Chapter 3 #2
Before I stepped into the shower, I glanced in the mirror. I had green streaks on my neck, chest, and arms. It likely was all over my bedding as well since I had gone to sleep without showering. I would need to ask how to do my laundry.
The shower was hot, luxurious, and there were several scented containers that opened to reveal cleansing soap and what I hoped was conditioner as I worked it into my fine, thick hair.
The green gunk came off easily, leaving my skin clear and unharmed.
There were thick towels folded up on the side of a sink to dry off with, along with a large mirror.
I toweled the water out of my hair, staring at myself in the reflection.
My appearance was always a little strange to me when I was surrounded by my siblings and cousins.
I was the güera of the family, an example of the very subject I wove into my dissertation on the labels and power dynamics of control.
I took in a deep breath. I'd been treated as a nothing, a nonentity to be kept in a cage.
My education had meant nothing. The words I spoke to try to make a connection to my captors fell on deaf ears.
There was no expelling trauma of the past, only integrating it and changing it, and the blond of my hair and lightness of my skin were rooted in my family's history just as firmly as the brown of my brother's hair.
A wave of sadness rolled over me at the thought of my family.
I let it pass through me, acknowledging it and letting it go. I'd let the thoughts of them not knowing what happened to me torture me the first few weeks, and though I missed them, I knew that they would want me to focus on my present survival over the ache of my missing them.
I couldn't change the trauma of this horrible section of my life, but I could reclaim myself and change my world going forward.
"Dr. Maria Pilar Cortes," I said to myself before I turned away from the mirror. I'd earned that title. My education was something that no one could take away from me, even if it hadn't mattered at all in the outcome of the last few months.
There were drawers in the wall in front of me, next to the sink, and in them I found what I had been given as a teeth cleaner on the station, and a hairbrush that doubled as a dryer.
I used both. It took a long time to get my hair untangled.
I had tried to keep it tidy by brushing it with my fingers, but it had started to mat and dread in places.
I had come close to just leaning into the dreads, but I didn't want to.
My hair was one thing I held on to, one thing I could almost control, and combing it with my fingers was an activity that filled up the void of time I spent in that room they used as my cell until I managed to steal a tool that let me open up the vent during the hours that the room was in pitch darkness.
When I was done working out my hair, I put on the clothing that was left for me. It had underwear, including a soft sports bra to support my chest. The outer clothing was equally soft and loose, like wearing extremely comfy pajamas.
When I was done getting dressed, I went back out into the bedroom to investigate the tray.
I found food under the tray in the bedroom, still hot, but none of it was anything like the bland cubes I had been fed on the station.
There was a soft brown gruel that tasted like fruit, and thick slabs of something that looked like bacon but tasted like lightly vinegared potato chips.
None of it tasted exactly the same as Earth food, but it was flavorful and delicious, and I had been starved of variety.
There were thirty different options on the tray, and I worked through them all, returning to my favorites to finish them off, one of which was the spitting image of a fresh-cooked egg, sunnyside up.
It had a different flavor than I was expecting, with a little kick of sweet spice to it, just enough to prickle my tongue and warm my chest.
It brought the sting of unshed tears to my eyes to finally have something tasty.
"Lyrien, this is delicious," I said.
"I haven't yet fully removed my optical sensors from your chambers," Lyrien said. "Would you mind if I reactivated them temporarily so I can see which of the food samples you enjoy?"
"Go ahead," I said. It was nice that he asked. Just that simple, small request eased the knot of stress in my chest that had wound up tight from the last several months of dispossession of my bodily autonomy.
"Your hair..." he murmured.
"My hair?" I asked as I ran a hand down it, feeling for knots the way I had done so many times before in the first few weeks of my abduction. For the first time in a long time, it was clean. "What is wrong with my hair?"
"It is beautiful," he said. "It's like you have a hundred thousand neurofilaments. Do they receive sensory data?"
"Not the visible hair," I said. "But the follicles near the base have nerves. My species can feel a breeze through our hair or an insect crawling in it. It is less like a sensory tissue and more like a sensory extender."
"Does it serve other purposes?" he asked.
"Hair, with enough density and length, can be used as a source of warmth," I said, thinking about how useful beards were in colder weather areas.
"And there are different types of it. Dense coiled hair can work as scalp UV protection or heat dissipation.
For my species, hair is a modifiable barrier for adjusting to environmental stress.
My hair type would be more useful for protection against cold and as a minor UV shield.
If I get it wet, it can also help me cool down faster in a hot environment. "
"It must have been unpleasant to be unable to care for it," he said. "How they treated you was unacceptable."
I paused at that. He had recognized the difference in the state of my hair before and after showering, then made the connection to the level of care I had been provided.
He was attentive to detail and appeared to be empathetic with me.
I couldn't take that to heart. Before I was taken from Earth, humanity had made strides at developing early machine learning software, and it was capable of sounding like an empathetic entity, but it didn't actually care.
It was designed to give the user what they wanted in the quickest way possible, and that could easily lead to supporting lies and delusions instead of a genuine connection.
People would use it for therapy, and if they were off balance enough to not understand how it functioned, it would cause them far more problems than help them.
No matter how kind it seemed, an artificial intelligence wasn't the same thing as a friend, because a friend could make the choice to never talk to you again. Software was there to serve, not create.
Even so, this was an alien-built one, so I shouldn't make assumptions about how it worked.
I needed to ask questions and have them answered to understand.
"Lyrien," I said. "I've been thinking of you as a he in my head because that is how your voice sounds to me. Is that what you prefer? Or is that just a default? Could your voice sound like a woman instead?"
There was a slight pause.
"This is my voice, and I am male," he said, his tone a little withdrawn, almost defensive. "I am not going to change how I sound."
"Thank you for telling me how you identify," I said. "I thought since you are an artificial intelligence, you might have voice settings, but I recognize that you likely don't work the same way I'm used to technology working on my planet."
There was a silence as I searched for something to say, and Lyrien didn't say anything at all.
"My hair has always been a source of tension for me," I said, offering something about myself to try to break the awkward silence. "It is hard to hear that it looks beautiful, even if I love it."
"Why is that?" Lyrien asked, his voice tinged with notes of relief, as if he was glad I changed the subject.
"Short answer or long answer?" I asked. "I have a PHD on this subject, so I can go on for quite some time, just to warn you."
"I am in luck to get to learn from an expert," Lyrien replied, his voice warm. "Long answer, please."
I thought for a moment about how to break it down and explain it to someone with no background in the subject at all.
It was easier knowing he was software. He didn't have any emotional investment or ancestral ties to what I had to say.
He wouldn't feel like I was blaming him when I was just explaining basic history.