Mystical Tales of Romance

passage of time and the existence of space as limits on our consciousness. Even when traveling in hyperspace, we have to carry a cocoon of awareness or we’ll go utterly and fatally insane. Yet there is a part of us which belongs outside those boundaries. Mere intelligence is unable to fathom that, so AI can’t cross The Boundary, because it’s merely an extension of human intellect. Intellect belongs inside the time-space limitations. But the human soul is much bigger than the mind, and is designed to cross that boundary. If, during your human existence, you don’t choose to start reaching across The Boundary, you won’t like what happens when the end of your life drags you there.”

  Eventually, he recognized why he had survived. He came to see how she had in some ways done him a favor. Never again would he be a sucker that way for anyone. Having been to the bottom of that dark pit of human fear, he would never fear on that level again. He had nothing left to lose, but he was sure he had something left to do before things came to any kind of end. Not precisely something to accomplish, but there was something he needed to put his hands to, something which called his name. The Brotherhood denied he owed them anything, but they had given him the one piece of sanity which justified facing the insanity of the cosmos one more day.

  Rez had his own imperatives, not thrust upon him by any other human.

  10

  It was when the academy went through the process of adding their accreditation to his identity that he realized his implant was a little unusual. It was as if he could section off that part of him and not reveal it. Standing next to the implant reader, he noticed he could call up the accreditation or push it back into some unreadable part of the memory in the thing. A little more experimentation and he discovered he could change his ID reference code and some other interesting registers in the implant.

  He chuckled, then realized, while the cause was technological and randomly in his favor, it was an appropriate metaphor for what he had gained from the Brotherhood. The odd features in it made it possible for him to alter his official identity to match what he might feel was his imperative for that moment in time. He reset everything to the standard defaults, but savored the train of thought it introduced.

  One of the first things he needed to do was get a job and visit somewhere else in the galaxy. The listings revealed several jobs, but something in the most mundane of them spoke to him. There was a refurbishing project in some obscure old merchant complex, and the workmen kept uncovering odd devices which required someone capable of making and processing images of these things. Some of them were from several centuries in the past, performing functions mechanically which had long since been turned over to electronics and energy fields. Rez had a knack for knowing how to capture the best angles for quick analysis.

  A little research told him the place was one endless maze of building and passages housing the widest array of niche market players in the galaxy. It was no longer a big player in the primary markets, but a huge collection of fiercely independent survivors among the various specialties from a large number of star systems densely packed in that area. He wasn’t fully conscious of why it seemed so important to him, but at least a part of him was aware it would be hard to find something which would broaden his experience with humanity more than that.

  And while he doubted he was anywhere near ready for another romance, he was quite certain he knew what it would take for someone to draw his interest again. The Brotherhood helped him understand he had no business investing any emotional energy in someone so needy. It would require at the very least someone be driven by what drove him. He was not going to be a sucker for plain animal attraction again. He needed a partner, not a distraction.

  The job contract provided lower class travel, a circuitous route and much more time consuming than usual. He was glad for the opportunity to become better acquainted with himself. It was the first time in his life he wasn’t bored by delays and inconveniences. Life itself had become quite an adventure, and there was always something that required just a little more time to understand. He doubted he would ever have the talent or skills with vocal communications so prevalent among the members of the Brotherhood, but he was absolutely certain he could live what they taught him. He was the message himself, as it were, and he was quite happy for the unseen forces outside the universe to steer him wherever they wanted him.

  Oddly, all of this didn’t radically change his behavior too obviously. When things got crazy, he still presented a placid front. But whereas in the past it had been the blank face of utter confusion, now it was the blank face of unconcern. He didn’t rely quite so heavily on physical memory and his implant to get him through a crisis. His choices now had purpose, and he actively tried to hide the advantage his implant gave him. Only once did he turn off the implant signal to get past an automated gateway, which was designed to lock in the presence of an identifying code, but allowed freight to pass. He really didn’t want some bureaucratic ass making him miss his connection and losing a whole week waiting for the next ship heading back toward the galactic core where his job waited.

  The backlog of work orders wasn’t too big when he finally arrived; he was able to catch up in just three days of working intensively and longer hours than usual. He was contented and enjoyed something which allowed him to ignore people for the most part as he went quietly about the chores. The imaging device was decent and allowed him a full range of adjustment to make the most of enhanced shots. Once he caught up, the dead time between assignments could be rather long. Rez was glad he had three days of observation to measure how people generally behaved in the place. With just a minimal interaction with the technicians disassembling parts of the structure, he was able to save them time by not requiring the odd pieces of equipment be fully exposed. They only had to be accessible to his hand.

  The one thing most changed by his time with the Brotherhood was learning not to laugh so quickly when something struck him as funny. Some of these workmen and other functionaries were surprisingly easy to offend, and it required constant watching and evaluating to keep track of it all. But because of what he learned, he was able to keep a rather Stoic demeanor which seemed to work pretty well. Still, he often caught himself wanting to stare, and had to learn to use his camera and heads-up display surreptitiously.

  11

  His quarters were tiny. The contract placed everyone in his class of independent operators in a decommissioned hotel of sorts, itself waiting renovation. It needed it badly. Someone in the room next to his was making an awful racket during one sleep cycle, so he was not at his best the next day. He found himself waiting for a wall to be cleared and the workmen were struggling with corroded fasteners. That’s when he caught himself, too late, looking at the woman.

  He had turned off his camera, and was staring aimlessly into the space above door level on a store front. Seated on a folding chair, when a figure passed close to him, his eyes followed when it stopped just a few steps away. The wild coloration of her hair was what got his attention, rather like exotic bird plumage.

  She was tall, but he saw right away part of it was from prosthetics. Apparently she either used an implant for the purpose, or had been wearing this stuff a long time, because she moved quite easily and comfortably. An awful lot of people around this place had different types and configurations of such prosthetic devices, and some were clearly not yet accustomed, but this gal was the exception. He estimated some portions of her figure were also artificial but the overall effect was surprisingly pleasant to see. As his eyes swept up her body, he froze when he realized she was looking back at him.

  Their eyes locked for an instant, just long enough for him to decide there was nothing behind hers, no soul. Instead, he detected that same bottomless hunger he had seen before. Inside, he shivered. Perhaps some tiny measure of his disappointment registered on his face, but he closed his eyes and turned away. He knew that very thing would be taken differently by different people. He was hoping she would be turned off by it, perceiving she had failed to impress him, w
hich was the truth.

  He was wrong. She must have taken it as challenge, but he didn’t know until later.

  The workmen had finally removed the wall section exposing yet one more inexplicable device with wires running to it. He made quick work of it because his display indicated under penetrating wavelengths it wasn’t too complicated. Just a half-dozen shots, and it was transmitted almost immediately over the uplink with time and location. He turned to check if the transmitter showed another assignment yet, and found her standing right in front of him.

  Her prosthetics probably offered variable height, because while he was sure she had walked past slightly taller than him, she was now facing him at eye level. She held out what appeared a human hand, and introduced herself as Kehli, spelling it for him. The flesh of her hand was a little unnaturally soft, he decided. With the absolute minimum of words, he offered a pseudonym for himself. He maintained full eye contact simply because he refused to let her intimidate him, despite the black feelings lurking at the edges of his mind.

  Over the centuries, various corporations had explored just how far they could go with prosthetic