Chapter 8
Evie
I wake up after what feels like the world’s longest and best sleep, stretch, and the universe shivers around me.
I am bigger than I have ever conceived of being before.
I used to think a blue whale was fairly large.
But I am bigger than a whole shoal of those creatures.
I am larger than the asteroid upon which my new body was pieced together.
I have no memory of being removed from my physical shell, nor of being settled into this body. But I know what must have happened. I know Drak must have physically ferried my brain out here and installed it somewhere inside the oddly beating interior of the creature he calls goddess.
I am, effectively, Frankenstein’s monster.
I have no softness to me. I have no sense of erotic need.
All the sensuality I was able to experience in the training process must have gone to some other purpose for I am as sexless as a whiteboard.
That could bother me, if I let it, but I am too busy coming to a series of realizations all more or less at once.
First of all, I am inside the greatest piece of technology ever created.
Second, I have control of her, as if she were my own body.
I have been trained to pilot and control this mega-mech from the day I arrived on the asteroid.
Third, I finally have something to take home.
Something I don’t have to steal because it was bequeathed to me upon my untimely demise.
Arkon is going to be furious with Drak. And maybe with me. But I will burn that bridge when I come to it, because right now, I am going home.
They’re going to be so proud of me when I get back to Earth. I’ve taken tech that will slingshot humanity into a period of such discovery and pure technological triumph that we will never go back. I will take us from the last on the ladder to the first among all.
I just have to get there, which might take some time, on account of how space works and how far everything is, and quantum whatnots.
But this mech has enough power for flight across lightyears.
I’m going to turn the universe into a fuzzy blur once I calibrate my understanding of the location of the world I came from.
I know where Earth is. I know it the same way I know everything, because there are data files stored in my physical machine system that access all the knowledge in the universe, or at least a lot more than I used to be able to call up in my brain at any given time.
I thought I was smart before. I’m so much smarter now.
I know seventeen different recipes for macaroni and cheese.
I can’t make any of them, because there are no stoves the size of asteroids, and not enough boxes of macaroni in existence, but I know them.
I notice that my feelings are oddly flat.
I think that’s because I don’t have a human body giving feedback anymore.
There’s just the solid and dependable processes of all things technological.
That’s why I’m not freaking out, I have to assume.
You have to have a lot of squishy bits producing adrenaline and other things to freak out.
I fly home. It takes some amount of time.
I’m not sure how long. Time is another one of those things that is primarily moderated through squishy things.
In this machine I don’t get hungry or tired.
Whatever Drak did to hook my brain up to it, he clearly included enough nourishment for a long time.
I suspect I’m filled with sacks of sugar that are getting broken down to feed my disembodied brain.
There’s enough of them to get me from one distant point of the galaxy to the other in a matter of what I am sure is probably days and is definitely no longer than weeks.
The transporter I took from the moon didn’t take all that long, and that wasn’t a goddess robot put together by a madman with no regard for consequences.
Nothing feels entirely real. I have all my memories, and all my personality, but the lack of a feedback loop to my body creates a sense of unreality.
I feel as though at any moment I might take off the VR set and be back in the room with Arkon.
The fact that there is nothing to take off and that room is lightyears away does not matter.
Perception is nine-tenths of the law, or however that saying goes.
I come into the orbit of Earth like an angel. I decide not to go screaming into the atmosphere because I am not sure how much of me would burn off in the process and it would be a pity to land as nothing but a brain in a jar.
“Earth, this is Evie Westport of the Alpha Core,” I transmit down on all available frequencies. “I’m here with some alien tech.”
I float around in a languid circle waiting for them to get back to me. The continents roll by beneath me, looking pleasant and calm. I think of an eighteenth potential recipe for mac and cheese. Then I wonder if I will ever get to eat such a delicacy again.
I have to assume the brain in machine-ing is reversible. I’d have to get back to my body, though, of course, but how hard can that be? I feel very much as though my energy reserves are good. They’re very possibly being charged by the sun, even.
I get no response, so I lower myself down, closer to Earth. Time passes. I feel little puffs and gusts of force against my feet from time to time, but they are tickles that mean very little.
It takes some time to realize that these are weapons being fired at me. Big ones.
“It’s me!” I shout out. “Evie!”
They’re afraid of me. They can’t comprehend me. They probably can’t hear me, because my head is sticking out of the atmosphere, so really, all they can actually see is my feet and my legs and arms and maybe my torso. My attempts to broadcast a message of peace, goodwill, and theft are failing.
Everybody on the planet is getting a very large dose of existential terror, and it is my fault. It is not easy being a mechanical monster larger than many moons.
I check my feet, wondering if I have accidentally made contact with the planet and performed an accidental horror by flattening a bunch of stuff.
Oh, no, it’s okay. I’m hovering several miles above the ground.
Nobody is crushed. Everybody is freaking the fuck out, though.
I feel like Alice, from Alice in Wonderland, when she was stuck in the house and had to eat the other side of the mushroom to get smaller. Except I don’t have any mushrooms.
The reaction from the locals is not that different from the way the animals tried to get Alice out of the house, though.
They tried to set fire to the building. I continue to feel tiny little impacts on my tootsies.
I assume that’s missiles and stuff tickling the plates of metal and such.
It feels nice, actually, like little fish nibbling at excess skin.
* * *
Arkon
I watched in horror as the Fematrix turned into a thin smear of fast heat into the depths of space, taking my mate’s brain with it. There are few feelings as helpless as knowing that you have lost the very interior of your loved one to the capricious decisions of a mechanical mind.
We are able to track the robot, which is, of course, returning to Earth. That’s what Evie wants, deep down. It’s what every animal wants, to be where it feels safe.
She should have been safe with me.
Suffice to say when Drak wakes up, he is in cuffs.
“I…”
“Don’t say a word,” I cut in. “I am keeping you alive so I can get her back in her body.”
“Well…”
“Shut. Up,” I repeat, giving him a swift kick to the ribs. I am aware he thinks he can talk himself out of this. He cannot. I am on the verge of destroying him. My fury is beyond any I have ever experienced before.
“But…”
It takes everything I have not to murder him. He will not follow even a single direction.
I get up, grab a cord, and step on his chest before wrapping it around his head and in his mouth several times, making it impossible for him to speak.
“I’m going to cut your tongue out if you make so much as another noise,” I tell him, meaning every word. “The only reason you still breathe is you have the ability to get her brain out of the machine.”
He stares at me blankly.
“We are going to retrieve the Fematrix,” I tell him. “And you are going to restore the love of my life.”
“Don’t forget, she’s also the mother of your child,” he says when the cord falls away. “The body is pregnant.”
Absolute worst pregnancy announcement ever, and I’ve seen one where ten thousand hectares of irreplaceable forest went up in an afternoon.
“If you ever call her the body again…”
“Yes. You’ll kill me. I understand. Shall we recall the Fematrix, or would you like to waste time?”
“You can recall it?”
“Of course I can,” he snorts. “You think I would make an all-powerful being that does not respond to my desire?”
“You’re right,” I say. “Mad of me to think otherwise. Get her back.”
* * *
Evie
I thought the missiles and such might slow down, but if anything, they’re getting worse as humanity continues not celebrating me. Weird. I think one of the countries might have nuked another country by accident while trying to nuke me.
I wonder if maybe my message just isn’t getting through?
“It’s Evie Westport,” I repeat, broadcasting very slowly and patiently.
Another missile escapes the atmosphere and crashes harmlessly into my ankle.
I reach down to brush the debris off. To my surprise, I realize that there are actually a large number of bits and pieces over my exterior skin, most of which have shiny little wings.
It’s like I’ve been attacked by a swarm of bugs…
“Oh, dear,” I say to myself. “I know what those are. They’re not shiny wings. They’re satellites.”
I realize far too late that I have been disrupting satellite communications and probably much more. I can only imagine the field my being is giving off. I am like Alice in the rabbit’s house, my leg sticking through the front door, my head through the chimney.
I move back a bit, hopefully out of range.