Chapter 21 Elanie
Our clothes were nice, made of linen, dyed green and blue and pink. They were simple and flowy and completely unlike anything I’d ever worn before. I liked them. And Sem couldn’t stop staring at my breasts under my strappy and nearly see-through top. I liked that too.
“You told them we were engaged?” he asked while pulling a soft pink shirt over his head.
“There are only bionics here,” I explained. “I didn’t know what they might do to non-bionics, so I panicked and told Gol you were my fiancé.”
“Smart thinking.” He grinned at me, but it wasn’t his normal grin. This one was tight. Nervous.
I scanned his face, his exposed arms, still pale and mottled. “Your skin looks bruised again.”
“Well, your skin looks beautiful,” he said, sidestepping my concern. A surprisingly easy thing to do when he reached for my hand the way he did, pulling me in tightly against him.
Heat bloomed inside my chest as he surrounded me in his arms. He was alive. We were both alive. And he was touching me, holding me, kissing my head. His breathing slow and steady as he hummed. “Hmm, so sweet.”
In cosmically bad timing, my stomach growled.
“Are you hungry?”
“Starving,” I said, only I didn’t think I was talking about food.
“We can’t have that.” He cupped my face between his hands as his expression shifted from raw longing to mild disappointment before settling on something wry and irresistible when he said, “Come on, mate. Let’s eat.”
Sem’s mouth hinged open, his expression mirroring mine when I’d first seen Thura.
“This is amazing.” He pointed to the pink-tinged but mostly transparent terradome arching overhead, then to the boundaries of the bioshield, where snowdrifts from the frozen tundra had banked into tall piles.
“I guess that explains why it’s so warm here.
” He raised his nose into the air. “Saints, what is that smell?”
“Food,” I answered, taking his hand in mine and leading him down the steps. I liked not having to think too much about holding his hand. Because engaged couples did that. They held hands, all day sometimes.
My mouth watered as we reached the buffet table. While a warm breeze brushed my hair off my shoulders, I piled food on top of my plate. Sliced pineapple, gwarf salad, honeyed ham, some rice dish with shredded carrots and fried eggs.
“We’ve died,” Sem said, holding a ring of pineapple in the air before biting into it. He moaned at the taste. “That’s the only explanation. We’ve died, and this is the afterlife.”
“Not quite.” Gol arrived beside us, his shoulders blocking out the afternoon sun. “But it’s as close as I could make it.”
“How long has Thura been here?” Sem asked as we carried our loaded plates past tables of other bionics. Purple Argosians, gelatinous blurvans, four-armed Gorbies, mundane New Earthers, all sat together, smiling and laughing.
Gol guided us to a table under a palm tree that swayed in the weather-generated breeze. He sat, then motioned for us to do the same. “I started this commune over thirty-five Standard years ago,” he said. “It was only a handful of us at first. Now we are over three hundred strong.”
I’d wanted to ask him about this last night. I hadn’t felt brave enough then. But now, with Sem by my side, I did. “Why did you bring me here?”
When Gol laughed, it was even warmer than the breeze. “I love an inquisitive bionic. You will do well here, Elanie EL-42xdZ.” He leaned forward, placing his cleft chin into the bowl of his palm. “Or soon to be Elanie Semson, I suppose.”
Elanie Semson. A shiver raced across my shoulders.
In part because I liked the name, the way it sounded, how right it felt.
But also because of the way Gol had said it.
Suspicious yet amused, like he knew we were lying and found it as adorable as the bionic children currently fighting in the sandbox.
“That’s right.” Sem’s spine snapped straight. But even puffed up, he was so small compared to Gol, whose grin was enormous as he swept his hand out wide, a tattoo of one of the trees near our hut growing up his forearm, willowy branches swaying as their strange red fruit dangled toward his wrist.
“Well,” Gol said, “what do you think of our home?”
“It’s amazing,” I replied. Because it was.
Thura was remarkable. With soft, white sand blanketing the ground, tall trees reaching up toward the terradome, and animals everywhere.
Wolf-like dogs stretched out long in the shady spots beneath the trees.
Birds that looked like chubby miniature trestals perched on limbs above them.
Long-tailed cats prowled under the tables, searching for food that had dropped from plates.
And the bionics here seemed so happy, relaxed. Not a care in the world.
A first-generation bionic approached our table. He was almost as tall as Gol and held a tray of dirty dishes in one titanium hand while refilling my empty water glass with the other.
I’d never seen a gen-1 before, not outside of history experientials. I studied the smooth titanium shell covering his head and trunk, the exposed articulating joints that studded his long limbs, his bright yellow eyes staring down at us as he asked, “Can I get our new arrivals anything else?”
Gol sat back, crossing his arms over his chest. “Thank you, Mal. But I think we have all we need.”
“You have servants here?” Sem asked, staring after the gen-1 as he ambled away.
I hadn’t missed the accusation in Sem’s tone. Gol hadn’t either.
“There are no bionic servants in Thura,” Gol said, sharply arching a tangled green brow.
“We live communally. We all have roles, shared duties, equal responsibilities. But some of us, especially the early generations, have a harder time assimilating to a life that includes leisure. We give them the space to work as they wish for as long as they desire to keep their systems functioning at optimal levels. Mal enjoys his work.” Raising his head, he called out, “Isn’t that right, Mal? ”
The gen-1 wheeled around, holding his tray so steadily that none of the plates or bowls atop it shifted an inch. “Yes, Gol.” He gave a little bow, his head catching the sunlight filtering in through the dome. “I am very happy in Thura.”
Satisfied, Gol nodded.
And while I wondered if Mal was actually happy here, if I’d be happy here, a creature leaped onto our table.
“What is that?” I reeled back as the creature opened its beak and squawked at me. It had a long, ringed tail and a plump, furry belly, like a monkey. But from the neck up, with its sharp beak and feathery head, it resembled a chicken.
“We call that a grint.” Gol shooed the animal back to the ground, where it glared up at him, picked something from the tip of its tail with its tiny fingers, chewed it for a moment, and then spat it out in Gol’s general direction.
“I didn’t know there were bionic animals,” Sem said while the grint scampered off into a nearby happle tree. It plucked a happle off a branch, held it up to its mouth like the smile-shaped fruit was its own smile, then pecked at it.
“There is much you don’t know,” Gol replied, turning his attention back to me. “For example, do you have any idea how old you are, Elanie EL-42xdZ?”
Music drifted through the air: steel drums, a soft, lilting melody.
“I’m twenty-nine,” I answered.
“Is that what you think? What you know to be true?”
“Yes.” Goose bumps raced along my arms at his strange, almost compassionate expression. “Why?”
“You achieved consciousness twenty-nine years ago. But would it surprise you to know that you, a gen-26 bionic, are closer to your seventeenth decade than you are to your fourth?”
“That’s incorrect.” My shoulders stiffened. “I was commissioned exactly twenty-nine years, ten months, and sixteen days ago.”
“True,” Gol said. “All gen-26 bionics were recommissioned around that time. You were gen-18s before then. And gen-12s before that. Your parts have been recycled for centuries. ”
“Recycled?” Sem asked, interlacing his fingers through mine, pulling my hand into his lap. And because I hadn’t in several seconds, I took a breath. “What do you mean?”
“In the eyes of our creators, bionics are not unlike any other resource. We contain rare metals, sophisticated data drives, and power cells. Intricate circuitry. Even our eyes are recycled.” Leaning forward, Gol raised a brow.
“Do you have any idea how expensive bionic eyes are? How difficult they are to make?” His dark green stare landed on mine. “How precious?”
Sem’s hand flexed, his grip tightening.
“That can’t be right,” I insisted. “Wouldn’t I know if I’d been recycled?
Wouldn’t all bionics know? Wouldn’t the worlds know?
” As soon as the words left my lips, a cold reality settled over me, heavy and terrible.
It was a long moment before I could say, “No. They wouldn’t know, would they?
Because why would they tell us? Why would they tell anyone? ”
The bionics surrounding us stared at me with something like pity, like they knew what we were talking about. Like at one point, they’d also been told they were four times older than they thought they were, that they’d lived past lives they knew nothing about.
“They wouldn’t tell us,” I said, almost to myself, “because the worlds want new bionics. They don’t want harvested parts. They don’t want recycled lives. So why would LunaCorp tell them that was what they were getting?”
Gol dropped his gaze with a remorseful sigh. “There have been unspeakable atrocities enacted against our kind, Elanie. Recommissioning our bodies and wiping our memories are only a couple of examples.”
“What do you mean?” Fear swelled inside me. “There’s more?”
Sem’s thumb ran gently over my skin. “Maybe we should take a break,” he said, looking at me with concern. “Come back to this when we’re not so—”
“No.” I shook my head. “Tell me now. I want to know.”