Alice and I stand there gaping.
“Well? Isn’t anyone going to say ‘Hello?’ asks Nan. “Anyway, I’ll get some tea.”
She leaves. Kitty comes in, followed by Lady. Lady’s blue eyes widen. “What is this? Are we too late? Those poor boys… they’re dead!”
“Dead for centuries,” said Alice, glumly.
My mouth feels very dry. “Yes… I think Nan is in denial … or maybe she’s not programmed to deal with the guys passing away.”
“Where’s that cute guy?” grumbles Kitty. “The one with freckles? I wanna kiss 'im and wan' 'im to stroke pretty Kitty. There are only these boring old bones here. Booooring.”
I shush her.
“After all this getting our hopes up… it was only a crazy old android,” says Alice bitterly. “I wouldn’t have bothered if I’d known it was just her here. She let us think human lives were in danger! She should rot here.”
“I honestly think she didn’t know better,” I say. I want to cry. Maybe I should. Alice has seen my cry before and so has Lady. Lady is always really sweet about it. I kneel beside the skeletons and whisper. “Sorry… we were too late. Much too late. Rest in peace.” Lady nuzzles my cheek in a comforting way.
“You’re weird,” says Alice.
“I want fooood,” caterwauls Kitty.
On cue, Nan comes back with a tea tray. “I’ll get you some scones in a jiffy,” she assures Kitty. Then she glances around at the rest of us. She can’t fail to notice how glum we look. “Is anything the matter?”
Alice’s lip curls. “Anything the matter? They’re both dead!”
“Sorry, who are you talking about?” Asks Nan, gazing at Alice with her black eyes as she puts the tea tray on the table.
“Gabriel and Raphael, you dopey machine,” says Alice pointing at the skeletons.
Nan straightens up, her eyes widening. “WHAT?! I was only away for two minutes!”
“They’ve been dead for centuries, just look at them. Nothing but old bones,” snaps Alice.
“We should bury them,” I say, my voice a husky whisper.
“You’re that sure they’re dead?” says Nan, staring at us blankly.
“Oh, there’s a simple test,” says Alice. “Alright guys… hands up who’s alive.”
Nan urges the skeletons to raise their hands, but eventually she has to accept Alice’s test results as definitive.
Lucinda’s Journal Entry 1st November 3118
Great Galaxy, it’s so sad… having to bury those poor boys and conducting their funeral the best I know how, but I know they deserved better. Lady’s sad as well, sniffling and wanting to link arms with me more often. Alice is bearing the disappointment well, although she’s a little more dour than usual. Only Kitty is unaffected. For Nan though, it’s like her whole world ended.
“I – I knew the other crew members had died on impact, but I couldn’t accept my two favourites… my two precious angels leaving me. Raphael so strong, Gabriel so beautiful, and both of them so kind, even to a lowly android like me. I can’t go on. Please, Miss Lucinda, bury me with them.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“No Nan, you’ve got to start a new life,” I say tell her, my voice trembling. She’s gonna make me cry again, I just know it.
We’re carting a lot of the Bolide’s cargo onto the Rosasphere. There’s plenty of space to store it in the ruins of the Southern Hemisphere’s deserted cat city. We did already have enough supplies in the Northern Hemisphere supply cupboards to last me and the two cats for 240 years, but I am having a baby now and I do want to have more kids after that. And maybe someday we might really be able to rescue someone… I’m still really sad that I was too late to rescue those boys. Something like 750 years too late! Punctuality was never my strong point. I could have looked after them if they were injured, I just know it. Yeah, Alice, Kitty and Neb were obviously on the pull, but I want to help people. Like I couldn’t help anyone on Rosasphere, cos I was in stasis...
I take the sperm samples from the Bolide to put into storage too. Gabriel had donated a lot. I suppose cos he was really cute and a lot of women wanted his sperm donations… I may too, someday...
Lucinda’s Journal Entry 2nd November 3118
Back on the Rosasphere again! I’ve stashed the really posh food from the Bolide. The caviar and all that expensive stuff. Poor Nan’s sitting huddled against the table.
I put my arms around her. “Nan… dear… you’ve got to start a new life for yourself now.”
She’s cold and stiff in my arms. Like she’s dead herself. “I can’t go on without my boys.”
I rock her. “You poor thing.”
Alice is in the corner reading a holographic manual on the Bolide IV blueprints. “It’s a machine,” she scoffs, without looking up. “You might as well feel sorry for a tractor.”
“Don’t start, Alice,” I warn her. “Nan has feelings.”
“I did have feelings,” says Nan. “But it’s like my heart was buried with my boys.”
“I have loved and lost,” I tell her. I kiss the top of her shiny green head. "You have done more than that. I know the boys loved you as well, so the fact that you loved two people and they loved you back means you can learn to love again and make it work."
Lucinda’s Journal Entry 3rd November 3118
Alice can still astonish me, even now, and I think I knew her best. She’s found the VP unit on the Bolide and it turns out there was just enough power in it to create one more VP. And she’s created an exact copy of herself from her downloaded personality algorithm on the Rosasphere databank...! Another Alice. Great. Fantastic. OK, words fail me and the mind boggles at this. Wish I had found it first. I could have gotten Baldr back…
Alice announces her plan to move into the Captain’s old quarters with her duplicate.
“So you’re leaving me Alice? Really? And who for, might I ask?” I put my hands on my hips and give her my best sardonic smile.
“Sorry, Luce, but the company is what matters,” says Alice smirking, “I’m moving in with the brightest star in the universe!”
Nan picks up the box of Alice’s personal stuff. “Is this all, Miss Alice?”
“Not quite all. The blu-tac Luce uses for her posters is mine too, but that can wait. Careful with the box, it has an important work of art in it.”
The important work of art is a porcelain sculpture of a huge man thing…
Nan rolls her glassy eyes as she follows Alice with the box.
The Other Alice snaps at Nan when they’re in the Captain’s room. I can hear her. “Careful with the box, it has an important work of art in it…” Wonderful. Alice in stereo.
I’m with Lady in my room now that Alice has … Other Alice… yeah… and Nan wants to be left alone at this time. I will give the poor old thing her space. I reach out and stroke Lady’s head and she purrs. I’m trying to knit bootees for my baby, but I’ve no talent, really. Talent must skip a few generations.
Kitty comes sneaking in glancing furtively around. “I’ve left a surprise for ‘em both in there,” she says, pointing a claw in the direction of Alice’s new room. “They won’ find out ‘til they try on their boots.”
She has feline instincts, clearly, but doesn’t realise the Alices don’t need leather boots anymore.
“Boo.” Neb’s ghostly green face appears on the monitor. “Lucey goosey…” she giggles, her eyes rolling weirdly. Then she glares at me. “Are you disappointed, sweet thing? With those cute guys being dead? I was. Still am.”
“Please… try to be delicate about it if Nan can hear,” I say, putting a finger to my lips.
“I hope you have a little boy,” rambles Neb. “And that he’s gorgeous like Baldr, but has a freckled face, like you. That would be perfection. That would be super-gorgeous. Maybe he’d grow up to be really smart, then settle down and marry me.”
Awww, poor Neb. I know she’s not well, but she must be less with it than I thought, if she thinks she can get married.
Neb glares at the wall that adjoins to the Captain’s quarters – Alice’s room. “And that complete cow is alone with herself. She's made her own bed. Let her lie in it.”
Lady’s keeping me company tonight. She just likes to sit with me, even when I’m concentrating. Nan’s comforting herself by doing the laundry. She says it’s the best way to ‘drown her sorrows,’ and she would rather not be disturbed. I’m still trying to knit some bootees. I know I’ll get it right. They won’t look like woolly bladders this time.
Suddenly I hear shrieking through the wall. It’s Alice, arguing with herself!
This is the really weird exchange they’re having:
ALICE: “I’m not hearing this!”
OTHER ALICE: “No wonder father hated you!”
ALICE: “That’s a lie. Lie, lie, lie lie, lie…“
OTHER ALICE *sneering* : “He didn’t send you to the Academy, but he sent our sisters. No one liked you, not even Mummy…”
ALICE: *sobbing* “That’s it. I hate you, Alice.”
OTHER ALICE: “I hate you too, Alice. I’ve always hated you.”
Well… seriously, what to make of all that…? It’s just disturbing.
Then Alice comes gliding over the threshold, dressed in a white gown. “Ah, Luce. How’s it coming taking the blu-tac?”
“You want the blu-tac right now?”
“No, it can wait ‘til morning. I’ll just wait here ‘til then.”
She sits on the side of the bed and cups her face in her hands, looking really miserable.
“What’s all the yelling for?” asks Lady.
“No point in hiding it. Alice and I… we’ve had a bit of a tiff.”
Other Alice screams through the wall: “Shut up, you dead b****!”
Alice glides into the corridor and screeches at the top of her voice: “You shut up, you foul trollop!”
She glides back again. “There’s no point in denying it. I hate myself.”
“Oh, Alice.” I kiss my hand and touch it to my cheek.
“I always thought you must do,” says Lady, trying to lay a paw on her arm, but her solid paw passes through Alice’s shadowy form.