Embarkment 2577 (3 page)

“Don’t worry, Alex. If there’s anyone
you’re safe with, it’s Adam. He has been taking care of you all this time, and
he’ll take care of you in the future. I’ll check in on you later tonight to see
how you’re doing.”

Her words reassured me, but I still
didn’t want to go. She bent forward to glance into my eyes. “He’s right.
Anything can happen here at any moment, and I think you’ve gotten enough things
to assimilate for one day.”

I didn’t get a chance to answer; Adam
swept me up in his arms and carried me off as if I weighed no more than a
feather. Anya called out behind me. “I’ll see you later, Alex.”

I peeked over his shoulder and kept my
eyes fixed on the little group by the bed. Then, the door shut behind us,
cutting me off from everything I knew.

We were in a long corridor with pale
walls. Adam turned left and walked in silence. Should I say something? I wanted
to complain about being carried. It was humiliating, and I was much too old and
heavy to be toted around like a little girl.

Just as I gathered courage to open my
mouth, I saw something from a nightmare over his shoulder. All thoughts of
complaining were gone. I clung to him and stared, suddenly not at all worried
about my cheek pressing against his. If he’d been human my grip would probably
have choked him. I couldn’t help myself; I was too weak to run on my own, and
he was my only hope.

The creature approaching the door we
just left was about seven feet tall. Its skin was a dark tan hide, looking
almost as thick as an insect’s shell. It walked on spindly legs and had four
multi-jointed limbs as arms.

I could deal with its body, but not with
its head. Multi-faceted eyes perched on long antennae, and I could see my
reflection in them, hundreds of tiny me looking back. A long snout dripped ooze
over constantly moving mandibles. It was easy to imagine it chomping down on a
defenceless woman.

I expected it to open up its back and
show off wings, to take flight and attack us, but it didn’t.

Adam took a few more steps to get us
around a corner, out of sight, and stopped. I wanted to urge him on; we needed
to hurry away from the monster. Another part of me wanted to ask if my new
friends would be alright.

He turned his head to look at me, and
his nose almost touched mine. I forced myself to relax enough to get out of
kissing distance.

“Don’t worry, Alex. That’s just Lupe,
one of our security officers. I saw he’s due for his monthly check-up and hoped
I would get you out of there before he arrived. You’re not used to aliens. I
miscalculated. I apologize.”

My voice sounded a little faint when I
mumbled, “Security, huh?”

It was probably efficient. No one would
ever want to do anything bad with the threat of someone like
that
coming
for them.

I wanted to ask if this Lupe was
friendly, but with a species as alien as this, human concepts might not apply.

Adam started walking again, and I tried
to persuade my arms to loosen their hold on him. They did not obey. Was seeking
shelter with him just instinct? A trace of a hidden memory? After leaving the
unlikely girls in sickbay, he was the only thing I’d known for more than five
minutes. “I can walk, you know. I’m too heavy to be carried.”

“I’m an android, and compared to my
lifting capability, you weigh a near equivalent to nothing.”

There wasn’t much for me to say. He
wouldn’t let me down, and in spite of trying to sound cocky, my legs would
probably fold under me.

We met a few people. They all looked
normal, greeted him with, “Commander Adam,” and paid no attention whatsoever to
me. I was clearly none of their business.

Adam stopped in front of an unmarked
door that turned out to be a talking elevator. The urge to rest my head against
his shoulder was almost impossible to resist, but I forced myself to keep it
upright. “Are you sure I’m not heavy?”

A shadow of a smile flew over his face.
“Yes.”

For a few long seconds, he didn’t say
anything more, but then he elaborated, “You are as heavy to me as a pen would
be to you.”

It was a strange likeness, but it made
me smile, and I suspected he did it on purpose. He winked at me, and by the
time we reached deck five with my new room I couldn’t remember why I’d been so
worried to be alone with him.

The door to my new home slid open, and
Adam said, “It’s not perfect, but it will have to do for now.”

He put me down on a couch in the middle
of the room, and I experienced a brief but intense feeling of loss when he no
longer held me. Odd. There might be a perfectly reasonable psychological
explanation to it, but still… Odd.

I glanced around to distract myself. The
room was nice, but impersonal. It reminded me of a hotel in the upper price
range.

My new friend took a seat next to me, a
little awkwardly as if it was difficult to find a comfortable position. “Are
you hungry?”

I probably should be, but eating was the
last thing on my mind. I shook my head and fingered the sofa. The fabric under
my fingers was almost familiar, but not quite. Everything was like that; just a
little off, enough to be disturbing. Just like him.

Adam looked human and felt human to
touch. He was solid and warm, but didn’t really have a smell. Not until now did
I realize everyone I ever knew except for him had an elusive feeling of
humanity around them. Maybe it was the lack of endorphins and other things a
living body would produce. Maybe all of us pick those things up all the time,
without even knowing. “Are you really an android?”

“You’ve asked me that before. Yes, I am
an artificial life form. Look here.” He rolled his sleeve up, showing a perfect
arm. It was slightly tanned, muscular, and covered with fine hairs, just like a
human’s would be. He ran his fingers over the skin and I gaped as a hatch
opened. A moment earlier, it was seamlessly attached, and now a portion of his
skin and underlying whatever it might be slid to the side, revealing metal and
circuits. “Wow!”

He grinned. It was the first real smile
I saw on his face, and it looked perfectly human. “That’s exactly what you said
the first time I showed you.”

How could I not remember a marvel like
this? “Close it.”

He did, and I ran my fingers over his
arm, unable to see or feel the hatch. The skin under my fingers felt perfectly
human. I should probably remove my hand. He didn’t seem to mind it resting on
his arm, but it couldn’t stay there. I felt his eyes on me and withdrew it
slowly, forcing it to lie on my lap instead. “I can’t believe I would forget
someone like you.”

“Maybe you didn’t. Maybe it will all
come back. Until it does, I remember you.” He sounded a little sad. Was that
even possible for an android?

Everyone assumed he’d take care of me.
Why? His spending time with me and being so interested in me didn’t make sense.
“Did you really read to me?”

“Yes. I hoped it would have a positive
impact on your condition.”

I wanted to ask why he cared, but it
seemed a bit too blunt. “What, eh… What are we to each other, exactly?”

Adam leaned back in the sofa and sighed.
Was it a part of his programming, a conscious imitation of humans, or something
he just did? I really needed to stop thinking so much.

“I was away from this ship in a
shuttlecraft, investigating a space anomaly. It sucked me in. There’s a 0.03
percent chance I miscalculated my distance, but I don’t think that’s what
happened.”

My imagination claimed it was nowhere
near as mundane as he made it sound.

“I was stuck in a whirlwind. The shuttle
wasn’t built to take that much stress, and I crashed through the atmosphere of
a planet that looked just like Earth. Only, I started out on the other side of
the galaxy, and as it turned out, in another century.”

He glanced over towards me and lifted an
eyebrow. “Luckily, I crashed on the sand a hundred yards from you.”

Had I been walking on the beach that
day? I could almost feel hot shells and sand under my feet, and the smell of
the ocean. It seemed very long ago, in another lifetime. “I heard you. I
thought a plane was crashing, and then there was this… box standing on the
sand. Black smoke. I remember black smoke.”

Adam nodded. “I got out of the shuttle
and saw you approach, and I told you to run before the antimatter pod
exploded.”

I couldn’t remember this; the flash of light
in my memory’s dusty archives was gone. “Antimatter.”

The word popped out of my mouth in a
reverent tone of voice, as if he’d said something of great religious impact. He
flashed a smile. “That’s just what you said last time. Anyway, by the time the
shuttle exploded we were already in your car. You took me home and hid me. It
was a very brave thing to do.”

All this should be easy to remember. I
tried to imagine him in my house, or in a grocery store, but my mind was blank.
It did give me a mental image of him looking at things in my home with a mix of
surprise and amusement, turning them over to examine the other side, but it was
a figment of my imagination and not an actual memory.

Those warm brown eyes were still fixed
on me, and his gaze made me want to blush. “You bought me clothes and taught me
to fit in. Without you I’d be disassembled for study right now.”

“And…?”

He gave a slight shrug. “Later on, you
helped me break into a… secure facility… to retrieve a sonic transmitter, and
we built sort of a radio with that and your laptops. Thanks to you, I could
send information back through the anomaly, and instructions on how to reinforce
a shuttle to handle the journey.”

It wasn’t what I wanted to know, but
clearly all I’d get out of him. As unbelievable as the story was, it did sound
like things I’d get myself into given half a chance.

“So… Can’t you take me back home?” I
feared his answer, and telling myself it shouldn’t matter since I imagined
everything anyway didn’t help.

“It’s not there anymore. I’m sorry.”

Tears welled up in my eyes and I blinked
them away. I’d have plenty of time to bawl later. Adam made an apologetic
gesture, “I would if I could. I’ve spent weeks trying to figure out a way, but
I can’t.”

I surprised myself with reaching out for
his hand, and he gave my fingers a little squeeze. For a moment, I wasn’t sure
who comforted who.

“Did you like my time?” Christ, now I
was saying ‘my time’ too.

He cupped his hands around mine. “I
loved it.”

“How…” My mind was bursting with
questions, but Adam got to his feet.

“Come on, I’ll show you how everything
around here works.”

Standing up scared me; I didn’t trust my
legs. Still, I would have to try sooner or later, and it might be smart to do
it while someone was there to support me if I fell.

In spite of everything, Adam made me
giggle. He’d stand leaning against the wall next to some console or other,
looking perfectly unemotional with his arms crossed over his chest, saying
something he seemed to know would crack me up.

Eventually, my new best friend glanced
into my eyes and said, “I have to go. I have some things to tend to in
engineering before my bridge duty starts.”

What? He was leaving me alone? The rooms
weren’t bad with company, but on my own they would be intimidating, big, and cold.
“Please don’t go.”

Oh, was I a needy loser! Why would I say
a thing like that? Adam smirked. “I know you don’t like to be alone. Here, take
this.”

He pressed a small badge in my hand, and
sounded like he was clarifying a tactical plan to an ensign. “I’ve reprogrammed
this so you don’t have to know a thing about the ship’s systems to use it.
Pretend it’s a phone. If you want to talk to me, press it and I’ll hear you,
and press it again to hang up.”

I nodded, afraid to open my mouth in
case more dumb things would jump out.

“I’m sure Anya will be here to check on
you later tonight. I’ll be back in the morning when I get off duty. Stay here,
get some rest, and call me if you need me.”

He looked at me a moment longer with a
thoughtful expression on his face, nodded, and left.

As soon as the door closed behind him,
the room seemed extremely big and lonely, and I crept up in the sofa, finding
comfort in making myself smaller. I should have asked if this century had TV,
or a computer game. There was a computer on the ship, surely it would at least
have solitaire?

“Alex, you’re silly.” Talking to myself
shook some of the mood away. It might be okay to be a needy wimp after dying
and being brought to the future, alternately after making up a fantastic
universe in one’s own brain, but I couldn’t afford to wallow in self-pity and
fear.

I got up and walked around the room. My
legs still worked fine. I wouldn’t be jumping or running any time soon, but I
could move around.

The bedroom was moderately interesting;
big and impersonal. The bathroom offered more entertainment, and I spent some
time playing with the console for the sonic shower. Good thing Adam took the
time to teach me how everything worked, or I might have sprayed blue goo over
the floor…