A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers #2)(100)
Sidra zoomed in with the cockpit camera. ‘Figurines,’ she said. ‘Alain, Manjiri, and Pinch.’
Tak went light brown with recognition. ‘Big Bug, right?’
Pepper nodded with a faraway smile. ‘Yup. Owl had one episode in storage. “The Big Bug Crew and the Planetary Puzzle”. I can’t even tell you how many times I played it. I can still tell you every bit of dialogue, word for word. Every story variable, every line in the artwork. I could draw that ship from top to bottom, if I could draw for shit.’ She collected her thoughts. ‘My first morning on Coriol, I left Blue sleeping and went out alone. I wanted to get a handle on things by myself. I was still so angry, and so afraid, and having an audience for that was just too much. Anyway, I wandered the marketplace for a while. I didn’t know what I was doing, but looking back, I was searching for something – anything – familiar. I would’ve eaten dog again, if somebody’d been selling it. I don’t know how long I’d been out there – an hour, maybe two. I stumble on this shop. It’s got all sorts of sim characters painted on the walls. I didn’t know most of them, but right there, smack in the middle, are the Big Bug Crew. And I was just like . . . holy shit, my friends! My friends are here! Stars, I almost cried. I know that sounds stupid—’
‘It doesn’t,’ Tak said.
Pepper gave a small nod. ‘So I go into the shop – it’s a sim shop, obviously – and there’s this Human guy in there. And he’s like, hey, what can I do for you? And I say – well, keep in mind, I’ve got about ten thousand credits to my name, and I woke up in the corner of some modder’s cargo shed. I was broke as broke gets, but I bought a hackjob sim hub off him. He asks me if I want any sims while I’m there, and I say, “Do you have Big Bug Crew?” And he looks at me and says, “Of course, which one?”’ She laughed. ‘“Which one?” I didn’t know there was more than one! He thinks I’m nuts at this point, obviously. He brings up this massive catalogue, and he says, “Friend, they’ve been making Big Bug for over thirty standards.”’
‘How many did you buy?’ Sidra asked.
‘Oh, all of them. I had to go back and explain to Blue why I’d just spent most of our credits on kids’ sims and a busted hub. I didn’t really understand money then. I still don’t.’ Pepper looked to the ceiling, thinking. ‘Since then, I’ve played every single episode at least twice. I can tell you any trivia you want to know. I love Big Bug. I love it dearly. But it will never feel the same as it did when I was a kid. I’m different now. And different is good, but it cuts both ways.’ She reached out and touched the closest circuit junction. ‘You’re different now, too.’
Sidra wasn’t sure if that was a comfort or a concern. ‘The kit has so many limitations, and there’s only so much code I can tweak before I start changing who I am. If I had come back into a ship after only a few days, or a tenday, even, I think I would’ve been fine. But now . . .’ She tried to untangle her pathways. ‘I don’t know what I want.’
Pepper laughed. ‘Sweetheart, none of us ever do.’
Sidra considered her own words: the kit. The kit was back in the storage compartment. She processed. The ship was what she was designed for, but . . . but. She didn’t know this ship. This ship could have been any ship, and she would’ve filled it equally as well. If she didn’t open a hatch, someone else could open it manually, regardless of whether she wanted to. She was nothing more than a ghost in a ship. A sidekick. A tool.
The kit was restrictive. It wasn’t enough. But it was also autonomous. It was hers. Nobody could force her to raise a hand or walk across the room. In the kit, she could walk when she wanted to walk, and sit when she wanted to sit. She could run. She could hug. She could dance. If she could alter her own code, then the kit wasn’t the end limit either. For all the things the kit wasn’t, there was much it still could be.
‘Tak, could you open the storage compartment to your left, please?’ Sidra asked. ‘I think I’d like to be in my body for a little while.’
PEPPER
The Reskit Museum of Interstellar Migration (Kaathet Branch) turned out to be one of those things that made civilisation as a whole look like a pretty okay thing to get behind. It was the largest building in the city, by far, and even though Aandrisks weren’t known for getting too fluffy with their architecture, the design was a hell of a thing to see. Aandrisk buildings weren’t big on windows to begin with (hard to keep heat in that way), and sunlight was rough on just about everything, especially old tech. The museum had gotten around that problem by building the entire complex out of thinly cut yellow stone, sliced so slim that the light from outside glowed through. The effect was haunting – magical, almost. It was like walking through the heart of a star, or a dying fire. It was like being within something alive.
None of that changed the fact that by base, museums were weird. Pepper understood that you had to get your story down somewhere, and making it tangible was a good way to keep from forgetting. The intent was fine. The content . . . that was what weirded her out. Everything in the Reskit Museum was junk. A clunky early ansible, a burned-out nav beacon, an old tunnel map from the days when the Harmagians were the only ones boring holes in space. Why this stuff? Why this antique exosuit, and not the ten others that had probably come in with it? Why had this one been lovingly stitched, patched, and propped up in a temperature-controlled cube, while the others had been chucked out – or worse, boxed away in an archival warehouse somewhere. A whole building set aside for stuff you couldn’t use, couldn’t fix, and wouldn’t get rid of. Now that was the mark of people who had it good.