Against the Tide - A New Elysium Story [Complete]

Seven Wishes

After all the time spent in a human body and seeing the world through human eyes, Lars had come to recognize an important distinction from his robot body. As an android, he had relied on sensations from the outside – mostly visual and auditory information, and some crude tactile senses. But he could not feel from within. He had perfect recollection of every bit of sensory information he had ever received, but it did not compare to true recollection as an organic body could do it.

When an organic being brought a memory back to the forefront of their mind, they would really feel it. He had witnessed that in Null's dreams mostly, but also during their waking hours. Human memory could evoke sensations that were almost as powerful as the actual events. Sometimes, related memories could tint each other with additional emotions – a happy memory could become bittersweet, a sad memory might become empowering after a while. In that way, the emotions coming from memories could become even more powerful than the ones experienced in the moment. Some of these dulled over the years, like old mirrors. Eventually, they became blind, unable to reflect these old emotions at all. And sometimes, the smallest detail, like a sound or a scent, could be enough to cause something long lost to flare back to life again.

That strange quality of organic recollection, Lars realized at some point, was why humans could not retain it all. They had to consolidate only the most important things, and allow those things that were rarely needed to fade into the back in favor of others. Most of all, they had to forget their pain. Because the pain that an organic was capable of feeling, physically and emotionally, and through their recollections, was the most terrifying organic sensation of all.

Null had forgotten a lot, especially of that time before her death. But forgetting was a very enigmatic process all in itself. For instance, Null often dreamed of her past these days. Lars noted that her dreams often held surprising detail. That was another strange aspect of organic recollection – they could remember things on a strange level below their actual conscious. They were not able to access that information directly, but it was still there. He knew that for Null, many of the images in her dreams were hazy and blurred. But he could see all of it with surprising clarity, every night.

He suspected that she simply didn't want to really remember. Perhaps it was better for her like this, because with every fragment of her past they retrieved, she seemed to become more restless. Lars knew that she had once thought about the jagged chasms in her mind as evidence that she was broken, and that she was missing something. But the memories that had come back fully over time had not filled these chasms. If anything, he sometimes had the impression that they became deeper.

She was restless even during their vacation on Delothia. She spent four days swimming in the emerald ocean until she could not feel her legs and arms from exhaustion, and four nights drinking Mai Tais until even her voice inside their mind became slurred. But no matter how much she exhausted herself, she still slept badly. She was haunted by nightmares of Riga and Blake, by images of the Butcher and the men they had killed on his station, and of Xenia, red-eyed and convulsing in pain as the program in her mind took over and the metal armor broke through her skin.

On the fifth day, Heisenberg called from the ship. Fifteen hours of continuous exposure to Alonian opera music had managed to convince Enigma to share another piece of crucial information about Lazarus LTD. An hour later, she was back aboard the Blackstar, eager to leave Delothia behind.

Enigma's intel led them to a deserted colony on a nameless outer sector world. The planet was desolate and it was hard to imagine that a colony had once been planned there, but as they approached the surface in the Blackbody together with Heisenberg, they spotted several burrow-like buildings, nestled close to the red-hued, rocky slopes of a mountain range. Terraforming had failed on the planet, so there was no breathable atmosphere and no organic life. It was the perfect place to conduct illegal activities, because nobody in their right mind would come here willingly and without good reason.