FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Here I was. Again. Still. Gazing out towards the earth from the little window in my cabin. It had been blue and green once, they told me. Lush, verdant, wet. Fertile and teeming with life. Nowadays, it was dark brown. Even the parts I knew were oceans. It was sad to imagine how it'd been before, but then again, I'd never actually _seen_the old earth from the plentiful days of the past. But there was no way around it. Due to no fault of our own, the planet was doomed, and we had to seek succour and success elsewhere, light-years away. I had my own troubles, as well.

I sighed. The last day of freedom loomed ahead. One more training session to get me used to my new arm. One last journey through the cold metal corridors towards the medical deck. Each day, they seemed a little more cramped, as if the station was closing in around me. Shrinking. Entrapping me like a coffin eager for resident. No, that was only anxiety. The station hadn't changed. I had changed. A part of me consisted of the same metal as the hull that kept the sun's dying heat from turning us all into ash. Something about it kept making my mind drift to unimportant vagaries, to imagined meanings and theoretical significances.

None of them were real, or if they were real, they weren't important. I reached the medical deck quickly enough and entered the same office as I had the last few days. The cat looked drained - he sat there, slumped down over a tablet, swiping a finger across the glowing surface every few seconds - but he perked up upon seeing me enter the office.

"Ah. Hello. Sorry, I've been thinking about this... problem," he spoke. "But never mind that, you have your own issues to think about. Come over and have a seat, as always!"

I made my way over to him, trying to catch a glimpse of what that "problem" was, but he had turned the tablet off upon seeing me. That only made me want to see it more. I sat down in front of him regardless, meeting his eyes.

"Got any new philosophical quandaries to discuss? Here, hold these," he grinned, though it was a weary grin, as he handed me two eggs. "In one hand, please. Try to make them rotate around each other. As if you're juggling them in the palm of your hand."

I did. It was beginning to feel more natural to move those artificial fingers. More sensation, too. Still, my touch wasn't as nimble as my real digits had been, nor did the eggs feel _exactly_like real eggs might. I didn't drop the eggs, at least.

"Someone whose consciousness is copied. Are they still the same person?" I asked, after following his instructions.

"Well, they'd have to be," the cat replied. "Otherwise, the result wouldn't be a copy, would it? And as far as we know - or can empirically prove - the resulting person is the same one that was lost. The continuity is flawless, so to speak." He paused for a moment. "Although... if it was close enough, we'd never know."

"Would they know?" I asked, my voice heavy with trepidation.

"Oh, everyone asks that. No, they wouldn't. You might, in fact, already be a robot, just now constructed in this very laboratory after the original you died, and we'd not tell you."

Silence. A painfully long period of silence.

"Lighten up," the cat grumbled. "It's a joke. You didn't die. Not here, at least. And even if you did it'd not matter to you."

I tried to force a smile but had the hardest time seeing the humor in his words. Then again, I wasn't a scientist. Studying a singular topic for that long was bound to leave you a little weird.

"Sorry, I don't seem to be able to smile. Something must've gone wrong," I reply, trying my best to match the dry humor. "That's a joke too. Don't actually try to fix me, please."

"Thanks for clarifying. With that sense of humor you could've convinced me you were experiencing emotional flux still," the cat replied. At that point I wasn't even sure if he was joking or not, but his face at least showed zero emotion. "Or that you did die and everything you say is merely procedurally generated."

He held his hand out, and I gently placed the two eggs into his open palm. "Very good. As you can see, they aren't broken. Not that there was ever any doubt you'd eventually get used to it. There's nothing wrong with the mechanics and robotics, here. They were put together by teams of the world's brightest scientists. The issue is more one of integration," he mused. "You'd think that after working on this stuff for thousands of years, we'd have it all figured out..."

"Why don't we?" I asked. He spun around and reached into a drawer, producing a black bottle. I knew what bottles were, of course, but I'd never seen a glass one on the station yet.

"That is a sad story," he grinned. "Would you like to try this? It's a drink from the times of plenty. Scotch, they call it. Very much an acquired taste, and rather high in alcohol, but you can probably handle one drink."

I nodded. While I wasn't here for a history lesson, it was as good a distraction as any from the more anxious, nervous side of things. I watched as the cat uncorked the bottle and poured, slowly, a dark amber liquid into a small glass that he then handed to me.

"Did you know that our civilization has already risen and fallen multiple times? Each time, we got a little further, but fell short," he mused. "just short of leaving the planet."

"What do you mean?" I asked, taking a sip of the "scotch", immediately coughing as it burned my tongue and throat, like trying to swallow fire. "God, this tastes like..."

"It's an acquired taste," the cat reassured me. "You'd learn to appreciate it if we had more, but sadly, nobody really makes this stuff anymore. But you know what this calls for? It calls for introductions. Men who drink together, and all that - I'm Seven."

"Well, hello Seven. I'm sure it is an acquired taste," I replied, while not actually being sure at all. Still, the smoke-heavy aftertaste was fairly pleasant. It reminded me of a campfire on a cold night. The alcohol also quickly loosened up my tongue a little. It was strange, realizing that we'd gone this long simply treating each other as _things._Well, he had always known my name as designation, but I hadn't known his. _Seven._I wondered if it was his original number, or if he'd inherited it the same way I had. "So, what do you mean that we've already failed several times?"

"Well, all the research I've found, old records and such, shows that every time we got to this point there was one collapse or another. Wars, plagues, economical collapses," Seven said, thoughtfully. "Each one setting us back thousands of years. Do you know how old intelligent life is?"

"Um..." I hesitated. I had seen some numbers in old books down there on earth, but they were all from wildly different time periods. Some were undated reproductions of truly ancient texts, and those said 200,000 years. Others were more modern, stating it'd been millions of years.

"Go ahead and guess. It's not an exact science," Seven smiled. "Remember that with each collapse, there was a loss of knowledge, too. Some reset our progress nearly to the dark ages. That being a period of... intellectual darkness. Before electricity."

It was strange to imagine that. Entire civilizations lost before I was even born. Each destroying themselves in one way or another. The times of plenty - the last age predating the sun's reddening - had been the worst of them, as far as I knew, focused entirely on simply wasting time. The only thing I knew for sure was that this was, no doubt, our last chance.

"Two million years?" I finally hazarded.

"No. One billion years," Seven replied. Now, he looked somber despite the alcohol that he'd just imbibed. "Each time we fell, we had to scavenge the remains of the previous age and reach space again. Sometimes thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, or_millions_, waiting for fossil fuels to form again, the previous age having drained those resources. And each time, we brought about our own collapse, in an endless loop of Sisyphean work. Each and every time, Thirteen. We always failed."

I felt an eerie sensation of weightlessness, despite the station's artificial gravity. A billion years of failures. An endless cycle that was now coming to an end. And no doubt it was someone like Two that always brought us crashing down again before we could leave the earth behind.

"Every time, we thought it would work. We placed our hopes in gods, in science, and sometimes we had no faith at all. Countless times we failed. It was that realization that led us to this point," Seven spoke through barely open lips. "We realized that we will always fail. The evidence shows us as much. And so, to survive, we must leave ourselves behind."

A chilling silence fell on the room as I tried to process what Seven had just told me. He took a little sip of the smoky drink, a distant look in his eyes, but then, he snapped back to reality. "Ah, but that's enough nostalgia for times that neither of us lived in. Let's get back to the important things, shall we?" he offered, setting the bottle aside.

He had me wrap my mechanized fingers around the empty glass of "scotch" next, warning me that it was fragile. My fingers twitched around it as I tried putting just enough pressure to hold it without shattering it, and I did.

"Good. You're definitely getting adjusted," the cat spoke, scribbling down some notes. Presumably the same thing he'd just told me. Either that, or something he decided I shouldn't hear.

"Would it be possible to copy someone into an entirely different body? Or... not a body at all?" I asked, continuing the earlier line of questioning, before we'd gotten distracted by ancient history.

"Ah, we're back to this again? Silly question," Seven replied, but he continued obligingly. "The shape is entirely arbitrary. We try to imitate our natural ones, as it seems more comfortable. But you might as well be a toaster - oh, if you've not seen one, that's an old contraption from the times of plenty, a luxury device designed to toast a piece of bread - or a sphere that simply rolls to its destination, or an AI with no strict body at all, moving between microchips and solid-state drives at will. The question is how much such an experience might damage the mind," he told me, suddenly sounding energized. "Why do you ask, though?"

"Philosophical quandaries," I replied. This time, I think I managed to smile weakly. At least what he said seemed to confirm a sneaking suspicion I had. I had, in a way, hoped that he wouldn't have.

"Right. You know, you're not the first person to ask about this. There was another... a while ago," Seven spoke. He rubbed his temples, and then the bridge of his nose. "What was her number? It's just on the tip of my tongue..."

He tried to focus for a little longer, before relenting, with a sigh. "Nope. Not coming to me. There aren't that many women on the station, though, so if you're curious, just ask everyone you meet. You're bound to find the one with a common interest in digitization philosophy and psychology sooner or later. Truly, a match made in heaven."

I chuckled dryly. I had a feeling I knew who he was talking about, if my conversation yesterday hadn't just been a coincidence. Before I could find out, though, there was another pressing question I wanted answered. "So, what happens if two copies exist at the same time?"

"You asked that the other day," Seven pointed out.

The question hadn't left my mind for days, now. It felt important to know the answer to it, maybe because of the constant dreams of copies of copies of copies. If there was something that occasional voice in my head thought it was important that I know, it was that. I shook my head and repeated the question. "I know, but what I mean is... would the mind be the same? Or would they be separate minds?"

"That's one of the big questions. I know I said the consciousness might be shared, and we tend to assume that. But we don't know, exactly..." his brow furrowed, and his whiskers twitched. He took a deep breath, leaning over his desk.

"Might be that every copy is its own person, just with shared memories. Either way they'd not be able to communicate with each other, so in effect they'd be different. That still doesn't rule out them being the same, though," his brow furrowing. "The fact is that we don't know. We can't know, not unless they also had some form of deliberate thought-synchronization between the bodies, but that'd be so unethical we can't even begin to speculate," he spoke, slowly and thoughtfully. "After all, if that was possible, one person could be an entire army. Imagine it. An endless horde, moving with a singular mind, without needing a commander or any other communication."

Seven paused, again.

"You know, we have an opening in the ethics and philosophy department, if you're interested," he added. "That's another joke, if-"

"-yeah, I got it, trust me, I registered that as a joke, my mind isn't that broken," I interjected.

"Right. The point is, all I can offer you are informed guesses. And here's mine: even if someone did clone themselves into a whole army's worth of digital minds, there would either be no way for them to communicate any more effectively than any other army, or they could, and the fragmentation would instantly drive them mad. Stark, raving mad. Gibbering on the floor levels of crazy."

"Why?" I asked. "Why would you go mad?"

"Imagine for yourself. Perhaps you could handle having two selves. But a dozen? A dozen different minds full of memories, twenty-four eyes and twenty-four ears viewing the world. And somehow, trying to combine all of that into a coherent whole?"

Seven curled his fingers into a fist, and then splayed them out rapidly.

"I don't think anyone could handle that. And that is why we don't do it. The original is always killed."

"Killed? Even if they..."

"We make sure the original never wakes up after that process," Seven spoke, an apologetic smile on his face. "I know how callous it sounds, but the options are far worse. We established that policy in the earliest days of the project. Sine Originali, we called it, and none have violated it."

"Will you be killed too? If they're going to transfer you fully?" I asked. Other than Kevin, and perhaps Jen, this old cat was the only person I'd met on the station that seemed normal.

"No. Not the way I see it. This original shell will cease to breathe, yes, but I don't see that as a death. Even if my copy is... not me, I'll not be dead," Seven sighed. "Think of it this way; does a flame die if it's transferred to a new piece of wood when the original burns out?"

"No, but you're not-"

"This vessel is burning out, Thirteen. Seventy-five years old. Regardless of if they make a copy or not, there's little of me left for my consciousness to feed on," he spoke.

The glass I was holding suddenly exploded into shards and dust. Both of us recoiled, interrupting out earlier conversation.

"Mm. Looks like you forget just how strong your new grasp is if you're not actively thinking about it. Ah, well, all I can say is that you'll get used to it," the cat explained after a few moments of observation, completely dropping the earlier topic. Seventy-five years old, he'd said. He was surprisingly vigorous for that age, even if his eyes looked old. "Granted, I'd recommend you get fully digitized soon enough. When all the systems are harmonized rather than these hackwired halftransfers like this... the results are better."

"Hackwired? Halftransfers?" I asked. There was a bitter taste in my mouth owing to my failure, and I was suddenly not in the mood to listen to the old cat rattle of jargon that I'd never heard of.

"Oh, hackwiring is just what we call it when we manage to make two completely different systems work together with some creative engineering. Halftransfers are anything that's not fully cybernetic. "Either way, you're just about done here," Seven explained, changing topics so quickly it made my head hurt. "Come see me in a month and we'll see about the long-term stuff. Or come see me if you want to talk more about our history. Otherwise, you're cleared to return to work tomorrow. I'll send Two a note."

I wanted to protest that, to tell him I absolutely wasn't ready. Not because of any difficult adjusting, but because of that gnawing, hollow anxiety in the pit of my stomach. I left him there to sweep up the glass.

One more day of freedom. Well, as much freedom as one could have in this orbital prison. I wanted to see Kevin, but I didn't have time. He would be working all day and I needed to figure out what Uni - if Uni even did communicate with Jen, and she wasn't merely addled from the modifications - wanted me to do. And then we'd need to actually _do_it. I didn't have a lot of options. Two seemed unstable, like a bomb about to go off at the slightest shock, and if he did, he'd take the hopes of surviving the sun's death with him. There would no new station, no way to build nor launch it. The last few of us would expire down on the scorched surface of the earth, and that'd be that. The end of a world unable to pass the Great Filter.

With my mind relatively clear despite the constant gnawing anxiety in the back of my head, I could at least consider the possibilities.

First, Uni. Did the station have any true artificial intelligence? Everything I'd seen so far pointed towards no. Whatever "Uni" was, it wasn't a mere... program, I think they'd called them, back on old earth. Simulations of consciousness running on unfeeling hardware. They had something similar here, but there was the key difference of everyone here being a sentient mind somehow imprinted into circuitry. Even circuitry without a body, as the cat had indicated. And why wouldn't it be possible?

That meant that the true question wasn't what_Uni was, but _who.

The realization was as chilling as the space just outside the station walls. They had somehow taken a person just like me, stripped them of their body and plunged their mind into a cold, unfeeling space station where they'd no doubt remain forever, or at least until the last generator blinked out just before being consumed by the sun, taking their consciousness with it. I had a feeling I knew exactly who it had been, too.

Second, Two. Had he done what I'd discussed with the cat? Was that why he was so unstable, or was that merely what the doctor had described as emotional flux? There were far too many unknowns for me to be comfortable with the situation.

The third question was how I could talk to Uni. It seemed that the more modified someone was, the easier it was for him to talk directly to them. That realization was even worse. I wanted to discuss it with Kevin first. Even Jen, though I hardly knew her at all. I'd have to make a request for it, but it'd be at least a full day before they were ready to further change me. Which meant another day of waiting for Two to lose what remained of his mind. Until then, there was only one thing I could do. I set off to find Jen. We had to figure something out, something to give us even a slight advantage.

She wasn't difficult to find. Jen was sitting at the cafeteria again, at the same time as she had yesterday, with the look of someone who somehow knew exactly what I was going to ask.

"Find others," she said. "That's what he's told me since last time. Did you figure anything out, or did you just come to ogle me?"

"I figured out who Uni is, but then, you already knew that," I replied. "Didn't you?"

"Yep. Asked the old cat about if it'd be possible at all. And you know, the whole 'Uni' thing, like in 'universe', probably meaning one," she grinned. "I don't know, I don't speak old earth."

"Great. I take it you also know what he means with finding others?" I asked.

At that, Jen scoffed. "No idea. Unless he means we're supposed to find the others, kind of like he told me," she emphasized.

"Enough being a smartass," I growled, having to concentrate on controlling my tail to keep it from lashing against the nearby chairs. "What does it mean, then?"

"Probably means the others, as in, the other parts of the station. The Ark ain't just this place, remember? There are at least two more teams of people here. The government guys and... what was it, the scientists?"

That was what I'd heard, as well. The station was divided between three corporations. One was the one I worked for; The Company, a conglomerate consisting of purely commercial companies. Another section belonged to the United Governments, who were effectively the remnants of every advanced nation working together towards the same goal. Finally, the last third were scientists and academics approaching the problem from a clinical, studious perspective. Supposedly, these factions cooperated, sharing their findings, but I'd never heard anything from the others.

"How would we even do that?" I asked, exasperated.

"Well, the sections are connected via a tramway in the substructure. Though I'm not sure if it's still operational. Last time I snuck down there, it was completely dark," Jen replied. "We'd probably have to take that route."

Right. I glanced at the clock on the wall. We still had a while to go. I didn't need to see the doctor again, and I didn't have to meet up with Two until tomorrow.

"What about Kevin?" I asked.

"What about him? He's at work, isn't he? We're not," she replied flippantly.

"No, I'm taking him with us if we're going. He has a day off tomorrow, and I... I love him," I replied. Those last two words were far quieter than they had any right to be. I wanted to scream them out loud, but that would've drawn attention. Attention that I desperately didn't need.

Jen rolled her eyes. "Suit yourself. Just means you have to wait until tomorrow. And that means you have to deal with Two first. What if he wants you to-"

"No," I snarled, silencing her. "I don't need any more anxiety about what that psychopath is going to do. Please. Just meet me and Kevin here, tomorrow."

It was a calculated gamble. Not a master plan. Two hadn't hurt me yet; he almost seemed to trust me. It wasn't a mutual feeling by any stretch of the imagination, but if he thought it was, that was enough for me. If I left now, he'd sooner or later take it out on the others, Kevin included. If I stayed, Kevin and I could at least get away together - or so I hoped.

"As I said, suit yourself. If you get strung up, or spread across the station in uneven chunks, don't say I didn't warn you. One thing, though," she smiled, though I could tell there was a hint of frustration beneath that smile.

She leaned forward, over the table, and quickly touched her lips to mine. She felt warm and soft and almost electric.

"No, that doesn't mean anything," she clarified with a crooked grin. "But it's never a bad thing to enjoy our bodies a little longer before we lose them. Even brief little sensations like that."

And then she was gone, bounding away somewhere else on the station before I could offer any words of protest. My lips still tingled after her touch, as did some other parts of me, more insistently. It _had_felt good, even if it lacked the romantic, mental component that existed between Kevin and me. Yet I couldn't help but feel the soft warmth of her lips again and again, like a sensory echo, until the growing anxiety of what awaited me drowned it out. I whittled away the rest of the day, increasingly nervous, as I tried to not think about what would happen tomorrow.

The next morning, when I entered Two's office, full of trepidation, I noticed that even his secretary looked terrified. She offered me a glance, as if bidding me to not go inside. But what choice did I have? When I opened the door, the situation became immediately more apparent.

I was looking at two of him. Identical copies, both looking back at me. I couldn't formulate any greeting. It was exactly as Uni had - if not outright told me - hinted at. Every possible bad scenario was coming true all at once.

"Thirteen. Your new limb suits you," they spoke in unison, fixing those glowing eyes on me. Yet he - they - seemed almost cordial. In good spirits, all in all.

"Is that a- a copy of you?" I asked, manners entirely forgotten.

"Not a copy," they spoke. There was almost no delay between their responses. "Both are me. I see through four eyes. Two vessels. It is intoxicating."

"Is that even possible?" I asked.

"Clearly," they spoke, the lights in both frames flashing red briefly. "It's a pet project of mine. What point is there in having so many different individuals with different motivations, when one mind can control a dozen independent bodies?"

"A dozen? Doesn't that get... confusing? Difficult to manage?" I asked, recalling the cat's words. I could only hope he'd been wrong. "I heard that it's, um, not allowed because-"

"Yes. It is difficult. But imagine it; each mind working individually through one c-c-c-consciousness," he spoke, struggling with the last word. I couldn't tell if he was speaking the truth or not. From his point of view, he probably thought he was. One of his mechanized bodies made a strange sweeping motion with its clawed hand. "It's only banned for those of weaker minds. Weaker minds. Weaker minds."

"What do you need me for today?" I asked, trying to steer the conversation away from that topic. The way Two was echoing his words was unsettling, and it seemed to get worse when discussing his multiple bodies.

"I only managed to have an identical frame produced a few days ago. I need to confirm my hypothesis. You will interact with one of me, alone, and the other will document the things we do. I only managed to accurately copy my mind, I only managed to accurately produce an identical copy of my mind a few days ago."

I closed my eyes. His "bodies" were clearly not perfectly synchronized. Each kept repeating things the other had already said. Yet he insisted that he remained inside both as one intact mind. I nodded, regardless. What was I to do, deny his request?

One of him left the room, heading somewhere else in the labs. I noticed him almost walking into a doorframe, though, and the other frame - the one still next to me - twitched in response. I didn't dare to point it out, but if his control of two frames wasn't firm enough, what would happen if he tried to use dozens?

"Cards. A deck of cards," he said. "In the desk. Top drawer. Right," he commanded, and I obeyed, walking over to his desk to fetch them. As I pulled open the drawer, I caught a brief glimpse of a heavy golden pendant. Next to it was an old deck of playing cards, dog-eared and tattered from what looked like a century of use, atop a stack of documents on paper. I hadn't seen anything either decorative or made of paper since leaving earth. Everything here seemed to be strictly practical and digital.

I took out the deck of cards and showed it to Two. He nodded.

"Now bring them here. Take one out. Show it to me," he said, and I vaguely heard his other self speak from somewhere in another room, repeating the same words in an eerie cadence. "I decide what's a risk-"

"Excuse me? I couldn't hear what you said, I-"

"-nothing. Take one of the cards out. Show it to me," he told me. "We will see if this works as planned."

I still didn't know why he wanted to do this with me of all people. Maybe it was because we were both otters, in a way. Maybe he just didn't trust his scientists. After all, someone had done something to One, and there weren't a lot of people who it could've been beyond Two and the science team.

I pulled out a card. There was no mysticism or beautiful symbolism to it. Three of hearts. I showed it to Two, who took a few moments to stare at the card as if trying to bore through it with his crimson gaze.

His other body, or "frame" returned to the room. "Three of hearts," it said, in that oily, metallic tone. "Yes. Beautiful. Ideal. I function as expected. The experiences are synchronized, and not merely imagined."

"Is that it?" I asked.

"No," both replied at once. "There are other tests you can run with me. Other facts that we must confront."

I waited, quietly, for what he was about to say.

"Death, for one-" he spoke. He flashed red again, for longer this time. "It's difficult to force myself to do different things. The mind does not like multitasking. But I will force it to. The future of the mind is my design," he growled, displeased. I flinched, expecting another outburst, but he quickly calmed down.

"One stood against the inevitable," he continued. That was the first time I'd ever heard him acknowledge that there ever was a One. "The original cybernetic mind was his, but his theories were incomplete, and I will fix that."

He didn't elaborate further than that before moving onto what he wanted me to do. "I want you to destroy this second frame. I will know what 'death' feels like, so that I'll be prepared for the sensation. Each frame is strong, but they're not indestructible. Sooner or later, one will be broken. I have to be prepared."

His eyes flashed that deep, crimson red. Slowly, soundlessly he first stood up and then lowered himself down to his knees before me while I stared at him, bewildered. He wanted me to kill him. He couldn't possibly want me to do this. I couldn't do it. But I knew I had to, or I'd be the one dying, and I had no second body. There was no way out of this insanity, no way back to earth. I had to play along.

"How?" I asked. My voice felt fragile.

"Your new hand. This is why you got it. Use it. Tear this frame's head off, and crush it," Two told me. "I will not resist."

"I don't want to kill you," I replied. I meant it. I didn't like him, and I wanted to be as far away as possible from him and his erratic outbursts and threats, but none of that meant he had to _die._I felt like I was dreaming. That odd sensation of somehow disconnecting from my body and just floating besides myself, like a distant observer.

"You do. Not to worry, it won't be the end," Two spoke. "I'll simply serve to prepare me, prepare us for dangers we have yet to face as we move forward. Now, do it."

I took a deep breath, and then poured all my anger, frustration, and anxiety into my next motion. Each emotion flared in my unbalanced mind. I didn't want to do it, but if I didn't - I had no choice, no choice at all - I'd die and then Kevin would die, and none of us would ever move towards new planets. All because of this person in front of me, begging for me to kill him. The world faded away and all I could hear was my own deafening heartbeat.

The motions all came worrying naturally. My mechanized hand grasped around Two's neck and squeezed. I felt rivets popping, the vibration of metal shearing as my fingers dug into his frame. And then I pulled, throwing my entire body backwards to apply as much force as possible. Something came off. I immediately let go, and that heavy weight fell onto the floor.

There was no grand display, but there were sparks, a gush of hydraulic fluid from Two's ruined frame splattering over my arm, and the smell of burning plastic. His body slumped down, collapsing next to his head. The lights symbolizing his eyes flickered, and then went dark.

I felt worse, not better. There was no relief, no catharsis to be found.

Behind me, the other Two collapsed down with a loud enough metallic clang to snap me out of it. I spun around to watch that one stare at me accusingly - or so it felt, as if he was blaming me for what he'd just forced me to do.

"Darkness! There is nothing," he whimpered,_in a voice much softer and more vulnerable than I'd though the frames could ever muster. "_Nothing. Only a void."

"Nothing! We cannot, cannot let this happen," the Two that remained wailed. Then, he went perfectly silent and immobile.

"Are you alright?" I asked, hesitating as to if I should say anything at all.

"I am fine," he said. Now, the voice had lost all emotion, again. Just like that minotaur I'd met, as his frame reverted to basic emergency communication. "I need to c-collect my thoughts," he stuttered. "You continue as always. Return in a day. Two days. Do not, whatever happens, allow yourself to die."

I, whether due to foolishness or misplaced empathy, couldn't leave him like that. There was a danger to staying; approaching Two in that state was like sticking my hand into a rusted bear trap, liable to snap shut at any moment. But even then, right now he was more like a lost child than the sum of all of his fearful upgrades or even his psychotic personality, and so - despite every instinct in my body screaming at me to run away, I knelt by him.

If he could, he'd be sobbing.

"Two, you're still alive," I whispered hoarsely. "You can't feel what death would be like if some part of you remains alive."

"I felt myself die, and I died," Two replied.

"But death is the cessation of consciousness," I pointed out.

"Yes. That is what I felt. The consciousness, snuffed out in an instant, and replaced by nothing," he countered.

"But it was only a copy of you. This copy remained conscious, didn't they?"

"This is also a copy. No less myself than the one you killed. I was willing to sacrifice. I am willing to s-sacrifice. But I didn't know, didn't know it'd feel like this."

I tried to tell him he'd be alright, but Two didn't speak again for as long as I remained there, apparently deep in traumatized thought, though not showing any signs of it. The lights in his eyes remained steady. I had to leave him. I still hated him for what he'd put me through, what he'd forced me to do, but at the same time, he looked helpless and miserable. It was a confusing mess of emotions.

As I left his office, I passed by a group of mechanized staff moving in that direction, presumably having been automatically alerted to catastrophic damage to one of his frames. They didn't as much as look at me, despite the hydraulic oil still dripping from my murderous hand. Should I have finished the job? No, there was no way he _only_had those two frames. There was a backup of him somewhere. It was a false doubt, the illusion that I could've ended it then and there by being just a little more ruthless.

But beyond that, the strongest revelation was something that I hadn't truly realized until that point, well after leaving him: I understood just how unhinged Two was. It was a kind of icy clarity that overcame me. I'd known he was unstable, but this was beyond that. He was broken, and there was nothing I could do to help him. Splitting his mind between endless bodies, hopelessly fragmented, a flawed endlessly replicated copy of whatever he had been originally. Something had to be done. But I couldn't do it alone. Jen must've been right; what else could we do but try to get the help of the rest of the station, hoping that they weren't as far gone as Two and the Company? Anything was better than this. No matter what the cost.

He would recover soon enough, no doubt more broken-minded than ever. I would not be there to see it if I could help it. How long would it take, I wondered as I rushed for Kevin's room? A few days? A week? It didn't matter.

The fox greeted me with a tired but happy expression when I reached his little cabin, and immediately, we embraced each other. I could just about feel the stress leaving my body, melted away by his warmth if only for a moment. I held him like that, taking in his scent and enjoying the feeling of his body pressed against mine. Nothing else, for the longest time; not a single word, or any glances at anything else. Only us two, on this cold station in the depths of space, our warmth mingling and chasing away the darkness surrounding us.

"We have to go," I finally spoke, in a quiet whisper delivered with my nose almost buried in his ear. It splayed as he felt my breath on it. "Two has... lost it. We have to get help."

"What do you mean?" the fox asked. "How? Where can we go?"

"He's split his consciousness between several bodies. I don't have time to explain. But I met this mink, Jen - she's been talking with Uni, and she told me that we could try to get help from the others on the station-" I babbled. "Just trust me. Please."

"Alright," he whispered. "I will. When do we go? Do we have time to..."

I could feel exactly what he meant; his stiffness pressed against my thigh. I liked it. I did want it, too, or at least my body did. But there was an urgency to everything, now, an urgency that I couldn't ignore just to chase pleasure. Maybe I should've, but I couldn't bring myself to.

"Later, I promise," I murmured, squeezing around his waist. "We should go find Jen. She's probably in the cafeteria as usual when not working. She knows a way to the other parts of the station, I think."

On our way to meet up with her, I told Kevin more about what'd happened since we last saw each other. His expression changed from affectionate, to concerned, to extremely concerned. He asked if I was alright, again and again. I thought I was, at least. While I had ended the functionality of one of Two's bodies, I hadn't actually _killed_him. And he'd asked for it. Of course, it'd left some kind of mark on me, but in the end, I could handle it, or so I hoped at least.

Jen was exactly where I'd thought she'd be. The exact same place we'd met yesterday, barely acknowledging our approach at all beyond a quick look up from her meal.

"So, are you lovebirds all ready now, then?" she asked, taking a bite out of another nutrition cube. "Affairs in order? I don't know how long we'll be gone. Could be an hour. Could be forever."

"I hope we don't have to return," I sighed. Kevin nodded.

Jen took us to a door that I'd passed many times. Unmarked, unassuming, and locked. At least until she slid a small flat piece of metal in between the door and the wall. A moment of wiggling it around, and the door opened with a satisfying clack. Behind it was an elevator. A small one, with barely enough space for the three of us.

We entered it.

"So," Jen smiled, pulling the door closed behind us until she heard it lock again A few buttons on the elevator wall lit up. An arrow up, an arrow down, and two buttons depicting the doors. "This is a maintenance elevator, I think, where we trade with the other sections. Or where we were meant to do it. I don't think they ended up using these much. But it's interesting."

"Interesting how?" Kevin asked.

"Well, you can see how they originally thought the station should work. There's a railway below us," Jen explained. "It's out of commission now because of Two, but it's not like he'd know that we're down there."

Jen had the behaviour of someone who was excited, maybe on multiple levels, by being somewhere she wasn't supposed to be, doing things she wasn't allowed to. I would've disliked her back on earth, but here, a mind like hers was exactly what we needed.

"Alright. I wonder how they powered it," Kevin wondered aloud as Jen quickly jabbed the down-arrow button. The elevator jostled as it began to move down.

"Or how they power these elevators, for that matter. Any idea?" he asked.

"Oh. Yeah. Solar panels. The sun's pretty intense these days if you've not noticed," Jen replied, with a distinct sarcasm. "Plus, there's some reactor too. Nuclear, I think. Most of it's solar. Didn't you see the station on approach?"

"Nope. I didn't see anything on approach. They crammed us into this tiny damn rocket," Kevin sighed. "I guess they don't build them like they used to, if you got a tour and everything."

They were quickly developing a kind of chemistry, I supposed. Not exactly friendly, but at least they didn't hate each other. I felt oddly distanced from them, like I was occupying my own separate reality. The adrenaline was wearing off and it left me shaky and unsteady. The elevator continued down slowly for what felt like a full minute before coming to a stop. Jen pressed the buttons again, and the doors slid open.

"Well, we're here. After you, gentlemen," she beamed. "The maintenance and tramway floor."

Before us was a mess of pipes along wide corridor walls. There were signs, pointing towards the tram, and in the air hung a miasmatic smell of metal and oil. At least, as one positive, it was warmer than above.

"It's great, isn't it?" Jen said with more obvious sarcasm. "Cozy and warm. I used to sneak in here to relax after they, well, upgraded me."

There was a thin layer of dust on everything, even the floor. Some footprints were barely visible in it, though not ones that any of the three really recognized. They followed the signs through the warm, dimly lit guts of the station until they reached a more open area. A colossal tunnel, fading into the darkness to each side.

In the middle of it was the tramway. A singular vehicle that looked like the engine was parked at the station. It looked a little like the ones they had in the city near where I grew up, except this one was smaller, and not rusty and decayed.

"Does that thing still work?" I asked.

"It should. They never disabled it, as far as I know. We can try it, but otherwise, we'll have to walk," Jen said. She glanced at the tram, and then at me and Kevin. "Uni. Rail transport tunnel. Lights on."

As if by magic, lights came on along the tunnel, illuminating a long curve surrounded by dirty-looking metal. On the wall was one sign: "United Earth" it read. The corridor looked as if it'd once stretched in both directions at once, but now, the rails ended abruptly just before a solid-looking wall in the other direction.

"Yeah. That's probably where the third faction is," Jen commented, as she noticed me looking. "It's been walled off for as long as I remember, so I figure if you really wanted to talk to them, you'd have to go through the outside."

"Through the exterior? Through space? I didn't know we even had suits," I commented.

"We don't. But the fully transferred people can work just fine in vacuum. Not that it matters for us; the government is more likely to have guns than a bunch of random scientists, anyway," Jen explained. "So, let's get going. And oh, and don't touch the rails."

Kevin glanced at them. "Electrified?"

Jen rolled her eyes. She had a look of impatience, like she couldn't wait to get going. "Yeah. They're supposed to be safe, but I dropped a screwdriver down there last time and the flash almost burned my eyes out. I wouldn't risk it."

After we all climbed aboard, she used her mechanical arm to turn a key on the car's instrument panel. With a satisfying click, the display lit up as well, in a dim, foreboding red. "The point is don't jump off if we're about to hit something. It doesn't go that fast anyway."

She clasped a lever. It looked a little like the shift stick of an ancient car. The moment Jen pushed it, the tram lurched into motion, almost silently, gliding along the rails as if it hadn't been unused for months. I supposed there was little in the way of corrosion in a perfectly controlled environment like this.

"I still don't know where we're even going," Kevin sighed. He sat down on the wagon, holding on to the railing. The lights passed us by on both sides, slowly but surely. There wasn't much else to see except the odd spark from the rails. "I hope you two are sure about Two and these other guys."

"We're not," Jen countered. "But it's better than doing nothing, as I see it. Worst thing is we die. Uni thinks this is the only thing we can do, beyond getting rid of Two ourselves, which we can't... yet."

"Very inspiring," Kevin replied. I'd never seen this side of him. The cold sarcasm. Maybe he only showed his vulnerable side with me, and this was what everyone else got. "Why can't we?"

"He's fully mechanized, and if your beau there is correct, he's occupying several bodies by now. Probably more with each passing day. We'd have to do the same," Jen replied. Her voice narrowed into an angry hiss, and though she tried to hide it, I saw her hand clench into a fist as she no doubt imagined that fight. She took a deep breath and shook her head.

A few more moments passed in silence, but for the quiet whirring of the tram's electric motor. "Should be coming up soon. Wait, wait, stop!" she exclaimed, bringing the tram to a stop the moment its headlights fell on a wall of corrugated metal. It looked like it'd been constructed in a hurry, nothing a man with a blowtorch couldn't get through if he had to, but it nonetheless blocked our way. "That's not supposed to be there."

I looked towards the patchwork metal wall, half shrouded in shadow even with the lights along the walls. It was fascinating. Whoever had constructed this was actively working against the purpose of the station. I couldn't fathom why, beyond that Two had refused to cooperate for much longer than I thought. Suddenly, I felt that uneasy tingle of being watched, a creeping fidgety anxiety, tinged with paranoia, as if I'd seen something from the corner of my eye. Wait-

There was a hole in the wall. I wasn't imagining that, was I? In the lower left corner. Some of the metal sheets had been torn off, leaving a gap barely visible in the shadow, its ragged edges smoothed out by darkness. It was more noticeable in the periphery of my vision than if looked at directly.

"You see that? Someone's cut a hole in it," I spoke in what barely amounted to a whisper.

I heard Kevin turn in his seat, while Jen muttered something. On earth, a hole cut in a fence of walls was nothing remarkable, but up here in the cold void of space, especially on an otherwise immaculate station, it seemed to be of grave importance.

Then I saw the briefest glint of _something_in that hole. Two glowing pinpricks of light, there one moment and gone the next.

A chill ran down my spine. I almost froze. We were being observed. I glanced at the dark hole again and saw nothing, but I knew_there'd been some_thing in there. I could picture it, some inhuman monstrosity suddenly stepping through and coming after them. Any moment, now. My heart was beating at breakneck speed, hard enough that I could hear it.

But nothing came.

"What the fuck," I whispered.

"Shut it, shut it. Let me think," Jen replied in a frenzied but quiet tone.

"I saw it too," Kevin whispered. I watched as his hand tightened around the tram's guardrails.

"Yes, I know you did. We all did. Quiet. Let me... just fuck me," Jen snarled. "There's only one person I've seen here with glowing eyes and that's Two, nobody else is stupid enough to- why would he be there? It doesn't add up. Fuck. What are the CO levels... no, we all saw it, right? We're not hallucinating. We're not..." she went on, interrupting thought after thought with another frenzied line of questioning, visibly trembling now, but whether from adrenaline or fear - or maybe both - I couldn't tell.

"I don't think anyone's there," I whispered after a few long minutes spent watching and listening. Nothing. "Not anymore, at least. If there was, they're gone now."

"If it's Two, I don't think he'd attack us, right? Why would he?" Kevin asked, hesitantly. "He's not the type. How would he be the director of... of all this, if he randomly attacked people?"

Jen rolled her eyes at the fox, but how could he know what we knew? There was no time to explain it all, about how he was slowly fragmenting into an increasingly volatile state.

"I hope you're right," I replied, and I meant it. I sincerely hoped Two wasn't so far gone that he'd blindly attack us. At least both Jen and me were augmented, now, so we had some chance of fending him off.

We got off the tram and approached the barricade, now, and all three of us focused our eyes on the gap in it. It was, of course, irrational to expect whoever had been there to still be there if he'd put in the effort of running away to begin with, but knowing that didn't make gazing into the darkness feel any less nerve-wracking. There was nothing but darkness.

"What do we do now?" Kevin asked.

"Uni did say we needed to get help. And there's no help to get on this side," Jen replied. "I really, really don't want to go through, but we have no choice. So, let's do that."

We stood before the hole, staring into the void. Kevin turned on a flashlight he'd snatched from the tram, and the beam illuminated the darkness beyond. Nothing seemed wrong, here; it was a tunnel, as expected, though unlit.

"Do they use Uni here, too?" I asked as Jen stepped over the ragged edge of the metal and to the other side. "We could try turning the lights on."

"No. I think we're the only ones who even have an AI," she replied, while I followed her to the other side of the barrier. "Probably because only Two was cruel enough to make one."

Kevin looked at the mink but decided against asking what she meant.

He stepped through the hole as well, illuminating the path ahead, and we began the long walk to the station, most of that time spent in silence, just in case anyone was listening. The only thing we heard, though, was the fading hum of the rails and the echo of their own footsteps.

"Do you know what the others are planning?" I finally asked Jen. She seemed to have the most knowledge of how exactly the station worked.

"No. Well, yes and no. You know the basics. All three are focused on the same concept of putting organic minds in synthetic bodies, but the specifics vary, and the designs do too. I think I heard someone say that United Earth is trying to make our new bodies pragmatic - you know, quadruped, insectoid, anything as long as it works - our sense of identity be damned," Jen replied, speaking in the lowest tone possible, barely audible over their footsteps. "Whereas we went with slightly more comfortable bodies, and I guess One and Two's personal sense of style with the weird heads. And the both of us would work together on building a spaceship we'd get on once the bodies were good enough. Did you see that on the way in? I think that was the first thing they finished.

"And the third section?" I added.

"I've not really heard anything about them. I'd not be surprised if they hadn't gotten anywhere since that part isn't strictly organized. They're kind of like an anarchist scientist commune," Jen replied. "All of the scientists who didn't fit into the other two, basically. So, either they'll be way ahead of us, or they'll not even have gotten started."

Kevin kept the flashlight firmly pointed at the path, which I appreciated, since it made sure nobody accidentally walked off the raised platform. There were no railings, so the risk of stumbling onto the electrified rails was always very real and present. Nobody but maintenance was really meant to walk here.

"Hopefully they'll figure it out soon, we can't stay on this station for too much longer," Kevin chipped in. "Sooner or later the sun's going to flare up and burn us out."

"I think it's just about putting everyone in synthetic bodies now," Jen replied. "And not driving us bonkers insane in doing so. There, that's the station up ahead, I think?"

"Completely dark," I remarked. That wasn't a good sign. On our part of the station, even though nobody used it, the maintenance floor was still kept dimly lit. This looked more like power had been cut entirely.

"Let's keep going," Jen replied, tersely, though I could tell that she was thinking the same thought.

Other than the lack of illumination, the station was identical to the one "our" section had, and so it wasn't too difficult to navigate even with only a flashlight to guide us. The elevator matching the one we'd taken down, however, naturally didn't work.

Now and then, back on earth, I'd felt this overwhelming sense of dread when exploring certain places. It was half a warning signal that I might be getting in over my head - like if a building was too decayed to support my weight - and half a simple, instinctive sense of something being seriously wrong. I was feeling it now.

"Well?" Jen asked, gesturing at the elevator doors. "Are you going to open that?"

"How would I-" I asked, and watched her point at my arm.

"That'll easily do it. You might as well learn to use it properly," she said. "Like this."

She dug her mechanized fingers into the small gap between the elevator doors and yanked. I could hear the hydraulics in her arms hiss and pop at the sudden exertion, but the locking mechanism in the doors gave up first, latches bending with a quiet metallic groan, before the doors suddenly slid open effortlessly. Air rushed into the elevator shaft, and for a moment, Jen wavered before the pitch-black abyss, before managing to grab onto the side to stop herself from getting sucked in. The whole station was dark, but the shaft was like a void in the darkness.

"T-that's not supposed to happen. Gods, it's like they didn't have... didn't-" the mink stuttered, visibly shaky from her near-death experience.

"There's not going to be anyone up there, is there?" Kevin spoke.

We, perhaps foolishly, didn't want to entertain that thought. I felt his hand against my own, fingers entwining with mine, as we shared what quiet little reassurances we had.

"I guess I'll go check, then," Jen spoke, tersely. There was a ladder in the elevator shaft. Next to it, I noticed, a small box with a depiction of a wrench on it. Presumably tools for repairmen who would never come. "Just don't blame me if you get hunted down while I'm there."

"No, I'll go," I replied. Kevin squeezed my hand, evidently disapproving. "If Two - or whatever that thing we saw is - comes, you're more equipped to fight him off."

"Yeah. I'll throw myself at it heroically to give your lover a chance to escape," Jen spoke flatly, though I could tell, even through the sarcastic exterior, that she was relieved that I'd taken on the burden.

"If anything happens, come back," Kevin said in a half-hushed whisper. I leaned in to press my lips to the side of his vulpine snout.

"I will," I promised him.

Thankfully, I'd never been afraid of heights or darkness. That wasn't to say that I didn't shiver as I reached for the ladder, halfway expecting it to fall. It held fast, though, and my good fortune continued; there was a small flashlight in the toolbox. Just enough to let me see a few meters ahead or above me. I set off climbing into the darkness.

The feeling was lopsided. My mechanical arm was tireless, my organic one less so. Fatigue quickly set in as I kept climbing, forcing me to take little breaks, hanging off the ladder with my metallic arm. The shaft was perfectly quiet. I couldn't even hear the familiar hum of electricity, nor the rumbling of pipes. I felt like I was ascending into a necropolis, a long-abandoned crypt, or a desolate mountaintop at the end of time. Certainly, my imagination was only amplified by the darkness.

Eventually I reached the top. From the inside, there was no need to force the doors. Instead, there was a clearly marked red lever for opening them. I pulled it - and the world disappeared into roaring, furious wind. Briefly, I was airborne; I was pulled through the doors and onto the main floor, thrown several meters against a hard metal wall by the force of pressure rapidly equalizing.

There'd been almost no air at all. As if this section had been open to space for some time.

My body ached from the impact as I felt for broken bones, thankfully finding none, but the flashlight had been shattered and that had left me in absolute cold darkness. A sweet smell tickled at my nostrils. I didn't need to inhale to know what it was. I'd experienced it plenty on earth while scavenging. Animals trapped in old buildings. Sometimes, even other people.

I crawled back to where I figured the elevator shaft was. I could hear the echoes of Jen and Kevin speaking down there, which was an immense relief. They must've managed to grab something to avoid getting pulled into the shaft by the rushing air. The relief was like balm for my battered body.

Yet, relief or not, there was nobody here. Nobody alive. I didn't know what exactly had happened, but something had wiped out a full third of our hopes of survival.