The Ballad of Ash and Hum

1. HUMAN 273

Hum searches for files about Ghabrie on the tiny bunk, his head pillowed on Ash's broad chest. He knows the spinal enhancements on his neck must be digging into the older boy's clavicle, but Ash never complains. Instead he murmurs, "You read those pages 'bout fifty times already."

Ancient laptop slams shut and Hum sits up, rubbing his hardware. "I know. Just keep thinkin' I musta missed something."

Ash smacks Hum's head in violent friendship and follows with a one-armed hug. Hum ducks into the embrace, baring the hardware. It covers the last part of his neck tat, 'HUMAN 273.' The wires and plates stretch over the numbers and two of the letters, leaving only HUM visible. Now no one remembers his original name.

"Whacha think eternity means?" he asks Ash, who grins and cuffs him again. "I just mean there has to be an end somewhere, right? The rock can't keep going on and on to infinity."

The earth surrounds the Pandora Alliance on all sides. Thanks to his enhanced neural wiring, Hum can call up an exact picture of the entire facility, rotate, flip the image, and figure the fastest way to get from one port to another. This includes airshafts and what Ash calls 'smuggler tunnels', passages known only in Alliance legends. It's possible the tunnels don't exist at all.

His mental images come to Hum as music, a strange symphony of bytes and constant input. No one quite understands the constant tune in his head, although Ash comes closest to hearing the crackles and whines of Pandora's song. Zeroes and ones instead of notes, wires and hardware for instruments.

Ash stands and cracks his back, ready for another sparring session. When he doesn't move for long he becomes restless. His enhancements are all physical: strengthened bones, perfect eyesight, the balance and poise of a dancer. HUMAN 272 is tatted under his long hair, but only Hum gets to see it. Ash won't let anyone else come close enough to touch.

They're bred to perform perfectly together. Ash is all hard muscle and sinew, ready to spring to action when Hum makes the call. One theorizes, the other acts. It's how things have always been for them.

Hum leans back on his elbows and watches Ash whirl into a series of leaping kicks, always stopping just short of the walls and door in the tiny space. A large feline boy, carelessly flicking dark hair out of his eyes – Hum watches and wishes he could keep the image superimposed on his pupils forever, a snapshot of his Pandora partner.

Ash lands on one foot, the other twisted gracefully behind him. "C'mon," he declares. "I'm hungry."

"You're always hungry. Used up double rations last night." Hum follows Ash anyway. He always does.

"Well, hack me some more!" Ash laughs and closes his door. A passing tech glances at him, her eyes filled with admiration. Hum can't blame her – Bhari, her name is, the girl who wears something around her neck tied onto a long, knotted string. Whatever it is lies hidden under the collar of her shirt.

In Hum's mind there's no one prettier than Ash with his long black hair and lazy limbs like those of a jungle cat. Leaping like one too, running faster than the gazelles in the library tapes Hum hacks into during sleep time.

No, he can't blame Bhari one bit.

#

Dinner is the usual agar and phytoplankton soup grown in the vats on the lower levels of the Alliance. The place was built near underground cenotes before the BPA event. Information is scratchy at best, and when Hum hacks into historical files, the music filters through a constant waterfall of white noise.

Regulated airshafts with radiation sensors blow a warm, sticky stream over Hum's body as he and Ash eat the soupy mix in their bowls. It's a VitD day to prevent rickets in the Alliance community, so the atmosphere is extra humid as a result. Hum's used to it, to the sweat under his grey shirt and in the creases of his bony knees. He has a sudden flash this is what it will always be for him – agar soup and VitD days in an endless cycle. Ash will eventually sexbond with Bhari or some other tech, leaving Hum behind to his dirty, messy, hacky work in the dying computers of the Alliance.