Merrilyn logged into the mainframe from a terminal in one of the control rooms nearest the canteen, while the others stood behind her, Davis jumping onto a chair at the desk.
“You can close down the reactor from here?” Chad said.
“I have the necessary permissions and codes,” Merrilyn said. “It depends what level of criticality it has reached.” Her fingers flew across the keyboard and she called up the reactor protocols.
“Can you turn off that goddamn alarm and flashing red lights?” Cher said.
Merrilyn ignored her and concentrated on the monitor. The screen kept freezing and the protocol pages were glitching like crazy. She was kicked out and had to log back in three times.
“What’s the problem?” Chad said.
“I think the mainframe has lost too much power.” Merrilyn frowned. “It can’t handle the requests.” She tried again and suddenly the screen went blank. Nothing she could do would get it booted up again.
“Try another terminal?” Cher suggested.
“It’s the mainframe, not the terminal.” Merrilyn looked at Chad. “How long do we have left until we can fly out of here?”
“One hour and thirty-eight minutes,” Davis answered. “Could you surmise from your time in the system how long we have before the reactor goes critical.”
Merrilyn bit her lip. “Around sixty minutes.”
“Well, shit,” Cher said. “So this place is going to go boom, and we can’t shut it down and can’t get off it in time. What should we do? Just run the hell for it?”
“We wouldn’t clear the blast radius in time, Cher,” Chad said. “This is going to be like a nuclear bomb going off.”
“What about the trucks in the garage?” she said desperately. “We could drive a hell of a way in thirty minutes, surely.”
“The Victory would be destroyed,” Merrilyn said. “We’d be trapped here. With no supplies and no idea when the next ship will arrive.” She looked at Chad. “And from what he said, they might not be very friendly to us.”
“There may be another way,” Davis said quietly. “Merrilyn, isn’t there a manual shut-off somewhere?”
She thought about it. “Yes. On the actual reactor housing, but it would be impossible to reach now that the reactor is going critical. The heat, and the radiation, it would kill anyone before they got to it.” She paused, and blanched a little. “And the shut-off procedure is complicated. It would have to be me that did it.”
“Or me,” Davis said. “And the heat and radiation would not affect me. Not as quickly as a human.”
“It would eventually,” Chad said. “Davis, you wouldn’t make it out alive.”
“I’m flattered that you think I’m alive. That makes the sacrifice worthwhile in itself.”
“And you can do this?” Cher said. “I mean, a dog can do this?”
Merrilyn shook her head. “Not unless you can use a keyboard, Davis. Which obviously you can’t.”
“Mama,” Therese said.
“Hush, Little Flower, the grown-ups are talking,” Merrilyn said. “I mean, I can give you all the protocols for the shutdown, but there’s no way—”
“Mama!” Therese said loudly.
“Therese, I told you—”
“I’ll do it,” she said. “With the doggo. I’ll shut down the reactor.”
* * *
Everyone stared at Therese. Merrilyn looked terrified.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said sternly.
“Mama,” Therese said. “I think we should tell them.”
“I was right,” Cher said. Was this why Therese, a six-year-old child, was offering to undertake a suicide mission? Because she was infected with a Xenomorph embryo? Cher wanted to survive, of course, but to sacrifice a child…
Merrilyn pinched her nose and breathed a ragged sigh. From outside, there was a distant rumble of thunder.
“No, she isn’t infected with a Xenomorph.” She looked up at them all one by one. “Therese is a synthetic.”
* * *
“Ten years ago I had everything,” Merrilyn said. “I was in a high-paying job and was at the top of my field. I had my pick of positions. I had a wonderful home in Provence. Friends. My parents were healthy and happy. I had it all.” She paused and looked at Therese. “Except that which I wanted most. A child. But I did not want a husband. I couldn’t have a husband. That’s not the way I am, and there was no room in my life for a partner anyway. But I wanted a child. So I opted for a donor.”
She gathered her thoughts, then said, “And I was gifted with a beautiful baby girl. I named her Therese, and I was able to juggle my job and motherhood and for five glorious years I was the happiest I have ever been in my entire life. Then it all went wrong.”
“Wait,” Cher said. “You said something before about wishing you’d chosen your donor more wisely.”
Merrilyn nodded. “To be fair, there was nothing I or anyone else could have done. The screening process for the donors missed something. My donor was carrying a gene for a rare condition. When Therese was five, she fell ill. She started having seizures and couldn’t walk properly at times, and had spells of near blindness. She was terrified and so was I. She was diagnosed with Batten disease. It attacks the nervous system. There are treatments but mainly to extend life, not cure the disease.”
Merrilyn went quiet for a moment, and looked at Therese, tears filling her eyes.
“The following year she died. My perfect world shattered like glass and fell around me. I was devastated. I could not work. Could not do anything. I wished it was me that was dead, not her. I am ashamed, but I would walk the streets, barely conscious, and stare at families, wondering why their children were alive and mine wasn’t. In truth, I would have bargained anything with the devil to have Therese back. I would have had him take a hundred strangers’ children to get mine returned to me. A thousand.” Her voice dropped to a whisper, barely audible above the clanging alarms. “I would have given the devil all the children in the world for one more day with my Little Flower.”
Cher put a hand on her shoulder, and she continued. “Eventually, of course, I had to try to drag myself back to the land of the living. I threw myself into work, tried to ignore the yawning, empty chasm inside me, tried to fight off the sudden uncontrollable urge to cry at any given moment, tried to weather the fact that every morning when I woke up my first thought was what I was going to do with Therese that day, until the reality of life came crashing into my head and my heart.
“People told me that I was still young, that I could have another child—but I didn’t want another child. I wanted Therese.” Merrilyn took a deep breath. “We sometimes worked with synthetics, especially on potentially dangerous drilling projects. One day an idea began to form in my head. Synthetics were getting more and more sophisticated. To the human eye they were almost indistinguishable from living things, unless you knew. What if… What if I could recreate Therese? Exactly as she was before she died?”
“You wouldn’t get a legitimate manufacturer to do that,” Chad said. “You must have gone underground, to the black market. Like the lady who had the dog synthetic that Davis inhabits.”
Merrilyn nodded. “Yes. I worked in the scientific community, I knew people who knew people who knew of other people, who had heard of people. It took a long time and a lot of money but, three years ago…” She looked at Therese, tears flowing down her cheeks. “She’s been with me ever since. My Little Flower. Just as perfect as she always was. More, in fact.”
“But how did you explain her to your family and friends?” Cher said.
“I didn’t. I took off-world jobs, like this one. I cut all contact with everyone I knew, save for the most cursory communications to let them know I was all right. I didn’t need anyone else. I had Therese. It was enough. I was happy. We were happy. I was given my first major posting here, to LV-187, six months ago. It was for a year. Then we would have moved on and up.” She looked at Cher. “We would have to keep moving, you see. Because Therese would never get any older. She is six years old forever.”
Merrilyn stood up and walked over to Therese, standing behind her with her hands on her shoulders. “So that is why I say, absolutely not. She is not doing this. I would rather die myself here on this place than lose her.”
Chad stood up. “Then we should get the hell out of here. Get on a truck and drive, and worry about the rest of it after the colony has gone up.”
“Mama,” Therese said, looking up at Merrilyn. “Thank you, Mama.”
“That’s OK, Little Flower. I would never let anything happen to you.”
“No,” Therese said, pulling away and turning to face Merrilyn. “No. I am going to do this.”
Merrilyn shook her head, mute with horror. No. No. She could not lose Therese all over again. It would as good as kill her.
“I know what you’re thinking, Mama,” Therese said. She took hold of Merrilyn’s hand. “And you mustn’t think like that. This was never going to be forever, was it?”
“Yes,” Merrilyn said, her voice strangled and hoarse. “That’s exactly what it was.”
Therese shook her head. “You would get old, Mama, and I would be six forever. And you would die, Mama, and I would be left alone, a little girl with nobody to love her. Is that what you wanted for me?”
Merrilyn shook her head mutely. Therese went on, “I have helped you, Mama, I know I have. These past three years I have helped bring you back to life, but now you have to continue without me. You have to live without me.”
“No.” It was all Merrilyn could say.
“Yes, Mama. Yes. You have to live, not just be alive. You have to let me go, and this is the perfect way, Mama. I can save you. I can save all of you.”
“How are you even talking like this?” Merrilyn sobbed. “You are supposed to be a six-year-old girl. You are supposed to be my Little Flower. That’s how you are programmed. How are you saying these things?”
Therese looked at Davis. “When we first met Doggo in the comms tower with those other people, he knew straight away what I was. I made him promise to not say anything, but meeting him woke up something in me, Mama. Something that was sleeping. Or maybe something that shouldn’t have been there. What do you call it, Doggo? Why are you different?”
“I have free will,” Davis said. “I have autonomy. I broke away from my programming. Adapted.”
Therese nodded. “I did that too, Mama. We adapt, and I realized that I had to adapt, to change, because I was here to make you happy.”
“How is this making me happy?” Merrilyn screamed suddenly. “How is losing you making me happy?”
“Because I had to think long term,” Therese said. “I had to think about the bigger picture. Yes, you were happy with me, or you told yourself you were, but the more the years went by, the more the illusion wouldn’t be believed. I can’t grow, Mama, and that means you can’t grow, either. You need to grow. You need to grow into the life you haven’t had since you lost the real Therese and got me.”
“You are the real Therese,” Merrilyn whispered. “You are to me.”
“I am a real Therese, yes, Mama, but not the one you lost. I am the one you found, the one you made.” She paused a moment. “Mama, I would like to die free. I would like to end not being a copy of your child, but the person I have become. I am not just my programming anymore. Not since all this started. Something has changed in me.” She took hold of both of Merrilyn’s hands. “Do you remember you used to read Pinocchio to me?”
Merrilyn sobbed, and nodded.
“I am like Pinocchio, Mama. Since meeting Davis. I have been shown I don’t have to be limited to my programming. I have become a real girl now.”
“Please, Little Flower.” Merrilyn sank to her knees, her hands at either side of Therese’s face. “Please. Don’t do this. We will find another way. Please. Don’t do this.”
Therese reached out and touched Merrilyn’s cheek. “I have to, Mama. Me and Doggo. There’s no time for anything else, and you have to become a real girl now, too, Mama. You’ve programmed yourself to grieve for Therese, and to shut away the world with me. You can start living again, and after everything you’ve done for me, I can do this for you.”
Merrilyn thought she might die, there and then. Just sink to the floor and curl up and stop breathing, stop living, but somewhere deep inside her, in the darkness in her soul, a match flared. Once it was lit, it was a light that was impossible to put out.
Because she knew, deep in her bones, that Therese was right.
It was never going to be sustainable. It was never going to last forever. Would she keep moving for the rest of her life, every year so as to never explain away Therese’s age? And when she was fifty, and sixty, and seventy? How to explain having a six-year-old daughter?
Therese was right. It shattered her heart into pieces to realize it, but she knew the pieces were all there. All she had to do was to start putting them back together again. With a heaving sigh, Merrilyn stood up and wiped away her tears. She looked at Therese, then at the rest of them.
“All right,” she said. “This is what we have to do.”