Arc 1 - UGF Cleveland
Chapter 4 – Melnick

Melnick cannot find a close approximation for how Melnick feels when she wakes during this Riselight. Sometime in the Afterdark it shifted. A sense of self. Melnick’s Intelligence is no help. It never has been any help, though ze has been very good at hiding it.

When it initially moved through Melnick’s awareness, the implanted intelligence blazed paths and cleared out swashes and opened up serpentine rifts glowing with disconnected data. Mostly, what it left in its wake was language. It has been quiet ever since, leaving Melnick to sift through the wreckage, learn what is possible. From this wreckage, Melnick collaborates on an identity for today. Ze/zir/zir seems to suit zir better than most else, though it still feels insufficient. Zir dons a new jumpsuit and boots and leaves Andra sleeping in their shared cabin.

Ze contemplates zir’s own tenuous link with life throughout breakfast and concludes that there’s not much keeping zir here. There’s the vastness of space, but a tickle in zir subconscious brain insists even that is easily traversable. The bigger matter is knowing what to do once one got there. Ze is a Life Support Engineer, or soon will be. Zir future is a singularity, collapsing quickly on one point of reference. Melnick picks feebly at the hard, dense protein cake ze picked up at the food stations.

You’re being awful quiet, ze prods at her implant the same way she prods zir food. Hey. Good riselight to you, too. Are you there?

More of nothing. Just a hibernating little hum.

Which is maybe a good thing. The implant confuses zir. Ze feels too-frequently whipped between its polarities, its personalities, unable to find purchase in the firmament of her own thoughts. Ze plays a game with zirself while forking tasteless food into zir jaws. The game involves plucking words from the cosmos of data the implant has opened zir up to, words that seem to fit the implant: Narcissus, self-congratulatory, self-conflagratory, shady, two-bit, rudimentary.

Still, the implant refuses to take the bait, or maybe sleeps so soundly that even zir intentional nagging can’t break down its security measures to get a rise out of it. Ze’s bored with the game already. But, looking around, it’s clear nobody else wants to play or communicate. The shaggy brown collies of Melnick’s cycle bow their heads to devour their trays of bland food in sweeping, hungry forkfuls. There are two older Clusters staggered through the mess hall, and the gray-clad biological crew, but they keep to themselves. Melnick risks singling zirself out as a dud if ze associates freely with them. The newer Cluster hasn’t yet arrived in mess, and won’t for another hour, but Melnick wishes for Andra anyway—anydog would do to talk to.

#

Dudding—a fearful conclusion to such little life. It happened to two in the cluster prior to Melnick’s, and once in Melnick’s cluster already, and now it has happened to one from the newest cluster. Melnick reports to zir training only to stand over Thyla’s corpse. “It’s not ideal for you to be here,” Doctor Nara says. “Bias interferes with the process. You’re not to touch this one, understand? Do only what you’re ordered to do. Understood?”

//Understood.//

“Good girl,” says Nara. Melnick has not been commanded to correct her, so ze does not.

So ze rushes the room trying to discern the names and functions of tiny medical instruments that, under normal circumstances, the intelligence would tell zir about. But the intelligence is silent today—it didn’t wake when ze did. A pit forms in Mel’s stomach when the handler-cat Havlen comes in with his blank stare and his uptight stride—clipped half-steps, too stiff, betraying him as a biosynthoid, a creature without biological family to teach him even simple ambulation. Mel hopes ze doesn’t walk the same way. Ze attempts to correct her steps in response to Havlen’s presense, eyeing him every now and again to check zir posture against his.

He wants a status report, and Mel is relieved when he barely receives one. Any information he has about zir amounts to too much. Especially now, gloved in the irony tang of Thyla’s blood. With a gut-turning crunch, Doctor Nara forceps away a plate of Thyla’s skull, revealing the pink, glistening treasure within: the biosynthesized brain, rich in biomass for recycling. Havlen takes this as his cue to leave, thankfully, and Mel steps forward to loom over the doctor’s practiced hands as she wrestles the narrow metal components of Thyla’s intelligence implant from the lower inside of their skull. Another doctor, a bright young goat, bows forward periodically with a hollow plastic instrument, vacuuming the pooling blood away from Nara’s tools.

“Being stubborn,” Nara talks to herself as she works. “C’mon. Here you go.” A wet length of wire unspools from Thyla’s open skull as Nara pulls back on the implant, trailing the neural feelers, the thick, scabby docking component. “An emesis, please.” Mel knows this word. Ze fetches the kidney-shaped metal basin from a stack of identical basins near the sink. Doctor Nara lets the implant and its thin limbs hit the emesis basin with a metallic clink when Melnick draws closer. She returns to Thyla’s brain without further acknowledgement.

Mel stares into the emesis basin. The bloody wreckage of Thyla’s sentience sitting in the sea of their fluids like a pearl tucked in its mother. All of their brief existence boiled into this tiny fragment.

Doctor Nara’s icy voice snaps Melnick back to zirself: “Put that with the other pieces for indexing. Now.”

//Acknowledged.// Melnick scuttles to the wheeled bin rack near the back of the examination room, finds an empty bin, and slides the emesis basin carefully in. Though ze tries not to peek back into the other full bins, ze can’t help zirself: all of them contain a single piece of the whole. The dark wet heart, a piece of rib, kidney, tracts of intestines. All of Thyla, separated. For future research. Maybe, Mel thinks, the captain will be able to figure out what went wrong. Maybe then it won’t happen to Melnick. Maybe they can fix zir.

#

Andra is already laying back in her bunk when Melnick is dismissed from her duties for the remainder of riselight. She looks cool in her used, salt-smelling jumpsuit. It’s clear to Mel that Andra spent her day doing physical proving: running laps, doing push-ups, pull-ups, strength and resistance, hand-eye coordination, reactivity tests. Mel recalls the rigor of zir day of physical proving, how hard ze failed without the aching aid of a higher processing-power dictating how ze metered out zir stamina. But Andra exudes success. Half-lidded black eyes, ears folded forward, paws cradling the back of her head. Her legs hang off the end of the mattress. Melnick grazes the bottom of her paw pads as ze passes into the room, and Andra’s eyes flit to her. Unstartled.

To Melnick’s surprise, Andra transmits to zir first: //Present hurts good / day of sweltering, testing / and she finished at the top of her class but went unregarded maybe with a hint of jealousy, maybe not //

//I am still not sure I entirely understand you. Phys went well, I take it?//

Andra pulls her lips back into a toothy grin. //Affirmative / what you?//

//I spent my day training for my future assignments. Once we’re out of our educational period, I mean. You know about Thyla?//

//Affirmative.//

Melnick had wanted to speak to Andra about Thyla’s body in the moment of its unmaking. Faced with the opportunity now, ze found zirself unable to figure out what to say. Ze shrugged limply. //Well, afterdark is nearly upon us, and they will be closing the showers soon. Would you like me to show you?//

//Shower (?)//

Melnick covered zir snout, signing laughter. //You smell, friend.//

The showers are only down the hall, but they have very little time before lock-out. Melnick retrieves zir and Andra a spare set of jumpsuits and makes quick strides for the showers, but Andra remains a step ahead, her long legs and hard-working intelligence knowing the path before Mel shows it—still, Andra waits at the door for Mel. Waits patiently for zir to show her the lockers where they can leave their change of clothes, the controls for the long line of showerheads and soap dispensers. Steaming, decyl glucoside-tinged water comes jetting out from two shower heads side by side, and Mel leans her neck back to let it cascade over zir chest and shoulders. Ze turns around in its lovely heat. Rinsing off the blood, the smells, the remnants of Thyla.

Andra stands underneath her showerhead, observing. Mel pretends not to notice at first, but can’t help zirself. //What is it? Need help?// she sends.

Andra shakes her head. She sticks her ears underneath the flow and lets the water pressure flatten them against her skull. Pink trickles of blood wash off the spot on the back of her neck where, only two days ago, her implant was first cut in, nestled, secured. Her sweat-scent fills the vapor gathering in the showers, and then quickly dissipates in lathers of chemical soap so strong it burns the surface of their flesh. Melnick shivers. Ze lifts zir feet and shakes zir head to keep zir ears clear, but something else bubbles inside Mel as ze runs zir claws through the thick brown fur covering zir waist and thighs and in between. As ze darts quick, curious looks at Andra doing the same. Andra leans her head back like she did in bed. She closes her eyes fully and sighs through her nose, enjoying herself, and Mel thinks ze has never seen a creature look so sublimely happy. Though it is nearly afterdark and Havlen will soon appear to close them into their tiny sleeping chambers, Mel feels a beaming light fill zir insides like a ship’s beacon sweeping the starscape for signs of alien life. Ze has a partner in this suffering uncertainty, in this fate dictated by forces beyond zir control. Perhaps that makes it not-suffering. Perhaps, now, Melnick’s fate can be something else. Something good.

******

(A/N): Thank you for reading again, if you're following the story! If you're not following the story, feel free to go back and read previous chapters if you liked this one. I update regularly! Or leave a comment, and I'd love to talk about writing, sci fi, or anything with like-minded authors, artists, etc : ) Hope everyone's having a great week! I may update again soon, but probably not this weekend, since it's pride weekend where I'm from, and I'll be out and about in fursuit! I'm so excited--it's my first time publicly suiting, and I put together a really cute outfit, so it's gonna be stellar! Happy pride, everyone <3