CHAPTER 5 KORI #2
I swallow a sudden lump in my throat. Maybe Aspect is closer to human intelligence than I’ve dared to hope.
Either that, or their ability to mimic the remembered emotions I’ve implanted is becoming terrifyingly on point.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.
Clearly I need to reboot your vocal box. ”
Aspect vigorously shakes their head. As if I hadn’t spoken at all, they continue, “If Aspect—had caring—it would be—because—Kori had caring—for Aspect first.”
“My mother cares for me.”
“How?”
“In her own way.”
“How?”
Words bubble up, unbidden, clogging my throat. My mother loves me by keeping me close to her chest, like an heirloom piece of jewelry.
My mother loves me by welding my feet to the floor. My mother loves me by ensuring that no one, least of all a dayfolk commoner, toys with the monarch’s daughter’s heart, even with platonic affection. My mother loves me by teaching me to love her back.
“Enough with the damn questions!” My own volume rattles me, quivering against my ribs. I smash my fist on the control panel, grateful that autopilot already disengaged the manual buttons. “She cares. She does.”
Aspect holds my gaze with their visual receptors for a long moment. Then they spin the copilot’s chair away from me. “Affirmative,” they say to the wall. Their voice is always an inescapable monotone, but I swear it sounds more drained of feeling than ever.
I let out a long breath, shaking the sting out of my fisted hand. “I’m sorry.”
The words feel utterly ridiculous as soon as they leave my mouth.
This is what my life has come to, apparently.
I’ve built a mech, originally meant for mining minerals or delivering packages, that instead wants to know about feelings and families and birthday cake recipes. And now I’m apologizing to it.
“What is—sorry?”
“Depends on who you ask.” My mother, it would seem, believes that sorry is the salve that heals all wounds, no matter how many times the scab is torn back open. “I’d say it means I won’t do it again.”
“Raise—the volume—of vocalizations?”
“Yes.”
“At Aspect?”
“Yes.”
“For no—fault—of Aspect.”
Now it’s my turn to spin my chair away from the mech. “Rub it in, why don’t you.”
“Affirmative.”
“When did I install a sarcastic memory into your mainframe?”
Aspect attempts a mechanical laugh. “Ha. Ha. Ha.” They spin their chair back around, leaning forward to force eye contact. “Aspect learned—that—from Kori.”
“Lovely.”
“Affirmative.”
A bright blue text message scrolls across Charon’s viewport. NOW APPROACHING DESTINATION.
I’ve missed my chance to lose myself in the ruins below, wondering what everyone’s old lives were like. But it’s probably for the best. I switch Charon back to manual control.
In the distance, beyond the deserted expanse we’ve just traveled, loom the stark black mountains and towers of the Shadowlands, their edges gleaming an eerie azure.
Here, the radiation that drove the dayfolk underground thrives, unchecked.
There, what my people call the kiss of death has imparted an unnatural, new sort of life.
But directly below us, well concealed by the ever-shifting sands, visible only to the well-trained eye, is the entrance to the Morpheus Market.
Easing onto the landing pedal, I simultaneously tap out the code for a dispersal signal and pull the release lever down from above my head. The dispersal signal is a sonic wave, beyond the pitch of human hearing, enough to at least briefly repel any nearby mutated predators of the Passage.
The ground rumbles as nearby sand serpents scatter, their bodies even longer than Charon’s wingspan.
I hear howls, snarls, and snuffling as various misshapen beasts flee, their heads like Earthside dogs, their bodies mostly limbs like overgrown insects.
The viewport briefly darkens as winged creatures also take flight, their guttural cries rumbling through the ship.
Their open beaks are packed with teeth, and though they lack seeing eyes, I swear their milky-white pupils lock with mine before they vanish along the horizon.
Charon settles soundlessly, set to autopilot a simple orbit as soon as we disembark. I cut the engines and nod to Aspect, who knows the drill.
“Armor, Kori,” they say, reminding me to activate the collapsed pieces around my body, from the heavy filtration helmet to the ribbed boots.
This armor protects me from so much more than the surface’s high temperatures.
If the atmosphere ever touched me, through even the slightest fissure in my gear, I’d be infected with Pagomènos’s radiation, never to be the same.
With exposure that direct, I would be doomed to die, possibly mutating along the way into something not unlike the toothy birds or oversized snakes of the Passage.
An animal, without thought or conscience.
Unlike the colony we call home, the Morpheus Market doesn’t purge all radiation despite being so deep underground. No one is entirely certain if it’s because the expense would be too great or because requiring protective gear further ensures anonymity of buyers and sellers.
Absently, I feel for the heatshot pistol at my waist. Once initial laser weaponry was lost to the Cataclysm, the Pagonians had to improvise.
Dayfolk designed heatshot weapons to be continually powered by the Daylands’ brutally hot atmosphere, rather than relying on bullets.
More advanced than Earthside weapons, but weaker than what ought to have been.
Quite the metaphor for life on this forsaken planet, honestly.
Charon slows its movement, the exit ramp extending to release us before the starship enters patient orbit around the lift.
Aspect follows me to the ground and toward the faint circular outline of an entrance.
I slip one hand into my pocket, retrieving my coveted individual-access card, and wave it over the silhouette.
The ground shudders and bucks. Aspect stumbles, but I stand tall, smiling behind my helmet, never so alive anywhere else.
If this were any other rote assignment, I would chafe against the concept of returning so soon after my last visit, but this is the Morpheus Market.
My memory runs may be sanctioned by Chloe, but this is one place where she has no control over what else I do.
What I learn. Who I meet. What I allow myself to imagine I become.
Somewhere amidst these competing vendors, hidden innocuously amidst forgettable wares, there must be a memory that can awaken Aspect’s sentience.
I may officially be here on government business, but that boring chore isn’t what accelerates my heartbeat to a gallop as the door in the floor hisses open, unveiling the market’s entrance lift.
I take Aspect by the hand and step onto the panel, squaring my shoulders, taking and holding a deep, deliberate breath.
This time. Surely this time, I’ll take one step closer to achieving my real goal: finding the right shard of human experience to imbue a robot with a soul.
If only I knew what to look for.
For an instant, as the lift lowers us into the elevator shaft, we’re coated in complete darkness. Then circles of lights illuminate all around us, blinking from top to bottom of the elevator chamber.
“Welcome, Monarch,” the security voice intones. The elevator drops into an immediate descent so fast that my stomach threatens to hop into my throat.
The elevator then stops almost as sharply. “Welcome to the Morpheus Market.” The door slides open, and Aspect toddles after me as the hustle and bustle of memories bought and sold absorbs us once again.
I never know what memories for Aspect might catch my eye.
Or Aspect’s simulated eyes, for that matter.
On one memorable journey, I had to practically drag Aspect by one leg away from a booth dedicated to, shall we say, adult memories, as Aspect riddled me with unwanted questions about intimacy and bondage.
This robot has more than enough idiosyncrasies without introducing queries like, “Kori, what is horny?” The question very nearly made me trip and fall on my face at the time. I very nearly said something about Hyrra’s careful hands tinkering with the mechs. But I caught myself.
On this visit, on the second floor, Aspect fixates on something else entirely. A shimmering pink sign that says, SEA MEAT. Being a mech,
Aspect can’t taste or smell, so the prospect of recalled food carries much more significance for them. The memory carries a low credit cost, too; the dayfolk colony breeds fish in an artificial environment without much difficulty.
I can’t imagine who, besides Aspect, would consider this memory valuable or notable.
Seafood definitely won’t be a human experience that rattles Aspect’s artificial brain into realizing they are a person having an independent, autonomous, meaningful experience of being alive.
But I can’t say no to those pleading optical processors, so I scan my card and make the purchase with standard credits, hushing Aspect all the while.
Bringing a modified mech for security or assistance purposes is normal in the Morpheus Market.
The mech personally requesting a simulated experience with seafood is …
not. Better not to draw undue attention to ourselves, and better to entertain Aspect while I keep my eyes open for the truly right memory.
Like bribing a toddler with sugar, I promise Aspect they can access the sea meat memory when we return to Charon, but only if they behave.
That means no more loud questions about human mating rituals in public, not gripping my hand tightly enough to threaten the integrity of my fingers, and staying close at all times, ridiculous runway gait be damned.