008 on 003
A young girl, barely out of school. An old woman, lost decades into the future. A cyborg, augmented with advanced technology. A soldier, thrown into a war she did not start. A fugitive, seeing her pursuers in every shadow. An experiment, doomed to failure. A dancer, shining with grace and elegance. A sister, still pining for the older brother she can never see again and coping with the eight new brothers who do not share a single drop of blood with her. A daughter, of a country that limped its way to victory through two world wars. A princess, born into the safe, polite world of upper-middle class Parisian society. A victim, of kidnap, imprisonment and illegal human experimentation. A warrior, who found her feet when crisis threatened. A gentle soul, never too busy to help her new family. A silver-tongued rebel, always ready to put others in their place when the situation calls for it.
003 is all of these things; sometimes all at the same time. Except, she seriously dislikes her number. She asks us all to call her Françoise and makes the effort to use our first names in conversation. She is so polite too; no doubt a relic of her childhood, so deeply ingrained in her that she doesn't even notice herself doing it. Not that she's submissive though, oh no. If anything, her adherence to good manners has given her a rather fierce temper, regardless of who her target might be.
After leaving Japan, our little family found itself under a rather zealous string of attacks from Black Ghost, including everything from high-tech espionage to good old-fashioned bombings of our ship. We were forced to remain on the run for a period of about four or five consecutive months, by land, by air and by sea. Life aboard the Dolphin varied between structured coordination between us all and a ten-person exercise in madness, sometimes changing by the minute. It's what happens when you put that many people in a life-or-death situation against their will and then put them all in an enclosed space for anything up to a month at a time. I mean, it was bad enough in Mr Kosumi's house, when we were all able to leave and have rooms to ourselves, but, once we were all packed into the Dolphin, underwater and under pressure, all sleeping between three rooms and constantly on call. We ate, slept, piloted, fixed and cooked on rotas, seeing one another only through work. The air was thick and warm, the sound of the engines was constantly droning in the background and any conversations that came up were brief and tense. Arguments were frequent. Although some of us we more prone to bickering (002, 006), the rest of us all had our times to lose control. I feel really bad telling this story, especially since 003 can probably hear me telling it, but, I think you need to know it in order to understand.
It was around the eighth or ninth week, around the start of February and everywhere outside the ship was frozen solid. Most of Europe was covered in snow and, no surprise, none of us was feeling particularly enthusiastic. One morning found Françoise and me in the engine room, trying to figure out if there was anything obviously wrong with the water filtration system. With her X-Ray vision, she had proven to be an irreplaceable help in fixing the engines and my hope had been to get the systems fixed on board, without a potentially dangerous trip to dry land. But, even without our joint efforts nothing was obviously wrong and with every minute that passed we were both getting short tempered. Moreover, it was plain to see that she had her mind on other things, based on how often she was glancing off in other directions. Not wanting to push anything, I was about to call it quits for the morning when she rather beat me to it. After a final glance over to her left, she sighed, slammed her hands on the wall, stood up, dusted her clothes off, muttered "excuse me" and stormed out of the room. Before I could take the time to process what had just happened, the sound of a scuffle out in the main corridor reached my ears. By the time I reached the source of the sound, most of the rest of the team had already gathered. At the centre of the little cluster, 003 had 007 pinned to a wall and had seemingly been giving him a rather vicious piece of her mind. Before the two were pulled apart, I caught the end of her tirade.
"... and believe it or not, I can still hear you! There's nowhere on this pisse-puant rust-bucket of a ship where I DON'T hear everything! I wouldn't even need to to be able to hear you! I know you're sick of being down here! We all are! I have heard nothing but complaints coming out of your mouth for a week straight and I am sick to death of..."
It probably would have gone on, had 009 and 004 not gotten in the way. 003 avoided the team for the rest of the day and any attempts at conversation ended in seconds.
It was only two days later, when she consented to sit in the kitchen with 004, 009, 005 and me that we got the rest of the story. In a slightly too-measured voice, 003 explained that in actual fact, she had been mulling over her actions for days before actually doing anything. 007 – she said – had been getting on her nerves for a week before then and she had been wanting to put him in his place from that start. However, she had also been keeping her eye on another submarine that was in the same waters as us. It wasn't immediately obvious as being a Black Ghost vessel, but neither was it one that we could immediately trust. Too much commotion aboard the ship would alert the other sub to our presence, potentially putting us all in danger. So, with much chagrin, she waited, and waited, and waited further, keeping an eye and ear out for the other sub at all times. She kept going with her daily routine, mindful all the while, and waited for the danger to pass. When at long last it slipped out of her range of sight she wasted no time in racing from the engine room.
That, in a nutshell, is Françoise. All-seeing, but also very much all-aware. She balances a warm heart with a will of steel but never forgets the mission at hand.
But, I won't pretend this all hasn't been that little bit more difficult for her than it has for everyone else. I was only exaggerating a little when I said that she was a princess in her old life. From the bits I've been able to glean from her in conversation, her family was pretty well-off and they loved her dearly, in a strange sort of way. They could afford to send her and her brother to good schools and take vacations each year in the Côte d'azur. Françoise's parents shelled out the cash for her ballet career and all they asked in return was her unwavering love and obedience, as well as a share in the limelight. By today's standards, her parents seem quite strict and closed-minded but for their time it was pretty normal. There was genuine sadness in Françoise's voice when she was talking about how her family used to be.
"I think mother would honestly have a fit if she saw who I was spending my time with these days. She had a bit of an issue with foreigners, especially after the Algerian War."
We were in the kitchen together, with a mountain of potatoes and carrots to peel for what would later be a chicken curry. We had already washed and chopped a stack of other vegetables and in that time I had already talked at great length about my own home and family. At first, Françoise had just stuck to small details about Paris, like her favourite bakery just next to the Parc Monceau where she and her friends would meet for lunch after dance rehearsals, but as the minutes dragged on she went in to greater and greater detail. I learned about her brother, Jean-Michel, and how much her mother had adored her when she was younger.
"Looking back, she wasn't actually that great of a person. She was impatient, shallow and spoiled and if I had stayed at home for the rest of my life I probably would have ended up just like her: housewife, rich husband, a couple of kids of my own, no real purpose in life other than to stare at paintings all day and judge people I'd never meet..."
She sighed then; the long, worn-down sigh that only a soldier knows. She pressed her hands to her eyes, in an attempt to block the world out for a moment.
"She's probably dead now, though. She and papa, and maybe even Jean-Michel. As strong as my brother was, he could never could stay out of a fight; kind of like you, Pyunma... I think you would like him; he's a soldier too, even if he's not the smartest man around."
"Is it worth trying to find him? Maybe when this is all over..."
"No. When Jet, Albert and I all awoke in this time we discussed it as a three. We spent a whole night talking together about what had happened, airing grievances and coming to terms with it all. We agreed it would be best not to try and find our families for the time being. It would put them in danger, if nothing else. Besides, if he's alive my Jean-Michel's an old man now; I don't think there's any space left for me in his life. I wouldn't want to upset things..."
We talked for hours, even after the shift was over. I kind of got the feeling by the end that 002 and 004 aren't the best people to talk to, even if they share the most life experience with 003. Of the nine of us, Françoise is probably the only one who misses her old life. It makes it all the more impressive to see her dedication in the fight against Black Ghost when I think about it. In her own way, she is indomitable.