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nautilusopus · 7 years ago

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The Number I

Chapter 15: Aeris Also Buys a Snack but Does Not Get Hit by a Truck in the Process

So this thing was originally one 12k+ chapter. That’s enough for two short chapters but pacing wise it’s meant to be one thing, so I’m gonna split it in two and post the next chapter the very next day.

Thank you @auncyen, @limbostratus, @cateringisalie, @cloud-and-tifa, and @fury-brand, the latter of which is indirectly responsible for a couple of the bits in here.

There are holes in the world, and spaces between numbers. Neither should exist. Cloud starts noticing them, and he isn’t the only one who has. And unfortunately for him, he’s both. (Contains graphic depictions of violence.)

Aeris had been staring at Zack and Cissnei huddled around her phone for the last three hours. She knew it was three hours because the battery finally ran down on whatever terrible game they'd been emulating and Zack complained loudly about the fact that it was supposed to last longer. She was supposed to be reviewing the transcript -- she'd been the one the most pushy about their schedule, after all. It's not like there wasn't anything to review, either -- new information on how families were structured, this time without any nonsense about larvae and eggs; the absolutely clusterfuck awaiting her with the fact that she'd have to explain they were in contact with a civilisation that took an "anything goes" approach to both warfare, human rights, and diplomatic relations, that would be fun to deal with; and a few interesting tidbits that seemed to hint at a religion of some sort -- a mention of gods, plural, except on occasion only god, singular, and something rather curious about the planet asking for a name, and a mention of returning to it, clearly hinting at some sort of implied afterlife. She'd have to ask about that later. She had scribbled a note in shorthand that she probably wouldn't remember to check later and had let her attention wander.

Instead, she was thinking about how to best approach her coworkers. Waking up next to someone like that back in Cloud's room, it had been nice. It had been a long time since she'd experienced something like that -- maybe when she was eighteen and had begun dating for its own sake? She'd never really had much in the way of peers, due to being repeatedly jumped grades and put in classes with people several years her senior. And after that, her work had always made her too busy for any sort of social excursions. Besides, who would she even go out with in the first place?

Cissnei was already friends with her, or at the very least was an acquaintance, though she wasn't sure how comfortable she'd be with casual human contact (which was such a strange thing to be uncomfortable with, in her opinion). Zack was fueled by fifteen percent coffee and eighty-five percent machismo, it seemed like, which could either mean he'd been looking for an excuse to get extremely familiar with everyone, or did not even remotely consider anyone else here his equal. Tseng was allergic to fun. Angeal seemed good-humoured enough, but in a dry, professional way. Lazard was technically her physician and they weren't really supposed to get overtly familiar with their patients.

Teachers were easy enough to get along with, though. She wheeled her chair over to Angeal with a good shove off the counter.

"Busy?"

Angeal shrugged. "Not particularly. Much of my work won't be starting for another week or so, though I have gotten portions of it done early... was there something you needed?"

"A sounding board, preferably. I'd like to get my thoughts in order." She straightened her printed copy of the transcript out from their last conversation, reading over some of the more interesting parts of it. The interference seemed to be gone for now.

I talked to your friend.

Teefah (sp?), or Reeve?

Teefa. She seems nice. How long have you known her?

Years. you'd have to ask her that.

I see. How long is a year for you out of curiosity?

like in days?

Perhaps? For that matter, how long would you say a day is?

24 hours (clarify cesium-133 second standard later?).

Good. So how many of those in a year?

358, except when it's 360 every 6 years.

So then how old are you?

25, I think.

You don't know?

No. I don't remember a lot from before I was 14 (age of enlisting, maybe coincidence)

Any reason why?

Mako poisoning I think. It does funny things to your head.

Is it all just a big blank?

I remember Ma. don't know how she looked, or what she was like. she returned to the Planet when I was 16.

I'm sorry for asking but does that mean she's dead?

Yes. That's what that means.

I'm sorry for your loss.

Why are you apologising? you didn't kill her. hard to miss something you don't remember

Doesn't it bother you?

Of course it bothers me. but she's gone, and nobody's alive that remembers her. So there's no point in trying to get her back. it's not like I don't have a family now anyway.

"He's obviously hiding something big," said Angeal. "The question is, is he hiding it because it's personal or is he hiding it because he knows it's relevant?"

"How do you go about asking that?" said Aeris. "This is the first conversation we've had where he didn't tell me to fuck off once. If he knows it's relevant, he'd tell us, wouldn't he? So we have the information we need to move onto the next stage and stop messing with his head."

"Would he?" Angeal gestured to another page of the transcript.

Why are all the doctors afraid of you? Are they prejudiced? Are you a minority subspecies?

the last time I was in here I broke a lady's arm.

Why?

Said I would. I said, you stick me with that needle, I'll break your damn arm in half. I told her. I warned her. I'm a man of my word. Didn't need her fucking flu shot anyway.

"He doesn't seem to have much sense of what's good for him, is the point I'm trying to make," said Angeal.

"But what we're trying to do is going to directly benefit him --"

"I'm not certain he cares. He's very... spirited. Try appealing to his better nature."

Aeris gave him a look, then shook her head. "I'm going to try speaking to Tifa about it. She seems interested in his wellbeing. If I just explain to her we're trying to help... what do you think he could be hiding anyway?"

"...Maybe he's just embarrassed," offered Angeal.

"He's done all this over embarrassment? He said he'd tell me eventually. I don't understand why he's like this." She looked over the papers again. "He's younger than I thought."

"He's your age."

"He is." She's been thinking of him as older, but it seemed he was actually a year younger give or take. She'd gotten used to most people she knew being her senior by twenty years or so. The fact that she was technically the "adult" in this situation in more ways than one was something she hadn't considered. Perhaps that's why he'd calmed down as she'd stopped trying to prove herself to him. She went back to reading the transcript.

What does it mean, to return to the Planet?

It means a lot of things to a lot of people. But we all come from the Planet, and when we die, our souls return to it. For a long time, everyone thought that's what the Promised Land was, too

So you're Jewish?

I'm what?

Never mind. It's a religion. For instance, I'm a Jew. We have one god, and one day hope to return to the Promised Land. Do you have religions?

Yeah.

What's yours?

I don't know.

So, you don't believe in any of them?

I didn't say that. I just said I didn't know. I don't remember anymore. Same as Tifah's, I guess. With the gods of the hearth and the gods of the mountain and the sky, and their circular war.

And when you return to the Planet, do you meet these gods?

I mean, some people think that. I guess maybe I did too. I don't know. What are you asking, exactly? Returning to the Planet isn't a belief, like the gods of the hearth. It's a fact, like gravity.

I'm sorry. I didn't intend to be rude.

You weren't rude. I just don't get how you don't understand that.

"He's very devout," commented Angeal. Aeris shook her head.

"It was more than that. The way he said it..." she pondered, "he wasn't angry. It was... it was as though he really didn't know how I didn't know about his culture. It must be very ingrained. You know how every culture on Earth, or very nearly, has some sort of flood story, suggesting something like that really did happen?"

"So you're suggesting there was some... mass earthquake?" asked Angeal.

"Maybe. We could do with an anthropologist, too."

"How many spare rooms do we have left?"

"...Not enough for an anthropologist," admitted Aeris. "Nobody expected to find anything more than rocks and germs. They might shut the project down even if I hadn't thrown our ambassador into traffic, just because we're underprepared for this. Come back to it in another year or two."

"You think they would, after all this?"

"I don't know. Maybe." She stared at Angeal. She wasn't actually sure if they were closer or not. Suddenly it didn't seem to matter much -- they might not see each other again for a while if the entire thing was shut down. It was such a stupid thing to try and engineer, too.

Instead, she just got up and hugged him. She made her way around the room with everyone, even managing to get a confused hug back from Zack and Cissnei before heading back to her room to organise her findings.

There wasn't anything that was scientifically helpful. The atmospheric content had been useful information, at least. Though she couldn't imagine them ever getting to a point in her lifetime where she'd get to walk around on another world with no isolated air supply. She looked over the transcript again.

If you're not sure how old you are, is there any way you normally keep track of it?

We normally mark it based on the day you're born. I think I was born sometime in the summer, so we just decided it should be the first day of August.

August as in the month August? Did you have an Augustus Caesar?

I don't know. Haven't heard of them. But I'm not good at history.

Sorry. Continue.

So, every year we celebrate the day you're born with a small party. We call that a birthday.

We have those as well. Please continue to tell me about your celebratory customs.

She smiled a bit. That wasn't quite how the conversation had gone...

Do you do presents?

Yeah. Do you?

Aeris had been examining a patch of skin on her arm where she was sure there had been a needle hole. Injuries didn't seem to stick here, between this and the coma. She'd made a note to ask Cloud about that as well. But she hadn’t yet.

Yes. I got a bottle of very fancy champagne and some garden tools from a colleague. But my birthday is in the winter, so I had to wait until the ground thawed out to use them. The tools, I mean, not the champagne, she added with a hint of distaste. She hadn't really cared for the champagne, either. It had tasted terrible and not at all sweet, which probably meant it was extra expensive and it was extra undignified to say you didn't like it. Apparently she wasn't even supposed to open it, she was just supposed to let it sit on a shelf for another ten years.

I get tools for my birthday sometimes. Wrenches and screwdrivers, not garden tools. Don't really need 'em anymore, but it's nice when someone remembers I like that kind of thing. One time I got a knife, though.

What kind of a knife?

Hunting knife.

That big one under your pillow?

That's the one.

Have you ever stabbed anyone with it before?

No. There's never been any reason to. Not until recently, anyway, but then that's what I've got my sword for.

Was that a present as well?

It was, yeah. But it was from me.

Why a sword? Why not a gun? You have guns in your world, right?

Because I'm better with a sword. Duh. And because swords are better. If you're going to kill someone, you should do it with your own two hands instead of pressing a button. Have some respect.

Yes, but a gun would be a lot more efficient.

No it wouldn't. Not for me. And guns are stupid.

Yes, but --

Have you ever used a gun or a sword?

...I can't say I have.

See? You're in no place to talk.

So you're telling me, you've used a sword.

Yeah.

Instead of a gun, when a gun was an option.

Yeah. I don't know what part of this you're not getting. Maybe this is why someone got you gross champagne for your birthday instead of a real present.

It was expensive gross champagne, thanks. It's a huge honour to get gross champagne from your boss.

Are you sure it was even gross? Maybe you just don't like dry stuff. There's no shame in that. I get a lot of customers like that. Some people just can't handle it.

You work in a bar, that's cheating. Piss off.

And then he'd laughed. Or, something like it. A strange little burst of amusement that had her own mouth curling into a smile involuntarily.

Didn't think you had it in you, "ma'am". I bet it wasn't even bad. I bet it was really subtle and complex and you're a big baby that can't handle anything that isn't ginger ale.

Well, maybe I am. And maybe ginger ale is just good.

I never said it wasn't.

She'd begun editing what went into the transcript at this point. She was supposed to be learning about another culture and forging a path ahead for humanity, not debating with someone about swords and guns and birthday presents. Not to mention, with sections like the above, she'd been a bit too distracted to take note properly and had to hastily fabricate a couple generic lines on the spot so Lazard wouldn't think something had gone wrong because she had stopped "writing". She'd been getting more and more spotty lately. Hopefully no one had thought much of it.

She didn't know why she disliked the project so much now. This should have been a big turning point.

She awoke to someone shaking her and found Zack and Cissnei leaning over her bed.

"Don't do that," she reprimanded. "It's creepy."

"Sorry," shrugged Zack. "We were thinking -- do you wanna hit up a bar or something? To celebrate."

"This might be the last time we will get to work with each other for a while, depending on how things go," said Cissnei. "We should make the most of it. Grab something to eat."

Aeris smiled. "I'd like that. Maybe I can try out the champagne."

Zack blinked. "I... I guess you could, yeah."

Going back out through decon was much faster than coming in -- an hour later they found themselves switching places with the inspection crew, which was already waiting outside for them. They'd have a week to decide what to do from here while the facility was re-cleaned and restocked.

They found a small cafe several hours away, closer to civilisation. Cissnei had to do most of the talking for them, though Aeris insisted on ordering her own drink in broken French. Zack stood there, looking lost.

"The others didn't want to come?" asked Aeris, after she'd received her cocktail. They wound up getting a pizza to split. Zack had gotten a sparkling water, and Cissnei had surprised them both by requesting straight gin.

"Don't know. They left earlier this morning," said Zack. "We got three, right? Good enough. So..." he continued, lowering his voice, "no ovipositors, huh?"

"No," she said flatly.

"How do you know? Did you look?"

Aeris smacked him with her napkin. He shrugged.

"In all seriousness... we aren't gonna get to use any of the pictures. Everyone's gonna think they're fake."

"What's fake about them?" asked Cissnei.

"What do you think? 'We totally found aliens, you guys. They look just like us except they have cat eyes'."

"I mean, maybe it's a statement," said Aeris. "About how humanity thrives, so on and so forth." She paused to take a sip of her drink, then stopped. "Actually, maybe that's something to think about. People are the same all over, aren't they?"

"I guess," said Zack. "I don't know if they'll see it that way... man, we're getting shut down for sure."

Aeris glumly dug an ice cube out of her glass. That would probably be for the best, she knew rationally -- Cloud would probably be glad to never see her again, and no one would have to deal with any ugly politics in the event that two entire worlds' worth of geopolitical conflicts came into contact with one another. She wanted to continue, she knew. She also knew perhaps it was selfish to want it to continue, but she wasn't surprised she felt that way. What did surprise her was why.

The entire point of it had been furthering humanity as a species... well, actually no. No one actually bought into that. The entire point of it had been finishing her parents' work and following in their footsteps and clearing their names by showing her discovery to the world. That was the point, wasn't it?

When she'd been sitting there in that waiting room talking about guns and birthdays, the thought hadn't entered her mind. She found herself wondering if Cloud would want to talk to her again, and if she'd get a chance to pet that not-a-dog, and if Tifa would be willing to talk to her again about something less boring than the atmosphere.

She still wanted to do the project, of course. What did it matter why, as long as it got done? But it still felt like a betrayal of why she started this in the first place. Remaining professional about this wasn't a matter of her pride -- it was a matter of... family tradition? Maybe. It was important, even if she didn't have the right word for it.

"...I mean, because no one will believe what we found," amended Zack, getting the wrong idea from her silence, "not because we're all gonna be jailed for human rights violations."

"Keep your voice down," hissed Cissnei.

"I'm just saying. Maybe they'll be too distracted by the weirder bits to even notice the whole... y'know."

“Why are we still talking about the project?” said Cissnei. “We have been talking about the project for weeks.”

“Not me,” said Zack. “I just got here, remember? In comparison, anyway. If it weren’t for this thing I’d probably have just let them pick me up with the next draft. That stuff pays crazy good as long as you don’t do anything stupid like beat your girlfriend or make your pet dogs snort cocaine.”

“Draft for what?” asked Aeris.

“Basketball, probably. In case you hadn’t guessed,” he said, gesturing vaguely above his head to indicate his height. “I’d have probably gotten some free press just for being the first pro player with multiple doctorates. Get my career started early.”

“That was the deciding factor?” asked Aeris. “Your career?”

“Well, what about you? What did you do before you went and dumped your life into bothering some random asshole from Jiffy Lube?”

“Well… I finished school obviously. Then I went into physics after my parents. They were always talking about how important the project was, and since I had the skills to help --”

“You’re talking about it again,” Zack interrupted. “We need a non-project goal. Hobbies. Something.”

“...I’d always wanted to be a pilot, actually,” said Aeris. “At first it was just space shuttles, but then I got interested in aeroplanes for a while. That was what I was set on for a while, was flying.”

“So, why did that not work out?” asked Cissnei.

Because it was all entirely false and Aeris had never had more of a passing interest in flight before. But that was better than admitting that there hadn’t been a non-project goal; that her entire life had been working towards this moment, and now that it was here, it was…

...Ordinary. She didn’t know how something like that could be ordinary -- she’d met a bunch of aliens that were all sitting on some sort of enormous secret-that-wasn’t-a-secret. She’d made… if, perhaps not a friend, at least an acquaintance. It was all very exciting. But…

She don’t know if she expected some sort of epiphany. She certainly didn’t feel like one was coming on. An entire world had been opened up in front of her, quite literally, and she didn’t really feel like she cared. That didn’t make sense. She obviously did care, she did strongly hope they weren’t shut down after this. None of it made much sense.

Though, now that she was spinning a ten-minute lie about it, the plane thing actually seemed interesting too. She knew more about the subject than she thought. She wondered if Cloud knew how to fix a plane. If they had planes. They probably had planes, right? Reeve mentioned airspace violations, so they definitely had planes that maybe one day she could have a look at.

“I haven’t been on a plane in years,” said Zack. “Not until recently. Suddenly a bunch of ‘interested parties’ are in my face, and I’m being flown around everywhere, and there aren’t enough barf bags in the world.”

“What kind of interested parties?” asked Aeris.

“Same ones that started throwing money at you, I guess,” said Zack. He opened his mouth to continue, then shook his head and took a drink from his soda water.

“I like planes,” said Cissnei, shrugging. She was pushing around the ice cubes in her drink, looking glum.“I think they’re exciting.”

“With the rush to get to the terminal, and a bunch of strangers shoving you around?” said Aeris.

“No. It’s just fun to up and go somewhere else. Even if it’s work, it still feels like a vacation.”

“And how often do you actually get to go to the beach on these vacations?”

“Almost never. It’s usually a conference room full of old angry men.”

“The beach is overrated,” said Zack. “It’s nice, but it’s overrated.”

“You’re just over-beached,” said Aeris. “You’re spoilt on a beach that isn’t piss-cold all year.”

“It does too get cold.”

“Ten degrees is not ‘cold’.”

“Well, tell you what -- when all this is over, we’ll wait until the winter and we’ll see for ourselves.”

“How do you know you’d remember to keep in contact that long?”

“How do you know we'll even be in contact that long?" he retorted. Something must have shown on her face in response to that, because he suddenly looked uncomfortable and went back to eating.

“I’ll cover it,” said Cissnei as they got up to leave. “First useful thing I have done in weeks, no?”

“Come on,” Aeris huffed. “You’ve --”

“No, you come on!” snapped Cissnei, angrily throwing her money down on the counter. “I was only there that long because I wasn’t allowed to leave. Chances are I will not be reapproved for the second part of this, if there is one. It is the least I can do.”

Aeris exchanged an uncomfortable look with Zack, who was already on his way out the door. She left after him. “Look…”

“Tell me one useful thing I have done for the project,” she said, shoving the door out of her way.

“...You dumped what we had of the transcript the other day,” suggested Zack. Cissnei rolled her eyes. “Alright, whatever. You were useless. You happy?”

Aeris glowered at Zack. “Oh, come off it --”

“She was! I’m not saying anything everyone wasn’t thinking already,” he protested, as Cissnei sat there and glowered at him.

“...Alright, fine. Why’s she need a use? Maybe it was nice having her around,” Aeris fired back, standing on her toes to try and get her point across. God, he was tall.

“I’m right here!”

“Well then fine!” shouted Aeris crossly, rounding on her. “It was nice having you around!”

“Then thank you!”

“You’re welcome!”

Zack was staring at them both, looking rather bewildered. “Is… this a European thing, or…?”

“Shove it, Fair,” said Aeris. Zack raised his hands in defense and turned away, still looking nonplussed.

“...I mean, I thought this was going pretty well,” he said after a few moments as they drove back to the airport. “Good talk.”

Aeris and Cissnei both made a general noise of assent.

“So… now we wait?” asked Aeris.

Zack nodded. “Seems so. Best case scenario, we’re all back in a week.”

Aeris didn’t ask for the worst case scenario. In truth, she wasn’t sure what it would be. The project continued, but they’d have to double down on the work? Or perhaps she’d be removed from the staff for mishandling the whole thing? Or maybe she’d be invited back, but everyone else would be gone. It wouldn’t really feel the same. Or perhaps they’d all be jailed, that wasn’t out of the question either. Or maybe the project would continue, but her backers would pull out and no one would believe the research. Or maybe CERN themselves would just shut the whole thing down. Or perhaps…

There really wasn’t anything to be done about the whole mess. She’d just have to hope for the best. At least Cloud would have a week to recuperate -- she got the sense he seemed high strung in general.

So, a week to mull things over. Just her and Shithead, and her work. For the project.

Zack tapped her on the shoulder, and she started slightly. "Thought I said not to do that."

"I tapped you. Doesn't count. Anyway..." he shrugged. "You and Cissnei already live here, and I don't really feel like getting on another twenty hour flight back to Hawaii just for a week. Would you care if I hung out at your place? Just for the week."

It was the kind of question he'd almost certainly asked on purpose. Had she really looked that disappointed?

"I know it's kind of out of the blue," continued Zack, as though he wasn't obviously asking for her benefit, "and I don't even know if you have a spare room, and I totally get it if you want your space, but..."

She really shouldn't, she knew. It was vastly inappropriate. But then, she'd also been living with these people for days on end anyway. And Zack seemed decent. And all professionalism had gone out the window the minute the medically advanced civilisation they'd made first contact with had been revealed to know the phrase "fuck you".

"Yeah, alright," said Aeris. "But I hope you're not allergic to cats."

They'd parted ways with Cissnei shortly after the plane ride, when she'd been nice enough to drop them off at the kennel first to pick up Cassiopeia, who yowled angrily the entire bus ride home.

"Is she usually this grouchy?" said Zack, as he swiftly withdrew his finger from the carrier as a set of claws swiped at it a moment later.

"No. She's an attention whore, and she's mad I didn't dote on her for ages," said Aeris. The bus rolled to a stop a few moments later.

"I got it," said Zack, and before she could say anything else he'd hefted their combined luggage in one hand and the carrier in another, its contents still hissing and spitting at everything she could see through the door.

She remembered, all too late, that the pan she'd cooked her eggs in was still in the sink. The house probably reeked -- yes, there was definitely a smell, she quickly realised as she stepped inside. At least she'd remembered to empty the litterbox.

Zack set down the carrier once they were inside and knelt by it. "Can I let her out?"

"Yes. Just keep her away from the patio. She likes to eat the plants."

She saw Zack carefully unlatch the door to the carrier, and watched as a very grouchy tortoiseshell streaked past him a moment later.

"She'll say hi later," said Aeris in response to Zack's somewhat offended look. "She's gonna have a good sulk first."

"So, am I staying on the couch, or...?" questioned Zack. If he noticed the smell, he wasn't acting like it.

"I've a spare room you can use," said Aeris. "I'll get something for us to eat later. Snacks are in the kitchen."

"It's just you here?" he asked.

"Well, me and Shithead," she said, gesturing towards the direction Cassiopeia had sprinted off in. "It's not all bad, really. I've got my work..."

Her work. Her parents' work, at least. Hers now. Her very very important work. Humanity. Something or other.

"Something wrong?" asked Zack. Aeris realised something must have been showing on her face and quickly flashed him a small smile.

"No. Just thinking about what to do in the meantime. We could try and organise our findings into something we could publish, but the whole thing might be pointless in a week, depending on how things go."

"Well... why don't we check the news? See if we're famous yet."

Aeris fetched her laptop from her room. She could have used the desktop computer, but she wanted to sit on a couch. She'd missed couches.

There wasn't much on the news about it that wasn't already common knowledge -- obviously they'd be debating about whether or not to publicly release the information.

Unsurprisingly, there was a lot of focus put on their age. A quick self-google had revealed Zack already had a small following of people interested in more mundane aspects of him than his scientific achievements. Aeris, too, had something of a following, though her name also turned up a number of conspiracy theories surrounding the failed bridging experiment, and how her parents had been taken in by the aliens on the other side and ascended to a higher plane of existence.

Aeris would have liked to believe that. She'd never been brave enough to look at the photos herself, but apparently there was a great deal of viscera everywhere that had clued authorities into the fact that, perhaps, there might not have been any survivors.

The computer was right there, though. Perhaps she should look. For closure. If there was ever a time for it, it was now, before everything they'd worked for came crashing down under its own weight.

She sighed and searched "gainsborough gast explosion remains". Zack, who was still sitting next to her, gave her an alarmed look.

"Are you okay?" he asked quickly, clearly convinced she wasn't.

"Yeah. Just... I wanna look," she said as nonchalantly as she could. She only succeeded in alarming him further. Too late now -- the picture had already loaded.

It wasn't actually as bad as she'd thought. But it was about what you'd expect from someone standing next to a very small hydrogen bomb. There wasn't as much... paste, there was no other way to describe it, as she thought there would be. Still a lot, though.

There. She'd looked. She closed the tab and went back to self-googling, then closed that tab when she inevitably found her head badly photoshopped onto a porn star's body.

"You're not worried, are you?" asked Zack. "It's totally safe, I promise. And we'll send rats through first, obviously..." He rubbed his neck nervously. "God, I shouldn't have been petting them. If any of them survive, at least one is getting dissected."

"I'm not worried," said Aeris distractedly. They wouldn't need to dissect all of them, surely. They'd need some alive to observe over the next few days anyway. And maybe if Cloud wound up dying from anything that developed from doing this, they'd find some other waypoint and whatever was left of his corpse would be used for educational purposes. And there would be others, probably, because there would be more visits now that there was an entire world to develop relations between, and it was her project after all, hers, she'd made such a fuss about that, her project, not her parents', she was doing this for her --

In that minute, she saw the whole of her life stretching out in front of her in two long, narrow paths -- one of more projects, and more terrified mechanics she'd have to possess. More guilt. More objective being put in front of her to complete, walling it in, stretching it further. More refining this project that had sucked everything she knew into it.

The other path was empty.

Aeris curled up further into the couch and turned the volume up on the television. Zack looked at her concernedly, but said nothing for a long while.

Cassiopeia had finally warmed up to her again by the time she went to bed -- perhaps the fact that she'd been living in a clean room for several days had removed her scent? Or perhaps she was getting used to smelling her again after it had faded from the house. That wasn't likely, though. The scent of humans tended to permeate whatever they were around. One only really noticed it was there when one stopped smelling it for a while.

God, it was so bizarre that she knew that now. So far, the smell thing definitely had to be the strangest part of that world, bar none.

Aeris had another strange dream that night -- one she'd had several times before she was eight years old at the zoo with her parents in front of her favourite exhibit, the ostriches. She'd always wanted a pet ostrich in those days. In the dream, they always came up to the fence and permitted them to dig her grubby, cotton candy-encrusted fingers into their feathers. A voice from behind caught her attention.

"Aren't you Dr. Gainsborough?"

Aeris turned around, but of course they weren't talking to her. Her parents had been approached by another pair of visitors. Her mother nodded graciously.

"You were in the news recently -- about the parallel universe thing, yes?" said one of them. "Amazing stuff, never thought I'd see something like that in my lifetime." He leaned in closer, looking at Aeris. "Is that your daughter?"

Her father nodded proudly. "Aeris. She's eight years old, and already in her ninth year."

The man laughed. "Well, now! The apple certainly doesn't fall far, does it? I expect she'll have quite a bit to contribute to the field when she gets older." The man crouched to address her directly. "Do you like physics, Aeris?"

"I like ostriches!" she had said proudly. That earned another laugh out of everyone present.

"With that kind of enthusiasm, she'll make a great scientist," said the man. Her parents leaned over her pen in the zoo with great interest.

"She's too small right now," said her father. "She can't help us yet. She'll have to get bigger first."

They had all hunkered down to watch her. She was exposed in the pen. She wanted to hide behind something, but there wasn't anywhere to hide in the fifth ring. There were thousands of people watching from the rails now, and her parents were lost in the crowd. Their faces blurred together into a leering, flesh coloured mass. They all had cameras, wanting to take a picture of the alien she had discovered, and she and Cloud were exposed for the world to see, the scientist and the project bound together in a single exhibit. She was trapped in skin that wasn't hers, and Cloud was desperately screaming in her ears to be let out. They were twisted together too deep, and when Tseng pulled her, she woke up inside the tank in Cloud's body again, and was moved back into the exhibit. She woke up again, in her bed, and she was still Cloud, and he was still pleading to be let out, and she woke up again, and was still Cloud. She was here, in this body, in this exhibit, forever.

She woke up a fourth time and immediately grabbed a mirror. Just her own sweat-slicked face staring back at her this time. Her own hands, not pockmarked by battle scars, but not familiar either -- no dirt under the nails from her garden, due to the thorough decontamination weeks ago.

She got up right then and there and went downstairs to the patio. She'd never gardened in the middle of the night before. First time for everything, she supposed. She needed the dirt back right now.

She was woken up by Zack, who looked rather alarmed at this point. He tossed her a blanket.

"Jesus Christ, do you always sleep outside in the dirt?"

"No. Just... wanted to check on the plants. It's been a while, you know?"

"Whatever, lady. Aren't you cold?"

"No," she said as she began to shiver. Good thing it had been late summer.

"...Alright. Well, if I've got permission to go through your kitchen, I wanna make breakfast. If there's anything I missed, it's cooking."

“You cook?” asked Aeris, following him inside. Everything was sore. This was a mistake. She was never sleeping outside again, ever.

“I mean, as a hobby, yeah.” He began going through her cupboards. “Do you cook much?”

Aeris shook her head. “I was never much good at it. Never learned before, and haven’t really bothered to.”

“Well, you’re missing out,” said Zack, as he began chopping up some of the vegetables he had insisted she buy, even though she really didn’t bother with cooking from scratch, with a couple exceptions. It was a lot easier to just buy something canned, season it, and get back to work. “It’s really just chemistry, you know -- monosaccharides will brown if you heat them at this temperature, but introducing lipids will slow that reaction by this percentage -- and then you get to try and figure out how exactly long in your head.”

“And that’s fun for you?”

“What is? Cooking? Yeah, obviously.”

“I meant, guessing at things, for its own sake.” Aeris began to feel a bit useless, and decided she might as well make tea with what little space the stovetop offered.

“Oh, that too. Part of why I got into basketball, you know. If you know where the ball is gonna be before anyone else, it makes the game a lot more interesting.”

“So, why didn’t you just go into basketball?” asked Aeris. Whatever Zack was doing with those vegetables, it smelled amazing. “Seems like you’d enjoy it a lot more.”

“I don’t,” he said shortly, as that odd look passed across his face for another moment. “...I mean, not as much as theoretical astrophysics,” he said, flashing her another obnoxious movie star grin. She rolled her eyes. “Although I guess at this point it’s not really theoretical anymore…”

“Now, cooking,” he added, as he switched the stove off and dumped the contents of two different pans into bowls and fetched them a couple plates, “cooking I could get into. Who knows, maybe once we’re all fired I’ll go on Chopped or something.”

Aeris helped herself to a few generous spoonfuls of everything and took an experimental bite. Her eyes watered.

“Oh, wow,” she said.

Zack raised an eyebrow. “That bad?”

“No, it’s fantastic -- what is this?”

“Not anything fancy or anything -- sauteed some mushrooms and onions in butter, and, uh… we didn’t have sausage or anything, so I improvised,” he said, gesturing to an empty tin of corned beef hash. “Mixed the eggs and rice in with it, threw in some red pepper and a little cheese. Shit, we shoulda got some fruit too...”

“I have fruit,” said Aeris, and quickly got up and left the table for the patio again with an empty bowl. She came back with it filled with strawberries.

“Grew them myself,” she said, as she began rinsing them off in the sink. "I've got edible herbs out there as well."

"Wish I'd known that earlier. Remind me about that later."

"Remind yourself," said Aeris, taking her plate and the bowl of strawberries and sitting on her couch next to Shithead. Zack uncertainly followed her. She dug the remote out from under the blanket she'd left it buried in a lifetime ago and switched on the television.

The news was on. Some important-looking doctor was discussing Tseng's presence on the project and his credentials, and what a huge deal it was that he was involved in this monumental endeavour.

"I think we should change the channel," said Zack quietly. Aeris nodded and flipped to a competitive baking show as Shithead marched her way across her lap to demand attention from Zack.

They spent the week stubbornly ignoring the outside world. Aeris went back to fending the cat off from her herbs. Zack didn't even bother changing out of his pyjamas for most of it, except to make another grocery run. He seemed to have taken her comment about his cooking skills as a personal challenge, and it had become clear early on that he was showing off, although Aeris had no trouble admitting she was actually impressed, even if it did make him insufferably smug. She preferred smug to the grinning mascot she'd encountered in the facility, though. He seemed less on-edge here. And perhaps it was just his face, but he seemed to look happier when he wasn't actually smiling.

She'd miss him when he left.

#the number i #spitegarbage #a much-needed interlude i think

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