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“It doesn’t matter if I drown myself,” Jedao told Hemiola as they both watched the bathtub fill up with water. “If someone finds me, I’ll just pretend I slipped.”
He tried to sound convincing, but Hemiola’s light flashed red in disagreement.
“If someone finds you, they’ll just think it’s a suicide attempt. What if they tighten the security to make sure you don’t try that again?” it argued. “We need to be careful enough as it is.”
“I don’t think they will bother this much,” Jedao pointed out and turned off the faucet. There was enough water to engulf him completely when he lied down. He watched his reflection waver with the last ripples. “Besides, everyone must have realized by now I’m suicidal anyway.”
“They kept you alive for some reason,” Hemiola said, and Jedao had to admit it had a point. Mikodez hadn't killed him so far – maybe he hadn’t found the way yet, maybe he was not lying about the instructor job entirely, or maybe he saw some other use in keeping Jedao alive, for now. Jedao still felt uneasy about it.
“I won’t be dead for long anyway. I’m sure no one will notice.” A long bath was not something he’s done often, but not something improbable either. He was hoping that none of his watchers would find it suspicious.
“Well, I hope you’re right,” Hemiola answered, and turned to leave the bathroom.
“Thank you,” Jedao said as it levitated towards the vents. Hemiola acknowledged it with a flicker of green light, and left.
Jedao considered, briefly, not taking his clothes off, but it would definitely not work with the accidental slip story, so he stripped and left them on the cabinet.
The water was reasonably warm as he sat down, but he couldn’t shake the chill deep inside his bones. He wondered how would it feel to have his lungs filled with water (especially when he was rather certain that he did not own proper human lungs). He wondered if it would take him longer than average human to die – if this was what ended up happening.
Then he took a deep breath and lied down.
The water closed over his head. Jedao was surprised with the sudden silence that surrounded him. Was it how the void felt, out in space? He let the breath out, watched the air escape to the surface of the tub, and waited.
Nothing. He felt a kind of – instinct – to try to take another breath, but no real need. He was wondering whether to wait a little longer when the light went out. He blinked, but there was no emergency light kicking in, and the bathroom was pitch black.
He tried to sit up, but he didn’t break the surface. What in the—? He reached up, but his fingers only found the water. Tried to stand up, and found that he could no longer sense the bottom of the tub – or the room, for that matter.
This is wrong. It wasn’t how it was supposed to be. He was going to sit up, bathe himself, maybe use one of the fragrant soaps whose scents he did not recognize. He was going to dress and leave the bathroom. He realized he knew exactly which soap he would pick – deep blue, smelling of freshness and flowers – and the way his skin would smell afterwards. As if he could remember it.
But it was not possible, was it? He was underwater, during the failed-successful experiment with drowning. But the light went out, and he could not reach the surface, even though he was only in the bathtub. He could not see anything, but there was a sound coming from far away, and it took him a while to realize it was gunshots.
Hemiola? He tried to scream-reach-sense the servitor, unsuccessfully. Maybe he did, in fact, drown, and this was what happened to voidmoths after death?
The next gunshot sounded closer, and another, and another. Jedao flinched, suddenly afraid, and pushed up with all his strength.
—There were more gunshots, all right. The water – that he could not escape just moments ago – was gone, like it was never there. He saw a ruined room – a shop of some sort? The inventory seemed to consist mostly of weapons, which he thought explained the firefight.
The firefight included, apparently, Cheris and– himself. Except he was looking at himself from outside of the body, which, he decided, was weird. He wondered if it was afterlife, or perhaps a dream, because no one seemed to notice his presence.
Currently he – or his body, at least – seemed to be stalling the hostiles outside of the shop while Cheris typed something furiously on the store’s terminal. “It won’t be long now!” she shouted, and his body nodded. There was a streak of black substance – oh right, I bleed like this – on his cheek. Jedao watched his body turn around and shoot two times through the window. Two people outside dropped on the ground, and he noticed they had guns as well.
Someone else was in his body, that much was clear. But why was he outside of it? He struggled to remember what happened. He survived the bathtub experiment, that much was certain; he then found out that the Shuos were planning to kill him; he run, with Hemiola’s help, and met Cheris; then they run from the Shuos again, and found the base and Cheris fed him carrion glass—
Except he could not remember the memories that came with the glass.
“Done!” Cheris yelled, and broke into a run to the rear exit. His body followed, after firing another shot. He felt himself pulled with them.
To his surprise, the exit was not under attack. Perhaps the people after them did not have time to find it? Cheris and not-himself ran through the deserted streets and alleys – it was dark, with only the street lamps providing any light. Yet both seemed to know which direction to go.
The direction was a vehicle parked on the side of the street. Cheris jumped into the driver’s seat; the other person winced, but did not protest, and the vehicle rose from the ground, towards the highway.
“So was that little excursion worth it?” his body asked, in his drawl, as the vehicle sped between the buildings. Jedao could not help but stare at the skyline. “I guess it was worth knowing that Shuos-zho is still wasting his time on us, but we could have found that out the easier way.”
“You tell me,” Cheris said, and reached to her pocket for a data stick.
Jedao watched his body scan it. The light on the device turned on when the person must have accessed it with his augment. Whoever they were, they were clearly allied with Cheris. Has she deceived him, and instead of feeding him his lost memories, removed him from his own body to put someone else in there? She had enough mathematical skills to be able to do this and no reason not to – he knew she had no sympathy for him; but he could not understand what she would gain from this.
“So this was what you planned?” he asked her, not really expecting an answer.
Cheris didn’t react, but the other person did. They suddenly looked up and turned around to look at the back of the vehicle. They frowned, scanning the interior.
“Are we being chased?” Cheris asked, and the person shook their – Jedao’s – head.
“Just thought I‘ve heard something.” The person turned to Cheris, probably wanting to tell her about the intel from the data stick, but Jedao was faster.
“You did, all right,” he said, and the person froze. “Hello. This is my body you’re in.”
The person didn’t say anything for a while, and then…
“What’s going on?” Cheris was sounding more worried now. But the next thing she said felt like a slap. “Jedao?”
So this was what was happening.
“It’s not me, Cheris,” he said, and then remembered how she seemed not to hear him. “Stop lying to her. You’re not me, and this is not your body.”
“And who are you, exactly?” the person asked in a calm voice, and made eye contact with Cheris. Some kind of understanding passed between them and Cheris turned back to the highway. Jedao’s heart sank.
“I’m the owner,” Jedao snarled, “of this body that you stole. Shuos Jedao. I don’t know who you are or how did you…”
“That’s funny,” the person said, still unfazed. “I’m Shuos Jedao too.”
Jedao felt ill. At first he thought that certainly, Cheris would have recognized him? She should not have been deceived so easily. But then he remembered how his memory stopped at the first shard of carrion glass.
“You must be this moth creature,” the person – Shuos Jedao, the original – was saying. He barely heard him.
How did this happen? He was supposed to absorb the missing memories, or at least disappear in them, not be forced to watch someone else – even another himself – walk around in his skin. And why only now has he regained awareness?
“Jedao?” the other Jedao asked, trying, for whatever reason, to keep the conversation going. “Are you still here?”
Jedao wanted very badly not to be. “Yes.”
The other Jedao dared to smile lightly at this. “And what do you remember? Before today?”
Trying to drown in the bathtub , he wanted to say. Except he now knew it didn’t really happen this way.
“The glass,” he said.
“And later?”
“Nothing. Dreams, I think.”
The other Jedao seemed to ponder this. But before he could speak, Cheris flew the vehicle out of the highway and into the parking lot next to a shuttle port. Harmony – if they still travelled on it – was probably waiting for them in orbit. The thought stung – he seemed to no longer have his othersense, so it was likely that he wouldn’t be able to speak to Harmony again. Or to anyone else but the other Jedao.
He didn’t try to talk to him either as they boarded the shuttle and sat in silence during the trip. But he could not help that notice that while Cheris looked somewhat tired, the other Jedao seemed almost excited.
Harmony couldn’t hear him. He tried calling it twice, once in the language of moths, but got no reply. The other Jedao offered to relay his words to the needlemoth, but he refused. He didn’t like thinking about the man having access to all of his moth abilities.
It was what he saw further inside the moth that both delighted and hurt him more.
“Hemiola!” he exclaimed, forgetting for a second that the servitor could not hear him. He didn’t know how the servitor found its way onto the Harmony, but he was glad to see it was safe.
“Don’t you want me to relay something to it at least?” the other Jedao asked him later, when the needlemoth left orbit and headed to their next destination. Cheris was in the cockpit with the other servitor, and Hemiola was nowhere to be seen.
“And what can you relay, really?” He did not bother to keep the bitterness out of his voice.
“Whatever you want to say.” The other Jedao shrugged. He hated how calm the other man seemed about this whole ordeal. But if Jedao's guess about what happened was correct, it was nothing new to his older self. “Cheris already knows that you’re here, so we will tell the rest eventually.”
He was right, of course, but Jedao did not know what he could even say to either Harmony or Hemiola. How could he even describe the situation he was in? That he was anchored to– himself – who inhabited his moth body?
All the proof needed was already on display in the form of the other man's shadow. Instead of a normal human shape that he was used to, the shadow writhed with hundreds of tentacles, only ocassionally forming into a vaguely human shape. Jedao found it disturbing, but his older self looked almost fascinated when he first paid attention to it.
This wasn’t supposed to happen , Jedao thought to himself, not for the first time this day.
“Well, let me know what you decide,” the other Jedao said, after he didn’t reply for a while. “I think you might be a revenant now, but for sure you’ve noticed it already.”
“This must seem very funny to you,” Jedao told him and was surprised with the reaction.
“No,” the other man said firmly. “It is not.”
They stayed in silence for a while. Jedao watched the other man open the terminal to analyze the data he shot at least two people for.
“What are you doing right now?” he asked. How much time had passed from the last moment when he was awake? “You and Cheris?”
“Well, there seems to be an interspecies conflict in the making, and Mikodez is still thinking chasing after us is a sensible thing to do.” The other Jedao smiled wryly. “That’s his problem. I guess we will have to figure out what to do with you in the meantime.”
“I guess someone has to have a carrion bomb available,” Jedao said. He did not know if it was an observation or a suggestion.
“If this is your only idea, then you’ll forgive me if I would prefer to wait until someone threatens me with exotics.” The other man didn't look up from the terminal, yet Jedao sensed that he tensed all of a sudden. “Revenants make excellent shields.”
“What’s your idea, then?”
The other Jedao tapped his fingers on the terminal, as if weighing his next words.
“I would like to know what happened,” he said, finally. “Your memories started to clash with mine after a while – it was as if I were seventeen twice. I think that’s why we got separated, but you’re still here like this.” He seemed to think about something. “I don’t think it would be a bad idea to wait and see, necessarily.” He paused for a while, “I guess you could say I am curious. About you.”
“Why? You won’t find anything interesting, you know,” Jedao said.
“Humor me.”
Jedao sighed. He didn’t like the situation, and being a ghost. But Hemiola was there, and since he had already failed at proper farewell once… It didn’t hurt to try to say goodbye properly this time. When it was time.
“Okay,” he said, and was surprised to see his other self smile.
He caved in just before the other Jedao went to sleep.
“Can you go tell Hemiola I'm sorry I didn't say goodbye?” he asked. The other Jedao blinked, but indulged him without hesitation.
Hemiola was in one of the corners of the needlemoth, probably watching one of its favorite dramas. Its lights flashed in a polite acknowledgement when Jedao approached.
“Hemiola,” the other Jedao said. “Sorry for bothering you. I don't know if you've noticed, but I am an anchor now, to the Jedao that you've met no less.”
Hemiola didn't say anything at first. The shadow was fully visible (no doubt his older self has deliberately chosen this place to stand), so Jedao wondered if the servitor was horrified by it.
But then Hemiola asked, “Is he okay?”
Jedao would have cried if he could. He was sure the storm of emotions must have somehow been felt by the other man, because the other Jedao said, “I think it is too early to say for sure. He is alive, in a way. And... he told me to tell you he was sorry for leaving without a goodbye.”
Hemiola flashed orange, in impatience.
“Has he forgotten that I helped him leave? I'm not angry with him. Can he see me?” After Jedao nodded, the servitor continued. “I am, however, angry that he got himself into this mess. No offense, but he should be in this body, not you.”
“Yes.” The other Jedao smiled. “He yelled at me about this too.” (“I didn't yell,” Jedao protested.) “About this, I wanted to ask...”
“I will contact them,” Hemiola said, and apparently it was obvious to his older self who it meant, which infuriated Jedao. “I can't promise anything, but if we find something they want... maybe it'll work.”
“Thank you. Could you keep it from Cheris, for now?” That was surprising. Was the thing being discussed so bad it needed to be kept in secret? Weren't Jedao and Cheris allies now?
Hemiola flashed green in agreement. Jedao thanked it and left it alone.
“What are you planning?” Jedao asked. “Why are you hiding it from Cheris?”
“Nothing that you need to worry about yet,” the other man answered, lying in bed. He left the light on, for some reason. “Hemiola has some contacts in the enclave on the shearmoth that you've commanded. There's something there that we might use to help us, but I don't want to say anything until we're sure.”
“I can't imagine Revenant working with us willingly,” Jedao commented. The warmoth hated him, and wanted nothing to do with him. He could not imagine it changing since the last time they'd met.
“Not Revenant. The servitor enclave. They don't hate us as much.” The other man sighed. “But let me figure this out. Do you want me to leave you something to watch, by the way? It gets boring during the night, as a revenant.”
Jedao did not expect the question, but it made a certain kind of sense. His older self had much more experience as a revenant, so he would know what to do to make the experience more bearable. He wasn't in a mood to watch anything, however.
“Not right now, but thank you for the thought,” he said. “I... need to think, I guess.”
“Of course.” The other Jedao smiled. And then he said, in a gentle tone that Jedao had not ever heard used on him, “We will figure something out. Don't worry.”
“All right,” Jedao murmured, and let the silence fall between them.