Chapter 17 Sem #2
“Not much. She was a big pop star in the twenty-third century, right? Just before Old Earth’s biosphere collapsed?”
Elanie sat up straighter. “She was more than just a pop star.”
“Sorry,” I said at the snap in her voice. “Tell me about her.”
She settled back into a comfortable position.
“I didn’t even know who she was until I watched her episode of Behind the Stars a few years ago with Sunny and the twins.
But she was a genius. She was immensely talented and often misunderstood.
She was also a prisoner for most of her life.
Her career, her finances, her choices were controlled by others.
By her parents and her agent, even by the courts when she was placed in a conservatorship.
But she spent years fighting for her freedom, and she never gave up. ”
“Did she win?”
“Eventually,” she said. “And she spent the rest of her life fighting for the freedom of others in the same position. Her story was inspiring to me. But it was also terrible, in a way.” Even though it was warm in the cave, she shuddered.
“She had done nothing wrong, and the people around her stole her freedom anyway. They made her work, made her sing, made her tour until she was sick. They treated her like she owed them something just for existing. Like they owned her.” She stared into the fire.
“I’m not supposed to think this, but nobody should be owned by anyone else. Beings should not be property.”
Not even bionics was the part she didn’t need to say. Was this how she felt? Purchased? Owned? Like she was serving out a life sentence to LunaCorp that she’d done nothing to deserve? If so, she wasn’t wrong.
I hated how sad she looked. I hated that I didn’t know what to say to make her feel better. I wanted to reach through the flames and take her hand, let her know that I understood. But I didn’t understand. Not really.
“I don’t know if you’re aware of this,” I said. “But there are virtually no bionics on my planet.”
“Yes, I know.” She rolled her eyes. “Portisans hate bionics.”
“What?” I said, shocked. “We do not hate bionics.”
“Of course you do. It’s well-known that Portisans can’t stand us. I could tell at our first visit that you didn’t like me.”
“Saints, Elanie.” My heart sank, landing somewhere near my stomach. “I have never not liked you.” I liked you too much, I thought. More than I should have. Probably more than I should now.
“Do you mean that?” she asked, a brow rising.
“Of course I do.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Then you really need to work on your bedside manner.”
When I burst into laughter, she grinned at me. It was transcendent, her flushed cheeks, the way her hand covered her mouth even though there was nowhere to hide in this cave.
“The truth,” I said, “is that Portisans are intimidated by bionics.”
She frowned. “You can’t be serious.”
“It’s true. I’m used to knowing what the beings around me are thinking and feeling. When I first met you, it was just…silence. And for a Portisan, emotional silence is uncomfortable.”
Like they did when she was upset, her shoulders inched toward her ears. “So being with me is uncomfortable for you?”
“Only at first,” I said quickly. “And that was my fault, not yours. I didn’t know if I could be a good doctor without empathy.
I was worried I wouldn’t be able to help you.
I’m still not sure that I did. The thing is, though, because I didn’t grow up around bionics, I don’t know much about you.
I mean, I know what the Vnet has to say.
But only about 50 percent of that information is accurate—even after the Vox Accords. ”
“Fifty-two point six,” she corrected while wiggling her toes in the fire’s warmth.
I was happy to see they were already healed.
“With my empathy,” I said, “I know, at least emotionally, certain things about other species. I know that Argosians struggle with self-worth since they equate their success with the size of their crops. I know that Delphinians don’t entirely trust reality after their planet passed through that rogue temporal eddy five hundred years ago.
I know that New Earthers are still addicted to conflict even after it nearly destroyed their planet.
But I don’t know what it’s like to be a bionic. I don’t know what it’s like to be you.”
“I didn’t know that about Delphinians.” She played with the ends of her hair. “But that explains why bionics designed with Delphinian DNA have coincidence amplifiers installed in their temporal lobes. I always figured it was so they’d be willing to believe in magic.”
I snorted. “Why not both?”
After a quiet laugh, she met my stare head on. “All right, Portisan. What do you want to know?”
“Everything,” I said, meaning it with every fiber of my being. “Tell me your story.”
She tugged on her ear. “I don’t have a story.”
“Everyone has a story.”
“I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“At the beginning?” I suggested while I fed the last few sticks to the fire.
“The beginning…” She puffed out a breath, and if I had to guess, I’d say that talking about herself wasn’t her favorite way to pass the time. Humoring me anyway, she said, “I was commissioned twenty-nine years ago in the Elysian System.”
“That’s near the Drift Nebula, right? I’ve heard it’s beautiful there.”
“I wouldn’t know.” Her lips pressed into a tight line. “I was sold and put to work on a LunaCorp ship within twenty-four hours of my CPU booting up.”
I tried my hardest not to let the shock show. But only twenty-four hours of her life had been hers. Only one single day before she’d belonged to LunaCorp.
“That’s just how it is for bionics,” she explained while one of the fresh sticks popped. “Our life is work. Service is our purpose. We are dedicated. We are efficient. We are focused. We don’t strive.” She stared into the flames. “We don’t want.”
“You don’t want?”
Her eyes floated up to mine. “I shouldn’t. I’m not supposed to.”
Reaching around the fire, I placed my hand on her knee. “We are in a cave on the edges of the Known Universe. There’s no Vnet here. No surveillance. You’re even shielded from the SBN. Nobody can hear you but me. And my lips are sealed. Say what you need to say.”
It took her a few seconds, several billion nanoseconds by her perception of time, but then—“What if I’m not satisfied with my life, Sem?
What if I want more? We are half-organic beings by design, yet we’re denied so many of our organic rights.
Why does the entire Known Universe think it’s fine that we can’t make our own choices about our lives until we’ve worked off our commission costs?
We didn’t ask for this life.” Her hand landed on her chest. “I didn’t ask for this life.
And maybe it’s our fault because we never complain.
But how could we? We’re too busy. We’re too tightly controlled.
Even our union is only allowed to meet for one hour every six months. We don’t have a voice.”
“You have a voice here,” I said, sensing her frustration even though I couldn’t feel it. “So what do you want? If you were given the choice, what would you want?”
She looked at me for so long I had to hold myself back from leaning in, from running my fingers through her hair, tipping up her chin. From lowering my lips to hers because, Saints save me, I wanted to kiss her.
Eventually, she said, “I don’t know. But at least now I have some time to think about it.”
We fell into silence again, and I was preparing to stand to gather more wood for the night when she grabbed my heart with both hands and said, “I know you think you didn’t, but you did help me when I came to see you.”
Heat spread inside my chest, the tension between us suddenly so thick I could touch it, taste it. And I wanted to taste it. I wanted to taste her. I wanted it too much. So I said, “It was my drawing, wasn’t it? That’s what helped,” and was finally able to breathe again when she started laughing.
Later that night, after tinkering with the comms and getting nowhere, I stood guard while Elanie went to the bathroom, whisked her back inside the cave before she started growling again, and then I walked back out to the lake.
Gazing up into the clear night sky, I made a wish on an unfamiliar star that we’d somehow find our way back to the ship.
Where neither of us, it seemed, had been very happy at all.