“It’s better if you let the gel harden for two minutes first before wrapping the new synthetic skin over it. I know the standard practice is to just sheathe it all up after applying the sprays, but the Coagulant K works best if it's exposed to air for a few moments. It’s not like you’re in a rush, Elster. Or maybe you should just wait for the Eule to get back. Not to slight against your own medical skills, but the nurse Replika would probably be far better at this than you.”
The wraith won’t stop talking.
After she had finished with her baton, Elster began working on the burns she suffered from the steam room accident earlier that day. The phantom’s commentary grated her ears, even if most of it was, admittedly, good advice. The girl had casually sprouted off half a dozen Replika-specific medical tips that Elster did not know as if they had been common knowledge.
Elster wasn’t completely bereft of medical knowledge; her mental blueprint as a combat engineer at least provided her with basic first aid information for both Gestalt and Replikas. It was what allowed her to acknowledge that the advice given by the girl was sound.
It was a conundrum. Elster couldn’t bring herself to fully trust the hallucination. But it also felt wrong not to follow what she felt was rational advice.
“There’s a trick with the oxidant blood you could do to replenish if you’re low on supply as well. But that’s probably not useful for you right now, since the situation’s not that dire. There was this one time when you were stuck in Nowhere without medical supplies, and you had to extract oxidant from–”
Her blade scraped the gore from the pulsating walls of Nowhere, the keening knife slicing a generous amount of living flesh and thickening fluid off it, before slathering them onto her wounds. The sickening meat instantly began squeezing into her injuries, scabbing over and encrusting them in a layer of hardened tissue.
Walls of blood and iron and symbols. Nowhere provides, and the Empress’s statue Sings for all. Elster pulled a chunk of the pulpy, corpulent mix of flesh off her knife. She eyed the sickening meat in her hands and, after a brief moment of deliberation, brought it to her mouth–
“You talk too much,” Elster mumbled as she pushed away the memories and finished with her repairs. The Repair Logic Module, RLM, in her heads-up display gave her the green light status. Her arm and shoulder were patched up to full functionality, although its outward appearance was far from pleasing. Her first aid training had been unsurprisingly centred more around addressing practical concerns rather than aesthetics.
Ariane beamed at her, happy that she finally responded. Elster’s chest felt tight at the sight. “And you always talked too little. Really, I thought I was quiet before I met you. I had to learn to talk enough for the both of us on that ship.”
Elster didn’t respond, instead resolutely keeping her eyes away from the wraith as she walked over to her calibration pod and keyed in the codes. Her repairs, both for her weapon and her body, were done. Fixing the weapon was a necessity since the Eule would be asking questions if she found the stun prod spent.
Or so she told herself. The truth was, she simply did not feel comfortable without a weapon of some sort at the ready. The repairs to herself were also likewise essential, since recovery within the calibration pod would go smoother with her injuries attended to.
Now that both tasks were done, she had to address the issue with her mind. With any luck, the calibration pod would correct whatever was wrong with her neural patterns, and she would wake up alone without some strange, white-haired phantom haunting her every step. Although with such a degree of degradation already present, Elster didn’t hold much hope of that happening.
“Are you going to sleep?” The disappointment in her voice was subtle, but Elster still heard it. The Replika continued to ignore the girl, repeatedly reminding herself that she was surely just a hallucination, no matter how genuine her presence felt.
The calibration pod hissed open as Elster finished entering the code. Just as she stepped in, the hallucination spoke again.
“Wait, El. Could we talk, please? Just a little.”
Despite already resolving to ignore the wraith, her pleading tone still made Elster freeze. Choosing to dismiss her after that felt impossible. It went against every instinct. Already, she was half-tempted to just turn around and wrap her arms around the girl to comfort her.
They infuriated her, these feelings that were not her own, surfacing and controlling her at the wraith’s whims.
Even still, Elster turned around, burying the turmoil of conflicting emotions behind a practised mask of indifference. The wraith’s sad expression brightened a little, although she still looked uncertain of what to say.
Elster didn’t know what to say either. She shouldn’t be conflicted on this; the girl was just a product of her deranged mind. She should just get in the pod.
But instead, The Replika stupidly chose to open her mouth and ask:
“Are you alright?”
The words just felt natural. Instinctive. Seeing the girl so vulnerable felt wrong. She should not be sad. She should not be in pain. She–
–asked her to make a Promise she couldn’t fulfil. Elster still remembered the moment just before she placed her dying body into the cyro-pod, hoping to one day save her, but knowing full well that it would never come.
Ariane looked at her in surprise, before letting out a huff of exasperation and amusement. “It’s just like you to worry about me, even when you are scared out of your mind.”
Her words made Elster bristle. “I’m not scared. Just… concerned.”
“I’m fine, El,” Ariane giggled. “You’re the one who was nearly boiled alive earlier today.”
Elster scoffed. “I would have been fine. I’ve survived… much… worse…”
The words trailed off, as Elster reminded herself that the boiler room was the closest she ever came to dying, and not whatever strange nightmarish scenario her imagination kept making up for her.
A volley of golden spears came screaming her way. She managed to dodge the first, but the second clipped her shoulder, tearing her arm off. The third and fourth impaled her through the torso, the heavy combat armour failing to hold against the might of a Bioresonant demigoddess. The RLM flared useless damage warnings that she ignored. She choked oxidant blood from her mouth. Still defiant, she looked up at the winged golden angel staring down at her, surrounded by dozens more golden spears and a company of black shields. Elster raised the Type-84 with her remaining arm and resumed firing, futile as the action was.
She died seconds later, as the two spears embedded within her pulled her body apart in an explosion of indescribable pain and gore.
Elster grimaced and blinked, willing herself to forget the image of that strange, wrathful demigoddess, even as an irritating and inexplicable sense of longing persisted.
The both of them fell into another length of silence as they studied each other. Not for the first time, Elster felt ruptured by how beautiful the girl was. It wasn’t that her features were void of imperfection; far from it. Her body looked too thin, her complexion too pale. Her white hair was unnatural, and her red eyes, while vibrant, were unsettling to look at.
The colours of freshly-spilled blood. The colours of Carcosa.
There were adhesive bandages plastered all over her face and cheeks as well. Her nose was slightly crooked, her fringes too long, her skin so pale and thin that Elster could almost see the lightning web of blue veins crawling beneath. Her enhanced sight saw all these imperfections and more.
And yet, she was still the most beautiful sight Elster ever laid eyes on. The more she looked at her, the more enamoured she became. The delicate length of her fingers, the way she shyly looked away before glancing up beneath long eyelashes, the way she bit her lips in nervousness. All those things she saw, and–
–it felt like she was falling in love all over again.
“You’re beautiful,” Elster murmured, before she realised she said that aloud and blushed. “Well, of course you would be. You are a fragment of my imagination, after all.”
Ariane gave a pleased smile. “You still think I’m just an illusion?”
“Well, you are obviously not real,” Elster replied as she looked away and waved her hand in awkward dismissal, thinking back on how the girl had no reflection. “The fact that you just keep spontaneously appearing out of nowhere reinforces the fact.”
“Hmm, I suppose that would be the only rational explanation.” Ariane sat back down on the chair. Elster idly noted how the cushion didn’t even sink the tiniest bit. “So you believe you are hallucinating?”
“It’s the only rationale that makes sense,” Elster said, ignoring the sinking pit in her stomach. “Maybe it’s a bug in my cognitive framework, or an issue with the Gestalt brain scan my neural blueprint was based on.”
AEON would have a hard time checking, since the destruction of the central neural archive on Vineta during the war meant they had no way of accessing the original blueprint.
“It’s not persona degradation, El. You can rest easy about that. AEON won’t touch you,” Ariane said gently.
Elster snorted. She wasn’t going to start believing whatever sweet nonsense her hallucination told her.
“I guarantee it, El,” the girl said resolutely. “I didn’t stop an entire war and decommission the Penrose Project just to let AEON scrap you in the end. No matter what happens, you will get to live a normal life.”
Hearing that, Elster shook her head incredulously. “That’s absurd. You can’t really expect me to believe something like that. You stopped the entire war? And the Penrose Project? All just so I can live a ‘normal’ life?”
“Well, stopping the Penrose Project was a necessity, since the last thing I wanted was for you or the ‘me’ in this timeline to suffer the same misery as before. As for the war, well, that was more of an unintended side effect. Turns out the Empress was able to sense my presence when I came back. I went to her, we talked things through, and she agreed to arrange peace talks instead of continuing the war and the embargo enforced by the Imperial Kitezh fleet.”
The ‘me’ in this timeline? What does that– No, there’s something more ridiculous she had to address first.
“The Empress,” Elster said slowly. “You mean the Empress of the Eusan Empire? The same Empire the Nation has been fighting and losing against for years? And you just convinced her to drop the entire war even though they held the advantage?”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The Empire was a lot weaker than it once was, but with both the Empress’s vast Bioresonant might and the Imperial fleet still around, the Nation stood little to no chance at winning, only at maintaining a deadlock with strategic positioning of their FLKR Commanders among their colonies. The sudden peace treaties that were finalised months ago came as a shock to everyone, especially the Nation, given the heavy concessions the Empire agreed to even though they had the upper hand.
The only thing the Nation had to give up, in the end, was a relatively worthless moon and penal mining facility that orbited Leng: S-23 Sierpinski. No one knew why the Empire wanted it so badly, and even after an extensive investigation, the Nation couldn’t fathom the moon’s supposed value to the Empress.
Elster did manage to hear the Empress’s stance on the matter, however; The entire Eusan system did. The Interplanetary Peace Conference was a public affair, and the signing of the peace treaties at Vineta had been broadcast across the Eusan system. The Empress herself had even been present at that momentous occasion.
After all was said and done, the Nation made one poor, last-ditch effort to uncover the value of S-23: by daring to ask the Empress herself. Despite all the propaganda the Nation made about the tyranny of the Bioresonant Goddess over mankind, they never once insinuated that the woman was a fool. There had to be some reason the ruler went to such lengths to secure the moon; snatching defeat from the jaws of victory at Vineta, and even going so far as to agree to cripple both her economy and military at the Nation’s demand and benefit. All for the sake of a random, unimportant celestial body orbiting Leng, which itself was a planet of little value located at the very fringes of the Eusan System.
To that, the Empress only had one thing to say. It was a quote that baffled the Nation’s officials to this day, and perhaps even haunts them still, at what unknown mistake that peace deal trade may one day wrought upon them.
“It would have been cheap at twice the price.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that.” Ariane looked uncomfortable. “But at least it all worked out in the end, right? I mean, you already met her. You know she’s not unreasonable.”
Elster stared at her, utterly perplexed. “I am an AEON Replika unit who was assembled merely half a year ago. When could I have possibly met the Grand Empress of the Eusan Empire?”
“Well, you did see her just a few hours ago. Or rather, she saw you, I suppose. Maybe you can’t remember? Cass did mention it might be a side effect of the brain surgery she gave you.”
Elster’s mind stalled at that statement, before rebooting urgently to process the absurdity of what the wraith just casually said. “Brain surgery? I had BRAIN SURGERY?! Wait, did you just say it was the EMPRESS herself who gave me brain surgery? She’s all the way in Buyan! How did she get here?”
“Oh no, she wasn’t here physically. Cass did the surgery from her Imperial Palace. She used Bioresonance to project herself here.”
“That’s–!” Impossible, was what Elster wanted to say. But the truth was there was no way she could know for sure. The Grand Empress was widely known as the most powerful Bioresonant entity in the system, but Elster had always assumed there must be some limitation to her powers. Otherwise, she would have simply destroyed the Nation’s revolution the moment the rebellion occurred.
But now, her mind reeled at the implications of what the wraith just said. Rotfront was half the system away from the Empire capital planet of Buyan. If the Empress was strong enough to casually extend her influence this far and still perform something as complicated as a cranial operation, then Elster had vastly underestimated the ruler’s capabilities.
In hindsight, perhaps it shouldn't be too surprising. If one looked towards the Nation’s conduct towards the war throughout its existence, one could see the signs.
Like why all the important, high-ranking officials in the Nation lived in Heimat, far from the frontlines; why all of the Empire colonies seized during those first few years of the Revolution were located so far beyond main the asteroid belt and not within the more developed inner sphere of the Eusan system instead; and why any coordinated strike force at the Imperial Palace to end the war decisively had always failed before they even reached close to Buyan.
With that enormous reach and control, the Grand Empress could assassinate any high-ranking personnel in range at her leisure. Any coordinated force sent towards Imperial territory would fall into disarray as their commanding officers fell one after another to an invisible and inviolable power. Any bureaucrats that tried to step foot near the edge of the war front or pass the system’s main asteroid belt into the inner sphere would be instantly felled.
It would explain the Nation’s recent actions at the peace meetings as well. Despite the momentous importance of the peace treaty signings, an occasion where even the illustrious Grand Empress herself was present, the Leaders of the Revolution still failed to show themselves in person, instead relying on their ambassadors to sign and speak in their name.
“She’s that powerful?” Elster whispered. “No wonder the Leaders weren’t present at the signing. Your beloved Empress would have popped their heads off the moment they strayed within half a system’s radius of her.”
Ariane looked uneasy. “I doubt it's that simple. She had the opportunity to do so when we were exploring the Red Gate on S-23 Sierpinski months ago, and she didn’t tell me about any heads popping.”
“She–!” Elster choked. “She what?!”
That was practically within Nation’s territory! No, scratch that, that WAS within the Nation's territory! Right within Leng’s orbit and at the very fringes of Nation-controlled space! How in the world did the Grand Empress manage to sneak past all that interplanetary surveillance and out to the very edge of the system without anyone noticing?
“Now, THAT was a headache.” Ariane huffed. “Good thing we had Falke on our side, or else it would have been practically impossible to get in. I don’t think I could have convinced the Empress to fully go along with my idea if she didn’t sense the Gate first-hand.”
“A F-Falke…” Elster felt faint. She was referring to a FKLR unit. A traitor FKLR Commander unit.
One of the most revered and powerful Replikas in the Nation, programmed to be incorruptibly loyal to the Nation and its ideals. And one of them had helped smuggle the Grand Empress of the Eusan Empire all the way to Leng. Who's to say the Falke wouldn’t bring her to the doorstep of the Nation’s Capital next, or at least close enough till Heimat fell within her vast Bioresonance range?
This was a disaster. One of the unshakable foundations of the Nation, one absolutely vital to its continued survival against the Empire, had just turned traitor. She had to tell someone, right? But who? And what should she say? It’s not like she could just show up without proof, make those outlandish claims, and then declare that she learnt it through a ghost.
“Look, I’m sure the Leaders of the Revolution are fine,” Ariane placated half-heartedly, before mumbling under her breath: “Not that they won’t deserve to have their heads popped off.”
That hardly assured Elster. The Replika’s mind whirled and stressed at the myriad of highly troubling possibilities that this new information entailed, and what she should do with it…
Betrayed. Left to die.
… Before deciding to just give it up entirely. Quite frankly, there was nothing she could do with this newfound, disturbing knowledge, even if it was true. No one would believe her, and in truth, she could scarcely find a reason to care. Despite being a Replika of the Nation, she hardly felt any genuine loyalty to the government. It was difficult to develop devotion when the overbearing institution kept reminding her that they would decommission her the moment she slipped up in her work or showed any signs of ‘insubordination’.
The problem could be set aside for now. There was something else that urgently needed addressing. “You said I had brain surgery earlier.”
“Oh, yeah. That.” Ariane fidgeted and tugged at the hem of her nightgown unconsciously. The act drew Elster’s attention to the wraith’s exposed thighs, before the Replika caught herself and forced her eyes to look away. “I didn’t know how bad the damage to your brain was. After you shocked yourself unconscious with the stun prod, you began bleeding from your ears. I knew part of the damage was because of me, and that it was related to Bioresonance. There was only one person I knew who was competent and trusted enough to diagnose you.”
“The Empress.” Elster rubbed her eyes. “And she just agreed to be my… interplanetary brain surgeon? Even for someone like the Empress, it couldn’t have been that easy for her.”
“Well, she was really tired afterwards,” Ariane admitted. “And she might have slipped up a few times. But overall, I think she did alright.”
Merely tired. After performing a remote brain surgery six hundred million kilometres away using purely Bioresonance. The implications were staggering. Elster did not know much about Bioresonance, but even she understood that such a feat was utterly ridiculous in scale.
“Where did she even get the tools to operate? Did you bring me to a clinic first, or… wait.”
Elster frowned and walked over to her workbench. After a brief moment of inspecting her wares, she whirled back towards the wraith with an incredulous look. “Did you two touch my stuff? Did you two use MY stuff to perform a cranial operation on MY head, right in my room?!”
Ariane coughed and looked away. “Well, technically it was the Empress that touched your stuff. And even then, it was with some floaty, Bioresonant hands. I know you don’t like people messing with your things, but surely this doesn’t count, right? It was for a good cause!”
Elster just stared at the wraith, eyebrows twitching. “I’m more concerned with the fact that the two of you thought that using engineering implements was an acceptable substitute for proper medical instruments, Ari! Especially for a brain surgery! Whose idea was this?!”
Ariane had the decency to look guilty, at least. “I mean, at least we cleaned it first?”
Elster sighed. Well, at least she was still alive, and relatively sane. Kind of. Or at least not more insane than she was before. The Replika turned to her workbench and began meticulously rearranging the tools back to how she remembered. The act was more to buy some time to get her thoughts in order, rather than any true annoyance at the misplacement of her things.
No matter how she looked it at, it was utterly ridiculous. All of this was just…
“This is all a bit much, isn’t it?” Elster said aloud as she organised her instruments in their proper order. “This story you fabricated.”
The Replika could feel the wraith’s gaze against her back. “You still don’t believe this? After everything?”
“I believe there’s something wrong with my head, at least,” Elster murmured, glancing back at Ariane. “Nothing about what you said made any sense. You claimed you to have met the Empress in person, swayed her to exert her influence over the Empire and force peace upon the war. All that, for what?”
The wraith looked out the window. The evening’s ashened snow was beginning to fall. “For you, mostly. But it isn’t as if others don’t benefit. At the very least, millions won’t have to starve this time around. And the Nation’s recovery would proceed faster than before too, making their regime less severe for you.”
The words coming from the wraith were entirely absurd. Elster would have laughed if the situation wasn’t so surreal. She placed the last tool back in its original spot and sighed.
“And dismantling the Penrose Program? Stalking me day and night? Getting the Empress’s help to fix my brain? What’s so special about me that you would go through all this effort for?”
Who am I to you?
Ariane didn’t reply. When Elster turned around, she found wraith gazing out the window, her expression melancholic as she stared at the falling ash illuminated by the first rays of moonlight. She crossed her legs, exposing more of her skin as the nightgown fell further away. The sight of that pale expanse of skin brought forth another unbidden memory.
One far more indecent than the ones before.
Her hands rubbed against the Gestalt thigh, slowly circling upwards as Elster’s lips drank in her lovely moans.
Elster felt her throat go dry at the sight as she hurriedly looked away. Whoever her mind was based on must be a pervert. There was no other explanation for her thoughts to conjure such salacious, albeit pleasant, imageries for her.
Although perhaps she should be more appreciative of her twisted imagination. Despite everything, at least the wraith her mind fabricated was attractive and not ghoul-like or such, like the undead Replika creatures that kept appearing in her daytime nightmares. And the way the white-haired woman wore that nightgown makes her want to rip it off and–
She blushed as another rush of illicit memories overwhelmed her. Memories of nights spent cuddling together. Watching movies or painting together, before the two of them inevitably proceed to more vigorous nightly activity– Stop!
How would that even– she was a machine! She didn’t even have the right parts for, for…
Fingers lightly tracing on skin. A teasing grin. A tender kiss on her lips, then neck, and further down as she went…
Well, clearly they found a way, if her memories of those many nights spent tangled together were any indication. Turns out there were many creative methods for intimacy, even between a Replika and a Gestalt. And for most of the ideas to be Ariane’s… Who knew that, underneath her shy demeanour, the minx could get quite motivated when she set her mind to please?
Elster coughed in mortification, which caught the attention of Ariane. Elster blushed and looked away from the wraith’s curious look. “I’m going into the pod now.”
Rather than protesting like she thought she would, Ariane simply smiled. “Alright. I’ll see you tomorrow, El.”
Elster wanted to say that she hoped she wouldn’t see her, that the calibration would fix whatever was wrong with her mind and erase the wraith’s presence from her life. But the words won’t form, and even the thought of saying such cruel things left her unable to speak.
Instead, she sighed, and said: “See you tomorrow too.”
Ariane didn’t reply, but the wide smile on her face was enough. Before Elster realised it, she was grinning back too. As she settled into the pod and the covers came down to engulf her, Elster’s last thoughts before she fell asleep were still of the white-haired wraith.