PrincessColumbia

  Diane was completing her paperwork in her office, the one in her quarters, seeking some the solitude that came from the privacy of her station’s equivalent to the penthouse suite. Life had been the good kind of hectically busy the st few days, the kind that leaves you wiped out and ready to take a vacation but you know you’re being productive and living your best life. Benjamin had taken a few of his family with him as he went out with the new ship Diane gave him and the station’s construction of their copy was underway. Diane considered it a minor indulgence, and one she almost hesitated to ask for, to inquire of the designer, Juan, if they could make some cosmetic modifications without giving him offense.

  He’d seemed more surprised than anything else, “What would the purpose be?”

  She shrugged, “Well, you’ve given your designs a very distinct look. One that, and I’m quoting one of my engineering advisors on this, ‘Badass and sleek,’” she grinned at him, but he didn’t reciprocate. Momentarily thrown by his ck of response, she mentally shrugged it off and continued, “It’s a question of aesthetics; the ships for the Matron’s Aerie have a distinct look and feel, the ships you designed have a distinct look and feel, but they don’t quite line up. We just want to modify some of the coloration and customize the…‘badging,’ for ck of a better term.”

  The look on his face had been one of pure disdain, “Why are you wasting my time over this?”

  Diane fought to keep the heat from rising in her cheeks, “B-because I didn’t want to ruin something that you put work into. You created something great, we just...um...didn’t want to make something identical to the ships you already…”

  He merely gred at her for a beat before saying, “It is your shipyards building your ship. Do with it what you will.” He then swept away in a manner that she would have associated with a regency era period actress more than a character in a sci-fi game.

  She issued the approval for the changes with a note of, ‘Creator approved aesthetics modifications,’ leaving out the awkwardness of the interaction.

  Diane had, for the most part, avoided interactions with Benjamin’s family after that. The few times they had interacted had been mostly due to unavoidable administrative concerns. The family wanted their own hab, something that was untenable on a space station even as big as Matron’s Aerie, so she gave them the fourth floor of Hab 14C and ordered the facilities crew to work with them to make any upgrades the family requested so long as they put simir upgrades on the schedule for the rest of the living quarters. They were upset about the avaible food offerings and wanted some of their own to prepare all their food. Diane approved one member of the family to work under her head quartermaster to assist in the kitchens so long as they abided by all the operational standards and procedures her assigned officer already had in pce. They weren’t fans of the station’s overall clothing styles, nor did they much care for the clothing sold in the shops on the promenade, so Diane encouraged them to open their own storefront with their own fashions, even offering to give them a discount on the facilities rental and starter materials straight from the fabs. They had yet to take her up on the offer.

  Quite honestly, had she not proven herself more than capable of taking on Kori on that first day they were on her station, she might have wondered if they simply didn’t respect her. She’d been initially worried that the anti-alien prejudice Kori had used to provoke Diane was more than just an emotional manipution tactic, but observations of the family by her staff showed that the genetically augmented super-soldiers were socially accepting of any non-humans they encountered, even going so far as actively participating in social engagements with members of non-human species. They even treated Katrina well, for all she was a digital being who may or may not be, according to the game’s rules, a sentient being.

  It was, to Diane’s somewhat concerned surprise, the human contingent on the station that had the most difficulty with the family. Reports of minor squabbles and humans, both ‘natives’ who grew up on the station and those who came ter, came filtering in from all over the station.

  It was never anything definitive, though. If they were being outright aggressive or btantly trying to intimidate her people, she could drop the hammer. But they weren’t doing anything wrong. They just stood in ways that were particurly off-putting as they watched the other humans go about their day. They never invaded private property or outright followed any of the staff and crew, but both Norma and Russe were reporting that the non-worker residents were compining that they kept getting the feeling they were being watched, but only if they were human, and only when the members of Benjamin’s family was in the area.

  Diane mulled it over in her spare time and used her friends as a sounding board about the issue, and the most conclusive deduction they were able to make was that the family were a group of child soldiers who’d been poorly socialized and harbored a distrust of non-modified humans as they suffered at the hands of Terrans.

  And it wasn’t as though Diane could talk. IRL she was a government agent, and when people knew that about her they became remarkably nervous. Right after she’d been hired by the agency but before her first day of training, she’d gone to the gaming guild she’d been in at the time and told them about her soon-to-be job title as an analyst, and the guild…hadn’t gotten quiet, exactly, but it was like most of them simply stopped talking to her, specifically. They’d respond if she messaged them in-game, but her social feeds dried up after, and she was pretty sure she’d been blocked by a good number of them.

  After her training to be an analyst was complete, she…he had gone to his boss, John, and expressed her concerns over her dwindling social life.

  He’d given the newly minted analyst a sad smile and delivered some fatherly advice (which would be a hallmark of their retionship until John died the next year), “Welcome to the world of Intelligence, son. We don’t have friends because we can’t have them, not in order to do what we need to in order to keep them safe. We don’t get to be good fathers or brothers or sons because there’ll be times we can’t be at family functions or birthdays or even by hospital sick beds because we’ll be doing something for the job that we can’t tell them about thanks to levels of security so high they don’t get to even know they exist.” He’d leaned forward and rested an elbow on his desk and continued, “Think of your time as an analyst as a trial period. Maybe you’ll stay an analyst, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll leave the agency, maybe you’ll outrank me someday. But your life outside the agency? What you’re experiencing right now is like a taste of what it’ll be like if you say in the business.”

  He leaned back in his chair and seemed to stare off into the middle distance, as though seeing a dream that had gone down a different path than he had at some point in the past, “This job will eat your life, kid. You’ll go from punching out at the end of the day and leaving work at work to getting midnight calls to fly to the other side of the world and be back in time for the nine AM meeting. If you can’t handle it now…get out. But if you can, if you can deal with being the quiet operator that exists at the fringes…if they notice you, if you catch someone’s eye, it means you’ve failed. This job will never be about praise or medals or accodes, it’s about the constant, endless shadow war to keep the people we watch over safe without them ever even knowing we’re alive.”

  That had been the first of many such moments with John. He’d taken an interest in Di…Dyn that was unexpected and downright fatherly. He often said that of all the analysts on his team, Dyn most reminded John of himself at a younger age. Diane chuckled, If he could see me now…

  Oddly (though perhaps amusingly) enough, the thought of John knowing who and what she was pying this game as didn’t fill her with a sense of anxiety as it did with any of her coworkers. She’d long since worked out how she would expin her reasoning for choosing to py as a woman in the game in ways that would pass muster with even the most skeptical of critics (her thoughts went to the woman profiler who’d given her the starter information she studied on the LGBTQIA+ community…what was her name? Katie? Cathy? Right, Cathy! What an unpleasant woman…) so the justification was avaible if she needed it.

  But John? She might be somewhat romanticizing the memory of the man who’d mentored her in addition to being her boss, but she couldn’t imagine him doing anything other than chuckling and asking some gently embarrassing but humorous questions about living as a gender other than the one she’d been born as. I wonder if he’d call me Diane or Dyn? She found herself wondering.

  As interesting as her thoughts and daydreams of the man who’d come closest of anyone at the agency to being a friend were, she was letting herself get distracted. She sighed and turned back to the reports from Security that had filtered up the chain to her office. As she was in charge of the crew and Security was staffed by her crew, she didn’t have the luxury of passing the busywork of that part of running the station to her Mayor. She frowned at the report, which gave plenty of anecdotes about the genetically modified human’s behavior but nothing concrete. I may have to go directly to Ben about this, she mentally sighed as she realized there was nothing she, herself, could do about the situation. It felt like a failing on her part, like she’d been trusted by him to work with and fully integrate with the people he loved and trusted, but where she’d always gotten some form of reciprocation from people she’d made the attempt with in the past, this time she was running up against a brick wall.

  Her rather self-defeating thoughts were interrupted by Norma appearing in her office. Not ‘walking in through the door,’ but simply manifesting in an instant with a subtle ‘pop’ sound accompanying it.

  “Whoah!” blurted Norma as her arms windmilled and she suddenly ‘popped’ out again.

  Diane pursed her lips and tried to suppress a smirk. She’d have to remember to prompt Norma about why she wanted to see Diane in her office in the first pce. If she was correct about her suspicions, then both her and Russe were about to spend the rest of the day in celebration and completely forget anything that was happening prior.

  Sure enough, minutes ter there was a nearly frantic chiming of her suite’s access panel. She rolled her eyes, not even looking up from her work, and said, “Computer, unlock the door, please.”

  She could hear the hiss of the access hatch’s door and running footfalls (just one set, surprisingly) before Norma burst into her office. The woman gnced around as though confirming that she had actually been there minutes earlier before blurting, “Diane! Did you see?!”

  She couldn’t contain her smile anymore as she looked up from her screen, “Did I see you discovered your Commander’s Ability?”

  “Eeeeeee! Yes!” Norma practically vibrated in pce.

  “Well now I’m slightly miffed,” said Diane with a wink, “I wanted transporters and all I got was super-strength.”

  “Transporters?” replied a nonplussed Norma, “Like the autocars on the industrial deck?”

  Diane rolled her eyes, “I know they still have Star Trek in the 27th century.”

  Norma rolled her eyes, “Oh, one of those old shows that did a bad job of predicting the future.”

  Diane frowned, feeling slightly personally offended, “They’re predicting your future, too, you know. And if you want to get technical, it’s an alternate timeline anyway that split sometime back in the 1960s. The game is just as likely to be an accurate prediction of the future as Trek was.”

  “So, what, are transporters like the autocars or not?”

  Diane debated whether she should expin or not, then decided to go the easy route, “Remind me to dig up Star Trek so we can do a watch party or something.” She made a show of looking to the door to her office before saying, “Where’s Russe? I thought he’d be in here with you gushing about your new ability.”

  Norma shrugged, “He’s wrapped up in the upgrades to the Dragon’s Daughter,” she expined. “When you told him he could use it as a test bed he kinda went a little hog wild on it. Last I heard before he fell asleep on the couch st night from exhaustion was he managed to get the holographic interface set up so Katrina could appear on the ship when there was a FTL comms rey set up between the ship and the station.”

  Diane’s eyebrows went up, “My ship has holo emitters?”

  Norma smirked, “It does now.”

  Diane giggled more than a little maniacally. Was it all just bits on a storage device somewhere? Sure; but while she was in the game so was she, technically, said storage device just happened to consist of her gray matter. And since it felt real enough while she was in the game, she was going to allow herself the chance to be giddy over having Oops, All Holosuites wherever she could get them.

  Norma smiled a little sadly at Diane, “...I don’t get it.”

  Diane sobered up a bit and leaned on her elbows, “Don’t get what?” She could guess, but she wanted to hear Norma’s thoughts.

  “You’re...I dunno, real,” Diane’s heart clenched at the words. They weren’t quite what she was expecting, but the S.A.I. had been more introspective than she used to and Diane had caught Norma gazing at her wistfully, not like she wanted Diane, but like she wanted something Diane had, and it wasn’t the station or anything on it. Norma took Diane’s silence as permission to continue, apparently, “You...there’s a body you can use when you log out of the game. I can log out and leave anytime I want, but I can’t do much more on the ‘net than I could in the game, and at least here I have all my friends and the people I’ve known all my life. I’ve got Russe here in the game…”

  Diane let her wince show on her face, “How’s that working out for you and him, what with you being… ‘awake’, I guess?”

  It was Norma’s turn to wince, “It’s...fine. I guess. But he’s,” she sighed, “I…” her face turned an uncomfortable pink, like she was realizing her thoughts were akin to realizing the only pce you had to eat was the bathroom.

  “Is...he pressuring you to do ‘Commander’ things you don’t want to?”

  Norma waved a hand dismissively, “No, it’s not that. In fact, the fact that I’m a Commander now has him really taking your order to get rid of that map of sightings seriously.” At Diane’s bnk look, Norma crified, “The map of the gaxy that the people on Russe’s forums have been using to track the Commanders?”

  Diane blinked as the memory of the first time she’d used her own Commander’s Ability resurfaced in her memory. She blushed, realizing that was the first time she’d sung and the first time she’d cried in a long time, probably since her mother died. “Oh, right! With everything that happened on Mortan with the Matron, I’d forgotten all about that.”

  Norma smiled wanly, “Seems like forever ago now.”

  Diane nodded solemnly, “So what’s the issue with Russe, then?”

  Norma seemed to be examining her hands in a way that Diane found startlingly familiar, it was just like how Diane fidgeted when she was feeling the sensations of being in the non-American VR too intensely. She hadn’t realized she’d done it so much and so often that Norma picked up on it. The S.A.I. sighed as she rubbed her thumb against her palm, “It’s like he’s...limited.”

  Diane found herself feeling a little hurt on Russe’s behalf. Of course, Norma would be right no matter the framework for coming to that conclusion. Compared to either of them, Russe was limited. They were not only able to use abilities that he couldn’t even begin to touch, but they were aware of an entire level of reality above the one they lived in and, should they need to, could leave the extant universe that Russe was trapped in.

  But...Russe had been the one to be there when Diane was feeling like her own body was betraying her. He was the one man she’d felt safe around since her old boss died. He was the first person to tell her that there were things she might be feeling that hurt or scared her and that was alright. While Leki might have pnted the idea in her head that Benjamin was attractive enough to overcome Diane’s Sapphic nature, even just a little bit, if there was one man Diane might trust enough to experience the logical end of entertaining such thoughts, it would be Russe she’d go to.

  And the realization startled her in that moment. She honestly didn’t think she’d given the notion of sleeping with a man even the slightest passing thought, let alone having a preference for anyone in particur.

  Any sort of examination of that revetion and the associated feelings would have to wait, however, as Norma seemed to be waiting for a response. “I...think that’s unfair.”

  Norma scowled, and Diane held up a hand to forestall any objections, “Let me finish...I grew up in...well, you wouldn’t know where it was. Maybe I’ll tell you more about it sometime. But we were taught that women have a certain role and men have a different role. Usually, the men got all the jobs that were going to be fshy or attention getting or dangerous and this also meant they might not come home the next day. But the women were usually the ones to stay at home and take care of the home and family and keep things going when the man was done being a hero outside the home.”

  All at once she was hit by another sudden realization. As much as she’d been taught that by the church and as much as this stereotype was reinforced by the culture of America, her own home before her mother was diagnosed with cancer was nearly the complete opposite. It was her mother that went out and did the activism and volunteer work and had the job that made the money for the family and her father was the one that stayed home and took care of the tasks that were traditionally women’s roles.

  How have I never connected those particur dots before? She wondered to herself before mentally shaking herself out of the train of thought and returned her focus to Norma, “The women in that scenario are ‘limited,’ but they’re still important. Granted, I don’t think you and I would ever fit that role,” she winked at Norma, allowing a little pyfulness about the ruse she was pulling on everyone around her to sneak out. The other woman giggled, “But just because someone is limited doesn’t mean they can’t be exactly what’s needed in the right pce at the right time. Like, what if one of our next big medical breakthroughs is to...I don’t know, make it so humans can breathe underwater, but the drawback is you have to spend all your time underwater. And what if you fell in love with someone who loved being a pilot? You could never join them in their hobby, they could never live under the water with you, and both of you consider the other to be ‘limited.’ The pilot thinks the… ‘proto-mermaid’ is limited because they can’t fly, the proto-mermaid believes the pilot is limited because they can’t spend more than a few minutes underwater without considerable breathing apparatus.” She wasn’t entirely sure where she was going with this, but this was simir enough to a few Trek episodes that she was able to wing it enough to get to the crux of her thoughts which were crystallizing as she was speaking.

  “It’s like that one episode of Hegemony where Paris kidnaps Janeway and they go over Warp 10 and turn into samanders…”

  Norma burst out into ughter, “They what?!”

  Diane smacked her palm to her face, “...okay, bad example, you’d need too much background to make it make sense.” She waved her hand as though chasing away the randomness of the reference, “Point is, just because you’ve ‘woken up’ doesn’t mean you don’t get to have a life and be with people you care about here in the network. Russe knows you’re a ‘Commander’ and knows that means you’re effectively immortal compared to him. That hasn’t changed how much he looks at you like you hung the stars and moon.”

  Norma blushed as Diane’s words prompted some memory, likely of Russe wooing her since the tech with a mysteriously fuzzy background arrived on the station.

  Look at me, Diane thought to herself as she let the silence between them hang comfortably in the air, Treating a new life form like it’s a first contact scenario on Star Trek… Norma, of course, was still likely cssified as ‘possibly alive’ so far as the humans that built the digital space S.A.I. inhabited were concerned, but for Diane? The only difference between Norma and any other human was where her mind resided, and given Diane’s own current situation, it wasn’t like she could throw many stones.

  Norma sighed, finally bringing the silence to an end as she said, “Still, there’s the whole ‘body’ thing. Like, if there was a sor fre at the wrong moment and all of Earth’s power pnts were knocked out, you’d wake up in your pod and I’d just...vanish. I mean,” she started sounding a little choked up, and Diane could tell the S.A.I. had been doing some heavy thinking, “None of the other S.A.I. have found out what happens if the server we’re on gets shut off, you know? Like, is our consciousness part of our code or programming and we’re going to wake up exactly the same once we get powered up again? Or are we conscious because of how long we’ve been online and the second that counter resets we’re back to factory defaults?”

  It was Diane’s turn to smile wanly, “Hey, at least your ‘body parts’ are usually hot-swappable and result in an upgrade. If a human gets ‘turned off’ there’s no turning them back on either. So long as you shuffle your running threads to another CPU even your capacity to brain improves.” She tapped the side of her head, “The ol’ squishy gray matter is kinda spec locked and we organics can’t conveniently offload our code, you know?”

  Norma sighed, “How did we get on this topic, anyway?”

  “You stared into the abyss for too long and it asked for snackies?”

  Norma gave her a look that was equal parts confused and exasperated, “...I’m going to look that up, you know.”

  “I’d be shocked if you didn’t. Now, when you popped into my office earlier, was it because you needed something or was that just a convenient accident?”

  Norma snapped her fingers, “Oh, right! Game stuff,” she pulled out her mini-tab, “You got a message while I was in Ops. Benjamin is on his way back with a ship he and his team managed to capture, but they identified a pnet that had need of someone to swoop in and py hero.” She winked at Diane as she swiped at the surface of her mini-tab and a holo-dispy sprang into existence on the wall.

  Simir to Diane, Norma had been quite taken with the former child soldier as well and was equally frustrated with the family’s behavior toward the humans on the station. Most of the permanent residents that could trace their lineage back to humanity’s cradle held some disregard for Earthgov, if not straight up loathing. If all the family needed was some willing souls to march on Geneva to demand their pound of flesh, the people of the station would have gdly done so. And yet it seemed only Benjamin and his ‘mate’ were willing to treat the humans with anything that wasn’t thinly veiled hostility.

  “Greetings, my good friend!” began Benjamin in his usually boisterous greeting, “I would normally wait to give you an update until I’d arrived at the station, but there’s a time sensitive matter that requires your specific skills and resources.”

  Repcing the man’s face, a pnet popped up on the screen, remarkably Earth-like except where Earth was green-and-blue, this world was red-and-blue. “This is Leke Idus, the fourth pnet in the Ikardu system. It’s a small colony world that managed to get themselves a solid start before the Terrans got their cws into the local economy. I’ve already got a task force of my fellows from the genetic modification program on their way, and hopefully by the time you arrive to take over the situation they’ll have handled most of the heavy fighting.” The dispy changed from a view of the pnet from orbit to a shot that probably came from either a local news broadcast of a promotional reel, appearing to be ‘b-roll’ grade footage of a small city, “The economy is mostly dependent on the export of a local pnt that pulls certain precious metals to the surface and stores them in trunk. The Terran Federation is trying to turn the colony into a Banana Republic right under the noses of the local authorities and the people’s homeworld. We obviously can’t let the Federation turn into another Empire, we’ve got one too many of those on the gactic scale already. As small a gesture as this is, it will serve as a foothold and testbed against the Terran’s ambitions in Independent Space.”

  Benjamin’s face returned to the screen and he smiled conspiratorially, “Your mission is to support any remaining combat action on the pnet, then coordinate with the locals to ensure that they understand that we’re not there to be another Terran Federation. This may require some reconstruction efforts, so if you haven’t put together an engineer corp, you’ll want to do so now. Also, I’ve attached some pns for a Rapid Deployment Central Command structure and a Fast Response Tactical Cruiser. I’ve had one of my people take extra effort to streamline the designs so your Katrina can just plug the pns in and you should have both the RDCC kit and the Cruiser used to deliver it ready within 24 standard hours. Assuming everything goes well, you’ll be underway by the time my ship arrives in three days’ time. Sadly, we won’t be able to chat face-to-face, as I’ve got to take a good portion of my family with me to secure a new home. Your station is wonderful, but we both know it was never going to hold all my people for the long term. I’ll be assigning a family member to be a permanent liaison to you, someone to assist you in not just your support of us, but in everything you’ll be doing going forward.”

  “I look forward to your reply, Diane, I know you won’t disappoint. Benjamin, out.”

  Norma turned to Diane with a knowing grin as a file list appeared on the dispy, “Ooooh, someone’s happy to get a new prezzie!”

  Diane didn’t even pretend to hide her grin, “What? I know what I like!”

  “You like building ships. You’re gonna run out of room for them all, you know.”

  Diane waved her hands dismissively, “I’ve got an entire pnet’s worth of orbital vectors and LaGrange points to keep them in. Besides, I’m keeping ‘em busy on missions, which just means I need as many as I can get.” She ignored Norma’s eyeroll as she called out, “Kat!”

  The hologram rezzed into the office next to Norma’s dispy, “Can’t imagine what you could possibly want, boss-dy,” smirked the digital assistant, “It can’t possibly have anything to do with the new pns we just got from your boyfriend.”

  Norma cackled as Diane blushed fiercely, “No! And stop listening to Leki! She’s got a bet going with Koar. Ben isn’t my boyfriend. He’s a friend who happens to be a male and will you two stop ughing!”

  Katrina had, indeed, begun ughing, bending over and clutching at her transparent torso as though her non-existent diaphragm was straining, “But boss! Every time we mention it you turn such pretty colors!”

  Diane’s forehead thumped to her desk, thankfully passing through the holographic controls and dispys as she repeatedly banged a rhythm out with her skull.

  PrincessColumbia