Linked

“Hey, hold still, will you—you’re not making this easy.”

I’ve got my left hand on the top of Link’s little round head as my right fumbles around for the screwdriver that’s slowly rolling to the other side of the workbench. I recall asking Link to fix that damn unlevel workbench. No matter, I’ll get around to it sooner or later. I grab the little screw from between my lips—it has a weird acrid taste—and gently place it into the back of Link’s eye socket.

“You need a clean, buddy,” I mumble, leaning in close with the screwdriver and seeing specks of rust and dirt in the sockets. “I’ll see if I can find some polish or something for you, as soon as we’re finished up here.”

Link’s left eye flickers—a glowing sky-blue—and then droops slightly. He emits a dejected humming followed by a low whistle. I instantly lean back.

“Don’t be like that,” I reply sternly.

Link dishes out more whistles followed by a loud pop.

“I am being gentle—well I’m not an eye surgeon, just a mechanic, and yes there’s a difference, even if you are a robot.”

I work in silence for a moment longer. My ship—the Valerian—is finally running smoothly and quietly again after an incident with an asteroid belt; I learned a valuable lesson there. And Link has stopped complaining, which is nice. Even though he can’t speak I can tell he’s in a sulking mood. Apparently there aren’t many people who can hear emotions in the beeps, whistles, hums and pops of their multipurpose droids. My business partner, Yuna, says I have a knack for machines, motor oil in my blood, but I’ve found that when you’ve spent enough time with someone, you just sort of… resonate.

I pick up Link’s replacement eye and he recoils slightly as I go to put it in.

“Listen buddy I know it hurts but your eye is only going to get worse until I replace it. You don’t want to go bumping into things forever, do you?”

Link shakes his head.

“Atta boy.” I fit the eye into place. “And… just a few more nuts and bolts… presto! How’s that?”

Link stands up on the workbench, two blue eyes shining at me. He blinks his right eye, then his left, and then both, and gives me a thumbs up.

Yuna’s footsteps rattle through the hallway outside. She rarely ever comes down here. Must be some news. And sure enough, she calls out.

“Hey Z, we should be pulling into Q46-B’s orbit in the next hour or so.”

I can’t help but smile. “Sure it’s the right planet this time?”

“Oh ha-ha,” she mocks. She pokes her head into the workshop. “Watcha doing?”

I’m packing up my tools and looking around for some polish, but I stop to pat Link on the head and say, “Ahh just fixing Link up. Eye fused out again.”

She nods, not really having much of an interest in robotics herself. Yuna’s job is mostly just to get us from A to B through all of our inspection routes, and she handles the budgeting and requisitions for missions, and communicating with the higher-ups, reports and all that.

“Well, we should be ready to start running some preliminary scans soon,” she says. “If you want to look at anything.”

“Uh-huh…” I’ve just noticed that one of Link’s fingers isn’t flexing properly. I could probably take a proper look at it tomorrow, no doubt Link won’t want another procedure right away.

Yuna approaches and leans against the edge of the workbench with her arms crossed. “You put a lot of work into that one,” she says. “Even more than all the others.” Her eyes sweep over the array of bots and tech littering the walls of the workshop. “You do know that Q-Star offers company-issued multipurpose droids that are in much better nick than that, right?”

Link narrows his eyes at Yuna and I pop the last of my tools in their drawers. “Hmm… they’re not the same,” I say, of course I don’t really expect her to understand. With some bots it’s like having a favourite pen, with others it’s like having a pet dog, but with Link it’s a bit different than even that.

“You hungry?” I ask Yuna.

I see about getting Link to tidy up the shop while Yuna and I head to the breakroom for some grub. We don’t always eat in the same room together. When you’re the only two people stuck on a ship for three months you run out of things to talk about over dinner. Today, however, is different.

“Mission parameters,” says Yuna, as she drops her bowl of porridge on the table in front of her. “This one is easy money—three days tops. The atmosphere down there is technically breathable but I’m a little bit iffy about some trace elements.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Technically breathable?”

“Looks like quite a lot of volcanic activity in some areas so it’ll take a while for me to find a decent landing site,” Yuna goes on, data-pad in one hand and porridge spoon in the other. “You can send Link down first to test the atmosphere.”

“I’m more concerned about the local flora and fauna,” I say, recalling a recent close encounter with some very unhappy alien cattle.

“Well, they’re down there,” Yuna nods. “Biomass is quite high. Lots of vegetation which means a high potential for primitive lifeforms.”

“No giant cows?”

Yuna purses her lips. “This is just an estimate, but I don’t think there’s much megafauna on the planet at all. Weird electromagnetic readings, though, I wonder what that could be?”

“I’ll program it into Link’s directive, have him check it out.”

We sit in silence as we each finished our meal, then I stand, collect Yuna’s bowl and place it on the sink. There’s a tickle of excitement on the tips of my fingers. Say what you will about this job, there’s something miraculous about seeing a new world for the first time, even if it won’t be through my own eyes. I used to think that Q-Star: Unknown Worlds for Your Enjoyment^TM—the tourism company we work for—was a real waste of time and money, but now I’m beginning to wonder…

“Say you didn’t do what you do,” I begin, turning to Yuna, “would you buy into that Q-Star slogan?”

Yuna leans forward on the table and smiles ironically. “Are you asking me a personal question?”

“Well?” I persist.

“Well,” says Yuna, “it’s an interesting idea, I’ll have to admit. Pretty unique, really, bringing adventurous customers to uninhabited planets so they can be some of the first humans to set foot on a new world. Yeah, maybe if I was the rich egotistical type I’d see the appeal of being the first human on an unknown planet to scratch my name into an alien tree.”

“It’s one thing for a person to buy an island or a plot of land, but an entire planet just for you…” I trail off. “Just imagine.”

Yuna stands up. “And just think, we get to do it for free.”

“Doesn’t exactly have the same appeal to it. Imagine being the first person to set foot on Mars, or the Moon.”

“But the thing is, it doesn’t matter how many ‘firsts’ there are, Q-Star is selling the opportunity to be the ‘first’ of just one. It’s funny.” Yuna walks to the sink of pours herself a glass of water. “You know, I think I’m starting to change my mind. This is all too pre-packaged. But then, Q-Star sells the potential for prospectors to make big bucks on some new discovery, for a percentage. I never used to think about this sort of thing until the board assigned me to your ship.”

“You’re welcome,” I say with a smile. “Well… shall we?”

I follow Yuna into the cockpit and she places herself in the pilot’s seat. She taps a few buttons and the dark screen embedded in the console to her right begins to glow with a display of the preliminary scans. I glace through the streams of data, nodding slightly.

“Oh-kay,” I rap my fingers on the back of Yuna’s chair. “I’ll go get Link prepped.”

Yuna pushes a button and the Valerian’s main thrusters whir to life. “I’ll get us into atmosphere.”

As I make my way back through to the workshop Yuna’s voice sounds over the ship’s speaker system.

“This might get a little rocky—”

A heavy jolt just about knocks me onto my face and I flail my arms to stay balanced.

“A little?” I shout, and I steady myself against another wave of turbulence. “Hey, easy on the Valerian.” Then I mumble: “Try being gentle with her for once, you monster.”

“Your mic’s on,” Yuna sneers. “You know Q-Star has company issue vessels too. Why are you hanging on this piece of junk. Judging by how you call it a ‘she’ I already think I know the answer.”

“The Valerian was the first ship I bought right out of school. She got me off Earth. I spent the last six years working jobs as a space farer in this one ship. I think she’s lucky.”

Yuna’s voice crackles. “You’re a sentimental idiot.”

I scowl in her direction as I set up my VR deck and take a seat in the specialised chair. I attach the neural receptors behind my ears and onto my temples, one on the back of my head, and I drape the goggles around my neck.

“Oh yeah,” I reply to Yuna, “I’ve met toasters with more heart than you.”

“Ho-oh,” Yuna laughs challengingly, “that was a good one. How’s this, after Q46-B I’m gonna go set you up with a girlfriend, mate.”

“Right after you get yourself some hobbies.”

“Okay space ranger,” Yuna chuckles. “You plugged into Link yet? Ready to go?”

I lean back and strap the goggles over my eyes, relax my arms and my shoulders and my legs. Pretty soon my body will start to feel numb, like lucid dreaming, a sort of calming paralysis.

“Still calibrating,” I tell Yuna.

“Must feel weird being inside a robot,” Yuna says casually. “Your mind and all.”

“Not really. Just think of it like a really immersive video game. The machine transmits data from my motor-neurons outputted by my brain and sends them to Links CPU, while at the same time receiving sensory data picked up by Link that’s been converted into information my brain can process. Basically when I move, Link moves, and when Link sees, I see—”

My eyelids begin to feel heavy, like I’m falling asleep, and when I open them a few moments later I’m staring at myself from a position somewhere on the workbench, my body laying comfortably in the chair. A watery-blue glow overlays my vision and I’m aware of data scrolling across Link’s—my—heads up display. I look down at my hands to find little metal stubs and one finger that won’t extend completely. Link is responding well to my movements. I have a clear optical feed. When I try to speak I find that I don’t have a mouth, which is still a very peculiar feeling. Imagine not being able to suck in air. Imagine not needing to.

I had managed to resolve the communication issue by installing a digital keyboard in Link’s left arm that allows me to type messages to Yuna while I’m, well, away. I tell Yuna that my connection to Link was a success and then I turn my attention to the little spherical launch pod that will get me down to the surface.

It’s a snug fit, otherwise Link’s body would be bumping around the interior right until impact. I set the coordinates, lay my arms over my chest and lean my head back like I’m lying in a coffin.

“See you space cowboy,” Yuna says over comms.

3… 2… 1… Launch.

I feel almost nothing as I plummet towards the planet’s surface. The pod has no windows so I can’t gage how fast I’m falling, and I’m locked in tight so that I feel little turbulence. Link is equipped with a g-force sensor but his body responds to the changes in pressure much better than mine would. I might as well be in a very fast elevator.

Despite all this, I am aware of a violent thwunk and the clatter of falling debris as I smash into the ground. The pod unseals with a hiss and slides open, and I step outside into a dense and alien forest. When you’ve seen as many worlds as I have you stop being surprised by the massive variety of vegetation and animal life that appears from one world to another. This particular forest has tall fern-like trees covered in vines, and a thick moss coating the rocky ground beneath them. There is a light mist all through the air, and though I can’t see them, the call and song of a myriad of birds and insects permeates the forest.

There’s a bit of interference on the comms before Yuna’s voice buzzes through: “Z, you there?”

I type a response. “Landed safely.”

“Cool, cool. Listen, we’ve got a sudden storm making its way towards us; you’ve got time to finish the mission but I don’t want to be hanging around in atmosphere when it hits.”

“Understood,” I type, followed by a thumbs-up emoji.

The work itself is slow and repetitive: collecting samples and slotting them into Link’s internal storage, taking readings and video recordings on one gadget and then another. It takes hours, and I travel a fair distance given the size of Link’s little legs. The days here are long. Twelve hours later and the sun hasn’t seemed to move, but an ominous blanket of cloud now mars the sky.

“Wrapping up now,” I type to Yuna.

“Roger that, standing by for LZ coordinates,” Yuna replies.

I scope out a suitable place for Yuna to pick me up, in a rocky clearing by a stream, carpeted by thick blue-green moss. I’m just about ready to leave when I spot something peculiar from the corner of my eye, something smooth and shiny half buried in the moss.

“Hang on,” I tell Yuna. “Just checking something.”

“We really should get going,” says Yuna, but I ignore her.

Whatever I’ve found does not seem natural. I ask Link to scan the strange item and my HUD displays the chemical makeup of some kind of metal, but nothing that I’ve ever used. I could have sworn Q-Star had never sent any teams before Yuna and I, and yet here is a man-made metal just lying in the moss. At least, I believe it’s man-made until Link suggests otherwise. He sends a text to my HUD to tell me that there’s an electrical signal coming from the device.

The device is a robot.

I walk towards it, stricken with awe as the thought finally crosses my mind—that this peculiar little machine, this robot, isn’t man-made at all. Slowly I raise my bony robot arm and place a hand on the surface of the metal. I expect nothing, but what I get is a vibration that ricochets through my body.

An electrified gurgling sound emanates from the alien machine, and then two white eye-slits snap open, four pincer-like legs sprout from the round body, and the machine lifts itself up. Its round eyes shine brightly in my direction and its upper body hovers smoothly while its legs crawl like a spiders. The sky continues to darken and beams of pale-blue light roll from the robot’s domed head as a clap of thunder splits the sky.

“You’re not gonna believe this,” I type to Yuna.

“Whatever it is,” Yuna says urgently, “it can wait. Either get Link out of there or cut the connection. We have to go.”

For a moment I’m at a loss for what to do; I can always come back but it could take days to find this guy again. In the end I listen to Yuna and tell Link to compile whatever data he can on the robot while we wait for Yuna to pick us up.

“Ready for evac,” I type.

Another thunderclap heavier than the last causes my comms to go haywire. The Valerian is hovering unsteadily above me… and it’s damaged.

“I’ve taken a lightning bolt—” Yuna yells. “Z—disconnect now!”

My hand darts to the control panel on my arm and I push the button to sever the neural connection with Link; I expect to jolt upright in the chair in my workshop but nothing happens, and I remain one with Link.

“Electricals are starting to fry,” Yuna reports. “We’re still in the air but I gotta set her down. I’ll get us out of the storm and we’ll come back for Link.”

She doesn’t realise that I—my consciousness at least—is still on the surface. For the moment I stand alone in this strange new world until I receive a message from Link, a reassurance that I’m not entirely alone.

If robots could hyperventilate I’d be doing it big time. How in seven hells did this happen? I’m stuck. Stuck in a body that isn’t mine. Stuck on an uninhabited planet with alien robots. A touch of guilt creeps into the back of my mind. Not that there’s anything wrong with Link’s body. I don’t mean to be rude but… Link can’t read my thoughts anyway. It’s just that Link has his body and I have mine. That’s the arrangement. My foot is tapping like a jackhammer. I have to get back to Yuna. Once I return to my body I can manually disconnect from there. Right?

Link makes a point that given the circumstances this is the best possible scenario, and when I ask him why, he says that we are alive and I’m not braindead. I can’t argue with that. How do robots manage stress, I wonder. Stop pacing, for starters. Slow down. Take a deep—never mind. Let’s just get back to the Valerian.

In all the commotion I had forgotten about my new round crab-legged friend. His… or I guess, its… white eyes shine on me light a flashlight. It continues to create that electrical gurgling.

What does it want?

Link suggests that I let him talk to it, but I’m not entirely sure what that means. And just like that I’m losing control of my body; my arms move of their own accord and I lean closer to the alien robot. It’s like I’ve been pushed onto the sidelines. I’m an observer, and I wonder if this has something to do with our neural connection malfunctioning when I realise that Link is speaking to the robot, not in English but in his own beeps-and-whistles dialect. And the robot understands. A moment later I receive a message from Link: “City nearby. Should follow.”

There’s a—what? Well, the presence of civilisation would explain what this robot is doing in the middle of the wilderness on an uninhabited planet, and at this point my curiosity has gotten the better of me.

“Z?” Yuna’s voice crackles away somewhere inside my head, startling me. “Are you… still inside Link’s little robot body?”

I type a reply: “Maybe.” Shrug emoji.

“Oh-hh… well,” Yuna hesitates for a long while, with a tremble in her voice. “Should I be worried.”

“What’s going on with you?”

“I’ve touched down about fourteen clicks north from where we dropped you. The Valerian took some damage but at a glance it doesn’t look like anything you can’t fix… you know… if you were actually here.” She lets out a sigh. “I’ll do what I can but I’m no mechanic. Give me a sec and I’ll check on your body.”

If robots could sweat I’d be feeling more than a little anxious—I’m clearly still alive but with this current configuration I have no way other than Yuna of checking the state of my body.

“Still in one piece, buddy,” Yuna reports. “I’ll try not to draw a moustache on you while I’m waiting for you to get your ass over here, which, by the way, I have no idea how long that’ll take. Looking at the scanners I can’t get a fix on Link’s location. Something’s stuffed up.”

Yeah, no kidding. Well, I guess it’s time to follow this alien robot to the ancient city, and that’s not a thought I was expecting to have today.

The robot moves quickly, like a crab or a spider, its powerful legs ploughing into soft moss and hard stone like spears. Link is only small and we have trouble keeping up, but we travel under trees and over streams for hours without tiring; this is the longest I’ve ever remained in Link’s body.

When we stumble upon the alien city I feel a sense of disappointment yet also understanding. Part of me hoped for great chrome spires and busy roads teeming with history and life. The city would have once existed in a valley. Now it is overgrown with trees, but little moss. And I learn that my new robot friend is not alone. What first looks to be shrubs blowing in the wind is actually dozens if not hundreds of little mechanical creatures. They crawl and sliver and hop from crumbling walls, rusted terminals and bone-dry water pipes.

As we walk through the forested paths I type a message: “Link, ask what happened here. Where did everyone go?”

Link strikes up a conversation with the robot and a moment later replies: “It can’t remember.”

We travel further through the ruins and I get a closer look at the swarms of robots. Many of them show signs of wear-and-tear, but little rust or corrosion or significant damage. Perhaps they run on biofuel—there’s plenty of it here and it would explain the lack of moss—or maybe they’re powered by solar energy. What I can guess is that these ruins are hundreds, if not thousands of years old, and still the robots are here, long after their creators have vanished.

The ruins are also much larger than I anticipated, not just in size but in complexity. Yuna has probably landed somewhere in the city without even realising. Walls strewn with vines, and pathways overgrown with trees, have created a labyrinth for me to navigate, and every now and then I stop, sometimes for as long as an hour, distracted by some miraculous new discovery.

“This place is a maze,” I tell Yuna. “Going to take a while.”

In fact it takes days. Link’s ability to decode and interpret the aliens’ dialect—with the help of our new robot friend—is way beyond my comprehension. I take the back seat and let Link do his thing whenever we stumble across the old alien terminals. In time I catch glimpses of the little robotic creatures running repairs on the terminals. The computers display holograms of glyphs and other patterns for Link to translate.

This planet was once a colony—that’s all the computers are able to tell me for now. Link suggests that whatever advanced civilisation built this place had left it behind over a thousand years ago, due to a sudden yet mysterious cataclysmic event. A mechanical insect scatters past me. It seems they left their stove on.

The days are significntly longer on Q46-B and on the morning of the third day I suspect that I’ve only had about twelve hours of sleep in the past seventy-two. But I don’t really sleep. At random intervals my mind sort of just shuts off for a while and I come back someplace other than where I was. Of course, Robots don’t need sleep, so Link continues to operate even when I’m not exactly ‘present’.

After one of my little ‘naps’ at around the middle of the third day Link plays back footage of something very intriguing. A dead machine is laying on the ground. It hasn’t been there long. After a while a small swarm of ant-like machines creep out from the underbrush and envelop the dead machine, cleaning it of mould and rust, and eventually tearing it apart. Link follows the ant-like machines to see what they do with the stripped-down parts and he finds a larger robot that is on its last legs. The spare parts are being donated, reused, recycled.

I decide to check in on Yuna’s progress with the ship.

“Absolutely squat,” Yuna sighs. “How are things on your end? You’ve been with Link for almost three days now, on this planet that’s over a hundred hours, you’re not feeling any side effects?”

“It’s weird,” I reply. “Hard to explain.” And then I type, “Always knew he was special.”

“More than just a little robot after all,” Yuna chuckles. “I guess I was wrong.”

“I need to get moving,” I tell Yuna. “Think I’m nearly on the edge of the city.”

I am. The number of robotic creatures is diminishing as I trudge through the final leg of my journey towards the little blip that represents the Valerian’s GPS signal. The forest, however, doesn’t grow any more or less wild. Funny that in a thousand years something as impenetrable as a megapolis can be reduced to a intricate garden bed.

Through the trees I see her—first the red wing of the Valerian, then the body, and then Yuna sitting by a lamp outside—and I rush forwards as fast as Link’s tiny legs will take me.

Yuna hears me coming and, startled at first, she stands up.

“Link!” she cries. “Err… Z. You are in there, aren’t you Z?”

I nod hastily.

“Oh thank god,” she breathes. “Thought I was going bonkers. Well come on, I looked after you while you were… well… away.”

Seeing the workshop again is a feeling akin to returning from a very long holiday, from days or weeks of the unfamiliar to the welcoming comforts of home. I feel safe and secure. I feel the urge to relax, but somewhere in the back of my mind is the anxiety that something can still go wrong. I won’t really be back until I’m back.

But that’s an easy process. Plug a few wires into the right places, punch in the correct sequences, run the machine. I’ll admit to panicking at the sight of a bright light somewhere in the distance. A light like that either means that I’ve done it… or I’m dead.

But just like that I feel warm. I feel air flowing into my lungs and the rise and fall of my chest, a torso made of flesh and bone. My mouth is dry. My neck is stiff. My eyes hurt when I open them and my head spins like a top as I sit up.

“Link?” I whisper.

There is a weight on my knees. Link is there, truly there, and I’m here. After our time together, we’re finally back.

Bile stings my sinuses as I stumble from my cot and hurl into a toilet bowl. Imagine having constant seasickness for days but feeling it all at once, and that’s just about how I feel now. Apparently “over-linking”, as I’ve aptly termed it, has ended up having a few side effects, mostly nausea. I’ve been as sick as a dog ever since I woke up.

“Well you have been in a coma for almost a week,” Yuna explains, leaning in the hallway outside the bathroom. “I suppose your brain was active and, as you said you felt fine, but your body has been strapped to a chair.”

I sit up, wipe my mouth with my sleeve, and rub my aching neck.

“Explains why I’m so stiff,” I mumble. Even so, I’m already thinking through a strategy for electrochemically stimulating my muscles to keep them from tensing up after future prolonged missions with Link.

“You shouldn’t have overeaten,” Yuna went on.

“Well… apparently I needed something to throw up. I was hungry. You try going four days without food.”

“I fed you with a drip.”

“Oh a drip, that’s real appetising…” I remind myself that I’m not usually like this, that it’s just been a weird week. “Thank you, anyway,” I say quietly, “for looking after me.”

I do eventually recover, to the point that I can set about repairing the Valerian, at least without wanting to chuck my breakfast. I estimate about forty-eight hours’ worth of work, and there’s nothing to do but get to it. So the hours that follow aren’t too exciting: lots of welding and wiring, unscrewing things and screwing them back in. Every now and then I turn my head and glance in the direction of the ancient city. So much to explore. So much I could learn from them… they could help me get off this rock. But I know that’s not the reason why I want to go back, so I keep my head down and focus on the task at hand.

I reach for my laser cutter but my hand grasps nothing but air. Agh, where did I leave it?

“Hey Link, can you fetch my—”

Link pops up behind me, presenting the laser cutter in his outstretched arms. I take it, eyeing Link curiously.

“Thanks,” I say, and return to work.

By the end of the day my hands are red and aching—I suppose even now I haven’t fully recovered from my little holiday. I glance up at the waning sunlight, falling in pale orange spears through the silhouetted canopy above up. A cold wind tugs at my clothes. It’s getting chilly. We’re not getting the Valerian fixed tonight.

Back inside the ship I prepare myself some dinner and fix up a bowl for Yuna. She’s been acting tough but I have a feeling she’s scared, or perhaps not scared but unsettled. And so am I. I’ve had my first thoughts of home since lord knows when. But I’m tired and I need to rest. First I carry a bowl of hot food to Yuna in the pilot’s cockpit. She’s wrapped in a blanket and fiddling with a communication device.

“Here,” I hand her the bowl. “It’s freezing down here.”

Yuna stares at the bowl for a moment. “Are you… bringing me dinner? Did you hit your head?”

“Shut up.” I lean over the back of her chair and take a look at the coms. “Anything?”

“Zilch,” Yuna replied. “Systems are all up and running after that storm, and I am getting through, but the connection is a little too wonky. I have a bad feeling we’re getting interference from… well…”

“From the city,” I say, and a tingle runs from my shoulders down my spine.

“There’s something about you and Link,” Yuna points out suddenly. “How long have you had him, anyway.”

“Five years. First bot I ever purchased, at a garage sale on Mars, of all places, and on a measly salary too. I chose him because… he seemed funny, and a little clumsy, but oddly compassionate for a droid, and of course he was smart. He was also cheap. The junk dealer kept him in poor condition, but I fixed him up. We’ve been together since.”

“That’s actually somewhat sweet,” Yuna muses. “And look at you now.”

We wait for morning to venture into the city, Yuna a little reluctantly while and I stride ahead eagerly, excited to not only find the parts I need to fix the Valerian, but hopefully to unlock more secrets about this magnificent place.

Yuna shrieks and raises her feet as a tiny centipede-like machine trickles around her legs.

“Why do they have to be so… creepy crawly?” she asks.

“Careful.” I grab hold of Yuna’s arm to keep her from falling over.

The machines are actually smaller than what I remember, and I suppose from Link’s perspective, lower to the ground, they would appear quite large. To a grown human the machines are like insects, but they behave in an interesting way, like they’re smarter, or as if they’re communicating. Ants I can understand, or maybe bees. They seem to be operating under a hive-mind, and that’s a field I know little about.

I find a larger wrecked machine that hasn’t been scrapped yet and I kneel in front of it, pulling pieces apart in search of usable scrap-metal, running my hands over the smooth chrome surface and feeling for imperfections.

“You haven’t noticed it, have you?” says Yuna.

“Noticed what?”

“You’re… I don’t know… different now.”

I laugh and continue scrapping. “That’s funny, I feel the same.”

“You just remind me a little of Link, to be honest.”

“Well maybe you’ve just gotten to know him better.”

Link has a job to do as well in all of this, as he’s the only one who can read the data on the ancient alien terminals. I don’t really know how he does it, or how he manages to find the terminals—maybe he asks the locals—but he’s away for hours at a time and when he returns he uploads volumes of useful information to our own computers. Some of the intel is great for helping Yuna and I to find parts and supplies, and some of it helps us speed up the repair process of the ship, but one day Link returns with a design for something that I never thought possible.

I don’t regret taking time away from the Valerian’s repairs to work on this little project, and without telling Yuna as well. Just imagine—being able to connect with Link in an instant, and without the use of a VR deck. Yuna thinks I’m out scrapping but in truth I’ve established a workshop in an alien facility where I have easy access to the materials needed to build my device.

In its completed state the device looks like a small silver chip that connects to the back of my head. A split consciousness. The part of me that knows how to eat, how to walk, how to speak, to perform basic regular tasks, that stays in my body. The rest of me, that goes to Link.

“You can’t be serious,” Yuna exclaims, when I eventually demonstrate the device. “So are you here or—” she glances at Link, “or there?”

“I’m both,” I say excitedly, and Link—also me—waves at her. “There’s a lot of places I can’t reach when I’m out there,” I explain. “I don’t have time to go all the way back to the Valerian every time. This way I can make the switch on the spot.”

Yuna eyes me and Link cautiously. “I’ll admit… it’s cool. But just, be careful, alright? You’re messing with an alien design, you do know that?”

During the moments when I am in fact inside my own body, and I have only an inkling of what Link is up to, I try to hang around the ship where it’s safe. I try to ignore the worried looks I get from Yuna every time I switch over to Link for just five minutes, every half-hour or so.

At one point I check on Yuna as she continues her attempts to make contact with Q-Star.

“Anything?” I ask.

Yuna shrugs. “Nav is up and running. Once we break atmosphere I guess I’ll try again. The closer we get to home the more likely we’ll be to reach them.”

“I’m starting to think coming here was a bad idea.”

Yuna cracks a smile but keeps her eyes on the terminal. “Only if we don’t make it off this rock.”

“Well it’s honestly not the worst pickle I’ve gotten myself into… it’s up there, but it’s not the worst.”

“And if Q-Star are generous they might even give you a promotion, or a percentage. I wonder what a dig-site like this would be worth, anyway?”

“Hell of a lot more than what I’m getting paid,” I breathe. “Anyway, I need you to jump into the cockpit for a sec, start her up.”

Yuna and I head to the cockpit, Yuna jumps into the pilot seat and activates the engines—they whir and hum quite gracefully.

“You’ve done it!” Yuna bounces up and down in her seat.

“Hold on there, run a systems check. The hull is space-worthy and the engines are firing but I don’t know about the rest yet.”

“Oh-kay…” Yuna types away at a keyboard, pushes a few buttons, flips a few switches. “Running systems check now and… all green lights.”

“Then that’s it!” I pat the back of Yuna’s chair. “We’re ready for lift-off.”

Yuna swings out of her seat. “I’ll make the final preparations.”

I can’t help but smile. “We’re going home.”

It’s hard not to rush as we pack up all of our things from outside the ship, secure our cargo, upload the last of our data, and prepare to initiate the final launching sequence. At the same time, however, I can’t help but feel a little reluctant to leave, especially as Link presses his head to the window, his sky-blue eyes gazing longingly at the sprawling ruined city.

The Valerian rattles with turbulence as we make our ascent—nothing unusual, but I try to breathe through the ball of anxiety rising in my chest.

“Come on,” I mumble, “you can do it.”

Violent rocking shifts into a smooth quiet and I look around for something unknown that might have gone wrong.

“We’ve broken atmosphere,” Yuna reports over coms. “That’s a hell of a repair job.”

I don’t realise how tired I am until after a few hours of quiet deep space lulling me to restfulness. My eyelids feel heavy and my thoughts are muddled. When Yuna assures me that everything is on track I stumble into my workshop to remove the neural connector and then fall into my cot to rest my eyes.

But sleep alludes me for a moment longer as I feel a presence somewhere in the room.

“Yuna?”

I sit up but no one is there. I scan the ground.

“Link?”

Nothing. I guess I reallydo need sleep, more than I realised. I close my eyes and just as I’m drifting off I hear an unfamiliar voice somewhere in the back of my mind.

“Z… can you hear me?”

I jolt upright.

“Link!”491Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsCApDjjdmx

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