Chapter 5: Schrödinger

Almiria's eyes eased open at the gentle hum and vibration of her wristwatch; the digital face glowed a soft blue and pronounced it was 06:00. She took a moment to remember where she was and what she was doing, but also that now she'd graduated, she didn't necessarily need the same wakeup time she'd had for the past few years.

Maybe I'll change it to 05:00, she thought, drawing back the scratchy coverlet and sitting up.

A quick glance revealed, to her surprise, that Mass was already awake and making use of the room's courtesy digital console in the far corner by the window. The twin bed parallel to hers hadn't been touched. She stood, did some quick habitual stretches, and moved to the window to open the blinds a crack.

"You should have slept," she said.

"Couldn't," he replied.

She didn't comment. The 'why' didn't matter anyway. Her eyes adjusted to the daylight outside and took in the street activity some two floors below before moving to the en suite. "I'm assuming you're trying to find Wei," she said. A flick of an old-fashioned lightswitch and the decidedly pale green bathroom was illuminated; she began unwrapping a courtesy toothbrush and the crinkle of the wrapper was loud in the resin-coated space.

"Couple of leads didn't follow through," Mass said, though it took her eliciting a repetition to make out his mumbling behind the hand propping up his chin.

"Unfortunate."

"Think I've got one though. Threw out the Nightingale thing altogether and just started fishing."

Almiria ran the faucet and raised her voice over the rush of water. "Sounds haphazard."

"It's worked pretty good for me in the past."

She rolled her eyes and scrubbed at her teeth vigorously. Whatever works at this stage. Certainly won't be doing that once things get truly moving, though. She spat in the sink, splashed water on her face, and stared at herself in the mirror. You can do this.

Do what? a separate voice countered. You haven't done anything yet.


They ate on the go – not Almiria's preference, especially since she found herself paying, but not unfamiliar to her either – while they followed Mass' nearly incomprehensible trail of breadcrumbs across the city. Although the mounting messages and calls on her wristwatch reminded her that she didn't have all the time in the world, Almiria forced herself to simply let Mass take the lead on this part. She gave him five hours, mentally. They were on hour number three; she was growing accustomed to the mugginess and the noise and the smells and the crowds, and her longing for the cold cleanness of space felt far away, like it belonged to another person. She wondered, obscurely, if Wei had grown accustomed to this place too – if she missed that which seemed to have given her birth.

A street hawker swung into her field of vision with a felt-lined tray of knockoff pocket e-readers and began chattering at her.

"No, no thank you," she said and waved him off, refocusing. She looked around for Mass. He was chatting in a broken fashion with a young man and what appeared to be a grandmotherly type outside a flower stand; she could barely follow the gesticulations or read their lips. Crossing her arms, she wandered closer, avoiding foot traffic and bicycles.

"Right, okay," he was saying, and following the pair's pointing down the street. "Okay. Thank you." They smiled and nodded at each other, and Mass turned and began to walk away without seeing if Alimira was following.

She jogged a little to catch up with him. "So?"

"Really hope this isn't a dead end," he muttered, picking up the pace. Finally, it seemed to occur to him that maybe he should explain the last three hours' clues. "My thinking was that for someone like Artima, it would have raised less suspicion to not try to fly under the radar completely, because in someplace like this, there's bound to be a whole section of law enforcement watching the underbelly. It made more sense to look for a modest but seemingly honest civil record." They paused to let a tram pass. "So from there I narrowed it down to recent residents, worked through rumors, finally lucked out."

"That's vague. What do you mean?"

He hesitated, but in an embarrassed sort of way. "Artima used to be a dancer, I think. So I figured, what would she try to fall back on that gave her a means of surviving without raising suspicion? Then it was just a case of asking around on local hobby messageboards for anything that might fit the bill."

The intuitiveness surprised her, even if she did find it a little quaint compared to her own tactics – but then, she'd let him take the lead after all. "I hope you're right. Where are we going, then?"

Although initially she'd suspected the cheong fun they'd grabbed for lunch not sitting well with her, now that they stood in this shady alley at the bottom of a set of narrow, rickety stairs staring up at a chalkboard A-frame sign proclaiming 'Traditional Ballet Lessons', Almiria had to admit that maybe what she was feeling was anticipation and nerves. The two of them started slowly upward without speaking, leaving the smell of the dim sum restaurant below in favor of the first whiffs of the gardenia proudly guarding the sign.

I'm nervous, really? Almiria asked herself. It was unlike her, so she reasoned that it was her sister-in-law's anecdotes at fault.

"The Pilot…" Julieta had said, her face growing distant as she stood upright with empty dinnerplates in hand. She'd thought for a moment, then spoken to the table, "Yeah, Wei was her name. It was an alias, sure, but then...it felt even less like it belonged to her. Like she wasn't supposed to have a name. Like you didn't give things like that a name."

"Flesh and blood, my dear!" Galileo had tried to inject some levity back into the conversation. "And no longer a problem, I might add." He'd taken a satisfied sip of wine.

"That's bullshit and you know it." Julieta had seemed to regret the harshness of her tone and run a free hand over her husband's shoulders, smiled at him, then retreated to the kitchen. "She's died a few times now and still been a problem. She'll still be a problem even if I buried her myself."

Alimira and Galileo had shared a look of confusion before the subject had turned to the family vacation.

Almiria hesitated ever so slightly when one of the steps squeaked. The way Mass nearly walked into her told her he was a little distracted too. She took a deep breath in and chastised herself, stepping more quickly now. The door to the studio above the restaurant stood open courtesy of a hook on the rail surrounding the balcony, and they entered the soothing darkness of a small foyer lined with a pair of benches, under which was a single abandoned pointe shoe. A pierced screen separated them from the sunlit space beyond. Orchestral music was playing softly as though from someone's memory.

Mass' hand on her arm startled her. He held her back and stepped ahead of her; he was frowning but it didn't seem so much in tactical concern – a different kind of worry.

We're as worried about actually finding her as we are about anything else, she realized. She let him, willing to concede that if Artima Wei was in that room, he deserved to see her first.


Ride swallowed. Here and there the light in the holes of the pierced screen blackened, indicating a shadow moving in the space beyond. He hesitated on the threshold. As long as I stand here, she's both in there and not. Long as I stand here, maybe there's a chance I could choose differently… But the room was pulling him – his duty was pulling him. He stepped past the screen, from worn carpet to thinly-waxed wood.

It was indeed Artima. Balanced on one toe, her right leg raised straight up behind her with both hands clasping the arch of her foot, her ribcage a sharp jutting angle below her. Her left leg from the thigh down was a prosthetic, a glimmer of silver that ended in a taper like a knife – it did not startle him, somehow, and maybe that was worse. She was staring straight ahead at the blaze of the broad window on the far side of the room, perfectly still, as if she'd forgotten what she was doing or how to be flesh and blood. She remained unreal to him despite being mere feet away for the first time in years.

Then, she turned her head and looked at him over the swathe of empty space. He saw something settle on her that was not recognition exactly – though he knew that she knew who he was – acknowledgement, more than anything. Like she'd known this day would come. It was the same look he'd seen on Orga's face when he died and that scared him, but in the same breath gratefulness washed over him. She gracefully came out of her pose and became human for him again.

"You're alive," he said more weakly than he'd intended. His words fell to the floor like dead leaves and danced away into the immaculate corners of the room.

She approached, smiled gently. "Some kind of way." Her prosthetic made the softest of whirring noises as she moved, each footfall a tap like a water drop on paper.

"Yeah uh, me too," his words rushed out of him this time along with a need for her to be grateful to see him, to reaffirm he still had some thread back to the hangar of the Isaribi and all the warmth that'd been in it.

"I was never worried."

Ride was initially crestfallen. Then Artima was wrapping her arms around him and held him for a long moment, and his desperation bubbled over. He clung to her and didn't care if Almiria saw. Tears prickled in his eyes and he sniffed quietly. His fingers dug into her black leotard.

A loose piece of her hair tickled his cheek as she leaned her temple against his head. "I kept tabs," she explained. "Just enough."

"On everyone?" he asked, thinking of Eugene. He even wondered if Eugene had lied to him, and if both he and Artima had been keeping an eye on each other silently these past seven years.

Artima released him but didn't answer. He followed her gaze, now impartial again, to where Almiria stood on the threshold. Almiria folded her arms and shifted feet but didn't disguise her nervous expression fast enough – instead it gave her the air of someone who'd been asked a question and was used to being able to answer but found this time that they couldn't.

"So it's you," Almiria mustered.

"Just when I think I've seen everything," Artima said.

So she recognizes her, Ride thought.

Artima turned her back on them and wandered back into the studio space through the great slabs of sunshine, toward the far right corner of the room and the end of a low, long bench. After sitting she reached into a cloth bag on the floor and procured a thick flesh-colored bundle – when she tucked her left toe through it and began to pull it up her leg Ride realized it was a cosmetic sleeve of some kind. "You have ten minutes to explain. I have a class to teach."

Ride wasn't sure what he expected but it wasn't quite this. He felt more adrift here in this bare room than he ever had in space. He caught his reflection in the shabby mirrors on the far wall and was disappointed; he couldn't step over the hump of his hesitation before he saw Almiria do it for him, her arms falling to her sides. She pulled her shoulders back and approached Artima confidently – inherited from a line of diplomats and public figures no doubt.

"Mr Mass and I searched you out because we have a common goal and we need your help. We want to destroy Gjallarhorn, starting with the removal of Rustal Elion," Almiria stated.

The bluntness with which Almiria had spoken took Ride off-guard, and he clenched a fist as the surprise shifted readily into anger. How can she just come out and say it like that? He looked behind them at the doorway. What if someone had been listening? Why is she taking the lead now? I'm the one that knows Artima. But what was more infuriating was Artima's silence.

Artima tucked the hem of her loose gray shorts over the applied cosmetic sleeve, then reached down and with a few clicks and clacks restructured the foot of her prosthesis, and fiddled with the bottom of the sleeve a little more. Onto this she slipped a dull white pointe shoe to match that on her right foot, tied its long ribbons, and the illusion was complete. She then began slowly redoing the loose bun her hair was in, not looking at them.

"Miss Wei?" it was less a polite curiosity on Almiria's part and more of a demand.

"I wish I was more surprised," she said at last and her voice was heavy, almost drunken. "It's more that I'm disappointed. What you're suggesting is suicide because it's childish and foolish."

Ride saw Almiria stiffen and felt hot under the collar himself. "How can you say that? You of all people should know what they took from us!" he said. "This is not impossible and it's not childish or foolish. This is justice. Someone needs to put an end to them."

Artima looked directly at him. "Why?"

The word was like a gunshot in the dark.

"Why?" he intoned back.

"Yes. Why?"

"Because the perpetrators of everything that happened to Tekkadan, to me, and to numerous other people are still out there," Almiria chimed in, pointing out the window. "The war didn't end seven years ago – it just became more private."

"What you think is insight is melodrama and self-centeredness rooted in inexperience," Artima said. She stood, and her voice remained calm as she continued, "No one is denying what happened to either of you and yours." But consider whether the likely end justifies the means, if the means were even feasible. You will waste your lives attempting to throw water on a fire that's already guttering out. Did you ever stop to wonder that sometimes, letting something die a natural death works just fine?"

He took a risk. "I think you're trying to convince yourself more than anything."

"And I think you're being ungrateful, short-sighted brats," she snapped.

"Fuck I know this is about Orga, all right?" he snapped back, stepping toward her. "But how can I not finish this? You knew him. You, you – " he wasn't sure and it was too complicated to reason right now. "How can you let no one pay for his blood?"

Artima was about to speak but Almiria cut her off.

"They've discovered another Mobile Armor," she blurted, stepping up beside Ride.

This was news to him and he wondered if it was a bluff, but he couldn't show his surprise. They had to be a united front.

Almiria pressed on. "On Phobos, mid-excavation. We all know that isn't just a future anecdote in the history books. You know what's going to happen – unless we take advantage –"

"Listen to yourselves," Artima interrupted. "You have been given a choice between peace and self-destruction. You stand here in this room and want to push me to help you choose destruction? After it cost us so much to bring you even just a shred of peace? It's remarkable enough that you both even have a choice, and that you have the power to make either equally possible," she shrugged helplessly.

"We're doing this so we can have true peace!" Ride said.

Artima hesitated; her face grew tired. "I guess it'll take you a bit longer to realize that peace isn't binary." She moved to the wall of mirrors and rested a hand on the bar there, began stretching half-heartedly.

Ride and Almiria stood in silence for a long moment, expectant, but Artima didn't say anything else. Behind them in the foyer he heard footsteps and a couple of young girls chattering excitedly, followed by the slump of bags hitting the floor and zippers unzipping.

Almiria took a deep breath. "So –"

"We'll do it ourselves," Ride growled. He glowered at Artima one more time and turned on his heel. He felt Almiria follow him a moment later.