"Yo," she called out, stepping out of her church shoes.
"In here, Charlotte," Damion called out from the kitchen. She followed, bringing the grocery bags with her, and saw him and 8 sitting at the table. 8 was wearing a tee shirt and pajama pants, and Damion a brown polo shirt and slacks. They were looking over a few sheets of paperwork.
8 looked up. "Free from bishop's depredations at last. How is Kat?"
"Good," Charlotte said. She thought about whipping out the sword, all like 'Check this out! Early birthday present!' but at the moment it kind of seemed like a silly thing to have around the house, and…
"That's a big box," Damion said, pointing at it. "What's in it? Really big carrot?"
"Check this out!" Charlotte dumped the bags on the counter, pulling the box out roughly enough that the bag ripped a little. She set it on the counter, opened it, and held the scabbarded katana aloft. "Early birthday present!"
8 and Damion looked up, her stepfather with a quizzical look on his face and her partner with a quizzical shade of purple on his screen.
"Guess I'll return the sword I got you," 8 said, his face an insincere green. "Dang. Should have coordinated."
"OK, so it's a little silly, but it's very Kat," Charlotte said. "Anyone want coffee?"
Damion and 78 grumbled appreciatively as she got the kettle off the stove. She filled it at the faucet.
"I was giving 8 some updates," Damion said. "Nothing big. Teramel was going over the accounts with your mother and I, and he recommended we move some money around. The will isn't really any different, just some different wording and allocations."
Charlotte got three mugs out of the cupboard and groaned.
"It's not that we're planning to die any time soon, we just…" Damion said.
"I know, I know, peace of mind. It just feels ghoulish," Charlotte said.
She turned, leaning back against the counter, and tried not to think about how her stepfather was finally starting to show his age. His short, frizzy hair had finally gone all white, little spots and blemishes dotting his complexion, the meat in his arms looking just a little loose and droopy – dumb little details that made her think of how many more Christmases and birthdays they might have left, of how soon she'd need to have kids for Damion to have any relationship with them, of what the world would be like when he wasn't in it.
"Everyone dies, Charlotte," Damion Andrews said. "But not everyone gets to leave their daughter a house on Lake Cyrdak. Or, if the situation calls for it, the start of a few little college funds."
She groaned again, louder and with a little more intentional drama. The plasma stovetop had already heated the water to boiling. She flaked some coffee granules into the mugs and picked up the kettle…
Damion. Andrews. He was alive.
She remembered.
Her knuckles grew white, gripping the handle of the kettle with a shaking fury. One of the mugs filled, and she poured on, the boiling liquid splashing out over the countertop
She remembered everything.
Hot coffee spilled everywhere, flowing over the lip of the counter and onto her blouse. "Ow!" Brant shouted, the pain shaking her out of her reveries for an instant. "Ow! What the hell!"
Andrews and 8 were on their feet to help, and Brant froze. Whether by some oversight or by some especially cruel trick, she remembered everything now. Andrews had left a hole in her life when his punctured lungs had wrenched the last painful gasp out of him. She'd slowly closed that hole with time and duty, but now here he was again. Damion Andrews was alive, in her kitchen, gathering polymer towels to wipe down her counter.
She had a birthday present from Katarek on the counter.
Everything this mission had stolen from her – her captain, her friend, her eye, her future – was restored.
"Kettle slip?" 8 asked.
She froze.
"I…guess it must have." She shook her head.
"Well, I won't keep you. 8 can bring you up to speed on most of it," Andrews said. "I should get home before the storms hit, anyway."
It was a ridiculous but persistent old superstition, from a time when people had to manually control their cars and when inclement weather made this more difficult, but Brant didn't argue. She had to think. Much as she wanted to sit down with Andrews, just sit with him for five minutes, he'd only be a distraction. They said their goodbyes, hugged, a tiny little experience, surely routine in this life, that on its own nearly broke her. She stood with 78 in their front door, watching Andrews get into his car and drive off, one voice telling her he only lived fifteen minutes away and would be over for dinner later in the week with her mom, another shouting at her that he was already a ghost and she needed to get back to her post.
She grabbed at her coffee-stained blouse. "I should change."
She stumbled out of the front hall, aware of the concerned look 8 was giving her. She needed space, but she could not find it, walking out into a hallway that crowded in around her with photographs and memories. In one, she was a little pigtailed sprout of a person, standing up on a chair at the kitchen table as she blew out birthday candles, her mother laughing behind her. In another, she and 8 gave thumbs up to the camera as they lounged on a pristine white beach, the sun shining bright in a dark, star-studded sky – a leisure starship, most likely. She saw some faces she knew in both of her lives and some she knew only in this one, but they were all happy. She was buffeted by their smiles. She felt she should scream.
"I refuse this."
She reached the bedroom, and shut the door behind her.
"Stop it. Let me out of this. I refuse it already."
She was in the house, but not shackled to any one point in it. She was throughout the house, seeing the pile of laundry in the hallway that they had let accumulate just a little too far, the tiny rodents living in the walls of the garage, the clog in the bathroom sink that would soon need clearing. She was throughout the house's existence, seeing the day they'd finalized their purchase of the home, the day she'd finally gotten around to redoing the bathroom, the day they brought their first dog home, any of a number of days when she invited Karl from work over or some other human male. She saw the days she died, any of a wide number of them; mostly she either died of wasting diseases, heart failure, or degenerative nervous system problems, or from a cocktail of medicines prescribed to do the job before those other woes did it for her. She was generally old, and they were the sort of quiet little deaths that fall upon the old.
"You refuse because you think of your responsibilities," said the zoltan. It was everywhere, too, a haze of green hanging in the background, a dimension of green underlying space and time. "You still think this is a dream."
"I refuse this. This is dumb. I'm not going to abandon my friends so I can sip coffee in some stupid hallucination."
"You are wrong. But let us entertain your error," the zoltan said, a voice quaking through everything. "Yes, let us assume for a moment that this is all illusion. That the Great Eye is nothing but a huckster, a conjurer's trick of suggestion and deception. This engi and that man, then, would only be simulations of the people you know, developed by the Eye to deceive you into accepting this reality – this is what you suspect, yes? But consider that they are not merely simulations, but perfect ones. Consider the ramifications of this. They will react to any stimulus exactly as the engi and the human you know would, and thus underlying their simulated actions, there must be simulated thoughts, simulated emotions, processes that perfectly replicate the 'originals.' By any standard you may apply, these illusions have an authentic experience of the world, impossible to discount or ignore.
"If you accept this reality, the HR-XPC-78 who is your second-in-command will lose you, and he will face his end without you. The Damion Andrews who was your captain will remain dead. If you reject it, the HR-XPC-78 who is your domestic partner will lose you, and he will face his life without you, and the Damion Andrews who is your stepfather will face old age in confusion and pain for your absence – are you childishly arrogant enough to think this world will vanish if you leave it? And thus I tell you, you abandon your responsibilities either way.
"Choose not out of loyalty, for you are a traitor to your friends either way. Choose not out of your duties, for you abandon them either way. Choose not for the sake of your doomed species, for you already know you cannot save it.
"Choose only what you desire."
"What the hell gives you the right to…"
But it was over. She was back in the bedroom, her hands shaking as they clutched her coffee-stained blouse.
If she knew it would get her back to the Kestrel, she'd have run back to the kitchen and raked their biggest knife through her throat, ending this preposterous diversion. But would that even work? Was this really all in her head, or was she here in the flesh? And…what would this 78, this Andrews, all these people who loved her think? Katarek had gotten them that chef's knife on their registry – of course she did, of course Katarek got them a fracking knife, had described its provenance to them at length – it would be the worst thing she could possibly do to all these people, and…and…
"I refuse, I refuse, I fracking refuse this," she hissed under her breath.
But it was such a nice thing, this life. How could she wreck something so nice?
There was a crinkling noise behind her, like aluminum foil crumpling into a ball. It was the engi equivalent of a human clearing their throat. She turned to see 78 standing in the doorway, his face an apprehensive yellow.
"Status?" he asked, only a little concerned.
"I'm fine," she said. In fact, she felt a rage building in her, threatening to rip her apart, but she found she couldn't account for it. She had just been thinking about suicide, that she remembered, but she found this easy to write off as just an unsettling intrusive thought, the sort that sometimes dogged those with overactive imaginations. "Sorry. Weird mood today."
"Weather, possibly," 8 offered, but his screen didn't change from its cautious coloring. She took the blouse off and threw on a tee shirt for Nebula Beer; she knew she really should take the blouse to the basement and stain-treat it now, but she tossed it into the hamper instead. "Anything to talk about?"
She sighed, frustrated with her answer. "I don't know." She searched her mind for any accounting for this funk, and found only the familiar little sources of stress. Then again, those accounted for occasional funks perfectly well. "Same old, I guess. Should we get kids, are we staying on this planet forever, am I being a good friend to my friends, is Karl really on the same page with me or is he getting ideas, should I try for a promotion, was that tattoo a mistake…"
8 held up his claws. "Whoa there."
"Yeah. Nothing like going over your parents' will to make you assess the value of every little thing in your life," she said. "Toh still won't even talk to that goddamn girl at church, by the way. I can't, anymore. It's like…"
"Like rolling a rock uphill?" 8 said. He glared at Charlotte, his face now glittering with self-satisfaction. Charlotte threw her stained blouse at him, getting him right in the face.
"You're a dumbass," she said.
He picked the blouse off his face. "Very sorry. Also, cannot give much clarity to usual questions, but tattoo: sexy and tasteful."
"And a tasteless pervert," she added. She felt the natural thing to do now was to go with him back to the kitchen or the living room. They could sit down together, watch some vids, or she could go out to the garage and finish that table she'd been working on, or she could just have a beer and while away the evening. In the warmth of this home, in the safety of this peaceful world…
"Do you ever just want to pack up and leave?" she asked.
The rain started coming down outside, a soft patter against the windows.
"Only when you ask that," 78 said. He sat on the bed, sensing that this was going to be a more involved exchange. "Generally content. Needs, fulfilled. Confident that we could reestablish selves elsewhere if so chose, but…personally, don't see point."
"I know." She sat down on the other side of the bed, facing the window, watching the rain strike the glass. "I want to see the galaxy, but I don't know. I think I'm just restless here, and I'd probably just get restless wherever we went."
"That what bothering you?"
"It's more the guilt that I feel that way in the first place. Like…sometimes, I picture myself in some other life, one where I'm alone, or I'm sick, or you've died in an accident or a war. I think of that Charlotte Brant, miserable and bitter, and…I think of what that woman would say to me if I had this life with you and thought for even a moment to risk such a perfect thing. Like, here I am wondering if this is enough or why I'm not happier, and I think of what that woman would give to trade places with me, and I just…feel like an idiot."
A moment passed. The rain got harder.
"Wouldn't worry too much about their opinions. By definitions, those Charlotte Brants lack clarifying wisdom of HR-XPC-78, and so, are idiots."
"I'm being serious, 8."
"I know. In seriousness, probably not issue of this life being enough for you. Guess instead it's issue of not feeling you've done enough to deserve this life. But that, dangerous rabbit hole. Human psychology evolved in world full of dangers, whispers to them that they shouldn't be happy unless they're constantly overcoming threats and peril. For ancient ancestors, good mindset for survival; nowadays, good mindset only for psych unit manufacturers."
"Well la di da, look who watched a single documentary on psychology once," Charlotte said. She laughed, but she was aware that she was forcing the laugh.
"But you're right, I think," she said. They'd had this conversation before. He'd made this same point before. She couldn't think of why it had hit her so hard this time, why it had struck such a raw nerve.
And then, suddenly, she knew why.
The rain was coming down in sheets.
She got up and walked around to the other side of the bed. She sat next to 8 and took his claw in her hand, twisting her arm around his. She lifted the claw and kissed it.
"I love you, 8. I don't know if I say that enough. Whatever happens, I want you to know that."
His face shone with concern, but he said nothing. She waited for any response, even for any movement or indication of emotion, but he gave none. Then she realized the rain had stopped, and that the room was shining a deep green.
"You are near your choice," said a voice. "Say it."
She heard satisfaction in the creature all around her, and she seethed. "You get off on this, you sick son of a bitch."
"What do you choose, Charlotte Brant? Peace? Plenty? Freedom?"
She squeezed 8's claw and shut her eyes tight, focusing on her breathing.
"I choose violence."
She opened her eyes, and saw bright green fissures spreading through the walls of their hoes, felt the ground beneath them shake.
"I choose duty and purpose."
The ground opened and the ceiling collapsed, all becoming bright green plasma that enfolded her.
"Though violent death awaits you, and your friends?"
"Yes."
78 shimmered, and vanished in a whirl of green. Her hand closed on nothing.
"Though it shall change nothing, neither for your ship nor your species?"
"Yes."
Her senses were lost in the whirlwind of energy and light. She felt like a two-dimensional shape, scrabbling and clawing its way desperately into spatial reality.
"I choose death and meaning."
The words existed in her and around her. She had no mouth to speak them, but the ideas flew freely from her mind.
"I choose horror and clarity."
A sneer enveloped her. The green lights went black.
"Then you shall have them."
She opened her eye, felt only the familiar tug of the twisted, nerve-damaged tissue where her other eye had been. She saw only gray in front of her. She took stock of her other senses and found she was on her hands and knees.
Would you be surprised, Charlotte Brant, to know how many make this same choice?
The voice was in her head, but someone was talking ahead of her:
"Cannot leave."
"Lieutenant, I…" Someone else was responding, apparently through great pain and exhaustion. "…I admire this, but I cannot overstate the power this elder wields. While we remain here, it can ravage us at a whim."
No. I think you would not be surprised. The Eye sees, and the Eye reveals.
She tested her hands and knees, and found they could move. She pushed, and rose to a kneeling position. She was on the bridge of the Kestrel, right in front of the captain's chair. 78 and Toh stood ahead of her, their attention split entirely between the readouts of the little green planet in front of them and the exhausted Ahab in the pilot's seat.
She felt like she was waking from some grand prophetic dream, with some critical message hot in her mind but growing cold.
"The purpose of the fight is not peace," she whispered to herself, reading into the record of her memory.
"Cannot leave," 78 said.
Ahab looked as though he wanted to object, but his shining form flickered dully for a moment and he slouched with pain, too drained to make reply. Toh nodded.
"Looks like we can't leave," he said.
"The purpose of the fight isn't survival or culture," she whispered. "The purpose of the fight is the fight."
Brant got to her feet, but lost balance and stumbled back, falling right into her chair. All three looked back at the sound.
"We don't go to war for resolution," she said aloud. "We go for meaning."
Toh looked at her a moment, then let out a deep, heavy laugh.
"That…is one weird goddamn entrance, that is," Toh said.
8 walked up to her. "Status?"
"Fine…fine…how long have I been gone?"
"About seven hours. Been stalling, doing scans. You vanished."
"Yeah. I…I'm back now," she said. She nodded to Toh. "I'll bring you up to speed. Take her out of here."
Toh nodded. He reached over Ahab to the controls, made the appropriate motions, and off they went into the jump.