Reunion: Chapter 22

  Kathryn and Jaren burst through the door to the dining hall, almost falling together to the ground as the door slid open after they’d been leaning on the other side of it.  At first Kathryn pulled at Jaren’s shirt to keep him from falling but in the process nearly fell over herself.  This time Jaren was secure enough to keep hold of her arm to prevent her from falling to the floor.

  Unbeknownst to any of the others who did likewise, several people from all three crews had brought alcoholic drinks for celebrate with should the occasion arise.   Tonight felt like an appropriate occasion to celebrate a successful mission, and they had a good laugh as they all discovered that others had had the same idea when the bottles came out.

  It hadn’t been a formal party, more like some concurrent parties in different living quarters near to each other in the habitat ring, with people floating between the various locations, enjoying the company at each.

  Jaren and Kathryn had stolen away to find something to eat.  They’d stumbled their way down to the dining hall, both with unambiguous aims on their mind.  Their mission was effectively complete, there was no longer any need for pretense to professionalism.  Kathryn walked slowly backwards from Jaren, enticing him towards her with a gesturing finger and the seductive eyes she’d once practiced in the mirror but hadn’t felt like she’d pulled off particularly well.  It was only the drink that left her feeling playful enough to offer such an open sexual invitation with which she’d ordinarily be so uncomfortable.

  She was having fun tonight though and allowing herself to be comfortable with behaviour she ordinarily wouldn’t.  She was also long past the point of being concerned that Jaren would reject her for anything she might do in a moment of silliness.  They’d both been hungry to be this way with each other openly for some time now.  

  When he got close enough, she turned to bound away mischievously, but he caught her and pulled her towards him.  He embraced her in a long and lingering hug from behind, and they slowly rocked back and forth together as she stroked his arm appreciatively, savouring the closeness.   How long it had been since she’d felt this way.  How much she felt like she’d never felt quite this way before at all.  How much she was looking forward to turning around and kissing him again.

  It was at that moment that all the lights went on in the dining hall which startled them as much as it blinded them.  “Ahem,” they heard Molly say from the middle of the room where she was sitting beside one of the windows on the floor.  “I don’t want to bother you,” she said, “but I was worried that if I didn’t say something I might have to get involved and make things weird.”

  Kathryn smiled and walked towards her, pulling Jaren along with her by the hand.  “Why did you have the lights off?” she asked.

  “Makes seeing out the windows easier,” she distantly explained.

  It had taken two days of careful work, but between the instructions and schematic data in the archives, along with Molly’s own explicit instructions, Jaren and the other engineers had been able to successfully transplant her simulant quantum brain into the head of the new body they’d found for her.  She still had to carry her antimatter power source around with her until engineers on Kobol could fashion her a proper replacement for her new body’s internal reactor, but now having a fully functional body she was able to carry the battery herself in a backpack.  Considering the life she’d been consigned to mere days earlier it was by comparison a mere inconvenience.

  Kathryn came over and sat down on the opposite side of the floor window, and Jaren joined her.

  “How’s the new body working out for you?” Jaren asked.

  “Everything seems to be working well Jaren, thank you.”  She was so much more sincere than she’d been before.  The ever-present snark in her voice seemed to have lifted to some degree.

  “My pleasure.”

  “It’s funny though… I always imagined that I wanted a young woman’s body again, I always longed for the beauty of my youth.  But now…”  Molly held up her hand and turned it over as she scrutinized it.  Kathryn had noticed her doing this quite frequently since being transplanted.  She seemed interested in the look of her new body overall, but especially with the hand she’d been missing all those years.  “Now I really don’t think I’d want it to be any other way.  I fell in love with this body at first sight.  To want a young woman’s body would be…” she sighed, “to be chasing a re-becoming of what I once was; it would be a regression.   Simulant or not, I am not a young woman anymore… and this new embodiment I think much better represents the woman I have become.  It conveys the wisdom of age.  Compared to my original body it is… ancient as I am.  I suspect it will take some time until the sight of myself in the mirror doesn’t shock me, until I can recognize even my own hands.”

  With the hand she’d been musing over she reached over for the bottle Kathryn now realized she’d been drinking out of.  “You humans have it easier, I think.  Sure you actually age, but it dawns on you so gradually.  Yes, you periodically look in the mirror and are shocked to realize how much you’ve aged but that’s just the product of accumulated denial.  You can see the regular passage of time in your face every day if you really look for it.”

  She poured each of them a glass of the liquid.  “One of the Koboli crew was kind enough to allow me to try some of this alien pink champagne.”

  “Ah yes,” Jaren acknowledged in understanding, “beashou.”

  “Can alcohol even affect you, Molly?” Kathryn asked.

  “Of course.   Well… the system detects it and simulates the effects at least,” she said as she handed the glasses of bubbling pink liquid to the other two.  “Molly though…” she considered reflectively.  “Hardly feels like an appropriate name for me anymore, does it?   So demure, so diminutive.  Rather a girl’s name, don’t you think?”

  The other two shrugged.  It wasn’t really a common name for any age group on either of their worlds.

  “Margaret, I think.  I think that a more fitting woman for a woman of my age now.  Yes, definitely more of a Margaret I see in the mirror now than a Molly.”

  Kathryn laughed a lighthearted laugh that was a mixture of moderate intoxication and sleep deprivation.  “To Margaret!” she exclaimed as she held up her glass.

  “To Margaret!” Jaren and the newly incarnated simulant parroted, likewise raising their glasses before all three emptied them.

  They grew quiet in reflection.  Kathryn looked on Margaret and found that she really did seem to suit her new body.   She was wearing a fitted yet conservatively cut dress with her thick bone white hair tidily pulled back in a ponytail.  Her new pale baby blue eyes were remarkably piercing.  The new lines and wrinkles on her face suited her; they suggested a life richly lived more than a life of conflict survived.

  “Jaren,” Kathryn said as she put a hand on his shoulder, “why don’t you go and wait for me in Felix’s room with all the others.  I can meet up with you again there, okay?”

  “Sure,” he answered, understanding well enough.  He seemed content enough to leave them some time in private to discuss whatever Margaret wanted to.  He put a hand behind her head and gently pulled her forward to meet his leaning in and gave her a kiss on the forehead before standing himself up and making for the door with only the slightest hint of an alcohol induced stagger.

  “Can I ask you something?” Kathryn asked Margaret.  She nodded slowly with that same mischievous smile which came off equally well in either of her forms.  “You know?   I’ve forgotten what I was going to ask!” she laughed.  “Guess I’ve had too many of these…” she said as she looked into her glass and whirled it around with a grin.

  “Hmm,” Margaret said, looking down with a smile.  “You know I never realized before how much I associated my body with what was done to it, with… what it was made for,” she said as she poured another modest amount of rose coloured sparkling liquid into Kathryn’s glass and then her own.

  “My obsession with the youth and beauty I once had… I think at some point it became metaphor for… my innocence or something.  Does that make any sense?”

  Kathryn nodded.  “I think I understand.”

  “It’s almost like I wanted to go back not just to the state of a perfectly functioning body, but more importantly a new body, one fresh out of production, completely… untouched.  Virginal, you might say.  And now with this body, not only is it fresh and brand new, not only is it completely untouched, but I can feel that it is the body of someone who lived a life, who was happy.  Someone who was loved, a thing created out of love.  I have nothing to really to base that on of course, I just… have a feeling.

  “Now, in this body I feel like I am free of so much.  Not just my infirmities, but all of the baggage I was carrying around in that body, all of the bitterness and bad experiences I experienced in it and associated with it.  I had a lot of good times in that body as well of course, all those years with Colin and our children…” she trailed off wistfully.  “Those were good years.  But it’s weird.  Those experiences are mine to keep as well; I feel like I can shed away the negativity and darkness along with my old body.”

  “Does it bother you at all that Jaren is going to take your old body back to Kobol for study?   It being used in just some other way?”

  Margaret thought about it for a moment.  “No, I don’t think so.  Not at all really.  I’m not in in it anymore; it’s not me anymore.  I guess that’s really the key, isn’t it?  Things that I feel were done to my body I can leave behind with it, things of my mind I get to keep and take with me.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Kathryn said as she finished the last of her drink.

  Margaret looked at her for several moments with those piercing pale blue eyes.  “You two are so obviously very much in love,” she observed.  “Obviously you’ve forgiven him.  I’m happy for you.”

  “Thank you, it’s… it’s new, but it’s also so different from anything I’ve ever known.   I can be silly with him, that’s so new for me.  I feel like I can… be myself with him in a way I’ve never been able to before.  He feels like my equal in every way.  I really appreciate that.  I don’t feel like I have to impress him, and he never fails to impress me.”

  “That’s the best you could hope for I would think,” Margaret offered as she finished her own glass.  “A word of advice though.  Cherish it.   No matter how good it is, no matter how well it goes, it will all end, and always far too soon.  So it goes…  Every moment you’re able to remember to, cherish that you’re still alive and that you’re together, try to remember how wonderful it is to be alive.  Remember that someday it will all be over in every sense and let that dark reality in just enough to highlight in glorious relief how wonderful it is that that day has yet to come.  Look at me child, six hundred plus years and a brand-new body, and I still feel sad at the idea of it all coming to an end someday.  Sixty years, six hundred years, six thousand years, it doesn’t really matter.  No matter how much time we have, it never feels like enough if you’re doing it right.   One more day will always be the most valuable commodity in the universe for any mortal being, and you and your team have given hope not only me, but for the first time in a long time you have brought hope back to this planet, another day to live and the promise of more.