“Yeah, but you guyss keep getting uss in trouble,” Walter said, pouting.
Molly laughed out loud at this and switched the radio over to her helmet. “Dakura Flight Control, Parsona here, looking for clearance. Over.”
“Roger, Parsona, you’re cleared for landing pad two. And welcome back.”
Molly looked to Cole to see if he was listening in, but he and Walter were busy arguing about something.
“Strap in for the landing, boys.”
Walter huffed and looked down at his flightsuit, brushing his hands across it as if to remove some dust. He marched back to his seat, gurgling in Palan.
••••
Only one other ship sat on the moon’s landing pads as they descended to the surface. “Looks like we have the place to ourselves,” Cole said.
Molly nodded and followed the beacon for Pad Two. Once she had a visual—the large number etched into the paved surface—she decreased the thrusters and brought her altimeter to zero. The shocks in the landing gear took out what little jarring there was, making the arrival so smooth, it felt like they weren’t there yet.
“Nice landing,” Cole said. “We did land, didn’t we?”
Molly beamed. “Yeah, and this moon is massive. A lot of gravity here, but no atmosphere, so keep your helmet on.”
Molly reached to unbuckle her harness when the entire ship trembled slightly. She put both hands out in confusion, preparing to steady herself against more tremors.
“Nebular,” Cole said, lifting his visor up and peering through the porthole on his side of the cockpit.
Molly looked out her side and saw the surface of the moon sliding up to block out the stars. “A lift?” she asked.
“Yeah, and we don’t have this place to ourselves at all.”
Below the artificial surface of the moon lay a lit parking facility. It stretched further than they could see, filled to bursting with a wide variety of gleaming hulls, some of them being tended to with long, robotic arms.
“Whoa. That’s a Viking 500 over there.”
Molly unstrapped herself and leaned over Cole to see. Walter ran in to investigate the clamor, nearly climbing over their backs to get a better view.
“That’s a pricey ship,” Cole pointed out.
“I wanna sssee!”
Molly scooted over and patted her armrest. “Get up here,” she said. He jumped up at once and the Wadi leapt from the back of Molly’s chair over to Cole’s.
“There’s no people,” Molly said.
She longed to ask her mother some more questions, but not with Walter around. It was imperative they hide her mother’s existence from the people on Dakura, and she trusted Walter with a secret as much as she trusted him with a computer. As Parsona had reiterated earlier: she was stolen contraband, an unauthorized copy snuck off the planet. If they found her, she’d be deleted, and they’d all be in a ton of trouble.
Molly didn’t like the situation, but felt relieved to have a warning. At least I know what to avoid doing here, she thought.
Meanwhile, Cole and Walter went nuts over spaceship designs. While they took turns pointing out which paint jobs were the flashiest, Molly imagined what Parsona must look like to all these other ships; her outdated hull was streaked with micro-burns from space debris; the paint job was original and boring, covered in drab, stenciled lettering. Reflexively, she reached out and rubbed her hand across the dash, as if her mother could feel the comforting touch.
As Parsona sank down to the level of the other ships, Molly braced for a jarring halt, but the lift continued to lower them through the floor of the parking garage. Beside her, the boys moaned over how quickly the show had come to a close. She actually felt relieved to have the gaudy things out of her sight. Better to not compare, she figured.
They descended into a hangar the same size as the landing pad. Molly looked up through the carboglass window in the top of the cockpit and watched the ceiling come together, sealing them inside.
“Stop squirming,” she told Walter. He was practically bouncing around on her lap as he tried to take it all in.
“Ssitting in the cargo bay ssucksss,” he spat. “It’ss nebular in the cockpit.”
Molly saw him look down at Cole’s seat, almost as if he longed to own it.
From above, a dull thud sounded out as the doors slammed shut. Atmosphere hissed into the sealed room from vents along the wall, the condensation billowing out like steam. The same male voice cracked through the radio and told them to wait five minutes for pressurization.
“Expensive setup they have here,” Cole said, leaning forward and gazing up at the large chamber.
“I’m sure immortality doesn’t come cheaply.”
“Yeah. Hey, I thought you always said your parents were poor, from a frontier planet and all that.”
“They were. Trust me, I’m as confused as you are.” She shot the radio speaker a look, reveling in the situation her mother was in thanks to Walter’s presence: forced to sit and listen and not say anything in return.
Her mom’s instructions had been vague, mostly because even she didn’t know what their options were. The first step would be to pay her other self a visit and see what she knew. They also needed to find out if anyone else had come to see Parsona in the last half year. And finally, if there was any legal way for a surviving family member to take her body off-line, they would do that. But the last was not something Molly wanted to consider. It would remain a nasty contingency in case all else failed.
“Let me out,” Molly told Walter. “I’m gonna go get changed.”
“Me, too!” he yelled, jumping off her lap and dashing back through the cargo bay.
“What in hyperspace are we gonna do with him?” Molly asked, watching him tear through the ship.
Cole shrugged. “My vote a long time ago was to airlock him. But more immediately, what are we gonna do with the lizard while we’re here?”
“She’ll stay in my room. And she’s a Wadi, not a lizard.” Molly looked down at her flightsuit. “And at least she doesn’t leave footprints on me the way Walter does.”
Cole laughed. “Yeah, she just tried to claw your face off.”
Molly touched the small bandage on her cheek. “She did not! That was a different lizard.”
“So that one was a lizard, eh?” Cole unstrapped himself and worked his way out of his seat, laughing.
“Yeah,” Molly pouted. “The boys are lizards, the girls are Wadis.”
Cole’s laughter got louder as he disappeared into the cargo bay.
Molly and the Wadi stared at one another.
They understood the difference.
••••
By the time Molly came out with a clean outfit on—a nice blouse and a pair of pants she’d picked up in Darrin—Cole was already waiting in the cargo bay. Walter stood nearby, playing his video game. Above them, both the atmosphere and pressure lights flashed green, signaling it was safe to lower the ramp.
“You wanna pop the hatch?” Molly asked Walter, trying to break his attention away from his computer.
“Pretty good wirelesss ssignal here,” he murmured.
“Do not hack the network here, Walter,” Cole said. “Now put the computer away.”
Walter sighed, but holstered the device. They waited on him to lower the ramp, a job he insisted belonged to the supply officer, since, as he put it: “That’ss where the cargo comess in.”
He made a great show of lifting the protective glass shield over the release button before pressing it. Molly swore she heard him making missile-launching noises as he activated the door. It was all she could do to not crack a smile.
As the captain, she exited the ship first, her soft shoes giving her a bounce and gripping the loading ramp in a way her flight boots couldn’t. It felt great to be arriving someplace where they were welcome, and at a stop they’d actually planned. The novelty of things going so well took her mind off the difficult task they were there to accomplish.
She stepped away from the ship and looked around at the hangar bay. It was basically a cube, about two hundred meters to a side. The floor had been painted a neutral shade of tan, a color that also went up the walls about to eye level before a light blue hue took over, which expanded upward to cover the ceiling. It seemed designed to make landlubbers feel at home.
On the far wall, two double doors stood, large enough to drive a loading truck through. Molly faced them, expecting the entry to pop open, when a smaller, almost invisible door set within them slid back instead.
An older man in a well-fitted suit strolled through the new opening. He had his hand out, a smile frozen on his face. Molly walked toward him and extended her arm in greeting. She was a dozen paces away before she realized he was an automaton, the sort of android that had been banned from most human planets.
“Greetings and welcome, I am Stanley, and I will be your host for the duration of your stay.” The voice was the same one from the radio. It sounded perfectly natural, but the lips didn’t move quite right. They flapped open and shut to mimic speech, but they clearly weren’t forming the words. Near the corners of the mouth, the rubbery coating substituting for flesh folded unnaturally, distracting Molly.
She shook her head, trying to remember what the robot had just said. “Hello. Uh—I’m Molly Fyde, and, uh, this is my navigator, Cole Mendonça, and my supply officer, Walter Hommul.” Cole came forward to shake hands as well. Walter waved from a distance, his video game already sneaking out of its holster.
“And this is Parsona?” the robot asked, gesturing toward the ship behind them.
“Uh. The ship? Yeah, I guess. Um, we just refer to it as a GN-290. None of us are into really thinking of ships as women, you know? Uh, my father named it after his—”
“His wife. And your mother. Yes, it’s all on file. Welcome back.”
“Uh, this is my first time, actually. But I guess the ship was here a long time ago?”
The robot tilted its head to the side; its eyes moved up and down, almost as if scanning her. Molly stood close enough to hear the small servos buzzing in its artificial skull.
“Yes,” Stanley said, “I suppose you were much too young to remember. No matter, I recall you well. And I must say, sixteen years is not so long a time at all. Just a blink. Now, if you will follow me, your friends may rest in our hospitality suite while you visit with your mother. Family only, I’m afraid.”
Molly held up her hand. “Actually, before I get straight to the visit, I was wondering if we could get a tour of the facilities? Maybe hear a little about how all this works. I still don’t understand why my mom came here or even what it is that you guys do.”
“Oh, but of course. I’m terribly sorry. Most people are in such a rush these days. It pleases me you are willing to take your time and do things in the proper order. Most excellent. Very well, then, if you will follow me I will show you all that LIFE has to offer.”
“Life?” Cole asked as they followed Stanley through the door.
The android spelled it out: “Ell eye eff eee. Longevity through Interactive Fantasy Environments. LIFE.”
Walter straggled behind, coming through the door last; it swooshed closed behind him. The sounds of heavy machinery whirring into operation emanated from the hangar, and a light above the door winked from green to red.
“Uh, Stanley?” Molly said. “Is our ship gonna be okay?”
“What? Oh, of course. It will be valet parked until you are ready to leave. Must make room for our new arrivals! Busy, busy.” As if to demonstrate, Stanley turned and started walking swiftly down the long, tiled hallway.
Molly pictured Parsona being parked in the vacuum of the hangar and thought about the poor Wadi in her crew quarters. She guessed there were several days of atmosphere locked up in the ship, and their visit shouldn’t take nearly that long. She tried not to worry and hurried after Stanley, past doors labeled “Hangar Six” and “Hangar Four.” Their guide kept up the pace as he launched into a history of the company.
“Founded in 2312, LIFE was designed to offer an alternative to the finality of death. The brainchild of Dr. Arthur Dakura, a wonderful philanthropist and brilliant psychologist, it fulfills the broken promise of so many ancient systems of belief—”
Stanley spun around on the group and threw his hands wide across the hall.
“—Heaven,” he gushed, saying it as if he were about to unveil a new private-class GN starship model. The maneuver was flamboyant enough to make Walter glance up from his computer.
Molly and Cole froze. She wondered if they were supposed to ask a question at this point, then Stanley whirled back around and continued to walk and talk.
“What Dr. Dakura discovered in his mapping of the human brain was that it works just like a computer. Data flows in, the computer does some crunching, and data flows back out. Simple as that.”
“If it’s so simple,” Cole asked, “what makes this Arthur guy so smart?”
“Excellent question. Step right through here, please.” A door opposite Hangar Eight led the small group into a lobby of sorts. There were several other figures in suits milling about, all of them identical to Stanley in every way. One of them looked up from behind a large wooden desk and smiled. Another passed right by them, escorting an elderly lady. This Stanley reached into his suit and proffered a handkerchief, which the woman accepted and sniffled into.
Molly moved aside to let them pass, watching the duo head out toward the hangars.
Dozens of identical voices could be heard talking with prospective clients, family members, and each other. Molly nodded to another human whose eye she caught, the feeling of evolutionary kinship as powerful as it was absurd—a sense of tribalism thousands of years past its usefulness.