Searching for Sun Chapter Four

Four

Fact: one tablespoon of soil contains over seven billion organisms.

Ok . . . eww.

I could literally eat seven billion organisms in one swallow.

Why do you think of these things, sweetie?

Is this for that dumb joke volume again?

No . . .

—Asami (Hadano) Five & Cloey

Cloey’s JPV

“What happened to him?” Asami asked, relaxing slightly.

She knew Heidi, she trusted the older woman. She’d help Sam. When Asami was ten, she had been caught trying to grow fat zebra tomatoes in an incubator. Heidi had called off the angry nurses and explained that medical equipment was too expensive to be used for potted plants. Her voice had been stern, but her mouth had twitched up at a corner, and she had let Asami keep the tomato plant. It seemed, almost, as if she had been proud of Asami’s single-minded interest in the plant. Asami didn’t understand why, since she had been genetically designed to be interested in plants, but Heidi’s pride made her happy, and she couldn’t help being a little proud herself for causing that warmth in the older woman. Since then, when she spoke to Asami, Heidi’s eyes had always retained an intimate twinkle, as if she were telling a secret.

“Sit, please,” Heidi said crisply, a new formality in her voice.

Asami stood, the absence of that warmth in Heidi forming a nauseous ball inside her stomach. What had changed? Why did the people closest to her have to change on her like this, why on this day?

Heidi looked up and smiled expectantly. The personal twinkle was back but it seemed almost like an afterthought, a technique, a charm used to put patients at ease. She gestured again towards the chair, a gesture Asami remembered Heidi using on adult guests from the government—polite, impersonal, professional.

It was the awkwardness of strangers between them. It had been eight years for Heidi, but only a day for Asami. Had she been forgotten? Asami couldn’t imagine what she was to Heidi, one more child out of . . . there would be hundreds of them now if everything had gone accordingly. The familiar eyes and features of the older woman endeared Heidi to her, provoking her to please and obey. She wanted Heidi to love her.

“Sam had complications after the freeze,” Heidi continued as if Asami had taken the offered seat instead of standing rigid and fixed behind the chair. The desk had been put back to rights, its empty, black surface shining. The coffee cup and spill had been wiped away as well.

Heidi sat behind the desk.

“Is he going to be alright?”

“Possibly a bad freeze serum, but we’ll do the best we can for him. I don’t want to worry anyone or make them feel the freeze process is unsafe. We don’t know that yet. I’ll make an official report about it today.”

“Is it unsafe?” Asami asked.

“No, what happened to Sam should never happen again.” Heidi leaned forward and squeezed Asami’s hand in reassurance. Heidi’s grip, once strong and smooth, felt stiff, her skin softer and wrinkled.

Asami caught the word choice. She turned the sentence over in her mind. Was Sam the first? Did Heidi know what was wrong with him?

“Should never,” because it was a scientific error they had put right?

“Should never,” because bad things can’t be explained, they just shouldn’t have happened?

“Should never,” because it might happen again?

“Now, how about you Asami? Do you remember why you’re here?” Heidi asked.

Asami felt the shift in conversation like a closed door. Heidi was done talking with her about Sam. Asami sat. She looked at the foot of the desk where Sam had fallen. For some reason, she wished there was a trace of him left behind, a hair on the floor, a drop of coffee. The quick erasure felt personal as if they had erased a piece of Sam himself.

“Can I see him later?” Asami asked. She wanted to hear what he had been trying to say. Why he thought they needed to go back to Earth.

“He may not be fit to see anyone.”

“He’s my best friend, Heidi.”

“I know. Now, the sooner you answer these questions, the sooner you can rest. What do you remember?”

Asami stifled her frustration by squeezing her hands together till they ached. She would see Sam, even if it meant sneaking past Heidi. She had already shown too much interest, now Heidi would be keeping an eye on her. Asami found herself answering in a colder tone than she had meant to: “I’m here to analyze the plant life the Libras started, and to introduce more plants to Gliese’s environment.”

“Do you remember how old you are?”

“I was twenty-four.” Asami glanced at the three thin lines like smile ripples by the corners of Heidi’s mouth. “I would have been thirty-two this year.”

“Forty, if you had stayed on Earth.” Heidi smiled and the lines deepened into crevices. “Can you recall your last day on Earth before the cryo tube?”

Asami studied her crooked cuticles, her hands that should now be aged. Were her cells aged? Her mind filtered backwards. She had gone running the day of the freeze, wanting to be in motion before she was paralyzed for what could be forever. As she pumped her legs, carrying herself further than she had ever run before, she had memorized the burn in her muscles. When she finally made it back to her quarters, she had hacked up phlegm in the sink.

 Eight years of freeze sleep had paled her memories of life on Earth. She’d thought they would be crisp and fresh, asleep in a blink and awake the next moment. But time was warped and distant. She couldn’t remember the exact feeling of her legs in motion. Some internal clock hadn’t remained still. It had kept ticking.

Asami swallowed and wondered if Cloey’s power cell would start after such a long trip. In all the fuss about Sam, she’d almost forgotten Cloey. A throb of guilt trickled through her. Cloey had agreed to power down until Asami was awake, it seemed the safest route, the one least likely to draw attention to the unconventional android. Asami hadn’t wanted anyone quietly “upgrading” her equipment while she was out of the way.

“Where is my stuff?”

“It will be sent to your room.” Heidi smiled down into her work tablet, as though pleased with Asami’s progress. The tablet was a thin interactive holographic screen projected from her desk, much nicer than Asami’s physical tablet. Heidi’s screen had been tinted on the back, shaded from Asami’s view.

“You should know this is only a temporary period outside of freeze. We will only require your service for six months. This will give us time to analyze your data and give your body a chance to rest. Then you will, of course, go back into freeze until we begin mass de-freeze the year prior to our arrival on Gliese.”

Asami nodded. She’d been briefed on all this before the freeze and felt impatient. The thought of something having gone wrong, a faulty power cord, Cloey never waking again, sent nervous cracks through her patient façade.

Alone in her small bunk, Asami opened the storage unit—a large metal box—and checked the power cell. It was no lower than she had anticipated, but still dangerously low for most tech as old as Cloey was.

Asami unsealed the lid and peered down at a mound of dirty, yellow hair. She hadn’t been able to afford the lightweight metal gears and bones most androids enjoyed. Cloey’s frame was made up of steel, the best Asami could buy at the time. Though she was a petite three feet, five inches, Cloey weighed a solid one hundred and ten pounds. She had a humanish face, if out of proportion like a doll’s, with overly large eyes that glowed when she was processing something, and hair that needed to be upgraded since Asami had played with it as a child. Though she was covered in a type of skin, flesh-toned synthetics, her joints no longer fit seamlessly, and the wires and blue coolant circulatory system showed through the gaps in her prosthetics. She wore a thin fabric bodysuit meant to keep her synthetic skin from cracking.

Cloey had been Asami’s childhood companion. Most kids had gotten rid of their android friends in favor of more productive android assistants or had dispensed with an android in favor of the chip, but a part of Asami felt that Cloey was family. She dragged the android across the barren room to the power supply in the wall and plugged her directly into the power outlet.

Cloey’s eyes were modeled after a humans, but the glow of her processor lit them like lamps. Her head tilted sideways, and her arms wrapped around herself as her teeth began to chatter.

“If I was human, Asami, I’d say it was a bit cold in here.”

The familiar cadence of the android’s voice warmed Asami. “Lucky for you, since you have no pain centers.”

“Yeah, well, it does nothing for my hair. The cold has made it brittle,” Cloey gripped a handful of hair, “feel it, it’s like straw.”

Asami wished Cloey’s had been the first voice she had heard waking up. She knew the words came from a voice box, not lungs, and that the moving mouth and tongue were simply aesthetics, but they were comforting.

“This is space; it’s supposed to be cold.”

Cloey sighed, “tell me you haven’t been living in this box for long. It’s absolutely dismal.”

“It’s empty,” Asami looked around the room.

“Exactly,” Cloey sniffed in disgust. “You could have at least brought me a bouquet of flowers to work with from the conservatory.”

“I’ll be sure you get some.”

Cloey’s eyes narrowed. “The net is so empty out here. There is so much less chatter.”

Asami wondered what it was like sometimes, to have a network in your head, to access information with a thought, to send messages to anyone. It was close to telepathy, except with text appearing in one’s periphery vision. Their third sight, as some of the G.P kids liked to say. It was also close to an android. Asami had always worried about how much of her personality was natural; the chip would escalate that paranoia.

Asami imagined Heidi leaning over her psychological profile on a holographic projector and tweaking the results towards a logical, meticulous mindset. Part of the reason she loved Cloey so much was that she filled in Asami’s gaps. Her interest in aesthetics and beauty complimented Asami’s sterile logic.

Cloey stood, her metal knees creaking. She bent like an invalid with a pained expression, her mouth puckering.

“Need an oil change?”

 “I need a drink,” Cloey rubbed her forehead.

Asami smiled at the idea, “Is shorting out your voice processor the new fad with androids? I don’t have credits for a replacement, and I haven’t heard of an android gifted with a stomach. Not that I’d be against it.”

Cloey waved her words aside as her eyes brightened. “You know I’m like Aurora. Minus the spindle, and the bed to lay out in, and you know, a prince. Not that you aren’t a fabulous face to see.”

“Thanks,” Asami said dryly.

“But, you know, asleep for one hundred years, preserved.”

“Yeah, I caught the connection.”

“Scary, right? I’m like a princess.”

“You need a drink.”

“What’s wrong?” Cloey looked over Asami’s face. “It’s hard to tell, you humans have such minor facial reactions, but you’re looking extra gloomy now, so what happened? Is it freeze?”

Asami gripped Cloey’s chilly fingers as they reached for her face.

“I saw something I wasn’t supposed to,” Asami said. “Heidi says Sam had a bad freeze serum. They took him off somewhere, but it wasn’t nurses that took him, it was security guards. And he was yelling that we need to go back, I think he meant to Earth.”

“Ew, okay, creepy. So, when do we go see him?”

“Soon as you’re—” Asami gestured at Cloey vaguely.

“Charging, Asami, it’s called charging,” Cloey glowered at the power cord. “You go. Be a socialite—do you, like, even remember how to talk to people? Scratch that, you never did, but learn fast. My jaw feels rusty, gosh, I can’t stop talking! Focus, focus—so yeah, go find someone with a chip who can give you the dirty on Sam. You’re too slow with the tablet. I need a tune-up anyways,” Cloey rolled a rusty-sounding shoulder, “and maybe a teensy bit of oil.” Cloey glared as Asami didn’t move. “So go!”