Chapter 6

IT ISN’T AWARE OF ITS SURROUNDINGS, IT CAN’T FEEL PAIN, IT CAN’T PROCESS ANY SENSORY INFORMATION. IT’S ASLEEP, AND WE HAVE ALL THE TIME WE NEED. SAVE YOUR SYMPATHY FOR THE LIVING, THERE’S SO FEW OF US LEFT AND WE COULD USE A LITTLE THOUGHT.

-DR. CARMINE CASSIDY [SOURCE REDACTED]

.•° ✿ °•.

There was something I didn’t understand about Lilt Jackson. There was a lot I didn’t understand about her, really, but the foremost thing I was having trouble wrapping my head around was... how had she become so beautiful? We used coolant tanks for recreation, our food during the years predating the successful solar farming of hydroponics had been a protein grown and fed on discarded human skin cells, and an infected wound back then so often meant a death sentence.

We didn’t live in those early days, we survived, and we weren’t even very good at that.

If I was being honest, things weren’t that much better now.

I was well educated. I wasn’t stupid, and even though my social skills were a little on the lacking side, I understood the concept of gender identity, the importance of defying the crippling results of bodily dysphoria; the misalignment of body and mind was something Skippers were well acquainted with in our own crippling way.

None of that helped me to understand the very core question here, though: a medical process like that was something that required approval well above Lilt’s station in life. It was medicine as an art, and not as a science; so, who approved it, and why was Lilt important enough?

I was feeling overwhelmed by thought and the space between my eyes and my ears ached.

Thinking is an obstacle to feeling.

There was too much focus on thinking, and I should have been feeling - that was Skipper Creed. I indulged the sensation of the bed beneath my thighs, felt every thread in the weave of the sheets and traced the interactions of the fibers as they pulled and tensed on one another at a scale too small to see. I didn’t need to see when I could feel. My fingertips pulled over my sheets and up the edges of my legs, soft pliable skin that prickled and sensed the flow of the ventilation system, pores that opened and closed the way crushed velvet changed color at the touch. Sensation was so important. Feel was everything.

I pulled on the snaps of my uniform between my legs and let my thoughts pull away from me the same way the fabric did.

There was a lot to do today, and Laurent wasn’t answering the comm.

.•° ✿ °•.
“Do you remember eating meat?” Lilt conducted her words as though her fork was a baton and her syllables made up a symphony.

“I never did, actually,” which seemed foolish now in retrospect, “I was an idealistic kid, Lilt. We grew blackcurrants and I remember thinking about how selfish it would have to be to take another animal's life when I could eat berries from the moment I woke up until the moment I went to sleep, every day from the moment I was born until the day I died, and we’d still have enough to spare.”

“Child Cadence didn’t really understand economics, huh?” Lilt wore eyeliner that softened the crinkling in the edges of her eyes when she smiled, and her lids were colored in blended blues and silvers that could have made the sky look artificial by comparison.

Back before the sky was fire, that was. I missed that sky, and Lilt’s eyes were not a bad alternative to get lost in.

“Do you?” I could feel the way she looked at me as obviously and as clearly as I could feel when the station moved, or when my Faering was targeted. That’s how I felt when she looked at me: like she’d gotten a lock on me.

It was an unusual sensation to have outside of a Faering.

“Remember eating meat, I mean.” I mumbled to myself, wondering what the civilian version of an evasive tuck and roll could have been.

Lilt pondered the question over a mouthful of greens and tomatoes, then pointedly waved her fork.

“I do remember it, but I remember it the way you remember reading a book, not the way you remember your first kiss.” First kiss? Well, that wasn’t a point of comparison I had to make, “I remember it, but I don’t remember feeling it. Knowledge, not experience. Thought, not feeling.”

“The Skippers Creed, huh? You sure do know a bunch about us, Lilt. And isn’t that what we’re here to talk about?” I didn’t mean to be pointed, but her mystery was growing into a negative feeling for me. Luckily, conversations could be piloted, too, not just conducted. “Who do you work for, Lilt Jackson?” I sipped my drink and peered at her over the rim of the little teacup.

“Well,” she set her fork down, “you can think of me as a... recruiter, I suppose. A talent scout.”

“Then you’re wasting your time, because I’m already a Skipper and it’s kind of a possessive club to be a part of.” I nodded to the ball joint in my elbow, raising an eyebrow. She had to know that, though, which meant... “Unless you’re looking for a Skipper.”

“Unless I’m looking for a Skipper,” she echoed, her lips speckled with a little bit of dressing from her meal, things I couldn’t help but notice, “if I were looking for a Skipper, why would I be asking for you by name, I wonder?”

“Because you knew me as a kid?” I tilted my head, curiously watching her expression as she broke out in a laugh, bright and crisp like her meal.

“That’s not a bad guess, Cadence, and I can’t deny that it’s a perk to your recruitment. But if mankind could get by on goodwill and happy happenstance, then our peace accords would have led to our salvation and not our destruction.” Lilt Jackson, how dare you drop such unlicensed poetry. “Try again.” “Because I have the best Run Record on the station, because my Sensation Report is always above- “ Her hand waved and her head shook, and she silenced my guessing.

“Try again.”

“I don’t know.” I huffed a little bit, pouting.

“Maybe I don’t know, either” She pondered, “or maybe someone I work for does and they seem to think that you’re the Skipper we need.”

“So why the charade? Why the lying? The fangirling, the pretense? Laurent knew who you were and- “ “Why do you think that?” She interrupted. I was beginning to dislike when she did that!

“Because he gave me the order to meet with you.”

“Gave?” Curious smile. She could definitely pull off cute much better than most women her age. “Relayed?”

“Relayed.”

“Okay, relayed. So?” So... “So, he thought you were actually looking to be a Skipper? Because...” I worked through it in my head. “Because he only knew what Skipper Command was telling him.”

“And Skipper Command only knows what my employers tell them.”

“You’re telling me that your employers,” I made air quotes, “are above the authority of Skipper Command?” She nodded. “And you expect me to believe that?” Another nod. “Without any proof at all?” A third nod rounded out the Trilogy of Lilt.

Somehow, at the end of all of that, she’d managed to avoid answering my question, too - why the theatrics? Well, she wasn’t getting off that easily.

“You didn’t answer my question. Why the games, Lilt?” I wasn’t letting go of this one.

“I needed to make sure you responded within parameters.” She explained, like that was the simplest response in the entire world.

“What’s that even mean?” I was out of tea but had plenty of bitterness left in me to make up for that.

“I’m a relic from your past, and I’m not how you remember me, Cadence. I needed to make sure and measure your responses to that kind of stimuli, if you’re going to be of any use to us at all.”

A game, is that what this was? A test? My life was schedules and logs and testing and routine, paperwork and process and administration. I didn’t need some woman from another station taking over my living complication of an existence and making it even worse.

“I’ll pass. This station needs me, and we haven’t had a new Skipper in three years, so you might want to look elsewhere.” I crossed my arms over my chest, over the neat little yellow sundress I was wearing since I’d gotten changed, and my fingernails traced the paths of my elbow socket. I couldn’t believe I’d tried to impress her. And she didn’t look all that impressed - although my answer didn’t seem to disappoint her, either.

“We’re going after them.”

“What?” I felt sinking in my chest that tugged down on my voice. Not fear, but realization.

“You heard me.” She repeated. And I had heard her, I just didn’t believe in her ability to be so dense about something so simple.

“We’ve attacked them before, Lilt Jackson, it doesn’t work.” I lamented, sadly. I wished that it did, but I’d seen the contrary firsthand. “We can fight them off, protect the stations, that’s what Skippers are for, but even when we tried to drive them out during the Mara Station Occupation, they only even left because it wasn’t a foothold worth holding.”

“We’re testing a new Faering. It doesn’t require Oversight,” she tapped her fingers on the edge of her salad bowl in time with her words, and her voice was hushed lest somebody overhear her - it was the first time I’d heard her be serious about something.

“That’s not possible,” I sighed and pushed back away from the table, a motion I needed to use my hands for, because my legs didn’t reach the ground when I was sitting, “whoever your employer is, tell them it’s a nice idea, but it’s not possible. You should go, Lilt. I’m sorry you got drawn up in this, but it’s just another dumb power play from one station to another, infighting we can’t avoid even when we’re at the brink of death.”

“Cadence,” Hadn’t she heard anything I just said? I was ready to get pouty and huffy when she continued.

“I know you think it’s not possible. Skipper. Faering. Oversight. It’s a three-part system, each part as essential as the other two. And you’ve been a Skipper since the beginning, you were one of the first, so I know you’re going to have trouble accepting something so wildly fanciful.” That was an understatement.

“Lilt...” My tone was soft, because there were feelings I didn’t want to have right now - like the feeling of a promise being broken.

“I know you think I’m just some messenger caught up in this, Cadence.”

“And I’m sorry that you are,” I almost snapped, but caught myself, steading my tone and staying professional as I continued, “it makes me so cross that someone would waste time and resources sending you here with something so obviously untrue.”

“Cadence.” Lilt didn’t raise her voice, but that single word was sharp. She paused, I didn’t know why, for dramatic effect? “I created it. The new Faering.” Her tone hung in the air as though she’d shared something enormous with me. I wasn’t buying it.

“I doubt that very much.” I replied, dryly, disappointment heavy in my tone. It hadn’t been meant offensively, but this woman was a nobody to me, she was just a visitor from another station. She was a kid who knew me when we were younger, a walking example of fiery hotness, yes, but that didn’t make her special.

“I know you can access Centra. And you know my former name. So why don’t you have a poke around in there? I’m not going anywhere.” She challenged me, and I rolled my eyes at her and thanked goodness they were one of the few parts of me that weren’t detachable, because they might just have rolled the heck away otherwise!

But sure, okay, fine. I’d humor her, so what? At least maybe if I did, she’d drop this act. I focused, and I felt, and I connected with the wireless data stream that made up Centra, ones and zeroes pulsed through radio interference, the database of everything representing the one strength we still had as a people in the form of communal knowledge.

Well, when we weren’t hiding things from one another, anyway.

This record wasn’t hidden, though; this was very public. This was academic, this was something we taught our children and something everybody knew. A piece of the Skipper puzzle, a part of how we were still alive. Skippers. Faerings. Oversight. A trinity connected at the most fundamental level, the entire reason we were still alive as a people. Obviously, we knew the history, of course we shared the names, evidently it was something I should have already realized.

My childhood friend wasn’t just a part of the team that worked on the project; Pulse Wesley Jackson created the Faering. Not just this new Faering. But the original, too.

And that meant...

I stood up with enough force to clatter the teacup to the metal floor before my feet even made contact - if we could afford for things to be breakable, I might have cut my little doll-like feet on the detritus, but sometimes poverty had its perks.

“You have to show me!” I took two steps away from the table in my excitement, my voice squeaking tightly in the realization, “Lilt! You have to show me, what are you even waiting for?!”

She looked at me curiously, tilted her head, and smiled when she picked up her fork from the bowl, her tone ever so gently amused the way that a parent might have been when their child first discovered money from the tooth fairy under their pillow.

“Well, I was planning to finish my salad...”