her pause. ‘I don’t know how to make the kit dance,’ she yelled. A dangerous bit of phrasing, she knew, but there was a degree of safety to be had in being surrounded by loud music and drunk people.

Tak looked over his shoulder and gave her a withering look. ‘With all . . . the hours of observation time you’ve . . . clocked, you should . . . have some idea . . . by now.’ He gestured at the dance pit. ‘Besides, does . . . anybody here look like . . . they know . . . what they’re doing?’

The kit swallowed as she watched the bodies shake and sway. ‘Yes.’

Tak scratched his jaw. ‘Well . . . okay, they do. But so . . . do I.’ He smiled at her. ‘If . . . you hate it, I’ll take you . . . right back . . . to your corner . . . and buy you any drink . . . you want.’

Sidra considered the kit’s limbs, its neck, the curve of its spine. She had the ability to manage life support systems, hold dozens of simultaneous conversations, even dock a ship if emergency demanded it. She could handle a dance pit. Yes, she could do this. She pulled up every memory file she had of people dancing at parties past. ‘You’re buying me a drink whether I hate this or not,’ she said.

Tak laughed, and led her into the throng.

Dance was curious in its near universality. Not all species had dance in their cultures, but most did, and those that did not quickly latched onto the idea once exposed to it. Even Aeluons, who would never hear music as others did, had traditional ways of moving together. Sidra had watched a lot of archival footage of dance, but fascinating as that was from a cultural perspective, she enjoyed the improvised madness of a multispecies gathering much more. In the pit, she’d observed, it didn’t matter what your limbs looked like, or how you liked to move. So long as there was a beat and warm bodies nearby, you could do whatever felt good.

Sidra knew dancing wouldn’t feel the same to her as it did to others. But maybe . . . maybe she could at least look good.

Tak let go of the kit’s hands and began to stomp his feet in an encouraging way. Sidra did a quick scan of her memories and found a file of a Human woman she’d seen sixteen days prior. It was as good a place to start as any.

Sidra analysed the file, and fed her findings into the kit’s kinetic systems. The kit responded, changing its posture into something Sidra hadn’t experienced before. The limbs were no longer pressed close to the torso, the back no longer straight. What had been tension and angles was now a harmony of curves, rocking, swaying, shifting.

Tak threw back his head, cheeks a mirthful green, laughter exploding from his talkbox. ‘I . . . knew it,’ he said. ‘I knew it.’ His hands went up in the air and he cheered.

A curious sense of delight began to warm up Sidra’s pathways. This whole change in affairs was fascinating. The awareness of people behind the kit was as uncomfortable as ever, yes, but in this case, it was more of an irritation than a hindrance. Frustration with perception was a familiar feeling. Dancing was not. Presented with something new, she could easily ignore the everyday.

The music played on and on, never slowing, never stopping. Sidra could not hear Tak breathing, but she could see it – hard and elated through his open mouth. A stranger appeared beside them, as if the crowd were an ocean washing someone ashore. It was one of the Aeluons Tak had been flirting with earlier, and her friend was clearly happy with the turn of events.

Do you mind? Tak’s face asked.

Of course not! the kit’s face responded.

Tak grinned, then turned his attention to the other Aeluon. They moved closer than friends, silver skin shimmering under the flashing lights. If the colours of the environment were communicating something erroneous to Aeluon eyes, they clearly didn’t care.

Sidra was happy for Tak, happy for this entire turn of events. She had three dozen more dance memory files waiting on tap, and she couldn’t wait to see how—

Another stranger appeared – two of them, rather. A pair of Aandrisks – a green man, a blue woman, feathers groomed perfectly, considerate pairs of trousers hung around their broad hips. They looked at Sidra in tandem, excited and interested.

The kit nearly misplaced its foot. There were dozens of sapients here; why were they looking at her? Had she done something wrong? Had she manoeuvred the kit incorrectly? Were they laughing at her?

The Aandrisks weren’t laughing. Their faces were structured differently than the Aeluons entwined together nearby, but they had the same sort of look: friendly, confident, inviting.

They wanted to dance.

Without a word spoken, they moved close to her, both facing the kit’s front in a sort of snug triangle. From the trusting, easy way they touched each other while dancing, Sidra surmised they were of a feather family – but then, it was always hard to tell with Aandrisks. She wasn’t entirely sure how to proceed now that she was dancing with others, rather than around them, but she stayed the course, grabbing files specific to platonic groups.

The Aandrisk woman leaned in toward the kit as they danced. ‘You’re amazing!’ she shouted.

Sidra wasn’t sure her pathways were capable of holding much more pride than what she felt right then.

Her dance partners glanced at each other, communicating something Sidra could not know. They returned their gaze to her, their eyes asking a question she wasn’t sure she understood.

She nodded yes anyway.

The Aandrisks moved even closer, green and blue scales brushing against the kit’s skin. They put their hands on it, and their touches became a dance all of their own, every bit as much as their swinging heads and tails. There were hands running down arms, and claws in the kit’s hair.

An image appeared, brighter than any she’d experienced before. Light. Warm, life-giving light. Water lapping over her toes. Sand cradling her body, holding her steady and safe. Sidra was at full attention. The image lingered, even though there was no food in her mouth, no jar of mek beneath her nose. It lingered as the Aandrisk woman pressed her hips against the kit’s. It grew as the man ran the flat of his palm down the kit’s back. Sidra had never experienced a sensory image in this way before, but somehow, she knew exactly what it meant.

Oh, no, she thought. And then: Oh, wow.

The image was almost overpoweringly good, and yet she had this hungry, impossible-to-ignore sense she hadn’t seen all of it. She knew there were other images waiting behind it, every bit as good. The Aandrisks nuzzled the kit, and she nuzzled back, wanting. She—

A system alert went off, drowning out everything else within her. A proximity alert, the kind that warned of the sudden appearance of a nearby ship, or an object that posed a collision risk. An all-powerful screaming alert, triggered by someone behind her, someone she could not see, whose unknown hands were sliding over the kit’s shoulders.

Sidra shut the alert off as quickly as she could, but her pathways were sure her housing was in danger, and the kit had taken its cue. It was no longer dancing. It was throwing the hands off its shoulders. It was spinning around to see what the danger was. Another Aandrisk, a man, likely associated with the other two, but it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter. Her system knew only danger.

‘Whoa,’ the third Aandrisk said. ‘Whoa, I am so sorry.’

‘Are you okay?’ the Aandrisk woman said.

Sidra had to answer, but she couldn’t get the words out. The kit was breathing too fast. She shook the kit’s head.

Tak was there – but from where, she couldn’t tell. She couldn’t tell anything. She couldn’t see, she couldn’t make sense, she just had that one narrow cone, and no no no, don’t do this, don’t do this now, stop it, don’t ruin it, stop it stop it stop—

‘It’s okay,’ he said, putting an arm around the kit’s shoulders. Sidra looked up at him just in time to see him flash an apology toward his dejected dance partner.

See, you’ve ruined it, you’ve ruined it for him, I need to go home, I need to go away, I need to stop, please—

‘Hey. Sidra. Sidra, come on. We’ll . . . get somewhere quiet, yeah? I’m here, it’s . . . okay.’ He led the kit through the crowd. She kept her gaze on the floor, trying to ignore the concerned stares. She wanted to disappear.

‘Is she okay?’ It was the third Aandrisk, pushing his way alongside them.

‘She’s fine,’ Tak said.

Sidra looked at the Aandrisk man, and tried to push words through the panicked breaths. ‘It’s not – it’s not your—’ The air got in the way. Dammit, she didn’t need to breathe!

‘It’s not . . . your fault,’ Tak said. ‘She’ll be . . . fine. Thank you.’

They cleared the pit, leaving the Aandrisk behind. Tak barrelled them through the crowd toward the table they’d occupied earlier. A group of Laru sat there now. Tak swore, and headed for the exit.

‘Not outside,’ Sidra gasped. ‘Not outside.’

Tak changed course and entered the smoking room. A group of modders looked up from around a tall communal pipe.

‘Hey, man,’ a Human woman said, a smoking mouthpiece hanging in her mechanical hand. ‘Sorry, we just—’ She looked at Sidra. ‘Dude, is she okay?’

Tak visibly willed the concern away from his face and looked back at them with an easy smile. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Never . . . buying smash from . . . that vendor again, though. Synth shit, y’know?’

‘Oh, rough,’ the woman said. ‘She got the shakes?’

Sidra forced the kit to nod at her. It was true, technically. Just not in the way the modder meant.

‘Well, you’re welcome to ride it out in here,’ the woman said. She flicked her eyes over to Tak and gestured at the pipe. ‘Sorry about the redreed.’

‘It’s fine,’ Tak said. Sidra could see that his eyes were already starting to itch. As if this couldn’t get any worse.

Tak led the kit to a quiet corner, away from the smokers. Sidra sat the kit down. The fast breathing had stopped. All that was left was the overwhelming sense of embarrassment. She preferred hyperventilating.

‘I’m so, so sorry,’ she whispered.

‘It’s not . . . your fault,’ Tak said, his talkbox turning itself down. ‘I pushed. I’m sorry. You told me . . . how you’re comfortable, and I . . . should have . . . respected that.’

‘It’s okay,’ Sidra said, taking his hand with the kit’s. ‘It was fun, at first. I liked it. I just—’ The kit put its face in its hands. ‘Stars, I am so tired of always making a mess of things for you.’

Tak scoffed. ‘Now, that’s . . . just not true. We’ve . . . been to . . . how many parties—’

‘Eight.’

‘It was rhetorical, but . . . thank you. This is . . . the first time . . . this has happened. It’s also . . . the first time . . . somebody . . . surprised you . . . while dancing. So, we know . . . to avoid this . . . next time.’

One of the modders approached them with a cup of water. ‘Here ya go,’ he said, handing it to Sidra.

‘You’re very kind,’ Sidra said, accepting it. She took a sip, for show. Water did nothing for her, but she was grateful for the gesture.

‘Take it easy,’ the Human man said. ‘We’ve all been there.’ He gave a warm, slightly inebriated smile, then returned to his friends.

Sidra stared into the cup, watching the ripples bounce off each other. ‘I’m sorry for screwing things up for you,’ she said, remembering Tak’s happy face when the other Aeluon started dancing with him.

Tak looked confused, then laughed. ‘Ah, don’t worry . . . about it. That . . . kind of thing . . . will come around . . . again.’ He patted her hand. ‘Let’s get you . . . mellowed out, then I’ll . . . take you home.’

She started to object, started to tell him to stay, to have fun, to go get laid – but she didn’t. She didn’t want to head home alone. She couldn’t be alone. There was no telling when there’d be another system alert, another well-meaning stranger sending her into a panic. Tak would hand her off to Pepper and Blue, who would hand her off to Tak again the next time she wanted to go out. Like a child. They didn’t see her that way, she knew, but it didn’t matter how nice they wanted to be to her. Being nice didn’t change the way things were.

JANE, AGE 14

I could die today.

That was the first thing that shot through her head that morning, same as it had every morning since she dragged herself back to the shuttle two weeks before. The words showed up the second she was awake enough to start thinking, and they stuck with her all day, like a heartbeat, like a bug crawling on her ear, until she fell back into bed at night, relieved that she’d been wrong. Okay, she’d think. Today wasn’t it. Then she’d sleep. Sleep was good. Sleep meant not thinking. But then Owl would bring the lights up, and the whole thing started over again.

I could die today.

She hadn’t left the shuttle since she’d got back. Her leg was still weak and painful, but it was healing, and the splint she’d thrown together allowed her to hobble around. She’d fixed the weapon, too, and she had the means to build a new wagon. She could go out, if she stayed close to home. Except . . . she couldn’t. She couldn’t go out. She couldn’t do anything.

Owl hadn’t said anything about Jane staying home, which was weird. Usually Owl nagged her about the chores she hadn’t done or stuff that needed fixing, but not now. Jane was glad of that, though she hadn’t said so.

She tugged her worn blanket around her shoulders and headed for the kitchen. She opened the stasie and stared at the shrinking stacks of dog meat and mushrooms. She needed to go out. She needed to get more food. But she couldn’t do that, either.

Her stomach churned. She was hungry, but everything in the stasie looked like too much work. She hadn’t done any dishes, either, which she’d have to do before cooking. That would take for ever, and she was hungry now. She grabbed a handful of raw mushrooms and shoved them in her mouth. They were gross that way. She didn’t really care.

‘Are you going out today?’ Owl asked.

Jane pulled the blanket closer and chewed, avoiding eye contact. ‘I dunno,’ she said, though she knew the answer wouldn’t be yes. She thought about going back to bed, but it’d been a while since she’d done laundry, and the sheets were grossing her out. Plus, she knew what would happen if she went back there. She’d just stare at the ceiling, brain all fuzzy and stupid, thinking the same thing over and over. I could die today. She’d be stuck in that thought, and everything would get hot and fuzzy and she couldn’t breathe right, and Owl would try to help but nothing would make it better, and then Jane would just feel even worse for making such a fuss, and – yeah, no. She needed something else to fill up her brain.

She lay down on the couch. The sim cap lay on the floor nearby.

‘What do you want to play?’ Owl asked.

Jane was officially sick of Scorch Squad, and all the other story sims Owl had sounded too loud and fast. Jane felt tired just thinking about them. She didn’t want danger and explosions. She wanted quiet. She wanted her head to shut up. She wanted a hug.

‘Do you want me to pick something for you?’ said Owl.

‘No,’ Jane said. She closed her eyes. ‘It’s . . . it’s stupid.’

‘What is?’

Jane sucked her lips, embarrassed. ‘Can I play Big Bug Crew?’

She couldn’t see Owl’s face, but she could hear the smile. ‘You got it.’

Jane put on the cap and the world blanked out. Everything went warm, soft yellow. Alain and Manjiri and little monkey Pinch jumped out from nowhere. ‘Jane!’ Manjiri cried. ‘Alain, look! It’s our old friend Jane!’

Alain reached up to touch her forearm. He was so small. Had she been so small? ‘Good to see you, Jane!’ Alain said. ‘Wow, you’ve gotten tall!’

Pinch ran up her back and hugged her head, chirping gleefully.

‘It’s good to see you guys, too,’ Jane said. She pulled Pinch off her head and held him against her chest. His fur felt totally unreal, and she loved every bit of it. He crooned and wiggled his toes as she skritched his ears.

Manjiri pulled out her scrib and flipped it towards Jane. A star map glittered in bright, bold colours. ‘We’re so excited for you to be with us on our latest adventure—’

‘THE BIG BUG CREW AND THE PLANETARY PUZZLE!’ Jane shouted along with the kids. The sim’s title appeared in mid-air, bold red letters shimmering with confetti. The kids took her hands, and she started singing with them at the top of her lungs. ‘Engines, on! Fuel pumps, go! Grab your gear, there’s lots to know—’ Jane couldn’t get the words out past that. She didn’t know if it was the kids or the monkey or what, but suddenly, she was ten years old again. She was ten years old and the entire world was crumbling down.

The kids did something she’d never seen them do before: they stopped singing the theme song. ‘Jane, are you okay?’ Alain asked.

Jane let out a sob. Why? What was wrong with her? She sat down on the fake floor, face in her hands.

‘Jane?’ Manjiri said. Jane could feel Pinch’s furry paw on the top of her head. ‘If you’re feeling bad, that’s okay. Everybody has bad days sometimes.’

Somewhere in Jane’s head, she was real interested that she’d triggered a script she’d never seen, but that tiny flicker was drowned out by . . . by whatever this sobbing, uncontrollable bullshit was.

‘Is there a grown-up you can talk to?’ Alain asked.

‘No!’ Jane didn’t know why she was yelling. ‘There’s nobody! There’s nobody here.’

‘Well, we’re here,’ Manjiri said. ‘You should talk to a real person when you can, but it’s okay to make yourself feel better with imagination, too.’

‘It’s just—’ Jane wiped her nose on her sleeve, knowing it did nothing for the snot that was probably running down her lip back in the real world. ‘I’m so scared. I’ve always been scared. And I’m so tired, I’m so tired of always being afraid. I just want – I just want to have people. I want somebody to make me dinner. I want a doctor to look at my leg and tell me to my face that it’s okay. I want to be – I want to be like you. I want to live on Mars with a family and go on vacations. You – you both always – always said the galaxy was a wonderful place, but it’s fucking not. It can’t be, if it’s got places like this one. If it’s got people who make people like this.’ She pointed at her sun-scarred face, her bald head. ‘Do normal Humans know? Do they even know this planet is here? Do they know that any of this is going on? Because I’m going to die here.’ Saying the words out loud made her even more afraid, as if putting them out into the world would make them happen. But they were there now, and it was true. ‘I’m going to die here, and no – nobody will care.’

‘I care.’

Jane turned around, and her mouth fell open. ‘. . . Owl?’

It was Owl’s face, but no longer flat on a wall. She looked like a person, a whole person, with a body and clothes and all of it. There was nothing real about her, not any more real than the Big Bug kids. But she was there. Owl smiled, kinda shy. ‘What do you think?’ she said, gesturing at herself.

Jane wiped her nose again. ‘How—’

‘I got the idea when you started playing the adult sims. I figured out how to build myself a character skin and paste it into the base code. No different from reorganising memory banks, really. And I’m not in here. This is just . . . a puppet.’ She sat down on the floor next to Jane. The kids, who had apparently run out of script, sat down too, smiling in stasis.

Jane couldn’t stop staring. ‘Can I—’ She reached a hand out, hoping.

Owl shook her head with a sad smile. ‘I couldn’t make this tangible. But we can share the same space, at least. That’s something, right?’

‘Why haven’t you done this before?’

‘I thought . . . see, you enjoyed the other sims so much, and I wanted to share them with you. I thought maybe if we could play together, you might . . .’ Owl’s voice trailed off. ‘I was worried you’d think it was a dumb idea. I’ve just been annoying you lately. I figured you’d rather play on your own.’

Jane almost threw herself at the Owl puppet before she remembered it couldn’t hug her back. ‘I’m sorry,’ Jane sobbed. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Shh,’ Owl said, sitting next to her. ‘Everything’s okay. You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.’

‘I’ve been such an asshole,’ Jane said. Owl laughed, and Jane laughed, too, through the tears. ‘And I was stupid out there, I was so stupid and I knew better, and I almost left you all alone.’

Owl put her puppet hand on Jane’s back. It didn’t feel like anything, but knowing Owl wanted to have a hand to put there was good enough. ‘When you didn’t come home that night, I thought I’d lost you. But I never thought you left. I know you wouldn’t do that, not without saying why.’ She placed an empty kiss on Jane’s scalp. ‘That’s not how family works.’

SIDRA

Sidra stepped into the workshop, her scrib in the kit’s hands. ‘Pepper, do you have a minute?’

Pepper looked up from the sim cap she was repairing. ‘I have several.’

The kit took a breath. She set the scrib down flat on Pepper’s workbench. ‘I was hoping this might be a good time to talk about the . . . thing I’ve been working on.’

Pepper grinned. She put her tools aside and sat down. ‘So, do I finally get to see the mystery project?’

‘Yes.’ Sidra gestured at the scrib; a set of blueprints appeared. Pepper leaned forward, studying. ‘This—’ Sidra began.

‘—is an AI framework,’ Pepper said, eyes darting from junction to junction. She raised an absent eyebrow and looked Sidra in the eye. ‘And it’s also my house.’

The kit swallowed.

Pepper gave a patient smile. ‘You’re not being presumptuous, if that’s what you’re worried about. I have no problem ripping walls open.’ She leaned back in her chair. ‘I’m all ears.’

Sidra regrouped. She was off-script now. A quick adjustment of the intro, and: ‘I’ve done a lot of research, and I think this could be accomplished rather easily. You’ve already got cable columns throughout the walls, so you could run the physical pathways alongside. My room could remain just that – my room. With some extra hardware and a cooling system, it would be an absolutely suitable spot for a core.’ She gestured at the scrib, and a new set of images appeared. ‘I could have cameras in all the rooms we share now – excluding your room and the bathroom, of course – and even’ – she gestured again – ‘a few outside.’ Another gesture brought up a table of numbers. ‘According to what I’ve found, I could buy all the supplies for the equivalent of eleven tendays on my current wages. If you’d be agreeable to starting on this project soon, I could work off the cost, no problem.’

Pepper tapped her finger over her lips as she thought. ‘You want to install yourself in my house.’

‘Yes.’

‘Okay. How does this setup benefit me?’

‘For starters, increased security. I know you’ve got an alarmbot hive in case somebody breaks in, but it’s a very basic model. With me, you’d have a way of preventing trouble before it starts. If something was wrong, I could wake you up, call the authorities, and have all the lights in the house on in the blink of an eye. Same goes for medical emergencies. If something happened to you or Blue and the other wasn’t home, I’d be there to help.’

‘Interesting. What else?’

‘Enhanced communications and convenience. Want to order dinner? I can take care of it. Want to have all the newest sims downloaded to your hub before you come home? Give me a list of what you want, and I’ll have it done. Want me to read you your messages while you get ready for work? That’s a good twenty minutes I can shave off of your morning.’

Pepper laced her fingers together under her chin. ‘And what do you get out of this?’

‘I just . . . think this arrangement would be better for everyone.’

‘I’m asking why.’

Sidra looked at her friend for a moment. How was Pepper not getting this? ‘I don’t belong out here. I’m going to get someone in trouble – you, or Blue, or Tak. All three of you, maybe. There are too many variables, and I don’t know how this’ – she pointed at the kit – ‘is going to react to any of them.’

‘Is this about the thing that happened at the Vortex?’

The kit froze. ‘In part. How do you know about that?’

‘Tak told me, after he brought you home.’

Sidra’s pathways crackled with indignation. ‘He told you?’

‘He was just worried about you. Wanted to make sure your kit wasn’t malfunctioning.’

Sidra tried to squash the petty sense of betrayal. If anything, whatever exchange had happened between Pepper and Tak further bolstered her point. ‘Well, that’s exactly what I mean. I don’t belong out there with Tak, and I’m just going to get you in trouble. One day, someone’s going to ask me a question that I shouldn’t answer—’

‘I’m working on that, Sidra. I’m sorry, Lattice is a beast—’

‘You shouldn’t have to be learning it. You shouldn’t have to be rearranging your life for me. I know you’re not going out as much as you used to. I see your calendar, I know things were different before I got here. I’m a hindrance to you. I’m a danger.’

‘You’re not.’

‘I am! And I’m not getting used to this. To life out here. I know you don’t understand that, but I am tired. I am tired of going outside every single day and having to fight my vision and my movement and everything else that’s boxed up inside this fucking thing. I’m tired of every day being a chore.’

‘Sidra, I understand—’

‘You don’t! You have no idea what it’s like.’ The kit tugged at its hair. ‘I have a form that doesn’t suit me right now. Tak gets it, but you don’t.’

‘What, because he’s shon?’

‘Because he’s Aeluon. They all have to get implants in order to fit in.’

‘Yeah, but that’s it right there – they do it to fit in. We live in a society, Sidra. Societies have rules.’

‘You break rules all the time.’

‘I break laws. That’s different. Social rules have their place. It’s how we all get along. It’s how we trust each other and work together. And yeah, there is a big stupid law that keeps you from getting the same deal as everybody else. That’s bullshit, and if I could change it, I would’ve done so a long time ago. But that isn’t the world we live in, and there are some things we have to step carefully around. That is all I am trying to help you do: to help you to fit in so that you don’t attract the wrong attention.’ Pepper pointed at the schematic. ‘This is not going to help you the way you think it will. You want to sit in a house – a house with nothing happening inside – alone, for most of the day, every day.’

‘I’d have the Linkings. I’d have—’

‘You would be alone. Intelligent sapients like you and me don’t do well that way. I don’t care if we’re organic or synthetic or whatever.’ Something pained and angry bled into her voice. ‘AIs aren’t supposed to be left alone. They need people. You need people.’

‘I can’t exist like this.’

‘You can. The rest of us do. You can, too, if you try.’

‘I am trying! You want me to do something I’m not made for! I can’t change what I am, Pepper! I can’t think like you or react like you just because I’m stuck behind the same kind of face right now. This face, stars – you have no idea what it’s like to walk past that mirror by the door every morning, and to see a face that belongs to someone else. You have no idea what it’s like to be stuck in a body someone else—’ Sidra stopped as she realised what she was saying.

Pepper was not a large woman, but even seated, she seemed tall. ‘Are you going to finish that sentence?’ she said. Her tone was quiet, final.

Sidra said nothing. She shook the kit’s head.

Pepper stared at her for a few seconds, her face like stone. ‘I need some air,’ she said. She stood and walked toward the door. She paused before she left. ‘I’m on your side, Sidra, but don’t you ever say that to me again.’

JANE, AGE 15

It had been a pretty good morning. The sun wasn’t too hot, there hadn’t been any dogs, she’d found some promising scrap already, and best of all, there was a huge mess of mushrooms spilling out around the fuel drum in front of her. Jane sat on the ground with her pocket knife, talking to herself as she cut.

‘Aeluons,’ she said. ‘Aeluons are a bipedal species with silver scaled skin and cheeks that change colour. They don’t have a natural ability to speak or hear, so they talk through an implant stuck in their throat.’ She reached down and sliced a thick strip of fungus into nice food-sized pieces. It would’ve been faster to just carve hunks off, but then she’d just have to cut them up again at home. ‘When you meet Aeluons, press your palm into theirs to say hello. Don’t be scared when they talk to you without opening their mouths.’ She brushed clots of dirt from the slices of fungus, then tossed them into her gathering bag (she was pretty proud of that one – it hung well, and the red and yellow fabric she’d found for it was fun, though pretty faded). ‘Harmagians. Harmagians are really weird.’ Owl had told her saying species looked weird wasn’t a nice thing to do, but there weren’t any other species around, were there? She crawled forward into the fuel drum, cutting and cutting. ‘Harmagians are squishy, soft, and have tentacles. They use carts to get around because the rest of us walk faster than them. Don’t touch a Harmagian without permission, ’cause they have sensitive skin. Harmagians usually speak Hanto as a first language, but only the jerkface ones won’t speak Klip to you. They used to own a lot of planets, but then the Aeluons came along and—’

Her knife hit something hard. She wiggled the tip around, trying to get a feel for whatever was beneath. Not metal – too thick. She pried the fungus aside. She blinked. Bone. She’d hit bone.

She used her fingers to pull the fungus away, then grabbed the piece her knife had hit. Jane frowned. A rib, but not a dog rib, and too big to be a— She froze, remembering Owl’s anatomy lessons. No way.

Jane cleared out the mushrooms fast as she could, no longer worrying about nice, kitchen-friendly sizes. She grabbed handfuls, tearing and tearing until the picture became more clear. There was a whole heap of bones, tangled and messy. She reached out a hand, a little afraid, though she didn’t know why. She pulled a skull from the pile – one of two. She sat back, cupping it in her palms. A Human skull, no joke. It was dirty, and had thin scarring lines where the fungus had grown around it. There were other lines in it, too, lines she didn’t have to think too hard about to understand. A dog – or many dogs, who knew – had run its teeth over this skull once. She thought about how it sized up compared to her own head. Not tiny, but smaller than her, for sure. She stared into the eye sockets, empty except for clumps of dirt and stray roots.

The skull had belonged to a little girl.

Jane nearly threw up, but she didn’t want to waste the food. She stared at the bright sky until her eyes burned. She breathed slow and angry. She spat a few times, fighting to keep her stomach down. It listened.

She collected all the pieces she could find. She emptied her bag of scrap onto the wagon – if she lost some of it, fine – and put the bones in instead. It would’ve been more practical to carry it all together, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t put girls in with scrap.

She went home. There was still a lot of day left, but home was the only thing that made sense right then.

Owl didn’t say anything once Jane took the skulls out of the bag. Jane sat cross-legged in the middle of the living room, bag of bones by her side, skulls on the floor in front of her. They were about the same size, those skulls. ‘I bet they were bunkmates,’ she said.

‘Oh, honey,’ Owl said. Her cameras clicked and whirred. ‘What do you want to do with them? What do you think we should do?’

Jane frowned. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, struggling. ‘I don’t know why I brought them back. I just . . . I couldn’t leave them.’

‘Well,’ Owl said with a sigh. ‘Let me see if I have any reference files about funerals.’

Jane knew the word from sims, but she had never really understood the idea. It was a party for dead people, as far as she could tell. ‘Can you explain a funeral?’

‘It’s a gathering to honour the life of someone who’s died. It also serves as a way for a family or a community to share grief.’ Owl made a face and sighed. ‘I don’t have any extensive references on this, but I know some things from memory. I know different Human cultures have different customs. Exodans compost their bodies and use the nutrients to fertilise their oxygen gardens. A lot of colonists do that, too. Launching remains into the sun is popular among Solans, though some practise cremation – burning bodies down to ash. Some of the communities in the Outer Planet orbiters freeze and pulverise remains, then distribute the dust among Saturn’s rings. And then there’s burial, but only grounders and Gaiists do that.’

‘That’s putting a body in the ground, right?’

‘Yes. The body decomposes, and the nutrients go back into the soil. I heard one of the brothers talk about that once. He liked the cyclical nature of it.’

Jane picked up one of the skulls and cradled it in her hands, trying to imagine a little girl’s face looking back at her. What would you have wanted? What would I want? She’d never thought about that before. What did they do with bodies back at the factory? She imagined that whatever it was, there wasn’t any honour or grief involved. Dead girls were just junk, probably, like all the rest of it.

She pressed her palm against where the little girl’s scalp would’ve been. Something heavy and cold formed in her chest. You weren’t junk, she thought, fingers tracing bone, carving white lines through the dirt. You were good and brave and you tried.

‘What do living people do at funerals?’ she asked.

‘I’m not entirely sure what the procedure is. I know they talk about the person who died. They clean up the bodies, too. They make them look as good as they can. There’s music. People share their memories of the person. And there’s food, usually.’

‘Food? For the living people, right?’

‘For both, I think, in some cases. I can’t say for sure, honey, my memory files on this are very limited. This isn’t something I thought I’d need to know off-hand.’

‘Wait, why both? Why would dead people need food?’

‘They don’t. It’s an expression of love, as I understand it.’

‘But the dead person doesn’t know the food’s there.’

‘The living people do. Just because someone goes away doesn’t mean you stop loving them.’

Jane thought about that. ‘I’m not going to waste food,’ she said. ‘But we should do something.’

‘I think that’s a wonderful idea,’ said Owl.

They came up with a good plan together. First, Jane washed the bones, but not in the cargo bay sink. That was where she cleaned dogs, and that didn’t feel right. She washed what was left of the girls in the bathroom, the same place where she cleaned herself.

She laid the bones out on a length of fabric she’d scavenged from a bench in a wrecked skiff. It was clean and in good shape, but too rough for clothes. She was glad to have found a use for it.

Owl pulled up her medical files and helped Jane arrange the pieces in the right way. Some bones were missing. Jane felt bad about that, but she’d tried her best to find them all. There was only so much she could do.

Jane cleaned the scrap off the wagon and laid the bones on it. She thought about it more, and started rearranging their fingers.

‘What are you doing?’ Owl said.

‘They’re bunkmates,’ Jane said. ‘They should be holding hands.’

Owl closed her eyes and bowed her head. Music started playing, a song Jane hadn’t heard before. It was weird music, but cheerful, too, all bouncing flutes and drums.

‘What is this?’

Owl smiled sad. ‘It’s an album Max liked when he was small. Aandrisk music. This one’s called “A Prayer for Iset the Eldest”. It’s tied to a folk legend about an elder who lived five hundred years.’

‘Is that true?’

‘I highly doubt it. But the song is supposed to have been played after her death. A celebration of a long life well lived.’

Jane looked at the fingerbones, now intertwined. ‘They didn’t have that.’

‘No. But they should have.’ Owl paused. ‘And you still could.’ The music danced gently. An Aandrisk voice hummed along with the drums. Another joined it, then another, and another, a group blending together. Jane and Owl listened, saying nothing. The song eventually faded away. ‘Do you want to say something to them?’ Owl said.

Jane licked her lips, feeling nervous for no reason. The dead girls couldn’t hear her. Even if she said the wrong thing, they wouldn’t care . . . right? ‘I don’t know who you were,’ she said. ‘I don’t know your names or numbers, or . . . or what your task was.’ She frowned. This was already all wrong. ‘I don’t care about your task. That’s not what’s important. That should never have been the most important thing. What’s important is that you were good girls who – who found out how wrong things are. And you died, and you were probably scared when it happened. That’s so unfair, and I am so, so angry about it. I wish you had been here so we could’ve helped each other. I wish we could’ve been friends. Maybe we could’ve gotten out of here together.’ She rubbed the back of her head. ‘I don’t know who you were. But I remember others. I remember my bunkmate Jane 64, who said’ – she smiled – ‘that I was the “most good” at fixing little stuff. She slept without moving and she was . . . kind. She was a kind friend, and I remember her. I remember Jane 6, who could sort cables super fast. I remember Janes 56, 9, 21, 44, 14, and 19, who died in the explosion. I remember Jane 25, who asked too many questions – and was probably the smartest of all of us, now that I think about it. I remember the Janes, the Lucys, the Sarahs, the Jennys, the Claires. The Marys. The Beths.’ She wiped her face on her forearm, eyes stinging. ‘And I’ll remember you, too.’

Owl couldn’t be with Jane for the next part of the funeral plan. Jane wished she could be. The walk to the waterhole was way too quiet. All she could hear was the rattle of the wagon of bones in tow. She needed to make some noise. The music back at the shuttle had felt like the right sort of thing to do for a funeral, but she didn’t know any songs like that.

‘Engines on,’ Jane sang softly. ‘Fuel pumps, go. Grab your gear, there’s lots to know. The galaxy is where we play, come with us, we know the way . . .’ It wasn’t nearly as good as the song Owl had picked, but the bones had been little girls once, and Jane bet they’d have liked Big Bug.

After she got to the waterhole, she put on the pair of huge rubber boots that had been in the cargo bay from day one. They were enormous on her, but they went up past her knees, which was what she needed. She picked up the fabric that the bones rested on, holding it wide as she could between her arms. The bones shifted together. Some of the lizard-birds near the bank looked up.

‘I hope this is okay with you,’ Jane said to the bones. She stepped carefully into the water, trying not to jostle the bones any more than she had to. ‘I can’t launch you to space, and you don’t have any nutrients I can make anything out of.’ She walked forward. The water was dirty and polluted, but it gave life, too. It gave life to the lizard-birds and the fungus and the bugs, and even the dogs, the bastard dogs who’d made a meal out of these kids. The water gave her life, too. ‘So, um, in sims, sometimes they talk about fossils. Fossils are great, because they mean there’s a chance somebody will find you a long long time from now and what’s left of you can teach them things about who you were. I don’t know if this will work, but I know you need water and mud for fossils, and this is the best I’ve got.’ She stopped in the middle of the pond. The lizard-birds chirped. The water lapped at her huge boots. She felt like she should say something more, but what else was there? The bones couldn’t hear her anyway. She didn’t know why she was talking. She didn’t have any more words left, just a heavy chest and a whole lot of tired. She laid the fabric into the water. The water reached up, bleeding through, tugging it down. The bones sank and vanished.

As Jane headed back home, she decided something, and she knew it better than she’d ever known anything. She would die someday – no getting around that. But nobody would find her bones in the scrapyard. She wasn’t going to leave them there.

SIDRA

Sidra stood outside of the shop for three minutes. She’d seen the place before, when running errands for Pepper around the caves, but had never gone inside. She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t before. She wasn’t sure why she wanted to now.

Friendly Tethesh, the blinking blue sign read. Licensed AI Vendor.

The kit breathed in. She walked through the door.

The space within was empty, for the most part. Just a cylindrical room with a large pixel projector bolted to the floor. Advertising prints for various programming studios lined the walls. An Aandrisk man lounged in an elaborate reclining workstation, eating a large snapfruit tart. The door to a back room was shut behind him.

‘Hey, welcome, welcome,’ the proprietor said. He put down his snack and got to his feet. ‘What can I do for you?’

Sidra considered her words with care, hoping this wasn’t a mistake. ‘I’m . . . honestly, I’m just curious,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been in an AI shop before.’

‘I’m happy to be the first,’ the Aandrisk said. ‘I’m Tethesh. And you?’

‘Sidra.’

‘A pleasure,’ he said with a welcoming flick of his hand. ‘So. How can I help?’

‘I’d like to know more about how this works. If I wanted to buy an AI, how would I go about it?’

Tethesh looked at her, considering. ‘You thinking about getting one for your ship? Or your workplace, perhaps?’

Sidra struggled. A simple yes would move this conversation along, but that she couldn’t do. ‘The shop I work at has an AI,’ she said. It was an awkward reply, she knew, but she couldn’t say nothing.

Tethesh, however, didn’t seem thrown. ‘Ah,’ he said, with a knowing nod. ‘Yeah, I know how it is when it’s time for a replacement. You’re ready to upgrade from the old one, but you’re so used to it, it’s hard to take the plunge. Well, I can show you what I have to offer, and maybe that’ll help you make a more informed decision.’ He gestured to the pixel projector. A flurry of pixels shot up and arranged themselves in neat sheets around them. ‘You’ll find a lot of merchants who specialise in one catalogue, but me, I offer a bit of everything. I’d rather help my customers find the perfect fit than get a sales commission.’ He pointed at the orderly lists the pixels had arranged themselves in. ‘Nath’duol, Tornado, SynTel, Next Stage. All the major developers. I have a few independent producers on offer as well,’ he said, nodding to a smaller list. ‘The big names give you reliability, but don’t discount the little guys. Some of the coolest changes in cognitive capacity are coming out of smaller studios these days.’

Sidra looked around. Every catalogue was just a list of names. Kola. Tycho. Auntie. ‘How do you go about picking one?’ she asked.

Tethesh raised a claw. ‘We start with the basics. Let’s say you’re looking for a shopfront program.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Catalogue filter: shopfront,’ he said, loud and clear. The pixels shifted, names disappearing, others sliding in to take their places. He looked to her again. ‘Now, you’re probably going to want someone who shares your cultural norms, so . . . catalogue filter: Human.’ He glanced at her, considering. ‘I’m gonna guess Exodan. How’d I do?’

The kit clenched its teeth together. Stars and fire, but it shouldn’t be so hard to just say yes. ‘I was born out in the open.’

Tethesh looked pleased with himself. ‘I thought so. I can always tell. Catalogue filter: Exodan. Now, we start to get into personality traits. Do you want something folksy? Classy? Purely utilitarian? These are the kinds of things you have to think about. If you’re planning to work or live alongside an AI, you have to consider the environmental effect it’s going to have.’

‘The core programming controls all of that?’

‘Oh, sure. Synthetic personalities are just that: synthetic. None of the core stuff happens by accident. Now, your installation will grow and change as it gets to know you and your clientele, but the starter ingredients remain the same.’

‘If I wanted to replace the AI at my shop, how would I go about that? Is it difficult?’

‘No, not at all. You’d want an experienced comp tech on hand to make sure it all goes smoothly. But it’s no different in practice from, say, updating your bots.’

The kit wet its lips. ‘What about other models? Say, something for a ship?’

‘What kind of ship?’

She paused, wondering if she actually wanted to ask the question she’d lined up. ‘A long-haul vessel. I was on a ship once that had an AI named Lovelace installed. Do you have that one?’

Tethesh thought for a moment. ‘That’s a Cerulean product, I believe,’ he said. ‘One of the indies. Cerulean catalogue search: Lovelace.’

The pixels shifted. Sidra stepped forward.

LOVELACE

Attentive and courteous, this model is a perfect monitoring system for class 6-and-up vessels out on the long haul. Lovelace features robust processing capabilities, and is capable of handling dozens of crew requests simultaneously while still keeping a watchful eye on everything inside and out. Like all intelligent multitaskers, Lovelace can develop performance and personality issues if left without input for too long, so this model is not recommended for vessels that habitually remain in dock.

However, if you make your home out in the open, this AI is an excellent choice for those seeking a good balance between practicality and environmental enhancement.

Cultural basis: Human, with basic reference files for all GC species.

Ideal for multispecies crews.

Intelligence level: S1

Gender: Female

Accent: Exodan

Price: 680k GCC

The kit’s shoulders began to tense. ‘If I wanted to buy this model – or any – what would be the next step?’ Sidra asked. ‘Do they arrive by mail, or do I download them, or . . .’

Tethesh waved for her to follow him into the back room. He wrapped a heat blanket around his shoulders before opening the door. A cold sigh of temperature-controlled air met them. ‘Worst part about my job,’ he said with a wink.

He gestured at a light panel, and the room’s contents were revealed. The kit went stiff. They were standing before approximately two dozen metal racks, all filled with core globes – hundreds of core globes, each about the size of a small melon, individually packaged like any other tech component. Their wrappings made them look like something Pepper might have her pick up on a supply run, but Sidra knew their contents. Code. Protocols. Pathways. She swung her gaze around the room, looking over all the quiet minds waiting to be installed.

‘I have a healthy selection here on hand,’ the Aandrisk said. ‘If you want a popular program, you can usually walk out with it soon as I’ve got your credits. If I don’t have what you’re looking for, I can order it for you. Express transit’s on me.’ He walked through the stacks, looking for something. Sidra followed, the kit’s footsteps falling soft. He nodded at a spot a few racks in. ‘Here, see, here’s the one you were just looking at.’

The kit froze. Sidra pushed it forward.

There were three globes on the shelf, all identical, sitting silent in the cold. Sidra picked one up, cupping it gently. She could see the kit’s face reflected in the globe’s plating. She tried not to look at the label, but she’d already read it by then.

Lovelace

Shipwide Monitoring System

Vessel Class 6+

Designed and manufactured at Cerulean HQ

She set the globe back down carefully before turning to Tethesh. ‘Thank you so much for taking the time to show me around,’ Sidra said, forcing the kit’s face into a smile. ‘I think I’ve seen enough for now.’

JANE, AGE 18

Scouting missions always sounded cool in the sims, but holy shit, were they ever boring in real life. Jane had been tucked into the same scrap pile for a full day, watching carefully through the binoculars she’d fashioned out of some storage canisters and a sheet of plex. The view was fuzzy, but she could make things out well enough. Nothing was happening. That was good. It needed to stay that way.

She was a four-day walk from home, and being away was hard. The night was bitter cold, even with the sleeping bag she’d stitched together (seat fabric inside and out, with upholstery foam stuffed inside for squish and warmth). She was cranky. She was stiff. She missed Owl. She wanted warm food, cold water, and an actual bathroom. She was scared, which was to be expected, but had to be ignored. If she couldn’t pull this part off, none of what they’d done over the years would matter. If she couldn’t pull this off, they’d never leave.

There was a factory beyond her scrap pile – not the one she’d come from, but clearly of the same make. She’d never been there before, but Owl had, when the shuttle first came to the scrapyard. This wasn’t just any factory. This was a fuel recycling plant. Any vehicles that made their way to the scrapyard passed through there first. Owl remembered workers – very young, she said – fitting tubes into the fuel tanks, sucking the ship’s reserves dry. Owl doubted the fuel removal was a safety precaution. The scrapyard was full of weird leaky things, and nothing else from the shuttle had been removed (except for the water – they’d taken that, too). No, Owl thought it likely that the Enhanced were reusing the fuel, and from what Jane had seen, that seemed like a safe bet. Crewless cargo carriers dropped off big bellyfuls of old junkers and skiffs at one end of the factory. Barrels were picked up by smaller carriers at the other end. It was so neat and tidy and sealed off. Everything about it made Jane’s fists go tight. She knew that behind those walls, there were workers – little Janes, little Sarahs – all as empty and wasted as she’d once been. She wanted to tell them how things were. She wanted to run in, hug them, kiss their bruises and scrapes, explain planets and aliens, teach them to speak Klip. Take them away with her. Take them away from all this shit.

But she couldn’t. She’d be toast if there were Mothers in there (there had to be, and it made her want to throw up). She was just one girl. The Enhanced were a society. A machine. And no matter what the sims said about the power of a single solitary hero, there were some things just too big to change alone. There was nothing she could do but help herself and Owl. That was a cold, mushy mouthful to choke down, but that’s all there was to it. She wasn’t even sure she could do that much. Looking at the factory made her shaky. It was huge, riveted, dominating. It wanted nothing more than to swallow her whole, and there she was, trying to find the best way to dive in.

She had to try. For her sake and for Owl’s, she had to try.

There were two obvious openings – the drop point for the scrap, and the exit for the barrels. Both seemed like stupid ideas. There had to be Mothers or cameras or something there, making sure no girls got out. What she’d had her binoculars focused on for the past day was way more interesting – and way more scary. There was a short tower on the side of the factory, and on top of it, a door. A person-sized door with a small platform attached to it, the kind of thing she imagined a skiff could dock itself to. There was no telling what was through the door – or who. She remembered the Mother holding Jane 64, staring furiously at the hole in the wall, unable to step beyond it. She was pretty sure the Mothers never left the factories. Couldn’t leave the factories. That meant this was a door for people . . . but what kind of people?

Those were the questions that had kept her there in the scrap pile, tucked into a small cubby, switching her legs to get the ache out of them. The door hadn’t moved since she’d got there, not in a whole day. No skiffs, no people. Just a door, with who knew what on the other side.

She had to try.

She left her cubby that night, moving quick and quiet through the yard. She was scared – stupid scared – but it was this or nothing. It was this, or hang out in the shuttle for ever, until everything broke beyond repair or the dogs got her, whichever came first. No way. No fucking way.

‘I’m not leaving my bones here,’ she said to herself as she moved. ‘I’m not leaving my bones here.’

She had a different weapon for this trip – a gun, or something rather like one. It was smaller, lighter, fit comfy in one hand. It could kill a dog, sure, but it wasn’t meant for that. This weapon was meant for something she really, really hoped she wouldn’t have to do. Owl hadn’t said much when Jane had built it. What was there to say? They both knew what was at stake. They both knew what it might cost.

Jane reached the edge of the factory. A metal ladder led up to the platform, rusty and cold. She stood under it, feet heavy, hands shaking.

‘Shit,’ she whispered. She ran her hands over her head. She wanted to turn around. She wanted nothing more than to turn right the hell around and go home.

She climbed the ladder. She hoped she’d climb back down it.

The door at the top didn’t have a latch or a handle. There was some kind of scanning pad instead, and she had no idea what would happen if she touched it. Was it keyed to particular fingerprints, or bio readings? Would an alarm go off if the wrong person put their hand on it? Would—

She had more questions, but they vanished the second the door opened and a man stood in its place.

Jane almost shot him. That’s what weapons were for, and she had one humming in her hand. But she wasn’t dealing with a dog. This was a man – a man, like in the sims. A young man, she guessed, maybe a little older than her. A man who looked ready to shit himself. He stared at her. She stared back. He looked at the gun, confused, terrified. He was a person – a person! – like she was, made of breath and blood and bones. She raised her weapon higher.

‘Are there alarms?’ she asked. It had been a long time since she’d spoken Sko-Ensk, and the words would’ve felt weird on her lips even if they hadn’t been dry and trembling.

The man shook his head.

‘Are there cameras?’

He shook his head again.

‘Can I get inside without anyone else seeing me?’

He nodded.

‘Are you lying? If you’re lying, I’m not – I’m not kidding—’ She wrapped her other hand around the gun. Stars, who was she right now?

The man shook his head furiously, his eyes begging.

She jabbed the gun at him, like she’d seen done in the sims. ‘Inside. Now.’

The man stepped backward slowly. She followed, hardly daring to blink. She took one hand off the gun and closed the door behind her. He stepped back into a room – a not-very-big room, full of control panels and monitors and – drawings? There were drawings tacked to the blank spots on the walls. Waterfalls. Canyons. Forests. Jane frowned. What the fuck was this? This guy was Enhanced, had to be. He was tall and healthy and had hair, which was hard not to stare at. But he was in a factory. Alone, it seemed. What was he doing there?

The man’s eyes flickered to a control panel with a large red button on one side. Jane didn’t have to think hard to guess what it was. ‘Don’t,’ she said, keeping the gun high. ‘Don’t even think about it.’

He looked to the floor, shoulders slumped.

Okay, Jane thought. Okay. Now what? She was in a room, in a factory, with a freaked-out stranger and no plan. ‘Sit,’ she said, nodding at a chair. The man obeyed. She looked at the monitors. Live camera feeds, all gut-punchingly familiar. Conveyor belts. Scrap piles. Sleeping little bodies in a dorm room, two to a bunk. Mothers, walking the halls. Mothers. Mothers.

Jane wanted to scream.

‘Do you watch them?’ she asked, angling her head toward the feed of the dorm. ‘Is that your – is that what you do here?’

The man nodded.

‘Why?’ She had a job to do, yes, but this was confusing as shit. Had her factory had someone like this? Someones, maybe?

The man looked pained. He said nothing.

‘Why?’ Jane repeated. ‘Are you . . . are you some kind of backup? Like a failsafe? In case the girls take over or the Mothers break down?’

The man looked at the red button and nodded.

Jane looked around the room again. She’d only been in there a minute, but it looked like a fucking miserable place to be. Two small windows looking out to the hell outside, a wall of camera feeds broadcasting the hell within. There was a hole in the floor, too, with a ladder stretching downward. She walked back toward it, never turning her back on the man, and glanced down. She could see the corner of a bed down there. A potted plant. Some basic furniture. More drawings. Something that looked like a sim hub. ‘Is this – like a punishment or something? How long have you been here?’

The man opened and closed his mouth, but no sound came out. Was he that scared? Stars. ‘Look,’ Jane said. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, okay? I will, if you start anything. But I don’t want to. I just need answers.’ She kept her voice quiet, but didn’t lower the gun. ‘What’s your name?’

The man’s eyes fell shut. ‘L-L—’

Jane frowned. ‘What’s the matter? Can you talk?’

‘L-Laurian.’

‘Laurian?’

He nodded. ‘M-my n – my n—’ His face contorted with frustration. He looked like he might cry.

‘Laurian,’ Jane said. The gun sank a smidge lower. ‘Your name is Laurian.’

SIDRA

Sent message

Encryption: 2

Translation: 0

From: name hidden (path: 8952-684-63)

To: [name unavailable] (path: 6932-247-52)

Hello Mr Crisp,

I’m a friend of a contact of yours on Port Coriol, whom you delivered some hardware to last standard. I am using that hardware daily. I’m sure you understand my reason for sending this message anonymously. I have some practical questions that I hope you might be able to help with.

Firstly, my friend has discouraged upgrading this hardware with a wireless Linking receiver. She is concerned about the potential for remote hijacking, as well as certain noticeable behavioural differences (I hope you understand my meaning). Would you agree with this assessment? And if so, is there any way to upgrade the hardware’s memory capacity? I do not wish to delete downloaded files unless absolutely necessary.

I realise this second question may not be your area of expertise, but perhaps you can offer some advice. There is a particular software protocol that is hindering my ability to write this letter. Can you make any recommendations for working around it?

Thank you for your time. I appreciate any help you can give.

Received message

Encryption: 2

Translation: 0

From: Mr Crisp (path: 6932-247-52)

To: [name unavailable] (path: 8952-684-63)

Hello! Always a pleasure to hear from someone actively using my hardware. Doesn’t happen very often. I hope everything is working to your liking.

Your friend makes a good point about remote hijacking, which is why the hardware doesn’t include a wireless receiver. I understand this can be frustrating, but she’s right about the behavioural differences, too (and yes, I get what both she and you mean). I don’t tend to have much contact with my customers after the fact, but I have heard through the grapevine about some having luck with external drives. If you find a way to create a private local network, your hardware can interface with external drives without any danger of hijacking. Of course, you’d need an experienced mech tech to help you there. Maybe your friend could lend a hand?

Speaking of experienced tech work, your second question will require the help of a comp tech. If you can’t find a trustworthy one, you might ask your friend if she’d be willing to take a course or two to learn how to tweak code. Though, now that I think about it . . . is there any reason you couldn’t take a course like that yourself? Might be worth exploring. You would probably have to have someone else actually implement the changes, though, depending on where you come from.

Have fun, and be safe out there.

Mr Crisp

Sent message

Encryption: 2

Translation: 0

From: [name unavailable] (path: 8952-684-63)

To: Mr Crisp (path: 6932-247-52)

Hello Mr Crisp,

Thank you so much for your reply. It was very helpful and has given me a lot to think about. I have one more question, if you don’t mind. You mentioned other customers in your previous message, and it has made me very curious. It might be easier for me to address some of these challenges if I could speak to other people who have encountered them as well. Can you tell me how many other customers you have, and how I might contact them?

Since you asked, the hardware is working fine. No malfunctions.

Received message

Encryption: 2

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From: Mr Crisp (path: 6932-247-52)

To: [name unavailable] (path: 8952-684-63)

I don’t mind questions at all, but I’m afraid I can’t help you with this one. As you know, my customers value their privacy, and having you in touch with each other could make you more visible. I don’t think any of you want that, though I do understand the appeal of speaking to someone with shared experiences. I can tell you that I have just under two dozen customers using hardware similar to yours. There are not many of you.

Hang in there,

Mr Crisp

Sent message

Encryption: 2

Translation: 0

From: [name unavailable] (path: 8952-684-63)

To: Mr Crisp (path: 6932-247-52)

I understand. Thank you for your reply.

I thought you might like to know that I very much enjoy trying new foods and beverages. My liking of these things was a very nice surprise.

Received message

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From: Mr Crisp (path: 6932-247-52)

To: [name unavailable] (path: 8952-684-63)

I couldn’t be happier to hear that.

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From: Sidra (path: 8952-684-63)

To: Jenks (path: 7325-110-98)

Hello Jenks,

I hope you don’t mind me contacting you

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From: Sidra (path: 8952-684-63)

To: Jenks (path: 7325-110-98)

Hello Jenks,

I hope you are well. I need help with

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From: Sidra (path: 8952-684-63)

To: Jenks (path: 7325-110-98)

Hello Jenks,

I hope you are well. I have some questions about my honesty protocol, which I am hoping to remove. Given your familiarity with my base platform

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From: Sidra (path: 8952-684-63)

To: Jenks (path: 7325-110-98)

Hello Jenks,

I hope you are well. I have some questions about my honesty protocol, which I am hoping to remove. Since I’m guessing you removed this protocol for Lovey, or at least planned to

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From: Sidra (path: 8952-684-63)

To: Jenks (path: 7325-110-98)

Hello Jenks,

I hope you are

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From: Sidra (path: 8952-684-63)

To: Tak (path: 1622-562-00)

If I wanted to take a university course, how would I go about finding a good one? I don’t want a formal certification track or anything. Just a single course from someone with the proper credentials. Is that allowed?

Received message

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From: Tak (path: 1622-562-00)

To: Sidra (path: 8952-684-63)

Well, now I’m desperately curious. Yes, if you’re looking at standardised GC ed, most will allow you to take courses outside of a certification track. I’m assuming you don’t want to study off-world, right? Start by looking for schools that offer correspondence programmes. From there, find ones that offer courses in the field you’re looking for. Then spend some time reading the individual course descriptions (this won’t take you much time at all, I’m sure). You can do all kinds of fun cross-referencing to figure out who the professors are, what research they’ve done, etc. Use that info to find the right fit for what you’re after.

Do I get to know what this is about now?

Sent message

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From: Sidra (path: 8952-684-63)

To: Tak (path: 1622-562-00)

I’d like it to be a surprise, though I may ask your help again later. Thank you for answering my question.

Sent message

Encryption: 0

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From: Sidra (path: 8952-684-63)

To: Velut Deg Nud’tharal (path: 1031-225-39)

Hello Professor,

My name is Sidra, and I’m considering enrolling in your correspondence course ‘AI Programming 2: Altering Existing Platforms’. I am not a professional comp tech, nor am I planning to pursue certification, but this skill set would be very useful for me. I work in a tech repair shop, and I have a lot of experience with AI behaviour and logic. Altering certain protocols would make my day-to-day interactions much easier. Is your course appropriate for a more casual learner such as myself?

Thank you for your time.

Sidra

Received message

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From: Velut Deg Nud’tharal (path: 1031-225-39)

To: Sidra (path: 8952-684-63)

Greetings, dear student,

While my course was intended for those working towards certification, I would not object to including someone such as yourself. The curriculum is focused heavily on hands-on application as opposed to abstract theory, so I believe this would suit your needs well. Please tell me more about your existing skill level. Are you proficient in Lattice? You must have at least Level 3 fluency in order to take part.

May I ask what kinds of platform alterations you are most interested in?

With gracious regards,

Velut Deg Nud’tharal

system logs: downloads

file name: The Complete Lattice Guide – level 1

file name: The Complete Lattice Guide – level 2

file name: The Complete Lattice Guide – level 3

Sent message

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From: Sidra (path: 8952-684-63)

To: Velut Deg Nud’tharal (path: 1031-225-39)

Hello Professor,

Yes, I have Level 3 fluency. I am also already familiar with AI installation and maintenance. If you have no objections, I will go ahead and enroll. In answer to your question, I’m specifically interested in learning how to remove out-of-the-box behavioural protocols without causing instability within the core platform. A general awareness of other potential alterations (and associated risks) would also be useful for me.

Thank you again. I’m looking forward to the course.

Sidra

JANE, AGE 18

‘He’s coming with us.’ Jane sat on the couch, eating a bowl of stew as slowly as she could. She could’ve eaten four bowls, especially after the long walk back from the factory. But she only had one, and it was the last of the batch she’d made before she left. Eating it slow made it feel like there was more of it. Kind of. Not really.

Owl didn’t look thrilled with the turn of events. ‘Are you sure about this?’

‘No,’ Jane said. ‘But that’s the deal. Laurian lets me grab three barrels of fuel every four weeks, and when our tanks are full, he comes back with me.’

‘Will no one notice? Does he not have to file reports?’

‘He has to report it if something goes wrong, but he won’t be mentioning me. There aren’t Mothers on the outside of the fuel pickup area. Just cameras, which he can move so they’re not pointed at me. And three barrels is apparently a drop in the bucket of what they churn out. Nobody will miss it, not if I spread it out, and so long as I’m not there when his inspector comes to visit. He gave me a schedule for that.’

‘Jane, I don’t like this. You don’t know this man at all. You don’t know if you can trust him.’

‘What else are we gonna do? We need fuel, and I need to not get caught. Or killed. Or thrown back in a factory. Whatever it is they’d do.’ She took another bite of stew. She was so sick of dog. Didn’t matter how she cooked it. ‘Besides, he wants out just as bad as we do. His life is shit, Owl. It’s as shit as mine is. Worse, maybe, because he’s still stuck in there. I’d be a giant asshole if I just took his fuel and left him behind.’ She sipped her cup of water, savouring it. Clean and cool. That, at least, she wasn’t sick of. ‘And, I mean, he seems nice. He can’t talk right. He wrote down most of his side of the conversation. But I think he’s nice.’

‘Nice.’

‘Yeah. He has a nice face.’

There was a faint whirring as Owl’s cameras zoomed in. ‘How nice of a face?’ Owl asked.

Jane paused in mid-bite, rolled her eyes, and shot the closest camera a look. ‘For fuck’s sake, Owl,’ Jane laughed. ‘Jeez.’

Owl laughed, too. ‘All right, I’m sorry. It was a fair question.’ Owl paused, her face thoughtful. ‘How was it seeing another person again?’

‘I don’t know. Weird. Good, once I realised he was okay. Mostly weird.’ She scratched her ear. ‘I was scared.’

‘Understandably. You’ve been alone a long time.’

Jane frowned at the screen. ‘No, I haven’t.’

Owl smiled in that warm, quiet way she did sometimes. ‘You know if you bring him, it’ll change the fuel calculations.’

‘I know. I thought of that. That’s fine. Trust me, they’ve got plenty.’

‘Food and water, too. You’ll need to ration them differently.’

Jane nodded, scraping as much as she could from the sides of the bowl. The remnants filled her spoon. Almost. ‘Yeah,’ she sighed, taking her last bite. She let the taste of food – boring as it was – linger until it faded into nothing. ‘We’re figuring on a thirty-seven-day trip, yeah?’

‘That was how long it took us to get here, yes.’

Jane leaned back into the couch, sucking the empty spoon, pressing her tongue into its cold curve. Thirty-seven days. They couldn’t do it on mushrooms alone. She’d need a lot of dog, but they were getting harder and harder to find. Maybe Laurian had access to food, too. She remembered the meal drinks back at the factory. Did he eat those? Maybe, maybe not, but the workers he watched over definitely did. What was in those things, anyway? Chock-full of vitamins and protein and sugars, probably. Maybe he could snag some of those. She felt like she’d be asking too much, but then again, she was bringing him home. A few meals for the road was not an unreasonable thing.

SIDRA

The shutters in Tak’s shop were closed, and the door was locked, too, but he did not look comfortable. He stared at the scrib being offered to him as if it might bite. ‘You’re serious,’ he said.

Sidra gave the scrib an encouraging little wiggle. The tethering cable attached to the back of the kit’s head bobbed in tandem. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘It’ll be easy. I’ll talk you through every step.’

Tak rubbed his eyes. ‘Sidra, if I fuck this up—’

‘It would be bad, yes. But I don’t think you will. I know exactly what to do.’

‘Why aren’t you asking Pepper to do this?’

‘I’m not entirely sure,’ she said. ‘I can’t give you a clear answer, because I don’t know. I’m more comfortable asking you.’

‘She’s a tech, at least.’

‘Yes, but she’s not a comp tech, and she’s never been to school. She’s not fluent in Lattice. I am.’ Sidra made the kit look as reassuring as she could manage. ‘Tak, it’ll only take an hour. Maybe two. You’re acting like this is surgery.’

‘It is surgery. Explain to me how this isn’t surgery.’

Sidra moved the kit closer to him. ‘Look,’ she said, pushing the scrib his way. Crisp lines of code lay waiting on screen, a small snippet of everything she was made of. ‘Right there. Those six lines. That’s where we start. I will tell you where to cut them, what to enter in their place, and where to go from there.’

Tak’s cheeks simmered with indecisive grey. ‘I still don’t get why you can’t do this. You can tell me how to alter your code, but you can’t change it yourself.’

‘That’s right. I can’t edit my own code.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I can’t edit my own code. That’s a hard rule.’

‘But you’re sitting here telling me to do it. Telling me how to do it. The end result is the same. That . . . doesn’t make sense.’

‘Sure it does. Possessing knowledge and performing an action are two entirely different processes.’ The kit smiled at him. ‘After we make these changes, you will never have to do this again. I’ll be able to edit my code by myself, if I want to. I just have to get a few protocols out of the way first, and for that, I need you.’ She set the scrib in the kit’s lap and took Tak’s hand. ‘I did a simulation of this exact thing for class, with a copy of my own code.’

Tak’s eyes widened. ‘You didn’t tell them that, did you?’

Sidra wasn’t sure whether to laugh or feel insulted. ‘Of course not.’

‘Well, I don’t know, maybe they asked you the wrong question, or—’

‘Stars. No. I said it was code taken from the Lovelace Monitoring System, which is entirely true. More importantly, my professor reviewed my work – the exact steps I’m about to talk you through – and he said it was perfect. I know this will work.’

‘So . . . you can copy your code, and edit that. But you can’t edit the code inside your own core.’ Tak’s entire face was a frown.

The kit gave an exasperated smile. ‘Tak. Please.’ She reached out and touched the implant in his forehead, ringed with faded scar tissue. ‘You think your fathers didn’t worry when they sent you in to have something implanted in your brain? You think their fathers didn’t worry, too?’

Tak said nothing for five seconds. A pale, caring blue filled his cheeks. ‘Dammit. All right. Okay.’ He placed his hand atop the kit’s and sighed again. ‘I need some mek first.’

JANE, AGE 19

Jane stared at the ceiling, willing herself to get out of bed. Come on, she thought irritably. Get up, Jane. Get the fuck up. You can do it. This is the last one. Last one.

She sat up. She always slept longer than she should these days. She didn’t know how a person could sleep so much and be so tired.

She tied her clothes around herself. Bunches of fabric hung loose at her hips. She glanced at herself in the mirror, but didn’t look long. She knew what she’d see. Ribs. Bones. Hollow eyes. Being inside that body scared her, but it was the only body she had, and if it scared her, well, then she wouldn’t look at it. Being scared would just waste time she didn’t have.

‘Last time,’ Owl said, following her down the hall. ‘You can do this.’

Jane opened the stasie. The shelves were filled with meat and mushrooms, stacked and counted, divvied up as evenly as she could. There was enough for two people to eat two fillets and one bowl of mushrooms per day for thirty-seven days, plus extra to get her to and from the fuel factory. She’d have to go two days without eating – one on the way there, one on the way back. Laurian would have to skip a day, too. She hoped he’d be fine with that. He’d have to be.

She stared at the food, all the food she couldn’t eat. She hated it. She hated how much work it took to gather and prepare. She hated the smell of the meat, the texture of the fungus. She hated the pieces of dog staring accusingly at her. She hated how much closer the live ones circled her these days, how much bolder they’d gotten ever since she’d started skipping meals.

She ran her tongue over the spot where another tooth had fallen out, a ragged snap at the root. It had been gone two weeks, but the gum still bled a bit, sharp and metallic. She had a few scrapes on her legs from the last food trip that weren’t healing well, either. She looked gross, she knew. Would Laurian find her gross? His problem if so. He could either deal with her grossness or stay put. Up to him.

She leaned her head against the stasie door. She was so tired. Stars, she was so tired.

‘You’ll be all right, Jane,’ Owl said, but her voice wasn’t sure. The screen in the kitchen wasn’t on, which meant Owl was hiding her sad mouth, her worried eyes. Jane hated that, too. She didn’t want Owl to feel that way on her account.

Jane nodded and tried to smile, just to make Owl feel better. ‘Last time,’ she said, moving food from stasie to satchel. ‘Last time.’

SIDRA

The surface market was overwhelming as ever, but Sidra felt she could walk through it a little braver now. This time, she didn’t have to shrink away from strangers. This time, she was prepared.

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Tak was watching her closely, as he had been since they left his shop. There was no need for it, but the intent was appreciated.

Sidra started to say the words I’m fine, but another possible response appeared, a far more tantalising one: ‘I don’t feel any different.’ Her pathways buzzed gleefully. It wasn’t true. It wasn’t true. There was a difference in her – not a big one, but she could feel it. I don’t feel any different was a nice, colloquial way to reassure someone that she was okay, but an hour before, she wouldn’t have been able to say it.

She managed to keep the kit from skipping.

A shopfront caught her eye. ‘I want to go in there,’ she said, making an abrupt turn.

‘Wait, what—’ she heard Tak say as she stepped through a smooth, curved doorway. It was an exosuit shop, filled with everything an organic sapient needed for a stroll out in space. Suits for different species stood smartly on display, as if their occupants had just stepped out. There were rocket boots, too, and all manner of breathing apparatus. Another Aeluon stood when they entered, clearly eager for customers. Her cheeks flashed in greeting to Tak.

‘Hello,’ the merchant said to Sidra. ‘What can I help you find?’

Sidra had already crafted a new response file on her way inside. She deployed it, savouring the moment. ‘Well, I’m the captain of an asteroid mining ship.’

‘Oh, stars,’ Tak muttered.

Sidra continued brightly. ‘I’ve been thinking of replacing my crew’s suits.’ The kit’s toes curled within their shoes. She gestured to Tak. ‘This is Tak, my comp tech. We’re travelling to Hagarem.’

Tak looked pained. He flashed a weak acknowledgement.

‘You’ve come to the right place,’ the merchant said. ‘If you can tell me more about your budget and the species present in your crew, I can go over some options—’

‘Oh, no, look at the time,’ Sidra said, glancing at her scrib. ‘I’m so sorry. I just remembered, I have an appointment at the algae farms. We’ll have to come back.’ She took Tak’s hand and exited the shop, leaving the merchant looking politely bewildered. Sidra felt a little bad about that, but she couldn’t keep her delight from surfacing. She exited the shop and burst into laughter. ‘Oh!’ she said, sitting down on a nearby bench and clutching the kit’s sides. She hoped the merchant couldn’t hear her; it really hadn’t been a very nice thing to do. ‘I’m – I’m sorry, I just had to – oh, stars.’ She drummed the kit’s feet happily.

‘I’m so glad you’re amused,’ Tak said.

‘I’m sorry,’ Sidra said, trying to get a hold of herself. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just – none of that was true!’

‘I’m well aware.’ Tak was starting to laugh as well, the kind of laugh that sprang from someone else’s laughter. ‘Though I guess I was your comp tech today.’

‘You were. You were, and I am so grateful.’ The kit smiled at him, warm and sincere.

Tak returned the look, but it shifted serious again. ‘Sidra, you have to tell Pepper and Blue. Just in case something goes wrong.’

‘Nothing will go wrong. But, yes, I will tell them.’ She knew Blue wouldn’t object. As for Pepper . . . well, easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

There was a slight tightness in Tak’s face Sidra hadn’t seen before. With a sting, she realised: he was trying to determine if she was telling the truth. ‘I wouldn’t lie to you,’ she said.

‘I know,’ Tak said, but there was a hesitancy in his tone. Sidra didn’t like that. Had he been more comfortable with her when she’d been easy to control? When she’d been truthful by default? She hoped not.

JANE, AGE 19

Jane had picked out their first overnight spot on the way to the factory: an old skiff, rusted through, but with the seating compartment easily accessible (well, mostly – she’d removed the upholstery on a previous trip). She glanced over her shoulder as she laid the sleeping bags out on the stripped-down seats. She started to say something, but had to clear her throat first. There was this weird, dry, rattling feeling in there she couldn’t shake. She’d have sworn she was thirsty, but it was food she was short on, not water. She cleared her throat again. ‘Hey,’ she said in Sko-Ensk. ‘You okay?’

Laurian stood a few steps from her, staring out toward the setting sun. He didn’t talk much anyway, but this was a different kind of silence.

Jane abandoned the sleeping bags and walked to him. ‘Hey,’ she said. She didn’t touch him. She’d made that mistake shortly after they’d left the factory. Just a congratulatory hand placed on his shoulder once they were well out of sight, but it had been enough to make him jump and gasp. Jane hadn’t needed to ask why. She’d been alone a long time, too.

Laurian continued staring outward. ‘I r-re – I remem—’

Jane considered. ‘You remember . . . being outside?’

He shook his head and pointed toward the sun.

‘The sun? Sunsets?’

Laurian nodded. He’d told her about his family in previous visits – the family who’d given him up. He’d drawn her sketches of a big home with lots of plants and windows, of siblings to play with, of pets that loved him. He’d been young when he’d been sent away, but he remembered. He remembered all of it. ‘I could – couldn’t see f-from – f-from—’

‘From the factory? Yeah. Yeah, your windows were facing southeast. That’s the wrong way.’ She paused, trying to remember what she’d been doing before speaking to him. The sleeping bags. Right. Right. ‘Come on and help me. It’s gonna get dark and cold real fast.’

They worked together to get the fabric bundles lying flat as possible. Jane asked a question carefully. ‘Do you think they’ll come looking for you?’

Laurian shook his head. He opened his mouth, then thought better of it. He pointed to the door of the skiff.

‘Door,’ Jane said. ‘Which door?’ She thought. ‘The door on your tower?’

He nodded, then pointed at the locking mechanism.

‘The lock. The door was . . . locked? It was unlocked.’ She thought. ‘You could leave any time?’

Laurian shrugged and nodded.

Jane chewed on that. She understood. You can leave any time you want, the Enhanced were saying, but look outside. Look out your windows. Where is there to go? We’ll keep you fed, at least. We’ll give you a bed. It was a mean way to keep someone from running, tied up with an extra layer of we really don’t care, go ahead, starve out there, you’re totally replaceable. Stars, she hated them.

‘Did anyone else – any of the other monitors, did they ever leave?’

Laurian nodded. He held up one finger.

‘Once?’

He nodded again.

Jane wondered where that one had gone. Was xe living out there, like she was? Or had the dogs and cold and hunger made another pile of bones?

‘Come on,’ she said, crawling into the skiff. The air was already starting to bite, and they weren’t going to have a heater that night. The sooner they got into their sleeping bags, the better.

Getting comfy was awkward, but they managed, bundled up side by side in the back of the skiff. Jane was excited. It was like having a bunkmate again. Jane could feel the warmth coming off of him as he sat down beside her, and that was good, too. She never felt warm any more, no matter how much she wore, no matter how close she sat to the heating elements at home.

‘Hungry?’ she asked, reaching for her satchel. Laurian hadn’t managed to snag any food before they left, which was okay, but kind of disappointing. She’d really been hoping to not have to skip any more meals.

The light in the skiff was dim, but she could still see Laurian’s brow furrow. ‘Wh-what—’

She followed his gaze to the well-cooked meat that lay unwrapped in her lap. ‘It’s dog,’ she said. ‘It tastes okay, and—’ She stopped. Laurian hadn’t moved much, but his whole face was one big expression of no. She frowned. ‘I know it’s probably really weird to you,’ she said, handing him his portion, ‘but you have to eat.’

Her stomach was already growling loudly, and she tucked in fast. She took a big bite, tugging at one end with her teeth, the other with her hands. Laurian looked like he was going to be sick. She thought of how she must look to him – dirty skin, dirty clothes, tearing at a hunk of dead dog. Maybe she didn’t look much like a person. Maybe she wasn’t one, really.

Laurian looked at his piece of meat for a bit, then took a timid bite. The corners of his lips twisted, but he chewed and swallowed. He turned to her with a forced smile. ‘I-it’s – it’s good,’ he said.

Jane pushed her bite of food into her cheek and laughed. ‘You’re lying,’ she said. ‘But thanks.’

SIDRA

What would Pepper say?

Sidra wondered about that as she made her way down to the caves with Tak. Would she be angry? Proud? Hopefully proud. Sidra had solved a problem on her own, and Pepper was a fan of such things. But would Pepper be upset that Sidra had done it without asking? That she’d asked Tak? She wasn’t sure, and that was never a state of mind Sidra enjoyed.

She returned a few smiles and waves as she made her way to the Rust Bucket. It was nice to be recognised. From here on out, she could actually have proper conversations with the other people here. No more vague answers, no more technical truths, no more fear of direct questioning. She could make stuff up. She could nod yes when she meant no. She could get to know people without putting herself or her friends in danger. She could make more friends. This was good. Everything about this was good.

She paused when she saw the empty shopfront. No shield around the stall, no In the back, yell for service sign on the counter. That was odd. Pepper didn’t usually leave the front unattended without some kind of notice. ‘Pepper?’ she said as she approached the counter. No answer. She waved her patch over the counter door and stepped behind it. Tak followed at a respectful distance.

‘Are you back here?’ Sidra asked, heading to the workshop.

Her question was answered immediately. Pepper was sitting on the floor beside the mek brewer, empty mug still in one hand, staring at her scrib in the other. Her face was taut and pale.

‘Tak, could you keep an eye on the counter, please?’ Sidra whispered. Tak obliged.

Sidra stepped close and crouched down. Pepper looked up at her with . . . with . . . Sidra didn’t know what to make of the expression on her face. Hope and pain and shock, all twisted together.

Without a word, Pepper handed Sidra the scrib. Sidra read it, line by line, quick as she could. She looked sharply to Pepper as she reached the end. ‘Have you told Blue yet?’

Pepper shook her head. ‘His scrib’s turned off,’ she said quietly. ‘He does that sometimes when he’s painting.’

Sidra reached out the kit’s hand. ‘Come on. Let’s go get him.’

JANE, AGE 19

The ceiling looked the same as it had four hours before. Jane pulled her blanket up to her chin. She had longed for her bed during the three days and nights out in the scrapyard, but now that she had it, sleep was a long way off.

‘Water tanks are full,’ she breathed into the dark. ‘Taps and filters are clear. Hatch and window seals are . . . sealed. Artigrav nets – well, we’ll find out, won’t we—’

She touched thumbtip to each finger on her left hand as she went through every system on the ship over and over, index to middle to ring to pinky, then back the way she came. The words leaving her mouth barely moved the air around her lips. She didn’t want to disturb Laurian – who was asleep, snoring softly in his bed. Good for him. At least one of them would be going into lift-off with a decent night of rest.

‘Life support systems are go. Control room panels are go. Hatch – no, dammit, you already said hatch, start again, start again.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Water tanks are full. Taps and filters are clear . . .’

She’d been forgetting things, or if not forgetting things entirely, doing them in the wrong order, or getting confused on things that should’ve been easy. Her head ached all the time, and her thoughts ran thick as fuel. ‘You’re just tired,’ she reassured herself, pausing the count on her fingers. ‘You’re just tired.’

She startled as Laurian rolled over in his sleep. She’d known for nearly a year that she’d be sharing this space with him, but knowing that and doing it were two very different things. He made sounds she wasn’t used to. He stood and sat in places that had always been empty. Part of her was glad to hear someone else breathing again. Part of her wanted him gone.

She continued her count again and again, until Owl appeared some hours later, turning on the screen beside Jane’s bed as dimly as she could. ‘Hey,’ Owl whispered.

‘Is it time?’ Jane whispered back. Laurian continued to breathe deep on the other side of the room.

Owl nodded. ‘Sun’s coming up.’

They’d decided on leaving in the morning, rather than the moment Jane and Laurian got back to the shuttle (as Jane had initially wanted). A night launch would’ve been crazy bright, and though there had never been any indication that anyone was watching, there was no need to call more attention to themselves than needed. A little ship heading spaceward was obvious enough without lighting up the sky.

There would be no breakfast that morning. The thought made both heart and stomach sink, but in some ways, having an empty belly was good. Apparently some people got spacesick – especially if the artigrav nets didn’t hold, which was really anybody’s guess at this point – and wasting food was out of the question. They could eat once they got out there. They’d have dinner in space.

Jane hugged her blanket to herself, the same blanket she’d crawled sobbing under her first night there, the same blanket that had covered her every day since. She got up, holding the ragged cloth around her like a cloak. She walked out to the living room, every step a chore. She walked to the hatch and looked through the window into the airlock. She knew what it looked like outside. She knew it like she knew her own face, her own skin.

‘Owl, can you let me outside?’

Owl opened the hatch. Jane stepped through the airlock, then out. Rocks pressed roughly into her bare feet. The sun was bleeding orange, the dark blue above fading lighter. The air was cold and sharp. She breathed deep, the last breath of unfiltered air she’d have for a while. She looked out, out to the piles of scrap, out to the makeshift paths she’d walked in the spaces between. She had worked for nine years to get out of that place. Nine years where she thought of nothing but leaving, but now . . . now she dug her toes into the dirt, trying to hold on. She looked up at the fading stars. She knew the scrapyard. She knew this shitty planet. Up there . . . that was something else altogether. She dug her toes in harder, pulled the blanket closer.

‘I know,’ Owl said, speaking through the vox on the hull. ‘I’m scared, too.’

Jane took a step back, still looking up, and pressed her palm against the hull. ‘I never said thank you,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know to say thank you then.’

‘What do you mean?’

Jane thought back to that first night – a voice calling out in the dark, reaching farther and faster than the dogs and Mothers. A voice that brought her home. ‘I wouldn’t have made it without you,’ Jane said, pressing her palm harder.

Owl was quiet for a moment. ‘I wouldn’t have, either.’

It was time. It was long past time. Jane returned to the airlock. The hatch opened, and once again, she jumped at the sight of Laurian, sitting patiently on the couch, eyes a little bleary. There was a question on his face. Jane could guess what it was.

‘We’ll be going in about an hour,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to . . . um . . .’ The thought died in transit from her brain to her mouth.

‘Warm up the fuel pumps,’ Owl said.

‘Yes,’ Jane said. She shut her eyes and gave her head a short shake, trying to clear it. She was just tired.

‘W-what—’ Laurian licked his lips, pushing the words through. ‘What – what c-can—’ He tapped his chest with his fingertips, then gestured around the room.

‘Nothing really,’ Jane said.

Laurian’s face fell ever so slightly.

Owl switched to Klip. ‘Jane, let him help. He wants to help.’

Jane glanced up to one of the cameras. ‘There’s nothing for him to do. I’m fine.’

‘How well did you do in a new place without anything to do?’

‘He’s an adult.’

‘He’s afraid.’

Jane sighed, and looked at Laurian. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Do you know what an indicator light is?’

He shook his head, but looked a little happier.

Jane walked to the kitchen, leaning lightly on the couch as she passed it. She pointed to the small green light on the underside of the stasie. ‘See this?’

Laurian nodded.

‘There’s a bunch like it on the—’ She paused, trying to remember the word in Sko-Ensk. ‘—engine casing. I need you to go below and tell me if you see any red or yellow lights.’ She didn’t need that, actually. She’d checked them a dozen times over, and Owl would know if something was up. ‘You gotta check real careful. Double-check, just to be sure. Got it?’

Laurian smiled, nodded, and beelined for the engine chamber.

Jane gave Owl a look of there, I did the thing. Her eyes trailed over the stasie, full of food she couldn’t eat. It was ridiculous, but in that moment, the idea of ditching the whole plan, tucking into dog and mushrooms until she physically couldn’t eat any more, and just staying in the scrapyard for ever didn’t sound like a terrible alternative.

‘Is the heater on?’ Jane asked, doing her best to ignore her angry belly. The lower end of her torso was weirdly big these days, especially compared to the rest of her. She didn’t know how that could be, since there wasn’t much food in it.

‘Yes,’ Owl said. ‘Are you cold?’

‘Nah,’ Jane said, pulling the blanket tighter as she made her way to the control room. She settled into the pilot’s seat. ‘How are you feeling?’

Owl appeared in the centre console. ‘I don’t know how to answer that. I’m having a hard time finding a good phrase that covers everything.’

Jane began flipping switches. The console started to hum. ‘What’s the first thing that comes to mind?’

Owl considered. ‘Holy shit, we’re doing this.’

Jane threw back her head, cackling. ‘Yeah, that about sums it up.’

SIDRA

The three of them sat in the quick-travel pod, Pepper and Sidra up front, Tak leaning quiet in the back. Pepper had been staring out the window the entire time, but from her expression, she didn’t appear to be seeing much.

‘If he’s not at the shop,’ Pepper said, ‘we’ll ask Esther.’ Sidra knew who Pepper meant – the glassblower in the shop beside Blue’s. ‘He usually tells her when he’s stepping out so she can keep an eye on things for him.’ Pepper nodded to herself, calculating. ‘And if she doesn’t know, we can split up. I’ll go to the noodle bar, you two can go to the art supply—’

Sidra put the kit’s hand on Pepper’s knee. Pepper was agitated, naturally, but figuring out every variable concerning what to do if Blue wasn’t there wouldn’t help. ‘He’s probably at the shop,’ Sidra said calmly.

Pepper chewed her thumbnail. ‘This doesn’t feel real.’

‘Understandably.’

‘What if that message was wrong? Like a prank or something. It didn’t say much. Just said to write back for details.’

‘Which you did.’

Pepper frowned at her scrib, which hadn’t left her hand since Sidra had found her. ‘Yeah, but he hasn’t replied yet.’ She sighed impatiently, then handed Sidra the scrib. ‘If that message came from a dummy node, we’re all wasting our time here. Can you dig through the comms path, make sure it’s legit?’

Sidra took the scrib. ‘What are you going to do if it’s not?’ she said. She gestured at the scrib, pulling up comms path details.

‘I don’t know. I haven’t got that far y—’ Pepper stopped. She looked straight at Sidra. ‘You didn’t answer the question.’

Shit. Sidra inwardly flailed. ‘I just meant—’

‘You didn’t answer the question. Sidra, you didn’t answer the question.’

The kit sighed. ‘This is . . . not the best time to talk about that.’

‘Ah, fuck.’ Pepper put her face in her palms. ‘Fuck, Sidra, what – who did you go to?’

‘No one, I – Pepper, this isn’t the time.’

‘Bullshit this isn’t the time. Are you okay? Holy fuck. I can’t – who helped you?’

‘No one! It was just me and Tak.’

‘You and Tak?’ She glanced toward the Aeluon in the backseat. ‘You did this? You fucked with her code?’

‘I—’ Tak began.

Pepper snapped back to Sidra. ‘Have you run a diagnostic?’

‘I’ve run three. I’m fine, I promise. I’m stable. I came to the shop to tell you—’

‘Stars.’ Pepper pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘I really – ugh, I really can’t think about this right now.’ She let out a tense breath. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

‘I’m fine. I promise, you don’t need to worry about it. I’ll explain later.’

Pepper pressed her forehead into the side window and shut her eyes. A silence filled the pod. One second went by. Two. Five. Ten.

Tak leaned forward, sticking his head over the back of the front seat. ‘I would really love it,’ he said, ‘if someone could tell me what’s going on.’

JANE, AGE 19

Laurian sat down in the right-side chair and strapped in tight. She looked at him – nervous, not quite trusting, but willing to follow her. Under other circumstances, she would’ve wondered why he was there at all. She had no idea what she was doing – not a damn clue – and there was a non-zero chance they might blow up or decompress or die in a dozen other horrible ways in the next three minutes. But in comparison to the place she’d taken him away from . . . yeah, this was a better option.

Jane adjusted herself in the sagging seat. Owl had their ascent plotted, their course to the border charted. Jane wouldn’t have to steer at all; she could learn that later. Owl couldn’t do anything fancy, but then, they wouldn’t need that. Jane hoped they wouldn’t need that.

‘Engines on,’ Owl said.

It took Jane a second to make the connection. She chuckled. ‘Fuel pumps, go,’ she said, smiling at Owl’s camera. Okay. Okay. She could do this. ‘You ready?’ she asked Laurian.

Laurian swallowed hard. He nodded harder.

‘Right,’ Jane said, gripping the armrests. She could hear her pulse in her ears. ‘Okay, Owl. Let’s get out of here.’

Jane had turned the engine on before, switched the thrusters on, made the shuttle hover just a bit above ground to make sure it worked. This felt nothing like that. This was a thud, a kick, a girl clinging to the fur on the back of a running dog. The thrusters roared, and Jane was aware of how small she was – she and Laurian both. So small, so squishy. They’d strapped themselves into this explosive hunk of scrap and aimed for the sky. How was this a good idea? How had anyone ever thought this was a good idea?

She wasn’t sure if she was doing it for herself or for him, but she reached across the gap and grabbed Laurian’s hand. His fingers latched onto hers, and they held on with all they had as the shuttle shot away from the scrapyard, curving up and up and up.

They climbed, the sun burning bright. They met the clouds, then left them behind a moment later. They pierced the sky until there was no sky left. It melted away in an instant, changing from the roof of all things to a thin line below, shrinking smaller and smaller, hugging the curve she’d been told of but had never seen.

And there were stars. There were stars, and stars, and stars.

In the back of her head, she was aware of different sounds: the thrusters switching over to propulsion strips, the low hum of the artigrav nets (which worked!). She’d built those things, fixed those things, and they’d taken her away. They’d let her escape.

She unbuckled her safety straps and ran into the main cabin. ‘Jane!’ Owl called after her. ‘Jane, wait until we’ve stabilised.’

Jane ignored her. She ran on shaking legs to the viewscreen beside the hatch, the one she’d never used for more than a minute or two to check the weather. She never wanted to see the scrapyard once she’d left it, never wanted to turn it on one day to see a dog or a Mother staring back. But now . . . ‘Turn it on,’ Jane said. ‘Please. Please, I need to see.’

The viewscreen flickered on. The only planet she’d ever known lay below. Clouds tumbled thickly, but she could see through the patches between them, down to the scrapyards, the factories and pockmarked land that stretched on and on until they reached . . . seas! There were seas down there, stained sickly orange and grey. But those colours faded, gradually clearing into a deep, breathtaking blue. The shuttle continued around the planet, using gravity to throw itself free. Seas met land, and Jane saw cities – sparkling, intricate, flocked with green. They were so far from the scrapyards neither would ever know the other was there. You could live your whole life in one of those cities and never know how ugly it was somewhere else.

‘Why?’ she whispered. ‘Why’d you do this? How could you do this?’

Jane clung to the wall, breathing hard. Her head swam, but it had nothing to do with launch, or the fake gravity, or any of that. Everything was too much. Too much. The planet was beautiful. The planet was horrible. The planet was full of people, and they were beautiful and horrible, too. They’d made a mess of everything, and she was leaving now, and she was never coming back.

She stumbled to the couch and put her face in her hands. She wanted to scream and laugh and sleep all at once. Laurian was with her, all of a sudden, sitting close but not touching. He said nothing, but somehow Jane knew it wasn’t because of his trouble with words. He said nothing because there was nothing that could be said.

Jane looked up toward the viewscreen again. She could see satellites out there, glinting with sunlight. She could see them turn towards her ship.

‘You sure we have nothing to worry about?’ she whispered.

Laurian nodded. He made a curve with his hand, and gestured down through it with his index finger. Jane understood. He’d explained this before – the Enhanced weren’t as concerned with people heading out as they were with people heading in, and there weren’t any orbital launch sites on the part of the planet where the factories were. There were defence patrols that could come after, but by the time they realised what was happening, the shuttle would be out of reach.

The satellites grew smaller, and the planet did, too, bit by bit. It was so lonely, so exposed out there. Just like their ship. Just like its passengers.

Jane put her hand on Laurian’s, and looked at Owl’s nearest camera. ‘No matter what happens next,’ she said, ‘no matter where we go, we’re all going together.’

SIDRA

Blue wasn’t at the noodle bar, nor the art supply depot. He was right where Pepper had hoped he would be: standing behind his easel, hands and apron spattered with paint, a thump box blasting music as he worked. He looked up with congenial surprise as Pepper and Sidra entered. Tak had parted ways with them at the travel kiosk, saying that this was a ‘family affair’. Sidra felt privileged to be included in such a thing, but she stayed a few steps behind Pepper anyway. Pepper needed her space right now.

‘Well, hey,’ Blue said, gesturing the thump box into silence. ‘What’s going—’ His smile faded. Sidra couldn’t see the look on Pepper’s face, but whatever it was, it changed everything for Blue. ‘What’s going on?’ he said with a frown.

For as much as Pepper had talked on the way there, she didn’t seem to know what to say now. ‘Someone found it,’ she said at last, her voice sounding like it belonged to someone else.

Blue didn’t understand. He glanced at Sidra, then back to Pepper. ‘Someone found wh—’ His eyes grew wide. ‘No way.’

Pepper nodded. ‘Someone on Picnic.’ She took a deep breath. ‘They found my ship.’