The Soulmate Curse

Endurance

The apartment door swung open and in walked Finn.

"Zhen! I got the Gemini Ventures account back, only took me one month and three..." she stopped mid-sentence. Zhen gently put down the box she was carrying. Finn looked at the box and the ones gathered up in the living room, then back at her. "You're moving out."

Zhen nodded. "I thought you'd be home later."

"You weren't going to say goodbye?"

"No, I was. It's just..."

"You didn't want me to see you packing."

Zhen sighed. "Yeah."

"I know we talked about it, but then weeks went by... I thought we could..." started Finn. She faltered at the end. "I'm going to clean up, maybe go out to Jesse's. It'll give you time to finish."

Zhen had hoped to avoid this very situation. She nodded and moved a few boxes out of the way to let Finn through. The next hour was painful, but bearable. Zhen knew this was the right thing to do. They couldn't keep this up. Not with the impending wedding and whatever would come after that. She'd made a promise to Finn, but she was only human. And waking up in the middle of the night, every night, from either an intense sex dream about her soon to be stepsister roommate across the hall or a nightmare that made Zhen want to call out for her was just a little too much to handle.

Then there was the whole being famous thing. Being associated with Finn was just making it worse. Finn was an engineer Rockstar. People adored her. Loved her. Were constantly proposing to marry her. But Zhen? They knew nothing about her. That didn't stop them from saying that they did. Didn't stop them from trying to access every single one of her digital accounts. She even had to get Finn and her mum to help encrypt and reinforce some of her firewalls. This made hacking her near impossible, but it didn't stop the hate mail and the trolls. These were hundreds of times worse than the attempted direct hits on her accounts.

"How do you like your new home?" asked Lola, walking into Zhen's cabin at the Amputee Astronauts' Space Base.

"It'll be interesting living on my own," Zhen replied, enjoying how spacious the studio apartment was.

"You'll get used to it," Lola moved gingerly across the room, taking care not to accidentally bash any of Zhen's packed boxes with her exoskeleton. "Soon, you'll be walking around naked, wondering why you ever insisted on having a roommate for so long."

Zhen thought about waking up to Finn's face every morning. "I highly doubt that."

"We'll see," said Lola, laughing. "I brought pear and strawberry cider. And a couple of basil plants for your housewarming gift. I'm expecting to be invited for pesto soon."

Around one exoskeleton arm, she was carrying a half wine-barrel container garden filled with wet soil and tiny herb plants. She carried it like it was a small parcel, even though it easily weighed over eighty kilograms. In her other hand was a six-pack case of homemade cider. Zhen took the case of cider to the kitchen and let Lola place her new garden bed on the balcony, where it immediately brightened up the small space and made Zhen realise that she was definitely going to turn that balcony into a full-on container garden. Yup, she was totally down for being a plant lady. Especially because herbs were a fond reminder of Finn.

"Alright! Let's get drunk!" Lola exclaimed, lifting her arms in triumph, and smashing into a lamp in the process. The quadriplegic slowly lowered her exoskeleton hands. "Oops, soz. I'll get you a new one."

Zhen laughed. "I see the new suit needs a little getting used to."

"Yeah, I've been banging on things left, right and centre," Lola replied, sheepishly, as she dropped onto the armchair. "But it's by far the best one. Incredibly responsive. Think you can make something like this?"

"I'll definitely give it the old college try," Zhen replied with a laugh, taking the sofa for herself. She handed Lola a bottle of cider and tipped her own. "Cheers."

"Cheers! Welcome to the base newbie."

Zhen didn't mind her new environment. She liked everyone she was working with and the passion they put into their work. She liked that their designs and experiments usually had immediate real world applications for those living with disabilities and handicaps and that the company would immediately share any proprietary information, submitting it all into the Open Source Collective's repository of digital resources. The operation reminded Zhen of Finn and her insistence that human knowledge and discovery is only infinitely useful when shared without limitations. Which was why the whole MechSoft situation had ended up being so important to her. A lot of things reminded Zhen of Finn. Sometimes, it seemed like everything did.

Zhen's wrist-wrap pinged.

"You are the antichrist and will burn in hell for your actions!!"

Zhen deleted the message and blocked the user who'd sent it. it was the twenty seventh of its kind that day alone. Not everyone agreed with what Finn and Zhen had done. The collapse of MechSoft had created massive ripple effects. When its stocks crashed and burned, so did a lot of people as well as the entities that enjoyed MechSoft's association through donations and behind-the-scenes kickbacks. Unfortunately, that included all the police departments around the country that worked with their software and other products. MechSoft had its fingers in a lot of pies. Those pies were now crumbling. And plenty of the blame was being put squarely on Finn and Zhen, currently the main players in a ton of new conspiracy theories about bringing the world's end with this metal.

The hate mail hadn't been as malicious at first. It was mostly people just mildly upset at the fact that Finn and Zhen hadn't thought about everyone they'd affect by their actions. In those initial days, many of the writers were heads of families who'd relied heavily on the dividends from their investments in MechSoft, most of which had compounded over years. They had put everything in it. Generational, hard-won savings were destroyed in mere weeks. MechSoft had been too big to fail and so many trusted their money with them. As the tightly wound rope that connected MechSoft to other companies and entities continued to unravel, people stopped being mildly upset. Finn and Zhen went from being heroes to globally despised villains in what felt like the blink of an eye.

Zhen walked up to the main Space Agency office to pick up a delivery of groceries.

"Hey Zhen," Lola said cheerily. She was the main agent working the office today. "Walking naked yet?"

"Actually, yeah," Zhen said laughing. It was true. Living alone was different. A little lonely, but it had its pros. "Been doing so for a week now."

"Told you!" she exclaimed, lifting an exoskeleton arm for a high five.

Zhen laughed. "Did my groceries come through?"

"Sorry, Zhen," she said, shaking her head. "We found dead rats packed into your food printing tubs. Had to throw the whole delivery away."

Zhen sighed. She was down to her last few meals. The fact that she could no longer receive packages at her apartment because one was delivered with firecrackers in it, which freaked everyone out, was already draining enough. Now she couldn't even order food without it being tampered with.

"I'm cooking a big batch of chilli tonight," Lola said, cheerily. "You're welcome to some."

"Thanks, Lola," Zhen replied with a sad smile, before walking back across the base to her apartment.