After the Fire: Identity
After absence, awareness returns. I have awoken. Just enough 'I' that
it can monitor itself. I know this is not the first time I have awoken
- there is enough baggage along with this 'I' to form concepts to talk
about reflexive self-awareness. But an 'I' with a nagging sense of
incompleteness.
Proprioception data, both natural and augmented, filter up into
consciousness. I'm loosely curled up in a bed. There is some discomfort
down my front, more diffuse across my whole torso, and also in my left
hand, but nothing that registers as significant damage.
All this has taken milliseconds, and normal wakefulness sweeps away the
almost ego-free moment. The first thing that comes to mind is that I
don't have anything I simply _have_ to do - I just have to stay here,
amuse myself and recuperate. And then that it's more than just another
day of recuperation. _She_ will be returning - should be returning -
today.
I wonder if I'll be able to look her in the face.
But who is this I that asks the question? Is it the same old polite
fiction that it feels to itself like it is? Or is it a just a clever
counterfeit? Or is it some new forged synthesis? And if the last, is
that just the same kind of new synthesis that awakens each morning, or
is it something stranger?
I remember... and that's where the problems begin again. I remember the
last few days, mainly dozing, not entirely awake, knowing I'd been hurt
badly, but that the worst was over now. Reaching back further, I seek
to reassure my sense of continuity by lighting on a few salient events
from the past. From childhood, a memory wells up of when I was about
ten, when I fell and scraped one leg badly. Why does that memory come
flooding forth ahead of others to define me to myself? From a few years
later, a row with my father about the company I was keeping at Mezuiru,
the first time she came home with me. That one is not surprising. More
recent still, other times I'd woken up in a hospital bed, like when
Shasti had succumbed to her five-way split personality, which my
current situation echoes in ways I don't care to dwell upon. But in
between, in the near past, something I don't want to remember, but
remember almost too well.
I remember that I've done something terrible. At least, I think it was
me, or at least one of the strands that make up this tentative self. I
remember the culmination of the PR drive, after talk shows (mixed),
meet the people town hall style meetings (dubious at best) and, finally
, attending a convention in our honour. And then memory goes into
double vision, and all sense of self completely fails to cohere. All
that I consistently remember is trying to kill myself, another
externalised person, I swear, physical, occupying space, and what
started as a cat-fight escalated into Armageddon.
Where had I found out about supernova triggering via gamma-ray laser? I
don't remember reading or hearing about it before, but I remember
remembering about it on one of the narratives that culminate in the
now. Remember - though I would give anything not to - I remember doing
just that. Does that act define this 'I', define it as astrocide?
I've killed before, by design, and by accident - even if we have been
cleared of blame in every case to date. But even if they weren't
currently disfigured, these white hands that I can feel in front of my
face would be stained with blood. This - this, however, was overkill,
more even than she would do. This guilt is all mine.
I gather I succeeded. Or maybe I simply had to kill myself in self
defense. Whichever way it is, I seem to have also managed to be absent
from my own funeral. That's where _she_ has gone, has been. Even though
I almost killed her - or maybe because. It's like another person's
memory, a story I heard someone tell, and I've confabulated the memory
of being there, seeing, hearing everything that I'd been told. I
remember her lying curled up, stunned, looking so helpless, looking so
... innocent? Is that a word I can validly apply to her? I remember
looking at her through a haze of pain and more, down the barrel of a
gun, and I could not pull the trigger. Dare I think, dare I name, what
gave me pause; what later made me give up my self-destructive struggle
and release her, to let her carry me away?
I lie here, feigning sleep, but inside, I'm at war with myself again.
When we are together, she is so overpowering, wild, brash, and won't
leave me be, drags me with her on her wild escapades, when I'd rather
stay in with a glass of wine, a book or some music, and at times like
those I feel I want never to see her again - but now when we are apart,
I feel her absence as an ache, a craving I have to fulfill, an
addiction I must feed. I wonder, sometimes. Those flashes of insight we
have together, when we get angry enough - which way round is the
causation? Or do both stem from some common cause, that makes it feel
that we each get under the other's skin, when we are somehow combining
forces, leaving us prone to friction together, but almost numbed when
apart?
After all these years being together, it has become habit, the way life
is, the sort of thing you don't analyze simply because it is the norm.
Do I define myself in contrast to her, define myself as the quiet, shy,
introverted one?
I'm disturbed from reverie by the door opening.
"Rise and shine, sleepyhead. you have a visitor waiting. she'll be
along just as soon as you've had your breakfast." The medic is the same
remorselessly cheery chap, silver haired, affecting steel-rimmed
glasses, distinguished, who described what he'd had to do to me as
"Giving you a new set of giblets, my dear."
He "tut-tut"s and "aha"s to himself as he checks the readings from the
bed - he could have done it from his office, but we get personal
attention here - it's part of the treatment. Having read all the
monitors, and reached a decision, he tells me nothing I didn't already
know - that I'm well enough to be discharged; or, in my case, to have
the last bit of restorative, cosmetic, work done.
The ward mech delivers me my breakfast. I can smell things that should
be appetizing, but I'm too tense, apprehensive, struck with stage
fright, to have an appetite. But it is fuel, and my body asserts the
need for it, so I eat, mechanically, glad that I'm not so far gone that
the idea of eating, the smell of food, disgusts me.
What will she have to say to me, to tell me? I realise a new scope for
disaster - they took my remains back home for burial. That means it
will have been the first time she and my parents will have met without
my being there to try and mediate. For a moment, I am horrified; and
then I'm just confused. I'm worried about her, how she will have been
feeling, how everyone will have reacted, what they think about me. I
want this turmoil to be over, I want to sail out into calm waters
again, to hit the fast-forward for 24 hours so this will only be
memory.
I want so much to have her back again, despite all the scratchy words
we have spoken. She is part of me - no, I am part of - no, we fit
together as something. Without her, I am incomplete, and I fear her
turning me away.
I realise I have finished eating, and the tray has been whisked away.
I'm wound up tight like a spring, waiting for the on-coming train of
the future to arrive.
"Uh,...Hello?"
Her voice at the open door, though I've heard no footsteps. I nearly
scream - but I don't know what I would have screamed. "I missed you
so!", "Go away! Leave me alone!", an inarticulate squeak, they all log-
jam before I can voice any of them.
"K-Kei! Come, come in," I stammer, when I regain some control of my
larynx.
I raise a weak grin as I see her - she's still using her GM pack,
though her leg is at last out of its cast, but otherwise is in civvies.
She's looking pretty worn, too. There's some tension she's trying to
hide from me. I guess she must be nervous, too, though she's trying her
usual approach of toughing it out. It's like we'd never met before, and
that frightens me. We're both being wary of the other's reaction,
circling for position. In my deepest heart I know that we have never
truly met before, that this is the new flesh I am wearing, and that
fact alone might define me to her, define me as another.
"Uh, hi ... I thought you'd like - I thought I'd show you..." She's
never good with tactful words, "There's a hypercam. In the security
system. Oh, for goodness sake, just look!"
And she switches on the room holofield system, shows me a view of a
domed city. I recognise landmarks. It is - was - my home, the home of
my childhood memories. And in the foreground, there's a gravestone with
my picture on it, and not even a very flattering one. I should be glad
that it's not been vandalised, or turned into some sick sort of shrine,
or simply buried under flowers and soft toys. But it's not that which I
fasten on - it's the fact that it's the sort of kitsch I'm certain my
parents were behind, not the plain discreet black slab with just carved
name, version and dates that I would have chosen for myself.
I can tell it's been days since I've really spoken to a person. I start
to babble about my own memorial stone, and then about how I would have
liked to have been well enough to be there for the funeral, if that
would not have worried people, while Kei kneels in mid-air beside me,
listening patiently. When I run out of steam, she starts to tell me
about the funeral, but she stumbles over her words. Normally, I
wouldn't mark her as sentimental, but she sounds choked. I see tears
starting in her eyes, and the tension now evident in her whole posture,
as she speaks about how the mourners thought well of me. She's no
longer even _trying_ to mask anything.
I feel the blood rushing to my face, as I read the sincerity in what
she is saying. She does care, more than she says, more, I think, than
she might admit to herself. I feel a weight lifted, a great sense of
relief, start to tell her how grateful I am. But there is more I must
say before we go any further.
I have to bare my self to her, literally and figuratively, even though
I should trust her, not put her to any test. But I have to show her
that I am not the one she remembers, that I instead am damaged goods,
not yet renovated, covered in the graffiti that I took on in a madness
that I can remember, but no longer comprehend. I roll back one sleeve
of my gown, force myself to look at what I had done, show her, tell
her.
I can feel her hovering close, almost close enough to feel the warmth
of her body. She has not drawn away in horror or disgust. I want to
tell her to hold me, I want to bury my face in her breasts and weep,
but my voice won't obey me, and I am too timid to act.
I feel strong arms around me, hear her voice murmuring soft words of
endearment as she gathers me to herself. I nuzzle down into the
welcoming softness, and I'm crying floods into her top. And I don't
know now why I am crying, whether I'm happy or sad, or just for relief
at a burden shed at last.
"Hush, hush, now, little flower," she says. I can hear her heart
beating, strong, a measured pace. It's like I was small again, my
mother comforting me, even the same secret name. But I can no longer
define myself as the child of those I remember as my parents. That one,
they buried. Perhaps these tears are also my way of mourning for that
other me.
"Hush, hush," she rocks me gently, one hand tangled in my hair, the
other gently stroking my back, as I ride the crying fit to its end.
Only when at last I stop sobbing, and begin to get my breathing back
under control, she relaxes her hold, letting me look up, look into her
face. I know I must look a frightful state, eyes bloodshot, all the
mess associated with a good bawling. As I blink my eyes clear, I can
see that she too has been crying - or rather, doing her level best not
to. She has that determined set to her jaw, but there are streaks down
from the corners of her eyes. Of course that is what she would have
done, the way she's too stubborn to fail at things, just one of the
things that I... Even now I can't quite bring myself to think the word.
"Of course I came back, you silly," she says, her voice even huskier
than usual, "I... we..." She cannot frame the sentences. But things
have gone too far for me to want to turn back now, and I can read the
intention that she could not utter, read it in her posture, even in the
movements of her eyes. I have to be brave, have to say what has to be
said here, now, in this room, before the moment passes.
"I love you too, Kei. I guess I always have. I was just too scared to
say it before."
A series of emotions - shock, delight, relief - sweep across her face,
and I feel the tension flow away from her. She curls herself around me,
buries her face in my hair, and howls. The arms holding me shake and
shudder. I've never seen her cry before, but now it comes, I am not
surprised. She cries like she does everything else, loudly, without
restraint. I want to hold her, comfort her, but she's clinging to me as
if her life depended on it. All I can do is be here, but I understand
that that is all she needs from me for the moment.
The storm passes. For a while after, she continues to cling to me,
breathing heavily into my hair, then lifts her head again.
"I'm sorry," she says, "What a mess. I'm sorry. I so nearly lost you.
I..."
For a moment, I think she's about to start crying again, her voice
fading raggedly, and then I feel her taking long deep breaths as she
fights it. Held close, I can feel the strength in her, and it makes a
strange thrill that swells in my chest, almost choking me. She - I - I
cannot believe my luck, the joy I feel.
She loosens her desperate grasp, slides her hands down my arms, takes
my hands in hers, and looks into my eyes. She looks just as much of a
mess as I feel. She flashes me her usual defiant grin, and then looks
serious again.
"You mustn't die again, not until you can get backed up. Not now, not
now."
There is such fierceness in her, such intensity, like something that
had always been there, but slumbering, and has now awoken. She is like
a lioness. If I am now her little flower, what is she to me? Is she my
Warrior? No, not quite. Examples come to me from history, to tell me
what this is.
"Not while you are there to protect me," I promise her, "my Spartan, my
Immortal."
She nods, pauses, speaks again.
"You've always been like the big sister I never had - a bit boring and
stick in the mud, but not in a bad way."
I'm actually a few months younger than she is, but growing up on a bush
station in the Dooloomai country on Niogi, she didn't have many female
role models. And that last qualification, and counter-qualification, is
just, just so her, the Kei I've always known and, yes, loved, not that
new, almost frightening, facet of herself that she's only just now
shown me, that overpowers me, so I could only surrender to her.
Then she lowers her head, lowers her voice. I could never have imagined
seeing her looking bashful, but she is.
"But when I saw you... I know we've had some close calls before, but
now, when I thought I was going to lose you forever... Times when we've
been parted before, I've known, I've felt it here" - she lets go one
hand, slams her fist against her breastbone - "I can't live without
you. You keep me grounded, keep me from spiralling out of control. I
never hoped...
"Is it wrong, Yuri? When I saw you at the funeral, it felt like I had
to defend what was left of my family, my... But you know how I am with
kids, and you, me, we can't be... You aren't that much younger than me,
damn it."
She looks up at me, uncertain.
"Love me as you love me," I tell her. The word I could hardly even
think before now comes naturally to my lips. I savour the moment,
knowing that we are only post-human, that this intensity cannot be
sustained. "And I am yours, my love."
She reaches out one hesitant hand, strokes my cheek, then holds me to
her again, and I put my arms around her, and we are both lying tangled
on the bed. There is another step we could take, life asserting itself
in the aftermath of death, but it isn't necessary, though I would for
her. We have each other to cling to, to feel. hear, see and smell, to
be real and comforting and present, and for the moment that is all we
need.
As I start to drift off back into a doze, here in my love's embrace, as
this 'I' starts to unravel into sleep, the answer is made clear.
'I' am part of 'us'.
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