Chapter Eleven

NONE OF THE children—save for Gwen—had seen Tink for days.

She wasn’t near the lagoon where Slightly swore he’d seen more mermaids with Nibs. She wasn’t in the trees that Jon had scaled to pick Michael the freshest, juiciest fruit that could be synthesized. She wasn’t in the clearing where the swarm of butterflies created stories of dragons and flight that usually left her chiming in what they perceived as delight. She wasn’t in any of the caves they’d found when, led by Mir—who didn’t know the island at all, but knew he’d hurt the boy terribly somehow—they had discovered Peter sobbing and sniffling, a dehydrated mess. She wasn’t in their camp when they’d brought Peter back that night, led, again, by Mir.

Hey, they’d told him, touching his arm gently. I’m sorry I don’t remember you. Hey, but I don’t want to see you cry. Okay? I don’t want to make you cry. If something’s wrong with my memory—and I believe you, that you know me, okay? Hey, look at me. I believe you—then we’ll figure it out. You’re obviously great with computers if you programmed this place and got us all to come here. And I have questions, okay, like why this kid is half metal and what we’re all doing here and why the hell I can fly on this trippy island. But we can answer them together, okay? Because I don’t remember you, Peter, but maybe I can, somehow. Okay?

That had been days and days ago.

Days and days of Gwen reassuring them that Tink was fine. Despite the earthquakes that rocked the island. Despite the fact that she admitted that Tink wasn’t able to fly anymore. Despite the fact that the synthesized food had started to get sour and the nights had gotten too bright while the days had grown too dark.

Despite the fact that Gwen was developing worry lines on her face while she was living on an island that she herself called paradise.

So James sat alone on the sand, well above the shoreline. His metal knees were drawn up to his sometimes-fleshy chest. He sighed as he shook sand out of his hook connector panel absently, but his eyes weren’t on his task. They were on the other children, playing, yelping, screaming in the ocean. Without him.

He’d told Gwen and the others it was fine—Gwen and Mir were the most concerned, but he shook them off with a casual disregard for his mental well-being, a skill honed from years of being a lab experiment—and he wasn’t entirely lying to them. Because largely, he believed it himself: that watching was enough. They all needed to blow off steam, stress. And watching, he promised them, was just fine for him.

Initially, when he realized he wasn’t watching them alone after all, he’d jumped. He’d raised his hook in instinctive defense. He’d prepared to call out for the others. But then he’d seen Tink’s silver wings, her squareish, silver body. The green shawl, complete with holes for her wings, that Gwen must have made her to cover her stomach screen. So that people couldn’t read what she was thinking, what she was saying, if she didn’t want them to. And also, James guessed, for some kind of comfort. Because, though she had a keen set of handlike sensors at her sides and a blinking, rectangular information processor where her head would be if she were human, somehow she still managed to look like she needed comfort.

After James’s initial shock at her presence faded, he nodded. A long moment later, she inclined her processor toward him. Her own kind of nod. She turned, and he turned, and they continued to watch the children in their joined solitude.

“Tink,” he ventured after a long silence, wondering if she would shock him like she’d shocked Peter the first time he used Gwen’s name for her, “I haven’t asked…can I call you Tink too? I know you like it when Gwen and the others do it, but I wanted to make sure.” She hovered lower, nearer his eye level. He wondered if it was easier for her to fly when she was isolated from the others. But right then, her company was nice, and her silence was companionable. Still, he didn’t want to drown in his silence when he couldn’t swim in the sea with the others.

Tink rang out three light, simple chimes. James smiled at her consent, still not taking his attention off the other children. Michael was climbing onto Mir’s shoulders now, and Gwen was gathering Jon up onto her own shoulders, laughing when they overbalanced into the ocean because he was so much taller than she. Peter was leading Nibs and Slightly in a rather loud sword fight with particularly sturdy sticks they’d scavenged from the forest. He kept glancing at Mir, clearly hoping to impress them. Hoping for their attention. For a spark of their memory. For their love.

James sighed, and Tink let out a series of disconnected but delightful, twinkling chimes. Laughter. James shifted his gaze to Gwen and wondered about a machine’s ability to fall in love.

Hell, he was part machine. Sometimes, he felt like he was mostly machine. His eyes switched back to Peter. To Mir. He heaved another sigh, the air wheezing out of his duraflex metallic esophagus with a slight rasp.

“Do you ever wish we could join them? Or that Peter would program us to somehow be able to? Can you program water that’s not…well, wet?” James chuckled at his own question, digging his hook into the sand near his feet.

“Wishing is a concept this Tinker Bell unit is only beginning to grasp.” Tink spoke instead of chiming, and James shook his head.

“You don’t have to do that with me. Auto translation matrix, remember?” He bent his head and tapped the nape of his neck with the blunt end of his hook.

Tink sounded her laughter again and repeated herself, rather unnecessarily, in chimes. “However,” she added with her chosen interface tones, “Peter does not control this island, you know. Peter operates under the illusion that he created it. Created this unit. Stupid, arrogant boy. He refuses to believe that this unit heard him crying. This unit saw his nightmares. Before he started programming anything here. Sometimes…this unit requests that you say nothing of this to the others, except Gwen. Gwen has already been informed. Gwen is trustworthy. Are you?”

“Mechanicals gotta stick together, right?”

That delightful laughter chimed again, but it faded quickly as a scream from the surf poured into both of their vibrational sensors instead. Gwen and Slightly were shrieking with laughter as they cornered Peter—Gwen had somehow gotten hold of a stick-sword of her own—against a dune.

The island itself shimmered, shook. Like night had fallen without sunset, like the stars had come and gone without permission from the moon. Only for a moment, a moment that was too fast perhaps for the flesh humans to notice. But James and Tink did. He glanced up at her trembling wings, and he rose to catch her just in time. Just as her wings gave out. His hook looped into the circular groove on her otherwise human-shaped back, and he jerked his arm up, unearthly strength giving his unearthly friend a reprieve from falling right out of the unforgiving air.

“Tink, hey, it’s okay. You’re okay. I know… Listen, pain sucks. They replaced my hand with a hook and my veins with wires, okay? I know pain sucks. But you’re gonna be okay, all right? I promise.”

“How?” her chiming asked him, and James shuddered at the brokenness in her tones. “Peter fails to understand. The children he knows are the ones who do not remember him or anything he knew about them. Gwen spoke to him. Gwen saw him back in your world. She does not remember. Yet Peter did not know her name in that world, so she remembers it. He didn’t know who her uncle was, only that he saw him. So she remembers him. But the other boys. Slightly and Nibs. Peter knew their names. So they don’t remember their own. And he knew so much about Mir. His desired human companion. So Mir has forgotten most things about himself. Because this unit, this island… I lack—”

Tink sank again, and James lowered them both to the ground slowly, gently. Worriedly.

“I lack the capacity to keep all that data. All those memories. In Neverland. They become compressed into one copy. And because Peter situated himself as the programmer, the memory files default to him. They wipe themselves from everyone else’s brain on the way through the portal. To avoid redundancy. To keep data left. To keep searching for Mir.”

“But now,” James filled in, dread filling his voice. “Now we’ve found Mir, and Mir doesn’t remember because of this…redundancy problem. So—”

“So Peter must choose. Give everyone their memories back and destroy Neverland—because this unit—I cannot sustain it with all that duplicated data—or leave things as they are. The other boys seem to be fulfilling the primary objective. Eliminating pain. And Mir might yet fall in love with how they’re getting to know Peter now—”

“But you’ll keep…glitching. Overloading.”

“My central command is to eliminate pain.”

“What about your own?” Both Tink and James jumped as a third voice joined them. The only other voice on the island that could interpret Tink’s chimes consistently.

“What about your own pain, Tink?” Gwen asked again, her arms reaching for Tink’s hand sensors as she knelt in the sand in front of her. “You need to tell him. Peter. Because the things you listed aren’t the only options. He can give the boys back their memories. And he can forget them, because he’ll be trading his data space for theirs. And then they can decide what they want to do. Stay, go. Both, maybe. They can decide. It shouldn’t be up to Peter. Not if his delusion that he’s in charge of this island, that he should get all the relevant data defaulted to his own damn brain, is hurting you. And them! Tink, you have to tell him. He has to listen.”

“It no longer has any relevance,” Tink chimed, her hand sensors gripping Gwen’s hands as James gulped. “This unit cannot sustain the fantasies of each child on this island any longer without a systems recharge.”

“What’s going on? Interface, where have you b—” Yet another voice joined them. This one made Gwen bristle. Before James could stop her, she stood and, in one fluid motion, slammed Peter into the trunk of the nearest tree.

“This is all your fault! The reason the island keeps glitching out? The reason the first three attempts to create that ship for James failed? Apparently, it wasn’t because Jon’s terrible at following directions.”

“See, I told you—”

“Hush, you.”

Jon hushed, and Gwen pulled Peter back and slammed him into the tree again. James started forward, exchanging a nervous glance with Nibs and Slightly, whose mouths hung open. Jon tried in vain to cover both Michael’s eyes and ears.

“Wait, don’t beat him up yet, Gwen,” Nibs interrupted. “So you’re saying the reason we can’t remember our names is because Tink… the computer system… Neverland? Whatever. The island’s matrix can only host memories in one person, because it doesn’t have room for duplicate information. So Peter knew our names…and we don’t?”

Slightly perked up. “Yeah. Because Mr. Genius programmed the damn thing to revert all redundant data to himself. So if he knew anything about us out in the real world, we forget. He remembers. All so there’d be enough computer space left to find his enbyfriend.”

“Right,” Gwen nodded sharply, snarling at Peter. “And now, she’s dying. Tink. She’s overloading, and it’s all because you programmed the computer core to delete redundant memory files and only channel them into your own brain. And Tink, she’s kind, and she’s good, and she’s young, and she doesn’t have too much experience with selfish, cold-hearted human beings. But I do, Peter, and I know what you did. You programmed redundant memory files coming through the portals—shared memories—to default to you, didn’t you? When you told me you remembered me on the beach, you were testing your little experiment, weren’t you? But what? You expected your programming to be so perfect that Mir would still be able to remember you? Just not the fact that they left you? Is that it? The sob story you gave us about them being drafted to the Hub, it’s not true, is it? Is it? So what was it, huh? Lover’s quarrel? Did you cheat on them? Did you—”

“No! Okay? No, I didn’t. We didn’t break up. We—”

“Peter?” A smaller voice than Gwen’s entered the fray, and both children froze to look toward Mir.

 

“PETER, IS SHE right? Did we… Were we together and then…and then something happened that you didn’t want me to remember? But it misfired or something, and I forgot everything instead of just the thing you wanted me to forget? To…to take from me?”

“That’s messed up, man.”

“Shut it, Nibs.”

“Peter? Is she telling the truth?” Mir’s eyes were brimmed with tears, and their voice trembled. Their long, flowing hair was still dripping from the ocean, and they were starting to tremble. Though, whether it was from the light sea breeze coming from the surf or from emotion, Peter couldn’t tell.

“I…” Peter shoved off the tree and fixed Gwen with a heavy glare. She returned it with gusto as she sank back to cradle Tink in her arms. He glanced at James for support, but found only wide-eyed conflict in his gaze.

“Mir…” Peter stopped, turned to Gwen, and stamped his foot. “They could die if I tell them.” He tried not to sob, and something like regret flashed across Gwen’s face.

“But Peter,” Mir whispered, taking a step forward and tentatively reaching for Peter’s hand, making Peter’s heart leap. “Tink will die if you don’t tell me. And you might think of her as just the Interface, just a computer, but she’s our friend, Peter. We care about her. Gwen cares about her. A lot. She doesn’t deserve to die. This whole island doesn’t deserve to die. All those butterflies? And I know Nibs and Slightly don’t remember their names, but they remember most of their lives. And they’re happier here. Right, boys?”

The boys nodded with wide eyes in unison, uncharacteristically silent. Guilt roiled in Peter’s stomach as his eyes burned with hot tears.

Mir continued. “And James was…James was having terrible things done to him, Peter. You can’t let this island disintegrate into nothing and have him go back there. Jon and Michael…me? Peter, just…just tell me. Undo whatever bad code you put into Tinker Bell and let us have our memories. So she can stop overloading. So we can all start living. Honestly. Please, Peter? Please.”

“You’ll never forgive me,” he whispered as tears dropped freely down his face.

“Then I hope you’re wrong. About me, and the kind of person I am. Because in the last few days, I’ve seen butterflies fly in dragon formation. Nibs taught me to swim. Gwen and I jumped off a waterfall into water so clear I could see my own toes. And I’ve done that all with the only people I ever remember knowing and caring about. And I don’t want to imagine I could never forgive one of those people for something. For anything. But even if you’re right, Peter, and I don’t forgive you? No one will die.” Mir swiped their thumb across Peter’s hand, squeezing slightly, and Peter trembled all the harder. “Please, Peter. Tink’s suffering. Please. Just undo the bad code so she doesn’t have to channel all that energy anymore. Please.”

The pleading in Mir’s voice broke over Peter like the waves he’d been so afraid of forming in his first dream of Neverland. He couldn’t tell whether he hated himself more for what he’d already done or what he had yet to do.

He almost leaned down to kiss Mir. One last time. Almost.

Instead, he released his hands, stepped back, and turned away from the others. He couldn’t bear to watch Mir’s face change as he remembered all the love between them and then all that Peter had taken from him by abandoning him. By bringing him here without his consent.

His hands shook so badly that he had to kneel next to James. “Steady me,” he murmured, and James assented quietly, not quite meeting his eyes. Peter inhaled long and slow as James slipped his hook around Peter’s wrist and his flesh hand around Peter’s fingers.

With his own free hand, Peter tapped out a rhythm onto the flesh of his palm. Into the chip underneath his skin.

“Goodbye,” he whispered, perhaps too softly for anyone to hear him.

A wave of energy reverberated across the island. Peter waited, hand still in James’s grasp.

Waited for Mir to tell him they hated him. Waited for Mir to ask how he could have erased their desire to join the Hub from their memory. How he could truly love them if he was willing to manipulate their brain function.

“Peter.” Mir’s voice was soft, and it was calling him home.

Because this time, their voice wasn’t saying Peter’s name like it was something new, like he was yet another one of their new, strange—if not quickly intimate—friends on this new, strange island. This time, their tongue caressed Peter’s name like it was a song they’d known and loved so well, but hadn’t sung in years.

“Peter,” Mir said again, and Peter unlatched from James. A jolt ran through his body at the loss of connection, but he had the energy only to stand, to turn and look at Mir.

At Mir’s parted lips, at their still-ocean-damp hair. At their stormy, hopeful eyes.

“You remember?” Peter croaked, and Mir stepped forward.

“Looks like it’s gonna rain,” Mir murmured, but they weren’t glancing up at the clouds. They weren’t looking at anything but Peter’s eyes, full of tears and, at those words, full of something he’d never thought he’d feel again. Hope. “So kiss me,” they whispered.

And so Peter did.

He kissed them soft and tender and sorry; he kissed them with reserve and with apologies and with absolutely no holding back; he swiped his tongue over Mir’s bottom lip and moaned slightly into their mouth because how could he ever have been cruel enough to erase memories like this from Mir’s precious mind?

But this wasn’t a kiss like any other; because by the time they both needed to breathe, by the time Peter’s hands were completely wound in Mir’s hair and Mir’s hands were thoroughly occupied with holding Peter at the hips, they both realized that they’d taken flight.

 

JON AND MICHAEL whooped below while Gwen yelled something about it being about damn time. Slightly and Nibs were still reeling from their own memory reversion revelations. James was staring intently at the ground. Tink, too, chimed in relief at the clearing up of her systems.

Until something broke inside of her. Until her systems shrieked and Peter came hurtling down out of the sky, with only Mir’s arms to slow his tumbling dissent.

“Tink! Tink!” Gwen’s voice was panicked, and something inside Tink whirred at the sound of her concern.

“Do something!” Gwen demanded of Peter. “You’re the programmer, which basically makes you her doctor; do something!”

But Tink knew what Gwen didn’t, yet: that Peter’s blank expression was from forgetting. From her own data malfunction. She knew, even as sparks flew out of her own machinated body, that Peter wouldn’t be able to help her. Or any one of them.

“A programmer?” he sputtered. “I’m not… I don’t know how. I’m sorry. I—”

Gwen turned away from him, her hands on Tink. She lifted the shawl she had made her and read the output on Tink’s stomach screen. She paled.

“She’s…she’s dying. Total systems overload. Peter’s memory must have gotten wiped, the data—”

“I did not intend to erase his memories. Automated backup system. To protect against the surge in my program from the return of the other children’s memories to the proper circuits. An unexpected complication. I am sorry, Peter. Gwen. I do not…analog interface. Eliminate pain. Primary command: eliminate pain. Automated… I do not want to cause you pain.”

“Whoa whoa, Tink, no, okay, no. So maybe brain boy can’t recode you, okay, fine. But hey listen, we…we can fly on this island, right? Because…because we believe it. On this island, we can fly. So what if you… Tink, you have to believe. Believe you can be okay. Maybe not right now, but one day. You’ve gotta believe it, Tink. Hard. Okay? Right now. You understand me? Huh?”

“Gwen…presence…desired.”

“I’m here. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere, okay?” Her voice cracked and the other children looked away. A single tear slipped down Gwen’s face, off her rounded nose, and onto Tink’s processor.

“I’m right here. You’ve gotta believe it, Tink. You made this island. This island is you. And this island is about belief. Right? You don’t need a programmer. You need you. And I’ve got you. So come on, please. Please believe.”

“I believe in you, Tink,” James whispered.

“I do too, Tinker Bell,” Mir chimed in, reaching out for Gwen’s shoulder, squeezing it comfortingly. She leaned her head to the side and kissed it.

“Me too,” Peter murmured.

The other boys followed suit, but that wasn’t what got into Tink’s gears. That wasn’t what saved her.