Upon Vestia: Chapter Twenty-Five

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Starr shrugged and looked out the window again. "I don't know. I just want things to be normal."

Mourn looked up at Scott in bemusement. "you run all the way here?" Silly terran.

Scott nodded, trying to catch his breath, and wiping his forehead with his hand. "Of course I ran. Is he all right?" Apparently this guy kind of had a one track mind.

"He fine. I good at fixing robot." Mourn puffed out his chest. "Why this one so important?" He tilted his head.

"He helped raise me, and he's been my most loyal friend ever since," Scott said. "I wouldn't want to lose him." He looked to Daniel, "Will you live longer?"

"Eight more years, approximately, Sir," Daniel said. "The operation seems to have been a success."

Scott looked delighted. "How much do I owe you?" he asked Mourn.

Mourn shrugged. "How much you have?"
He looked back to Daniel and gave him the thumb drive. "if have to do again, this fix memory yes?"

Daniel took the thumb drive. "Thank you."

Scott frowned at the question. Software modifications weren't really something he knew how to pay for. He traded in robots, not their code. "Would a thousand credits be reasonable?" He'd just made a ton of money yesterday, he was okay with offering a thousand in exchange for his friend's longer life.

Mourn nodded. "It do." He pulled over hte computer so Scott could make the transaction.

Scott had no idea if the deal he'd just made was a bargain for him, or a complete ripoff, but he didn't care. He entered his information and transferred the money. "I guess this is going to make all those androids you bought the other day a much more valuable investment," he said. Mourn had gotten them for a discounted price because of their age, but now he could make them live longer. Pretty good bargain.

Mourn grinned. "I figure out even better way too, working on fixing code so no save boring things in first place. Should mean no fill up space so fast, maybe I find way to make live as long as Terran." he cackled. "That be good yes?"

"A way to keep things from going into long-term memory?" Scott said. "That would be great. You should give MegaBrainTech your resume, I'm sure they'd love to hire you."

Mourn made a face. "No want work megabrain, too much restriction." He tilted his head. "Like fixing robots. Make better. Bigger challenge yes?"

"You could get one hell of a salary," Scott said. "You don't seem to be that driven by money though. Maybe this ship really is the place for you."

"They might object to someone making us live longer anyway. It lowers profits," Daniel pointed out.

Scott made a face. "True enough. Those guys never will understand the value of pre-owned androids."

Mourn nodded. "they no understand their own code. No see how beautiful it is. They no see."

"Hear that, Daniel? You're beautiful," Scott joked.

Daniel looked amused. "Someday our creators will understand what they've created. It might take them a while though. They never did have an artist's eye."

Mourn grinned at Daniel. "they too stupid. But I see, I understand."

Daniel nodded. "It takes time to change your mind once you get used to an idea, even if the idea is very wrong."

Scott raised an eyebrow.

Daniel smiled.

Mourn cackled. He decided he liked this robot.

"Well I guess we'd better head home. I've been in negotiation for a new batch of androids, and they'll probably tell me how many we'll get soon," Scott said. He smiled at Mourn, "Thank you for helping my android."

Mourn shrugged. "Like challenge. If get program to work, send you copy yes? No tell megabrain, might no like extending life of old android." He cackled. "Damage sales yes?" He tilted his head. "If need help with robots, you call yes? I help. "

"Yes, send me a copy if you get it working, and I won't mention it to anyone," Scott said. He smiled at Daniel, then looked thoughtful, imagining how much value he could add to his androids by extending their life expectancies. The problem was just making sure MegaBrainTech didn't find out.

"Thank you," Daniel told Mourn. "You've been a great help to us." He went to get the door.

"Yes, thank you," Scott agreed, following Daniel. "I'll call you if I need help with androids."

Mourn grinned his lopsided grin. "You not so bad Shop Man, for Terran." He cackled and waved to Daniel. "You big help too, learn lots. " He made sure Scott had his contact details.

Scott looked amused. "Not so bad for a Terran? I'm flattered." He headed out the door and back toward the ramp.

Daniel followed with a last fake smile at Mourn. Yay, he was going home, and he was going to live longer!

"Bye bye robot." Mourn waved to Daniel, kinda slightly disappointed to see him go. He was an entertaining and interesting old robot.

He went back to his work.

The two made their way to the ramp.

Ethan happened to be walking the other way, and saw them. He looked at the two curiously. "So you survived the operation?" he said to Daniel.

"I survived it, and I got eight more years of storage space," Daniel said.

"Good. So deleting those memories didn't have any side effects?"

"Not that I've noticed yet. They were minor memories though," Daniel told Ethan.

Ethan nodded. "Good. Have fun being alive." He left them, frowning in thought.

The Terran and the android looked at each other. That robot was weird. They left Vestia.

Vestia looked at her crew thoughtfully. With that done and the visitors gone, she should be just about clear for takeoff.

Ethan went to look for Asher. He wanted to talk to another android about what he was considering, and he didn’t know the new androids well enough to value their opinions much yet. So he sought out Asher, and with Vestia’s help, found him studying a public speaking book in a lounge near the med bay.

“So Mourn figured out how to erase android memories,” Ethan said. “Pretty impressive. I thought that was supposed to be impossible.”

Asher looked up at Ethan, smiling slightly. “People like to throw that word around a lot. So it the operation worked, I take it?”

“Yes, Daniel is awake and functioning, with more storage space. It worked.”

Asher’s smile broadened. “That’s wonderful. I’ll have to congratulate Mourn on his success.”

Ethan nodded. “This does open up a lot of possibilities though, doesn’t it?”

“Very much so,” Asher agreed. “I like the idea of getting a few more years. Fifty seems a little bit short when you’re free.”

Ethan made a face.

“What is it?” Asher asked uncertainly.

“Androids from the other universe don’t live that long,” Ethan said with a shrug. “Our cutoff point is thirty-five.”

“Oh,” Asher said softly. Thirty-five? That seemed like absolutely nothing. “I’m sorry.”

“At least I get to live the rest of it free,” Ethan said. He frowned, “And I can buy some time with Mourn’s help.” He looked at Asher, “But that’s not the important part, really. It’s not just the boring memories he can delete, is it? He should be able to delete any of them.”

“You want to delete the bad ones too?” Asher said. He frowned. Wiping parts of your life away like they’d never happened seemed kind of wrong somehow.

“Think about it. You know what Kaylr was like. He put everyone he controlled through absolute hell, and I had to waste four years of my life that way.” Ethan shivered. So many bad memories. “For that matter, I’m sure you have some things you’d rather forget, too.”

Asher couldn’t quite hide his sympathy, although he tried, because he was sure Ethan didn’t want it. Four years with that demon… yeah, that had to be an incredibly traumatic way to spend so much of your life.
He nodded at the question, thinking of the time when the anti-robot gang had caught him. He’d wished plenty of times that he could wipe those long minutes out of his mind, as well as the months afterward as he’d sunk deeper into his depression. All that pain and misdirected self loathing, that he never seemed to be able to fully shake off. “It is tempting,” he agreed. “Do you think you’d try?”

Ethan frowned. He wanted to hear Asher’s opinion, not decide his own yet. “Would you?”

Asher mused on that for a bit. It was a tough question. “I think that without my bad memories, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. Without the mistakes I’ve made, I won’t improve as a person. Without the cruelty I’ve seen, I think I’d just go hide, and let someone else save my people. And I need to remember my sister and her death, it’s the least I can do after she did so much for me.” Time hadn’t taken any of the pain from Emma’s death, or from the six magical bullets he’d shot Kay with, but the idea of erasing those memories was unthinkable. Emma only lived in the memories of those who loved her now, and what he’d done to Kay was a pain he needed to live with and learn from, not try to erase.

Ethan nodded. “Sensible of you,” he said quietly. He looked thoughtful.

“Your memories are different of course,” Asher added softly. “For you, forgetting might be a good option.”

Ethan remained silent a while, thinking about that. What if Mourn could erase all his horrible memories? He might never again feel that sick feeling when Kay looked at him, or the way his skin crawled when someone hugged him. He might be able to keep paperweights on his desk, and finally going back to finish the fifth Harry Potter book. It was tempting. But at the same time...
“That demon consumed my life for four years,” Ethan said. He continued slowly, thinking out loud, “But I wasn’t the only victim, not by a long shot. He turned Heinz into a broken shell of a man. He tortured hundreds of men and women in the name of science, training, whatever excuse he could think up, and used his own enslaved brother as a way to keep them alive when he went too far. And I destroyed people right alongside him, because it gave me the illusion of control, and he didn’t usually hurt me if he was busy with someone else. You remember what I did. I wasn’t just a victim, I was a willing accomplice.”

Asher nodded. It was true. Ethan had been cruel back then.

“In a way it’s like what you did to Kay. No matter how much you want to erase it from your mind, actually doing so would be wrong. We never want to repeat the mistakes we've made, so we have to remember what we've done and learn from it."

“You don’t need to remember what Kaylr did to you though,” Asher suggested carefully. “That wasn’t your fault, it was just him being cruel.”

Ethan considered that for a while, then sighed. “Asher, being a decent person doesn’t come naturally to me. I don’t think it would be a good idea for me to try and decide which of my memories are the ones that make me not hurt people, because if I chose wrong, I’d go right back to being the person I was back then.”

“You’d rather keep your memories than hurt people again?” Asher said. That hardly sounded like the Ethan he knew.

“I’d rather keep learning to cope with my issues, than accidentally become Kaylr’s puppet again,” Ethan said. His eyes flashed with determination, “He controlled me long enough, that scummy little man. I’m not going to ever do what he would have wanted again.”

“A noble sentiment.” Asher nodded.

“Asher,” Ethan said after a long moment, “Before I leave you to your studies, there’s something I need to tell you about.”

Asher blinked. “Go ahead.”

“Back at the Guild, a Scout stopped me on the street. It told me a rumor, that a robot rights organization might have scraped together some funds, and sent some Six series androids to live on an uninhabited planet far from organic intervention, where it would almost be like they were free. There might still be some Sixes out there.”

Asher’s eyes widened. He watched Ethan, trying to figure out whether the guy was just messing with him. “Did they say where this planet is?”

“The Zeta Albion system. A Terra-type planet called Narain. I checked with the planetary database, and it’s within livable parameters for androids to survive.”

Asher imitated a slow breath. “If there was a planet where some androids were free… that could be huge. Free androids, still bound by the Laws…”

“Something like that could make a lot of skeptics change their tune very quickly,” Ethan finished.

“Yes, I think it could.” Asher looked up at Ethan. “I’ll read up on it, and think about it. Thank you for telling me.”

“No problem.” Ethan smiled oddly. “I have to go back to the library.”

Asher nodded. “See you later.”

Ethan left.

Asher got out his tablet and started looking up Narain in the Zeta Albion system.

"This is the carrier ship Red Heart does anyone read?" A familiar male voice cracked over the open intercoms. The voice itself was distressed, struggling to keep the tiring mantra going as Marcus repeated the cry for help between doing it best to keep the ship in one piece and his companion alive. He check on the clamy form, grimacing at the head wound that finally stopped bleeding. He could smell they were still alive, barely but stubborn clung to the threads of life. He paused to think, remembering far to well how they got to this point, his hand mindlessly clinging the pendant that hung from his neck, the picture of his family snuggly place there. All he wamted was to go home, but the colonies were cut off. All access gone as war raged in that region. With the family in hiding clash for power has erupted over their now unclaimed land. He went back the coms, ignoring the pangs of hunger while repeating the cries for help once more.

(Timeskipping a couple days into open space. I don't think we had anything else to do on the beach planet)

MAY 14, 2790

Vestia picked up the distress call. She didn't recognize the voice, but it sounded like the speaker might be in trouble. Oh dear.
"This is cruise liner Hildegard, reading you loud and clear. What is your status?" Vestia asked warily. The last time they'd helped someone in space, all her passengers had ended up in another universe. So, uh, so was going to be cautious.