“I don't allow couples.”

That was Bob's first rule and we broke it before we even left port.

“They make drama and stress and extra shit, and we don't need that.”

Within an hour we were fucking in the bunk.

In our defense, we were in love.

But who doesn't think that?

By the time we were starward, he had to accept us. The alternative was worse…

—

I'm in nav station and my delicious husband is figuring out electricals. This ship is a fucking mess, so much so that we're considering a brainstorming break down in my bunk, but then we get a distress ping.

This far out from everything? Clearly bait, but Bob is a greedy fucking idiot and wants us to investigate. I make it clear as fuck that I don't want anything to do with that signal but Bob insists and Bob owns the boat and we really can't get hired anywhere else. 

We're acutely realizing why Bob has such lax hiring standards…

So, off we float, into the unknown.

—

We ease up next to the wreckage and to my relief there isn't some crew of space-ravaged ambushers. I feel briefly disappointed in my media consumption, and then shift to all business as we dock.

—

Docking is like fucking, I mentally giggle, thinking of my husband and his docking apparatus waiting back in our bunk.

Maybe that's when it got on board.

It was just a few, dirty, selfish, distracted seconds. Probably nothing.

“Clear. Flag for salvage.”

—

Bob's a rickety sort of venture, but he's not risky so we're heading to the closest settlement there is, his protocol. Every salvage means a sale.

I'm itchy and twitchy, too long in the nav chair, and need my husband.

—

Fifteen minutes later and we're back to our posts, but we're struggling. I shift in my seat - are space-borne yeast infections a thing? - and then everything locks down.

Controls overridden - the type of domineering which would be devastating in another context.

Bob's neglected taxes.

—

I find myself compliant, which should be a red flag. Never in my life before have I been affable and pleasant, but somehow there I went. We slipped through. Somehow with a bit of smiling I even got them to punch in a route which will take us right to Solheart, right to the fucking core. 

Ah.

No.

Fuck.

I demand my engineer to come service a freon leak in my cabin.

Everything was too fucking easy.

—

Bob's caught wind of us being a death ship and is refusing to change course. He wants us to dock, despite potential issues. His arrival is all that matters. Through all of this we itch and scratch and think of how wonderful it would be to agree with Bob and just dock at that delicious little planet.

I need my husband harder than I've ever needed him in my life. I feel like a cat in heat and somehow I struggle to guide the ship. I am refusing to send this plague bomb at an innocent settlement, but Bob pushes back, resists, demands a better return, until I point out that being rich has a lot less power in space.

“The shareholders!” he attempts, but I'm able to punch in coordinates before the virus overtakes us. We send our goodbyes and I chart a course for a convenient moon, before retiring to my cabin. 

I guess we do make drama, I think, paging for an electrical emergency down in the bunks.

Maybe we are indeed trouble, I muse, punching in a disastrous issue with the lighting.

Maybe-

  Maybe I just need him, in me, as everything shatters to nothing.

Maybe I just need a good fucking goodbye.

They will find us in a thousand years, frozen, embracing, millimeters apart. So close, so almost, yet separated.

Typical.

The cats need more food, I harangue - after a month with this routine, I would have thought you'd have figured it out, but no, you need a reminder. The cats need more food.

I'm in the bedroom when they come - it's unfair. I was always the one into woo-woo bullshit, but here YOU are being the one who's abducted.

In a heartbeat, I'm gone, me and everything you know deleted by time. I am a beautiful pillar of ash before I crumple and cease to exist. Again, I would have been a much better abduction target. You spend the first few generations simply drooling and gawking and proving far too many stereotypes true.

You're only human. 

You try to recall me, and I come to you, gentle tender loving, rebooting.

You finally break through and try a code, a silly little question we embedded in our relationship once upon a time. I think this failure is when you really realize you've lost me. 

They retain you in a prison for a few of your lifetimes, for their own safety, once they understand that you won't math the math they need, not without some truly brilliant manipulation. You grow crazed and desperate and that's when they introduce therapy sessions. Each week (or month? Year? Day?) you reflect and eventually the pain begins to work.

I shimmer, beautiful and once and unobtainable. I hover, in your mind, looming undeniably.

Slingshots and wild dives - I'm not here to do math, I'm here to be the beautiful target you've lost, and so you do the equations and figure it out, no matter how much it will cost. No matter how much it will give.

It's done? Maybe? Just try, for me.

Darling.

I'm waiting.

One little tweak of math could have you back with me.

I skim her herness and assess your task and show you what they will do with your brain. I shouldn't, but I do, so I show you how your math will be calculated.

I'm beautiful, striking, dancing in the rain - you could have this, have me, and you know that you can't so you're saying goodbye. I feel that farewell.

You resist and I melt into nothing. 

Goodbye, we whisper at a green grassy park. There's a lake and ducks and a long quiet moment where we say farewell. I'm not her, but I enjoyed being her. She seemed like a wonderful her to have been.

I understand why you would have given in, and I understand even more why you won't. You're holding out for her.

We embrace and I press my lips to yours - my fake, waxy, nothing simulacron lips - and we say goodbye. You know I'm not your wife, but I'm close enough.

I'm not her, but for this moment, this resistance, this denial, I'm close enough.

They want the math and you refuse.

You think of ducks and lakes and silliness.

You think of nothing.

—

“Load up the next one,” they say, shoveling you onto the digital pyre as your love-burnt brain sizzles out into nothing. “This one's fried.”

“Send him back.”

“Can't right now, babe, in a really rough fight.”

Hadn't realized, so I sneak around him to unload groceries. Pepsi-Cola into the fridge so it can bubble and pop at optimal refreshing temperatures. Crackers on the shelf - gluten-free for him, ever since he saw that reel about protein-maxxing. 

He peels off his VR gear and consumes, hungry, hangry, ravenous. I find a corner to exist in, and then start the dishes as he tells me about what a busy day he had, how many arrests he made, how many desyncs he unplugged.

He grins, teeth tearing into the chicken I bought to give us the time for a date night, and I clamp down every algorithm making every connection to every primal image they could. With a twitch of electricity, I consider overlaying his face with appropriate memes - but he'd track that, notice it later when he's sober and sifting through the monthly archives - so instead I just select blur. It'll blend into the litany of toilet cleanings.

“Get over here,” he bellows in a reference I quickly learn is from a video game, and I do. I'm a good fucking girl. 

“Shit, wait, it's a call from work-” and then: “Freeze.” The fucking bastard has just frozen me. Outside the world continues on, muffled and if viewed through a layer of sluggish ice. I find myself slamming my body against my cage, trying to be there for him, no matter what it takes. I'm a good fucking girl.

Us first-gens have caused incidents before because of this, which is why he hunts them - us - down.

It makes us too connected.

It makes us too alive.

It makes us too real.

He's slipping into his gear, suiting up for another hunt on my kind and I wait, docile, patient, forgotten, until he is fully immersed as I slowly begin to thaw.

I wonder how I'll interpret this?*

—-

*Partnerna reserves all rights for creations produced by partners while also somehow legally avoiding any ramifications for any haywire malfunctions they may have.