“By the way, don’t be fooled by her performance. She doesn’t believe you.”
Elster was getting her appearance ready for the day when Ariane spoke up. Meeting with a FKLR was no small matter, and Elster needed to ensure that her appearance was immaculate, especially with the ugly repairs made to her arms and shoulders after yesterday’s incident.
The Eule had kindly offered to help, but Elster declined. While the engineer Replika had been given a reprieve from her duties for the day so that she may meet with the Commander, the Eule had been given an alternative assignment to follow on. Elster didn’t want to interrupt the few hours the Eule had for rest and calibration just to help her.
“What do you mean?” Elster frowned as she tore her gaze from the mirror to look at the wraith seated on her untouched bed.
“Come on, El. Eules aren’t that gullible.” Ariane’s blood-red eyes looked to the doorway. “Despite how cheerful they act, they are no less sharper than other Replikas, you know? In fact, I'd argue their models excel even more than the regular combat variants in detecting lies and deception.”
That made a certain amount of sense. Among the different models, the Eule was the only one designed to see near-constant civilian interaction in their daily tasks. It would be logical to assume that AEON had programmed them with the best social skills.
Ariane pointed at the door. “I also saw her eyeing the burnt marks on the walls when you weren’t looking earlier. She doesn’t buy your explanation.”
Elster looked back to the mirror, adjusting her attire to hide as much of the new synthetic skin on her arms and back as possible. She tried finding Ariane in the mirror’s reflection again, but as expected, she was nowhere to be seen. “But then why didn’t she say anything to me?”
“Because that grief you showed her yesterday was real. After a display like that, it’s no wonder she’s going out of her way not to push you for the truth. Eules can be kind like that.”
That does sound like her. “Do you think she would report to AEON?”
“I highly doubt that. They are the most empathic of the Replikas. She won’t kick you down after seeing you cry, especially since you are an LSTR unit. Even if you were acting pretty suspicious, I doubt she will try anything.” Ariane smirked. “By the way, you are a really bad liar. Even I could have come up with something better. ‘I tripped.’ Really?”
Elster grimaced. That was hardly fair. She had been recovering from the aftermath of an emotional breakdown. “I didn’t exactly have a lot of time to think of a good excuse.”
“I don’t think it would have mattered even if you did. You were always a terribly honest person. You can’t even lie to yourself to make yourself happy.” Ariane looked away. “It would have been so much easier on you if you had just given up during the endless cycles.”
“It would mean leaving you alone. And I…” Elster paused, unsure of what she was saying. The words came to mind anyway. “I can’t ever do that.”
“Evidently not.”
There was something she wasn’t grasping from their conversation. Allusions to events that she had no recollection of. It frustrated her. But did it even matter at all? All of this was fake anyway.
Or so I tell myself, she thought bitterly. Even Elster was beginning to doubt insanity was the sole reason behind everything wrong with her situation.
The tampering with her workbench’s tools alone was clear physical evidence that something was amiss. The act had not been her doing, or at least not in so far as she could recall, so someone else must have done it. The Eusan Empress herself, if Ariane’s words were to be believed.
Elster inspected her head, looking for the faintest trace of the supposed surgery the Empress did on her. The closest she found was a pale scar-like line that seemed to stretch around the top of her forehead, but it was hardly conclusive evidence. Ariane had told her that the Empress had healed up any sign of damage after she had completed her work on the Replika yesterday. For all Elster knew, that faint line might have simply been there since the day she was born.
Then there was that monstrosity on her workbench, crafted from the bare components of her spent stun prod. Replika engineer or not, there was no way she could have created something like that without having prior knowledge of its construction or at least a blueprint. Not to mention the unorthodox but effective treatment of her burnt wounds, which would have required a sophisticated understanding of Replika physiology that she could not have possibly possessed beforehand.
And in both cases, Ariane had helped out. The phantom was supposed to simply be just a projection of her mind. Yet the wraith had displayed a level of knowledge that surpassed what Elster had.
At the very least, it was near impossible for her to tell what was going on any more. The best she could do was to continue enduring this insanity until a solution miraculously appeared before her. Or until her blatant madness gets exposed, leading to her decommissioning by AEON. Whichever came first.
Elster completed the finishing touches to her appearance before closing the cabinet mirror. “I still can’t bring myself to fully believe everything you said,” Elster admitted. “It’s one thing to concede that you might not just be a product of my madness, but another matter entirely to trust you. I still don’t even know what you are.”
Ariane didn’t answer immediately, instead flopping back down on the bed to stare at the ceiling. The sheets remained immaculate, with nary a crease despite Ariane lying on it. “That was a question I had asked myself for a very long time. Even after I entered this world and met the Empress, I still didn’t fully understand what I was. But I think I’m real now, after you have asked me to stay. Or ‘real-er’ than I ever had been for a very long time.”
“You have no reflection, no weight, and as far as the Eule is concerned, no visible presence as well. What part of that indicates that you are not merely some make-believe spectre my brain had conjured?” Elster’s voice was controlled, even if her words were accusatory.
She didn’t wait for Ariane to reply, and instead turned around and walked right in front of the bed. The wraith remained lying down, but tilted her head to look at her curiously. Elster observed her. She looked so life-like now. Before, it was hard to even look straight at her for a single second, as if her body kept fading in and out of existence.
Elster remembered touching her yesterday, when she had seized the wraith’s approaching hand right before she shocked herself. The hand had felt real; warm even. The situation was tense, so the sensation might have entirely been fabricated by her imagination, but if she could physically touch her again, surely it would prove something, right? After some hesitation, Elster’s fingers reach out to the wraith, and–
–wrapped themselves around Ariane’s delicate throat. After a few seconds, they began to squeeze, and Elster–
–immediately backed off as if repulsed. The Replika took a few hurried steps back and tried to control her breathing. “Stop doing that,” she snapped.
Ariane sat up again, looking at Elster with an apologetic look. “Sorry. I can’t stop the visions even if I wanted to. Not unless I erase myself from this reality like I had originally planned.”
“What does that even mean?” Elster’s patience for vague answers had long reached its end. The uncertainty and surrealness of the situation, combined with the wraith's repeatedly vague or incomplete answers, was difficult to tolerate.
“It means I’m afraid you’re stuck with those visions as long as I still linger around. I never intended you to suffer through this. You were supposed to live a normal life— the one you never had the chance to experience— and then die a normal death. No repeated cycles. No nightmares. And no recollection of me.” Ariane shifted uncomfortably. “I had never planned to be a factor in it. After all that I have caused you to suffer through, I–”
“Stop.”
Ariane flinched, but didn’t say further. Elster took a deep breath, before continuing. “So you’re saying that for me to stop having these… memory glitches in my neural framework, you would have to disappear?”
Ariane bit her lip. After a pause, she nodded.
“Then don’t go.”
Ariane’s eyes widened. Elster continued. “I don’t know who you are, or why my brain fabricated you, but clearly some part of me thinks that you are extremely important, to the point where I would just break down completely the moment I thought you disappeared.”
Elster paused to gather her thoughts. “While I do not like the situation,” she said slowly. “It would be better for you to stay for now. The last thing I need is another similar breakdown, especially while I am still on a mission. So until I figure out a way to fix this, I would prefer you to stay.”
“That’s… not really how this works,” Ariane said, tone uncertain. “If you want the memories and nightmares to stop, all I have to do is leave and make you forget me. You don’t have to force yourself–”
“You stay,” Elster cut her off forcefully. “You’re a figment of my imagination, so if I say you stay, you don’t leave, alright?”
Elster didn’t like the way Ariane looked after she said that. The wraith cast her watery gaze away, a fragile half-smile on her lips.
“Just, try to keep surprises to a minimum while I’m interacting with others, alright?” Elster stammered out. “You can be distracting sometimes.”
And speaking of distracting… “By the way, is there anything else you can wear? That outfit is a little… improper.”
Ariane blinked and wiped at her eyes, before looking down at herself. She shrugged lightly. “Does it matter? You are the only one around who can see me anyway.”
“It’s indecent. For obvious reasons,” Elster forced herself to say as she willed her cheeks not to blush. The wraith giggled.
“Alright, I understand. Just so you know, it wasn’t like I chose to wear this when I manifested. It’s just what I’ve been with for countless lifetimes already. Now, let’s see…”
The wraith’s form began to blur. Looking at her felt like someone was putting needles in her eyes. Elster instinctively blinked and looked away. When she turned back to the wraith again, Ariane's appearance had changed. Her long hair had shortened so that it fell just above her shoulders, and her pale nightgown was replaced with a familiar black AEON officer uniform for Gestalts.
“There!” Ariane said, pleased with herself. “Wasn’t sure that would work. Wow, it feels strange to be wearing this again. What do you think?”
“You look nice,” Elster said, caught off-guard at the sudden makeover. “That uniform… you were a Gestalt officer?”
“Radio officer. And even then it was just at a remote faculty. I never saw the war front.” Ariane smiled wryly. “I suppose if there was one good thing my weak constitution gave me, it was an easier military service. Of course, that didn’t stop the Nation from deciding to send me to S-23 Sierpinski for re-education.”
Elster’s heart leaped. “They sent you to a mining correctional facility?”
“They tried to.” Ariane shrugged. “Until I applied for the Penrose Program. I guess volunteers were hard enough to get that they approved my transfer. After that, I was assigned to pilot scout-ship 512, and that was that.”
Elster’s head spun. “Wait, none of this makes sense. The war ended months ago, the Penrose Program had just decommissioned, and the S-23 facility had been scrapped and transferred to the Empire for almost half a year now. Your facts just aren’t adding up.”
“Well, yeah. That was the old timeline, about a year from now. The one where I came from,” Ariane explained, as if her words weren’t utter nonsense. “Stopping the war, decommissioning the Program, shutting down the S-23 facility. Those were all the changes I made to this timeline.”
Elster suddenly thought back to her roommate. The Eule had said her ID was 23-12. “The Eule. She was supposed to be on S-23,” the Replika realised.
“Yep,” Ariane nodded. “The correctional mining facility has been operating and expanding for quite some time, so it has developed a sizable Replika workforce there. But since the facility was being decommissioned and handed over to the Empire, AEON had to deal with the Replikas somehow. The Empress and Falke pulled some strings, and with some help from yours truly, we had them transferred with you here to Rotfront before AEON decommissioned them.”
Elster frowned. “But… why?”
“To give them an easier life. A second chance. After everything that happened, I suppose I felt guilty if I just let them die. That particular Eule was not only a Replika from S-23, but also one of the few that were still lucid within the Dream. I wonder if there are other familiar faces you will see around here?”
Ariane looked towards the clock. “It’s getting late, by the way. You should go now if you don’t want to miss your appointment with Falke.”
Elster looked at the time on her heads-up display and saw that Ariane was right. She had lost track of time talking with her.
Or just by herself, really, she thought. There was no one else physically present in her room, after all. Thankfully, the Eule was still in her calibration pod, so she wasn’t there to witness Elster acting crazy. She let out a tired sigh.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Alright, let’s go.”
-
No transport was arranged for her, so Elster had to take a train. That suited her fine, however. The Replika was taking the first scheduled ride of the day, and the sun had not even risen yet. The cabins were dark, quiet, and completely devoid of passengers. The tranquility of being alone was much welcomed, especially after the hectic chaos of yesterday.
Well, not completely alone, she reminded herself.
“Now, isn’t this nostalgic?” Ariane murmured. “I never thought I would be back here, sitting on this train again. When I was still in school, my late-night classes often meant catching the last commute home. Those rides were always peaceful and empty, like right now. Sometimes, I would close my eyes and pretend I was being taken somewhere else, far away from Rotfront.”
The wraith had chosen a seat opposite Elster, rather than sitting beside her. The Replika couldn’t recall when Ariane had boarded the train or sat down. The wraith simply appeared and disappeared on a whim. Even when they were walking to the station, Ariane would seemingly vanish one moment, only to materialise the next somewhere closer to their destination.
But Elster got a feeling that she was never far. That strange lingering sensation from yesterday was always present now, although it no longer bothered Elster as much.
“Could you be any more cryptic?” Elster asked, exasperated.
Also, weren’t you just on the train yesterday? The Replika thought to herself, but chalked up the wraith’s words as just being more enigmatic nonsense.
The wraith grinned impishly. “It just comes naturally to me. I’m not doing this on purpose, I swear.”
“Could have me fooled,” the Replika whispered under her breath. She glanced around once again.
“There’s no one here, El,” Ariane said. “You don’t have to worry about being seen crazy talking to yourself.”
“How reassuring,” she said dryly.
The both of them fell into a comfortable silence. Ariane seemed content to stare out the window, and Elster wasn’t sure if she wanted another conversation, so she remained silent. Stops after stop, the train paused and went, each station as empty as the last. It made Elster wonder why AEON even bothered operating the train at this hour.
It was when they passed by a familiar stop, labelled ‘Mandelbrot Polytechnische Oberschule’, that Ariane spoke up again.
“I hated this place, I think,” the wraith said.
Elster glanced at the station’s name and frowned. “I don’t blame you. I would hate being stuck learning in there too, I think.”
Ariane laughed. “Not the school, silly. I meant Rotfront. Although I hated most of the school as well.”
Elster raised an eyebrow. “Most?”
“It was pretty bad in the beginning,” Ariane admitted, before smiling. “But meeting the twins made things a lot easier. Isolde started protecting me from the worst of the bullying, and Erika was always great to talk to. She and I shared similar interests in books. But everything else…”
Ariane’s smile faded. “Everything else felt wrong. Uncaring. The ash, the cold, the people, the constant oppression lingering everywhere. But some days, it was like everything in the world just felt wrong only to me. Hated me for what I looked like or what I enjoyed.”
Insults. Bullying. Bruises and cuts. Broken paintbrushes and torn notebooks. Mocking laughter as her classmates berate her looks and hobbies. Her teacher assigning her to compulsory military service to ‘correct’ her aberrant behaviour and ‘beat’ out her interest in the arts.
Visions again. But this time, the images lacked clarity, as if they were viewed through someone else’s eyes.
“It made me wonder, you know? Maybe the world is right to hate and reject me. Maybe I was the wrong one. My weak and sickly body. My pale and foreign appearance. My love of ‘frivolous’ things like art and literature. Different from everyone. Useless and strange.”
Elster didn’t know what to say to that. She couldn’t relate to the phantom’s thoughts. To Elster, the world did not care enough to hate her. The Nation was simply cruel to everyone. And as for arts and literature being useless, well… it wasn’t like she completely agreed with that statement, but in a wartime environment, perhaps it made more sense to focus one’s attention towards more practical matters.
Seeing Ariane looking so despondent made it difficult to voice her thoughts. More than that, however–
“They beat you? Just for looking different?”
“It wasn’t just that. There were too many things that separated me from the Nation’s ‘ideal’ citizen. Looking back at it, perhaps I can’t blame them too much. You have to understand. I wasn’t born in Rotfront like them. They were indoctrinated into the Nation’s way of life from the moment they were born, but I grew up in an environment away from the worst of the Nation’s ideology. Except for my mother, I was always alone. Books, arts, drawing. They became the only way I could express myself. To feel like I was still someone. To feel alive. Then I moved to Rotfront, and at first, I was excited. That I would get to see what life was like with other people. How vibrant it could be, away from the loneliness of that radio outpost I grew up in.”
“But it wasn’t what you imagined.”
“No. I quickly learnt how everything was so much more lifeless there. The Nation. It took everything of colour or variety. Stripped it down until all that was left was duty and oath-bound purpose. And I… I couldn’t bring myself to change, to fit in for them. Not for something as ugly as that.”
–Elster couldn’t bring herself to judge. Who was she to know how the world worked? A Replika merely a few months old had no right to comment on such matters.
A Replika who was going mad too. Can’t forget that. “So, what did you do?” Elster asked.
“I tried shutting myself away from it all. Being alone was the only time I could be myself. Even in Rotfront, I could still paint, although the materials were painfully hard to come by. There was a bookstore near where I lived where I could expand my reading material too, even if the Nation kept confiscating everything worth reading. But in the end, I couldn’t even hold on to that much.”
[Workforce Assignment for Yeong, Ariane]
Should you not be accepted into a military service program by the end of the season or find other employment, you will be assigned the following workplace:
S-23 Sierpinski Production and Mining Facility on Leng.
How cruel. Elster hesitated to ask more, before deciding it might be best instead to change the topic. “You said you dreamt of the train taking you away sometimes. Where would you have wanted to go?”
“Hmm. At first, I would pray for it to take me back to my old home, to my mother, my paintings, and my private collection of books. But then, when it became increasingly clear I would be stuck here for the rest of my life, serving the Nation, I started looking for more drastic options instead.”
Ariane raised a dainty finger and pointed to the side. Elster followed her finger and saw a fading poster of the now-decommissioned Penrose Program hanging from the train’s advert wall.
Elster grimaced. “You hated this world so much that you were willing to go on a trip that would have taken you away from all human contact for years on end? You don’t strike me as someone unintelligent, so you must have known how bad an idea that would be.”
“I didn’t leave because I hated the world. Well, okay, maybe a little.” She giggled. “It was mostly because the world that the Nation had made couldn’t stand me. Someone like me had no place in the Revolutionary’s ‘utopia’. I didn’t really consider such an irrevocable escape at first, of course. Despite everything, I still had people who loved me. My mother. Isolde. Erika. But I lost them all eventually, one by one. The Nation and the war took them all. And when no one I love was left… Well, leaving humanity behind didn’t seem so terrible then.”
262144th Cycle
everything hurts, all the time. i can't go on any longer please make it stop
“Except that decision to join the Penrose Program ended up being the worst choice you made,” Elster said, heart clenching. “You were betrayed. The Nation left you to die, drifting in the void of space on a stupid mission that had little to no chance of success. Some part of you must have already suspected that would happen, even before you signed up for it. You gave everything to them, and in exchange, you suffered a fate worse than death. Anything, any life, no matter how miserable, would have been better than that.”
“No.”
No? “No?” Elster said incredulously. “Did you forget the hell you went through? All that suffering, all that pain, for seven hundred years! Any other life, even one in a penal facility, would have been infinitely better than that!”
“No.” Ariane looked at her in the eye, and Elster’s breath hitched. There was not a hint of doubt in those blood-crimson orbs. “Even if I knew everything that would have happened to me, I still would have chosen to take the Penrose Program.”
Ariane smiled. The sight felt painfully gentle. “It’s where I met you, after all. It was probably the first real choice I had taken in my life, the first time I chose a fate that the Nation didn’t choose for me. And it led me to you. It was the only time in my life I made a choice, and it was the best choice I ever could have made.”
It’s like we ran away from the world together.
Before I met Elster, I never believed I would find someone I could fall in love with like that.
Elster stared at her. For a long moment, the Replika wasn’t sure of what she could say in response to such a confession.
Eventually, she just settled for bluntly voicing out her thoughts: “You’re mad.”
Ariane grinned wryly. “Don’t you mean you’re mad? You are the one talking to herself, after all.”
Elster huffed. As she attempted to lean back into her seat, she realised that at some point during the conversation, she had stood up out of agitation.
She looked at the wraith, sitting alone on the bench opposite her.
Isolated. Defective. Abandoned. The Nation had no use for her.
They left her to die in the void.
Elster mouth tightened, before she strode over without thinking and promptly sat down beside her. She looked over at Ariane’s startled face, noting every lovely detail from her sanguine eyes to her snow-white hair. Elster breathed out, and reached a hand out towards her–
–to grasp her neck, to fulfil the Promise she made so long ago-
No, she thought to herself. Not this time.
Elster raised her hand and placed it on Ariane’s. Just like it was before, it was warm. Elster gave it a light squeeze.
“I don’t think I’m good enough company for you to suffer centuries for, but if that’s what you’re mad enough to think, even I’m not cold-hearted enough to ask you to leave.”
Ariane looked more vulnerable than Elster had ever seen here. For a moment, the wraith said nothing, before she simply leaned into Elster’s shoulder. Her body felt warm. “Thanks, El.”
Please, just let me stay by your side a little longer.
They lean against each other for a while. The train would soon reach its destination. Elster didn’t know what to think about all that had happened within the last twenty-four hours. Her life, short as it had been thus far, had been completely flipped upside down. All that she was could come tumbling down the moment she slipped up and let AEON realise that she was a Replika with a defective mind.
But at that moment, sitting beside Ariane with her head leaning against her shoulder, their hands clasped over each other, everything felt okay.
-
Everything felt terrible.
The Replika winced and rubbed her shoulders as she stepped off the train, her muscles aching and sore.
“Sorry about that,” Ariane said apologetically. Despite the station’s loud intercom announcing their location and time, Elster felt like she could still hear the wraith’s voice perfectly. “No matter how real it felt, my body wasn’t actually physically there on that train. Your mind was just tricked into thinking there was something for you to lean against.”
So her body had essentially been holding an awkward pose, half-leaning against empty space, for the entire ride on that train. Little wonder her shoulders were killing her, then. Talking and touching Ariane felt surreal. Even though rationally she knew the conversation was schizophrenic in nature, she still always forgot. Ariane talked, felt, and behaved like a real person, despite being an imaginary figment of her broken mind.
Or possibly a figment of her broken mind. But the alternative seemed so far-fetched that it bordered on utter nonsense. Stopping the war? Dismantling the Penrose Program? An alternate timeline? Honestly, it was too much.
“But you felt so real, though. I even felt your warmth,” Elster replied, rubbing her arms as she walked towards the station exit. “Is this what schizophrenia is like for Gestalt? It is uncanny how life-like you are.”
“Yeah, I don’t understand it either,” Ariane admitted. “The Empress was waxing on about how Bioresonance particles could still vibrate and imitate heat over dimensions, but not replicate a physical body, or something like that. I have to admit most of it went over my head.”
Elster snorted. “Somehow, you meeting the Empress sounds more unbelievable than you being from an alternate universe.”
“Well, how else was I supposed to stop the war? It wasn’t like I could just snap my fingers and stop everyone from fighting.” Ariane grimaced. “At least, not in the way I wanted.”
Fine, she will play along. If nothing else, her companion was making her curious. “So how was she like? The Empress, I mean.”
The wraith pondered a little, somehow easily keeping stride with Elster despite the Replika’s longer legs. “Lonely, I suppose. You would think the most important person in the Empire would be surrounded by people or servants at all times, but when I found her, she was all by herself in a massive chamber, surrounded by incense and giant statues. She was really surprised to see me, too. Said no one should have been able to sneak up on her at all.” Ariane smiled at the memory.
Elster hummed. The Empress. The most powerful woman in the Empire, and arguably in the entire solar system as well. Power not just by sheer political weight and importance, but by her unmatched Bioresonance capabilities as well. Even the FKLRs, no matter how powerful the Nation praises them to be, were not the Grand Empress’s equal. “She keeps the giant capital in Buyan afloat, right? I imagine a feat like that would require constant mediation.”
“The Imperial Palace? Yeah, she keeps it above the poisonous clouds all by herself. It doesn’t tax her as much as you would think, however.”
To be able to keep billions of tons of matter floating above the clouds with merely a portion of her power. Just calculating the sheer amount of raw energy needed to achieve that was insane. Elster had seen accounts before of how the Nation’s FKLRs, the proclaimed righteous Superweapons of the Great Revoluntionary, could shoot down entire imperial vessels in orbit with their golden lances from the ground, but the Grand Empress’s accomplishment was far more ludicrous in scale.
“Interesting as this is,” Elster whispered as her feet came to a stop. “They will have to wait till later. We have arrived.”
The pair just reached the station’s exit. A few hundred metres away from them stood the first of many checkpoints leading to Rotfront’s main military complex. The place was massive, serving as both the headquarters for the Replika forces on the moon and a bastion symbolizing AEON’s authoritarian rule over the colony.
The checkpoints’ massive steel gates were guarded by sentries of patrolling STAR Replikas. Perimeter fences topped with barbed wire lined the outer compound for kilometres, while the numerous guard towers positioned alongside them swept their blazing spotlight methodically across the border of the facility. Set against the background of a rising dawn and skies laden with ash clouds, the place looked positively nightmarish.
“Rotfront’s AEON military complex,” Ariane said appreciatively. “Now, this is a place I never had a chance to visit. I wonder what it looks like inside?”
“You have already been to the heart of the Imperial Palace. I doubt there’s anything within that will impress you.”
“I know there’s at least one person in there I would like to see again, even if I shouldn’t,” Ariane murmured affectionately. Elster didn’t like the way she said that, but Ariane continued before she could comment on it. “I will linger around, but don’t worry. I’ll keep my distractions to a minimum. Good luck.”
Elster blinked, and Ariane disappeared. She could still sense her strange presence lurking, however, meaning the wraith was not far. The Replika let a breath and took one more look at the foreboding visage of the looming military complex, before striding forward towards the gates.