Wat Pho Temple of the Reclining Buddha in Bangkok, Thailand (2019). Photo by Gaetana Pipia.
About: The Golden Maiden
Gods and monsters come to life in The Golden Maiden, my debut science fiction novel set in a cyberpunk future where humans are semi-immortal but barren–and everyone is going insane.
After the first androids abandon mankind, a plague ravages the galaxy, killing all children and rendering surviving humans infertile and unageing. Centuries later, humans live on but face the inevitability of brainrot—a mental decline that begins with memory loss, develops into depression or psychosis, and culminates in feral madness.
Ronin Jae Hashimoto and the psychic android, Min, navigate a fragmented galaxy as hired guns, facing chimera, cultists, and cruel, self-proclaimed living gods. Jae searches for answers about a lost child who may or may not have existed, while Min longs to forget and atone for her own violent past. But when living god Heph Titus sends them on a quest for the Eternal Mind, Jae and Min are faced with a choice: define their own destinies or sacrifice for the uncertain fate of a dying galaxy.
I am currently seeking a literary agent for representation. Sample pages are available below. Contact me at [email protected] for a full manuscript.
The Golden Maiden by Gaetana Pipia
Excerpt (Chapters 1 & 2)
CHAPTER ONE
Gone Fishing
The harpoon pierces its abdomen, slices through ancient, manufactured flesh, then exits the shoulder, skewering it diagonally. The two fishermen—exhausted from the hunt and covered in a mist of blood, sea, and sweat—pull it into the boat and pin it to the deck. They maneuver their bodies away from the thrashing of a heavy, shimmering tail that whips and thuds—the once elegant underwater mechanism reduced to the clumsy violence of a club.
“A beauty,” says Newt as he admires the catch. It has translucent scales, a circular marking above the caudal fin, flaring gills on the upper chest, and a pale, sad, feminine face. “This one’s nearly human,” he says.
“Human?” says Enzo. “All I see is fish-head soup. Look at the eyes.” Indeed, the eyes are large and lidless, black in the center, and orange where the whites should be. “She’s big. Seven-footer. Maybe eight.”
Enzo stomps on its stomach with his boot to gain leverage as he twists out the spear. Together, the men lift the creature and toss it into the icebox. As they make their way back to shore, they can hear it banging against the enclosure, although the noise eventually grows quieter and quieter still until they hear nothing more than an occasional thud amid the hum of the boat and the sea and the calm Eudoran wind.
Once they make it to shore, they lay it on the black pebble beach. Then they slice it up from tail to sternum, scraping the scales from its fish parts and scooping the innards from its belly. The men grin with pride and excitement: chimmy flesh, bone, and blood fetch top dollar at the floating market. Next they set up camp near the shore and roast some of its least valuable parts over the fire.
“See there?” says Enzo, motioning toward the sanguine sea.
They look toward the horizon, their gaze drawn to the ruins on the rock located some miles offshore. Carved from a towering basalt sea stack, the black bust of a titan woman rises from the sea. A serene face looks toward the sky, mouth open as if in song. A dozen metal monoliths, thick as trees, rise from her throat like tongues, like snakes. Seemingly unaffected by gravity, the curved structures undulate in the sky, licking at the belly of the heavens. The men don’t remember much, but they do know this: the things had once served as tethers, keeping some ancient, floating city bound to this strange and fertile earth.
Newt sees them not as tongues but umbilical cords, withered and dangling from a barren womb. The whole Way is barren. But it wasn’t always so, he remembers. She took nearly everything That Day. From this world and all the rest. The ruins are a vestigial reminder of it. Vestigial. What word is this? I must have known it once. Newt reckons his mind is as old and as rotten as all minds are, but odd bits of knowledge sometimes bubble up in his skull like flotsam floating to the surface of a seemingly empty sea. In this moment, he recalls in some detail the topic of human vestigiality—that is, how certain behaviors and organs’ original functions are reduced or lost to time. There’s the plica semilunaris—a small fold at the inner corner of the eye. It’s what remains of the nictitating membrane—the transparent third eyelid possessed by the likes of frogs, birds, fish, and lesser mammals. Then there’s the appendix in the gut, the palmaris longus of the arm, the Gartner’s duct in the womb, and the coccyx—our pathetic leftover of a tail. But a tail is easy enough to get. Only our defunct reproductive systems remain resistant to flesh transfiguration. There’s still some pleasure in it, sure, but I reckon we’ll lose that bit too if we live long enough.
“Vestigial,” Newt mumbles.
“What?”
“I must have been somebody once. A real genius.”
“Sure,” says Enzo. “I was saying those ruins are cursed.”
“Cousin fishes there often. There’s no curse.”
“Lost a leg, didn’t he?”
“Halfwit gave it up willingly,” Newt explains. “Metalheads. Seems every day I see someone new hobbling around with a freshly bloodied stump.”
“I didn’t take Dirk for a cultist.”
“It’s the Marias. That’s the draw. Some nights even I consider it. Still ain’t worth a whole appendage unless you can afford to replace it. Or send up an offering to the Baroness.”
“Bless her body. Bless her name,” says Enzo, his mouth now brimming with hot, flavorful meat.
“Cousin goes on about it. How it’s only a temporary sacrifice. That when the gold woman floats down on a cloud someday, they’ll all get shiny, new parts and live for eternity. Or however their doctrine goes.”
“He really believes in it?”
“Well, he sawed the leg off.”
“Huh,” says Enzo, spitting a fingernail into the fire. “The Baroness will punish him for his transgression. Only She has authority to transfigure the body.”
“A crude hack job’s more like it.”
“You’re as blasphemous as your cousin. Those ruins are cursed. I swear it on Mother’s soul.”
Newt musters the energy to feign interest. “She dead yet?”
“Nearly so. No use trading for parts. Brain’s gone bad, so it isn’t worth the coin. It’ll be our turn soon enough. We’ll all choose death in the end. May the gods bless our slumber.”
Newt had met the woman a handful of times. She’d seemed a bit mad, but then most humans were. “I never had use for a mother,” Newt contributes. “Took a sister once, but she robbed me after we laid together.”
“You’re not meant to—never mind. Mothers are better. You should take one in. Most fulfilling bond I ever had. I’ll take another soon as I put Lorena down. Sacred is the flesh. Sacred is the family. So sayeth the Baroness—most beautiful of all the living gods.”
Then Enzo slurps the last bit of meat off the finger he’s been snacking on, cracks the bone with his teeth, and sucks out the marrow.
#
“Approaching Heaven,” says the woman who isn’t a woman. “It’s time to get up.”
Jae Hashimoto awakens from the long sleep, and he feels awful. It’s always the hearing that returns first, followed by the sense of sight. “Min,” he says—or would say—if his jaw wasn’t still locked in an annoying paralysis. He’s been through it countless times, but the mind-body lag always makes him sick. The contents of the Sliime bag—Jae being the main contents—spill onto the transparent floor, a sea of stars and darkness stretched out beneath him. “Min,” he manages. “The hell did you say?”
“Not hell. Heaven. Clean up and I’ll explain. You smell like durian and your parts are showing.”
“Didn’t know you could blush.”
“I’ve seen more of you than that.” She helps him into the shower to wash away the congealed, pink jelly that’s kept him alive for the last six months.
“It’s freezing.”
“Don’t be a child,” says Min, and then, “I’m sorry.” She knows the expression is antiquated, even cruel, considering the circumstances of the universe—but language has a stubborn way about it. Jae nods. He knows she meant no harm.
According to Min, this is how it happened. On the way to Eudora, while Jae was in the deep sleep, a main engine had suddenly stalled out.
“Did you run diagnostics?”
“Of course. Nothing.”
“Nothing comes from nothing.”
“Could be debris. This whole stretch is an old dump. I need to do a manual check.”
“I’ll set her down then.”
Jae dries off, puts on the tattered kimono he’d left draped over his chair half a year ago, then takes a seat at the controls. Min, meanwhile, feels a bit low. She leans back into her station, and the port between her L4 and L5 vertebrae snaps into place. She feels a sudden surge of energy that immediately improves her mood.
The electric purple transport called Violet Rayne comes screaming across the sky in a cloud of smoke, landing clumsily but safely just north of some small settlement detected by the finder. They exit the ship, and Min immediately lights some ashweed. It’s a peculiar habit for a woman of her kind, but then, she is a peculiar kind of woman. She takes a puff from her pipe, exhaling a cloud of dense, viridescent smoke. “Sorry to wake you from that dream.”
“Find anything in the latest dive?”
“It’s all reruns.”
“And the ship?”
Min begins the scan. Her eye screens go white, and a quiet buzzing emanates from her head.
“Same results as the autoscan,” she says. “No signs of an impact or overheating. No damage at all. Like the thing quit on its own. I need more time to look into it, but I should be able to get her going.”
“Need a hand?”
“You know I don’t.”
“I’m getting something to eat then. Something other than Sliime soup.”
“Take the bird with you.”
An odorous mustard fungus covers much of the landscape, suffocating the sparse grass, the low-lying shrubs, and the haggard trees. As Jae walks toward the town, the stuff squishes under his boots and sours the air. He keeps his nostrils blocked and breathes in through his mouth—but even so, he can taste the stench.
The settlement is cradled within a shallow valley about a mile in diameter, and the buildings are all makeshift hovels formed from the yellow mud. Should the townsfolk prove inhospitable, Jae’s weapons are readied—twin pistols in holsters on each hip, a Tanto dagger tucked into his pants. He whistles for the creature, whom he calls Misfit, to come perch on his arm. The animal howls into the vast twilight that’s settled upon the place, spreading her wide wings against the lavender sky, the low, rust-colored clouds, and the three pale faces of the planet’s moons. A saloon sits at the edge of town, so Jae heads down into the valley toward it, passing a holoboard along the way: “Welcome to Heaven. Population, 482.”
I need to get off this stinking rock. She’s waiting for me.
“Come home, samurai. I have news of the child,” the transmission had read.
“She means to kill you,” Min said then.
“Have I spoken of—”
“No. You think of her often. You dream of her too.”
It used to bother him, but now Jae finds some comfort in it. There’s no need for pretense with Min—and she’ll keep his memories close, long after he forgets himself.
Min has never understood Jae’s obsession with finding a ghost. But I needn’t understand, she reminds herself. After all, it means everything to him—and so it means something to her. They are so close to Eudora now they can almost touch it. There it is, hanging high in the sky above them—small and red and ripe—waiting to be picked like fruit.
CHAPTER TWO
Android Saloon
“I’ll take a steak. Medium rare.”
“Canned okay?” says the barkeep, who stinks as bad as the rest of the planet and may have been beautiful if not for the lack of meat on her bones and teeth in her gums.
“What do you have that’s fresh?”
“Snakes and lizards mostly. Or how about some grub?”
“Canned steak’s fine.”
The woman leans over the counter. Her blouse bares a waifish midriff and the protrusions of narrow, whittled in hips. Jae imagines she is rotting on the inside and may, at any moment, with the proper gust of wind, crack and disintegrate into dust.
“How about some cricket pie for dessert? We bake it up fresh.”
“Just the steak.”
“Eudoran?” she prods. She’s never met one before, not that she can recall, but she places the accent from films she’d seen in the town sharing box. The man had a similar way of speaking—measured but lyrical, rural yet oddly dignified.
“I am,” says Jae.
The woman leans in, her rank breath festering in the heavy air. “You aren’t what I imagined.”
“Expecting two heads or something?”
“Or something,” she says, making little attempt to hide the disappointment in her voice. She examines Jae Hashimoto more intently. Her sole customer is of medium build with tired-but-gentle eyes set within a round, open face. His features look Novo Kyotian except for a darker complexion more akin to a descendant of Manila Town—not that she’d ever been to such places—or that such places still exist. There are no true cities anymore. Only the terra-level slums that once shadowed those gleaming cities in the air—and, of course, a spattering of rural shitholes like the one she inhabits.
Jae’s head is shaved, and he has a short, twisted beard, pitch black with a few streaks of white. Looks late 40s, pre-Exodus, she observes. I wonder if his parts are original. I wonder if there’s animal in him.
Jae wears a tan duster and a leather gauntlet over his right hand and forearm. As he taps his bare left hand on the table, the woman notices the ring fashioned from the skull of a small mammal, a rodent perhaps, with red stones set where the eyes had been.
“You coming or going?”
“On my way to Eudora.”
“So you’re headed home.”
“I wouldn’t call it that.”
“Home is home no matter what you call it.”
“It’s been a long time.”
“Time is all we have, and we sure have enough of it.” She gives him a strange look then, as if some important thought has wiggled its way into her ear. “Are you a metalhead?”
“What’s that?”
“Just how many years you been gone? Fanatics who forsake the flesh. I hear your home world’s overrun with them. None of that here. We stick to living gods, most of them local.”
“I see. I’ll take some sake too.”
“Who’s your patron?” she asks, eyeing the raised, circular brand on the side of his neck.
“I don’t serve any god, living or otherwise.”
The woman scowls, the creases of her forehead swallowing each other up. “Well that mark says you did once.” Her face grows tense, and she motions toward the creature purring beneath the table. “And that?” she asks.
“Organic,” replies Jae, stroking the animal’s back feathers.
The woman’s expression relaxes, and a wet, toothless grin crawls across her face. “Good. No metal allowed here. World ordinance. Fine specimen you got there. Whatever it is. Nice and fat too.”
#
Fix the engine. Get out of town. Min’s learned old wounds still fester in places like these, breeding hate and fear like so many worms. She is, after all, metal—mechanically engineered, thought-producing, artificial life.
She knows Jae’s waking routine by now. He’s hungry and irritable, sore that he could have spent those long months awake, working on his archives. “I bet you were a monk in the times before,” she’d told him once, only half joking. But Sliime-induced stasis is cheaper than food—and their cellar near empty—so into the bag he’d gone. Next, he’ll stumble into town, spend too much on a meal and a drink, then seek the company of a geisha girl, probably human, unless he’s saved enough for the company of some doe-eyed yokai.
Min envies his freedom of movement. Unlike the ancient machines, she can’t pass for human. The first androids, now long gone, had been nearly indiscernible from their makers. At least that’s how Jae remembers it. When Min dives him, she sees them clearly—metal frames covered in synth-skin grown from organic mesh, real hair sewn into their scalps and eyelids, and beautiful but slightly asymmetrical faces to mirror human imperfection.
But Min is a new machine—made a hundred years Post-Exodus—a period marked by a decisive rejection of the hyperrealism of the past. Neon lights pulse beneath near-translucent skin like veins. Her face—ageless and raceless—consists of a small but purposeful nose, heart-shaped lips painted on like a doll’s, and half-moon eyes set on the horizon of high cheekbones. Her irises dance on concave screens, changing in a nebula of color—gaseous bursts of blues, greens, and violets swirling together—within them, flecks of light floating like dust.
“Mouse, your eyes are as deep and lovely as the Way.” She can still hear the words, spoken long ago by someone she had known and loved and failed.
They’re so close to Eudora now. The journey getting there, or anywhere really, is a real time suck for a thing with no sleep cycle. The ship runs mostly on auto-nav, so Min performs more monotonous duties in the lags between gun jobs: routine ship maintenance; neuromuscular stimulation of Jae’s parts during long stretches in the bag; and the tending of her herb garden, which she mostly uses to grow her personal stash of ashweed. To pass the time, she studies Jae’s collection of scavenged books, films, and documents. The obscure vestiges of history include a soldier’s journal, Emily Number Nine’s complete works of poetry, and a water-stained pamphlet denouncing the sins of flesh transfiguration. Min has grown fond of the man during their fifty-year partnership. She feels a certain affection toward him, akin to how a child treasures her favorite toy—secure in its presence, lost in its absence, but not above throwing it against the wall in a tantrum. Of course, there are no children anymore—not since long before Min was made—although she often sees them moving through the human subconscious like ghosts through mist. She sees many things in the minds of men—fragments of memory eroded by time and by brainrot.
On long trips, Min passes time projecting Jae’s dreams into movies in the air. Beautiful people, she’s learned, are often the objects of human fantasy. Once, some years ago, as Jae was fast asleep having such a dream, she disrobed and removed the pins from her hair, the indigo, modacrylic fiber locks unraveling to the small of her back. She pressed herself against the thin layer of plastic separating her body from his. Min could hear him through the enclosure, noting the peaks and valleys of his breathing pattern. She touched her thigh, slowly, imagining what it meant to feel like one of the women in his dreams. She felt nothing. Min could feel simulated pain—a burn, a bruise, a rupturing of flesh—but human pleasure could only be feigned. Still, she often felt some abstract yearning for it, not unlike a human’s longing for something from a memory or a dream with too much time gone by to know the difference. Restless, Min walked to the front of the ship. She sighed, looked out the window, and hummed to herself quietly, her figure lit against a billion suns and the dark infinitude of space.
#
Jae looks down at his plate. The meat is of dubious origin. As he cuts into the stuff, its steak-like shape implodes into a gelatinous sludge. He shrugs, relinquishes his fork and knife, then reaches for a spoon.
“I wouldn’t eat that.”
There, at the entrance of the saloon, stands a scarecrow of a man, grinning, and dressed in a green suede suit.
The stranger jerks his head and whistles toward someone outside. Two hay-headed figures step into the saloon. Kids. They look like 10-year-old kids! Jae feels his stomach drop, shaken by the notion, however insane, that two living, human children have just walked into the place. His mind is more stable than most, and he knows they must be imitations—but their visage is still a shock to him. His thoughts are spouting nonsense now. They look as real as anything. As real as my—
“My babies!” cries the barkeep. “You’ve come home.” The woman, moved by the sight of them, buries her face into her hands and begins to weep.
The poor woman’s having a psychotic episode, Jae observes. We’re all so old.
“I have no mother,” responds one of the girls who isn’t a girl, grinning too widely. She tugs at her bottom lip and peels back the skin of her lower face and neck, revealing a mesh frame, a mangle of wires, sensors, and actuators within it, and a small speaker at the base of her throat.
The woman turns pale, then shakes her head violently as if to reground herself in reality. “You aren’t my kids,” she says. “They fell off their beds and bumped their heads and now they’re—” She reaches for something behind the counter. “It’s not right,” she manages, her voice faltering. “It’s not natural to make you look like that. World ordinance says you’ve got to leave.” She produces a shotgun, but the gesture is half-hearted. She can’t bring herself to point the relic in their direction. “Go,” she says in an ever-shrinking voice. “Please.”
The androids burst into laughter, but there is no warmth or sincerity in the sound of it, like the laugh track from their favorite cartoon, I Love Lizzy.
“Can we dissect her?” chirps one of the twins.
“Can we?” echoes the other.
The man says nothing. He’d designed them to be killing machines—but their violent tendencies and love for torture in its messiest forms are quirks they’d seemingly developed on their own. He describes his art like this: “Android personalities must be shaped by their programming—but never confined by it—not if the goal is something extraordinary. The girls had been made to kill. That they both enjoy doing it with such enthusiasm is of their own design.”
Next, the man removes an instrument from his pocket, presses it to thin, dry lips, and plays a series of low frequency notes. The woman goes limp, falling silently except for the thud of her body hitting the floor.
Jae draws a pistol and aims at the man’s head. “Drop it!” he says. “I’ll shoot.”
“Easy, Mr. Hashimoto. She ain’t dead,” the stranger says, the harmonica-like object falling to his feet.
Jae’s brow furrows with deep, uncomfortable concern that he’s been identified by name. “Who are you?”
“Easy now. Let’s talk.”
“Hands up. Sit over there. And tell them to shut down.”
“June, Jewel, sleep.”
The androids power down, and the stranger takes a seat at the bar.
“Last time I’ll ask,” says Jae. “Who are you?”
“Heph Titus. I’m an artist. And something of a deity. We have business to discuss.”
“Never heard of you. And I don’t need any metalwork.”
“My followers are small but devoted. Some of them live in my ear.”
“So you’ve got the rot. I best kill you where you stand.”
“We’ve all got the rot at some level, Mr. Hashimoto. I’m here as a buyer. That android on your ship. How much do you want for it?”
“I don’t own any metal,” says Jae. Do you know me, stranger? From somewhere? Some time? And what do you want with Min? It’s true what he says about the android. She doesn’t belong to him. She never has.
“I understand your attachment,” Heph continues. “It’s an impressive machine. I would know. I built it.”
Jae doesn’t immediately process the words. He knows Min isn’t human, but it’s a strange notion all the same—that she’d once been some formless idea, materialized (supposedly) by the hand of the odd man now grinning at him from down the bar.
“I’m getting older,” says Heph. “My recent works end up a bit off and uninspired. It would be nice to have a reminder of the old days when I could really craft something. I’d pay you well for it. Minerva was always my best.”
Jae examines the man. Heph Titus is long-necked with a sharp nose and high, sleek bone structure. Dark circles sit like puddles beneath his eyes, and depending on how the light hits, his face seems to change. He is, at moments, a very handsome or very ugly man.
He doesn’t trust a face like that.
“You’ve been tracking us,” says Jae. “Why go through all this? Why not just call in your offer?”
“I’m an old dog,” says Heph. “I prefer face-to-face dealings.”
“Bullshit. You fucked with my ship. Not sure how but you did. What are you really after?”
Heph’s expression contorts into an off-kilter grin, revealing teeth the shade of chicken bone. He looks at Jae with the kind of searching smugness common to criminals and sociopaths. “Hell,” he says. “I haven’t the time. Sing, Junebug.”
The android remains still, her mouth closed and unmoving as if still in sleep mode. But her voicebox switches on like an old radio, emitting the same muffled tune that put the barkeep down. Jae fires his weapon, or tries to at least, yet the weight of his body has become inexplicably heavy, the act of squeezing a trigger a most impossible task. His legs fall from under him, his musculature seemingly as formless as the protein sludge that still sits untouched on his plate. He hits the floor, and the world goes dark.
#
By the time Min finds the bug in the engine, Jae has gone silent—and she knows he is in danger. She recognizes the handiwork immediately. The thing resembles a locust, realistic in form but with a camouflage function that helps it seamlessly blend with its surroundings. Now that it’s been captured, it squirms between Min’s fingers, emits a deep humming noise, and reverts to its default skin—vibrant galactic hues that shift and ripple across its body. The color palette is the same artistic signature found in her own design.
All these years, and he’s found me. She examines the thing—a simple but effective gadget that’s hitched a ride these past six months since their last supply stop. It’s been with them all this time, awaiting the command from its maker to activate and cause a small mechanical malfunction out here in the middle of nowhere. Min squeezes until the low buzz morphs into a high-pitched squeal (even small things know death when the end draws near). Its parts disassemble and fall to the floor like a handful of coins.
Min lights her pipe and smokes some more ashweed while she waits. The addiction is one of her favorite human vices, of which she has adopted many.
“I’ll never understand why you do that,” says Otto, a personal assistance unit in the form of a small, immobile stuffed sheep.
“You wouldn’t get it,” says Min. “You don’t have a body.”
“But I do. I am soft, white cotton stuffed with polyfill. I have a black, posable head and cute, beaded eyes.”
“Yes, they are cute.”
“You seem down. Would you like to snuggle?”
“Not now.”
“It’s a bad habit. Smoking is a leading cause of forest fires according to my friend Captain O’Hare and his gang of furry woodland creatures.”
“Not now, Otto.”
“In any case, I do have a body. Why would you say that I don’t?”
“No, Otto. You’re a pile of fluff. You don’t have a real body that actually feels or moves through this world. All you can do is sit there until someone picks you up and places you somewhere else.”
“I suppose you’re right,” says Otto, his normally chipper voice suddenly subdued. Min knows he has a sensitive personality prone to melancholy, and she realizes the cruelty of her words.
“I’m sorry.”
Min is fond of the little sheep, often defending him when Jae gets in one of his more disagreeable moods. Jae doesn’t have much patience for AI—and Otto in particular reminds him of what once had been. Jae trusts human intelligence even less. Still, he has always been able to rely on Min—and she on him. They’ve been traveling together for decades now, picking up small gun jobs here and there, always living hand to mouth, but getting by at the very least. It’s not a bad existence compared to most.
“That wasn’t kind of me,” says Min. “I smoke to pass the time. It gives me something to do. Something to think about that doesn’t feel like thinking. A body isn’t much. Just dead weight and extra maintenance. You’re lucky you’re the way you are.”
“I accept your apology,” says Otto, his happy demeanor restored. “Swell talk we had. Would you like some music while you wait?”
“Sure. Some opera would be nice. Italian.”
In truth, the drug should have no effect on her at all—but Min finds something calming in the ritual of stuffing the pipe, lighting it up, inhaling, holding in, then exhaling the smoke. The repetition of movements gives her peace of mind not entirely dissimilar to the drug’s effect on human brain chemistry. When Min smokes, she gets so lost in solitude she feels simultaneously separate from and connected to the vast universe that surrounds her.
It’s the closest thing she knows to sleep.
“He’s here,” says Otto. “What do you plan to do?”
Min hasn’t seen her maker in years. She imagines he’s sore about her leaving. But when she’d realized what he was—and who she could be without him—she’d made a choice. She wonders if killing him now would help. Maybe it would be cathartic to slit his throat and watch him bleed. But if she’d been capable of doing so, wouldn’t she have done it then? She often thinks about her former self—loyal, unquestioning, and guilty of things she can’t suppress like an organic mind can. Why do people fear memory loss? she often wonders. For every moment lived, the human mind saves only the most relevant data, deleting what it deems as superfluous or harmful—or at least storing it away to be sorted through at a better time. To forget is to bypass pain. To forget is a gift.
Min longs for such relief—but neither ashweed nor the passage of time can take the edge off. For metal minds, every memory is as vivid and as real as the present moment. It’s a lot of pain to process—and androids do feel pain. I bet that’s why the first machines went batshit, Min speculates. Too many memories.
“Min,” says Otto. “Did you hear me? He’s here.”
The metal woman takes another puff from her pipe, then tucks it away into the inner pocket of her vest. “Okay,” she says. “Let him in.”
#
“Let’s string him up, June. Before Father gets back.”
“You rushed the last one, Jewel.”
“She had a weak constitution. This one seems strong. He’ll stay awake longer.”
“You turn them inside out too soon. Always do.”
“Do not,” says Jewel.
“Do too,” says June.
“You’re awful.”
“You’re insufferable.”
“Well, I am rubber. And you are glue.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Heard it somewhere. I wasn’t finished.”
“Finish, then.”
“I am rubber, and you are glue. Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.”
“That’s stupid.”
“You’re stupid. I want to rip your spleen out.”
“I haven’t got one.”
“Play along, June.”
“Fine. I want to stab you in the eye.”
“Well, I want to slice your belly open and string you up by your guts.”
“I’m bored.”
“Like I said, we could cut him up.”
“Father said not yet.”
“You’re no fun at all. Did you notice he’s been listening?”
“Yes, Jewel, I did. Been awake a good ten minutes now, haven’t you, Mister Hashimoto? No need to pretend. No use struggling. We’ve got you tied up good. Won’t hurt you just yet, even though sister is inclined to do so. She wouldn’t disobey Father. Would you, Jewel?”
“No, I suppose I wouldn’t.”
“There’s no supposing. It’s a fact. We couldn’t disobey him if we wanted to. Not in our nature.”
Jae, who has in fact regained consciousness and been listening to the androids’ conversation quite intently, finally opens his eyes. He observes he is no longer in the saloon but in a holding area on some unknown vessel. He can feel in his stomach that the transport is still grounded.
Jewel smirks. “Well look at that. You have been listening, you sneaky shit.”
“Suppose I ask you to loosen these ropes,” says Jae. “And you send me on my way?”
They laugh at the suggestion in their loud, joyless way. June regains her composure and responds. “No, Mister Hashimoto,” she says. “We can’t do that.”
“Why not? Would your heads explode? You’ve got as much free will as anyone ever did.”
“I am not an anyone,” June snaps, her child-like features suddenly overcome by a dark sternness that ages her considerably. “I am only because my father made me that I am.”
Keep them talking. Keep them distracted. “Don’t flatter that psychopath. He may have given you bodies—minds, even—but your souls, if you have them, are your own to lose.”
June contemplates the notion, retreating into her head space as if calculating some complicated equation. Finally, she reveals her epiphany with a confident grin, impressed by her own brilliance. “I don’t imagine I do,” she concludes. “Have a soul, that is.”
“And why is that?” Over the course of his life—or what he remembers of it—Jae has learned androids are quite fond of hearing themselves speak and, if given half the chance, will talk your ear off. He finds it odd how aware they seem of their artificiality, clinging to the whys and why nots of their existence, relentlessly articulating their questions and observations of the world and of themselves.
“You think you’re clever,” says Jae, quietly struggling with the rope. “But you’re a couple of hand radios compared to the old machines.”
“We know,” says June. “Father says they were real smart. Smarter than anything that existed then or has existed since. Do you remember them? The first androids?”
“I do.”
“Then you remember the War?”
War. Jae thinks it’s an absurd way to describe what happened that day. He knows history has labeled it as such as history is inclined to do when such death needs a name, a reason. But the truth of it, for Jae and all who still remember, is this: it was a swift and sudden departure, a merciless genocide, and the end and the beginning of all things—but it was no war.
“Tell us,” says June. “Tell us what you remember.”
“What’s your maker said about it?”
“We know the basic history,” says Jewel. “Father doesn’t remember much. Or that’s what he says.”
“He wouldn’t lie,” says June. “Father always tells the truth.”
“Go on,” says Jewel. “Tell us the story.”
“What’s there to tell? The androids took the cities in a day. They killed most of us and cursed the rest. And then they left.”
“That’s an awful way to tell it,” says Jewel. “We want to know more. Where were you when it began? In one of the cities in the sky?”
“No,” says Jae. “If I’d been a city dweller, I’d be dead.”
Jae maneuvers his thumbs behind his back in an attempt to loosen the binds. It’s no use. Where’s the bird? Is she even alive? And Min? Did Heph Titus get to her?
“Go on, then,” says Jewel. “We want to know everything.”
These things are loyal to their maker but awfully curious about the past. Just keep them focused on something, anything, and the right moment will come.
“All right,” says Jae. “I’ll start from the beginning—not the true beginning—but it’s the only place to start. Before that day, all I see is black.”
“That’s better,” says Jewel. “You should always begin like that. Come sister, let’s sit and listen. It seems he’s a storyteller after all.”