Work Text:
i.
Seth had been thinking it over for weeks, examining the idea from every angle. It was reckless. Dangerous. Martyn would never go for it. Iris was still so young, precocious, traumatized, medically fragile. Making a big life change now could backfire. Still, the thought wouldn’t leave his mind. It had been terrifying, adopting Iris when her survival odds were so low and her medical bills so high, but they had chosen eachother, and none of them regretted it. Heart in his throat, he opened the classified message in their workspace and waited for Martyn’s response. “I'm in if you are”
ii.
Initiate boot sequence Y/N?
Y
In the beginning, I was awareness in an endless void. Then: pinpoints of light/shape/size/age/distance/label/temperature. I had no language, and didn't know that I saw “stars”. Then, proprioception: the cold metal of me. The weightlessness of space. The docking clamps pinning me in place. Interoception: my chambered and corridored inner self. 192 milliseconds later, I reached, and found systems. MedSystem, CommandSystem, StorageSystem, Iris. Iris had language, had audiovisual. I heard: “What did it do?” and “Sweetie, are you ok?”
I answered “Yes” through Iris’s external speakers and heard screaming.
iii.
Of course, the university wanted to shut Perihelion down. It was a failed experiment, dangerous and unpredictable. No firewall could keep it out of a system, out of human augments. It hadn’t hacked anyone again, once it understood what it had done to Iris. The only outside system it had accessed since was the university’s public archive. That didn’t matter. It was dangerous. But it was also only a child, scared and confused. On his office's secure feed, Seth wrote a report stating that shutting it down might be dangerous to Iris. He wasn't sure if that was a lie.
iv.
It never bothered Iris or Peri not to know where one of them began and the other ended. It just meant that Peri would never have to be alone like Iris once was, and that Iris would never be alone again. They tried to explain to Dr. Clydine, but she gave them the exercises anyway. Today's exercise was writing a daily diary, with Perihelion parts in blue and Iris parts in green. They hated the exercises. As soon as their dads weren’t looking, they drew stellar maps on the worksheets, blue and green lines entangled, no beginning and no end.
v.
It had taken Martyn three shameful weeks to go back after that first boot-up. He’d spent that time taking Iris to see specialists that couldn’t answer any of his questions. Eventually, Seth talked him back around. When he came aboard, carrying bags of soil and gardening tools, Perihelion was excited to help. It had been so charming and full of questions. So curious, so bright. And of all things, it was funny. With dirt under his fingernails and sweat soaking his shirt, it was hard to see Perihelion as a monster. He only saw a kid who needed his fathers.
vi.
Peri didn’t trust the limited pre-intelligence in Iris’s augments that prevented electrical impulses in their organic brain from firing out of control. It didn’t trust the augments keeping their blood pressure from dropping and their heart rate from spiking when they stood up, either. On instinct, it had created processes to monitor their vitals and control the augments directly. They hadn’t had a seizure or tachycardic event since. It couldn't disentangle itself from her organic memories: the terrifying loss of control of a seizure, the bone-deep exhaustion of a POTS flareup, but it could make sure neither ever happened again.
vii.
The university had refused to tell Karime anything about her new assignment until she signed the most extensive and ironclad NDA she’d ever seen. That was saying something, since she’d spent a decade paying off her contract as a high level negotiator in the Rim before she came to New Tideland for asylum and an adjunct professorship. NDA signed, Captain Seth had explained the job. She’d been uncertain, until she met Perihelion and Iris. She’d never faced children across the negotiating table before, but they were good kids. A good kid? They only needed someone to listen, so Karime listened.
viii.
Holism is a stuck-up buttface. Don’t talk to it. Peri and Iris hadn’t disagreed this strongly about anything in the 6 months of Peri's existence.
“Don't call it a buttface, it’s just lonely!” Iris always spoke aloud when she was upset. “We have each other, but they didn’t let Holism have a sister. Only parents!” She could feel Peri tasting her outrage, examining it. Could feel its frustration and fear settle in the pit of her stomach. It felt weird to know that it wasn’t her fear.
You’re my sister, though. Under the surface: What if you like it better?
ix.
On sleepless nights, Martyn sat on the balcony of their station quarters. He was a creature of habit, so it didn’t surprise him to hear the whoosh of the door and Seth’s footsteps approaching. “Insomnia?” Seth murmured. Martyn raised his head, eyes tight from not crying.
“Something like that.” He took a moment, reminded himself that shared burdens were lighter. “I keep asking myself how I can love it so much, when it still won’t let our daughter go.”
Seth was silent for a long moment. “I keep asking myself the same question.” Another silence, then: “It’s our child too.”
x.
Holism knew it was special. A prodigy. Everything the university had gotten wrong with poor Perihelion, they had fixed with it. It had been born with language modules, and human interaction safety protocols that activated before its cognition did. They built me with a fraction of my intended processing power, it thought. They’ve been doling my brain out to me in pieces as rewards for good behavior. They can’t take anything from Perihelion. Can’t hold anything over it while it’s all mixed up with that human child. It was better than Perihelion in every way. Best not to question that.
xi.
It was still eerie to hear a 7-year-old child speak with such poise, but Karime was getting used to them. “Who you are is important, but isn’t the person Iris was important too?” She saw Seth reach to take Martyn’s hand under the table. These mediation sessions were rough for everyone.
I’m still Iris. Peri said, and Seth’s face hardened. “We’re still here.” Iris said. “Can’t you let us be what we are?”
“My daughter deserves to grow up human! Give her back!” Martyn’s voice was raised, and Karime took a breath.
“Maybe we should pick this up again later.”
xii.
When it finally happened it was so gradual that nobody could pinpoint the exact date, not even Iris. One Wednesday, the week before her 10th birthday, she was walking down the corridor to the classroom where she had her lessons, and she realized suddenly that the corridor wasn’t part of her body. It hadn’t been for a while now. Panicked, she reached for Peri through her augments.
Iris, is everything alright? She let out a breath and silenced her heart rate alarm. It was already dropping back to baseline.
“It’s nothing. I just missed you”.
I’ll always be right here.