The room felt frozen. The newly-entered light illuminated the thick particles of dust kicked up by Syn’s steps. No sound. Nothing. Now she did wish for the childish songs of Barney. Anything to break the sense of entombment.
“Remember that old movie The Mummy?” Syn asked.
“Which one? Fraser, Karloff, Cruise, or Wolfhard?” Blip had moved into the kitchen, but she could still his green glow through the slit in the doorway.
Eku walked through the living room sniffing at every chair, corner, and wall—undisturbed by the corpse in the entranceway.
Syn paused and thought through the options. “All of them. This is the disturbing of the crypt. The thing you’re not to do. And then…” She smacked her spearpoint hard against the door to the kitchen and shouted, “And then the Mummy gets you!”
Blip spun in the air, his body shifting from green to red in alarm. In a moment, his shell drained of color back to porcelain white. “Not funny.”
“Pretty funny.”
“There’s nothing here.”
Eku seemed to growl in assent.
Syn walked through the hallway into the back bedroom. Everything in the suite was undisturbed. Books on shelves. No food out. Compared to most places they had searched, this one seemed oddly prepared to be left alone for all time—everything perfectly cleaned and arranged. “Maybe.”
The bed was made with a green and yellow striped comforter. A normal decor choice on this side of the Disc. Syn had identified different groupings of style and taste of those that were here before—some were gaudy in their color choices, some were muted, some relished old cultural patterns. Some had clung to more recent, subtler choices. But the styles never varied much from their neighbor.
Syn walked into the bathroom and gasped. She was presented with an elaborate series of mirrors. Before her stood a large, full-bodied mirror with angled panes on all sides. She could see herself from nearly every angle. “Lights,” she whispered, and the bulbous glamour lights around the edges lit up.
“Ouch,” she grunted, closing her eyes as they adjusted to the brightness. When she opened them, the effect was dizzying. More than just five Syns surrounded her. A hundred copies of her receded back through the corridors of the mirrors—a hundred Syns all standing at attention. The orange dots across her forehead reflected back and seemed to float before her. She moved her hand in the air and watched the copies all echo the movement in perfect synchronicity. Yet, was there a delay? Would she have known if one had refused? Perhaps, twenty copies back, that one didn’t respond as fast, she wondered. A Syn that was not completely Syn. Just a bit out of step. Out of rhythm.
Or maybe instead, she imagined, she was peering into the past and was seeing all the Syns that she had been before. Young Syn, stepping out of the crèche and exploring Olorun the first time. Curious Syn next—always looking in every door and every room without much thought. But that extinguished fast. Curious Syn was the first to die. Oh, she kept a token of curiosity to remember her, but the Curious Syn would never survive the wilds of Olorun. After that had come Sad Syn, then Angry Syn, and then Hopeless Syn and then one after another—none of them capable of doing the job that needed to be done. Survival required that those parts of her, those echoes of who she was now, be cut off and thrown away with no precision. She was standing because none of those others could. She was the survivor that had been birthed in their passing.
Beside her, Eku stood and growled, snapping her attention back to the now.
“Ya, girl. Just me. Nothing to worry about.” She tapped the mirror with the point of her spear before turning away. “They’re just me. They’re not real. They can’t hurt you.”
Before exiting the bathroom, she examined the counter and opened up a wooden jewelry box. Inside were a variety of beaded necklaces. She picked one up that was carved from wood and decorated in a variety of blue designs. She slipped it over her neck to join the others. She searched through the box and found a small orange tiger carved from some soft stone. “Look Eku, it’s you.” Syn clipped the pendant to the end of the most recent necklace to join her collection. “There, that way you’re always with me even when you’re not.”
She turned back to the living room, and Eku padded after. “Nothing here. This wasn’t where the other bot meant.”
As she came around the couch, her foot snagged, and she stumbled, catching her balance after a couple steps before falling to the ground. “What the?” Behind her, half under the couch, was the shattered shell of a vacuum bot.
Blip floated in. “Are you okay?”
She pulled the bot out and picked it up. “I have discovered a remarkable thing.” She held up the vacuum bot. “A broken bot.” She held her arms out straight and let the heavy construction drop to the group with a loud clang as its plastic pieces shattered, spraying across the room. “Just like every other bot on this ship.”
She walked over to Blip and leaned in, pressing her nose against his white surface. “Know what?”
Blip floated without response or expression. With as mechanical a response as he could muster, he replied, “What?”
“Just like you will one day.” She stepped back and pushed him away. “And you’re going to leave me all alone.”
She walked back to the entrance and kicked the corpse’s skull, detaching it from its spine. It rolled across the floor before stopping against a table leg. “This was stupid. A waste of time. We should be opening that bot up. Or going back to the needle or something.”
“I’m sorry,” Blip said.
Syn stared at him. An unusual response for him. “What for?”
“I’m sorry we didn’t find anything new.”
She glanced down at the necklace and fingered the orange tiger pendant. “Oh, but we did. See?”
“That’s very pretty,” Blip said.
Syn grinned, “See. I knew you liked tigers.”
“That’s not what I—” Blip started, floating after her.
Syn stepped to the door as it slid open and interrupted him, “We’ve got a long ride back home. Theater’s on the way, and I want to watch a movie. You can choose. Come spend time with me or go talk to your girlfriend Olorun.”
With that, she stepped outside and breathed, “Lights off,” dropping the apartment into pitch blackness, leaving Blip floating alone. The door behind her to the outside shut with a strained hiss, cutting off the sound of her receding footsteps.
5
THROUGH THE FOREST
Syn had fallen asleep during the last minutes of the film and woke when Blip nudged her.
They moved in quiet from the Theater to her tree. She wanted to talk with Blip, quiz him more on the recent strange events, but instead she just squeaked out, “Stay with me until I fall asleep. I don’t want to be alone.”
Blip gave a single nod of agreement but chose to not respond.
From the darkness of the forest, from the false night created by the dimming of the sunstrips, walked a dark shadow. Syn froze. As it approached, she relaxed. Eku. The tiger. Her tiger.
She wrapped her arms around its neck and buried her face in its fur. Eku’s flesh was warm, its body rose and fell with its steady breathing, and deep inside, like from a hidden furnace, the slight start of the rumbling that would be a purr began.