Chapter 14: BONUS-ISH CHAPTER! A Brief Interlude (Alice)

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Dull work dragged on into the infinite. Sitting at my chair, tailoring. Berry hadn't realized it yet, but we'd ran low on our generator fuels: petrol, hydrocarbons, biomass, and the tiny amount of nuclear materials I'd been able to glean from what we stole. A lot of our power was in our minds — the things we knew alone could take down several companies, and maybe even a megacorporation if we were lucky — but trying to put a gigacorporation of even the smallest size into our Nantucket sleighride would inevitably result in our doom. They were leagues above. And we'd been barely trundling along with our minimal supplies for around three weeks now. Food wasn't an issue. Water wasn't. Energy was.

See, the power grid had been stepped up millions since the Age of Reckoning, where humanity fought its last war against climate change and failed to save the planet. It was necessary: we'd colonized every last bit of the Earth, scrubbed it of its culture and nature, then systematically eradicated a great deal of diversity even within our own groups. Hatred festered. I was living proof of that — admittedly it was minor, but I still got a deal of harassment when around anyone not struggling to survive or at the highest echelon. And that hatred meant living in an endless suburban landscape for most who couldn't afford to start outwardly hating others. For those who could... well, that was what the Towers were for.

As our cities expanded in inefficient, unwalkable space, the electricity needs had stepped up to match. And since science had exploded into popularity with the rich at the time, we'd fared just well enough. More efficient fission reactors to power the Towers were slowly disseminated among the lower classes by people working behind the scenes. When fusion came, that too was spread out. Most of the planet ran on deuterium reactors right now, but the naturally-flourishing areas around the Towers were just beginning to reap the rewards of whatever the fuck had been cooking up in the Blanket for the past few years.

I sighed. And none of that power was being spread to us, because I'd been fucking exiled to live in the goddamn woods. I'd known primitive engineering tactics, and had a basic amount of information-age technology (a datapad, some solar panels, and a few rechargable batteries), but everything else had to be made on my own. Foraged, since I had no fucking money, and food stamps were few and far between. To be entirely fair, today was like a dream come true. Finally, a glimmer of hope had arrived. Taking the form of a possibly-attractive gender-confused robot, no less. With top-of-the-line combat equipment that'd saved me twice by now.

But still, the weight of our situation hung heavy on my shoulders. Things were better, so much better. And they were also by no means good. Berry had talked of a utopian world, Dyson swarms and VR games without the fear of constant starvation, folded spaces and nanoportals allowing for practically-infinite energy. We didn't have the ability to build any of that here, and it spoke to the technological progress that could be attained by simply not trying to focus entirely on goddamn money for once. Even if we, specifically, had the ability to, both of us agreed that introducing those into the world would cause mass panic and likely result in an even more strife-filled future.

It was fucking tantalizing. The idea of a better world. A few years ago I might have been starry-eyed listening to Berry talk, but it filled me with a decent amount of some odd feeling as I was today. Dread? Anxiety? Longing? Exhaustion? An unerring treacle binding my movements?

I didn't know.

But it felt like that future was just out of reach, always. That no matter how hard I tried, I'd never get to that day when I could mourn the friendships I'd lost without worrying about money. I wanted to sit under the stars again, but on the ground this time. Without glass standing between me and the stratosphere. Maybe it'd be nice to make headstones or markers for the people I've lost — even if only metaphorical, it... would just feel right. I'd like to visit them and cry someday. Or scream. Whichever felt right. I wasn't doing all this because it was hard, or because it was right. It was selfishness. Pure selfishness thrown through jade filters and a sickly yellow lining.

It made being around Berry all the harder. I'd been avoiding her the past few days, physically at least. It'd been a little bit more real for me the past few days I guess. But she always seemed so bright. Even when it was stupid, she walked right up to the stupidity and told it off, then got punched in the face for her troubles. And then she'd just get back up. She told me herself that she was doing this purely because she wanted to; she was doing it because she'd chosen to work towards a better world, not because she wanted a quiet life to herself. She wasn't tired of anything.

And of course, this sickened me. Not because it was sweet. It was candy-cane sweet, of course, but I couldn't bear to be around someone so much more unequivocally good than me. Every so often, she'd go off on a tangent about how beautiful some random aspect of life was — here, or back where she came from — or she'd blink a few times and then laugh at a joke only she knew, or she'd start humming an Information Age tune to herself without realizing it. There was real joy in her eyes, a childlike wonder that'd seemed to be omnipresent the past few days. That is what she was fighting for. What hope could a lighter hold against the might of a star?

I never had a chance.

But in for a penny I'd gone, so in for a pound I'd go. I was tired. So tired. But I'd keep going on, nonetheless, because I couldn't bear to see Berry's face if I gave in because of her being a good person.

Anyways. I was saving on electricity by utilizing hand-sewing and crafting for at least a bit of my clothing and costuming. Berry was blissfully unaware that I'd been living in the same two barely-washed outfits for well over a few years by now, and I'm honestly really glad that I'd apparently smelled okay when she first saw me. That, or she's explicitly good at seeing the good in the world. In any case I was very glad to get the opportunity to gain more real clothes.

What she'd given me was totally fine, in my opinion. I'd fabricated it already. The nanomaterials which needed seeding were machine-made, and needed to be machine-crafted, so there was no energy saving I could do there. As for my other clothes, everything was up to me beyond needing to print materials or somehow get them without much suspicion. I'd learned from Berry's seemingly-neverending database of DIY education videos and documents how to sew and tailor to an okay extent, and quickly begun work on several cozy hoodies and sweatpants. While it would be easy to tailor out holes for my tail, I figured that simply wearing loose clothing would likely be more efficient on the limited biocloth reserves we had while also being easier to make.

And that's what led me to today's soul-crushing exercise in stitching. I really didn't get any pleasure from this, and I couldn't imagine others liking it. Working by dim lamplight in a just-too-cold-to-be-comfortable workshop, with stiff fingers and frequent accidental self-stabs? While alone? At fucking midnight? How the mighty have fallen. You start questioning your goddamn capitalist family once and this happens. Stupidest... ugh.

The anger in me fizzled just like it'd been doing on and off for the past few days, weeks. Years, maybe. There was nothing I could do about it. My few moments of reprieve had previously been with schaudenfreude at the stock prices of Keizen fluctuating, and more recently with Berry's conversation, but I didn't want to look at Keizen shit anymore and Berry hurt to be around. Fuck me, I guess it was just work and work and work until I died of it.

I mentally slapped myself back to cognition. Couldn't get too down now. There was time to do frivolous things like cut and sew myself clothing right now, and there wouldn't be a lot of it later. I had to get it done ASAP.

Argh, but I just couldn't focus! I accidentally stabbed my finger again, the room appearing a bit bleary as I cursed and applied a tiny bandage for the third time today. Maybe a break would be good.

Work-in-progress sweatpants lain on the table, I started off to try and find something to occupy myself with for 30 minutes or so. Some quick tuning on the hovercycle seemed a bit warranted, given how we'd been using it fairly frequently. I lugged a toolbox out into the drizzling night, lit by the blue light of the moon, and got to work.

The work with my hands calmed me a little, as did the rain. I'd lived here for three years, and I'd always slept better when it was raining here — even compared to the luxurious room back at the Keizen Tower I had. Something about the constant noise, maybe. For her part, Berry seemed to be the same. She'd installed a small circular window at the attic of our base and holed up in there recently. I'd caught glimpses of her looking up and out at the sky.

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Most of the time, the sky was covered by the Blanket. Endless modular structures somewhere in the middle stratosphere — even when I'd been in the echelons of society, nobody had told me what was inside. Though I guess I was a child at the time. Three years of experience living under the Blanket had given me some ideas as to what they did, however. They probably caused a constant rain, and they probably filtered the air.

The rain was obvious. Where else would the cloud-seeding be but up in the air? There were no airplanes that could send the entire planet into an endless showering state. No company would see that as cost-effective. And filtering was obvious too: what better platform than an aerial, worldwide one?

But there were a few holes in the Blanket, I knew. Not many. Only one existed, to my knowledge — there were probably others, though. And it was the moon's shy peek from its place behind the Blanket which drew my wandering eyes on this night. Probably which drew Berry's eyes as well. There was never a day which went by when I wasn't surprised by how beautiful it could look — probably because it only really appeared for a couple days before the damn thing poked back out of view from our little hole through the Blanket. Maybe a few degrees of sky were afforded to us. It still let the moon through, though.

A beautiful blue moon shone down on my work. It wasn't too hard. Just some tune-up using oil, wrenches, and a bit of elbow grease. I'd always liked this a lot more than the sit-down-and-poke-yourself jobs, though my family had frowned upon me doing mechanical work. Something about it being "beneath me". Classism at its fucking finest.

I grimaced. That anger had come back again, simmering like a hot stove under a pot of boiling water. I knew that someday I'd pull off the gas a little too late and blow up, somewhere deep inside me. It was a feeling I couldn't ever shake — at least when I was alone and hopeless there was no chance of my breaking point hurting anyone. Now there was pressure to be good. (And there went the anger, replaced with budding sadness. I kept tinkering with the hovercycle, trying to figure out just a little more to optimize.)

The squeaking of a loose and non-oiled nut caught my attention, and my feelings quickly washed back into gray-blue. I'd never seen the endless expanse of stars and nebulae and planets that Berry talked about. Not in person — there were illustrations, diagrams, and pictures, but no place like that existed anymore on Earth. First light pollution, then air pollution, then the Blanket. A haze surrounded us, making it difficult to see what was outside. Necessarily, the Towers had no real windows at high altitudes due to radiation, so I'd honestly rarely seen the sky anyways.

But I knew the moon, bright and clear and pure. Hell, I hoped I'd always know her. Until the day I died, I thought, as the light reflected silver off the hovercycle's metal components. Silver and pink and a little gold.

Berry had walked out of the house and begun leaning on the wall when I wasn't looking. Her stupid fucking sailor's outfit complimented the nighttime ambience well, with mist in the air setting a somewhat mournful haze over her usually-radiant features. She gave me a quick grin, but didn't initiate a conversation (at least, not yet). She seemed deep in thought. I supposed that I was much the same.

The clanking of my tools started back up, filling the silence just a bit. It wasn't much time before I noticed a veritable shower of color and light coming from around me, reflected off of the hovercycle's plastic and metal — anything even remotely smooth now registered a dim, but marked light from all angles. I looked up, and a gasp was wrenched from my lungs.

Berry's eyes were aglow with golden color, HUD circles hovering but centimeters from her irises. But it was quickly obvious to me that her illusions were the real show here: a nebula — the Milky Way, I think — simultaneously encompassed me and felt infinitely far away, a dazzling display of purples and blues and reds and whites and greens: all set against a sky washed with a true, real, midnight blue. I could make out Jupiter, a few blobs that I'd learned long ago were galaxies, and the moon right alongside — a bright, clear gray like I'd never seen in my life, set as a smoldering crescent blackened against the night sky.

My surroundings were suddenly different, too. Beyond the sky, I mean. There was a field of grass and possibly wheat where the forest once stood, though our base remained where it was — and so did my tools and hovercycle, of course. A few trails led over the horizon, and we were bordered far off by trees still, yet the oppressive atmosphere of the woods had been replaced by a quiet and calm one. Rustling of wind, an incessant chirping from what I assumed to be crickets. I could, and did choke on the sheer sincerity of it all.

"Is—Is this real?" I ask, after several flabbergasted moments.

Berry shrugs, a neutral look on her face. "Well, for my Earth it is. Was. We're witnessing the death of several million stars right now, I think. Not the visible ones, but the ones that you can't see without like, orbital telescopes or something. Literal, unironic gigaparsecs lie between us and the furthest things we've confirmed to exist. And we still have so many things in the night sky anyways, those millions of stars dying out don't make an impact because they're so far away and there's so much. I dunno if this is accurate for your Earth, but it's as good a simulation as I can run without cutting into my processing time."

I filed away the question of how she'd calculated all this for later almost on instinct. "It's too much. Doesn't it make you feel like nothing matters? Millions of stars die each day, statistically. In a few billion years our sun will too. And for me and you, it's more like a hundred or two at best, with premium medical technology. If we don't die in the next two months. It... why show me this?"

"Because it's beautiful. Millions of stars die, yes, but millions are also born. What a wonderful privilege, y'know? I like to think that somewhere out there is another species thinking the same thing. Even if it's dumb. Even if we're the only people in a sea of primordial ooze." She stops herself. "I'm rambling, um. Sorry. But, this is what I'm fighting for. You saw the sky, right? It's just clouds. Like, just clouds. And the moon feels way more blue than on earth, but I can't even see the North Star. I don't think most people here actually know what the sky looks like. What it really looks like, y'know? And... fuck, I dunno. I like looking at the funny lights, I was hoping you'd like them too. I'm... pretty sure you've been exhausted or something recently. Not the best at figuring people out though. So. Grain of salt. Maybe a truckload."

I force my eyes back to their work, and Berry sighs. "...and, I don't want you to feel bad. Um... tactically speaking it'd be not great for effectiveness. And, also, you are a good person. And I am glad to be your friend but this also makes me not want you to be sad. I think. Er, I'm genuinely sorry. Is that a good reason? I can stop if you want."

Her words seem passive-aggressive, but her tone is just as genuine and honest as the rest of her illusions feel right now (as honest as a brick to the face, that is. After being told you were going to have a brick thrown at your face. So pretty honest.) It's a little hard for me to get any words out, but I can't just kneel here and say nothing. Spending a moment to scrunch up my nose and sniff, as well as steady my voice — why did it feel like the world was crashing down around me, all the time? — I muttered out a quick "It's fine, thanks," before holding an arm to my eyes and blindly heading inside.

On second thought, fuck this. If I was going to fucking cry because of her, she'd be taking the fallout. I used my feline-enhanced hearing to sound out vaguely where Berry probably was — it was easy, she had fucking fans inside of her — and started dragging her to sleep with me (in a friendly manner). After a bit of confusion, she seemed to pick up on the implication and quickly hurried along to our sleeping quarters. The damn nerd only had a singular inch of height on me, but a confirmed assent later had me in warm and cozy arms, under the covers of a non-threadbare and generally midline bed. Heaven.

For a robot, Berry was cuddly and soft as shit. Hardlight emitters were crazy, I thought, yawning. I'd need to do some more investigation and sewing in the morning... but a cozy and lethargic sleep swept over me before long.