For a moment there, | wondered if | was dreaming. The next 
moment, | was wondering if it mattered, and then | was holding her, 
desperate sobbing breaths into her shoulder, murmured babbling 
that eventually resolved into "You're not real, you're not real," furious 
denials spoken to reverse-psychology reality into making it real. 


She yawned muzzily and rolled over. "Later... bug me about it 
later..." 


It was real — it was real in my mind, and that was the only real that 
existed for me, and that was enough. More than enough. My fingers 
traced tentative lines down her arm, felt the ragged hole of the bullet 
wound she'd always hated. It was an exacting copy that fit my 
mental photonegative of her all too well, | realised: calculated in its 
familiarity, an artificial clone ripped straight out of my mind... 


And then the light hit her scar, revealing the sharp gleam of steel 
and the same falcon brand that lay under my skin, too. 


Suddenly my stomach flipped from knowing warmth to chilling 


uncertainty. This was either a benevolent act of providence or a 
cruel piece of bait designed to keep me here for as long as possible 
— in either case, | knew it was her doing. 


"Someone's excited to get up and go." Alex rubbed her eyes, cat- 
like, and fumbled for glasses on the bedside table — bedside table? 
| realised | hadn't seen anything of the sort when I'd first gone to 
sleep here and the realisation only made the room feel smaller 
around me. "You have a bad night too?" 


"Yeah." 


"Aw." Before | could get up, she dragged me back down onto the 
hard mattress. "What happened?" 


"I'll... tell you later. Still not quite over it." 


"Alright." Our subconsciouses used to take it upon themselves to 
see which one could perturb their owners more: Alex had a fair 
approximation of what this usually meant for me, so she backed off. 
Useful to get her doppelganger to also leave me alone for a few 
minutes. 


As soon as | was out of sight of her, | threw myself down the 
corridors with renewed force, burning curiosity as my fuel down the 
labyrinth of the station. | didn't remember it being this big and yet 
that only served to make me even more claustrophobic, 
remembering Alex's tales of what had happened to the last probe 
they'd sent. | needed something | could trust, even if it was from the 
thing that was doing all this in the first place. 


So | pushed my way through the still-open doors and snatched the 
intercom from its resting place on the desk. 


"Why are you doing this?" 
The radio crackles back. "Are you unhappy about this?" 


"I—" | pause for a sudden bout of hysterical laughter that's gripped 
me. "| would think that | had a fucking good reason to be a little 
angry at you right about now! You can't just do that like this..." A 
sudden thought strikes me, that both me and the woman lying there 


are zombies alike, bought from the dead on the whim of their 
creator. "Why? Why did you have to bring her back?" 


"| thought that was what you wanted, no? To open closed books and 
to read them to someone like you, in you. Part of us both, yes?" 


My hand starts to shake as it grips the microphone and | hate the 
rogue servo that's making me act like this. "This— | was doing fine. | 
just wanted to— | just wanted to know. | just wanted to know what 
happened to you, how | got here... how all of this happened. Why'd 
you let me go?" 


She seemed taken aback by the question, and | knew all the 
scientists had. "They talked with me. I'd waited for them for so long, 
and then they talked again. They hadn't spoken experience in so 
long. The message was the medium: | listened. And part of that 
message was you." 


Spoken experience. | swallowed and parsed that slowly. "You. Alex. 
You absorbed Alex." 


"Listened, yes!" 
"And you... let me out. Why?" 


"They wanted me to sing to them, so | spoke your verse, improvised 
around what she'd given me when she spoke to me." 


Improvised. 


| was a variation on a half-remembered theme, a poor photocopy of 
someone who'd died in an apocalypse she'd tried to prevent: yet all 
she'd achieved was ensuring | was around to know she'd failed. 


She'd been a test subject in the first rounds of testing for the 
Anderson equipment: leftover BCIs collecting neural images of the 
men and women they wouldn't been able to save from the star, now 
blistering towards Earth at superluminal velocities. 


Kari was the first image broadcast to the Neptune station, a test of 
whether or not they could dump minds into Saker bodies fast 


enough over long enough distances to ensure they at least got 
evacuated in spirit. Unfortunately, the station didn't remember they 
had a radio receiver located smack bang in the middle of the station, 
and when the vacuum began to sing it began to seek out more 
melodies. 


After half the site had been disintegrated in a five minute rush of 
chaos, the Foundation immediately began prepping the total 
evacuation of the remaining inhabitants of the site — and the barely- 
functional image of Kari received through the distortion of the 
Vacuum. They'd later dump it into the Saker body of just another 
man five years after the incineration of Earth. 


She was hailed as a hero for a month, a proof of concept for a year, 
and then abandoned at a Site somewhere out on Proxima once all 
the other, proper Foundationites had their bodies back (or at least 
got made available as neatly formatted Nankeen substitutes). Then 
she was told what happened to Alex, and after they'd made sure to 
emphasise her fault in the matter she cut ties with them right then 
and there. 


It took another decade after that: exchanging information with the 
spallated remains of the GOC, a tipoff to Prometheus’ grandchildren 
here and there, but eventually she found her way back to the base 
where she was born. To mourn and to find answers. 


"| overheard you." 


I'd frozen, I'd begged for her to ignore it, but she was inconsolable 
— she reminded me of myself not two weeks after my birth on that 
satellite and | hated myself for it, for dragging anyone through that, 
by accident or not. "| overheard you" — I'd betrayed her, plain and 
simple, and that was that. 


"| can make it better." 


The inside was shifting violently now, rooms growing and shrinking 
in sharp bouts of topological birthing pains, furniture and drinks and 
post-its teasing and flirting and reminding, forming themselves out of 
nothingness as they slid into position. The windows, the little there 


were, shuddered and flickered with the light of a million different 
sunsets as they heaved to show a present pregnant with 
possibilities. 


"Shut up." 
| was heading to the airlock. | knew my ship wouldn't be there. 
"I'm sorry." 


Sparse white benches and plumbing extruded themselves out of the 
air around me, a laboratory sealing my path off. | screamed 
unconsciously and threw myself at the door to burst through into the 
other side. 


"| can make you happy again." 
Sheisn'tmesheisn thersheisn 'tmesheisn thersheisn 'tmesheisn 'ther— 


A lanky blonde man with a sample tube full of something glistening 
and black walked out from a corridor to nowhere, neck slit to expose 
the titanium framework underneath. He cocked his head at me and | 
watched something in his eyeball flicker. 


"We can fix this." 


A few more meters to the airlock, straight shot down a hallway that 
screamed as it burst into a million different antichambers and 
sublevels. And then | was there, clutching onto the door's handles 
and tugging and screaming, "Stop it—" 


Then hands, pulling me gently away from the airlock — am | so 
incompetent as to fail even in this? — and then I'm floating, staring 
wide-eyed at the cast of some sick play starring Site-64: Merlo, with 
her arm juddering uncontrollably, Holman, legs torn open at the 
calves to reveal serial numbers, and Shaw, face frozen to stare at 
me with wild, trembling eyes. 


Alex leads the troupe. She's crying. In unison, they declare: 


"Go back to bed and | promise | can make it better." 


| sob, muffled, into Alex's shoulder as she holds me and begins 
leading me down the corridors of the Site — this isn't a station 
anymore, there's too much gravity, too much carpet and mundanity 
to be the station | left — towards my apartment. Towards something 
right. 


"| can keep singing for you if you'd just let me," Alex stammers in 
that two-voice that is and isn't hers. "| know the day and | can play it. 
Just go back to bed." 


| see a man taking up his station at his desk, a woman burying her 
head in paperwork, a man who'd lost his friends and his family at the 
demand of a greater good, all staring at me as they take their roles 
for the show. The last performance of a million damned homunculi. 


Finally | reach my home and with a small prompting from Alex | 
obtain the keys from my pocket and unlock the apartment. | stumble 
numbly through the living room as the coffee and the apple and the 
television reassert their place as props on the stage, and then | 
reach the bedroom. 


"It's over now. You can sleep. You don't have to live if you don't 
want to." 


| fall onto the bed with her. 


Someone else holds her tight. 


/ stared into the face of everything and nothing and made 
it back alive 


Three months after his partner's disappearance, the first thing 
Draven Kondraki received was a Foundation Star sent to their 
residence, and he was scared to death because he had never heard 
of a living person receiving a Foundation Star before. 


But it was okay, they told him, he was just still in evaluation. 
What had happened, he asked. 


Classified, they answered. But as he held one of them up and asked 
again in a way more akin to screaming than sentences, "we don't 
know" was all he got. 


Nobody knew, it seemed, except for Researcher James Martin 
Talloran himself. A few days later Draven learnt that they had found 
James near death inside a containment cell a kilometer into the 
ground, lined with exploded reality anchors and guarded by four 
amnesiac guards. He saved the world, someone with enough 
empathy and decency finally told him after way too many requests 
filed. Single-handedly reverted an XK, so he was told. 


But that was not what he wanted to hear. 


James was alive. But Draven was also fearful and angry, because 
why did it have to be him, why would James have to face an XK 
entity alone, and how did it even happen because he was just a 
Level 3 Researcher transferred to Site-118 and assigned to a 
completely normal job. But above all, he just wanted to see James 
again. 


A month later, James came home. 


He opened the door and James smiled to him, and it was soft and 
sweet like it always was. He hastily signed a bunch of documents 


and was given a leave, but as he bid the personnel goodbye and it 
was just him and James again, Draven started crying. He hugged 
James, a strong MTF agent in the arms of a nimble researcher, but 
James patted him on the back and told him it was okay. 


And for a while, it was okay. James was in surprisingly good shape 
and spirit. Aside from a few traces of a large gash on his face, it 
almost felt like James hadn't disappeared at all. 


He was given a month (and he pulled his holiday over and made it 
double); James had a year or more and a large sum of reward 
money that came with the Star. James didn't talk about what 
happened, and it was okay, Draven wasn't about to push it. So they 
stayed at home, chatted and cooked and even watched TV and did 
all the things they never had the time or chance to. 


But one day, two weeks into their little holiday together, he was 
sitting by the table and James was cutting some tomatoes in the 
kitchen. When the cutting stopped, Draven barely noticed it, too 
engrossed in a book he had gotten from his father's collection. He 
looked up briefly as James turned to him and walked towards the 
table, still holding the knife. He raised an eyebrow and was about to 
ask; but his eyes were met with a blank expression and it horrified 
him. 


Without warning, Researcher James Talloran slashed at Draven 
with the kitchen knife, with a strange ease that no researcher sitting 
at desk jobs would have been able to, as if practiced many, many 
times. Thanks to his training, Draven dodged out of the way and the 
knife impacted with the table. 


For a moment, among the surprise and panic, Draven expected 
another attack. But James just looked at the knife, then the table it 
was stuck on, and then the knife again, as if it was the most 
interesting thing in the world. 


"James, put the knife down!" was all he managed to say. James 
turned to look at him, and obliged. He let go, the knife still stuck on 
the table. 


Draven was scared. But he acted without realizing, removing the 


knife and put it out of his partner's reach. A few more moments 
before he regained his composure, and recognized what had 
happened. His heart was still racing, and his voice cracked: "What, 
what the fuck was that?" 


"It didn't melt," James said. 


"What?" he barely squeezed the word out. 


"The table didn't melt. The floor didn't collapse. Everything was fine. 
"What are you talking about? Tables... don’t do that?" 


"Exactly," James smiled softly. "| just have to make sure." 


Three days later, Draven was sitting with Head Psychologist Dr. 
Simon Glass and was regrettably informed that "it is much worse 
than they thought". Glass told him that they had suspected 
Researcher Talloran's condition, of course, but a full set of 
evaluations over, he seemed to have recovered well enough. And 
Draven had to agree because for two full weeks, everything was 
fine. He had been extra careful and he knew that James went to see 
his assigned psychologist every other day. They had been together 
for... what, a little short of a decade? And he didn't notice anything 
even slightly wrong. 


"It seems that he had somehow faked a stable mental state." Glass 
looked at him apologetically (and Draven hated that look), "This 
shouldn't have happened... We used a three man group and applied 
strict procedures," he paused, and added. "It was almost as if he 
knew what he would be asked and what to answer..." 


As if he had sat through the same evaluation hundreds of times 
over. 


As Dr. Glass continued to explain, laying out the necessary 
measures to be taken afterwards and apologizing for their supposed 
oversight, Draven felt numb. The words pounded on his chest and 
strained his heart while everything else faded. 


He faked his mental state. He faked being alright. How? Why would 


he do that? Why would he need to do that? He hugged him and 
smiled and patted him on the back and told him everything was 
alright. But then he attacked him with a knife and told him that the 
table might melt. He smiled so softly and sweetly but it was not 
okay. 


It was not okay, and he hated it. 


When he snapped out of it, he was standing in front of James' 
temporary cell (for further observation and reevaluation). He fuzzily 
remembered that Glass had told him that if Talloran was proven to 
no longer be a danger to himself and others, he would be moved to 
restricted dormitory area in the site. And Draven would be able to 
visit and even stay, but no more stays at home and holidays and 
cooking. 


He stared at his partner from across a standard Foundation issued 
table, only to see James smiling back at him. And Draven suddenly 
felt very sick. Because how could he look at him with that soft 
comforting smile when they were in a Foundation holding cell, next 
to two armed guards? How could he still be like this when everything 
was not okay? 


It was his father all over again. 


They talked. Or James talked and nodded, and Draven's voice filled 
with a bit too much anger.