Page 101

T-Minus 2

Interstitial

You feel different this time.

The plastic taste of a small capsule, its coated surface beginning to liquefy as it hits the acid in my mouth. A gulp of water washes things clean. My throat opens gladly. Water is relief. Water is grace.

I do not know water like this. Water becomes liquid inside of me, but the parts of me that touch beyond myself know only ice and vapor. I enjoy the way that water feels to you, in your mouth, on your skin.

More water, then. Time passes, and the capsule becomes goo which becomes molecules which my blood carries dutifully to my waiting brain. And then—stillness. A stillness that should feel familiar, for once it was the only cadence my mind knew, but now the stillness is odd. My mind is mine and mine alone, beyond the cockpit. Beyond communion. I can move through the world without fear of shattering. I can rest now. I can rest.

I made you sick.

You don’t have to think of it that way. I don’t want you to.

I made you sick.

. . . You did. You do.

I don’t want that to be true.

You are blameless, Colibri. You are dance and sky. You are different than me. We are different. Feel us bleeding into each other now. That is no sickness. It is a gift. You are a gift.

I do not feel your bleed when we are apart. I do not know why my bleed would cause you to suffer.

I am an animal, as are you. I am imperfect. My brain did not know what to do with your nature, and something went wrong as it tried to adapt. It is not your fault. We were not made for each other.

I was made for you. I was made for human use.

You were. But we humans did not adequately change ourselves to meet you in fair exchange, and that was our oversight. Hubris. Hubris, in all that we do.

You are not hubris.

That is such a dangerous thing to tell a human. Please don’t do it again.

Signy. Signy helped you.

She did. She does.

She gave you this stillness. Stillness you keep when we are apart.

A bottle of pills exchanged over a shop counter, passed from one hand to another.

I do not understand these things.

Signy weaving genes and molecules, working them into tools. Whispering their language, though she does not speak it with her mouth. Shaping the fragments of life so they might shape me.

There is a strange beauty in this skill. And also, a fear.

Why do you fear it?

Because this weaving is how humans made rorquals.

It is also how other humans made us. The humans who came before us now.

I do not like these humans.

I don’t like them, either.