“You know, I used to wonder about the stars.”
Officer Yeong seldom speaks, particularly with this much purpose — when she does, it’s often to herself, quiet soliloquies lost to the humming of the ship. More out of necessity than indulgence, Elster figures — Gestalts need maintenance all the same. On first departure, however, she hadn't spoken at all, tenor not quite right, tentative, easing it into the silence she would receive in response. This would continue on for about five-hundred more cycles. Before she had learned to take Elster’s indifference as allowance, this reticence was broken up, sometimes, by a betrayal of the body, or perhaps the mind, too — a sharp vowel, sudden speech, the result of a question asked in some distant part of her own head.
“We could see them, on Rotfront. I’d wonder about the individuality of each one, its contributions to a greater whole being inherent rather than voluntary. My mother used to scold me for this — questions would devolve into spirals about the intricacies of ecosystems and work and purpose. She’d put her palm at the base of my head and massage it, saying that my thoughts had somehow wandered away from my brain.”
Unlike prior instances, this recollection is almost deliberate, her tone seemingly urging Elster to file this information away for later use. Herein lies the error: there is no space in which it would fit. An outlier among the pieces of Officer Yeong that Elster already knows: passing smiles, printed words, instructions and protocols.
“We all have purposes,” says Elster. Curt when she is not clinical. She knows no other way of being, should there be one — only knows the sharp twist and cuts of metal machinations, the cold objectivity of blueprints and layouts.
Officer Yeong’s face twists into something that knows no objective pattern, logic secondary to emotion. Furrowed brow, downward curve of a lip, slightly flared nostrils. Her ears, for a moment, seem to match the shade of her eyes — a stark contrast to the mess hall’s cold, sharp greys — before she lets her hair fall to obscure them. It’s as if Elster slid the panel back over wiring. She wonders, at this: this push-and-pull that Officer Yeong seems to engage in. Gestalts in isolation fare no better than Replikas ill-maintained, and they’re flying light years away from wherever home may be, their only company being the eternal nightlife beyond the Penrose’s unending grey. A possible counter could be that LSTR units were made with isolationism in mind, but that is dwarfed by their purpose: to assess, maintain, and fix. Elster glances at her. She sees a component lain astray, a socket without a wrench. Briefly, she imagines Officer Yeong laughing amidst a crowd of her own: a socket with a wrench. With a purpose.
“Maybe,” With a tilt of her head, quirk of a brow (separately, one after the other; curious), Officer Yeong speaks once more, “What do you think mine is?”
“My answer is dependent on the scale from which you’re looking at things.”
“On a larger scale, then. Larger than the Penrose program.”
Elster hums, probing the silence to part. Like Officer Yeong, she never speaks much. The silence has always been a backdrop, a common denominator for most of her work, which, naturally, takes precedence. Oftentimes the lack of it indicates a problem. Not the reverse. “You work.”
Officer Yeong laughs, and Elster wonders if the prior dormance of her vocal cords is obvious. Palm to her throat, she feels no pulse or whirring. Only the divot at the base of it.
“Figures.”
A response is typically engagement or indulgence, a prolonging of its contextual activity. But this is different: sharp, short, swift. An abrupt cut-off and departure from the mess hall, footsteps unevenly spaced and tentative so as to not take up more space than necessary. Withdrawal. The way one would steal their hand away from a short circuit or an open flame. As footsteps and figures alike are lost to the ship, Elster imagines Officer Yeong tripping, skin caught on the corner of one of her rivets, and the skittishness that would follow. The sorry or the sudden shove, sudden distance. Assess, fix.
Elster rises without intention to follow. Later that night, she would dream of self-dissection, an incision made across her chest. She’d reach into the part and find no frayed wires, no short circuits — only a strange, little globule of warmth.
-
Emotions, Elster has learned, come in quick flourishes. Pent-up and staggering, teeming with venom as they spill over the edges of a Gestalt’s brain. Once the majority has passed, it takes time for the silence to temper them back down into a sated calm — this is the stage in which she typically finds Officer Yeong. Not coincidentally, of course. Unable to map out the pattern of these little malfunctions, she’s taken to avoiding her until she is ready, a routine that Officer Yeong herself has proven adjacent to. Curious, but peripheral — no need to wonder about Officer Yeong’s sociability when they’re light years away from Rotfront. Instead, Elster allows herself a much more relevant curiosity, one that has been ravaging her furnishing with rust since it first came to her: why tell her about her childhood in Rotfront to begin with?
As is the nature of Elster’s existence, she’s never seen the settlement herself. She knows it in pieces: splotch of white-blue on a canvas, velvet spin of Officer Yeong’s voice. Even then, those are footnotes, comments in passing. Pieces not quite meant for her. Rotfront was never this cold, Yeong would say, then on another occasion, Rotfront was often this quiet, too. Never anything that would’ve indicated more than a brief visit, never anything that was inviting. Facts rather than recollections. But to refract that information, to redirect it so that it sheds light on herself: why? There can’t be anything wrong. Two seats are still at the helm, two seats are still occupied. She can feel the information and its irrelevance rusting her tongue, staying her fingers. Inactivity. Pent-up.
This time, when she comes around to inform Officer Yeong that she’s finished her round of maintenance, she lingers a little. It’s no different than when she usually does — the only shift that has occured is contextual. Now, the easels along the wall seem to beckon her like a radio signal: impulse that brushes and seeps into her skin, gathering in her bones before a sharp tug. Brighter than before. Errant strokes telling of an even more errant person.
“I’ve finished my checks.” She says. Her tenor wavers like the three-legged stool in the middle of the room, weathered wood that carries cycles of still memories, spilled into colour then canvas. But the shaking, she realises, is not coming from the ship, or her own mind in an attempt to relate — it is coming from Officer Yeong herself, perched atop it like a bird poised to flee.
“Officer?”
No answer. Only the rise and fall of a body gone haywire, a turncoat mind. After a moment, instead of speech, there is a sound. Strangled, air being wrought from her lungs. Elster’s never heard a sound like that before, likens it to the keening chirp of self-regard that the EULRs make often. But this doesn’t seem like that. More… immolating.
She considers leaving. The light from the hall is scorching against her nape, but it only seems to prod the words further, and they come unbidden. “What are you thinking about?”
Officer Yeong pauses, rigid, then turns. Red-tinted eyes and red-tinted nose. Elster’s never looked at her this intently before — she revels in the fabulism of Gestalt expressions and how Officer Yeong’s seem to strike a balance between subtle and overt. She thinks about isolating each feature, mapping the filaments that link the parts of her that the eye cannot see.
“You don’t need to speak to me like that. I’m not a child,” Not as aggrieved as Elster thought she’d be; instead, she just sounds tired. Elser thinks of suggesting a nap. Doesn’t, ultimately. “I was just thinking about home. That’s not a word you use often, is it?”
“Home,” She tests it, lets it wash over her and rust her tongue with a strange warmth. Metal and wires and orders. Home. “No. What is it about home?”
Officer Yeong scoffs a little, pulls taut. “I don’t think this is part of your maintenance.”
“You have needs, as well.”
“Ones that I can manage.” It’s a tone that brooks no further input — one that Elster recognizes: the smell of sulphur from a back-up drain gone awry, muffled words through thick doors, “They’re not ready to be commissioned.” Again, that heat, that burning. Like the sun was slotted in her chest in lieu of a heart.
“Perhaps,” She begins. Strange to linger on the edge of before, to teeter with uncertainty. “Your thoughts have wandered too far.”
“My mother used to tell me that,” A pause, an epiphany. Slight widening of the eyes. Then, eye contact — striking and probing, bright red, brighter than Elster’s ever seen them. Almost accusatory, the look in them. She resists the juvenile urge to smooth over her hair, to rap her knuckles against her chest and listen to the metal’s echoing response. The officer softens. “Hm. Maybe they have.” Softer, this time, less of an intrusion and more of a self-allowance. Acceptance.
Elster turns to leave, then, to curb the fraying edges of her own weary mind. Something is burning up in her chest, warmth where it shouldn't be, and she thinks of her dream — white-hot spill of light from her chest. LSTR units were not optimised for interaction, after all. Only cold steel and broken wires.
“Elster,” Officer Yeong calls. Quiet, almost nervous. Some tired, rusted part of her wants to defy, to pretend she didn’t hear — but she stays, for she is nothing if not dutiful. The stool scrapes against the ground. “You can call me Ariane, you know.”
She sets her jaw, listens to the grating noise, then relaxes it.
“That would be unprofessional.”
Ariane tilts her head. It looks wrong; Elster twitches with the urge to reach out and correct. “I didn’t think you cared much when you remembered.”
“Gestalts have needs, too.” She repeats.
“Your peers don’t seem to share that view.”
Elster doesn’t look at Officer Yeong, doesn’t move, either. Peers. “No. That’s why I was made.”
It doesn’t come out tight, like she’d anticipated, stilted. Rather, it cuts through the air, a revelation hoisted to the light. Worth found in her lack of it.
Ariane.
Elster leaves. Later that night, she dreams again.