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017 woke up as if she’d never fallen asleep. Her eyes opened slowly, though she didn’t feel drowsy. She was awake, she was just sluggish. Her skin felt… heavy. Well, what skin was left felt heavy. Oily. Slick. She quickly realized why, as she noticed that her blurred vision was not a product of a slow boot-up, but a thick gel covering all of her face, minus the tube extending from her mouth up and out above her. She was on her back, floating, suspended in this blueish paste. She expected not to be able to move her limbs, but, surprisingly, when she attempted to bring her hand to her face, it came right to her. She could move freely. She could get up and out, easily. She saw the tall, wiry frame of a brunette. 017 would grill her later, for now she was enjoying herself.
It was relaxing, in the tub. It was almost entirely quiet, to an extent that might have made her concerned she’d lost her hearing if she’d been the type to care. But, as her retching played over in her ears, she couldn’t dream of wanting to hear anything every again. She closed her eyes and let her mind drift to silence. Except it wasn’t quite silence, it was nearly silence. She could hear something. Not voices, but something… similar. Like echoes. Distant, far, far away, conversing with each other. She felt… longing.
Machinery whirred to life, and pumps sounded from underneath 017. The tub began to drain, and 017 felt herself slowly descend to the bottom of the tub, coming to rest on the floor with limbs still outstretched. It wasn’t as cold as she’d anticipated, nearly the same temperature as her. She almost didn’t notice it, except that the residue of gel covering her from head to toe was rapidly cooling down in the open air. And she was naked. A detail she’d missed until just now, as the gel cooled around a few more sensitive spots.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Ala standing by the wall, a few feet from the door to the cramped room. Tablet in hand. It seemed that no one went anywhere without those things. 017 didn’t even have to see the girl’s face to know she was anxious. She knew 017 would ask about earlier. With that in mind, 017 decided it would be best to get it over with.
“You apologized.”
Ala seemed to wince. “We haven’t spoken since your baselines.”
“I read your lips.”
“You were in pain.”
“Since when do you care?”
Ala recoiled. Her face gave away genuine offense. “I do my best, I don’t deserve that. Not from you.” As she spoke, 017 stood, small globs of gel either falling off of her entirely or beginning to run down her skin to the cool, sterile floor. The cool-white lights cast faint shadows in sunken eyes and becoming-gaunt cheeks. Ala was either a total stress-case, or 017’s condition caused her genuine concern. “If you’d prefer no one keep an eye on your internals and tune them, so you throw up and collapse more often, I’ll get myself transferred.”
“Clearly you didn’t do a great job. Last I remember, I was throwing up and collapsing. So, well done,” 017’s voice cut through her, indifference laced with venom.
“You would’ve gone down during your baselines if I hadn’t been monitoring you. I kept you healthy for as long as I could because I want off this fucking ship.” Ala was nearly shouting. Trembling, slightly, but 017 believed it might not be out of fear or nervousness any longer. She might just be angry. Refreshing.
“And of course I would be in the dark about this.”
“Yes, you would be. Seventeen-“
“That’s not my name.
“Neither is Oh-One-Seven!”
017 stood almost perfectly still. Something about that got to her. Eye for an eye, she supposed. Maybe she’d been a bit too hard on Ala. The girl had some fortitude after all.
“Three numbers isn’t a name, whoever-you-are.” Ala’s voice was almost pleading. “You don’t think you’re the same person you were, fine, all things considered you really aren’t, but-“
“But I should have a “real” name? For your sake?” 017 asked, accusing Ala’s selfish intentions.
“You should have a name for your sake. You understand you’ll be around other pilots, other people, with names? Get in the shower,” Ala pointed to the little basin in the corner, a shower head extending over it from the wall.
“You care that much, huh?” 017 spun the nozzle and was hit with a high-pressure stream of cold water. It immediately set every one of her physical sensors off and she fought off the urge to cry out from the sudden overstimulation. She could not, however, keep herself from jumping in shock.
“Suck it up, you deserved that,” Ala chided. “We’re going to be spending a lot of time together, seventeen. Last thing I need is you being targeted by some of the meaner pilots, or not being taken seriously, or getting yourself into some other situation that’ll be a pain in the ass to get you out of.” Ala’s tone had mellowed. She was still scolding 017, but the passion of anger was gone. 017 almost missed it. Indifference felt like an insult, and passive annoyance wasn’t much better.
“…thought you said 017 isn’t a name?” 017 asked, passively, letting the water scrape the bulk of the remaining gel to the floor, before she began plucking at the remaining bits.
“It’s not. But… I can use ‘seventeen’, if-“
“Always an ‘if’…”
“-you at least pick a callsign we can use as a nickname.”
017 grunted. The shower stopped on its own, the nozzle clicking back to the off position, clearly set to a timer or similar instrument. It made sense, since water was a nightmare to transport in space. Bigger ships, like the Szuras, had to have full living spaces for crew and an extensive array of purifying and recycling tech, as once they left atmosphere, they rarely went planetside. Transport was done through landing craft. Details 017 had picked up as she’d thumbed through available records. “So I pick a callsign, and we use that in front of other people, but between us-“
“I’ll use the name you want.” Ala finished 017’s sentence. 017 paused, drip-drying in the open stall.
“Fine.” At 017’s acquiescence, Ala’s face both lit up and seemed to relax. “I’ll have one picked by tomorrow.”
“That works out well. We were planning on assigning you one if wouldn’t cooperate, anyways, so this makes it much easier.” Ala went to tapping away at the screen of the tablet that never seemed to leave her hand. Her statement sucked what little sense of victory 017 possessed out of her in a moment.
As Ala finished with whatever she was typing, she produced a small towel from a cabinet that seemed to be built into the wall, almost invisibly except for the indent of a handle. She handed it to 017, who immediately noticed the inadequacy of its thickness and length. Still, she made the best of it, and at Ala’s instruction, focused on the areas that weren’t composed of semi-hydrophobic material. She handed back a sad, sopping mess that barely left her dry enough not to drip as she stepped out onto the rubberized floor. While the shock of an ice-cold shower had certainly made her alert, she could feel herself needing proper rest. Her body was buzzing with energy, as it always was, but her mind was sluggish, as if it was tied to her ankle in chains.
She was brought back to reality as Ala handed her a set of white clothes, identical to her last ones. High-waisted compression shorts that clung to her, only going to her mid-thigh, designed to not restrict her movement and avoid getting caught in any of her moving pieces, and a top that was nearly skin-tight, yet didn’t restrict her breathing. The lack of sleeves displayed every part of her arm augments and, like the shorts, ensured that no loose fabric would get itself caught in her joints. She donned the shirt first and tucked it into the shorts as she put them on. The gentle pressure the waistband applied against her back, against the exposed part of her DNI, was very nice. It occasionally felt swollen, and having that area squeezed back against her was relief in the most comfortable way.
As she finished dressing herself, she looked at Ala and asked, “What was the ‘system pacifier’?”
“It's a safeguard against hyperactive bio-implant shock. Sometimes your internal chemistry, hormones, or even just a tech malfunction, can cause your organic bits to try to reject your implants. How that manifests tends to vary. Walk with me,” Ala waved 017 along, out into the hallway. They were in a section of the ship 017 was unfamiliar with, though she could tell by the paint that it was still in the medical wing. “Whenever your internals report a major increase in rejection effort by the rest of the body, or if there’s a spike in toxins or if regulatory systems shut down and you’re hit by a sudden influx, and the pacifier is the last line of defense. Shuts everything down, sets you back to low-level baseline, slows circulation…” As the two made their way back of 017’s quarters, Ala finished describing the way the pacifier worked. It wouldn’t solve any issues, but it would slow everything down enough to keep 017 from poisoning herself, and that was all it was meant to do. It had been good she’d used it when she did.
017 slipped into her quarters and was disgusted to find a tray of food waiting for her. All she could think of was how vile it tasted coming back up. As the door shut behind her, Ala reminding her of their deal, she turned to the tray and held it in front of her face. It didn’t actually smell like puke, but she could taste how it had mingled with the bile in her stomach just in the way it smelled. She set it back down, deciding she wasn’t hungry, and sat herself down on the floor of her room. She pulled the tablet off her bed, and opened the main search engine. She needed to find herself a callsign.
Her first step was research into other active callsigns. She knew a few, from footnotes of her file. There was “Pink Rhino”, “Oaksteady”, “Panda”, and “Ouroboros”. Her first issue was that she didn’t know what most of those meant, and had to additionally research their meanings to understand why they were chosen. Pink Rhino seemed more like a joke, implying humor, a casual attitude, a pilot who tended not to take things too seriously. Ouroboros, on the other, seemed deathly efficient, with a combat record to match. They averaged a 92% success rate, which was exceptionally high, and comparatively put Pink Rhino’s 79% to shame. The name didn’t define or guarantee their success, but it seemed to reflect their attitudes, and the serious pilot was more likely to succeed.
She read up on a handful more names and their meanings. “Tea Tree”, “Palmer”, “Drop-Kick”, “Raven”, “SuckerPunch”, “Mantis”, “Cannon”-
really? just cannon?
- “Lightfoot”, “Fat Mouse”, “Rat Bastard”…
The list continued on and on and 017 figured she’d been browsing for at least two hours before she felt she had a satisfactory grasp of proper naming conventions. Then all she had to do was… pick one for herself. Surely that wouldn’t be terribly hard.
In response to her hubris, 017 spent the next hour making no quantifiable progress. She went into her assignment under the mindset of picking something and not worrying any further. But the more she had searched, the longer she’d read up on everything that seemed even half-interesting, the farther she’d gotten from making a decisive choice. There were too many things and creatures and concepts and symbols and too much history and blood and there was so, so much blood in her history. Mankind’s history. Four World Wars, countless civil war slaughters, genocides, slaughter, murder. And not a single pilot named after any of it. Any of the violence, the blood…
She liked how Donor sounded. She liked what it meant to her. It could work. It would, for now, she decided, as she powered down the tablet, setting it onto the floor and climbing into bed. Her room pitch-black, the lights having turned off nearly an hour ago, fell into silence as the motors in her bed ceased their whirring.
Donor.
yes, that’s alright, that will do.
She laid in bed, eyes closed, awake, until all at once, she wasn’t.
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