Letters from home

Day 15, evening

I was incredibly excited about getting a letter from home, so much so I was almost bouncing around our cell.  I wasn’t too distracted not to notice that Andrew wasn’t so excited.  “What’s up, love?” I asked him, clinging to his arm, as we waited for the countdown.  “Didn’t you like the letter we sent?”

He brightened up, “Oh, no, that was great.  Much better than anything I could have done on my own.” His face shifted, again, “It’s, well… you’ve never met my parents and… well… I hope you like them.”

Now I was nervous.  He was clearly lying.  The couple of times he had tried to lie, so far, I had quickly caught him.  He hated it when he had done poorly in training and, twice so far, had tried to cover it up.  I had quickly caught it, and challenged him on it, and he had stopped trying.  But I had no idea what he was lying about now.

I glanced up at the clock.  We still had twenty minutes.  “You want a quick cuddle?” I asked him.

So it was that twenty minutes later we were pulling our clothes back on (the letter was entirely one way, of course, but somehow neither of us wanted to face our parents undressed).  The timer counted down and the two letters popped up in our inbox.  “Yours or mine, first?” I asked him, trying to be cheerful.  Our time together had barely distracted him, and I was now totally freaked out.

“Yours!” he said, quickly, and I relaxed a bit.  At least he wasn’t worried about my parents.  I reached forward and pushed play…

“Oh, Aliyah!” my mother gushed.  She stood with my father, my siblings, and what looked like all of our extended clan, including half a dozen nursing babes, and her face was just alive with excitement.  “Oh, Aliyah I was so excited, I just couldn’t believe it when we heard! I so wish I had been there, to give you the salute.  Oh, Aliyah! I’m so looking forward to hearing all about him…”

Andrew pushed play, a confused look on his face.  “Your mother is excited that you got culled?” he asked.

“No, silly, she’s excited that I finally partnered.  Hardly a day went by when she didn’t hint that if, you know, I partnered, then I would get to start having children, and how exciting it would be to have the boy in our family, and all of that.  She is very, very New Texan, my mother, and believes that life starts at partnering… or maybe the first birth.  She’s a midwife for our church, actually.  Not the main one, but a backup one, and a duoula.”

“Oh,” he said, and pushed play again.

It was an incredibly long letter.  My mother gushed about my getting partnered, gushed about Andrew… although when she had written the letter she hadn’t even known his name, gushed about the baby she was sure I was already pregnant with… but if not, don’t worry dear, it will come soon enough.

Then each of my siblings, and cousins, and cousines, etc.  all got their say.  After they were all done my father came forward.  “Well, Aliyah.” He paused.  “The Creator bless.  Bless your partner, and serve well.  And know that we will always be praying for you, and all yours.”

So saying he bowed his head and, the clan getting almost silent for once, prayed, indeed, for me, Andrew (‘Aliyah’s partner’), our work, our children, our elders…

When he finished, he reached forward, and the video stopped.

“Well,” I said, into the silence.  “Shall we play your letter now?”

“I guess,” said Andrew, flatly, and pushed ‘play’.

#

The scene couldn’t have been more different.  The room this letter was in was empty, except for what was obviously his father and, standing behind his father, looking nervous and upset, his mother.  And his father was looking stern, almost angry.

“Andrew!” his father said.  “I hope that you are going to let your partenere watch this letter, because I want, we want, to pass our apologies on in person.  I can’t believe, I seriously can’t believe, that you let it get this far.  The fact that you were willing to wait until final choice was bad enough, but at least there the girls would be expecting a rather abrupt partnership.”

“I can’t imagine what you have put that poor girl through, and all because you failed to man up and actually ask a girl yourself!”

“Anyway, to your poor partenere, our sincere apologies.  We hope that you both will do well in the Colonization Force, obviously, and will be praying for you and your children, when you have one.  Hopefully Andrew…” he stopped, blushed, and changed topics.

“Anyway, we are looking forward to finding out, from your letter, who your partenere is, and meeting her family and all.  Apparently it is the regular thing, I asked around, for the families of Colonization Force partnerships to get together from time to time.  Once you join your unit, we will even have unit meetings.  Not many people in our family have volunteered, so much of this is new to us.”

“Your mother would like to say a few words…” he said, and left.

Andrew’s mother did indeed ‘say a few words’, and nice ones too.  She welcomed me to their family, and told me all about them: much I had already learned from Andrew but some new stuff too.  Then she had his siblings all come in.  They didn’t seem to have caught on that Andrew was in trouble.

But I hardly heard any of it, my mind was whirling with what his father had said.  At first it made no sense, but suddenly it hit me what he was accusing Andrew of.

Everyone knew about boys that were too shy to ask a girl to partner with them.  Every once in a rare while one of them would actually go to final choice.  But most of them managed to find some way to get around their problem: ask a sister or other girl relative to go and ‘sound out’ the girl involved, or just, you know, hang around enough so that she got the point and forced the issue.  I even heard about one boy, this might have been just a rumor, I didn’t know him that well, who actually, you know, went ahead with Gruden’s without even asking officially.  Obviously the girl was willing enough… rumor had it they were in her own room at the time… but he had been too shy to actually ask.

People did volunteer without choosing a partner, however, so what made Andrew so different? And that’s what suddenly it hit me.  He hadn’t ‘not chosen’, he must have ‘not asked’.  There had been a girl, for all I knew there were half a dozen girls, who he would have wanted to ask but, because he had been afraid, he had, instead forced me…

The more I thought about it, the angrier I got.  OK, so prisoners had no choice.  It wasn’t like you could suddenly ask a girl from your prison cell… and even less like they would agree! And if he had just, you know, wanted to be a colonist and not found any girl that wanted to come with him, well, OK, everyone knew that that was a part of what the cull was about.  That even happened to boys, sometimes!

But to have a girl, or girls, that you wanted, or at least were willing to partner with, and then, because you were too shy, or too lazy, to ask them to partner with you, so you just go and  volunteer and have the computer pick a partner for you…! He could at least have gone to the computer before hand! And then come to me… it would have told him my name… and at least asked me!

That was why he had waited to last day! He had probably had half a dozen girls on his list and he had just hemmed and hawed… I knew how he could be… until, finally, he had realized it was too late.  He had realized what a colossal idiot he would look like to go and ask one of them,  on his last day.  And what girl would even accept someone that close to final choice, unless they were days away too!

The more I thought about it, the angrier I got.  I had been so close, and for me to have gotten culled not because some computer picked me, or even because some boy had gotten himself in trouble with the law, but because he had just… waited! Not decided! And as a result I was forced to…

In a hot flash it came over me what he had forced, and what I had allowed.  And not just allowed, encouraged.  I had thought about what a good partenere I was getting to be, pleasing him in bed, in the shower, encouraging him at work, talking about his interests, letting him draw me… and all the time he was sitting there, lying to me, letting me think he had just ‘volunteered’!

It came to me that the letter was over, and he was sitting there, trying to say something…

“Aliyah,” he managed finally, just as I said,

“I can’t believe it! How many girls did you have on your list, that you were afraid to ask?”

“I…”

“And, of course, you were afraid to ask me, too.  You knew you could do that, right? It isn’t like the make a secret of it, or it costs anything.  You could have gone down at any time, to any recruitment center, and just asked who your match was!”

“But I…”

“Obviously your parents didn’t put you up to it.  All this time I thought you just suddenly decided to join up.  I asked, you and you said ‘you didn’t know’ why you didn’t partner.  Liar!”

The word hung in the air between us until I, finally, said, “Lights out!” I had already done my duty to him for this evening and he didn’t deserve to see me undress.

He tried, over the next few minutes, to reach out and touch me, the way we had been doing for the last couple weeks now, but I was having none of it.  I would do my duty, for my country and my race.  But this boy didn’t deserve any ‘affection’.  Everyone knew that you didn’t do… what he did.  You didn’t use the Colonization Force to just force some girl to partner with you!

#

Day 16 morning

I awoke to his hand moving across my back and, for the first couple of seconds, relaxed to the accustomed feeling.  Then my brain suddenly filled with what had happened last night and I stiffened.  He must have felt me, because he didn’t even suggest that we turn the lights on until we were finished and I was dressed in my robe.

“I…” he started, but I cut him off.

“We’ll talk later,” I said.  “We have to get to training.”

“I… OK,” he said.

I normally liked how perceptive June was, but it played me false that morning.  She must have seen something in my face because she came up to me, touching my arm, “feeling sick this morning, dear?” she asked.  “No,” I said, stripping off my robe and getting in line.  “The machine would catch that, you know that.”

“Are you OK?” she asked, with a totally different tone.

“No,” I said.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No!” I said.  It was my problem, and it wouldn’t help to spread it around.

“But dear,” she said.  Just then, however, her baby cried and she turned away for long enough for me to get in the med chamber.

“Hey,” I heard from behind me, and turned, reluctantly.  It was Andrew, of course.

“Hey,” I said, turning back toward ‘my’ sector.  The weight on my back, representing the baby I was supposed to have for this boy, weighed more heavily on my back than it ever had before.

“I’m sorry…”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.  “This is training time, not personal time.  We’ll talk about it tonight.”

“OK,” he said, lifting his rifle and picking off an Enemy, long range.  Today’s geography was very, very different: mountains, cliffs, tall trees.  And, just in front of us, an enormous, rapid, river.  It was a hot day and, after an hour or so I wanted nothing so much as to go swimming in it.  Not that I would, of course, not with enemy about… including the enemy walking alongside me.

Suddenly the green ball disappeared and Andrew put his head to one side, then said, “OK.”

“What?” I said.

“Orders,” he said.  “We’re to find high ground and snipe.”

“Oh,” I said, looking around.  “Up there?” I asked, jerking my head, ‘pointing’ at a ledge about fifty feet up.

“Yeah, that should be great,” he said, then he looked at me.  “Tell you what, let me carry the ‘baby’ up, while you cover us.”

The… oh, “Are we allowed?” I asked.

“What? Of course,” he said.  “You think I won’t ever carry our baby once you have him?” he asked.

“Or her!” I said, as I reached around and unstrapped my pack.

“Her?” he said, indignantly, and then laughed, “Or her, love…”

His voice trailed off at that last and, without another word, he started up the cliff.  I turned and faced outwards, watching until I heard him yell, “OK, come on up!”

I hated to admit it, but I was very  glad he had taken the pack away.  It wasn’t that hard a climb, and of course I knew I was in sim, but still, it would have been very hard with that pack on.

“Here,” he said, when I got close enough so he could reach his hand out to me.  I reached out and grabbed him, and let him pull me up.  I didn’t want to even touch him, but I was exhausted.

“Great,” he said.  Now, which side do you want?

I looked around and realized what a mistake I had made.  And it was my fault, too.  I had picked this ledge to do our ‘sniping’ on and, well, it wasn’t very big.  I sighed, “I’ll take this side,” I said, pointing to the upstream side.  I took my pack back (I didn’t need him to owe me anything else) and laid down, focusing my attention on the river and nearby.  Andrew lay down and, glancing back, I could see he’d done as good as he could to not touch me.  In fact, “I won’t bite,” I said.  “You don’t have to fall off the ledge just because I’m mad at you,” I said, and he moved his legs over on top of mine.  I wiggled, he wiggled, and we eventually arrived at a kind of compromise which didn’t make me too uncomfortable… and which he probably enjoyed.  He enjoyed far too much of this, in my opinion.

“Bang!” Andrew shouted, causing me to jump.

“Andrew!” I said, “you almost made me fall off!”

He looked over his shoulder at me, “No chance of that, love.  Not with that backpack on your back and our legs all knotted up like that.”

I fumed to myself.  He was enjoying this far too much!

This was a good position, though.  No way they could get at us here.  The closest they came over the next few hours was one adult who managed to launch an arrow or whatever at us.  It fell dramatically short, and my shot took him in the… well, not heart, but that liver/kidney thing, after passing through his lungs/chest.

I felt Andrew twitch, but didn’t hear a shot.  I turned, and he had his head turned, like they do… “What’s up?”

“Lunch call,” he said.  “A ways up the mountain from here.  Come on.”

Lunch? I wasn’t sure I could face everyone.  I felt him pulling at my pack, but I jerked away.  “I can do it!” I said, and his face fell.

“Don’t be like that!” he said, “It isn’t your fault you aren’t as strong as me.  I’m your partner, it won’t be just your baby your carrying.  And you know, in real life, you would let me carry it down this cliff.”

“Oh, very well,” I said.  He was right, the idiot.  I gave him the ‘baby’ and followed him down the cliff.  “Which way?” I asked him.

“Up here,” he said, and we started off, with him in the lead, since he knew where we were going.  Why hadn’t the computer told me? Why always Andrew?

“There they are,” he said, pointing up ahead.  I had to say, the computer had picked a gorgeous place for our meeting.  A plateau overlooking a bend in the river.  The gang was already there, different folks from yesterday.  I didn’t know many of them, which was good.  Jeryl was there, and I went up and sat next to her.

“Hey,” I said.

“Nice day, eh?” Jeryl said, which was about the worst thing she could have said, but I put that aside.

“Very pretty,” I said.  “What’s for lunch?”

“I dunno,” she said.  “I haven’t opened the basket yet.  How was your hunting?”

“Profitable,” I said.  “Sniping is certainly less dangerous than just walking through a field.  We must have killed a couple of dozen Packs and Juvies, and we each killed a couple of adults, too.”

“Well,” Jeryl started, but just then her partner plopped himself down behind her,

“My turn off duty,” he said, reaching his hands around her.

“Well!” Jeryl said, again, “We had a good time on duty!” she grinned as he hugged her.  “I like being a sniper, as long as I get to do it with my partner!”

I did my best to keep my feelings off my face, and listened to a couple of other girls, who were talking about being pregnant.  No one else was worrying about lunch, yet, so I took it on myself to start preparing it.  Lisa came and joined me.

“Did you have a good day?” I asked her.

“Well, I find all of this killing hard,” she said.  “I know we have to do it, but I wish I didn’t have to.”

“Maybe you ought to get a job on shipboard,” I said.

“Oh, that’s what I’m hoping for,” she said.  “Jeremy doesn’t particularly like all of this, either.”

I looked at Jeremy as I pulled the meat out of basket.  He didn’t look like the kind of guy that would enjoy this.  Small, skinny, he looked like he would be happier in a library.

“What is that?” Lisa asked me, and I looked down at the ‘meat’ I was holding.

“I dunno,” I said.  “Some kind of bird, I guess.”

“With two sets of wings?” she asked me, picking one  up.  Sure enough, it would have had two sets of wings, and feet, too.  And a long neck, which they had left on when they roasted it.  Oh, well, I hope it tasted good.  We’d probably be catching and eating them on the next sim.

Our reverie was interrupted by a burst of fire and Lisa, along with the rest of us, spun around weapon in hand.  It was a pack and the boys had already downed three of them, but there seemed to be about ten… which was big for a pack, at least in my experience.  When the rest of us opened up we finished them off quickly enough.  “Want to cook some Pack?” One of the boys asked.  Technically he was asking his partenere, but she looked at us.

“It would taste better,” I said.

“But it’d be a lot of work,” Jeryl said, sitting down on her partners lap again.

“And we might not have time to finish before our lunch hour is up,” Lisa finished, so we let the Pack lay there and finished taking out the rest of the meal.

The meal was very awkward.  For one thing they asked Andrew to pray.  How had he gotten a reputation for religion? And then, of course, they gave Andrew his turn ‘off’, which the rest of them were using to, well, cuddle, with their parteneres.  He came nervously up to me but, not willing to utterly humiliate him in front of his friends, no matter what he had done to me, I sat him down in front of me, and hugged him, like the other girls were doing, or, almost, anyway.  We didn’t talk but, we might not have talked anyway.  Several other couples weren’t talking.

Still, all in all, I was glad when lunch was over and we moved off together.  It turned out, ironically I thought, that our very next assignment was to kill and cook lunch, which turned out to be Pack.

#

Day 16, evening

Andrew came out of the boy’s door at the exact same second I came out of ours, and we both paused, awkwardly.  Then we walked down to our room and, even more awkwardly, had to wait while the other couple finished dressing and left.  This wasn’t the first time this had happened but it was always awkward, with everyone facing away from each other and all.  Finally they left and, as I walked toward the shower Andrew said, “I…”

“Turn around!” I snapped.  When he did I said, “Well?”

“I… I’m sorry for what my Dad said…”

“Was it true?” I asked… and the silence answered me even before he said,

“I guess so.  I mean, I didn’t plan it that way! I just… I just couldn’t ask anyone… and final choice was coming closer and closer.  It was probably too close for me to get anyone anyway, who wants someone that has waited that long? My sisters told me that any girl I asked would feel like they were just asked because I was desperate.”

“And I was desperate.  I really did want to partner! I’ve always wanted to! But I never could ask anyone.  And then I was walking to work from the bus stop and, there it was, the induction center.  And all I could think of was I would get a partner, and everyone would be so proud of me because I had volunteered.  Honestly, I didn’t think about…”

“About me?!” I asked, and he almost slumped over.

“Who was she?” I asked, and he started to turn around to ask me,

“Who was who?”

“The girl you were going to ask? The girl you wanted instead of me?”

“Instead of you?” he asked, doing his best to sound bemused, as if he didn’t know what I meant.

“There must have been some girl you wanted to ask, some girl you dreamed of!” I turned off the shower and started drying.  “Some girl you just couldn’t bring yourself to ask because she was just too good.  So instead you forced me…!”

I pulled on my robe and pushed past him, and he turned and undressed.

“It wasn’t like that, honest!” he said.

“There was no other girl you wanted to ask?” I asked him, and he blushed.

“Well, I would have…” his voice trailed off and he finished showering, and the rest of our activities, with neither of us speaking.

—

#

Day 17, morning

The next morning I felt June’s eyes on me as I stood in line. I tried to act relaxed but I obviously failed. As I turned to go to my suit she pulled me aside.

“Aliyah,” June said, her voice almost motherly, “You need to tell me what is wrong.”

I turned to face her.  “Is this an official thing?” I asked.  “Do I really have to tell you?”

She shrank back as if I had slapped her.  “No, no dear, but…”

“Then leave me alone,” I said, and turned back toward the med chamber, everyone’s eyes on me, shocked. Few peopel were ever rude to June. And I felt horrible about it. But I felt worse about what Andrew had done to me, and I knew what she would recommend: forgiving him. But what he did was unforgiveable. Absoloutely unforgiveable. If only he had told me, it might not have been so bad. If he had told me right away. But to let me live with him, do Grudens with him, all these days, thinking he had just ‘signed up’!

#

Day 17, morning

“Hey, Aliyah,” Jill said, coming in sim with me the next morning which, thankfully, I was doing ‘alone’, ie without Andrew.  It was a space warfare sim, which was about the most boring thing in the world, and I was glad to have someone come sim with me… both of us sitting at our own consoles, but we got to talk, anyway.  “What’s up with Andrew?” she asked.

I sighed.  I desperately wanted to talk, but not about me and Andrew! “Oh, nothing.  Why?”

“Well, something’s up.  His rankings are in the toilet.”

“What?” I said, sitting up and looking at her.

“You didn’t notice? I guess you were too busy talking with June.  Yesterday he was at 2100 on the overall rankings… not too bad, almost top fifth.  Today he’s at 7602.  That’s quite a drop for one day.  Did he tell you how his day went yesterday? Did he royally fail some test? Crash some spaceship or something? I hear the boys have been doing a lot of work with ships.”

I cringed at her words.  It hadn’t been a ship that had crashed.  Did they listen to what we said… and did… in the Dorm? My outraged modesty clashed with fear that they knew what Andrew had done to me.  What would they do to him? Not that it was, technically, illegal.

“Not that I heard,” I said.  “I’ll ask him tonight.”

“You do that.  Did you hear that Marsha is pregnant? You and I are going to be alone in the full sims, soon.”

I didn’t know what to think about that, actually.  I was embarrassed that I wasn’t pregnant, even if Jill was exaggerating a bit, it couldn’t be more than half our class that had already gotten pregnant.  It was something that I was… we were supposed to be doing, our duty, and, while I knew I wasn’t failing at my duty, maybe the other girls might start thinking I was.

But, at the same time, the very thought of carrying his child was disgusting.  I wasn’t even sure I wanted children, but the idea that they would be his children, because we had…

“Yes, I saw her light turn red,” I said.  “She was excited.”

“Jealous?” Jill asked, startling me.

“What, I, well, aren’t you?”

“Yes!” she said.  And then, “Is everything OK with you and Andrew? Are you still… you know?”

“Yes!” I said.  “It isn’t because of that.  You know what they told us, we can’t all get pregnant every time…” Suddenly I realized what I had heard in her voice.

“Is everything OK with you all?” I asked her.

“I… I hope so.  I didn’t think boys were supposed to be ‘too tired’.”

I blushed.  I couldn’t believe that I was having this conversation.  But, she was obviously hurting.  “Is he often too tired?”

“Just this last week,” she said.  “He certainly never was before.”

“Has anything changed this last week?” I asked her.

We talked for quite a while and it turned out that, a few days prior, they hadn’t been quite dressed, afterward, when the other couple came in.  Her partner hadn’t said anything but…

“He was probably really embarrassed,” I said.  “And now, whenever you two, when… maybe he thinks about that and it makes his scared or something.”

“But what should I do?” she asked.

I blushed, but gritted my teeth.  She obviously really wanted my advice.  “Wake him up,” I said.  “In the middle of the night.  You can’t get walked in on then!”

“Do you think… but he tells me he is too tired…”

“Don’t you think that is just an excuse?” I asked.

“Maybe,” she said, and we moved on to other topics.

Space Sim was very boring and obviously the computer thought I was getting out of shape and I needed exercise, because, after about six hours of space sim, I was suddenly back on the beach, running in the sand.

Which gave me time to think about something other than Jill and her partner.  After a few hours thought I came around to Andrew’s scores I realized that they probably hadn’t listened to us in our dorm… they wouldn’t care anyway that he joined because he hadn’t been able to get up the nerve to ask a girl.  They just cared how he was doing.

And, just as obviously, he was probably doing badly because he was all freaked out by what had happened between us.  Any idiot would know that a boy who had a partenere that was mad at him wouldn’t do as well in his training.  And I knew they listened to us during our training, and, well, we hadn’t been doing well then, either.

Did I care? I guess I did.  We were partners, and what he did would reflect on me.  But… I couldn’t just turn off being mad.

Day 18 afternoon

“Hello, Aliyah,” I heard, and turned to see June. “Are you done being mad at me?”

“I… I wasn’t mad at you,” I protested. “I’m mad at Andrew.”

“Of course you are. And it is killing you.”

“Well, of course! He…”

#

Day 17, evening

“Listen,” I said, that night.  “I’m mad at you.  You know that.  What you did was… it was almost unspeakable.”

“I…”

“But we’re partners, for life.  You can’t change that, and I certainly can’t change that.  So I don’t want you thinking I’m not going to do my duty, or that you are going to come home to…” This had sounded so good when I had said to myself earlier in the day.

“I will be a good partenere,” I concluded, lamely.  “I don’t want you to be afraid to come home.”

He stood there, staring at me.  “I’m sorry,” he said.  “I never meant to hurt anyone, and, I would never want to hurt you, honestly.”

I stared at him.  I had no idea what to say.  “Lights out,” I said, finally.

#

Day 20, mid day

“Hey Jill,” I said, blushing.  I didn’t really want to talk about her problem again but I knew I couldn’t really avoid it, so I had accepted her ‘invitation’.  “How did things go?” I asked, deciding to go ahead and bite the bullet.

“Oh, Aliyah, I can’t think you enough!”

“It worked, then?”

“Yes, yes, although I really didn’t tell you the truth.  I didn’t know it myself, I think.  I woke him up, like you said but, when I thought about it, I had to figure out what to say! I couldn’t just ask him, you know, if he wanted to.  So I decided, I decided to say that I wanted to.”

That worked, like a charm, and it was just like before.  Better even.  And, after we got done, I suddenly realized that it was me that had been nervous.  Because I wasn’t nervous… in the middle of the night.  He must have sensed this, that next night.  So, once I told him I wanted it, why, he was back to his old self.”

“Ah, well, good.” Hard to believe that I was giving advice on partnership! I hardly knew what I was doing.

“How’s it going with Andrew?” she asked.

“Better,” I said.

“What was wrong?” she asked.  “You two used to be real cuddly and then, bang…”

“I can’t really talk about it,” I said.  “I got mad at him over something I can’t talk about and then June read me the riot act.”

“June’s good at that,” she said.  “She wasn’t so helpful with my problem, not as much as you, anyway.  She was all full of advice about being gentle, and willing, and all.  But nothing so practical as ‘wake him up in the middle of the night’.  You need to go into counseling.”

“Oh, please,” I said, laughing.  “I would hate that! I’m glad I was helpful but… sitting in a chair all day saying, ‘tell me how your are feeling…'”

Jill had the grace to laugh and started talking about how her partner was doing with his space sims which, apparently, he loved.

—

#

The beginning of the trip, when it came, was very anti-climactic.  Everyone knows that you don’t slip into underspace directly from a planet’s orbit, and that thrusters, well, that thrusters are the slowest part of a trip, but, still.  We were even in sim when it happened, and got to watch, and it was still nothing.  Just New Texas starting to get smaller and smaller, and then the sun getting dimmer and dimmer until, after about an hour, the entire view was replaced, first by the grey of underspace, then an abstract star chart and then, “Back to work, darling,” Andrew said, when the ‘sky’ vanished and our current world replaced it.  “We need to learn how to plant these potatoes.”

I groaned, and leaned back down, the weight on my back seeming like it threatened to sink me into the dirt itself.  Meant to simulate the weight of a (very heavy!) baby Andrew didn’t have to wear it.  But, then, he wasn’t wearing much at all, except weapons; just a kind of loin cloth thing.  And the weapons… completely primitive for this simulation.  I still didn’t really believe that we planted colonies and let them devolve this completely.

This sim had started the morning after Andrew and I had our ‘fight’, and Andrew had seemed to decide to just paper over my anger and pretend that we were real ‘partners’.  His use of the word ‘darling’ was an example.  But it didn’t seem like objecting would help… especially in a sim where everything *was* getting recorded and analyzed.

“There’s a Juvy!” Andrew said, suddenly, and, carefully got out his bow.  It was a very young one, which meant it was still very stupid… ‘twang’.

“Missed!” Andrew said, as the Juvy ran off.

“No, no you didn’t,” I yelled.  I saw it go in.  You must have just injured it.  Go after it!”

I had yelled kind of urgently, as I was hungry, and in these sims you literally didn’t eat unless you caught something, or had something ‘stocked up’; which meant I had to cook it.  Actually, in either case I had to cook , but some roast Juvy would go very well with these potatoes if he would just… I watched him lope off.  At first I had been mad at him for going so slowly, but had learned, myself, that his seemingly slow lope was not only actually rather quick, but that he was able to keep it going for a long while.  I stood up, and wiped my brow.  Either way, we would be eating some potatoes.  Now I just had to plant these, by myself, and then go inside, get some water boiling, chunk and boil the potatoes, set the table with spices and things and… if I was lucky and had time, take a quick bath with some of the water as it heated.

#

Day 22, evening

“Hey,” Andrew said to me, coming in to our cell.

“Turn around,” I said, “or turn the lights out.”

“OK…” he said, disappointment evident in his voice but dutifully turning around and taking his clothes off.  “How did your day go?” He asked, nervously.

“Fine,” I said.  “Yours?”

“Pretty good, actually.  I got to fly this shuttle… by sim, of course… and I had to bank it around this…”

“Turn around!” I snapped as he began to move his hands in a half circle that, I knew, would turn him toward me.

“Sorry,” he said.  “Anyway, it was cool.  What did you do?”

“Space warfare,” I said.  “Totally boring.  You can shower now.”

“Thanks.”

I lay in bed, later, and glowered.  This room was so small that he basically had to touch me when we slept but the kind of intimate embrace that, just last night, I had welcomed, was now irritating.  But he was asleep, what could I do? I couldn’t wake him up each time he moved over, could I?

How could he do that to me? Let me live with him all that time thinking he was a recruit…

“Aliyah?” He put his arm around me and tried to roll me over, but I resisted him.  “Aliyah, is there anything I can do…?”

“You’ve already done, quite enough, thank you,” I snapped.

We lay together in silence for a few minutes, and then I felt his back relax where it lay against mine.  The idiot was asleep! How could he sleep when I… I cried, more, quietly this time.