My walkthrough of Sagua’s residence didn’t take long, since her dorm was quite cozy. The Lucren of a few days ago would’ve been flummoxed by the floating blanket, but levitation beds were standard for what I’d seen from aliens; it was mundane compared to much of what I’d witnessed here. Shit, seeing anything floating would’ve knocked me on my ass, back before I…died. Now, I’d just watched the alien loft my food over to me through telekinetic means. What I wanted her to show me was the magic bracelets facilitated that power, according to Keensty.
I chanced a glance back toward the couch, and noticed that the alien was following my every move. Was it worth the risk of explaining how I knew to look for them? Sagua did say she’d show me anything, and curiosity was eating at me. My eyes darted back over to her, and I gulped when I noticed the bands blending in with her gray wrists. Perhaps I could just ask where she got them? I spent a few final seconds eyeing the pictures she had pinned by her dresser, taking in her various haircuts and the scenery behind her.
“Hey buddy,” a familiar voice spoke into my head, making me jump. “How’s it going? Getting any action?”
Sagua looked up with concern. “Lucren? What’s wrong?”
“My friend just messaged me telepathically. I wasn’t expecting it,” I explained, casting a sheepish glance downward. “Keensty, you fucking imbecile! We’ve had dinner and listened to music. We’re talking, like…no shot she’d want to, or I’d want to, but let’s pretend. Do you seriously think that you can just bed a fucking ALIEN?! You’re the expert, you know how they work?! I learned a fuck ton about zoology from Mother and her job. There are species back on Teska that kill or eat their mates after copulation. What if Sagua…?”
Keensty snickered in my head, and I seethed that he’d figured out how to do that before me. “Well, some of these dudes are really old, so unless they’re celibate—which trust me, they couldn’t be if they tried…”
“How the fuck do you know?!”
“For starters, Sagua was raised by both of her parents. Your math skills need some work. Point is, she’s definitely down, and you should go for it. We need her distracted, remember?”
“I’m actually enjoying my time with her, and I’m not just going to throw myself at her because of your perverted ideas! The Watchers are here for kinship with our entire species; she’s trying to stop the whole ship from burning, and she wants a night to kick back. Stop trying to ruin this for me!” I simmered, before asking a final question. “How’s your search going, Keensty?”
“Well, I found where the spaceships are kept, but I have no idea how to fly them or get them out of the docking bay. The easy part was finding our escape. Learning how to use it? That’s another story. Our lives can just go back to normal, and we can come home as heroes from a great adventure. Quite the story to tell, don’t you think?”
“Yeah. Totally.” I bit my lower lip, feeling rotten over the idea of abandoning Sagua. What life was there to go back to, now that I knew the truth? Should I betray the sole person who’d been trustworthy and generous, spitting in the face of her gifts and damning the Watcher program by shredding her lone connection to Aratas? Either way, I had no right to make Keensty stuck here…and I supposed I didn’t want to be trapped here, when the aliens might kill everyone. “I’ve got to go. Please, unless you’re in trouble, keep this channel silent.”
Sagua raised an eyebrow, as I walked back over to the couch. “Everything alright, Lucren?”
“Keensty always gets himself into trouble.” I offered the alien a non-answer, and hoped she’d leave it at that. “Hey, speaking of pretending I don’t know, c-can I ask you about something?”
Her eyes popped, though a reserved calm returned to her features shortly after. “There’s something you’re pretending you don’t know? There’s no need for games then. Tell me what’s on your mind. Maybe we have a thought or two in common, don’t be shy.”
“I’ve just been trying to understand how your machines work. It might be nosy, or you don’t want to tell me, but um…” Be direct, like she said. Sagua was honest about everything, so I don’t think she’ll get that mad if I know too much? “I’ve heard that those bracelets on your wrists are how you pull off telekinesis. Is that true? Uh, what’s it like?”
“The…bracelets,” she said in slow motion, her eyes rolling back. Sagua blinked several times, before running a hand over the bangles and laughing. “You’ve been told correctly. These are raisers, and they can pull on anything magnetic. It ties those forces to your brain’s spatial awareness and sense of self. We’d have given them to Aratas, if we didn’t think you’d use them to impale someone across the room or rip the station apart. But you…I can show you how they work, if you’d like?”
I perked up, glad she hadn’t minded my knowledge. “Yes, please!”
The alien slipped the band off of her slender left wrist, while leaving the other one on. She was gentle lifting my arm, and I was keenly aware of how delicate she was being, now that I knew about her unhallowed super strength. The cool metal was adjusted to the size of my arm; her fingers brushed against my fur as they hooked under the bands. I could feel a buzzing web of connections with the faintest echoes, though it wouldn’t mean anything without her guidance. Sagua smiled and leaned back. The human raised her right arm, and gestured for me to raise mine.
“I’ll help you,” she whispered. “We’ll lift the little mug on the coffee table, together. Think of it like our hands meeting and pushing upward. Imagine that it really is, and tug it with that phantom part of your mind. There’s a lot more power in your brain than you might imagine, if you can unlock it with the right tools.”
I tunneled my focus onto the mug and pressed my arm right up next to hers, trying to follow her motions. This would be a joint effort, after all, and I wanted to pull my weight. My eyes widened at the poking I felt in my wrist, a fraught tension when it floated a few centimeters off of the table. I yelped in amazement and jerked away, causing it to lurch to the side. Sagua’s free hand came to rest on my knee, and she patted it for comfort. Seeing her reassuring nod, I sucked in deep breaths and tried to pull the wobbly mug higher—painful bit by bit.
My concentration waned like a burning muscle, and it lurched back down to gravity as my mind let go. Sagua was glowing, despite my pathetic showing, and she showered me with congratulations. I handed the bands back to her with a sheepish ear flick of appreciation; it was kind of her to give me a demonstration, especially when the Watchers hadn’t wanted Aratas to have this technology in the first place. The alien reattached her left raiser, then ruffled the fur behind my ears in playful fashion.
“So, I decided not to pick a war movie since we’re supposed to have fun, even if gratuitous CGI explosions are one easy definition of fun. And I definitely take you for an adrenaline junkie,” Sagua chuckled. “Action, on the other hand…this is just a simple revenge story about a former mercenary rescuing his family from baddies. What do you say, Lucren?”
I hummed in surprise. “I didn’t think your people enjoyed heart-stopping violence, or that you’d tell that kind of narrative. Now that you mentioned it though, I’m definitely in. I hope there’s some well-choreographed fights.”
The two of us fell into a comfortable silence, and I took in the “simple” displays of fighting skills on screen…complete with weapons that appeared out of thin air, and phrases like “teleportation blocking.” I didn’t know why I expected ordinary fisticuffs, but those items were technologies the humans took for granted. The central premise had me hooked, however, and the camerawork was top-notch; the actors were convincing in their portrayals of the characters, which lent a lot of credibility to the story.
I took a step back to process that I was watching an alien film, with a teleporting boat chase that wound up on the streets through crowds of people. As exciting as it looked from a visual perspective, this should’ve been utter nonsense. Why was my brain lapping up such a foreign culture? It was all such a massive adjustment, and I hardly felt like myself anymore. Was I still the same person at all? Shouldn’t my body have been blown up, and Hrothl’s have been sick and years older?! I had so many questions about how everything worked.
I don’t know how Sagua resurrected me from afar, but how do I know that I’m inhabiting Lucren’s body? Am I still me?! If Lucren died and was buried, that has to mean I’m in a different body. How does that work? Wait, what if…am I a clone?! Did she just implant my memories…that’s so creepy. That’s so wrong!
Sagua shook me by the shoulders, as I panicked and looked at my arms with revulsion. “Lucren, what’s wrong? We can stop the movie. I’m sorry, I should’ve picked something quieter…”
“It’s not that! This isn’t my body, is it? I thought about it, and that’s the only thing being dead can mean!” I screamed. “What am I? You never told me—and I didn’t ask, because I don’t want to consider it. Like, fuck! When I don’t know how you do something, I usually just assume it’s nanobots. This is different. How do you bring someone back?!”
“I can explain everything, and I understand why you’re freaked out. It’s completely normal to have that catch up with you, but I promise, you’re still the same person. Do you want the details, or would you be happier just knowing that? I’ve caused you far too much distress already.”
“I need to know everything, or else I’ll always wonder. You were right. It’s better to know the truth,” I panted.
Sagua pursed her lips. “We teleport the brain out of the corpse at the moment of the body’s death. We printed a new physical form, a replica of your old one, and used nanobots to reconnect your nervous system. Your memories, your personality, the way you’d process all of this hasn’t changed at all. Here’s some food for thought that I think helps. Does it change who a person is, if they lose a limb in the war?”
“N-no,” I stammered, shuddering and pawing at my fur.
“What if they have a prosthetic? That wasn’t their natural body.”
“Of course they should have one, to restore functionality as best as we can. It’s just replacing what they lost.”
“Exactly. Now what if Aratas found a way to grow artificial limbs and attach them back to the nervous system? So they use it and feel it with those neural pathways. Would that be a positive?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
Sagua gave me a slow nod. “If they lost one limb or all four, the concept remains the same. You have a very, very good prosthetic, Lucren, that’s almost indistinguishable from how it was before. That’s pretty good! Good for your quality of life, your healing, your looks. Ah. Everything is fixed so that you have a second chance, instead of…having a body where mostly everything was lost.”
The human’s explanation eased my turmoil a bit, since I could see the logic in viewing it as a full-body prosthetic. If such a thing was possible for us, Aratas would consider it to be restorative medicine, even if it would weird us out a little. The Watchers hadn’t modified my brain, and that was the core of how I experienced the world. It held all of my memories and emotions, so it made sense to preserve. I began to relax and let my fur settle back down, before another thought dawned on me.
“Wait. What if…something happens to the brain? Then how do you bring them back?” I asked. “You must have some way of restoring it then…”
Sagua’s face tightened, and a deep sadness glinted in her eyes. “We don’t. The unfortunate truth is that that is forever death. The person’s consciousness can’t be preserved without an intact brain. All that they are and were, even we can’t reverse damage to the neural structure.”
“Hang on. So if I got shot in the head, I…I wouldn’t have come back?”
“Correct. If that’s what killed you, then there wouldn’t have been enough of Lucren to teleport away. You can’t replace the brain, and even if you did somehow, I’m of the opinion it wouldn’t be the same person, as I wager you are. The actual being’s consciousness terminated with the loss of the brain. For all of our technology, we are not gods. We cannot reverse true death.”
My paw shot to my face in horror. Keensty had asked me to mercy kill him, and for a few seconds, I’d thought about putting a bullet through his brain to end his life swiftly. If I’d given my best friend the very thing that he’d asked for, he wouldn’t be here right now. I’d had no idea that I would be deleting him from existence forever, because how could I have known about aliens resurrecting us with new bodies? A darker thought flashed through my brain, on the topic of mercy kills. Guilt and revulsion ran through me like a cutting knife, remembering the appalling scene that had caused me to do exactly that.
The Pelsyl that was in abject misery, right in front of us, without both of his legs. He was crying for his mother and languishing on and on, and I…I put a bullet through his head to end his suffering. I did it because I cared and thought I was sparing him, but I…fuck, I killed him forever. I eternally murdered an enemy who was dying anyway! I thought I was being kind, I couldn’t bear it…because no one deserved…
“Then millions of people are just gone forever?!” I shouted. “Why don’t you stop the fucking war? Why don’t you tell them not to…?”
Sagua shot me a disbelieving look. “Lucren, if I told them that headshots are the only way to permanently kill someone on the other side, do you think that Aratas wouldn’t be sure to ‘finish them off?’ To make sure people like you, like Keensty, and yes, like innocent Pelsyls, don’t get an afterlife? It’s an easy way to deny someone you hate from eternal life.”
“I killed an innocent Pelsyl!” I roared at her, feeling sick and enraged by the memory. “I didn’t fucking hate him, but you never gave me the chance to know. I did that. He was screaming in pain, so I put him down and called it HUMANE. I thought I was a good person, and now I find out—what does that make me? A murderer. A monster!”
A slew of emotions flashed across Sagua’s face, before she bit her lip with compassion. “Oh, Lucren. That’s terrible, but if you truly did it out of mercy, it’s not your fault. War is and always will be an ugly business, especially for a kind soul to be dragged into. Nothing has changed in the context of your actions, so please, don’t beat yourself up over this.”
“Everything changed about the context! What the everloving fuck do you mean? It wasn’t supposed to…”
The alien wrapped an arm around me. “You thought you were killing him when you pulled the trigger. That’s still the same. It was the right thing to do with the facts you had, I dare to say. I don’t blame you at all. You meant well, and that’s as much as anyone can do.”
“What I meant didn’t matter! What matters is what I actually did! The why doesn’t fix it, doesn’t change it, doesn’t mean I didn’t take his fucking soul! If I didn’t do anything, if I just didn’t care…he’d see his mother again one day. What are you gonna tell her about why her son’s not here? He might’ve been a Pelsyl, but he was just a kid! How can I possibly deserve the second chance I took away from a child?!”
“Because like you said, it’s our fault through our choice to deny you the information. No matter what the Watchers do, someone gets shafted. I can tell you we want to minimize suffering and who you are, but it doesn’t change what happens.”
“You never pulled the trigger on anyone!” I wept.
“Yeah, well neither did Hrothl. Bad decisions have just as much power to kill people, especially when you have great authority. I have to live with it, with fucking up no matter how hard I try to do what’s right, the same as you. But I’m going to keep trying and caring anyway. We can’t give up or blame ourselves, because it dishonors the memory of those lost in this senseless war. It ensures there’ll be more.”
“Why do you let there be more?! Why? You could step in and move them all to separate universes, break their guns, something! Do something. Why won’t you?!”
“Because I’m not the arbiter of your destiny. I have no desire to be some tyrant that denies you your free will. Humanity learned from our mistakes, and Aratas must be allowed to do the same. I’m very sorry, Lucren. I understand your anger, but I much prefer it directed at me, since I made conscious choices. I hope you can find some peace with yourself in knowing that.”
It’s not your fault. You didn’t start the war, even if you didn’t stop it. It’s on us.
I rolled over on the couch and tried to focus on the movie. A cold exhaustion washed over me, as I found myself haunted and wracked by the guilt of what I’d done. There had been a peace in knowing that the aliens could resurrect everyone, and that in essence, the war casualties had done no real harm. It was appalling to realize that was not the entire truth, and that I’d have to live with my personal part in the permanent losses for all time.
A/N - 10! Sagua and Lucren use raiders together, then settle down to watch a movie. The action triggers Lucren to realize that this isn’t his original body and learn that it’s only the brain that’s saved, which makes him realize how much permanent death is going on—and that his mercy kill of a Pelsyl was a permanent murder. Should the Watchers interfere to stop the war rather than allow millions to permanently die?
As always, thank you for reading and supporting!