CHAPTER 1 KORI
CHAPTER
KORI
I came to the Morpheus Market to buy a memory, but instead, it seems I’ll be making one I’d rather forget.
I’m only partway through my transaction, trading a pilfered memory of a starship crash for a useful nugget of firsthand mech-repair knowledge, when everything goes sideways.
Every joint in my right hand stings from 45P3C7—better known as Aspect, my own personal mech—anxiously gripping my fingers, a stark reminder that I’ve instilled an alarming amount of humanity in what was once a hollow machine.
Memories are meant for human experience, not installation into a synthetic.
But making friends is next to impossible when your mother rules your entire society—which, unfortunately, also includes every detail of your life.
So I took friendship matters into my own hands. And nuts. And bolts.
Hopefully, buying this new memory will only broaden my (mildly to severely illegal) modification possibilities. One step closer to sentience. One step closer to Aspect truly seeing me.
In my left hand, my comms tablet buzzes, insistent. I glance toward its message from my mother, sliding across the screen in electric-blue text.
CHLOE: KORI, WHERE ARE YOU?
Licenses to trade in the clandestine Morpheus Market aren’t as simple to acquire as standard settlement rations or a freshly printed set of clothes.
Chloe didn’t grant me market access so I could trade for whatever memories I liked.
She definitely didn’t do it so I could build simulated neural pathways in a government-issue mining mech.
Usually I would hurry through a personal transaction like this, do my best not to raise any inkling of suspicion, but the seller won’t stop haggling.
The mechanical hand in my own squeezes hard. Twin optical processors meet my eyes. No eyelids—just twin bulbs, like headlights on a starship, flashing on and off as the gears and servos whirring behind them process my undoubtedly frustrated expression. “Message—for Aspect?”
“No, message for Kori,” I mumble under my breath, trying to focus on the transaction.
I give their hand a reassuring squeeze back.
A standard mining mech has limited touch sensors, primarily to identify either extreme heat or a total system malfunction.
I took the liberty of enhancing Aspect’s hardware long ago, to the point of practical pain sensors—so while a hand squeeze may not be enough to calm them, at least I know they can feel it.
I can’t see the seller’s face through the full-body anti-radiation gear that all dayfolk, myself included, wear outside our settlement, but I have a very vivid imagination.
In my head, he has beady black eyes, with hardly any whites to speak of, and a profound, judgmental outcropping of jaw, like a cliff’s edge about to collapse into an avalanche.
“You can’t provide more than a single flight memory in exchange?” the seller drawls. The sign above his crooked booth displays MECHANIC MEMORIES, the neon light on the second M rapidly blinking.
Dayfolk masks flatten emotion and tone, but even so, I can tell he’s not annoyed with me. He’s amused. Haggling is a hobby for this man. He’s not arguing with me; he’s toying with me.
I suffer enough of that from my mother.
But I school my voice into unmistakable neutrality, even as the message from Chloe buzzes again. “Two-for-one trades are commonplace only for rare or classified memories.”
“Message—for Kori—important?” Aspect chimes, gesturing to my comms tablet with one elbow.
“Not now,” I whisper. This time I grip their hand less as a comfort, more as a plea. Please do not decide to develop full-blown anxiety before I’ve even installed a proper personality, okay?
The seller scratches his head. I doubt he can actually feel his nails through his helmet, which means he’s stalling for time I don’t have. “This is very high-level mechanical insight you’re buying.”
It’s one I could easily learn from Hyrra if my stomach didn’t do somersaults every time she and I made eye contact at the repair station, but I swallow my frustration. “I showed you what I’m offering. Take it or leave it.”
The seller releases a deliberately dramatic groan.
“Or I could report you to the Coalition,” I press, “if you make a habit of raising prices after receiving an offer.”
It’s a low blow. We both know it. The entire Morpheus Market functions always and only at the whim of the Coalition.
When you break the Coalition’s rules, your Morpheus Market license goes bye-bye.
Sometimes your known whereabouts along with it.
Maybe a few fingers and/or toes. Your average citizen isn’t even supposed to know the Morpheus Market exists, unless an insider recommended them for a license.
Getting kicked out of the market often means getting kicked off this plane of existence, too.
Memories also can’t be stored on a remotely accessible network. Early in Morpheus tech’s development, settlement records report attempts,
but the memories went sour like forgotten rations; they turned strange, wrong, like waking nightmares when accessed. So, even if you escape a ban from the Morpheus Market with your life, getting kicked doesn’t just make it harder to obtain new memories for sale. It makes it impossible.
Aspect’s head bobs. “Kori is mean—when Kori has—maybe important messages—not for Aspect.”
Aspect’s insistence on always calling me by name—even here in the Morpheus Market, where everyone only uses codenames—is also a security risk if anyone connects that name with the monarch’s daughter.
If Chloe ever realized this was happening, she’d probably have Aspect reduced to scrap metal.
I try not to think about it too often, or else I can’t breathe.
If Aspect ruins this trade, I’ll have only myself to blame.
I’m the one who couldn’t settle for a mining and general maintenance mech like every other dayfolk citizen.
I’m the one who tried building a friend out of wires and metal.
The seller releases the longest, fakest sigh I’ve ever heard in my admittedly short life. Finally, blessedly, he says, “You have a deal.” He presses a shiny Morpheus sphere into my palm.
Somehow, even though we’re both wearing gloves, it feels slick and sweaty.
I wince a little as I tuck the sphere into my belt pouch, before handing over my own in exchange.
Thankfully, the armor we all wear includes an extensive array of pockets and pouches, primarily concentrated at the waistline, for carrying items. I’ve been told that at one point, the men’s armor had more pockets than the women’s, but the public complained so much, the government officials eventually standardized everything regardless of body type.
The comms tablet buzzes a fourth time.
Aspect raises their free hand to get my attention, but I quickly nudge it back down to their side. Multiple messages shimmer across my tablet.
CHLOE: KORI, WHERE ARE YOU?
CHLOE: I SENT YOU ON ASSIGNMENT, NOT VACATION.
CHLOE: I NEED THAT MEMORY ASAP.
I huff out an exasperated breath. Once again, just like every previous trip to the Morpheus Market, my actual assignment is cutting the visit short before I find a memory I’m confident can begin prying Aspect’s possible self-awareness open.
I suppose it doesn’t help any that I don’t know what I’m looking for.
A sentient mech has never been—should never be, if you ask the government’s engineers—created.
Nor are human memories supposed to be installed in a machine.
I haven’t the slightest idea what sort of memory could jar Aspect into being more person than science project, kicking their servos into something more akin to neurological synapses, but I’m determined to keep looking.
I will always keep looking. Somewhere in this bundle of bolts, I know there’s potential for the truest friend I have to feel what I feel, to choose me back.
But every visit to the market, without fail, ends with a flat, unfeeling reminder that I’m on a schedule, my mother impatiently awaiting my return with her merchandise—without any knowledge of why I really want to be here.
CHLOE: I MIGHT JUST FIND EXTRA HOMEWORK FOR YOU IF THIS MEMORY ISN’T ON MY DESK WITHIN MY CURRENT SLEEP CYCLE.
Briefly, I tab over on my comms tablet from the messaging module to the hourglass.
There’s hardly any sand left in the upper half on my display, and Chloe tracks her sleep cycles more religiously than most, always turning in when the hourglass turns over.
My margin for error is rapidly shrinking if I’m going to make it home before she wants to sleep, and I haven’t even picked up my assigned memory yet.
In my defense (not that my mother would care), Aspect’s detour became a full-blown digi-game side quest.
I want to ask why Chloe needs her own memory delivery so urgently, or what the memory even is, but I’ve learned the hard way not to pester my mother with questions.
It never leads to answers. And it usually leads to an even more watchful parental eye monitoring my every move. Not to mention extra homework.
I stifle a groan. If I see one more math sheet in my next ten sleep cycles, it’ll be too soon.
Another squeeze of cold metal fingers on mine. “Aspect is—”
“Leaving,” I interrupt, tugging them away from the Mechanic Memories booth. “Kori is leaving, and so are you.” The second M on the seller’s sign sparks and dies entirely as we depart.
We’re immediately sucked back into foot traffic.
The Morpheus Market is a hub of constant motion, but it’s confined to a limited space. To evade notice by unauthorized dayfolk (or too-curious nightfolk), it’s miles beneath the planet’s surface, with a singular elevator entrance connecting to four narrow, stacked floors.