Morning is different now, the same way everything else is. Light filters into her photoreceptors and she has a difficult time telling if it's real or not. Memories of how the light felt on her skin back home, how the wind felt in her hair, how the sand felt on her skin, all filtered through a dull thrum in the back of her head. “What time is it…?” Her voice called out to the assistance drone parked in its charging bay. Its eyes shimmered to life at the call, and the smooth metallic being lurched forth on spindle-thin legs. “Current station time is eight-twenty-two. Good morning Cassie, I hope you slept well.” Their voice was as monotone as ever, but she could sense the melancholic concern beneath it. She’d gone to bed early again last night, much earlier than ever before. “I slept for…twelve hours?” “Nearly, ten hours and forty-five minutes exactly. Do you feel rested?” She couldn’t tell, not yet, she wasn’t quite acclimated enough. “I…I think so. Thank you, Levy.” “Of course, Cassie, would you like some coffee? I can put a pot on for you while you get dressed and-” “Coffee sounds great, thank you. I’ll be in the bathroom.” Levy emitted a low tone that sounded like a sad animal before strutting off out of the room.
Cassie climbed out of the pile of blankets she slept in and trudged her way to the bathroom. It still rattled her how conscious she was of every step now. The mirror greeted her in the same half-hearted way it had been recently. A being with tired eyes and ragged hair blinked back at her with the soft glow of amber sensors. “You look like shit.” It said in a voice detached from her throat. “You look like shit and everyone looks at you weird now. Aren’t you happy?” Muffled static fizzled behind every word, rotating servos clicked maliciously as she combed her hair and washed her face, she could barely feel the water. She hadn’t showered in days because she didn’t feel the need to now. She could barely feel her skin, and it didn’t create the same day-to-day dirt that it used to anyway. Her clothes made her feel better though. Hiding the barely visible seams of her skin beneath a soft sweater and flowing skirt made her want to sleep less, for now. “Cassie! Your coffee is ready!” That was her que. “Time to put on that brave face, unless you want to disappoint them again.”
With her senses intact she caught the smell of freshly brewed coffee drifting from the kitchen of her small apartment. Levy always stocked real coffee ever since she mentioned off hand that the synthesized packs needed twice as much to taste the same. “Milk and sugar, just like always. I even made some banana-nut nutribars too. You said you missed them the other day and I found a recipe on OuterNet.” What happened in response to this? Pressure built behind her eyes as she took the cup and nodded thankfully. The taste was the same, perfect in every way, and the bars reminded her of home again. “Cassie…?” The assistance drone crooned in that same sad animal tone. She looked over to Levy somewhat confused. “Huh? Oh the coffee is great, Levy. It’s perfect, as always. A-And thank you for making these,” she gestured with a half eaten nutribar, “Just like I remember.” “Cassie, you are crying.” “What…? I’m…” Setting the bar down she prodded her face to find a steady stream of tears dripping into the coffee and wetting her sweater. “Oh, I am, aren’t I? I’m okay. Just, haven’t gotten used to everything just yet. The doctors said it could take time, remember? I’m okay, Levy. Really.” Levy made a small electronic chirping sound, a telltale sign that they were thinking hard about something.
“Cassie… I am worried about you.” They were trying their best to keep their helper-coded voice to its usual chipper monotone, but ever since she learned how to use her new ears she couldn't unhear the underlying emotion that came with every synthesized word. “Levy, I told you I-” “You have been shutting yourself in your room for two weeks now. You have not attempted to contact any of your friends or family. You have not attempted to talk to me…” Those last words stung the most. “L-Levy I'm fine. Okay? I'm still just having a hard time adjusting. The doctor's said this would happen. I'll be fine. I just need to get through this funk.” Levy’s chirping resumed. “Okay Cassie. I trust you. But please, if you need anything, I am here. I have always been here for you, and I always will be.” She knew that, why wasn’t it obvious? If she thought it was a problem she would have said something, right? Levy had been there since she was woken up, through all the medical appointments, all the moving and transport shuttles, all of it. They should know that she would say something. She should know that. “I know Levy, thank you…” Levy nudged her shoulder with one of their manipulators and she embraced them lightly. “I’ll call Leeda today, see if she wants to hang out for a while. I could probably use the fresh air anyway. How about that?” Levy let out a pleased fluting tone and nodded their chassis up and down a few times. “That is a great idea! I will clean things up here while you are out. Let me know when you are leaving!” They scurried off to start refolding the nest she had risen from moments before, leaving her alone to cast a look of dread at her communicator.
“Fuck… What do I even say? ‘Sorry I’ve been gone for two weeks! My family treats me weird now so I needed to shut myself in my room for a while! How’ve you been?’ yeah right… Just, call her, ask if she wants to go to the Atrium. You like the Atrium. Go for a walk. Yeah. Yeah, I can do that. I can…I can do that…” Her thumb hovered over the confirm key for a few moments, the slightest twitch of hesitation surging beneath her numb skin. “Hello? Cassie? Cassie?! Is there interference?! Helloooooo?!” “Leeda! Hey! Uh…How are you?” The rasp of Leeda’s aqualung respirator fired up as her shrill voice screeched through the speaker. “HOW ARE YOU?! YOU DISAPPEAR OFF THE STATION FOR TWO WHOLE WEEKS AND THAT’S WHAT YOU SAY?! HOW ARE YOU?! I’VE BEEN WORRIED SICK! KEEN’S BEEN WORRIED SICK! WE’VE ALL BEEN WORRIED-” “Leeda please don’t yell…” Her reply came like a wounded hound, limping through the dead air it created. “Sorry, Cassie, you know how worked up I get. Do you wanna hang out today? Keen and I were going to walk around the promenade, you could tag along!”
She wanted to tell her that she didn’t like Keen all that much, that the way he put in little effort to remember her name was annoying at best and soul crushing at worst. She wanted to say how Keen had been a large part of her having to talk to her family so early, and that she regretted ever bringing it up with him. She wanted to tell her about all the snide things she’d heard Keen say about her when he thought she wasn’t within earshot, and berate her for not believing her when she brought it up the last time they saw each other, bust most of all, she wanted to just say no. “That sounds great! I was uh, I was thinking about going to the gardens today… Any chance you two would wanna take the walk there?” Leeda’s beak clicked together in satisfaction on the other end. “Yes! Yes yes yes! That’s a great idea! I’ll get Keen and we’ll meet you there!”
Before she could reply the excitable Vessik had already hung up, plans solidified within a contract of silence that hung over her as she examined her appearance. “Levy?” The droid came scampering back into the kitchen, pile of folded blankets in hand. “I’m gonna go meet Leeda and Keen at the Atrium, we’re going for a walk in the gardens.” Levy chirped in reply, “That is great! I will finish cleaning and then go shopping for the week. Would you like me to pick up anything for you? The doctor recommended a particular type of coolant, I can look for it if you would like.” Her face was grim as the front door slid open to reveal the balcony walkway of her apartment building, morning light lapping at the edges of her shadow. “Yeah…that’d be nice… I’ll see you around, Levy.”
Outside the ever-turning rings of Axial-Tilt Four rotated in their never-ending cosmic waltz. She remembered first being woken up on the station. How she was one of just five colonists to be successfully woken up from their methuselah chambers, and how sick she was by the end of it all. “You have a decision here, we want you to be aware. We won’t do anything you don’t want us to. Things are better now, I promise.” Those words played over and over and over as her reflection walked next to her out in the stars. In her mind there was still a piece of her wishing she had perished with the others on that ship, it was louder on days like this. How easy would it have been to just live in that dream forever, to not have to go through all the pain and trouble of changing and fixing herself in the hopes of feeling more like herself. “The procedures are free, you won’t pay anything. We just want to make sure you understand that this comes with a potentially long recovery period. Some people acclimate quickly, but a lot of factors can cause it to take longer than expected. You’re sure?” If she had said no, where would she be? How many layers of trapped would she be in right now? Trapped on this station, trapped in the medical sector, trapped in a hospital, trapped in a room, trapped in a bed, trapped in her old body. She felt something then that stopped her in her tracks a few feet from the tram shuttle entryway. Her skin crawled at the thought.
It was there as she stood staring down at her hand that she failed to notice the fast approaching cephalopod towing along a short wiry human man. Leeda crashed into her with all the force of a wet jacket, vessik didn’t have a bone structure so it was less dangerous and more unpleasant that the two collided. All she could manage was a staunch “Ooufh” before Leeda’s happy trills and pleased beak clicking filled the air. “CASSIIIIIEEEE!” “H-Hey, Leeda, scrap that kinda hurt…” Leeda recoiled playfully, “Sorry! I think my com hit your forehead! Keen! Keen look, it's Cassie!” Keen, who was still tapping away at the keys of his own communicator, looked up for a brief moment with a rather tired look in his eyes. “Yeah! Yeah hey D. Long time no see, half a lunar cycle even, you been okay?” She could only grit her teeth so hard behind her lips before she had to respond. That single letter moniker dug under her nails and made her hands itch as she fiddled with the hem of her sweater. “Yyyyyyep, been fine. We going for a walk, or what?” A little more confidence, there we go, stare him down and make him uncomfortable. The show of half-hearted social dominance came with the tossing of her unkempt hair, pushing tangles of curls well in need of a touch up into a sad ponytail that lagged behind her head.
Axial-Tilt Four’s atrium might have been her favourite place on the gargantuan colony station. Four had been built with livability in mind, and unlike its three sister stations had a vast array of parks and botanical gardens planned out for the populace. Her favourite of them all was this one though. It was themed after the western coastal regions, a place from old Terra known as the Cascade Mountains, a place she knew as the Oregon regional district. The expanse of carefully created land emulated the pine forests and rocky cliffs of her birthplace in a near perfect display. This was where she did most of her thinking, this was where she felt most at home in the future she’d awoken to. “So uh, what have you two been up to?” “Work.” Keen shot back almost immediately, kicking a stone down the path ahead. “Yeah they’ve got him pulling double shifts until the next shuttle gets here, that last expedition crew took a good number of administration officers with it.” Leeda’s tone was more forgiving, still with that cheerful timbre behind it. “As for me, I've just been in school! This tri-segment has been rough. Getting all the certs to join the banking guild is haaaard.” Cassie nodded along to the words, two weeks had passed and nothing had changed, but yet something stirred within her. The three sat down around a concrete picnic table and exchanged a few more pleasantries. Mostly just Cassie listening to Leeda talk on and on about the intricacies of the Quaala Banking guild and how much math she was having to learn. It wasn’t until Keen piped up from whatever book he was clicking through that she felt the need to speak again.
“So D.-” “Cassie, or Cass, or Cassandra. I’m really not picky, you know.” Her tone was quick, sharp, laced with venom and she hoped he felt it. His eyes widened a bit, but the relaxed look he always had soon returned. “Right right, Cass. How’s the ol’ data entry goin’? Heard you guys got a fresh round of computers in at that processing place you work at. I helped sign off on the shipment, reminded me of you.” Her mind scrolled through dozens of possible lies, but settled unfortunately on the truth. “I’m still on leave… They uh, they give you as long as you need as long as you do regular check-ins with a doctor so, I’ve just been uh…around I guess.” gone was the violence that she had struck back at Keen with, replaced by the timid growl of synthesized vocal chords and nervously clicking finger servos. “Aaaah gotcha, gotcha… So uh… How long do you think you’re gonna… You know, how long do you think it’s gonna take?” How did she answer that? How could she face the reality of her situation? How dare he. How dare he put her in this situation. Made to confront her own bodily neglect and unwillingness to conform completely to the form that she wanted. Clearly she had made a mistake, clearly somewhere along the way she had jumped to a conclusion she could have been talked out of, clearly- “I’m not sure, honestly… I’ve been having some difficulty with the nerve bonding part as of late… I can’t feel stuff very well unless I really try and focus. I have an appointment to get them re-tuned soon though, so, maybe that’ll help.”
Something caught her in the arm. A flick sent from in front of Keen’s snide smirking face. Leeda prodded at him to stop, calling him rude but chuckling along with him as he jokingly added, “Did you feel that?” She stood, fists balled so tightly their clicking was audible, or at least she hoped it was. “Why did I do this? Why do I keep trying to hang out with you?” And off she stormed down a branching path nearby. “What- Hey! D.! D.! Come back! Hey!” She gave them one last glance from over her shoulder before she continued her hurried trek down a path and into a small clearing. She felt it this time, the tears on her face, the pressure behind her eyes. The dam she had built had broken, and in a moment of peace among the swaying pine branches, she wept. It happened there, when it all broke down around her. The carefully constructed walls of denial let loose everything she’d been holding back, and there, right there, she felt something. She felt everything. Every blade of grass, the wind on her face, the dirt beneath her legs, all of it. Her sobs mixed with bubbling laughter as something within her clicked into place. Catharsis never happens when you want it to, the same as true right now. She’d always pictured herself having this moment while at home, hugging Levy and quietly crying into a pillow or something. Rarely did the thought of sobbing in the dirt somewhere out in the woods of Atrium park Cascade cross her mind. A voice called out from some nearby shrubbery, and she looked over to see Leeda tiredly making her way up an incline and into the clearing.
“Cassie! Thank fuck, I found you, oh my fucking stars I found you… Just… Just give me a minute…” She reached up with a tentacled hand and clicked in a button on her aqualung to inject a fresh boost of oxygenized kelp mist into the gently flowing blue formula that allowed her to breath in the open air. “Whew! Much better. Cassie!” Once again the squishy woman threw herself around her friend, arms spiraling around Cassie’s in a distinctly vessik styled hug. “I’m so sorry about Keen… I’ve been talking to him about that garbage and I thought he would at the very least behave but I-” Cassie held a feeling finger up to her beak. “Leeda… Hush… Please… I’ve made my decision, I should have said something… I don’t want to hang out with Keen anymore.” Leeda’s head fins flapped at the statement with inquisitive affirmation. “I know! I mean, I figured, I just thought, well, you two had been through so much and… Then he and I started dating and I always felt like I was intruding on your friendship and… I’m sorry, Cassie…” Cassie laid her head on her friend’s shoulder. “I don’t… I don’t like how long it took us to get to this… It should have been solved way earlier… He doesn’t treat me well… He outed me to my family for fucks sake…” Her words were heavy and laden with the memories they carried. Leeda nodded, “I know… And I should have been more active in helping you instead of worrying about getting in the way. I haven’t been a great friend, Cassie, I’m sorry.”
Cassie shook her head. “I don’t want you to be sorry, Leeda… I just want it to stop… I want Keen to go away, I want it all to just, get better already…” Leeda’s cold grip loosened from her arms as she scooted into a position better suited for Cassie to prop herself up with. “It will! It will get better, we’ll start on that right now. Keen and I were already talking about splitting up, to be entirely honest, we were going to talk it out over lunch when you called.” “Really? Shit, sorry I got in the way of your breakup.” Leeda’s trilling laugh shook the pine needles around them. “Oh no you’re fine! If anything this probably sped things up a bit… After you walked off I got pretty mad at him and he brought up me ‘always taking your side’ in things again so I told him to take a hike.” Cassie stifled a laugh. “Did you actually say that while out on a hiking trail?” A cluster of tentacle fingers poked her in the shoulder. “No but I should have! Dammit why do you have to think of all the clever things to say!” For the first time in an honest while, the two shared a laugh. Eventually they decided to simply sit and enjoy the breeze, but Leeda’s curiosity infamously knew no bounds, and it wasn’t too long before a question lingered between them.
“So… I know you two are like, childhood buddies, but how long have you actually known each other?” Cassie was tracing patterns in the dirt, but stopped when the memories of her old home flooded back to her. “We grew up together, back on Terra… Our parents knew each other so we spent a lot of time playing video games and going on hikes in the public sectors. At one point I thought I had a crush on him but that was a whole different thing… When the Methuselah project came along his dad was one of the chief engineers on the whole thing. He got both our families spots on the colony ships. I didn’t want to leave but, it was very clear that Terra wasn’t going to be the future anyone hoped it would be… I remember the last day before we went into the pods he said, ‘see you in the future!’ and that gave me some kind of weird confidence boost… Like, maybe everything would be okay… And you know the rest. The ship got recovered a few centuries later with a few pods in tact, I got cryo-sickness and he didn’t, and I took the opportunity to act on something I was always afraid of doing back home…” She examined her hand then. How carefully crafted it had been just for her. Bulky but still different enough from her old hands so that she could tell the difference. “What made you consider cybernetics?” Leeda’s usual cheer was replaced with a softer, more genuine curiosity, one that told Cassie she could refuse the question if she wanted.
“It wasn’t much of a choice, really. The doctors told me that I could either go for the cyber-bod or just continue to get treatments. The treatments weren’t terrible, but I was in bad shape, I wouldn’t have been living much of a life outside the medical center. So I took the cybernetics, and the chance to finally… be me.” A stray tear rolled down her cheek. “You couldn’t have transitioned back on Terra?” A more complicated question than she would’ve cared for. She could have but she was too close to her original family, too close to Keen, all people who weren’t very accepting of the idea. “It wasn’t a good time to try… And I was scared… But I thought that, maybe since it was just Keen and I, you know, maybe I could go for it. Maybe he’d come around and maybe he’d regret telling my new folks about it without my permission… But here we are, huh?”
Leeda nodded. “Here we are… I’m still so sorry he did that.” Cassie shook her head. “For the record, my parents have been nothing but supportive… It was just the weight of it all… My depression was keeping me from fully acclimating to my cybernetics and that piled on just so fucking much dysphoria you have no idea… But, you said it… We can make it better now. Keen can take a hike, fuck that guy. I think I’ll call my moms when I get home… Haven’t talked to them in nearly two lunar cycles now, bet they’re gonna tell me off real good for it… Thank you, Leeda, for apologizing. I still think I need some time to like, sort this whole thing out in my head but, I’ll be in touch, okay?” The two stood and exchanged another hug. “Whenever you’re feeling up to it, we should hang out again! I know this really cool thrift shop on the promenade, I could show you!” Cassie chuckled, “I do love a good cheap sweater.” She twirled a bit, striking a half-hearted pose before collapsing into laughter. It felt good, to get some of it out. Her shoulder still slouched a bit on the walk to the tram shuttle, and she felt exhausted when she finally did get home. But the tactile sensations she felt along the way brought a delicate smile to her face.
When she arrived at her apartment she greeted Levy with a solid hug and took a shower while they made lunch. She ran the water cold and stood under to feel the chill snake its way up her spine. The face in the mirror didn’t sneer at her when she looked at it this time, and with a wry smile it repeated the words she whispered aloud, “There she is.” The rest of the day was quiet. A long conversation with her mothers about what had been going on, a conversation with her doctor about how her acclimation had finally progressed, and then some of the most restful sleep she’d gotten in weeks. That night she dreamt of the gardens, she dreamt of visiting her mothers up on Hab level two, she dreamt of standing on that beach back home as the water around her crashed into the rocky cliffs of the coastline. When she finally woke up, half past noon this time, her eyes fluttered to life with the bright glow of amber sensors. Morning is different now, just like everything else is.
