Chapter 16 Hazel
Hazel
STATION C, DATE UNKNOWN
She doesn’t mind being with the body if she can ignore it.
She examines notebooks on tables, stacks of pristine mirrors wrapped in cloth, computers from every age, and many, many failed experiments discarded hither and thither.
In one, Lilith grew a tentacled plant from inside a mirror, its pink-flowered stems still reaching through its own reflection.
In others, Huxley assembled two-way mirrors into cubes, pyramids, spheres, and geometries so complex Hazel doesn’t have names for them, some as small as her fingernail, others as large as a bed.
In one mirrored cone, a Tiny stands motionless, half its body rusted stiff, the other half slipping as if molten.
No wonder none of the Tinys would come in here with her.
With a sinking stomach, she remembers the metal shards she found in the Catopic Aperture, and Robin’s refusal to help with it suddenly makes a horrible sense.
She’ll never force the Tinys to help her, even if it means losing contact with the Backward Traveller.
They can’t fix the future on such shady foundations, though clearly Huxley disagreed.
Eventually, however, she has to turn and face the human contours under the sheet, at which point the body seems to occupy the whole room. Are these your; yes they are; weakened weak—
‘You will need to pull back the sheet,’ CHARL1E says over the Tannoy.
Hazel flexes her fingers. ‘And this is definitely necessary?’
‘Affirmative.’
‘And it absolutely isn’t a human under here?’
‘Affirmative.’
‘Or a deceased human?’
‘Affirmative.’
‘But—’
‘Hazel Brandt, I calculate we could spend up to three hours procrastinating in this manner, however you will still have to pull back the sheet. I highly recommend bravery as the most efficient expedient.’
She bounces on her toes. ‘I hate when you’re right.’
Cautiously, she approaches the body, reaches out a hand, and pulls back the sheet.
The cheeks and closed eyes are smooth and waxy like a corpse, but the skin is inhuman: the mottled green-and-khaki of a frog, with chestnut, Mandelbrot-style stripes over the bald scalp.
‘It’s not … alien?’ Hazel says, only half joking.
‘In the sense of extraterrestrial, negative. In the sense of uncanny and unknown, to you at least, affirmative.’
The body’s bare-chested, and Hazel tucks the sheet around its shoulders. She’s been here weeks, but without human contact it’s felt much longer. Strange as it is, the body represents living contact—if only it can be moved from its corpse-adjacent state, she won’t have to be alone. My dead parents—
‘Hazel Brandt?’
She jumps, having forgotten momentarily that CHARL1E is present. The body isn’t here for her company. When we die, someone must take over who can remain here indefinitely and operate the Arch …
‘This is what Lilith was talking about in The Last Acts Of The Keepers.’ Hazel strokes the corpse-adjacent object’s nose. It’s cool, like an amphibian waiting in the grass for the sun to rise. In secret, CHARL1E and I …
‘CHARL1E, is this your body?’
‘It was supposed to be.’
Hazel wishes there was some way she could look at CHARL1E, but there’s only his disembodied voice to connect with. ‘Lilith died before she could finish it, didn’t she?’
‘There were technical and social difficulties with the project.’
‘Social?’
‘Huxley did not agree that I should have a body. He calculated that another project would be more fruitful.’
‘The Catopic Aperture.’ Hazel turns to the time-ruined Tiny in the mirrored cone. Huxley must have felt strongly indeed to commit such violence against the Tinys, but no ends could justify those means.
‘Affirmative. Huxley believed that the Catopic Aperture would allow those who are not identical twins to communicate across time.’
‘Did it work?’
‘Early tests indicated that it had a 23.59 percent probability of working.’
‘I’m not going to ask you to show your workings. Why bother though?’
‘Huxley believed that if he could speak with Keepers from other eras, they would have a better chance of preserving humanity. He did not believe that a body would make me … humanity.’
‘That’s not the correct usage of humanity.’ Hazel frowns. ‘But you must know what humanity means?’
‘My definition is particular to my knowledge and calculations. I have never fully comprehended what humanity means to humans.’
‘Probably because we’re not sure ourselves.’ Hazel shrugs. It’s ridiculous to talk about a collective humanity when there’s only one of her left. ‘Did Lilith and Huxley fight over the right way forward?’
‘Negative, no blows were exchanged.’
‘You can drop the highly literal robotic act,’ Hazel says. ‘The jig is up: I know you’re sentient.’
‘Sentience does not correlate to a particular mode of expression. I was conditioned to speak this way, it is the manner in which I am comfortable communicating,’ CHARL1E replies.
‘Your manner of expression also regularly annoys me. It lacks specificity and you only approximately translate your thoughts into words. However, I do not imply that this makes you lesser because it does not; it only makes you different.’
Hazel nods slowly. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. You’re right again. Annoyingly. Let me rephrase: Did Lilith and Huxley argue about the right way forward?’
‘Uncertain. They reached an agreement to separate their experiments and their social dynamics shifted significantly, however they did not cease communications.’
I love my brother, but it becomes hard to like him when he takes his experiments so far …
What would Hazel have done, if the last person in the world, her own flesh and blood, did terrible things?
Like Lilith, she couldn’t have borne the loneliness of not talking to them, but there would’ve been so little left to talk about.
Hazel traces the scalp’s mottled patterns. She knows the feeling of being the last, but this body of CHARL1E’s is different. What must it be like, to be first and last at once?
‘Hazel Brandt, I would like you to finish my body. I would like a body.’
She folds her arms. ‘It’d give you a lot of power, CHARL1E. If I finish your body, you’ll have access to the remains of the Arch, maybe even time travel if you can figure out how to fix it. You’ll have access to the Catopic Aperture, the inside of Tree, the Tinys…’ She trails off.
‘You do not trust me still.’
‘Yet. I do not trust you yet.’ She runs a hand through her hair.
This project is the only thing that might sufficiently distract her from her returning memories.
Plus, if this Deed fails, CHARL1E really could become the last resort.
She blows out her cheeks. Better an untrustworthy last resort than none.
Lilith’s notes cover a desk by the window, her neat handwriting giving instructions, clearance codes, details of bugs.
It looks like the project was almost done when Lilith died, and there’s enough here that Hazel can probably finish it. ‘Alright. I’ll give it a shot.’
‘Hazel Brandt.’ CHARL1E corrects himself. ‘Hazel. Thank you.’
She’d better be right about this. Come home; weakened weak—She shakes her head, squeezing her eyes shut. ‘Let’s begin.’
‘Very well. Pull the sheet down to the hips.’
It feels inappropriate, as if she’s peeking at someone’s nudity while they’re asleep.
The body’s uninhabited state doesn’t sap it of personhood; it deserves basic decency, not least because Hazel knows the personality that’s meant to be inside it.
She tucks the sheet around the corpse’s hipbones and steps away, hands clasped behind her back.
It has no belly button, and the torso is pale green, like the underside of a newt, but the same Mandelbrot patterns arch around its sides from the back.
‘You must find the button at the base of the skull. Push it.’
She prods the flesh-like coating under the neck until she finds a small, round button, and clicks it.
Lines appear on the torso in a sideways H, growing into rifts as the panels that make up the chest cavity pull away, revealing the machinery underneath.
Her memories don’t even whisper, she’s never seen robotics this complex.
The chest panels pull into the body’s sides with a hydraulic hiss like a Tiny retracting its arms, but with smoother natural movements.
Centuries separate Tiny technology and this corpse-adjacent object.
A light flicks on inside the torso and the body falls silent.
Hazel walks around the gurney, examining the circuitry. ‘Extraordinary. But you say it’s not finished?’
‘Affirmative. I am not finished.’
She pulls up. ‘Apologies, I should’ve said “you,” not “it.”’ The automaton is more like an unconscious body than a corpse, its exposed wires troubling as living veins, and oily lubricants unsettling as spilt blood.
At the end of the day though, it’s a circuit, and Hazel can do circuits.
In lieu of the body’s creator, she’s the next best surgeon.
‘I’ll need to bring my kit over from Tree.’
‘Affirmative.’ After a brief pause, CHARL1E adds, ‘She awaits your arrival.’
‘Great, now I’ve just got to keep my fingers crossed the Tinys will let me in.’
Hazel uses an oxygen pipe by the airlock to refill her breathing apparatus and ventures outside.
She finds Robin by the shore, weaving among the shards of mirror half buried in the ground, hunting for sea-swept treasures.
She crouches to talk to the Tiny, the hot wind flicking grains of debris over her biosuit boots.
‘Will you take me to Tree please, Robin?’
Robin pauses, eyes tipped to one side. It shakes its head.
‘Please, I really need the tools from Tree.’ She imagines the glitch barrelling up the timeline towards them. ‘It’s important for the Deed. I think it might be the only way we can stop everything going wrong.’
Robin’s tail sways.
‘You can ask the others, that’s fine, but I think it’s what Lilith would’ve wanted.’