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Osoron, Zela City
Tessa sat across from Ziva Bell, one of only three human newscasters on Osoron, and adjusted the skirt of her duster for the fifth time in as many minutes.
For this interview, she'd chosen a distinctly human look. Black hair and purple eyes with the skin tone close to what she'd been born with – a soft, light brown. If then and now pictures were compared, she might have been mistaken for her own sister, and that was the point. They hadn't lied about her nanocyte body, but they hadn't pointed it out, either. Some questions were more harm than help.
The set consisted of a half-moon shaped gel-couch with a low, round table in the hollow center. Ziva sat at one end and Tessa at the other. Refreshments had been laid out, but Tessa couldn't imagine tasting them, let alone swallowing. The nerves clutching at the base of her throat would surely throw back anything she sent down.
Magnus flatly refused to do these interviews, choosing instead to stand in the background, scanning the crowd and looking formidable.
"So, you're saying that, contrary to popular belief, Gaia is not only a real person, but she's come over to our side?"
"She was never on any side except ours." Tessa took in the Ziva's wild mane of green hair, plaited and twisted into braids that closely resembled the tentacles of the planet's apex species, the Sotongi. Osoron was a water planet with few land masses big enough to support higher life forms.
The Sotongi allowed human settlers in limited numbers and there were now three small colonies on an archipelago in the planet's southern hemisphere. A discussion with the Sotongi government had resulted in today's interview.
"But surely you were taught our history in school?" Ziva's eyes brightened as if scenting easy prey. "How can you suggest that Gaia is our friend after what she did to us?"
"I don't know what you learned in school, but I'm guessing very little of it was based in fact. Gaia is not the villain you seem to think," Tessa replied.
"But an alien blood plague attacked humankind. We were forced to evacuate Earth to escape it. Our ships – all of them by every available account – suffered an unexplained glitch which erased Earth's coordinates at the same moment that the ships accelerated, leaving our solar system far behind at the precise moment when, inexplicably, every human on board was asleep, and unaware. If Gaia was not behind these events, who was?"
"Most monarchs have enemies. Gaia is no exception. Her adversaries sought to destroy her by damaging her terra and exterminating humankind so that they could take over the Simoi throne. Those seditionists are responsible for the current state of human affairs."
"And we are to believe the threat has been eliminated?" Ziva gave a soft, disbelieving laugh. "That, after more than eight hundred years, it is safe to go back to Earth? Our so-called home planet?"
The interview wound on, each question more difficult to answer than the last. By the time it was over, Tessa was exhausted. Facing down HiveZ was less work.
The lights overhead dimmed, and the technicians busied themselves removing video cards from the cameras.
Ziva's smile reached her eyes for the first time since the interview started. "Good interview," she said. "I'm sorry if it was rough."
"It was fine." Tessa scraped the mic-dot from her jaw and held it out to the approaching sound man. He held out a palette for her to place the two centimeter, flesh-toned circle on, then repeated a similar process with Ziva.
"I have a reputation as a hard-hitting journalist. It would have raised suspicion if I went easy on you."
"Like I said, it was fine. I didn't expect it to be a cakewalk."
Confusion drew wrinkles across Ziva's perfectly smooth brow. "A what?"
"Sorry. Old Earth expression. It was a sort of party game they used to play. Really easy to win, and the prize was cake."
"Oh." The wrinkles didn't ease. "Old Earth? Where did you hear it?"
"Where... I uh... School. University, actually. I was a linguistics major."
"I thought you were a medical doctor?"
"I am."
"You have a medical doctorate and a degree in linguistics?" Suspicion built in the bright eyes. "But that would mean at least twenty years at university. How old–"
"Tessa, we need to get moving if we're going to make our next appointment." Magnus appeared out of the shadows at the edge of the set, the twins ranged on either side of him. He touched Tessa's shoulder gently.
Tessa held out her hand to Ziva. "Ms. Bell. It was a pleasure."
Her mouth open to continue her questions, Ziva's eyes widened when she saw the Syfe. "I, of course. Thank you for coming." She stepped back, giving the small group a wider berth.
Magnus leaned closer to Tessa. "I told you those two would come in handy."
Syfe are always useful. Pan said smugly.
The quartet left the studio and the reporter behind them, walking out into bright sunshine. A short autolev ride later, they arrived at the spaceport, lifting off from Osoron within the hour.
In their cabin later, Magnus handed her a drink as they sat down to eat. "So, I'm curious."
She looked up at him, her glass arrested halfway to her lips. "About?"
"How many degrees do you have?"
Discomfort trailed soft, damp fingers across her ribs. The question took her back in time to another place, another love. "I... uh... Well, nine, actually."
His eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. "Nine? You have nine doctorates?"
She laughed. "No, no. Only six doctorates. The other three are master's degrees."
She could tell by his expression that this information didn't ease his astonishment. "In what?" he asked.
"I have doctorates in medicine, linguistics, philosophy, Earth history and science, and computer science."
"Stars and comets. How old are you really?"
"It won't help you to know."
"Oh, I think it will."
"OK. I don't know exactly, because there are some missing years in there, but I am approximately eight hundred and twenty-seven."
She didn't think it was possible for his eyes to get bigger, but they did. "You're almost a thousand years old."
"Not by choice, I promise you."
"Yeah, I get that. But that means... you were born on Earth?"
"About twenty-seven years before the evacuation, yes."
"Holy macerated asteroids. You know that makes you officially the oldest woman I've ever dated, right?"
She rolled her eyes. "I figured."
"And in all that time, there was never anyone special? A boyfriend? A husband?"
She waited for the inevitable stab of loss that came whenever she thought of Devon, and was surprised to find it less than it had been, muted and softened, somehow. "I was married to a man named Devon Michaels."
He frowned. "Wait, that name sounds familiar. Where have I heard that?"
"History class, probably. He did a lot of the cyber-tech engineering for the domes. So did I, come to that. We worked under a man named Court Avery, but I never met him in person. I'm guessing Devon did, at some point, but by then I'd already died."
"Wait, you died?"
"Yeah, it's a whole thing. Look, can we not get into all the details now?"
"Why not?"
"Because it's..." She hesitated, then gave in. "Fine. Just try not to interrupt. Gaia's mother, Rhea, kidnapped my soul."
"Just your–" She glared at him and he stopped, holding up his hands to show compliance.
"Yeah, apparently it was the only part she needed. She was working with Tevan, Gaia's enemy, to get rid of human kind. I guess her plan was to kill us all and then blame it on Tevan, because he'd killed her husband and son. She figured that would be justice, plus the added benefit of getting rid of a potential threat to her family's place on the Simoi throne. With me so far?"
He frowned. "Sort of?"
"OK, so Rhea took my soul and left my body behind. She gave me to Tevan, and he used me to program the nanocytes that caused the blood plague."
"How long were you disembodied?"
"I don't know. That's the missing years part. Sirius found me, eventually, and brought me back to Earth. To Gaia. She and Stella2 put me in a sensory replication unit – an SRU. And I helped them to lure the blood plague nanocytes out of hiding, at which point we destroyed them. That took a while."
"I bet."
"But that job ended. And I was left sort of at loose ends. So, when the vampires offered me an opportunity–"
"Vampires are real?"
"Gaia made a lot of different humanoid species. Vampires, pixies, elves, just to name a few. Anyway, when the opportunity to extend my education came up, I took it."
"But you said you already had training in your chosen field. What made you go beyond that?"
She shrugged. "What else was I going to do with my time? Devon was gone. We didn't know where the rest of the humans were and, at the time, there was no way to track them down. For all I knew, I was the last human being in existence."
"So you got nine degrees as a way to kill time?"
"To stay occupied, yeah. You have no idea what it means to be terminally bored and alone. I do."
He thought about that in silence for several minutes. Finally, he looked at her. "And the master's degrees?"
She rolled her eyes. "Not that I'll ever use them, but art history, Earth religions and mythological studies."
He took a seat across from her at the table and tucked into his food. "If you didn't think they'd be useful, why did you study those subjects?"
"Areas I'd always had an interest in, but never had the time to pursue. At that point, all I had was time."
"You must have been lonely."
An image of a replicated, digitized Devon, laying back on their bed in the SRU came to mind and she pushed it aside. "I had some company. Gaia, Stella2. And I had my memories and, of course, my teachers and classmates."
"But no human contact."
"Nothing real, no."
"What do you mean?"
"The SRU had access to my memories, my feelings, my thoughts, everything. It could have used those elements to replicate anyone I'd ever met. The more memories I had of them, the better I knew them, the more accurate the replication."
"How many did you –"
"Just one." Now the echoes of loss washed through her, the pain pulsing in her chest like a second heartbeat, faint, but steady.
"Devon?"
She couldn't speak, but she nodded.
"I've sorry, Tessa. I shouldn't have been so nosy, dug all this up."
"No, it's all right." She wandered to the viewscreen and flipped it to the starscape outside the ship. "It was, quite literally, a very long time ago."
"But it still hurts. I can see that in your face."
"Losing Devon will probably always hurt, but it isn't like it was when I first woke up. Then... There were days when I thought it would literally kill me, and that I wouldn't mind if it did. But having a purpose helped. Being able to get revenge, if not justice – that helped too."
"And now that it's all over?"
A rueful grin tugged at her lips. "You aren’t the first one to ask me that. I didn’t have an answer before, and I still don't. Especially since I'm still in this body."
"That makes things harder?"
"People think living forever would be fantastic, especially if they never got sick, or old, and their body healed easily from injuries."
"Like yours does. Have to admit, it sounds like a sweet deal to me."
"Sure. But what they don't get is that, unless everyone around you has the same advantage, you end up watching them die. And not just once, but over the course of a thousand lifetimes, you lose everyone you love, over, and over, and over again." She sank onto the couch, leaning her head back and closing her eyes. "I tried not to let anyone else in, to avoid getting involved with anyone, but..."
"But that gets lonely."
"Most of us aren't built for solitude. That's why I thought, with Sirius..."
"The Simoi live forever?"
"No, but their lifespan is millions of years. That's long by the standards of most species. Not just humans." She gestured toward herself. "And I figured that even this body was bound to break down, eventually. It felt like a match."
"And then he betrayed you." It wasn't a question, but his gaze was sympathetic.
"He wasn't exactly honest about his role in HiveZ's creation, no. And yes, I saw that as a betrayal. I still do. I get why he did it, I guess, but I can't let it go." There was no anger in her now, only resignation. "I don't hate him, but I can't love him either."
He sat down next to her, taking her hand in his, and they were quiet together for a long time.
"You took a risk with me."
"I'm taking a risk with you," she corrected. "The final results of the experiment aren't in yet."
He laughed. "Is that what I am to you? An experiment?"
She swung a leg over his lap, straddling him as she leaned down to touch his lips with hers. "Among other things." She deepened the kiss as his arms pulled her closer.
When she lifted her head, he was smiling. "I can live with that."
