Lia the Indecisive

My recovery continued in Valeria’s shipping container. Every day, once in the morning, once in the evening, Valeria gave a check-up to make sure my body hadn’t rejected the implants. Such monitoring wasn’t needed for regular cybernetics, but nothing about what I received was regular.

I felt weird and looked weirder, and I certainly didn’t feel powerful or perfect. With the new implants, the instability, I questioned my role in the Horace assassination.

Every day, after the check-up, I inspected the alterations to my body. I ran a finger over lumps lining my collarbones, starting from the outer left side, reaching my throat, and then tracing the right. They looked like tumours. Then I lifted whatever I wore and touched hardened ridges along my outer ribcage. The ridges changed angle at the serratus anterior. My original, organic cells changed colour every few hours. Last, I felt the prominent lump below my left breast. It came from the God-Heart. Still had no idea what it did.

Valeria spent her days at the underground clinic, so I lay in the shipping container’s hammock and fought to keep away boredom. Valeria had a few paperbacks, but I’d never been much of a reader. I mostly listened to music, slept, or walked outside the shipping container, listening to the looping “GullSound14.wav” audio, and watching the ocean.

It gave me plenty of time to think.

One morning, while flicking through random videos, I got a call. I declined it. Seconds after, a message came through.

Unknown: Lia, it’s me.

Lia: Aki?

Unknown: Cilla.

I took a breath and swung my legs off the hammock. Rage at my sister had been tempered, but I hadn’t considered a call or message for at least another year.

Cilla: I asked around Aquinor. Nobody has seen you. Are you okay?

Lia: I’m fine.

Cilla: Can we talk?

Lia: We are.

Cilla: I made a room. There’s someone who wants to see you.

Lia: I’m busy.

Cilla. It’s Aemilia Seneca.

I flipped real-side. A flurry of feeling surged through me, blending nostalgia and the sense of matters left incomplete. Why had Priscilla gotten in contact with Aemilia? Did it relate to me, or was I being self-obsessed? Either way, I wanted to see her. A lot. I couldn’t show myself, though. Priscilla had made a room, so they’d have avatars. I flipped cyber-side and hastily drafted an avatar, little more than the defaultmodel with T-shirt and jeans. Priscilla gave me a code and I joined the room.

Priscilla had modelled the room after the deepest pool in the world, made in 2046. They used it to train for saturation diving and specialised operations in the Mariana Trench, before the You-Know-What incident. When I joined the room, I stood in the middle level. Light wavered in banded patterns along the walls. NPCs swam overhead, on the higher levels.

‘Down here,’ Priscilla called from below.

A cylindrical passage adjoined the middle level, plunging straight to the lowest sections. An imposing darkness filled the cavernous space, broken up by small white lights. It was like a massive primordial beast had dug into the earth, trying to reach the other side. I knew drowning or getting hurt from the pressure changes was impossible, but that didn’t prevent a bit of worry.

I closed my eyes and stepped off, sinking into the emptiness. I didn’t open my eyes until my feet touched the floor. The realistic avatars of Priscilla and Aemilia stood to my right and left respectively. At least a hundred green glow sticks covered the tiled surface, lighting the three of us from below like we wanted to tell ghost stories.

‘Is your avatar loading?’ Priscilla asked.

‘No,’ I replied, with a pointed look. How much did Aemilia know about my situation?

‘It’s so good to see you,’ Aemilia smiled, embracing me. I froze, before patting her on the back a few awkward times. 'How long has it been?' 

It took a couple minutes for conversation to flow, but after we escaped the boring introductions and usual sayings like It’s-been-so-long, things went well. We mostly talked about the past. Easier than talking about the present or future.

I found myself angling toward Aemilia, like my gestures, voice, turn of my shoulders, and attention were fixated on her rather than Priscilla in an estimated 80:20 ratio. I didn’t intentionally ignore Priscilla, but the hesitation toward her joined with my excitement to see Aemilia. It didn’t matter. Priscilla reacted to my behaviour with equanimity, as she always did. She always forgave and loved me. She’d always been kinder and gentler.

Over an hour passed, before Priscilla said they had to leave. ‘We’ve got a shift tonight,’ she said, clearly wanting me to ask about her work. I did so, to keep the conversation going. ‘We’re helping the USCC with radiation clean-up. We’re in Florida right now. It’s pretty good. Quiet, too.’

‘You’re there, too, Aemilia?’

She nodded. ‘I handle communication with the field teams.’

‘It’s nice,’ Priscilla reiterated. ‘The field teams have a lot of over-eighty people. With the right gear, the radiation doesn’t affect them much.’

No, not eighty-years-old. Percentage.

Unbelievable, I thought, neither upset nor glad. Just – stunned. Again, maybe I was being self-obsessed, but I couldn’t help thinking Priscilla had found a job that suited being 94% for my sake. Like, her plan went: Get a job, hint at Lia that she’d be good for it, and then we can be together again.

Having Aemilia there softened me up.

Throughout the hour of conversation, I’d tried to process my feelings for Aemilia. Seeing her in that recent installation thing brought back old ideas. I missed her. I’d buried the feeling, but it bubbled to the surface when she stood before me, as if striking oil. But, I couldn’t just go to Florida. I had the Horace assassination to handle, and then I’d have to coordinate with the replacement underboss to get Mum out of exile. But…after that?

You know what optimism gets you, I thought. The “me” who thought that wasn’t wrong. Not wrong in the sense she knew how I’d react to Mum’s return from exile. I wasn’t going to meet her at the airport, say hello, and then fly to Florida.

Maybe we could get Mum re-established, and then we’ll go help Priscilla. Again with that unbridled, naïve optimism. Realistically, I would spend a couple years getting Mum re-established, and then I wouldn’t leave. She wanted to die as the Viper of Aquinor, and I was the Viper’s daughter. She expected me to replace her, and I wanted the same. Even with Aemilia there, did I really want to traipse through a wasteland, building purification sites and scrubbing radiated metal? No, I wanted the power I’d been born to wield.

Priscilla, Aemilia, and I bid farewell, and we left the room simultaneously.