100. Chapter Three
Chapter Three
A nya
Shadow and Drayke escort me into the small, attached lab. They’re each so kind, touching me as if I’m breakable as glass. It just proves how badly I’m taking this and how worried they are.
It’s cramped in here and a bit overwhelming with me on a little rolling stool and the two large, muscled males looming over me. They must sense my panic, because a minute later they’ve rolled in two more stools and we’re all crammed in, knee to knee.
“Nothing needs to happen right away, Anya,” Drayke explains slowly, his voice calm and soft, as if he’s talking to a frightened child. “Just one thing. The decision about Zar’s memories.”
I take a deep breath and blow out slowly, trying to calm myself. Just one decision. I can do that. In fact, I already have.
“Unless you can think of a reason not to, I want that thing to keep Zar’s memories. When we figure out how to extricate their two consciousnesses and kick the parasite out, I want my Zar back.” It doesn’t seem like a hard decision to me.
The two males share a glance. I know this look. When Grandma Hannah had dementia really bad, she’d continually ask where her husband Manny was. I remember being young when she’d ask and my mom and her sister would share a glance, then tell her, “Mom, daddy’s gone. Remember?”
The pain on all three faces was stark. Grandma had to receive the news of her husband’s death for what felt like the first time to her, although he’d been dead for years and she’d heard the sad news of his passing a thousand times.
My mom and aunt had to deliver the devastating news, knowing how it pierced grandma’s heart.
That’s the look of sadness and compassion that Shadow and Dr. Drayke share as they sit across from me. As if they’re dealing with someone who hasn’t accepted reality, but they’re going to humor her.
“Good,” Drayke says. “I agree. This isn’t over, Anya. We’re going to research, contact experts, perhaps even contact the Arclite Symbiont Council. If there’s a way to get Zar back, we will make it happen.”
“In the meantime,” Shadow says, “why don’t you get some rest? Want me to have Petra walk you to your cabin?”
Leave Zar? No, thank you. And my cabin? I don’t have a cabin. We have a cabin. Well, we had a cabin. When I picture entering that room, knowing my mate might never join me there again, I feel physical pain. It squeezes my heart and circles my stomach like a python crushing the life out of me. I can barely breathe.
“No. I’ll stay with him.”
The two males share another of those looks, full of compassion and sadness. It makes me feel worse, not better.
Rynn
Messy. This is certainly the messiest transfer of my existence. It should be orderly, calm, and peaceful. I should have merged with a Boklorn who trained his entire life for this and was eager for the joining.
It should not be conducted with an unwitting host, especially one with… fur and claws. And definitely not include a… what? Who is that female? His mate? Concubine? She put her hand on my testicles. Without permission.
How did this happen? There was no resistance. How did he accept me without prior knowledge or consent? This has never happened. With all the wealth of information stored in my brain, I am clueless as to how to deal with this conundrum.
“Go ahead. Do what you need to do to keep Zar’s memories.”
I open my eyes to see it’s the tan-skinned male with the bionic eye, the angrier of the two males, who gave this order.
“Zar? His name was Zar?” I ask.
“His name is Zar,” the male seethes. “He’s the best male I’ve ever met. He’s smart and thoughtful and good. Do you hear that? This male is more than you’ll ever be, whether you have fifty or a hundred lifetimes. Get it?
“You don’t deserve to inhabit his body and you fucking sure don’t deserve to have killed him in the prime of his life.”
He pauses, breathing as heavily as if he just ran a race.
“You will keep his memories. All of them. And, by the Gods, you should learn from them. It will teach you more about being a person than you’ve learned in all your previous lifetimes.”
The male’s chin is quivering. Not in anger, but in passion.
I live a simple life devoid of passion. By choice. When I encounter it, I avoid it. Not only out of personal preference, but because it is the Recepticon way. We keep emotions out of the equation so we can be better repositories of information to be handed down for eons.
I’m not used to emotions. Certainly not raw ones like this.
“I will preserve his memories,” I answer truthfully, then add the lie he insists on, “and I will learn from them.”
I will keep his memories. That is the Symbiont’s unwritten contract with our hosts. Learn from a male like this? I can’t imagine there is anything in the archive of his memory banks that will be helpful for the future of civilization.
“I will spend the better part of the next day completing the meld and absorbing Zar’s memories. Please do not interrupt this process. It is delicate. When I awaken, I will be known as Zar-Rynn.”
I give a pointed look at the female who is again sitting at my side, looking at me as if she expects something from me. Is she planning on staying for the completion of the meld?
“It would be best if you go,” I urge.
“Maybe for you, but not for me. I’m here for the duration,” she says as she wiggles in her seat to underscore her intentions. Her tone is full of anger, but her eyes, her eyes are looking at me with… what? Desire? Longing? She expects something I won’t be able to give.
I take a sip of water someone placed on my bedside table, then close my eyes, and begin the second step of the meld.
I’m fully entrenched in the brainstem. Now I let the tendrils of my consciousness progress through the cerebellum, then move methodically throughout the brain.
My first pass is an exploration. I’m mapping. This feline species is nothing like the Boklorn. I need to get the lay of the land before I dive in.
Nothing is like my previous 56 hosts. Perhaps because they’re different from this species, perhaps because they prepared their entire lives for my entry, but their brains were neatly segmented.
Hearing came from one part of the brain, sight from another, and taste from yet another.
In this Zar, everything is interconnected. Memories are harnessed to all the senses, everything mashed together into more of a goulash or stew instead of distinct edibles separated on a plate.
All of a sudden, I’m drowning. I believe I caused the body to scream. Or perhaps it’s that I’m squeezing the female’s hand so tightly she let out a squeak of pain.
These aren’t the memories of a Boklorn—nice, neat pieces of a bland puzzle. No. I’ve been immersed into hell. I can’t even separate the knowing from the feeling. This host’s being is intertwined with his memories.
I’m in agony.
Fiery, blazing spikes of pain slam through me. It’s not just physical. It’s accompanied by terror and… hatred.
I’ve read about these emotions. They are well documented in millions of my internal files, just as are the greatest artworks of the galaxy and the chronology of all the wars ever fought.
But I’ve never felt them before.
I’m suffering.
I hear moaning—it’s my own. My newly acquired muscles are spasming. My eyes pop open as I try to escape, but seeing this medbay doesn’t reduce the pain. It just heaps on more because it adds the picture of this female— his female—her face etched with concern for a male who, for all intents and purposes, is dead.
Shuttering my lids, I dive back in. I have no recourse. Once the amalgamation of memories has started, there is no way to make it cease.
Did I tell them it would take the better part of the day? Surely it’s been a lunar , perhaps an annum as the download continues. How could so much pain be packed into one humanoid lifetime?
He was ripped from his mother’s bosom, sold into slavery, forced to comply, to learn, to fight in the hot suns. He was lashed for misbehavior, beaten for non-compliance, and abused for not learning fast or well enough.
Oh. Misery. No. This couldn’t be happening. Must I watch?
My eyes pop open again, bared wide as I try to make this memory go away or, if not disappear, then fade. Cruelty. Unbearable.
No. No. No . He said it then, I believe my lips are chanting it now. A best friend? The only softness or compassion in his young life? And he was forced to kill him.
Sorrow. I can’t bear it.
In order to pull myself from this misery, I focus on the only lifeline at my disposal.
The female. She hasn’t left my side. Is she hanging onto me? Or am I holding onto her?
Pulling myself out of the well of sadness, I allow myself the briefest moment of respite to listen to her.
Are her lips at my ear? Her words, so soft, so tender.
“Zar, I know you’re in there. I’m still here. I love you more than life. More than breath. Come back to me. I will never leave you. I will stand by you. I will always be here for you.”
Perhaps it’s this sharing, this accumulation of my new host’s memories, that allows me a moment of compassion because all I can think is, Poor female. Zar, the male you love so much, is gone.
A n eternity later, I’ve absorbed all of Zar’s memories. I am a creature of duty. My job is to be the repository of all information, to gather it throughout many lifetimes, to be a living storyteller should all written and encoded information be lost to all species over time.
With great responsibility, there is always a great cost. The cost is that I’ve dedicated my life to this duty. The Boklorn species and the Arclites made this pact eons ago. The Arclite hold the knowledge, the Boklorn hosts give their lives in service to it.
It hasn’t always been an easy task. I have never, though, wished to be anything other than what I am. Until today. A hundred, maybe a thousand times today, I wished I didn’t have to go through with this accumulation of knowledge.
I’ve never known such pain.
Opening my eyes, I look around the room. I’m only half surprised when I see the female is still at my side. She has scooted her chair as close to the bed as possible and laid her head on my chest.
Over the last hoaras , I’ve seen all of Zar’s memories. I know who this female is now. I saw their tragic meeting, their blossoming love, and their heroic uprising.
As I watched their relationship grow, I came as close to love as I have ever been.
Of course, I have knowledge of the concept of soulmates, or truemates as Ton’arrs call them, but this is the first time I’m witnessing and vicariously experiencing the depth of the bond.
There were moments, I’ll admit, I envied them. Their sweeping emotions, the sweetness of their love, their unwavering commitment. I skimmed through their sexual encounters. It felt intrusive, like I was trespassing. Even still, I got closer to primitive sexual feelings than ever in my lifetime.
I see now why my awakening in Zar’s body was a surprise to everyone in the room. I was a sightless, formless gas in a dying body, and assumed the transfer was going as planned. It is a biological imperative.
Now that I look at it through Zar’s perspective, I see he was performing a primitive lifesaving procedure on #56’s body. He inhaled my essence purely by accident while implementing an altruistic act.
If I could turn back time and change the course of events, I would, even though it would mean my death. But I can’t. I take comfort in the fact that Zar died while trying to save a life, although he didn’t know the life he would save was mine, or that it would be at such a cost. I have a better understanding of these people’s anger and sadness.
Now that I’ve completed the melding, have absorbed all of Zar’s memories, and am on the other side, I can only thank the gods I don’t have emotions like that. I can’t feel the depths of love, nor thankfully, the urgent desires. I will tuck all of that away. Number 57 will stay at the bottom of the stack of all my hosts’ memories. There is nothing Zar can help me with in the future. He’s served his purpose.
I ease my shoulder out from under the female. She murmurs and shifts to place her head on the pillow without opening her eyes, then settles back into deeper slumber.
I take a breath, swing my legs off the bed, and make my way to the refresher.
I should have been prepared for this. Even though I just watched all of Zar’s memories, I’m still surprised to walk in his body.
I’m used to Boklorn bodies: tall and thin with large heads that always seem too heavy for their necks. I’ve never prowled in a gladiator body with its symmetry and power. No wonder he became such an accomplished fighter. His body—this body—could do anything.
Even in the few steps I take, I can feel how my gait differs from previous hosts. I have a rolling stride, as if I could drop to a crouch or break into a run at a moment’s notice.
I close the refresher door and look into a mirror for the first time since I’ve entered Zar. My palms cup my cheeks. So foreign.
I pantomime a snarl, giving myself a front-row seat to the view of my teeth. Boklorns are vegetarians, at least host Boklorns are. They spend their lives preparing the body to be healthy and calm. In the past, my teeth have always had flat chewing surfaces.
Fangs. I shake my head even as I glance down and manage to extend my claws from the ends of my fingers. At least my host has four fingers and an opposable thumb.
Perhaps the Symbiont Council will allow me to terminate from this host early. After all, I signed no contract. No. That would be dishonorable. Without Zar, I would have expired on that mountain.
After figuring out how to extricate myself from the rag that covers my genitals, I relieve myself. Although I have the information at my disposal about how to reapply the loincloth, I fumble with it for only a few minimas before I give up.
Upon leaving the refresher, I notice the female has awakened. Look at her. I know that expression on her face now that I’ve seen my host’s memories. It’s affection.
I am capable of some compassion, after all. I will steer clear of her, quickly return to planet Boklorn where the Symbiont Council resides, and put a swift end to this. After that, she’ll never again see the body of the male who is dead to her.