I’d done my time in service, sometimes to corporations, sometimes to flags. I’d done things that I wasn’t particularly proud of for both. And it never seemed to make much of a damned difference. Whatever I did, the world kept on keeping on, not particularly caring about the efforts of one man among the teeming billions. It was the reason I’d moved from working for big corporations or polities to smaller organizations, then from there to being an independent contractor until finally moving into salvage, where I didn’t work for anybody but myself and my crewmates. I didn’t talk about those previous lives. They weren’t failures, per se, but they had convinced me that the best you could do was look after yourself and your own and let the rest of the system turn as it would. Because it would anyway, regardless.
“Yeah,” I said at last. “I get it. The longer we live, the more the secrets seem to pile up and the harder it gets to talk about some things. But why bother with the Persephone at all?”
“I told you. There’s nowhere better to lie low than deep space. And working for the corporations doesn’t pay as much as you might think.” She shrugged, then winced, as if even that simple motion was uncomfortable in her new coil. “I…” She hesitated. Her cheeks colored, and she looked down, the embarrassment clear on her face. The demure expression didn’t really fit with her current features.
“I put most of my credits into saving for the next coil. To avoid… this…” She gestured at her body—her very male body—with one hand. “I run basic insurance, of course, but I was hoping to save enough to make sure my next coil was built to spec rather than whatever off-the-shelf model got dumped on me.” A slight shudder passed through her. “There aren’t a lot of ways to make that happen. Not for people like us.”
The silence stretched between us for several long moments.
Sarah, have you completed your analysis of the video?
Yes. I have cut it down to the most interesting parts and included a summary file, per your instructions.
“Sarah’s got the video feed,” I said. “Do you want me to port it over to Bit?”
She nodded.
It only took a moment, and then we both dropped into full VR, our senses turning inward, to the world created by our implants. The VR environment could simulate anything the programmer’s heart desired, provided there was enough bandwidth and talent available, but I preferred to keep things simple. My personal abstraction layer began with me hanging in space, weightless against the backdrop of stars. A nebula spread out far beneath my weightless form, glowing with ambient amber light. Sarah appeared before me, in the avatar I had chosen for her long ago, a glittering blue star reminiscent of a compass rose.
“Shay Chan is requesting permission to join your session,” Sarah said, her voice truly audible in the VR abstraction, however little sense that made against the backdrop of vacuum.
“Granted.”
Chan entered the session. Her avatar was a beautifully rendered animated version of herself—her true self—with flowing black hair, mysterious eyes, and slightly pouting lips. Her skill was evident in the details and customization. My avatar, in turn, was an off-the-shelf model rendered to look like a twentieth-century vacuum suit with a reflective visor.
“That’s terrible,” were the first two words that Chan said, her voice once again her own. “Surely you can code… or afford… better than that.”
“Techies,” I said with feigned disgust. “This was the first model vacc suit to set foot on the moon, and all you can say is it’s terrible?”
She just shook her head. “How do you want to do this? Immersion or vid?”
“Video.” I thought about the pain and horror in the eyes of the branch that had sent the video. I didn’t think I wanted to experience what he had experienced. Watching it would be hard enough; I didn’t need to live it. “Definitely video.”
Chan nodded.
“Okay, Sarah. Give us the highlights.”
The abstraction of the misty nebula faded, and the stars briefly swirled, realigning into new patterns—placements that reflected reality, at least at a point in time, rather than the generic light-spangled darkness of my simulation. There were gaps, holes in the starscape colored a dull black that didn’t exist in real space. Sarah had reconstructed the visualization by piecing together the footage the branching me had sent, but people rarely got a panoramic view in all three dimensions when going about their daily