Trees, part 2

The forest with its tiny trees and unimaginable cold closed off, falling away from experience like death closing in. She'd practiced it a dozen times but it still frightened her. She was in the grey murk between worlds... that's how it felt to her. In reality, she understood it was only the thinnest sliver of time as her consciousness disengaged from the interface and shifted over. But every time she hit it, it was like walking into a wall of some sap, reduced to its essence, slowing her down, dragging her limbs, filling her throat. She felt as though she had to wade through it, mentally, back to reality. Somewhere, the words of their dead kind flowed past her, still momentarily her own, confirming her orders, closing it off.

Her eyes opened, and she was in the chair. That soft, warm chair made for giants. Bennek was there. "Help me up," she murmured.

"Don't be alarmed, Kk'Alooka. It's okay," he said. "Someone tripped a perimeter sensor, but they didn't come this way. I'm sorry I called you back, but I figured better safe than sorry."

"It's alright," she said. "Thank you." She ground her black-skinned palm into the soft felt of her forehead. "How long was I in there?"

"Just a couple of quarter-spans. Are you okay?"

She grabbed his wrist. "I talked to him this time. Bennek, he talked back. We really communicated."

Bennek sat on the end of the seat, a definite liberty. "You really talked this time?"

"We did. And this time... I used the conduct command."

"Wow," Bennek breathed. "Did it work?"

"I think so."

Bennek snaked his tail in the air behind himself in excitement. "So you think, if he's ever revived, he'll remember it too?"

"If we've understood it correctly," she said.

"I'd love to interact with one of them," he said.

"Remember our agreement," she warned him.

"I know, I know. But it just sounds so exciting. I mean... all my life I've heard about them, seen them, their records. But you... you're going to get to know one. For real."

"I don't know how real it is," she said. "I might have recorded what just happened to his brain, too, but it's all being simulated by the computer here. And we don't even know how that works."

Bennek smoothed his hand over the massive helmet. "I love how alien they are, and how familiar all at the same time. It's like they're a different version of us."

"In a way, they are. It's exactly what they are," she said, watching him.

He said, "I'm terrified of letting them out. But imagine what it would be like."

"Things would be very different."

He was quiet for a moment. Contemplative. "When I'm in there," he said, "I can read. I can read their words. It makes me think."

"That's something you definitely need to keep to yourself," she warned him. She shifted, easing herself off the chair, her downhands pressing onto the cold, smooth lunar basalt. She moved her uphand over a panel at shoulder height, and the seat retracted smoothly in to the wall, tucked away behind its access panel, Bennek stepping down as it did so.

"Next time I get to go in," he said, "I want to talk to one."

"Bennek..."

"Not one of the ones we know is in the Chambre," he said. "Anyone. Synthetic. I don't mind. I just want to know what it's like. Walking around an environment pretending I'm one of them is one thing. Really meeting one... let me have that."

Alooka folder her arms. She didn't like bargaining with him. She didn't like having to count on a male, letting him have some kind of power over her, hold on her. But he was essential now. And he knew it. "I want to think it over," she said.

"Thank you, Kk'Alooka," he said.

She turned, smoothing her tunic front down, snaking her tail dismissively at him. He persisted. "May I ask you something?" he ventured.

"Yes, of course."

"I was wondering why you've chosen a male as a resource."

"I need your assistance to ensure security and to assist in formulating impressions and observations, of course."

"Well, I meant him. The human. Mwok'son," he said, forming his mouth around the impossibly foreign name Mark Wilson.

"Most of their hierarchy is male-dominated," she said. "That's something we have to accept. The researchers who come at it with traditional ideas are the ones who don't get anywhere."

Bennek nodded, tail low and swinging acceptingly just above the floor. The gesture was not entirely convincing, but she had no cause to point it out and he no business to press beyond her reply. And yet she indulged him, if only slightly. "I'm curious about them. That's my job." She moved over to the adapted chair that better served a waisluk-sized user in an human-scaled environment and accessed the ancient computer. "Can you tell me who it was who tripped the perimeter sensor?"

"R'kk'Sandannek," he replied. "But she went on to Main Research."

Alooka scratched her ear, impatient and anxious. "She's back around. She'll be looking for that cultural instance report. I'd really better finish that up." Again, she flicked her tail dismissively.

"Is there anything I can help you with?" he asked.

She turned to face him, perplexed. She wondered if she were giving off the Scent; she didn't feel flushed or desirous. "No. I hardly think so," she told him, quietly.

He dipped his head obediently, and began to leave her. Even so, he lingered at the door.

"What?" she said.

He paused. "You're different when you emerge, Kk'," he told her. "Just for a few moments. You're almost like a mother."

"It's disorienting coming back," she reminded him.

"I suppose. Yes, Kk'," he agreed. He left, and the door closed behind him, leaving her alone. She felt slightly humiliated having to indulge his masculine foolishness, and yet, somehow, disturbed to have caused him confusion. She brooded on it for a moment, leaning back. She sighed, and reaching up with her downhands, entered the code that retrieved the cultural instance her mistress's family had been researching for seventeen years: a murky, violent, thematically ambiguous tale that styled itself Casablanca.