They grabbed lunch in the DSMC complex’s cafeteria before the afternoon sim session would begin. Emi noticed how Donna couldn’t quit smiling, the last tendrils of her friend’s grief finally working their way out of her system as she came to accept Emi was well and truly alive. “Rob, Sam, and Gregor wanted to know if you all would like to come over to the K-2 for dinner tonight.”
“K-2?”
“Oh, sorry. The Kendall Kant. Our ship.” She smiled. “They docked us right next to the Bight. Sam hit the motor pool ten minutes after they secured and cleared us and headed out for a great organic market in New Phoenix. They’re really looking forward to seeing you guys again.”
Emi didn’t miss Donna’s hope. “It sounds great. I’ll send Aaron a message about it before we go into the sim.”
Donna had something else she wanted to say. She looked down at her tray, reluctance briefly flashing through her before being replaced by determination. “I don’t want you to feel embarrassed or bad by anything you see in the sim, okay? I never told you this before, because I never really thought it mattered, but Rob told me how badly they’d treated you in the initial pairing sim. I made Graymard show me. So please, don’t be embarrassed or anything on my behalf when you go through it. I already saw what happened.”
Another piece clicked home for Emi. “Graymard doesn’t want Aaron, Caph, and Ford getting angry at Rob, Sam, and Gregor.”
Donna touched her finger to her nose. “And there’s something else. After we learned they found you, and about your memory, Rob told me something. He pulled you aside at the Halloween party last year and apologized again in person about what happened. He also told me that, if you want, he’ll go through a sim session with you if you want to recover the memory and otherwise can’t.”
Graymard was far smarter than Emi ever realized. It wasn’t just for moral support and assistance that he’d brought Donna and her men to Earth. He was determined to do his part to make sure current relationships between the crews weren’t ruined by revelations of past incidents that no longer mattered.
Emi nodded. “Okay. Let’s see what happens first and go from there.”
Emi slogged through the process day by day, at times elated at her progress in some areas and frustrated to tears in others. Regaining her memories of life with her men from the moment they first met were easy. Recalling much of her college days, with Donna’s help and guidance, also relatively easy.
Elusive remained some of the memories she treasured most, and yet still couldn’t find a way to access—her childhood, and her parents.
Sure, she had pics, vids, and recorded messages from them she could play. Little teasing particles of memories would emerge as if called out from a children’s hide-and-seek game.
But a large void remained. As painful as she knew it would be, it was one she was most desperate to penetrate and untangle as much as possible.
One day, after a long and frustrating sim session where she made no new progress despite trying all the mental tricks she’d learned and modified to regain other memories, Emi went to bed early.
She did not sleep.
Later that night, after she was certain her men deeply slept, Emi slipped out of bed and dressed, grabbing her handheld as she headed toward the main hatch. By the time she reached the sim lab, Graymard was waiting there for her, dressed in jeans and an Arizona Cardinals T-shirt.
She stopped short at the sight, not used to seeing him in anything but a uniform and a lab coat. “Thank you for coming back,” she softly said to cover her initial confusion at his appearance.
He offered her a tired smile. “I’ve been staying here in one of the guest suites since we started the process. I didn’t want to venture too far afield and not be available to you.”
She felt guilty over that, that his life was upended over her. “I’m sorry.”
He waved her apology off. “Don’t be. This is part of my job. I’m not married, and my dog doesn’t care where we sleep as long as I feed and walk him on time.” He kindly smiled. “I know we were never what one could call close before, but I’ve been rather fond of you since the day you first walked into my office for your initial interview. Seeing how you interacted with Aaron, Caph, and Ford in the sim only reinforced that opinion.”
She blushed. “Thanks,” she mumbled.
“I’ve prepared the playback series you asked for. Are you sure you want to do this alone? You don’t want to wait for Donna or your men to accompany you?”
She nodded. “I know it’s going to hurt. But I also know it didn’t really happen.”
He shrugged. “Very well.” He led her over to the closest sim bed and helped get her settled before he attached the sensor leads to her forehead. He put a button in her hand. “I’ll start you out as an observer. I won’t immerse you until you tell me to. Remember, if it’s too intense, hit that button and everything will pause and you’ll feel like you’re standing in a sim room watching it instead of being part of it.”
She nodded, holding a deep breath as he closed the lid of the sim bed, waiting to let it out again until she sensed him move away toward the control console.
She closed her eyes and waited for Graymard’s countdown to begin.
His soft voice filtered into her consciousness. “Sim to begin in three…two…one…”
Mentally she opened her eyes and found herself standing on the bridge of the Tamora Bight. In the command chair, she saw herself sitting there, reading with her legs drawn up under her. Emi felt her own heart jump and begin to race as her sim-self sat up at the sound of an alert beep. With shaking fingers, her sim-self reached over and touched the screen, where a message box popped up.
Emi took a deep breath and softly spoke. “Full immersion mode.”
Graymard immediately replied, although her sim-self didn’t react. “Full immersion mode, commencing…now.”
Emi experienced a brief moment of disorientation as she found herself now seated in the command chair and reading the alert message. Her heart raced as adrenaline flowed through her body.
She relived the events as they had originally happened to her in the first sim, struggling to remember that it was just a sim, even as the very first one had been.
Still, the emotions, the fear felt real.
The terror.
The grief, thinking she was going to lose Aaron to an alien. That he voluntarily went to his death to save their lives.
As the four of them stood in the Grantz executive vessel and received the ultimatum that one of them would stay or all of them would die, Emi didn’t care that it was a sim of a sim.
She had started to plead with Aaron to reconsider his decision when everything went black. She felt a rush of air against her face and heard the outraged voice of a man screaming.
“…you goddamned motherfucker! We told you we didn’t want her going through this part alone!” Ford.
She opened her eyes to see Ford leaning in over her, his face filled with worry as he started removing the sensor leads from her forehead. “Babe, are you okay?”
She burst into tears as he gathered her into his arms and helped her sit up. He cradled her against his chest, his anger at Graymard white-hot and volatile.
“She’s an adult, Ford. She asked for this.”
“We fucking told you! You promised!”
“Please don’t be mad at him,” she whispered. She felt Ford’s anger begin to settle, to shift from supernova to violet, then orange, eventually settling into the hot grey of embers, stable but able to be stoked at a second’s notice. “I asked him to do this. I needed to.”