CHAPTER 5 KORI #3
Aspect nods eagerly as we turn away from the booth.
I can’t help but sigh and shake my head, even though my frustration isn’t with them.
“Always the same,” I mutter to myself, under my breath.
“Food. Fistfights. Songs. Sex.” I pinch the bridge of my nose.
“I need something else.” But I have no idea what, not in the slightest idea.
For all I know, the barrier to Aspect’s awakening could be not the absence of something, but the presence of a memory I’ve already installed.
And what would I do then? Uninstall it? Deprive them of an experience I already offered as a gift, which has become their own?
That would make me no better than the planet’s radiation.
And I’ve tried—oh, how I’ve tried, on every ill-fated visit here—asking vendors for something weird, something different, something positively odd.
But it always results in obvious discomfort and confusion from the vendor, who often stares at me like I tried to order a sandwich at a memory store.
Sometimes they believe that I’m seeking rightfully illegal, exploitative, or heinously violent material, which I most definitely do not want (and have reported to the Coalition when necessary).
Once the hopelessly awkward conversation is over, I have to run along, before I raise so much suspicion about my true motives that I get myself reported.
“Something else.” I grunt, my footsteps unnecessarily heavy as we trudge away from this useless, useless Sea Meat booth.
At the corner of my eye, at the very edge of my peripheral vision, I think I see …
a smudge? A splatter of ink, forming and re-forming.
But as soon as I look, the shape is gone.
My exasperation is veering into hallucination at this point.
Is that what it will take to awaken Aspect?
A final step over the edge, into a proper evil scientist?
Our path to the elevators and down to the third floor is a blur, my mind elsewhere.
Eventually, we reach my mother’s memory vendor.
Aspect tugs pleadingly at my elbow throughout the entire transaction.
If their optical processors could widen, they’d be round wheels of hope right now. “Sea meat soon, Kori?”
“Soon.” I pat them on the head briefly.
My attention is painfully split. After the odd recollection of Jelza I experienced, I can’t help but wonder what this new Morpheus sphere contains that my mother could want.
I’m also half-feral with the desire to find a properly unique, mechanically significant memory to install in Aspect.
And mild annoyance at this entire sea meat diversion still simmers underneath my skin.
I pocket the Morpheus sphere for my mother, waving Aspect away from the vendor’s booth.
That’s when another shadow moves.
It’s distinct this time, far from an imaginary ink splatter. My peripheral vision distinguishes something akin to limbs. With my pulse pounding in my temples, my hand flies automatically to the heatshot pistol at my waist. “Who’s there?”
A voice like oil speaks from everywhere and nowhere at once. “Not here.”
A whirl of … fabric? The wave of a hand? Something directs me toward an accidental alleyway, wedged between two memory booths—just barely wide enough to allow two or three bodies to squish in and have a less-than-public conversation.
“Kori …?” Aspect’s voice is an uncommon squeak.
Against my better judgment, I take one of their hands between both of mine, lean close to their auditory processor, and command, in the firmest voice I can muster, “Stay close.”
Together, we step backward into the alleyway.
One step from the crowd, two, three. The miasma of conflicting voices from the crowd steadily shrinks.
Even the light from the competing booths dims, distancing.
Everything tunnels. I keep my eyes firmly on the main market, ready to bolt back toward public view the instant it’s necessary, but even so, almost of their own accord, my legs keep carrying me farther back into this accidental wedge of space, farther and farther from the sales floor.
A secret place within a secret market. Only I could get myself into a jam this absurd.
“Further in,” the oil-slick voice says, somewhere close. “Further up, and further in.”
Back and back, farther and farther, my legs lead us.
My heartbeat is an emergency siren, nearly splitting my rib cage wide open.
I should have a hand on my heatshot pistol, but I can’t bear to let go of where Aspect’s metal fingers are squished securely between all of mine.
Back and back and back. The market is a faraway smear of color.
I know we’ve reached the complex’s wall only because it’s terribly cold when it presses against my back.
“Here,” hisses the voice, and if I squint, I can just barely make out the spidery outline of a person.
Hunched, slightly shivering, cowering even in the near darkness of this clandestine alleyway.
Layers of mismatched clothes—deep greens, faded maroons, patches of yellow, and threadbare blue—conceal whatever anti-radiation gear they must be wearing underneath.
It all grants them the appearance of a secondhand clothing shop come to life, bumbling about on its first day of improbable sentience.
“Your hand, darling.”
Aspect, ever courageous in the face of absurdity, pipes up, “The market—does not—sell hands.”
For an instant, I think my limb is indeed the price for whatever ware this stranger is about to offer. Then a shuddering gloved hand extends toward me, fingers pinching something tightly between them. “Open your hand.”
Barely breathing, I extend one open palm, the other still gripping Aspect’s so tightly that every metal joint digs painfully into my skin. A tiny rectangle drops into my gloved hand, somewhere between the size of a fingernail-sized Morpheus chip and a handheld credit card.
“You seek a memory, of another kind.” The voice is thick.
It sticks to the inside of my skull, makes me want to gag.
I swallow a surge of sick. “If you mean what you said, and I think most people mean the things they say, when they think no one else is listening, then that”—one gnarled finger taps the rectangle in my palm—“is my card.”
“You have nothing to sell?” My voice is a sudden, stubborn half snarl.
This feels, as strange as it all is, like the closest I’ve ever gotten to a special, specific, impossible memory—the kind that could bring Aspect into full awakening—and now all I have is a dusty gremlin’s business card?
“You, a stranger, haul me into an alley. I follow, against my better judgment. And the best you can do, for my taking this risk with my mech in tow, and with only a simple pistol to protect myself, is your card?” I
close my fist around the meager offering, my voice rising despite myself. “Who are you? What’s your code name? Where is your license—?”
But all at once, there’s an explosion of thick white smoke. My knees sting; I’ve collapsed, coughing, retching. Actual sickness threatens at the cloying chemical smell that ensconces me—a terrible experience to have while wearing a sealed anti-radiation helmet. Darkness flickers across my gaze.
The next thing I register, Aspect is shaking me with all the force their mechanical arms can muster. Then straight-up kicking one knee into my gut. “Kori. Kori. Kori. KORI. KORI.”
Choking on a mouthful of spit, I come fully back to myself. With effort, I pull my body back up to standing. “How long …?”
But Aspect has already retrieved my comms tablet from my utility belt, wildly tabbing through its various applications with both hands until the digital hourglass appears.
The sand is far emptier than it was when I arrived at the Morpheus Market.
But if we hurry, we can still make it home before suspicions are raised.
“Home,” Aspect pleads. “Aspect takes Kori—home to the sands—before Kori’s maker—wants to unmake.”
Numbly, I feel for the Morpheus sphere at my belt, the one my mother requested.
It remains nestled comfortably in my pocket.
So, too, my heatshot pistol remains sheathed at my side.
My credit card is where I left it. My armor is unbroken in any way, protecting me from Pagonian radiation.
What did this gremlin want, if they didn’t even take anything?
Their tiny business card lies discarded, just barely visible in the half-light, at Aspect’s feet.
I must have dropped it after the smoke bomb.
Gritting my teeth, I snatch the card up and pocket it before I can think better of the decision.
This strange, undeniably risky encounter can’t have been for nothing. If this card can open a path to Aspect’s awakening … that’s worth any risk. Scientific breakthroughs have never been made by playing it safe. No matter what happens next, I need to know that, given
the opportunity, I was willing to try. I was willing to fight my good sense for a shot at something greater.
“Come on,” I say, nudging Aspect back toward the distant light of the still-teeming, never-sleeping market. “Charon’s waiting.”
Sure enough, Aspect and I are soon safely ensconced in Charon once again, my anti-radiation gear collapsing to smaller pieces at once.
Somehow, despite Aspect’s eager bouncing on their metal toes, I manage to buckle them into the copilot’s seat.
“And here you go,” I say, pulling their new sphere from my pocket.
“One sea meat memory for the best mech I know.”
Aspect squeals. “Install now, Kori?”