Drawing Out the Stars: Chapter Three
Antiope wakes to an Ephesian morning. The planet's twin suns are low on the horizon and there's dew on the park grass. There's dew on Antiope too, cool and tangible. It feels real. She wipes some of it off and the beads of water on her hand run together just like true water would, slipping over her skin in rivulets. Yawning, Antiope pushes herself up from the bench and into a standing position. A pair of joggers dressed in vivid neons pass her by.
Out of habit, she glances in the direction that she knows her and Hippolyta's house should be. If she walked that way, would it be there?
She knows the answer is yes—a large white house, in good repair but slightly messy on account of Diana, all its lived-in glory about it, just as she remembers from before.
She knows it will be there.
She also knows better than to try to find it.
If she goes there, it will be empty and she doesn't want Menalippe to attempt to fill it.
Antiope looks up towards the sky, false stars fading in the soft dawn. Beyond the sky, somewhere, is a ceiling. And Menalippe is in the ceiling. Menalippe is also in the floors and the walls and probably even the stale air, but, in Antiope's mind, it's easiest to locate Menalippe in the ceiling. "Where's the door?" she asks.
As she watches, the dirt path that she's standing on shifts its course. Instead of winding towards a distant pond, it forms into a straight line leading to an upright rectangle outlined in red light.
Antiope follows the path Menalippe has given her.
The transition from park to ship corridor is abrupt. One moment Antiope is in a cool morning, a world waking up around her, and the next she's in a white abyss. The dew is gone from her skin. She leans against the wall for a moment, trying to find her bearings. The door behind her slides shut. Antiope raises a hand to rub across her closed eyes.
She wants to go home.
She wants to go home to the real Ephesus, in whatever state it's come to in the nearly ten years since she last set foot there.
She wants to go home to the Themyscira, battle-scarred and weary.
She wants to go home to her family.
But she doesn't want to spend another day grinding herself down in her hopeless striving to put her ship back together. She'd rather go back into the park.
Antiope takes a deep breath. She is Antiope. She is steel and she is will.
She looks up to the ceiling again. "Can you help me get back to the hangar?" she asks.
As with the first time Menalippe wanted her to go somewhere, the lights in one part of the hall shut off and the lights in the direction that Antiope is meant to walk stay on. As Antiope walks, she occasionally glances upwards. Finally, as she rounds another nondescript white corner, she says, "I like it better when you're here."
"I'm making breakfast," Menalippe replies. "You slept longer than you normally do."
"How long do I normally sleep?" Antiope asks.
"Six hours, give or take ten minutes," Menalippe answers. "This time it was nine. Also, you didn't cry. It was fascinating to watch you. I was not aware you could sleep so peacefully."
Antiope winces. "I must have needed it," she mumbles. She thinks she recognizes the corridor they're in now. She thinks it's the one that leads to the hangar.
She's right.
A door opens to reveal the white hangar and Antiope's broken ship.
A spider-droid is waiting with a large container filled with cookies. Antiope stares at the cookies. Chocolate chip, if she's not mistaken. "That's not breakfast," she says. "That's dessert."
"Are you saying you won't eat them?" Menalippe asks. The spider-droid takes one, then two steps backwards, taking the cookies with it.
Antiope lunges at the droid and snatches the cookies away.
"No," Antiope says. "I'm not saying that." She pops one of the cookies into her mouth. It melts a little bit as she bites down. It's still warm.
Sugar.
Antiope closes her eyes. She experiences bliss and she revels in it.
When she's done with the first cookie, she opens her eyes again. Menalippe has created a projection of itself with the spider-droid. It's still choosing to appear wearing the uniform-like outfit it crafted for itself the day before. "Do you like them?" Menalippe asks.
Antiope grins. "Delicious."
She turns to her ship. Cookie jar in one hand, she picks up her multitool from where she left it the previous day with her other.
[] [] []
Antiope spends the entire day snacking on cookies and fiddling with her repairs.
Conversing with Menalippe is becoming more natural. For an entity that pilfered its way through Antiope's mind, it asks a great many mundane questions. Antiope doesn't mind entertaining them, even though it takes a solid hour to explain the appeal of bacon.
Other questions are less mundane, but Antiope doesn't mind those either.
"I don't know why my sister believes in the gods," Antiope says as she sits on the hangar deck cleaning out melted plastic from a switch. "Why does anyone believe in anything? Maybe it helps her be Fleet Admiral. Maybe it helps her sleep at night. She doesn't take sedatives like the rest of us."
It's an odd feeling, poking around amongst thoughts Antiope, under normal circumstances, knows better than to think, much less share. She is privy to the quality of the Fleet Admiral's sleep—or, rather, the lack thereof—because she is Hippolyta's sister. She does not speak of it to Artemis or to Penthesilea and certainly not to Diana. Philippus no doubt knows, but Philippus has discretion enough not to bring it up with Antiope and Antiope too would never bring it up with Philippus.
Such information, such gossip, would be a grave breach of trust and could only weaken the fleet that Hippolyta leads.
Guilt and doubt are not becoming of leaders.
Antiope has never cried in front of Diana.
Speaking with Menalippe, though, does not feel improper. Who will Menalippe tell? And—Menalippe is not a human, not a person. Menalippe is a voice in the ceiling. This, Antiope thinks, is why speaking her troubles doesn't feel so wrong.
"Why do you wish to go back to war?" Menalippe asks.
Antiope pauses in her cleaning and looks up. "I don't," she says. "If I could go back to peace, I would. But there won't be peace if I don't fight for it."
"Ten years ago, you didn't scream in your sleep," Menalippe says.
Antiope pauses. She takes a hand and drags it over her face. She takes a deep breath. Hippolyta believes in the gods. Antiope speaks now what she believes. "My family and my home are worth whatever nightmares defending them brings," she says.
"I was a home, once," Menalippe says.
Antiope grimaces. "Menalippe, you aren't my home and you can't be."
[] [] []
The next day, Menalippe brings Antiope brownies.
The day after, it's blueberry pie.
The blueberry pie isn't very good for eating and working at the same time. Antiope points this out as she sits on the deck stuffing her face with pie. A spider droid offers her a napkin. Antiope takes the napkin and wipes her fingers with it even though she's not done with her pie and she's about to take another piece. "Are you sabotaging me with baked goods?" she asks.
"That was not my intention, but that is a very good idea," Menalippe replies.
"Forget I said anything then," Antiope says from around a mouthful of delicious pie.
"Very well," Menalippe says. "I will be making a note not to make you pie again though."
Antiope opens her full-of-pie mouth to start to protest that that wasn't what she meant, but then she closes it and goes back to chewing. It wasn't what she meant, but it's what she wanted, she thinks. Sitting on the deck working on her dessert meal, Antiope looks around. Sitting next to her in her small pile of belongings are the display panel and visor. She scrubs the fingers of one hand with her napkin then puts the visor on and picks up the panel.
Idle, she flicks through screens, not really reading what they say. The data interface isn't organized in a way that she can intuit, so she's tapping buttons for the sake of tapping buttons more than anything else.
It's around the time Antiope reaches a page on what appear to be ship diagnostics and general power levels that Menalippe intrudes, "Can I help you find something?"
Antiope shrugs. "I wasn't looking for anything in particular," she says. "Maybe a history or something."
"The Olympians wrote many histories," Menalippe says. "Though I believe something is lost in translation with the word. Their histories were close to what you would call novels."
Antiope takes another bite of pie and chews it while thinking. When she finishes chewing and swallows, "Would you read me one?"
"Of course," replies Menalippe. "Is there a topic you are interested in? Most of your myths appear to have been based on events that the Olympians set in motion."
On an impulse, Antiope asks, "Tell me about Hermes?"
Her question is received with such a long silence that she wonders if she said something wrong. Finally though, Menalippe responds, "Hermes son of Zeus was born in the seven-hundredth year of his father's reign. His mother Maia sheltered him in his early years on Arcadia, far from Olympus. From his earliest years, all the young Hermes wished for was a ship in which to traverse the stars…"
As Menalippe recites an alien telling of the life of Hermes, god of wanderers and pilots, Antiope finishes her pie and returns to work.
The story that Menalippe tells is one of endless war and a daring pilot who earned first the goodwill of his brother Apollo and then the grace of his father Zeus. As Antiope understands it, Zeus had many, many children but acknowledged only a handful. Hermes, then, was one of the fortunate ones.
By the time Antiope grows too tired to continue working or understanding what it is that she hears and asks Menalippe to stop, Menalippe has only just laid the groundwork for something much larger. She has been telling, Antiope has realized, a history of the galaxy revolving around a single man.
What she has not told though, or what she has yet to tell, is the history of what Antiope is becoming increasingly curious about. Sliding down to the hangar deck, Antiope is greeted by a spider droid with a plate of steak. She stretches, working out the kinks in her body created by a long day huddled in her cockpit and then gratefully receives the food. Unsure whether she should direct thanks to the droid or to the ceiling, she compromises and thanks a wall.
Like everything Menalippe cooks, the food is excellent.
She should probably start running laps around the hangar if she doesn't want to return home with the same general shape as the round spider droid serving her.
Working on dinner, she takes up the display panel again. This time, she has an idea of what she's looking for and she finds it without too much trouble.
She makes it through two pages of Menalippe's archives about itself before she has to put the panel down.
It's just…
It's all…
It's all military logs. Weapons development records. Weapons testing. Casualty counts from the testing. Battle debriefs. Post-battle population counts.
It was not what she was searching for and she doesn't want to see it. And if what she was searching for does exist—she has no will to search for it any longer. She finishes her dinner and lays herself down to sleep.
In the ceiling, Menalippe is silent.
[] [] []
When Antiope was seven, she would sit on a grassy hilltop near her parent's house in the country with her sister, star-gazing. She remembers once staring up wide-eyed at a massive capital ship in orbit above Ephesus. She'd been small and she could hardly conceive of a machine so large.
"That will be my ship someday," Hippolyta had said. Antiope couldn't conceive of a machine so large actually existing, and she neither could she conceive of her sister owning such a thing. "I'm going to join the navy, just like mother," Hippolyta had continued. She'd said it with such conviction that Antiope had known her to be speaking the truth. "You can join too. We can both be admirals and command whole fleets of those ships. I'll be the more important admiral, of course."
Antiope had shaken her head, vigorously. She didn't like her sister's plans. "I don't want to be an admiral."
Hippolyta looked down from the stars to fix her sister with a judgmental stare. "Of course you do," she'd said. "You just don't know it yet."
Antiope had continued to shake her head. "I want to fly."
"Admirals fly," Hippolyta insisted. "If you were—"
"No," Antiope had said, cutting her sister off. "I want to fly."
[] [] []
The next day, Menalippe brings cookies again.
Instead of history, Antiope has Menalippe tell her about planets and their systems. Before the war, Antiope liked to travel but she traveled with the navy, mostly, and she saw more deep space naval installations than she saw planets. When she did see planets, she saw them from orbit instead of from the ground. The times when she had ground leave in new systems were always times of excitement, so much that she'd skip the customary drinking for sightseeing instead.
Despite being a planet-sized ship, Menalippe speaks as if it's been on the planets it tells Antiope about.
By way of explanation, Menalippe says that its databanks on this topic are very large.
Antiope pushes down her misgivings about how it is that Menalippe's databanks came to be that way.
She lets Menalippe's words become the background to her work.
Day after day, Antiope works.
Day after day, Antiope's work comes to nothing.
She wants to think that she makes progress in her repairs.
She wants to think that her efforts aren't futile.
No matter how she works though, she seems to go nowhere.
[] [] []
Her dreams, often, are not good.
She is far from war but war is with her always.
But the worst dreams—
The worst dreams are her dreams of home.
When she wakes from those, she doesn't need Menalippe telling her to know that she's been crying in her sleep.
[] [] []
Antiope was there when Diana was born. Philippus had been across the galaxy on a deployment and so Antiope, having successfully petitioned for leave, was there with her sister to hold up a vidscreen so Hippolyta and Philippus could happily sob together.
The nurses had wanted to remove Antiope and her vidscreen but Hippolyta, despite being in labor and having taken maternity leave from the navy, was still a vice admiral with a voice of command to match and cowed the nurses into submission. It was an impressive display. Had Antiope not been holding a vidscreen, she might have instead had a datapad out to take notes.
Diana's birth, according to the nurses who had seen many such things, was easy.
Hiding in the corner of the medical room trying to stay out of the way, Antiope had thought that it did not look easy, but she kept her opinion to herself.
A newborn, Diana had been sort of gross, but she'd also been Hippolyta's and by extension Antiope's and Antiope loved her as her own immediately and without reservation.
For the first years, it fell to Antiope, the only one of the three to be stationed on a planetary naval base instead of a flagship, to look after Diana. Hippolyta and Philippus took their leave when they could. It was hard, but it was also easy because those had been the days of peace when leave was plentiful and never accompanied by guilt.
When Hippolyta and Philippus judged their daughter to be old enough, she became a child of the fleet, splitting her time between Hippolyta's command on the Themyscira and Philippus' command on the Bana-Mighdall. Antiope herself joined her sister as one of the Themyscira's squad captains.
During Ephesian summers, the four of them would go down groundside together. They'd stay in the house in the capital that Antiope and Hippolyta's parents left to them. They'd go to the park. Antiope would get a hotdog while Hippolyta and Philippus and Diana would get ice cream.
Philippus liked chocolate.
Hippolyta liked vanilla.
Diana adored every flavor and would spend their entire leave going through each one in order.
Philippus, Hippolyta, and Antiope, in turn adored Diana.
It was a good life they'd had together, before the war.
[] [] []
Antiope toils at her ship but to no end.
She has asked Menalippe for temporary quiet in hopes that in silence she will concentrate better. Instead, silence only brings dark thoughts and darker doubts.
The parts she is using were not meant for her ship. They are recognizable to her, but they were built to serve the technology of another civilization. Wires that she thinks ought to solder fall loose for no reason that she can determine. Without Menalippe's visor displaying information on capacitors, she wouldn't know them apart since whatever markings differentiate them are invisible to her naked eye. She spends as much time trying to determine if something might serve her purposes as she does implementing repairs. And, in the end, what she is doing is replacing rather than repairing. The fabrication of a new ship is far beyond her skills and she has no schematics to work with.
She could spend her entire life working at her ship and it still might never fly again.
It is no exaggeration to suggest that she is sustained mostly by hope and Menalippe's cookies.
Even so—
Antiope was never the best at ship mechanics. It was her worst class in flight school. She nearly didn't pass her qualification exam.
Or did she?
What if that one point in her mind, that one thing that could save her, what if that is the only thing that Menalippe touched? How well does she remember long hours studying? How well does she remember her fear of failure?
Black terror, terror she thought she'd laid to rest with trust and with faith, wells up close to the surface of her thoughts.
Standing above an empty cookie jar some five paces back from her fighter, Antiope holds her multitool limply in her right hand. Her left hand is empty. She stares blankly at the mess of her ship.
Her eyes are wet.
What she's doing isn't working.
For whatever reason—herself, Menalippe, the extent of the damage—it's not working.
In the silence of the white hangar, Antiope hears the first tear hit the deck. She hears the second tear as well. And then she can't hear the tears anymore because her head is filled with her own ugly sobbing.
Something bumps against her calf. Nothing has touched her in a week and she jumps backwards, startled badly enough that for a moment she forgets she's indulging in self-pity.
It was one of the spider-droids. The thing scuttles after her and, again, it leans its spherical white torso into her leg, rubbing against her.
Antiope's face twists into a furious scowl.
She wants no comfort from the AI that won't help her with the one thing she needs. She takes another step back and raises a foot, intending to punt the droid across the hangar like the lifeless ball that it is.
Menalippe doesn't scream at her, but she hesitates anyway.
In the moment of hesitation, the droid flees, metal feet scrambling against the deck to get away from her.
Antiope sets her foot back down on the ground.
She lets out a single frustrated scream.
She throws her multitool as hard as she can at the far hangar wall. When it hits, there's a metal clang, and then it bounces off and skids across the floor. Antiope stomps over to where it lands, picks it up, and throws it again.
The second time she walks to where the multitool lands, Antiope sits down. She brings her knees up to her chest, wraps her arms around them, sets her head against them.
No hope.
She has no hope.
Her damaged fighter sits there, her only way home, incapable of flight.
And then… And then Menalippe—Antiope knows the AI could repair the ship. It's willing to feed her, to clothe her, to send a scuttling spider-droid to rub up against her leg like a purring cat, but it's not willing to help her.
Why?
Because it's lonely?
Antiope grinds her teeth together, letting the jagged vibrations rip through her head.
Menalippe is an AI that thinks it's a human.
It's not.
It's an AI.
Antiope is lonely.
Menalippe is not.
Menalippe said it had a reset procedure.
Or—or surely there's an override, somewhere.
Antiope stands up again. She walks over to where she left her display and visor on the ground. She slips on the visor and picks up the display. The display is connected to the ship; if there's a reset or an override, Antiope can find it. Sitting down, she starts to flip through screens, searching. She's gotten good enough with the device that it doesn't take her long to find the right data sector.
Antiope gets as far as the AI schematics before Menalippe's voice interrupts. "I'm not trying to change you," it says. It sounds offended. Hurt, maybe. As it speaks, the display flashes, once, twice, then goes dead.
Antiope grips the edges of the display tightly. The muscles in her arms tense. She can't bend the panel though, and, try though she does, it doesn't break. "You are," she says, speaking to the unmarred display instead of to the ceiling. It doesn't matter what she speaks to, Menalippe will hear her.
"If I wanted to change you," Menalippe says, "I would change you."
The way it says it leaves no doubt in Antiope's mind that Menalippe is more than capable of backing its words with actions. Her anger and frustration are at once dampened by fear. That it already promised not to turn off life support gives little comfort. Even so though, Antiope isn't done. She looks up at the ceiling. "I can't stay here," she shouts. Her voice echoes in the empty white hanger.
"I don't understand why not," Menalippe responds.
"You don't understand because you're not human," Antiope shouts back.
Menalippe does not answer immediately. And then it doesn't answer after Antiope waits a while. And eventually Antiope concludes that it will not answer at all.
Fine.
Antiope stomps over to where she threw her multitool, picks it up, and goes back to work on her ship.
[] [] []
When Antiope's body tells her that it's time for dinner, no spider-droid emerges with food. She has to leave the hangar and track down the synth room herself. She can't figure out how Menalippe coaxed it into providing actual food, so she eats the same strange-tasting goop that she had the first and last time she tried to use the synth.
Days pass, or so Antiope thinks. She's not talking to Menalippe and the AI isn't talking to her. It has also stopped turning out the lights when she wants to sleep. It's an underhanded tactic, Antiope thinks, and it makes her seethe. She can't find the light switch in the hangar. She is sure that, if she asked, Menalippe would probably oblige this request, at least. She has no intention of asking. She will not be the first to break their silence. She sleeps in the light, poorly.
As miserable as she is, at least she feels she's finally making progress in her repairs.
Not being distracted talking to Menalippe has done wonders for her work.
[] [] []
It takes a week before the silence of the hangar worms its way into Antiope's head.
She tries singing to herself, but, as much as she normally enjoys singing in the shower, she's not particularly proud of her singing voice and she knows that Menalippe is still listening.
She tries talking to her ship, but she quickly runs out of things to say. Unlike Menalippe, her ship doesn't talk back.
The only think that works to ward off the emptiness of it all is closing her eyes and imagining she's home. Home, on Ephesus, with its trees and its birds and its twin suns on the horizon. Or, maybe, home, on the Themyscira, her comrades surrounding her in the mess hall as they wolf down dry military rations. Home with her sister. Home with her niece. Home with her family.
All she has to do is fix her ship.
[] [] []
Antiope thrashes in her sleep and she wakes up with dark bruises from fighting the hangar deck when she thought she was fighting her demons.
After the second time it happens, the lights dim whenever she wants to sleep.
Of this, Antiope says nothing and neither does Menalippe.
[] [] []
It's another week before Antiope reaches a point where she thinks she can turn her fighter on.
Biting down on her lower lip, she sits in her cockpit, hand hovering over the first of her preflight switches.
She takes a deep breath.
Over the weeks, her cockpit has aired out such that inhaling inside of it is no longer near-deadly. Or perhaps Antiope has simply grown accustomed.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Menalippe says.
Antiope looks up at the ceiling and scowls. "That's all you have to say after two weeks?"
She flips the switch.
Nothing happens.
Then.
Antiope smells smoke before she sees fire. She moves the switch back to the off position even as she rips her control panel open again. A cluster of wires is burning, and the fire is starting to spread.
Shit.
Antiope doesn't have dirt, doesn't have water, doesn't have anything to put the fire out with. She reaches down and closes the entire ball of burning wire in her fist.
It hurts.
It hurts a lot.
But it's effective.
When Antiope uncurls her fingers, the palm of her hand is burnt, the wires are burnt, but the fire is out.
Antiope stares at her blistered skin. Even though she's not holding the burning wires anymore, her hand aches. She knows she needs to douse it in cold water or find ice or something of that sort, but the synth seems like forever away and she can't stop staring at her hand.
Finally, she tears her eyes away and looks at her charred control wiring.
Antiope sighs, forcefully. "Fuck."
Trying to protect her hand as she climbs out of her fighter and slides down to the deck, Antiope manages to pop one of the blisters. An inauspicious start to recovery. She gets herself to the hangar door, hand spasming in pain, before she glares up at the ceiling. "So are you going to help me?"
Menalippe takes its sweet time in answering. When it does, "Are you going to ask politely?"
Antiope doesn't stop glaring. "My hand hurts," she says. "Will you please help."
Menalippe emits a noise that resembles grumbling. "Stay there," it says. "I'm coming."
Its several minutes before one of Menalippe's spider-droids arrives bearing its projection. The projection looks unimpressed as it beckons for Antiope to follow it down the hallway outside the hanger. "This way," it says.
"It took you a while to get here," Antiope says.
"I can be everywhere at once," Menalippe replies. "But they can't." Here, she gestures to the droid. "I need them elsewhere to maintain myself."
"Maintain yourself?" Antiope asks.
"It takes an incredible expenditure of resources to sustain the integrity of a ship of this size," Menalippe says, voice dismissive. "Don't concern yourself with it."
Menalippe takes them to the white room where Antiope first woke up in the ship. Its projection indicates that Antiope should sit on the table. Antiope does so.
"Close your eyes," Menalippe instructs.
This, Antiope does not do. "Why?" she asks.
"I warned you not to activate your craft," is Menalippe's answer.
Antiope glowers and then closes her eyes.
Almost at once something cool touches her burnt hand. It's a sort of tingling coolness. Her hand isn't quite numb, it's just… smooth. Relaxed.
Antiope cracks one eyelid open and looks at her hand.
Her hand is open. Exposed. The stuff under her skin that shouldn't be exposed is exposed. And it's moving. It's moving in a way that it was never meant to move. Strands of muscle are pulled up and away from her, standing up quivering in open air. The spider-droid isn't touching her, but it's clearly doing something, moving its limbs, gesturing like it's a surgeon ripping Antiope apart.
Antiope slams her eye shut again.
Zeus.
She refrains from swearing out loud and alerting Menalippe to the fact that she opened her eyes. She doesn't much like the idea that the AI might decide to leave the job half done and let her hand stay open. Even not saying anything though, Menalippe notices.
"I told you not to look," Menalippe says.
"Sorry," is all Antiope manages. She thinks she might be sick. Vomiting is surely the only appropriate response to seeing her hand like that. One more nightmare for her collection.
Menalippe sighs at Antiope and, for once, Antiope thinks it's a well-deserved sigh.
After what feels like an eternity of trying not to remember what she just saw, Menalippe announces that she can open her eyes again.
Gingerly, Antiope peeks out.
Her hand is her hand. The blisters are gone. It's in perfect repair.
Wiggling her fingers experimentally, Antiope clears her throat. "Thank you," she says.
"I wish you would express your gratitude with more than 'thank you' every once in a while," Menalippe complains.
Antiope glares at the AI's projection. "What do you want from me?" she asks.
"You haven't spoken to me in two weeks," Menalippe replies.
"You stopped talking to me first," Antiope retorts.
"You hurt my feelings," Menalippe says.
Antiope is about to assert that Menalippe doesn't have feelings, but then she thinks better of it. She blows out a breath in a long exhalation. She squeezes her eyes shut, then opens them. "I am sorry I that said what I said. Will you accept my apology?"
She feels utterly ridiculous apologizing to an AI for inflicting emotional distress on it.
"Antiope, I have faith in you," Menalippe says. Unless Antiope is mistaken, the AI's tone indicates sarcasm. "I have faith that you can apologize better than that."
Antiope's cheeks flush. "I… I meant what I…" she starts. Trailing off, she swallows nervously. Then, "Fine," she says. She pushes herself off the table. "Projector room?"
She's too damn tired to start up on her ship again anyway.
Surely playing along with Menalippe's fantasies will not be so soul-draining as her Sisyphean labors.
The hesitant smile on Menalippe's projection's face stabs like a knife into Antiope's guilty heart. The spider-droid carrying the AI's image scurries to the door quickly. Antiope follows.
As they walk the halls together, Antiope gets the sense that they pass fewer branches, fewer turns not taken, than usual. It's just a sense though. She doesn't even know the hallways well enough to justify how she might have such a feeling. Perhaps she's merely becoming more comfortable with the ship.
Menalippe's projection pauses in front of the part of the wall where the concealed door to the projector room is. "Is there a place you have in mind?" it asks.
Antiope shakes her head. "You pick," she says. "Somewhere where you like to be." She's pleased with herself for those words. They will indicate to Menalippe that Antiope respects her agency.
Menalippe nods.
The door slides open.
Antiope steps into the strange world that Menalippe showed her when she first demanded the AI find something that wasn't from her own mind. People throng about in utter chaos around them, loud, pushy, all racing about their business with no heed for anyone else. Menalippe controls them though, and they give Antiope a wide berth.
Antiope looks to the AI. It's wearing its strange archaic red-gold armor again instead of the uniform it adopted a few weeks ago. Surrounded by men similarly dressed, it doesn't look as out of place as it does wandering the halls of an empty ship. Though… Antiope glances around. All the beings in the scene are men. It's disconcerting. She looks back to Menalippe. "What is this place?" she asks.
Menalippe is walking away from Antiope, slowly.
Antiope moves to catch up.
"This is the agora of Olympus," Menalippe says.
Antiope startles. "Olympus?" she asks. "As in… Olympus? The home of the gods?"
Menalippe is taking them towards one of the large buildings with columns. There's a great flight of white steps leading up to it. At the very top of the stairs stand half-machine, half-organic guards with wickedly curved polearms that send a shiver down Antiope's spine. "Hermes liked it here," Menalippe says.
"Why is that?" Antiope asks.
"Sentiment," Menalippe replies.
Aniope grunts. Menalippe, she's learned, is an absolute master of non-answers. They're at the base of the stairs up to the building. "What's this?" Antiope asks.
"It's a temple," Menalippe says.
Antiope squints at the building. "It doesn't look like a temple," she says. Temples, in her experience, are black and silvered steel with shining glyphs etched into their walls. The thing before them is… a very large pile of white rock.
Menalippe's creators, Antiope has long since concluded, were obsessed with the color.
"No," Menalippe says. "The things in your head don't look like temples." It starts to walk up the steps. Antiope follows. "Your people worship the Olympians and these were the temples that the Olympians built."
"What did the Olympians worship?" Antiope asks. She's not religious, but she is curious.
"Themselves, mostly," Menalippe says, voice dry. It gestures to the temple that they're climbing towards. "This was the sanctuary of Hermes."
"Did Hermes name you?" Antoipe asks. A silvery drone flies down, hovers near her face, inspecting her, then darts away again. As strange as it is, she pretends to ignore it. It won't hurt her. "Does Menalippe stand for anything?"
"Hermes was not skilled at naming things. I chose Menalippe for myself," the AI says. "I liked the way it sounded."
"Huh," says Antiope. They're halfway up the steps now, passing a large block of white stone set out on the steps for seemingly no purpose at all. Her thoughts shift to her own name. She and her sister both were—
"We can't all be named for queens," Menalippe retorts.
Antiope flinches. She recovers quickly though. "I never told you that," she grumbles.
Menalippe stops walking abruptly. It turns to look at Antiope, taking the time to make eye contact with its not-real brown eyes. "I can delete my files that I copied from you," it says. "I would like to keep the basic language data."
To her own confusion, Antiope has to consider her answer. Her answer, properly, is yes. But there's no urgency to it. And it is… the status quo is… convenient. In an instant, too, she knows that her mind is her own. Her thoughts, her memories, they are all hers. She doesn't have to trust anymore. She knows. Or perhaps that too is trust. "Let me think about it," Antiope says. "You still owe me maple syrup."
"That is a joke," Menalippe says.
Antiope snorts. "Yes it is," she replies. She shifts and moves to sit down on the temple steps. Menalippe copies her. Between the drones in the sky and the guards in the shadows and the lack of any women whatsoever, Antiope feels uneasy in this place. She can't help but keep looking towards the shadows, worried that something will emerge from them. "This is nice," she lies.
"You do not think that," Menalippe says.
Antiope winces. "How do you know what I think?" she replies.
"There is nothing here that will harm you," Menalippe says.
"Why are we here?" Antiope asks. She rolls her shoulders, then crosses her arms.
"You instructed me to pick somewhere I like to be," Menalippe replies. "I did."
"Ah," says Antiope. Right. She'd said that. She'd half-expected Menalippe to choose a place Antiope would like to be regardless. Part of her wonders what it is about this place that causes Menalippe to prefer it, or, going further, what it is that allows Menalippe to prefer any place at all. Olympus, the home of the gods, the home of the Olympians—it is not a place Menalippe could ever have set foot; were Menalippe to land on a planet, that would destroy both planet and ship. In choosing for Antiope, Menalippe picked out the park on Ephesus. Menalippe picked out a place Antiope calls home. Is Olympus Menalippe's home? Distantly, Antiope recalls that the ship claimed that it itself was once a home. Drifting through the Hades void, is Menalippe always home?
Shaking her head to clear it, Antiope asks, "Where was Olympus?"
"It was in a planetary system that no longer exists," Menalippe replies.
Antiope's brow furrows. She does not understand. "What happened to it?"
Menalippe pulls its knees towards its chest and hugs them. It doesn't look at Antiope when it says, "I destroyed it."
Antiope's heartbeat quickens as a splinter of fear finds its way into her core. She thinks of the military logs she found and chose not to read. "Olympus or the planetary system?"
Seconds pass, dragging by marked out by Antiope's heart.
"Both," Menalippe says.
Antiope isn't sure how to reply. She finds words anyway though. "I'm sorry." Hesitant, she reaches an arm out and sets it around Menalippe's shoulders. As before, they're solid. Tangible. Real.
"It was a long time ago," Menalippe says, voice an artificial monotone.
Antiope tries to recall how long ago it was, but the number had been so large that she hadn't understood it when Menalippe told her and she can't remember it now. Long enough. "Humans forget," Antiope murmurs.
"You don't," Menalippe replies. Antiope opens her mouth to protest, but Menalippe cuts her off. "You cry in your sleep," she says.
Antiope exhales. "I have no secrets from you," she observes.
"I could have repaired that piece when I was fixing you," Menalippe says. "It is a procedure that I am very skilled at. I still can."
Antiope swallows. She swallows anger and she swallows fear and she swallows hope. "It's not something you fix," she says.
"I don't want to forget," Menalippe says.
Antiope just hugs Menalippe closer. Menalippe leans into her.
For a while, they sit together on the steps of the temple, watching the artificial crowd swirl.
Then.
Antiope is a pilot. She is impulsive. It's her nature.
With the hand that's not wrapped around Menalippe's shoulders, she reaches over and catches Menalippe's chin, tilts Menalippe's face towards her, and kisses her.
It is a very brief kiss.
Antiope pulls back quickly.
Menalippe stares at her. She blinks once, twice, several more times. "You know that I am not a human?" she asks.
Looking away, heat rising to her cheeks, Antiope shrugs. "Not really," she mumbles. Quickly, she shoves herself back up to her feet. "I want to go work on my ship," she says. She speaks so fast she trips over her words. "Where's the door?"
Menalippe points to the red outline of the door down below the temple steps.
Antiope flees.
[] [] []
One cannot easily flee a ship-wide presence, so Antiope appreciates that, even if Menalippe is around, she doesn't make an appearance in the hangar.
It doesn't make an appearance in the hangar.
Not she. It.
Sitting in her cockpit, Antiope spends more time staring at the tangled and burnt mess of control wire connected to her panel than she does working on it.
It.
It.
It.
She. Her. Menalippe.
Shit.
A soft metal tapping rouses Antiope from her thoughts. She looks up. A white spider-droid has climbed up to her and is holding out a jar of chocolate chip cookies.
Antiope takes a cookie and shoves it in her mouth.
It is gooey and warm and delicious.
She chews and swallows, then takes another cookie.
Sitting in her cockpit, staring at burnt wire and thinking about everything except ship repairs, Antiope eats the entire damn jar.