if there is any substitute for love

by jan

Summary:

A decade after the Solaris orbital station was lost, another expedition sets out.

Notes:

• For Gammarad.

“Good luck,” the head of the lab says. “And take care.”

“I’ll try not to disappoint,” you reply.

Her smile is slightly awkward. “I’m sure you won’t. We picked the best man for the job.”

You adjust your spectacles; a reflexive gesture, allowing you to break eye contact. Despite your colleagues’ euphemistic politeness about your role in the impending expedition, everyone knows the prevailing hypotheses in Solaristics. It’s safest to send those without major emotional bonds; in less polite terms, the asocial and unattached.

There are other reasons, less important but no less practical. It’s only right that you’re the one to take the risk, instead of some younger, keener, more promising researcher. After two fruitless decades in the field, if this is the greatest contribution you can make, then you might as well.

 

---

 

Annex II of the International Solaristics Institute’s press release on the mission:

Forensic analysis of the debris of the Solaris orbital station (Kelvin Commission, 21xx)
Waveform comparison of biomagnetic currents and Tarkovsky radiation (N. Bondarchuk & D. Banionis, 21xx)
The Burton-Fechner hypothesis: epiphenomenal versus metaphysical approaches (M. Ibanga et al, 21xx)
Biomagnetism and the cephalopod analogy in xenopsychology (V. Tarasov, 21xx)
‘A heap of disjointed facts’: epistemology and Solaristics (Z. Wang, 21xx)
The limits of knowledge: Solaristics a decade after the Kelvin mission (S. Woller et al, 21xx)

 

---

 

The craft is sent up with a skeleton crew – the project funders have drawn their own conclusions from the ignoble end of the Solaris orbital station – but that suits your preferences well enough. Not that your companions are likely to threaten your love of solitude, given both the selection criteria and your first impressions of them. The young engineer-pilot, Lem, has the breezy attitude of someone who refuses anything more than surface-level acquaintance; the ship’s doctor, Shibasaki, displays such a detached attitude towards humanity that, paradoxically, you feel utterly safe in his care.

The ship’s sleek interior is scrupulously free of any fixture that could be used for violence. Granted, this thoughtful design is meaningless; between Lem’s toolbox, Shibasaki’s medical equipment, and your scientific instruments, the ship has enough weapons to fill a murder mystery. But the minimalist aesthetic is tasteful, at least.

Transmission technology has improved exponentially since the Kelvin mission. Barring technical issues, you should be able to provide reasonably timely updates. There’s even an old-fashioned panic button – not to summon help, which couldn’t possibly arrive in any meaningful time, but to let the backers know that their funding has gone down the drain. And alert the lab, of course.

 

---

 

You spend most of the first day in your quarters, trying not to succumb to nausea. Warp travel takes a greater toll on older bodies; you knew that, in theory, but experiencing it is something else. Lem checks in on you, upbeat as ever (“Shibasaki said not to bother him unless you were dying”), and it makes you feel a fresh envy for her relative youth.

By the time you feel up to looking around, the ship is already locked in orbit. Beyond the porthole, the Ocean seethes, its surface rippling with disquieting patterns.

“I didn’t expect them to send a xenopsychologist.”

You turn. Shibasaki’s staring out at the Ocean, not at you.

“Radiobiologist and xenopsychologist,” you reply, bemused. “Besides, given the prevailing theories, xenopsychology is a natural skillset–”

“I meant,” he says, “that I was trained in multidisciplinary psychology.”

You don’t have the energy for this conversation. Your presence on this expedition has nothing to do with ambition or ego. You smile – though he still isn’t looking at you – and offer: “Glad to have a colleague with whom to discuss any observations, then.”

The second-last time you see Lem – though you don’t realise it yet – is at dinner, since the mission’s specifications include one shared meal a day. Lem carries the conversation, though it’s more of a briefing: the ship’s controls (“Just in case – well, you never know”), the internal warning system, how to access the flight tutorial.

“If I didn’t know better,” Shibasaki remarks, “I’d say you came here prepared to die onboard.”

Lem shrugs. “Surely you trust the Institute’s psychological screening.”

You laugh. Lem raises her glass, in an ironic toast; you do the same.

Shibasaki looks unamused. “And you?” he adds, turning to you. “Not secretly harbouring a death wish too, I hope?”

“Oh, leave the poor man alone,” Lem says cheerfully, turning back to her meal. “He looked close enough to dying, earlier today.”

“If I’m going to be responsible for the mental health of this crew, I’d prefer to have a decent starting point,” Shibasaki retorts.

“I’ll try not to give you too much work,” you offer, holding out your glass.

Shibasaki clinks his own against it, grudgingly.

 

---

 

The next morning, an impossibility appears in your bed.

At first you think you’re dreaming. It’s anachronistic now, but would have made sense a decade or more ago, when the memory was still fresh: the firm warmth of his body, an arm around your waist, soft breaths against your skin. He nuzzles the back of your neck, sleepily. You reach down, placing your hand against his, and–

His hand is smooth, the skin supple. Your own hand shows your age. You’re both clothed, which wasn’t usually the case on such mornings. If this is a dream, it’s a fairly confused one.

You bolt upright, fumbling for your spectacles on the bedside table. You stare at him.

You’ve had plenty of time, over the last two decades, to resent how pathetic you are. Burned so badly by a youthful love that you never got attached again – isn’t it embarrassing, being such a poorly-written cliché? The difference, of course, is that no one has swept in and convinced you to give love a second chance. Just as well. Your career hasn’t particularly benefited, but life has just been... easier. Less complicated. After a while, you forgot what it was like to want. Time helped; made it easier to consign those dreams and desires to a separate era, to write them off as follies of your youth.

And now your greatest youthful mistake is here, wearing a face from your university days.

“Good morning,” he says, blinking up at you through his long hair. He doesn’t say your name; you’re grateful for that mercy. As he looks at you, the sleepiness fades from his eyes. “Where’s this?” His gaze – that clear, sharp, perceptive gaze – flicks quickly around the room, taking in the surroundings, the furnishings so different from that of a university dorm.

You should be more surprised, you want to say. Can’t you see who I am now?

His gaze settles on you –- and softens, full of a warmth you barely recall. Maybe that’s because the unhappy moments have stayed with you the longest.

(Above all, your last argument. Most of it has blurred, replayed too many times by the unreliable machine of memory. You’re no longer sure how much of it is true and how much is your own reconstruction, years after the fact.

“I’m right here,” he said, or you imagined him saying. Sometimes the tone is hollow, sometimes angry – but always, always sad. “But that’s never been enough, has it? You’re the one who isn’t present. Not with me. You have some– some version of me in your head, some ideal I can’t live up to.”

You don’t recall what you replied. Something weak and prevaricating and ultimately useless.

“It’s so lonely,” he said, with a small smile. “Being in love with you.”)

You get out of bed. The apparition that wears his face follows you, closing the distance.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, reaching out. It sounds like genuine concern. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

You have. The touch of his fingers against your cheek makes something twist inside you. Nausea. You label the feeling as nausea.

“I need a doctor,” you tell him, and flee.

Shibasaki opens the door of the medical bay with a wild-eyed expression that you recognise. You’re sure you look the same.

“Did you–” he begins, trying to find the words.

“Someone who shouldn’t be here,” you offer, and he nods sharply. “We’ve both met one, then.”

“Burton-Fechner,” he says tersely. “Technically within the mission’s expectations, but still–” He stops, swallowing hard. “You should send a transmission.”

That startles a laugh out of you. Shibasaki, professional as always. He’s right, of course. This confirmation alone would redeem a long-discarded theory, herald a paradigm shift in Solaristics. The lab needs to know. And yet: “They really got it right when they chose you for this trip, didn’t they?”

He just looks at you. “We have to live with this. With... them. Whatever you might be feeling about this, it doesn’t erase our basic imperative.”

“Is that your professional opinion?” you say, attempting a grin. It’s probably slightly hysterical. “I thought one was supposed to exorcise one’s demons–”

“Professional and personal,” he replies. He pauses. In the silence, you hear the distant sound of sobbing, coming from deep inside the medical bay.

He notices that you’ve noticed. He pushes you half a step backwards, polite yet firm, and closes the door.

 

---

 

You spend a long time in the transmission room. You don’t have to be there – there are comms interfaces all over the ship – but you thought the environment would help you gather your thoughts.

You should be excited, you tell yourself. This is an unimaginably huge scientific discovery. You should send a transmission immediately, even if only a preliminary one.

But as you stare at the screen, you can’t find the words. You don’t know anything about the person – the person-shaped creature – in your room. Whether it will simply re-enact your memories of him, or has something resembling a mind of its own. The substance of its form, its biology. You need to find out more first.

When you return to your quarters, the apparition is seated on your bed, head in its hands. At the sound of the door, it looks up sharply, then flings itself at you with alien desperation.

“I missed you,” it says, arms tight around you, an unfamiliar intensity in that would-be familiar voice. You shiver, trying to pull free. It raises its head – no. The expression on that face is so genuine that you can’t maintain the distance of that pronoun. He looks at you, eyes wide with fear. Nothing like the man you knew. Yet something like pity stirs inside you, all the same.

You reach up and place a hand on his head, fingers curling into his hair; he leans into the contact, eager, greedy. His breathing calms to a regular rhythm.

“Sorry,” he says at last, drawing back. “I don’t know what came over me. I just–” He runs a hand through his hair, the gesture so familiar that it hurts. “I couldn’t control myself.”

“Who are you?” you ask. If not for the tremble in your voice, you could almost pretend it’s a scientific question. You’re trying to understand this lifeform. Making contact. That’s all.

But the confusion in his eyes is too sincere. “What? It’s me.” He places the back of his hand against your forehead, checking for a temperature; you suppress a flinch. “Are you feeling okay?”

“You’ve never seen me like this,” you say, voice low. “It’s been years.”

There it is again, that fear, creeping into his eyes. It erases the similarity; you’re shamefully, unprofessionally grateful for that.

“What do you mean?” he asks. “What’s going on?”

You should tell him. Rid him of the illusion that he’s human. But then he pulls you close again, burying his face in the curve of your neck, his breath warm and halting against your skin. His heart is racing.

You could pretend. For a while, at least, you could pretend.

The rest of the day passes in an absurdly ordinary manner. You have meals together; the other crew members don’t show up. You see the ghost of your ex-lover in every gesture. You reassure him, this sad phantom, a scrap of memory given a form it can’t fill. Nothing’s wrong. It’s fine that you don’t remember everything. Don’t push yourself.

You fall asleep with him curled around you; you wake the same way. The warmth is so achingly nostalgic that you almost want to linger within it, to draw some false comfort from this closeness.

You get up, instead, and leave him sleeping.

As you head to the medical bay, there’s a flash of movement in the corridor. You hurry after it.

“Lem?”

Lem pauses. Turns, eyes bright with an unnatural fervour – or perhaps with tears. In her hand, a heavy wrench, bloodied–

You take a step back. Lem shakes her head, silent, and continues down the corridor. You don’t follow.

You nearly change your mind about going to the medical bay. But in the end, some instinctive faith in Shibasaki wins out.

“Have you sent a transmission?” Shibasaki demands as he opens the door.

“Have you?”

His jaw tightens. He looks back into the shadows of the room; then steps forward, shouldering you out of the way, and closes the door behind him. “Maybe we should send an encephalogram. Save us from having to... articulate this.”

“The data load would be too great,” you say.

He nods. You both know you’re making excuses.

You trade observations instead, as promised. These copies seem to have some memories of the original person, but known as fact rather than lived experience. They replicate their original’s mannerisms, but only superficially. At times, there are flashes of some deeper reservoir of knowledge, things they know – of the ship, of other crewmates – that they shouldn’t. They have trouble being alone.

“There’s something else,” Shibasaki says, voice tight. “They bleed, like humans, but they have... quite spectacular healing capabilities. Regeneration.”

You don’t ask how he knows. He doesn’t offer.

You return to your room to spend another day pretending. The copy seems less anxious now, less insecure; more reminiscent of his original self. You can’t decide how you feel about this development. You take notes, instead.

That night, after you place your glasses on the bedside table, the copy reaches out and takes you by the shoulder. He turns you towards himself, meeting your gaze, his other hand slipping under the hem of your shirt. Despite yourself, a long-forgotten heat rises within you.

It’s been years since your body reacted like this to another person. This apparition might not even be a person, technically speaking, but your body doesn’t seem interested in that detail. His hand roams across your body, tracing its planes: the curve of a hip bone, just palpable beneath flesh. Your waist, no longer firm with muscle, its contours softened with age. The last time–

You push him away.

“Not like this,” you say, as if you’d accept this absurd situation with the right changes. Maybe you would. The realisation sends self-disgust surging through you. “Not with you being so– looking as if–”

You break off. Has it come to this? Explaining your frankly irrelevant qualms to a copy of your ex-lover? Rejecting an alien lifeform not for any of the sensible and obvious reasons, but because its borrowed shape is too young?

The pain in his eyes is unbearable. You try to turn away, but his grip tightens on your shoulder.

“Why? I thought– I mean– Don’t you love me?”

It hurts. Absurd as this is, it hurts. This isn’t the conversation you should be having – there’s something more fundamentally wrong with all of this – yet the words force themselves out of your throat anyway, irrelevant and burning: “I loved you because we were equals. Because I could see us going through life together, matching each other, every step of the way.” Your childish dreams: postgraduate studies, joint papers, a shared lab, a home. “Growing old together.” Strange how easily you can say this, now, this wretched confession, everything you’d never said to him–

– no. Not strange at all. You can say this because this isn’t him.

“I loved him,” you say, hopelessly. “And you aren’t him.”

His fingers twitch. You don’t look up.

“There’s a version of me in your head,” he begins, slowly, and you can’t. You can’t do this.

“Get out.” You stand – his hand falls from your shoulder and you grab his wrist instead, pulling him to his feet, dragging him to the door. His body is younger, stronger, but he barely resists, as if he’s afraid of hurting you by struggling.

He pleads, though: “No, no, please. Don’t do this. Please, don’t–”

You push him out and lock the door with trembling hands.

An eternity passes – that is, perhaps half-an-hour, as you lie in bed and fail to fall asleep – until the ship’s warning system goes off. A pattern of flashing lights, an alarm tone. What had Lem said? Airlock; unauthorised use thereof.

You look at the comms screen. There it is, blinking black-and-white confirmation. In the absence of details, it could be anyone else on this ship – yet somehow you know.

The warning runs its course. The room returns to darkness and silence.

He wouldn’t have done that. He was steady, self-assured, entirely his own person. What does it mean, that his copy chose this end? What does it say about you, about the sad and grimy corners of your unconscious, that you created something that would destroy itself if you didn’t love it back?

 

---

 

Morning arrives, inevitable.

This time it could be a nightmare: your guilt clinging to you, warm against your back, arms firm around your body. You struggle, pulling free, deja vu and terror mixing as you find your glasses. A face you’ve never seen, yet recognise instantly. Those defined features, now slightly weathered. A scattering of grey hairs.

There should be a handy French phrase for this too, you think. A memory you never had a chance to have. Nostalgia for an imagined future.

“This isn’t fair,” you whisper.

He blinks up at you, pushing his hair out of his eyes. “Hm?”

You used to dream about this, in your young and foolish days: waking up with him, over and over, years of ordinary and precious mornings. Is this the face you conjured up for him, in those fantasies of a shared future? The laugh-lines at the corners of his eyes. The rounder line of his jaw. His gaze, clear as ever, yet somehow softer.

No. You stop yourself, reaching instead for the safe detachment of scientific observation: Solaris is learning. It heard your protest, formed its own understanding of it, and offered you a solution.

You almost want to accept this. This beautifully crafted lie, this gift of a path you couldn’t take. The man you dreamt about, long after losing him. That was what he always said about you, after all: that you had your own version of him. You could make that same mistake, again, live it to its logical conclusion. You could.

He reaches out, fingers light against your face, brushing the corner of your eye.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, gently.

This time, you tell him.

 

---

 

He takes it well. Just as his original would.

Impossibly, a day passes. You test the limits of his memory, drawn from your own memories of him. You test his understanding of himself. You make notes. You have meals together. You watch as the sky over the Ocean goes from blue to gold to black. You try not to think about how you’d imagined something very faintly like this, once; you try not to think about how absurdly different the current circumstances are. You fall asleep in his arms, as if it means something.

A second day. A third. You think of letting Shibasaki meet him, then think of all the gleaming instruments in the medical bay, and decide otherwise. You make more notes. You attempt a draft of a transmission report. He reads the latest research papers that you brought onboard. You entertain the idea of discussing Solaristics with him, wondering if he would be able to speak with first-hand knowledge of the Ocean, if his understanding of it might be like an ant’s understanding of its colony.

But you don’t. Outside, the Ocean roils on.

On the third evening of his existence, when you get into bed, he moves closer. He reaches out and lifts your spectacles from your face, the gesture small and ordinary and wrenchingly familiar. Your vision blurs; you settle on the most immediate explanation for it.

He leans in. His lips are warm and dry and very human.

Fifteen years ago, you would have accepted this from anyone who came close enough: a stranger who could pass for him in the right light, or whose voice sounded similar in the dark. A decade ago, you might have allowed yourself to dream of this, then refused to remember in the morning. Now–

You let him part your lips with his tongue. You let him in.

Is it easier or harder, when you can’t see that face? Would you rather pretend that this was him, after all, in one of those warm domestic futures you imagined? Or pretend that this was someone else altogether, someone whose face you never learnt, whose body you don’t remember? In the darkness, silent, you could both be anyone.

You close your eyes; the worlds of your other senses expand to fill the absence. The soft heat of his mouth. His fingers fumbling at the collar of your nightshirt, lower, lower still. His unsteady breaths after he breaks the kiss. The scent of his skin. The warm open weight of his palm against your chest, pushing you down.

An experiment, you tell yourself. This too can be an experiment.

You’re already half-hard when he tugs your pants down, when his fingers close around you. His strokes are firm and assured and entirely too effective. You keep your eyes closed as he presses kisses against your throat, as he takes you closer and closer to the edge, until you grab his wrist with one shaking hand.

“Not like this,” you murmur, but this time it means permission.

He knows how this goes, because he was drawn from your memories, and you still remember: his fingers working you open, the eventual heft of him inside you. But your memories are of younger bodies, and your current self can’t keep up. He moves too soon, too fast, too hard, overwhelming. You gasp, trembling, as he pushes past your limits without knowing – but you don’t ask him to stop.

It’s unfair, you know. You’re just using him to hurt yourself. Punishment, maybe: for still wanting him, after all this time.

Make me stop wanting this, you think. Please. Make me stop wanting you.

You don’t realise you’re crying until he stops moving, abruptly. For a moment you think he’s about to finish, but no – he pulls out, still unspent. The stillness that follows is filled only with your halting sobs.

“This isn’t what you want,” he says, eventually.

You open your eyes. Part of you – some part that isn’t sick with grief and guilt, some remnant of the scientist you’re supposed to be – waits in detached fascination, as he searches his alien understanding for a conclusion.

He tries again: “I’m not who you want.”

“No,” you agree. “You’ll never be him.”

He stays very still. Without your glasses, you can’t see his expression.

“Is there,” he begins, uncertain. He hesitates, then lies down beside you; instinctively, you turn to face him. This close, you can see a familiar pain in his eyes. “Is there something else I can become?”

You can’t face his gaze. You close your eyes, stifling a wild, almost hysterical sob. So it turned out the same, in the end. Your unconscious was so selfish, so greedy, that it created something that only wants your approval. Perhaps you really are the best match for this planet; for the Ocean that froths and surges and never settles, moving through a thousand patterns and holding on to none. A consciousness so lonely that it reached out for any mind it could find, and took a shape to match, and couldn’t bear to be left alone again.

“I could be a research partner,” he says softly. “A... research subject. Both. We can explore this together. Tomorrow– tomorrow, let’s send a transmission to the lab. They need to know.”

He reaches out, slow and tentative. You let him pull you close. You let him hold you.

“I’m here,” he whispers. “Whatever I am. I’m here with you.”

Notes:

Title from Joseph Brodsky: If there is any substitute for love, it’s memory.