18. The Right Thing (Patreon)

The sight of my body being ripped apart in front of me is different when it's not a simple bug. I designed Evelyn Tinkerbell, after all. Those deaths and the resulting macabre horror show I witnessed as they got disemboweled was terrifying, and are certainly memories I will always dread, but it is so similar to watching an insect back home get picked apart. It is the kind of thing I have done before on purpose, and I knew what to expect from the sight. It feels very different to watching the incredibly human and incredibly me Evelyn Prime suffer a similar fate. My mind rumbles with frustration, parts of me pushing to destroy each and every person that took a bite of my flesh, but I refuse it. To hurt another Sthrenslian now is more unthinkable than death.

But I know that if I will not stop this horror show, I must at least watch to see that my body is properly disposed of. I can't leave it lying around. I'd wanted to give my fallen Tinkerbell bodies a proper funeral, but I couldn't do it. I doused the corpses in acid, only feeling better once they were finally all gone. Whatever I am now, it refuses to leave parts of me behind.

A loud click sounds in my direction, and I look down at the little weasel-like person who made it. He or she has no eyes with which to glare at me, but they still face me as they speak, directing their voice up to where I stare down from the lip of the pit.

"You see, demons?" they hiss. He hisses? "We will not cower. The warmth of Sss protects and guides us."

I swallow, knowing the words, knowing what I have to say. But they've never come from my throat before.

"Wet stone," I hiss, then swear in English. That wasn't right. "Closing gap. Hsssrsssriksss."

I swear again, take a deep breath, and go slowly to make sure I get it right.

"I'm... sorry," I say to them.

Although many of the Sthrenslians continue to tear at my corpse, many of them turn to me as I speak, in confusion or horror or fury. A flurry of responses follow.

"A speaking demon."

"What does this mean?"

“We should be fighting to reclaim the dead.”

"Don't listen! It will tempt you!"

The words they're using of course aren't exactly the same English words I think of, with different meanings and connotations. Most notably, the word "demon." It's specifically a monster from the surface, but there is a significant religious connotation to it, hence my translation choice. Whatever they think I am, it has to do with whatever they believe about the world. I'm picking up that their god is named "Sss," which is just about the simplest sound you can make in their language. Perhaps that's symbolic.

"I'm not a demon," I say simply, speaking with EE so my voice is loud enough to cut through all of theirs.

Perhaps I'm a monster, but I’m not a demon. Not unless this planet is often visited by alien hive minds, anyway, and that's not the impression I get from the word. One of them said something about reclaiming the dead, though. I run down the hill with EB2, collecting the corpses of fucking people that I just murdered in cold blood. Not even self-defense! I escaped, I was safe, and I returned here with the intent to kill them. I didn't know they were people. I didn't know, but… did I really check? When I first saw that… when I first saw Hsthressis, I just assumed she was a meal! I killed her before I even had the chance to investigate!

Shuddering from the cold grip of regret, I wrap the dead bodies in my tongue, trying not to be hyper-aware of each acid-burned puncture wound that marks the evidence of my horrific acts. I can't believe this. I can't believe I let myself do this.

"I'm sorry," I say again, barely avoiding screwing up the words as I almost choke. “I didn't know you were—"

My head short-circuits trying to find the right word. I want to say "people" but there's no direct translation, no singular concept that means exactly what I wanted to mean, only a bundle of culturally dipped terms that aren't exactly what I mean. When I say "person" what I mean is a sapient individual, a mind capable of reason and empathy and communication. But the Sthrenslian language contains no precise analog to that philosophical ideal, its equivalent words seeped in other connotations. One such word is just "Sthrenslian."  They are the only people they know, and so the name of their species identifies the only concept of a sapient creature outside of legends and gods— devils, angels, that sort of thing. Of course my analogues to Christian theology feel hollow and incorrectly appropriated in ways that I can't really understand without diving deep into the stolen brain within my own, but on the subject they have a religious word that denotes someone to be capable of receiving salvation from their god, having a soul, and so forth. They also have a word for indicating that someone has, through their actions, become a non-person, and a word which indicates the opposite of this state. It basically means "one who is not a heinous criminal," so of course that one doesn't apply to me. Still, I need to say something.

"I thought you were food," I continue honestly. "I was wrong. I am sorry."

Perhaps a more competent person at social interaction could have predicted that wouldn't go over well, but it turns out I'm surprised when calling a bunch of people food results in less than appreciative reactions. I just silently lower the three corpses into the pit, dangling them by my tongue.

"You… wanted your dead, right?" I ask, letting EB and my Tinkerbells take the brunt of the sobbing while I try to keep EE as mentally stable as possible. "I'm sorry. You can have them back."

Another Sthrenslian speaks as I lower the three, and with a shutter I recognize the voice as the one my mental simulation used for her mother. She says precisely the words I fear to hear.

"Where is Hsthressis?" she asks.

I am certainly no expert of Sthrenslian vocal cadence, although I probably could be if I tore the information from the ghost of a dead girl. Still, the pinpricks of knowledge I do possess recognize the equivalent of a quiver in her voice, someone on the verge of erupting into anger or sadness, and unsure which path to take. This woman, this mother, she believes she knows the answer. And I can believe that she knows; Sthrenslians have excellent senses of smell. Any one of them who knew Hsthressis could probably identify where she'd been, and how much blood she'd shed.

"I—" I open my mouth to tell her, to tell the woman I ate her fucking daughter, and that I am sorry but I deserve no forgiveness, I was ignorant but that earns me no mercy, because now she is dead, dead forever... but the words fail to come out. Some terrifying fraction of my mind first asks a question: is she actually?

I have a copy of her mind, created because I ingested her fresh, almost entirely undamaged brain. Her body, including that brain, have been utterly annihilated by whatever alien processes occur inside my belly, but before that ending of everything she is I made a copy in the form of memory, like an image file from a disk. She has no body, no bones, no brain, but in my brain I can create the conditions necessary for her to exist anyway, as pure information.

I pirated an entire person like a goddamn videogame, and I am the emulator that can run her.

Even more than that, I can install her into other hardware. I could just allow Hsthressis the ability to see through my bodies, I could let her talk to her mother right now. At least, I think so, and only in the sense that a memory replica of a person is the same person, which is… a very large can of worms that I absolutely don't have the philosophy degree to tackle! But still, I could let her talk to her mom right now. Not that her mom would believe it if I just gave Hsthressis control of one of my Evelyn Tinkerbells, and Hsthressis wouldn't be able to understand the body anyway, since it would contain senses completely alien to her and lacks the ones she has known her entire life, not to mention being a completely different shape, and probably tons of other problems I haven't even thought of.

Yet can't I fix that too? I'm already simulating her brain. Can't I just remake her whole body?

"Where is she?" the mother hisses again, louder.

"I... she's hurt!" I blurt.

Oh shit, am I going to lie to her? Is this a lie? I don't actually know if I can fix this, I'm just assuming but… it makes sense, right? I should be able to do this? And if I can do this, I'm kind of morally required to, right? Oh, shit, the other bodies! Can I revive them if I eat the other bodies!?

The numb horror of the situation gives way to panic once again as I reel the corpses I've been offering back up. None of the Sthrenslians had made any move to grab them from me, but almost all of them protest as I reel them in. All of this outrage is for naught, unfortunately, as I see one corpse with an utterly smashed skull and the other two with acid burns far too deep in the brain for me to have any hope of returning them as they were.

"Sorry!" I yelp at the protesting aliens. "Sorry, I just needed to check I thought maybe they weren't dead but…"

But they are very dead. And I killed them. I killed the other one too, but I'm too weak to admit it. Just gotta fix it. Fix fix fix.

"How hurt?" The mother demands. "Bring her to me."

"I…I can't yet, she's…I can't let her see you. Maybe—"

They don't have a word for tomorrow? Oh shit, they live underground, they don't have a word for tomorrow.

"Maybe after a rest I can bring her here?" I try.

"Chieftain, demon is clearly lying," one of the Sthrenslians insists. It's a voice I feel like I recognize, but all of the Sthrenslians pretty much look the same to me.

...Oh shit, I'm space racist! No, this is normal, right? It's like how humans can't tell monkeys apart. No! Bad brain! These are not monkeys, these are people!

“We will not fall for your tricks, demon," the mother says. "We will see you slain, and lies will not stay our hand."

I look over the near-hundred people arrayed against me, equipped with acid, claws, and a perfectly justified reason to hate. These creatures, capable of planning coordinated attacks and digging the massive pits with which to kill me using nothing but gravity, who greatly outnumber me and no doubt possess countless tricks to fight against anything I have to fight. People that by all rights I should submit myself to, for I have committed an unforgivable crime.

"I'm not going to let you do that," I tell them, my voice shaking. "I-I'll be back later. I'm leaving, you can't stop me."

Tears dripping into the pit, I lower the corpses of the three warriors back down again, and when once more no one moves to take them I place them into a tunnel along the pit wall, not resisting when my tongue is clawed and spit on. Fighting them is wrong.  Letting myself be killed by them would be wrong too. My mistakes have to be fixed.

"I will be back with Hsthressis as soon as I can heal her," I choke out. "Or as soon as I know that I can't."

Then I walk away, retreating from threats and jeers given by invaders in my own home. Though I suppose on a broader level, I am the invader. I am the outsider from another world, and there is nowhere on this planet that I can truly call home. Acid licks my feet as I leave, attacks of opportunity occurring wherever possible, and I make no retaliation or haste to avoid them.

Mr. Mooshi, the friend I don't deserve, waits safely for me at the bottom of the hill, outside the range of the tunnels. I encourage him to follow me to the river, but he stays still. Watching the top of the hill and waiting for his first and favorite Evelyn to return, his strange deformed daughter. She's not coming, though. That part of me is dead, and the degree to which I barely notice that fact is the most prominent loss I feel on the matter. Mr. Mooshi doesn’t know any of that, though. We were each unique to him, not a singularity but a family.

Mooshians are almost always silent, but as I lift him and carry him away to the river, he lets out a low and mournful wail of protest, struggling the entire way to escape my arms and return to the Evelyn he lost.

I don't look back, though. I'm too busy looking inward.

Hello? A part of me thinks. Hello, is anyone here? Where am I?

"Hello, Hsthressis,” I cause her to believe she hears. “My name is Evelyn. I want to see if I can help you."