I skipped through the memories, playing a few seconds if something looked good and then moving on, looking for something like the ones that Princess had showed me before, the ones that made my hand shake and my breath skip.
But all I saw was how, each time I stopped, there were half as many people, that the presents were gone and then the toys too, that the rooms were smaller and dingier, that Mom left on a rainy day and never came back, that Princess didn’t seem to care. She still had her Daddy and he always always held her tightly, close enough that even on watch I could smell the liquor on his breath—just like those booze pops I’d ordered. I still felt a little of the way she’d felt when he called her Brenda, all lit up from inside like candles on a birthday cake, but this time I wasn’t swept up in the share—she was just some sad little girl wearing grimy clothes, living in a dirty room with an old man who finally died in a rocking chair. Some girl who leaned over and let a perv at a front counter see down her shirt. Some girl too dumb to figure out her own stupid memories.
I left the booth before the half hour was up, still trying to get the stink of Princess’ dirty life out of my nose. Pervy was back on duty and waved me over from the front counter as I passed by.
“Your friend gonna be alright?” he said. “Seems like a sweet girl.” He licked his skinny lips and I had to try not to shiver. Princess would end up swapping more than ’grams with him one of these days.
“Leave her alone,” I said.
“I’m just a concerned citizen.” He lifted a bushy eyebrow in a way that was probably supposed to make me feel something. “Maybe I should be concerned about what you were doing during my break.”
“Just making a back up,” I said. “In case there’s another quake or she gets hit by a truck or something.” Pervy leaned forward a little.
“I’ve got an extra,” I said. “You want it?”
Pervy had his hands out before I could blink. They looked pale and clammy, like a piece of gum stuck under a chair too long. I fished the cube with Princess’ memories out of my pocket. It was the only one I had, but she’d be better off without it. Who wants to find out at eighteen that their life has been so fucking pathetic? Screw having something real.
“I give you this, you leave her alone, alright?”
Pervy nodded. I handed the cube over, making sure not to touch his sweaty hands. Fifty-fifty chance he’d try to pull some double-cross, but if I needed to, I could take care of his memories as easy as I had Princess’, so I just smiled and walked out. Can’t hurt somebody you can’t remember.
This time, I made curfew. I could tell by the way Miss Miranda stared me down that she couldn’t wait to have some reason to give me punishment, but she was gonna have to. I smiled right at her and headed up to the third floor like I had a mouth full of cotton candy. Soon as I got off the elevator I saw Princess lying in the bed she liked, hair spread out on the pillow like a pool of old soda. Flash sprang up soon as she saw me, with that big smile she got like she was either gonna hug you or eat you.
“It’s all gone,” she said. “All that shit about her daddy and her perfect life? Wiped just like if the Agency got her.”
I smiled back, but it felt weird, like baring fangs.
“I thought you were bullshitting about the hacking part, but you give good, Ghost,” Flash said. “Maybe next you can reboot Whispers so she won’t talk so damn much, right? Or creep up on Miss Miranda and take everything she’s got?” She laughed hard, and I knew not to tell her anything about how it really was with Princess, ’cause then she’d be mad I gave all the good stuff away.
“The rest of her okay?” I said, like I didn’t care too much really.
“Yeah, she’s good. Not like Whispers or anything. Just less annoying. Cuter too.” Flash glanced over at Princess like she was sizing her up in a prize booth at a fair.
“Yeah, but fosters’ll probably get her soon.” She’d be fine. Just like Hope. Better than her memories.
“Maybe,” Flash said, “If she figures out how to keep her mouth shut.”
“Fifty credits says she’s gone in a month.”
Flash shook her head. “She’s not that cute.”
“You said that with Hope.” I shrugged and hoped my palms wouldn’t be too sweaty.
“Fine.” Flash grabbed my hand tight with her cold one. “But make it sixty. And when she starts blabbermouthing again, I’m gonna laugh at the both of you.”
“We’ll see,” I said, and started over for Princess. I thought Flash might follow, but she just went back to practicing whistles like always. Princess wasn’t doing much, didn’t even look at me as I walked over and sat down right by her ear. Just stared up at the ceiling like any other new girl who got wiped and dumped on the third floor. Sour milk squared. But that was okay. You didn’t have to stay a sour milk girl forever.
“I’m Ghost,” I said, low and quiet so only she could hear. “You know Flash and Whispers. And we call you Princess, but your daddy, he called you Brenda.”
The Unnecessary Parts of the Story
Adam-Troy Castro
You almost don’t need the first half of the story at all. You know there’s a spaceship. You know that its crew stops off at some out-of-the-way planet on some pretext or other, probably repairs, and that while they’re there, somebody jars the wrong rock, or enters the wrong dark place, or something. You know that this person gets infected, that nobody notices, and that when they take off, a hostile alien intelligence takes off with them. Finally, you know that after some skulking around in corridors and a few isolated deaths, the carrier, call him Hennessy, is subdued and placed in isolation, where the others observe him worriedly on monitors.
All of that goes without saying. Because you’ve been here before.
What should happen now is the crew deciding after much rational and reasoned discussion that this is some heavy-duty alien shit, with any number of possible properties, and that the smartest possible thing to do is to write Hennessy off as a complete loss, and dump him into interplanetary vacuum.
But human beings are cute, not to mention slow learners, and so they come up with a different approach entirely. The Captain, and not some more disposable party, puts on an isolation suit and enters the lab in order to negotiate with the entity now controlling good old Hennessy. The Captain is wise, and the Captain is bearded, and the Captain is fully confident in the precautions already taken being able to prevent whatever’s eating Hennessy from also taking charge of him. He cycles through the airlock separating the ship proper from the horror that sits in the isolation cell, and he stands and he peers through his faceplate at the figure who was until recently a respected friend and colleague if also a bit of a comical asshole, who is now secured by gleaming silvery rings to a chair that keeps him immobile; and it would only confuse us to ask just why this vessel on a mission of peaceful exploration, or freight hauling, or whatever, even has an isolation cell with a chair designed to keep a prisoner immobile. Right now, it’s enough to focus our attention on the immediate problem.
The Captain’s probably thinking that he and his crew must be the most inobservant people alive. Hennessy did look a little grotty after leaving the planet, a little paler and sweatier than usual, possibly hung over, but even before he began to prowl the corridors, murdering his fellow crew members one by one, that grottiness was left far behind, in favor of grotesquery. His complexion turned pitted and warty, his flesh flaking and blistery, his lips yellowish and pustulent, well past the point where he looked dead, and yet a number of those he cornered on his several days of winnowing down the opposition greeted his appearance not with a horrified, Holy crap, Hennessy’s been infected with something, but a more neutral, Jesus, man, you look like hell. The ship’s faithful cameras recorded the killing that followed but not whether any of the victims, upon ascertaining that a violent death was now their lot, devoted any of their remaining mental energy to excoriating themselves with a sad stupid, stupid, stupid. Because, really: a number of their demises were an exercise in not seeing the bloody obvious until it was too late.