trans_9 | There are worse things out tonight than vampires

"The gain would be tremendous, in the long run. In the short run there would be chaos, panic, perhaps even war. No government would want to be the one who started that - not unless they were certain they would come out on top. I imagine that they just kept postponing the revelation. Just until the next election, just until this scandal is over, just until the harvest is in; and on and on. And the longer they hold the secret, the more they have to hide."

"I was thinking about myself - and about you. Toha Heavy Industries probably did not create you to fight giant insects in outer space, or to guard aliens. But you are here."

Well, that sounded like a familiar run of events. He sighed. "I understand; something similar happened on my world. But the existence of alien life sounds a little difficult subject to keep under wraps; if your Earth is anything like my Earth, people spent centuries craning their neck up at the skies, formulating conspiracy theories, and arguing that they couldn't be the only sentient species in the universe. And our nations' governments could never agree on anything, let alone whether to conceal the existence of alien life."

Zouichi frowned. "Anwei, I don't know what sort of mistakes you feel you've made, and I understand it's not my place to offer you advice, but... is it really that important to leave your past self behind?"

"That's... true, in some ways. But I believe you're giving me a little too much credit. N5S caused virulent mutations in its human hosts, so the ability to counteract novel combat situations was one of my most important design considerations. And as you pointed out, much of the current crew is human. So in a way, my mission has not really changed. I am still what I was created to be." For now, anyway -- he had an unsettling feeling that he was becoming more and more unlike his past self with every passing day.

"I very much doubt they agreed to conceal what little information they had. More likely they all just blundered along, hoping that the truth wouldn't come out until their group were out of office. And the Earth I was on was just starting to experience the consequences of widespread digital manipulation of information. Even if the truth came out, there would be a hundred ways to bury the truth in carefully prepared disinformation."

She stared up at the tentacled ceiling for a moment, listening to his words, light printing against the tense muscles of her neck. But when she looked down, her face was calm.

"My past self - before I left the path that was laid out for me - would have been a horror. The mistakes that I made in leaving that path are not the sort that you make and then can say that they are over, they are done. Some mistakes don't die like that. They propagate."

The cleavers never stopped falling...

Her tonguetip flickered between her teeth for a moment, in anger. "I would prefer to keep the absolute maximum distance between myself, and my past self and her - my - mistakes."

She relaxed a little more. "I hope that you are comfortable with who you are, that's all. Especially in an environment like this, which is almost guaranteed to change us all."

"Ah, I see. So we were a bit more backwater when you came to visit us. It would have been difficult to keep information secret for long where I came from -- everything is interconnected."

Zouichi took a step back, a little taken aback at her anger. What could she possibly have done? Was it worse than the DRF's humanity conversion plan? Was it worse than the CEU? Why else would she think of her past self and her present self as different people?

He looked away. "I am sorry. It appears I have indeed overstepped my bounds."

"...I would say that so far, it is other people who seem uncomfortable with me. Or not me, exactly, but what I represent."

"The connections were starting to form when I arrived - if I'd been fifty years later, it would have been much more difficult to keep concealed."

She held out her hands, palms out. "You have trod on a very sore subject for me - that's all. And I suspect it's the sort of thing that many people here will dislike; having people pay attention to their past lives. My bounds are just - touchier than some." She smiled, and rigidly controlled herself so that her smile did not get too wide.

Now she widened her eyes. "You represent a stunning achievement: a sentient lifeform trained to defend his creators, and partnered with an AI. All that and grace too. Or is it that they find the task you were created for upsetting? Anti-terrorism, biological weapon suppression? For all we know, some people here may have been created as biological weapons."

"I... see." He wasn't sure if she was angry at him or not, but it was extremely difficult to extricate himself politely from the conversation when they were the only two people in the room. At any rate, it was probably best to move the subject away from her past.

"...'Grace'?"

He shook his head. "No, although people seem to misunderstand what I am, they seem fine with what I was designed to do. It is... recently I spoke to Alex; he was extremely insistent that I grow 'beyond' my initial role and take this opportunity to become my own person."

If he was willing to move away from the subject, she would be more than happy to go along with it.

"You are physically graceful, but I meant more that you seem to have a - wholeness about you. Knowledge of self. You are meeting these new experiences and new people and handling them with great aplomb, in a way that is distinctly personalized - even if you have never encountered anything like this before." She would have liked to shake the hand of his coders; they must have been tops.

"I can't really be the judge of growing like that. After I joined the mercenaries, my growth was very, very slow and that was fine by me. You should do what feels best to you."

She looked up at the screen. "You seem to be coming to the end of this film. Do you want some recommendations for future viewing?"

Zouichi looked a little bemused. "Are you sure you're not confusing a poker face with graceful acceptance?" Because he'd often been told he wasn't the most expressive member of his generation.

Anwei likely wanted the woman who had raised Zouichi rather than his programming team -- his coded components were more or less limited to his autonomic and visual systems.

"Certainly." He hadn't actually caught most of this one while it was running, though it didn't seem like he'd missed out on much. "What would you recommend?"

"You kissed my hand, at our wedding, And did so with superb grace," she smiled. "That was not the gesture of a man maintaining his poker face."

"For films...hmm. I actually worked outwards in my film watching: first I saw the vampire films, then films appropriate to what my age would be when I arrived on Earth, and then a quick skimming of the classics."

"For vampire films, I'd recommend Near Dark, Nosferatu, and Horror of Dracula. For films classics, would you prefer to start with ones that were filmed in Japan? Because I would certainly recommend Floating Weeds, Yojimbo, and Ikiru."

Well, Anwei certainly knew how to say the most embarrassing things he'd ever heard from... anyone, really. Zouichi brought his palm to his face, slumping a little in his chair. "I am sorry about that, by the way -- it was rather uncharacteristic of me."

"I am not particularly attached to vampire films, but I can certainly give them a try." He smiled. "Ah, Kurosawa Akira. I remember one of his films quite fondly, although I didn't quite understand it at the time. It was called 'Yume'."

"It was still done very gracefully," she said softly, not missing his embarrassment. "I'm sorry if it did not make you happy."

Nobody had kissed her before that in - oh, hundreds of days.

"'Yume'" - she pulled out her omnicomm and consulted its translation - "oh yes, I saw part of it. The snow demon was apparently inspired by a film I had seen, 'Kwaidan'. I confess that since I started with vampire films, I probably watched a few too many films in the horror genre."

"Er, no, it's not... I wasn't particularly unhappy. It's just that I don't usually do that sort of thing."

"Kwaidan? Oh yes, I think that was an old movie based on the works of Lafcadio Hearn.

"Actually, I believe the demon in both movies were based on the yuki-onna, a creature that endlessly wanders the snow. In some stories, she's the vengeful ghost of a woman who lost her child in a snowstorm; in others, she takes pity on her would-be victim and marries him, only to be betrayed by him later. She's said to be quite beautiful."

"It was a unique situation," she said, tactfully - or as tactfully as she could manage. Which was obviously not tactful enough.

A good thing Horanckk wasn't here; he delighted in imagining that Anwei could be encouraged to romance people.

"It sounds like you do have a good background in Japanese mythology, at least. I'm glad that you weren't raised to only know fighting."

Zouichi sighed, looking away again. "Perhaps it's best if I explain more fully. In some cultures, it would have been perfectly acceptable behavior. But for someone who grew up in Japan, it was rather... forward of me. That is what I wanted to apologize for."

"I am also unaccustomed to being openly praised. It's just... a little unusual for me. I certainly did not mean to sound ungrateful or rude."

He frowned at her observation. "Well, it's not exactly uncommon knowledge in my area, but, I did enjoy listening to S-- to stories, as a child. Certain people within the project thought it was essential to give us a good basic grounding across subjects. Although I'm sure not everyone saw it as time well spent."

"And in the culture where I was raised, it would be unheard of for me to let an alien kiss my hand," she replied. "I've changed my opinion, since. Your apology is accepted, certainly." And if she didn't really feel an apology was called for, well, she wasn't going to stretch out the reminder of something that clearly embarrassed him. "And I'll confess to perhaps being fast to praise, but many times I've heard of personnel lost or dead and thought Oh, I never told them how well they did this, or how thankful I was that they did that...I'd rather be lavish with praise and stingy with criticism."

"If you enjoyed it, and learned from it, then it was time well spent. And your project people would have felt rather foolish if some vital information was not obvious to you because, say, the phrase 'face like a yuki-onna' meant nothing to you."

He nodded. "Point taken. It is unfair to expect others to observe social norms they are unaware of. I will try to move beyond my... concerns, in the future. And I do appreciate your sentiments. It is refreshing to talk to someone so open about their opinions."

Zouichi smiled at her comment, but his expression was a little complex this time. "I didn't have many missions in which such information proved to be valuable."

In fact, he had exactly 0 missions in which knowledge of folklore would have been relevant.

"However, I did enjoy the lessons, even the irrelevant ones."

"You can't take anything for granted when you are dealing with different species. Their mores and manners are always a mystery. Being open means fewer mistakes." If more embarrassment. But she tried to let that fall on her own head.

She shrugged. "Perhaps we will have a mission where we need to tell stories to get past some peril. If so, your lessons will be very useful. Not all fighting is by bullet and knife, or force and threat; sometimes a gift, a smile, or a kind word, can win the battle just as well."

Well, he wasn't sure about that one; he was sure there must be more retiring species out there who would appreciate more rather than less discretion.

Zouichi sighed. "If that happens, I'm sure there are people aboard the ship far better versed in stories or diplomacy than myself. Someone like you, perhaps? I'd be perfectly happy to avoid that particular spotlight."

He'd made quite a few strides talking to members of the crew since finding himself in that pod chamber, but...

"...I've probably spent more time speaking to people since coming to this ship than I have during the entire rest of my existence."

Members of such retiring species did not become rowdy space mercenaries - or if they did, they left their reticence behind.

"Is that a problem? You could always go back to using the omnicomm," she joked. Then she sobered. "You're doing very well, with talking that is, so far as I have seen."

Zouichi looked mildly exasperated at the mention of the Omnicomm, but let it pass without comment.

"I have certainly been giving it my best effort. It's just a little tiring at times. On Earth, Fuyu is usually the only person available to carry on a conversation with. We understand each other extremely well -- there are rarely misunderstandings, and she's already familiar with what I am." He actually spent a lot of time explaining to the crew what a Synthetic Human was. And usually left conversations under the impression that they still didn't quite understand.

"Oh, that sounds familiar." Anwei stood straight, and her fingers drummed an irregular rhythm on the back of the couch.

"I'm certain that I have spoken to Horanckk ten times more than I have ever spoken to anyone else. And in fact he would often be the one to remind me to go talk to this person or that about something. He sort of forced me to be social. And certainly, no one understood who I am as completely as he did."

He nodded. "Fuyu is more personable than I am in general -- I only wish that it was easier for her to get around on the ship. She often acts as a restraint for me, if she feels I'm acting too brashly. I do hope you can be reunited with Horanckk soon; I'm becoming more and more curious about him."

"You could check with Engineering; perhaps they could make some sort of self-powered framework that would let her move around with you. Or move herself, in case of some emergency." Now there was a breath of nightmare: the Vehicle Bay under fire, and Fuyu trapped because the motorcycle was damaged.

"I hate to say it, but I think I'm handling his absence better because I was stranded on Earth all that time without him. I'm used to missing him, as sad as that sounds. But," her voice caught for a moment, "I also hope we are reunited soon."

"Hmm. I can ask her how she feels about that, but she may not agree." He suspected Fuyu might have some objections to strangers fiddling about with her core. "Another solution might be modifying the XLA's tires to allow them to move around the fleshier portions of the ship more easily."

He nodded; it did sound terribly lonely, especially if the only people you had for company had no idea who you really were. "Were you able to interact with the human inhabitants, at least?"

"Horanckk would often go around in a casing about the size of a small briefcase, with arms and legs that ran off a separate power system. That way if I had to, I could just grab the handle, detach the limbs, and carry him inconspicuously. Modifying the XLA would probably work too - for all I know, someone here could put an antigravity engine in it and Fuyu could fly."

For that matter she could build an antigravity engine by rote - but only as a standalone unit for emergencies. And it probably wouldn't fit on the motorcycle anyway.

"To a certain extent. I had access to enough Earth currency to qualify as 'rich,' and as in many cultures, rich people are allowed to be more eccentric. Most of my interaction was virtual, via their phone and Internet systems; or buffered with the appropriate lawyers and security personnel. What face-to-face contact I had was often with random strangers, on the theory that if I forgot myself and did something like smile too wide, they wouldn't know how to trace me."

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