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He was silent for so long I almost thought he left.
“I didn’t make anyone be friends, Crux. You did that.”
A part of me knew he was right, but he was wrong too. “I didn’t make them be friends, they just… came that way.”
“My point,” ALCOR said. “But you’re wrong, you know. You do have a best friend.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Me.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I thought about what he said to me for a long time. Months, I guess. Because that’s how long it was before Valor and Luck started making their preparations to leave.
By this time I was sad. Because no one had come back. Serpint and Draden had been gone almost a full year. In less than twenty spins it would be Draden’s nineteenth birthday. And I’d already missed Serpint’s.
I really thought Serpint would return for that so when he didn’t I just sorta went into a funk. I didn’t have a job here. There was nothing to do but wander and think.
ALCOR kept me busy, but that’s all it was. Just busy. I had a checklist to go through every day.
Is life working? Why, yes. It is. Because I can breathe.
Do we have nutrients in the autocook? Sure do. Because I just made breakfast.
Is there water in the reservoirs? Yup. Took a shower when I woke up.
And since Serpint, Draden, Jimmy, and Xyla were all gone now, their servos hitched their wagon to mine. So I had like thirty little bots around me at all times. It was weird, and sometimes funny, but mostly depressing because… I missed my brothers and I was desperate for them to come home and rescue me from my boredom.
The night when Valor and Luck were leaving I really thought I was gonna lose my mind. I felt like a parent in that moment. Watching my last two kids take off and leave me behind.
Still, I managed to smile and be happy for them.
I knew I could leave. I could even go with them if I wanted. But they didn’t have room for me. The ship had plenty of room, that wasn’t the problem. Their brains had no room. Their hearts had no room. They were a team. And even though ALCOR said I was on his team, it didn’t feel true.
“I need parts,” ALCOR told them before they left. “In order to keep the station going after the people arrive I need you to go searching for parts.”
So they were salvagers. And when ALCOR explained where they needed to look—far, faraway places where no one even lived—I felt a pang of jealousy. Because I knew he was sending them to the ancient sectors. The old systems with planets where whoever he killed all those eons ago used to live.
This mystery was killing me. Slowly eating away at me from the inside.
After Valor and Luck left Tray disappeared for spins at a time working on his virtual reality. Months and months went by with no word from my brothers. No new people came to the gates, asking for rest and respite.
We made stores and filled them with copies of clothes and other goods that ALCOR printed using things salvaged around the station. We made restaurants with huge commercial autocooks that could make any recipe off the net. We even built shooting galleries, and arcades, and screen houses. We had all the most recent movies from the bigger worlds. All the famous people on the screens.
But there was no one to appreciate any of it.
Just me.
I spent a lot of time thinking about Corla in those days. That one night we had together. Did she make it? Did she meet her friends on the other side? Did she have my baby? And if so, was it still alive? Was it a monster?
Was it a boy, and did he look like me? Was he growing big and strong? Did he play war games like Serpint and Draden used to?
Or was it a girl and did she look like Corla? Did she have silver hair? Did she glow when she smiled?
Star-crossed, I told her. And when I said that I felt nothing. I didn’t miss the thought of not knowing her.
But in those days of boredom and waiting, I did miss her. I missed everything I never had. And I made a vow to myself. That if I ever did meet up with Corla again I’d never let her go.
I don’t care what the consequences were, I’d never let her go.
Then one day—years after my last two brothers left—there was an alarm in the station. A piercing, blaring alarm so loud and coming from every conceivable comm system, I thought my ears would explode.
I was on the lowest level. ALCOR had instructed the servos to plant new gardens down here and I was literally sitting on a bench watching things grow because he had them on some kind of nutrient accelerant.
