Searching for Sun Chapter Eight

Eight

Mandy said that the stuff in your eye after you sleep has color meanings. Yellow you dreamed of love, brown death, green wealth, colorless fame, and black death. Why do I always dream about death? I don’t even remember doing it. I should have logs of my dreams!

I’m pretty sure that’s just your mascara . . .

—Cloey & Asami (Hadano) Five

Cloey’s JPV

Twenty-four years later, Earth time

Twelve years later, Resolute time

Space, Resolute, Date: 2373

Asami shuddered awake. Her blankets had fallen off in the middle of the night and the sapping chill of space had sent her freeze dreams, strange twisting times wandering in black lands. But they were only dreams. She didn’t remember enough, as if her mind had created an eggshell around those memories, she was too cautious to crack. Fragments kept slipping back to her, and more and more often she had blinked away the face that had begun to whittle away at her confidence: Maxi, screaming mad, trapped in that land with her. What had she done to make Maxi hate her?

Cloey had laughed at this. “Asami, everyone hates you in your dreams, from what I’ve read, you humans dream up people to kill and torture you in your sleep. It’s like self-inflicted karma for your sins.”

Asami kept telling herself it was the mirage of a sick mind. But even in the waking world Maxi seemed to hate her. Maybe because of the bad freeze, because Asami had escaped, and Maxi hadn’t.

Cloey’s stomach blinked on and off in the dark. Asami wiped chilled sweat from her neck and slapped at the persistent alarm on her tablet, which droned in her ears. She scrubbed her face with her palm and squinted down at the vibrant screen tucked inside her android’s abdomen. Her agenda for the day written out like a script for her. She ignored it all except for the date, which Cloey had been logging ever since Asami woke from the second freeze.

Personal count, Day 321.

Estimated time till landing day, Days: 44 and counting.

Asami skimmed reluctantly over the agenda beginning with holo lab testing.

Alec fidgeted in uniform and Asami noticed a trickle of sweat slip down his moon pale neck making a damp spot on his dull, mint green collar. He was at least a head taller than herself, but he was so thin and wiry she’d never thought him tall. Or maybe she still couldn’t get the image of his cherub-cheeked child face from her mind, though it had thinned and grown since then. Something in her still thought of him as a baby. He caught her watching and smiled, laughing at his own nerves.

“It’s funny how this room bothers me. I don’t think the real thing will. It’s just, I don’t know that this is even a true portrayal of Gliese.”

“I know what you mean,” Asami squinted into the dull, pre-dusk light. The world seemed to expand around them in barren desert and rock. And the light was irritatingly low so that Asami felt as if a fog lay over her eyes, fuzzing out the details of the horizon and the space between the crew members. While the details were striking and real to the eye there was something overly crisp about the rocks around her feet, and under-detailed about the sand shifting around the rock.

“Get to work,” Clamps’ voice hissed over the lab radio. She was exempt from these exercises, as she watched their progress from the control booth. Today was the beginning of the third week in scouting theory and hopefully their last, if they passed the test. Each group was expected to identify and take samples of soil, water, and plant health. No one knew what awaited them planet-side, but they all had to be prepared to survey and determine the health of the ecosystem.

“Let’s just stick together this time,” Alec sighed. “If we finish early, we’ll have to talk with Clamps or one of her egg heads who wants to impress her.”

Alec was smart, he had caught on early. There was no impressing Clamps, there was just keeping beyond the reach of her overzealous eye for catching mistakes. Asami was in no rush to finish, and talking helped distract her from the gloom of the sun’s perpetual dusk.

The forest was thick with trees, and golden twilight filtered through the branches highlighting the dust in the air. A blueberry bush shook and Asami pretended not to notice Alec startle away from the offending rustle.

A moment later Asami flinched at the soft rattle of dry grass rubbing together in the wind. She wondered if Clamps would send a poisonous snake their way, just to test them on medical protocols. That was part of the eerie nature of the lab. It wasn’t nature she was frightened by, that was more predictable, it was the people behind the design.

Alec tapped her arm, “Clamps just simulated a bunny trail.”

Asami watched the backend of a brown hare disappear beneath the brush. It could mean nothing, or it could be an excuse to send a fox dashing across their feet, or a bear lumbering across their path. When neither happened Asami led the way forward. If she were walking them into a trap it wasn’t as if she were in actual danger. She would simply be marked “injured” and told to re-read the nature guidelines. With all the brilliancy of the simulation it lacked the danger and wonder of nature.

A group of trainee ghosts clustered in a circle. Asami watched them as Alec crouched to scrape up a moss sample. The children were unwilling to separate inside the holo lab world, but something about the way they were clustering bothered Asami. It was a quiet cluster, as if a group were watching one of their own lift fries behind the head chef’s back.

“Don’t move,” Alec gripped her arm, voice terse.

Asami tried not to jerk her head around to look. Carefully, she glanced forward, taking in the image of a man. She had expected an animal of prey, a ridiculous bear, a leopard, an alien monster. The man was in an old uniform, a dusty gray jacket, and pants with heavy boots. On his shoulder were formal patches, stars of commendation. Beneath scraggly black hair his face was gaunt and unfriendly. Asami knew from the training book these were all theoretical signs of a fallen society or a deserter. It pained her how black and white the high-ups colored these scenarios. As if people were caricatures and nothing and no one was unpredictable or different from what they appeared to be. The man carried a firearm and seemed nervous, shifting from foot to foot.

Despite the rigidity of the simulations, she’d been looking forward to this scenario most. It had been talked of as the end of training. First contact. The Libra crew could be a welcoming hospitable society, or over the years, if needs had grown and resources thinned, they could be hostile. Asami wondered if they would still speak Earth Universal, or if the crew would still have retained any ancient languages. She didn’t think anyone had been trained in linguistics, which just seemed stupid to her. But then, everything about first contact training seemed counterintuitive, like it really wasn’t about establishing relations at all.

It appeared this simulation was a wild straw. Or something had gone wrong with the simulation all together. The high-ups never mixed mission goals. This was supposed to be scout training not first contact.

Asami held up her arms in a gesture of surrender as the man pulled a gun.

Alec hissed, “We aren’t supposed to engage without a senior officer.”

Asami sighed. It had been a natural impulse. She wet her lips to speak.

“Please—”

A bullet shot through her chest. She felt the simulated blow and wobbled back a step, rolling her eyes. Of course she couldn’t reason with the man. Clamps and the high-ups’ rules said they must not engage. In this safety room, the enemy performed to the rulebook as well. No matter how unrealistic. She felt her limbs numb over with the simulated drug and sat down with dignity before she fell over like a wounded soldier giving the high-ups the dramatic image.

Alec made no motion, nor did he attempt to communicate with his eyes. He pretended not to see the man, sliding back along the path, and crouching beside her.

“Just follow the rules, Asami. Improvise when you can actually make a difference.” Alec took the samples from her before she lost them in the undergrowth.

The man bared his teeth and fled back into the brush. Obviously, this simulation would be counted as a failure for her. She could already imagine Clamps’ smile as she punched some nasty comment onto her profile for Heidi to analyze.

“I’ll turn in the samples,” Alec frowned, “you know, I don’t think they will mark you down for getting shot. We weren’t supposed to encounter the Libra colony till the last segment of training. Someone must have made a mistake.”

Or wanted to have some fun, Asami thought. “Go before you’re late. I can feel the paralysis already wearing off. Training must be over.” As if on cue a voice clicked on in her ears and Clamps voice crackled across the ozone.

“All groups return to the lecture hall to debrief.”

Alec trotted off and Asami waited till she felt the last of the paralysis leave her legs before standing. It was only a mild sedative, meant to ensure no one could cheat and pretend they had not been injured in simulation. The same sedative was given for snake bite, falling off a cliff, and apparently being shot in the chest.

She knew she should log off the scene, but her eye was drawn to the scuff marks in the dirt where the ghost children had been gathered. She traversed the trees, leaning on one as her head swam from the drug. Small feet had crushed the underbrush. To the side of a tree the dirt was scuffled, and moss had been scraped into a circle with a stick in it like a teepee. She remembered playing such games, building miniature houses for acorns to live in.

Then she saw flecks of red in the dirt. The moss hut twitched as if something were inside. She flicked the moss aside with her shoe and felt her stomach grow weak. A small body skidded across the dirt from the force of her kick and Asami’s skin crawled at the realistic give of soft, warm flesh against her shoe. Beneath the clump of moss, a mouse had been buried. A stick had been driven through its panting body.

She knew it wasn’t real. She could tell by the way it moved, in jerky twitches, almost fishlike in its death throes. It was not in pain, it was only an image, an idea. If it were alive, perhaps she would have forced herself to kill it and put it out of its pain. Instead, she looked at it again and noticed that the stick had not entered the body more than once. She wondered if the children had done this before. The mouse twitched again, gazing at her in glazed fear. It had no real feelings, but she covered it again in a mossy grave as she would have done for a real creature, to lessen its terror.

The children were long gone but the whole session would have been recorded and each of their actions watched. Something like this could not have gone unnoticed. She wondered if it had been an accident but something about the way the children had gathered, fastening themselves in, told her it wasn’t. Perhaps it was natural. Children were cruel, and un-empathetic.

Asami put distance between herself and the mouse before logging out of the simulation. The first time she had been in the holo lab she had expected the world to fade in and out. Instead, it felt as if she were entering a room only to find herself on a planet. Asami always found it more unsettling to leave the wideopen plain behind as she stepped back into the metallic world of computers and hallways with dead-ends. The world that seemed so endless narrowed in a startling way.

Maybe she found it unnerving because the exit was never concealed in a rock formation or in a fake building. It was always freestanding, wherever she was at the time, forcing her to cross through air like a portal into another world.

As soon as she exited the holo pod, she wished she’d been less quick. Clamps had everyone gathered around the large monitor, spanning the whole wall. Instead of their lesson plan, Asami was treated to a close up of her own face. She was surprised by the expressions filtering across what she thought had been a mask of indifference. Instead, her face was an open book: surprised, curious, excited, determined. She saw herself raise her arms in peace and whisper “please” like a moon-kissed idiot before the gun tore a shot through her chest. Wanting to close her eyes, she watched the monitor zoom in on her jerking frame, and then capture a bored sigh from her mouth, along with the exasperated eye-roll as she sat, or rather fell back, on the trail.

The video paused. Clamps and a class of eyes turned on her coolly. “And what, Miss Five, do you call this?”

“Dying? Badly?” Asami shrugged. There was no soothing the Clamps.

“Interesting, because your younger, less experienced partner seemed to know exactly what he was supposed to do.”

Asami held her tongue as the video rolled showing Alec not making eye contact, though he was in perfect view of the Libra hologram to be shot as well. He paused briefly over her body before walking away. Like that would ever play in real life.

Asami only just had the presence of mind not to be caught rolling her eyes again. Clamps did not seem to care if one was twelve or eighty-nine. One did not get away with eye-rolling.

“Ms. Clamps is unimpressed with your latest performance, frankly, so am I, but for other reasons. It seems you are not taking these sessions very seriously.” Heidi’s tone was direct and unsympathetic.

Asami didn’t reply, unsure what words could communicate all that she felt.

“As far as I can tell, Alec’s floating you. Do I need to demote you to something less taxing on your mind since you obviously aren’t using it?”

“No one is,” Asami muttered and closed her eyes at Heidi’s sharp look. “Heidi, an eleven-year-old could take these samples.”

“So, what’s your excuse?”

“They’re not real. You already have the data. I mean, you created it. This is all like a scavenger hunt. I don’t need to be babied; I need real work.”

“So, you thought you would be an anthropologist for the day?”

Asami leaned back, rubbing her palms on her pants. Mercifully, Heidi didn’t play the video . . . again.

“I could attribute your breach of protocol to defiance of the rulebook,” Heidi looked at her meaningfully.

“I didn’t know for sure it was a hologram, not right away. We weren’t supposed to meet any colonists till the final training week.”

“Which is exactly what I told Ms. Clamps. You were engaging based on instinct,” Heidi smiled dismissively. “Though that eye-roll did nothing to endear you. Let’s leave it at that, and next time, take Alec’s advice and follow the rules. Get your head in the game or when you actually get a chance to do your job you will find many more compliant volunteers stepping into your shoes.”

Asami swallowed her defense. She stood, unsure if she should bring up the incident with the children.

“More?” Heidi leaned back; her severe demeanor relaxed now that she had said her piece.

“The children killed a mouse in the holo lab.”

“Children are often brutal.”

Asami felt heat build around her neck. “Maybe it isn’t them as much as the environment. The holo lab doesn’t follow the same rules but some of us have nothing to compare it with.”

“It’s better than no exposure surely,” Heidi replied.

“It’s teaching them to devalue life.”

“Perhaps, as you say, it’s a disturbing sign, but in another light, it may be a sign of just the opposite. The children know that it’s not a real environment and it was not a real mouse. Their actions were not murderous. It is equivalent to defacing an artifice to confirm the reality beneath it. In a sense, they were killing the illusion.”

Asami saw the logic, but it felt twisted, as if more credit was being given to the children’s intellect than to their vicious act.

“In any case, let me worry about them. That is my job,” Heidi finally smiled, coming around the desk and gripping her arm in a gesture of reassurance. “I’m not angry with you, Asami. I understand you are a smart, capable woman whom we value as a member of this crew. I just don’t like to see you struggling. You’re not making new friends and I expected to see you as one of the leaders, diminishing the tension between the older groups and the younger.”

Asami bit at the inside of her lip, knowing Heidi would never acknowledge the terms freezy and ghosts, at least not out loud.

“Continue to be an example, like you have done with that nice boy from batch ten. Make more friends, focus on your assignments, and I can promise you, the real work will come all too soon.”