Post 67

Episode 21

Hoshi

It’s early. Much too early to try to uncoil out of bed and make your way to the command center, but something feels off. It’s a shame, because you are very comfortable. Kas has curled himself around you in a very cuddly way and has that sweet softness that you only get to see when he’s sleeping and not his usual asshole self. And the bunk is warm and a haven of irresponsibility. But that nagging sense of wrongess is only getting stronger and you can’t shake the feeling that maybe something went wrong with the Panopticon installation or Shori’s sick or something miserably practical and important requires your attention. You sigh a little with regret and extract yourself from Kas’s surprisingly tight grip and make your way to the control center. 

Back in the day, before Kas, before Des. When it was just you and Shori, you had almost looked forward to sleepless nights. The stillness of space and the slow sweep of the universe around you was timeless. A gentle reminder of the Void, only in living technicolor and you’d spent many hours with her just drifting through nothingness, enjoying being the only two living creatures in the whole universe. You got a hint of that feeling now, as you settled into the interface and felt Shori’s mind fold around you in relief. 

You were right. There was something wrong. But it was something subtle and oddly familiar, a taste of bitterness in the sweet. It almost reminded you of how Kas’s mind tasted when he was on Snow. But that’s ridiculous, you say to yourself. I tested and cleaned him out myself. It can’t be Kas. 

“Hello, Little Brother. Nice night for a stroll, isn’t it?”

The mind-voice is like a gong in the silence. In Shori’s interface, you turn to see Chiyoko, in her Sunyata form. She flickers in and out of your mental vision like lightning through the clouds. “Chiyoko?” You’re whispering, but you don’t notice it because you haven’t seen her in years and there was something viscerally off about her that you just couldn’t place. “Is that, you? What are you?” You reach out to touch her, but she slips away, back into the clouds and you lose your shell form to follow her into the Void. 

“Brother,” she says. “I’ve missed you, you know that?”

She’s changed the visualization to be their old house. You’re in the garden, settling on the balcony in your juvenile forms. “I know. I could feel you sometimes, over the years,” you say. “But I couldn’t ever talk with you, how is this” you wave to the visualization, “possible?”

“Shori.” She smiles. “I figured out I can’t talk with you alone, but the interface means that our different brains can finally meet up.” She looks at you with a mischievous expression. “Aren’t you happy I’m so clever?”

You don’t answer. “Chi-chan. I felt you all these years.” You don’t smile back at her. “Something has changed.”

She sighs and looks out over the garden again. “Yes, it has. Things were done, choices were made. Is that why you’re looking for me?”

You nod.

There is a long moment of silence. 

“I never wanted to get you involved with this, you know. The shell is the only thing we want. Just let us have it and you can go home. Go live your life. Leave.” She looks at you with that intense confidence you remember from her as a juvenile and it makes you a little melancholy. 

“You know I can’t do that.” You shrug. “That shell is a person, you know. His name is Kas. We’re sort of…attached, I guess. At least that’s what Des says.”

She gives you a surprised look. “Of course it’s not a person. It’s a Mentem. The only functional Mentem in the galaxy. Bought and paid for in blood and power.” She stops for a moment as if looking at something only she can see. “Like all shells.”

“You can’t have him.” She doesn’t respond. “Look, Chiyoko, I don’t know what you are now. I don’t know what you had to do. Believe me, I understand that morality becomes...flexible when you have limited options. But why are you helping Thiel? They killed almost our entire species to manufacture a drug that kills people just to jack up shells to help them with world domination. Seriously. What’s the loyalty here? Just come with us and we’ll go do something heroic and fundamentally flawed that’s honorable and be the stuff folk legends are made of.”

She leans her head back and laughs whole-heartedly. 

You scowl. “I wasn’t trying to be funny.”

She wipes her eyes. “That’s what makes it so hilarious.” She lets her chuckles die off for a moment. “Jiro, what are we supposed to do? On our own like that? We’re hunted animals alone. At least I have a chance to take Thiel down from the inside this way.” She stops. 

“Is that what you’re doing?” You try to prompt her. “You’re trying to take apart Thiel?”

“At first, I suppose.” She seems pensive. “You know, it’s easy to talk about freedom and honor when you don’t have anything. When you’re not responsible for anyone.”

You’re confused. “You sound like a Terran bureaucrat. What are you, middle management now?”

“Hmm. Sort of, I suppose. I like being in charge of things, Jiro. I like having power. I like having people depend on me and being able to make decisions that matter.” She cocks her head to the side. “What are you doing with your life? Whoring out to miners and station merchants for a few plasma relays and next month’s food ration? Is that the freedom you want me to have?”

You stop and blink in surprise. “I guess I never thought of it before. It’s just always been a matter of surviving until tomorrow.”

She nods. “Yep. But then, twenty years have passed. You can’t protect Kas. You can’t protect Shori. You’re just another trophy to some Dragon Hunter year after year after year. And you’re trapped just like me.” She gives you another smile. “At least climbing the corporate ladder gives me something to do. And the golden handcuffs are very pretty.” She looks at her wrist. “And the power is addictive. So much better than the Void.” She closes her eyes as if experiencing something private. Then opens them to look at you directly. “Go home, Jiro. Leave Kas. Hell, leave Des as well.” She gives you a smile with a lot of teeth. “She’s an interesting woman. I guess my shell’s former operator and her were very close at one time. I wouldn’t mind getting to experience that mind-fuck with her for a millenia or two.”

“What are you talking about?” you ask in confusion. “Des is a monk. She doesn’t play sex games or mind games. Immune, as far as I can tell.”

She shrugs. “All the more fun to break her, then. It’s something to do. Jiro, brother, listen to me. Do you know how long forever is?” You shake your head. “No one does. Because time and space are all folded up for me, do you understand? Do you know what a curse it is to be bored and in pain FOREVER?”

“Why are you in pain, oniisan? I can help you,” you say, trying to hold one of her hands. “Taking away pain is my specialty.”

She shakes you off. “You don’t understand yet. Give it a few more decades and then we’ll talk. Trust me. Living is a horrifying experience. Dying is a horrifying experience. All reality is just suffering.”

“Chiyoko,” you breathe out, feeling her mental agony keenly, but for once, not having the right gift. “I’m so sorry. For everything.” She turns away from you. “Chiyoko, please don’t be like this. I don’t know what to do.” The last comes out almost child-like. It’s an echo from that long-ago night when their lives changed so abruptly and you can tell she’s thinking of it as well.

“Go home, brother. Go home and leave me alone. Find some nice clinic on a backwater planet and Heal until your Pontifax burns out and the Void swallows you again. Just stop trying to get involved in things you don’t understand.”

“I understand that I want to help you,” you say, trying to get her to turn back to you. Trying to comfort her with just words. Trying to make some sort of connection as you feel her pulling further away. “Chiyoko, I’m not a mind-healer, but I can help you a little. Come with me, let go of Thiel. Just come be a person for a while and things will be better.”

She looks at you, finally, but it’s with an expression you don’t understand. “Things will never get better, brother. And for you, they are about to get much, much worse.” She sighs. “You can’t save me, Jiro. You can’t save anyone. You always were too soft. Shame you haven’t learned from your mistakes.” 

Your sister places her palms together and the interface around you starts unwinding. Shori’s mind begins to tear and warp in ways you don’t understand.

“Chiyoko!” you scream and you’re flung far away on a black, churning seascape thick with storm clouds and lightning. “Chiyoko, why? I love you! Don’t leave me!” 

But it’s too late. You’re trapped in Shori’s insanity as Chiyoko strips all the neural connections raw and stimulates a random cacophony of noise all around you.