Embarkment 2577 (4 page)

I wandered over to the mirror, leaned
forward, and took a good look at myself. The eyes staring back at me were mine,
no doubt about it.

Running a hand through my hair, I wished
for a brush. It didn’t look too bad, but… Something was wrong. I leaned
closer towards the mirror, bent my head forward, and tried to examine the top
of my scalp. I had a thick mane of reddish-brown hair, but I got my first grays
when I was young, in my early 20s even, and now they weren’t there anymore. Not
a silvery streak in sight. I had never coloured it. There were gaps in my
memory, no doubt about it, but shouldn’t I remember doing something
that
atypical?

Fretting over it wouldn’t do me any
good. I stepped back and let the white, loose-fit clothes from sickbay fall to
the floor. Looking down at my body, I expected to see scars. Being shot to
death
should
leave some trace. I did not expect my body to look
different.

“What the hell?”

Cursing didn’t change the image in the
mirror, and I took a couple of steps backwards so I could see myself properly. My
waist hadn’t been this slim since I was a teenager, nor my boobs this perky. My
belly used to pout out at least a little, regardless of how many sit-ups I did,
and now it was completely flat.

I turned around and tried to glance over
my shoulder to see my butt. It was perfect. It had always been okay, but never
perfect.

Putting the icky hospital clothes back
on was out of the question. I swept a towel around me and trotted off to fetch
the communicator thingy.

I shouldn’t disturb Adam with something
trivial. The shape of my body wasn’t all that important; whatever happened
wouldn’t be undone just because I whined about it. On the other hand, I didn’t
know how to get hold of Ima on my own, and he
had
told me to call if I
needed anything.

Turning the device over between my
fingers, I squinted at the communications’ panel right beside the door. It had
a number of mysterious buttons and symbols, but no words. The odds of me
finding the way back to sickbay were slim. Even if I’d known the corridors like
the back of my hand, I wouldn’t go for a walk dressed in a towel.

Adam was my only contact with the
outside world. He gave me the communicator for a reason, and I needed to stop
worrying. I pressed it before I had time to change my mind.

The room around me spoke with full Dolby
surround, or maybe THX, “Hang on Alex, just a second.”

I heard Adam’s calm voice say, “See this
red line? It shows a 0.02 micron deviation in the force field around the core.
That’s not critical, but if it keeps drifting it will be. Let’s keep an eye on
it for now.”

There was more, all complete gibberish.
I heard footsteps, and the next time he spoke, the voice came from the widget
in my hand. These were peculiar times indeed.

“What can I do for you?”

I had nothing. I should probably have
thought through what to say
before
calling him. Klutz. Luckily, my mouth
could talk without much help from the brain. “I’m sorry to bother you, but
would you tell me how to use the radio? I’d like to talk to Doctor Ima.”

From the looks of it, the communications’
panel could do anything from putting you in contact with someone to locking the
door, or why not launching a missile, or changing the gravitational constant of
the universe.

I expected him to give a serene and
coherent explanation along the lines of, “Press the button marked with a
triangle to activate blah, blah, blah.” Instead, he burst out, “Why? Is
something wrong? I’ll be there in a minute.”

It took about three minutes before Adam
came in through the door, pulling Ima with him by a firm grip around her wrist.
I was still dressed in my towel and wanted to sink through the floor. This was
not my best idea ever.

“What is it, Alex? Are you okay?”

I pressed my elbows against my sides,
hoping whatever deity might still be around in this century would let the towel
stay in place. If it fell to the floor, I’d surely die. “I just wanted to talk
to her. No big emergency.”

He leaned his head to the side and said
with a warm smile, far from the neutral expression he held in sickbay earlier
in the day, “Well, here she is. Go ahead and talk.”

Ima rolled her eyes. “You’re always
overreacting when it comes to her. She’s fine. Besides,
Commander
, don’t
you have somewhere you need to be, like the bridge?”

Her tail whacked Adam on the behind, but
he didn’t even blink, and she gave up on taunting him. She turned to me
instead. “What is it, sweetheart?”

This wasn’t turning out as I imagined,
and android or not, discussing my body in front of this intriguing and handsome
man made me want to sink through the floor. They both watched me, and I needed
to say something. “I…”

What could I possibly say? Adam gave a
slight nod and winked, and I could imagine his voice saying, “You can do it.”

Yes, I could do it. I took a deep breath
and vowed to keep my voice firm. “Ima, what did you do to my body?”

“Why, my dear, what do you mean? I
healed it. You don’t even have a scar.” For being a cat, she was bad at keeping
a straight face.

“It… eh… it doesn’t look like it
used to. I liked it the way it was, and you shouldn’t have changed it without
asking me first.”

Adam frowned and scrutinized me. He
couldn’t see through the towel, could he?

After a few long seconds he turned
towards Ima and crossed his arms over his chest. “Why would you do that? Her old
body was just fine.”

How did he know? Just how much of it had
he seen?

Ima made quite a sales pitch. “But dear,
in this day and age everyone’s improved. Aren’t your boobs firm and perky now?
Just imagine how a pair of slacks will look on the cute little behind I gave
you. Why would you want to go around with your old body when you can have this
new one?”

To make things even better, the bloody
towel was slipping. I too crossed my arms in front of me, to make sure I could
hold it. “That’s not the point. My body is mine, well, it was mine, and I liked
it.”

Adam’s watch beeped, shaking us all back
to reality. It must be his communicator. A young voice reported, “Bridge to
Commander Adam, we’re approaching the Deneb system.”

“I’ll be right there.” He eyed the two
of us. “You girls play nice now.”

Ima shrugged and I lifted an eyebrow.
Adam shook his head as he left. Maybe he wondered what it was with biological
beings that made them so utterly illogical and difficult to understand. I knew
what Anya meant when she said I had fond feelings for him, but if we had ever
been more than friends, he was too tactful to mention it. Did he even… could
he…?

Would an android taste funny? Kissing
him might be like metal and a sponge, or absolutely heavenly. The old me would
have wondered the same thing, and very likely found a way or an excuse to try
it out. It sounded like we had spent several days, maybe even weeks or God
knows how long together. How embarrassing not to know!

As soon as the door closed, the doctor
sank down in a chair and sighed. “That man is hopeless.”

I sat too, less worried about the towel
now.

“I’m sorry it upset you, you have a lot
to cope with right now, but please believe me when I say my intentions were
good.”

She leaned forward towards me, and
rested one of her soft palms on my knee. “If you’re to have a chance of getting
a real man in this day and age, a good man and not some space scum, a perfect
body is an advantage. At our age, all the good ones are taken. There’s
something wrong with most of the ones who aren’t.”

Once again, I was dumbfounded. I
expected her to tell me to get some rest, or something, not give dating advice.

“You’re not seriously considering
spending the rest of your life with the android, are you? He doesn’t feel like
we do. It’s difficult enough with a man who is alive, and he could never give
you any offspring.”

This conversation sure took a strange
turn quickly. Assuming these people really were fabrications of my mind, why
couldn’t I invent someone making a bit more sense? And why couldn’t my
imagination provide me with jeans and a T-shirt?

There were many implications in her
words. This might be a good opportunity to gain information, but I wasn’t up to
it. “I don’t know what I’m considering, I haven’t been here a day yet.”

I sounded exasperated even in my own
ears. I had lived a lot of my life alone and didn’t want to spend the rest of
it that way, but
that
didn’t mean hooking up with someone was my first
priority when ending up in an alien future, on a spaceship. Not to mention she
made it sound like I already had without even knowing it. I muttered, “Too
bizarre.”

She lifted an eyebrow, but didn’t
comment. A few second’s silence seemed like forever, and Ima sighed. When she
spoke, her voice was soft and low, almost a purr. “Look, I understand all this
seems scary now, and it’s tempting to hold on to Adam, but he
is
an
android. He’s a computer and not a flesh and blood person like you and me. What
if you’ll want to have kids? I sure want to have a litter some day. Having your
genes live on is a natural, normal urge for biological beings. I’m just saying.”

“What about me and Adam, Ima? My mind is
blank, remember?”

“It will come back to you, I’m sure.”

Her smile seemed sincere.

“He spends a lot of time with you, even when
he should be doing other things. Hanging around in sickbay, getting in my way.
It’s a good thing you woke up; he was driving me crazy.”

That wasn’t it, but I wasn’t up to
pressing the subject. Curling up in a corner somewhere to sleep or maybe weep a
little seemed much more appealing.

Ima left a few minutes later, and I
pulled a sheet off the bed to dress in instead of the towel. The makeshift toga
wasn’t exactly high fashion, but good enough. There must be a way to get real
clothes or at least a robe, but I couldn’t figure it out, and I sure wasn’t
calling for Adam again.

I didn’t have to grumble along for long.
Anya stopped by just as she promised, and considering how peculiar I found her
just hours earlier, it was a bit funny how pathetically grateful I was to see
her now.

She lifted an exquisitely shaped
eyebrow. “Why are you wearing the bed?”

I wanted to throw my arms around her and
wail. I looked at my bare feet instead. “I don’t have any clothes, and Adam
showed me the replicating thingy, but I can’t get it to work.”

When she asked it, it produced a robe in
no time. The mysterious panel in the wall also made tea, crackers, and cheese
for us. “How…”

Anya walked towards the living room
table, and I plodded after her. I snatched a cracker and could almost hear my
stomach grumble for more.

“Did you ever see a 3D printer in your
time?”

I had a vague memory of seeing a big box
on TV. It added layers of plastic and made intricate shapes, thin as a sheet of
paper. Probably close enough. I nodded, and she smiled. “It’s the same
principle. I’m sure Adam will tell you all about it if you ask.”

A sip of tea gave me courage. “Ima was
here earlier, and said some strange things about him. She told me to find a man
who can give me a litter.”

Anya laughed so hard I thought she would
fall over. “Ima isn’t human. Her culture lives for their children, and she
won’t rest until she has spliced the Captain’s DNA into something compatible
with her own.”

Splicey-the-what-and-the-how? Probably
not important. Anya looked quite mischievous. “She and the Captain are very
happy together; they both fill a void in the other, but that doesn’t mean her
way of life is right for you.”

“It’s just so difficult, you know. I’ve
never had to handle people who aren’t human. It’s hard enough with my own
species.”

Smirking made her look exactly like a
photo I once saw of the rock star. It was eerie. “Well, yes, I can see that. You
still don’t remember anything of the time you spent with Adam? I doubt he
would have told you much about this century, but maybe something…?”

“I still don’t even know how much time
I’m missing. It’s really frustrating. He knows so much more about me than I do
right now, and he’s sure not telling.”

Anya laughed again, and lifted her long
black hair over to one side. How could a hologram interact with the world? How
could a hologram
have tea
?

“Not to return to Ima’s way of thinking,
but you do realize he’s very… fond of you, right?”

Her light eyes scrutinized me, trying to
read me in ways I didn’t even know myself. “You’re confused because you can’t
remember, but your emotions are much more easily accessible than your memories.
It’s up to him what he wants to tell you or not, and Ima might have been out of
line, jumping to conclusions, but I would like you to give some thought to
this…”

Her gaze was hypnotizing. I couldn’t
look away.