Chapter 6 – Marvelous Gifts
There was no point on staying on the bridge. The consoles there continuously monitored the life-support, air and fuel reserves, and the integrity of the crew, but if anything needed repairs that couldn't be handled by the Leviathan's own systems, the ship immediately notified Luka through their connection.
But there wasn't much point in being anywhere else on the ship either. At first, she would float around, examining the many parts of the dimmed decks. But by now she knew every part of the ship by heart, and there was nobody to talk to. The organic crew was meant to sleep comfortably while the ship darted through the emptiness. Luka was under orders to only wake them if something relevant happened.
So she curled up in the command chair, humming and drumming a rhythm with her bare toes. Once upon a time, she had sang that tune surrounded by her friends, holding the hand of the man she loved. It irked her to have to resort to human words to label Gakupo and the rest, but she couldn't run from the facts. She was a daughter of humans, even if they didn't see it that way.
And that only fueled her hate for them.
They had taken Gakupo from her. It wasn't enough for her to examine the past they had shared, not when she knew that he was back on Earth, beyond her reach. Luka needed to create more and more memories by his side. She needed him to be there by her side, to partake in the infinite variations of his smile, the subtleties of his touch, the way he joyfully learned and adjusted to new experiences. Luka was slowly starving, and they had taken away the one that could keep her sated.
The strain was starting to make her act in odd ways. Two months ago, she marched into the airlock, took off her shoes, and then went back inside and dumped them into space, laughing all the while. She had no idea why.
And she had spent so many days by now, floating upside down in the engine sector and dancing in zero gravity. She would spin around, slowly, suspended between the core of the Leviathan and the curved walls of the chamber, bathed in pulsing red light. She sang the waltz softly to herself, recalling his arms around her, ignoring the ship's messages until the pain of disobedience was too much to bear.
And yet, somehow, she kept going. Even her own systems seemed determined to taunt her.
Luka stared dully at the screen before the command chair. One of its many subdivisions showed the ship and its trajectory. In the upper right corner, a dot flashed. Despite their relative closeness, the object was still months away. Leviathan was the fastest ship in the Solar System, and it would remain to be so until Scylla was launched, three and a half years from now, but out here, distances were immense.
She was in a strange situation, in more ways than one. Like every other synthetic, she was supposed to safeguard human existence. And yet, the need to rendezvous with the object superseded the need to protect the crew. If it was dangerous, the sacrifice of a small number of humans was acceptable in order to warn mission control and the planet at large.
In fact, thinking that the object could be dangerous made Luka feel almost happy, right now. It was only the fear that it would harm Earth that made it less appealing.
"We are wasting time! We need to-" Mitsuki struggled feebly.
"You need to eat something and sleep. I doubt that a couple of hours will make much difference," Gakupo cut Mitsuki off and pushed her gently towards the kitchen.
"But Luka-!" Mitsuki pouted.
"I'm extremely anxious to see Luka again, so much I can barely concentrate on talking to you. However, if I understand the situation correctly, you and Warren are the only human allies I have in accomplishing that. Having you in a good condition works in my favor. Please let me take care of you." Gakupo sat Mitsuki on a stool, and started to inspect her supplies. Almost all of it was either rotting or past its expiration date.
"I'm fine! Stop bossing me around!"
Gakupo paused with a bag of flour in his hand. He fixed his eyes on it, thinking. "I feel no compulsion to follow your orders…" he trailed off. Despite his anguish for Luka, he felt a certain clarity of mind. The weighty whispers of his directives meant nothing to him now. He smiled with relish. "I am bossing you around. I am going to make you some food, and you are going to sleep at least five hours, and then we'll act upon your plan."
Mitsuki glared at him with her arms crossed.
"You gave me this gift, Mitsuki," he said softly.
"I guess I did," the scientist conceded with a sigh. As she watched him continue his hunt for ingredients, her expression gradually softened. "Can you make me something sweet?"
"There's not much to work with here, but I'll do my best," Gakupo winked at her, and began mixing dough inside a bowl. "And maybe you can answer some of my questions," he added.
"Of course!" Mitsuki perked up.
"…Why did I break, and Luka didn't? I am not… defective, am I?" Gakupo asked with some hesitation.
"No! Don't ever think that!" Mitsuki jumped from the stool, shouting vehemently. Gakupo tilted his head at this. After a moment, she sat down, red faced. "It- It was my fault. All those modifications I've given you made your systems more unstable. But I was more careful this time around."
"As for Luka… I think she's just taking the long route to the same end result. These last months there have been several instances of bizarre behavior. Just three days ago, mission control received a transmission from her that was nothing but seven hours of some Brazilian song about scuba divers."
"I think I know that one…" Gakupo smiled, shaking his head.
"Torrealba is thinking of waking up Thompson, so he can take a look at her. Pffft."
"They are not going to hurt her, right?" Gakupo asked alarmed.
"No, at most they'll turn her off for a while. But it's not like they need to run a diagnostic to see what's wrong here. They sent a companion model to sit by her own inside a ship for the next couple centuries, the idiots." Mitsuki rubbed her bleary eyes. "But they needed a synthetic capable of creativity and adaptability, and only third-wave models fit that description. And happy coincidence, the biggest jerk in the galaxy owns one."
Gakupo left the frying pan sizzling over the stove and crouched before Mitsuki. He looked at her carefully. "I get the feeling a human in my situation would feel resentment towards him-"
"Of course you should, he's the worst!"
"Worst what?" Gakupo cocked his head. Mitsuki didn't reply.
"Heh… If I compare him to you, yes, he wasn't too kind to us. But you balance him out," he took one of her hands and remembering Luka's favorite gesture, he squeezed it gently.
The scientist looked at him with slightly unfocused eyes. It seemed like her reserves of energy were almost exhausted. No wonder, given that it was the middle of the night. Gakupo returned to the stove, flipped the pancake, and turned on the electric water heater.
"You're wrong… I'm a bad person," Mitsuki muttered in a pained voice. She scratched her scalp in a manic fashion. "You don't know how hard it was not to simply erase your memories of Luka… The work of repairing you was going so slowly, and all the time I was afraid you'd just break again, the moment I woke you up." Her eyes welled up with tears. "And if I was successful, you'd go away. Even though I knew Luka was all alone up there, all I could think is how much I needed you…" She broke off, sobbing.
The heater pinged. Gakupo poured water and some powder in a cup, and put it on the small kitchen table. Alongside of it, he served her the pancake. Then he once again crouched before the scientist. He looked at her wordlessly. Seeing her cry felt somewhat different from before. He still felt a need to comfort her, but the impulse came from a different part of his systems. It felt more personal.
"Your actions are what matter, in the end. I can't judge you without bias, but to me, they are the actions of a good person," he said simply. Nothing else was relevant, as far as he was concerned.
"I love you so much," Mitsuki said, sniffling. A timid smile appeared on her lips.
"I love you too, Mitsuki," he replied sincerely. "Now, please eat before it gets cold."
It was around five in the morning. Gakupo approached the garbage treatment unit in the back of the garden with several bags on his hands. It was rather appalling how much of a mess the house was, so he felt the need to clean up a bit while Mitsuki slept.
The neighbors' bot, an early second-wave synthetic called Henry, was already trimming the bushes and gathering leaves. When he detected Gakupo, he turned his red photoelectric eyes towards him and did a stiff bow. "Good morning, Mister Gakupo" he called out with his gritty voice. Gakupo had never managed to convince Henry that he wasn't a human and thus required no honorifics.
"Good morning, Henry," he smiled and began emptying the bags on the appropriate chutes for each kind of waste, since most of the unit was, in fact, underground.
There were some bags next to the garbage, as if Mitsuki had tried at some point to clean the house but gave up halfway. Under one of them, Gakupo noticed a disk. He picked it up and examined it.
It said 'for Mitsuki' in Smith's uneven handwriting.
Pensive, Gakupo took it back into the house and inserted it into the slot for the viewing screen in the living room. After a second, Smith appeared in view, dressed in his flight suit. He looked somewhat nervous.
"-um, yeah. First of all, thank you for watching this. And… I know I'm not your favorite person right now, but please hear me out, until the end, ok?" The man looked around and sat at the edge of the bunk behind him. Gakupo wondered where he was. It didn't look like a civilian house.
"You might be thinking this is stupid, that I should've spoken to you in person. And you're right. No duh, right? Big stupid-looking dude, does stupid things? Yeah, I'm not that smart, surprise. I've spent all my life fighting to stay over the water, you could say. But at least it got me here."
"So yeah, call me stupid all you want. Perhaps that why I can't see things your way, sure. But I tried. I tried for you, and for Aunt Lillian. God knows how much she loved that damn- how much she loved Luka. But try as I might, I see the strings. I can hear it when they speak. It creeps me out, honestly."
"I guess you want to know what the deal with her face is…you are not going to like this, though…"
Smith leaned forwards, looking at his feet.
"I did something stupid. Like I said, every single day I have to struggle just to stay in the race. But I really wanted this, this mission. More than anything. So I took… something, to give me an edge over the competition. It was for the first round of tests. At first everything was great. It all seemed so simple. I aced the test, and none was the wiser. But even at the end of the examination, I started to get a headache. An hour later, I was shaking, had a fever and… things felt wrong. I had no idea how I got home, but I did. And there of course, Luka was waiting for me with champagne and who knows what, to celebrate my success. And then…" Smith fell silent.
Gakupo felt himself going tense, the constant ache for Luka flaring in his mind.
"You know I wasn't in control, right? I didn't meant to damage the damn thing. And those thieves at the factory charge a fortune for repairs. No, there are way cheaper ways to blow off steam," the navigator said, running his hand through his short hair.
"What did you do to Luka?!" Gakupo shouted pointlessly to the screen.
Silence. Smith leaned back on the bed, hiding his expression from view. "I woke up the next day inside my bathtub, for whatever reason, stewing in my own freaking filth. That muck had worn off, by then. As for Luka, she was still lying on the floor next to the table. The guy at the shop said she shut down automatically to avoid a short or whatever, but moron that I am, for a second I thought I'd killed her."
"There was no way I was paying for an official technician, never mind the fact that I would have to explain what happened. But the man I got was good enough, I guess. He removed the glass shards lodged in her face and fixed her up all pretty. Yeah, Luka couldn't smile all that much after that, but she could speak normally, at least."
Gakupo pressed the palms of his hands to his temples, confused. There was a roaring inside his head, something he'd never felt before. A destructive urge, pulling at his fingers. It was a stifling, corroding feeling.
"Don't think I didn't learn my lesson. I was incredibly lucky that I didn't puree my own brain with that stuff. Or worse, I could've assaulted a real woman, instead of Luka. I'm sorry to phrase it like that, but they are easier to fix. Now, listen, Mi-"
Gakupo cut off the recording mid-word. He stood up, still trying to sort out the turmoil in his head. Some ideas were crumbling away, no longer supported by his directives. There was one in particular that he had never enjoyed thinking about, but had accepted so far. 'All synthetics are fake and replaceable', his first lesson back in the factory.
But Luka was real. As real as anything else in this world they had been forced to inhabit. She mattered. There was no other conclusion possible.
Gakupo took out the disk and casually crushed it with one hand. After throwing away the remains in a waste bin, he opened the front door and sat on the stone steps before the house.
He looked upwards. The sky was completely clear. It was a beautiful morning, the start of a promising day.
Inside of him, the implant was still plaintively calling out. It was a needless waste of energy to leave it on, knowing that Luka was out of range.
He didn't turn it off.
At quarter past nine, Mitsuki appeared in the doorway. She was looking much better, with her hair in her usual bun, makeup concealing the bags under her eyes.
"I called Warren, he and the twins are coming over," she informed Gakupo. "They want to say goodbye before you go." She returned inside.
"I was hoping you'd sleep until noon…" Gakupo followed her. "I guess I need to cook some breakfast, then?"
"Until noon? No way. I'm already late as it is. If we arrive after lunch, we'll draw too much attention," Mitsuki retorted and plopped herself on a couch. "As for breakfast, don't bother. Warren is probably bringing half his morning menu with him anyway. Sit down, please."
Gakupo took a chair and sat before her. "I take it that you are still working at the spaceport."
"I lead one of the teams in charge of onboard systems development of the second stage long-term exploration ship, tentatively called Scylla, to be launched five years after Leviathan," Mitsuki rattled off quickly. She probably was used to saying it often.
"…Congratulations?" Gakupo said with a wry smile. She didn't seem too enthusiastic about it.
"I suppose it was in the cards all along. After Leviathan launched, Torrealba told me I was too valuable to become an active crew member on any of the missions. Well, Scylla will be at least twice as fast as Leviathan thanks to one of my ideas, so that might be a fair assessment," she smiled.
"You truly are an accomplished human," Gakupo complimented Mitsuki, as she clearly wanted.
"The beauty of this is that I'm charge of Escualo, the prototype ship to test Scylla's technology," she said in a hushed tone, despite no one else being in the house.
"…And that's what I'm going to use to reunite with Luka," Gakupo said after a moment. Mitsuki grinned impishly.
"By the time they realize it's not a routine exercise, no one will be able to catch you. It's going to be close, but my guess is you'll reach Leviathan a week before it reaches the object. Just take Luka and get out of there."
"What about the crew?"
"Let them handle it. They signed onto the mission willingly, didn't they? Luka didn't," Mitsuki shrugged. It was somewhat disturbing to see her acting so callously. Her nonchalant posture deflated somewhat under his surprised stare.
"We are facing an unknown here, Gakupo. I don't want you to put yourself or Luka in risk. Leave them to their job, please," she begged in a soft tone.
"…Alright," Gakupo said, hanging his head.
A moment later, the doorbell rang. Gakupo startled, jerking his head from side to side. Mitsuki looked at him for a moment, then laughed.
"I erased your connections to the house. You won't need it up there, and besides, I needed the memory space for other things," she rose and went to open the door herself.
Warren walked in with a big basket full of goodies. Rin and Len poked their heads around him, and when they saw Gakupo, the twins jumped and tackle hugged him, almost throwing the bigger synthetic to the ground.
"You woke up!" they shouted in unison.
"I had to, didn't I?" Gakupo smiled at them, patting their heads.
"You got that right, boy," Warren interjected. "Boil some water, Mitsuki, be a dear. I need some coffee."
The five of them sat at the dining table, discussing the plan. It was rather simple. Mitsuki was going to call a meeting of her team, and the twins and Warren were going to cause a ruckus in the boarding sector for civilian flights. Even more, Warren had talked to his nephew and his wife, in order to secure Al's and Oliver's assistance in messing with the maintenance crews. With all of those distractions, they hoped that Escualo would take off unnoticed by the security personnel.
"We're going to make such a mess!" Rin squealed happily.
"But this is going to get you all into trouble," Gakupo frowned.
"My dear boy, we've had time to consider the consequences. Don't worry about it," Warren gesticulated with a pastry in Gakupo's direction.
"Besides, we're going away on tour today," Len commented. This earned him a pat on the back from Warren's free hand.
"Yes, quite right, Lenny. Even if they suspect that we are connected to the theft of the Escualo, our clients will be very disinclined to hand us off over, especially over such a minor offense as disruption of a public space," the impresario finished with a flourish.
"What about you? What are you going to do?" Gakupo looked at Mitsuki. This was worrying him the most.
"Fu fu, my carrier at the space agency is going to be over when they figure out whose synthetic is inside the ship, obviously. But I've got some interesting job offers… in the private sector," she finished mysteriously. "I'll have some protection."
"Well, I'd prefer if you come with us, dear-"
"We've been through this," Mitsuki interrupted.
"But Mitsuki wants a lab to work with," Warren continued, this time facing Gakupo.
Gakupo furrowed his brow. He wondered whether Mitsuki would truly be OK on her own. But at the same time, Luka's face was at the back of his mind, urging him to go to her.
"Let's go to the spaceport, then," he said.
Mitsuki's office was as messy as he expected. Gakupo really hoped that her mysterious new patrons would assign a few servants to her, or they would soon lose her to a mountain of scientific clutter. She managed to make a space on the corner of her desk for the folders she was carrying to the meeting by unceremoniously dumping the books previously occupying it to the ground. She cleared a chair using the same method.
"Sit, please," she asked him. "No, facing the door."
Gakupo obeyed, after giving her a curious look. She then took a comb and a long black and red ribbon from one of her lab coat pockets.
"Let me indulge myself one last time, ok?" Mitsuki asked him with a hoarse tone of voice.
A gesture of affection, Gakupo recalled. He nodded.
Mitsuki ran the comb through his hair, stopping to wipe her eyes from time to time. Then she began to braid it, instead of his usual ponytail.
"It will be easier to handle in low gravity," she explained.
"Now, remember that I said I replaced some of your old files with new info? Well, half of it is about Escualo, how to fly it manually and how to repair it. But the other part is even more important," Mitsuki paused, and tied the ribbon in place. Gakupo turned to look at her.
"I reorganized your mind to be free of the constraints usually given to synthetics. It was a long process, obviously, but I learnt from it, how to make it faster and even how to automatize it. So I wrote a program and placed inside of you. The next time you and Luka link minds, the program will enter her. You just need to stay merged until the process is done, so that the program can use you as temporary backup space as it moves her files around. Then, Luka will be free," she finished triumphantly.
"Luka will be free…" Gakupo repeated, testing the words. Yes, it was correct and necessary. More than anything.
Gakupo had an easier than expected time getting close to the spaceship. Technically, he was the project lead's personal synthetic, so even though his presence attracted some attention, no one stopped him while he walked around the research section. Thanks to the meeting Mitsuki scheduled, the landing strip was deserted by the time he got there.
The experimental ship was waiting by itself, on one end of the open area. Escualo was svelte and graceful, a dark grey needle to pierce the skies. In part, it was due to how barebones the ship was: no crew quarters or food storage, no recycling systems to make use of human waste. Not that Gakupo needed any of it. Mitsuki had made sure that a charging alcove was installed on the secondary deck, and that was all the 'life support' Luka and him needed.
Gakupo's brooch pinged. Somewhere on the other side of the hangars to his right, Al was giving the maintenance crew the most perplexing serenade of their lives. He was rather curious about Oliver's contribution to the whole thing. The little synthetic didn't seem the type for flashy performances. Smiling to himself, Gakupo boarded the ship.
The ship's cockpit was very small, with enough room for only one pilot seat. Though from the information Mitsuki had uploaded inside of him, Escualo's AI was capable to running the vessel almost wholly by itself. Gakupo sat on the seat, and flicked a couple of switches.
"Hello, Escualo," he said out loud.
"Hello, Gakupo. I've been waiting for you," the genderless voice answered pleasantly.
At that moment, the brooch pinged twice. That signified the start of the twins' 'great spaceport extravaganza', as Warren put it. It was a shame he would miss it.
"Please start the launch sequence," Gakupo requested.
"Initiating launch sequence," Escualo answered. "Please enter destination coordinates for trajectory calculation." Among the many switches, displays and buttons, there was a common keyboard. It lit up to call Gakupo's attention. He entered the current position of the object, as per Leviathan's readings. He could adjust it later for more precision.
"Take me to Luka," he whispered as he hit the accept key.
"Trajectory calculated. Estimated travel time: 84 days, 16 hours. Destination codified as 'Luka'. Sixty seconds to lift-off."
Gakupo leaned back on the seat. 84 days seemed like such a long time. Yet once it had taken years for manmade probes to travel similar distances.
The engines rose from a hum into a wild melody. Gakupo joined them in song, making up the lyrics as he went. The ship began to vibrate.
"Engine alpha is go. Engine beta is go. Gravity modules are go. Energy conversion unit alpha is go. Thirty seconds to lift-off," Escualo rattled off calmly, as it began to roll down the strip. "Energy conversion unit beta is go. Shielding is go. Automatic routing is go. Manual routing is go. Sensors are go. Pressure cocoon is go. Ten seconds to lift-off, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, lift-off!"
Like a swan rising from a lake, Escualo took to the skies.
Luka ran her hand through her hair. Or least, she tried to, but the knots in it stopped her fingers half-way. It was at least a couple of months since she last bothered to put any effort into her appearance. The only reason she was still clothed is that she had no reason to take the jumpsuit off in the first place. The various dirt stains on it were certainly not a good enough reason.
She stared at the screen, confused. Leviathan had called her to the bridge, on account of unusual activity. The unusual activity was an incredibly fast unidentified ship leaving the Inner Solar System. If it remained on its current course and speed, it would rendezvous with Leviathan in about two months.
Was Scylla done already? And why come here? Because of the object? Luka's mind became a bit more focused, her curiosity aroused by this new development.
Fourteen hours later, there was a short transmission from mission control. It only furthered her inquisitiveness.
"Attention Leviathan. A rogue synthetic has stolen the experimental vessel Escualo, and seems to be heading your way. He's not answering hails and can't be deactivated remotely. Luka, you are ordered to protect the crew and ship of Leviathan by all means necessary. Capture of the synthetic is preferable for study, but only if it doesn't jeopardize primary mission objectives. Otherwise, destroy him."
After she answered in the affirmative, Luka sat back in the command chair, hugging her knees. As hard as she tried to fight it, a single hopeful thought rose from the morass of her thoughts. Gakupo was coming for her.
"No…" she rubbed her hands against her face. It wasn't right. What if that thing out there was dangerous? Gakupo had to be safe. And even if it wasn't, Gakupo would be stuck in this awful ship with her. Luka had to capture him now. He had managed to break free of the cage, and she had to pull him back in. "Please, please stay away…"