Idyllian by R. Z. Held

Author:R. Z. Held
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: space opera, artificial intelligence, found family, planetary empire
Publisher: Rhiannon Held
Published: 2021-08-10T00:00:00+00:00

Cold woke Sienna, though her own stink hit her so powerfully on her first conscious breath that it seemed very much like the cause instead. Sweat, dye, dust—she felt it all as a physical film squirming over her skin. She groaned and turned over, but that removed her from the pocket of warmth she’d built up on the mattress and started shivers down her legs. The army jacket had insulated her core, but her feet were ice. This wasn’t ship cold, but planet cold was plenty cold enough to keep her from sleep.

She sat up, shucked off her boots, wrapped the sides of the jacket around as much of her knees as she could encompass, and turtled her head down under the hood. Examined in the light of day, the room was of good quality. Without cleaning systems operational, dust had drifted away from most anti-dirt-coated surfaces to the floor, where it could drift no further—she could see her prints standing clear. On the wood, as she apparently hadn’t imagined from before. Strange luxury, for a Pax Romana facility.

Or maybe not so strange, for somewhere clearly far from the core. It dawned on Sienna that she was seeing things in the literal light of day, through a window that took up much of the space where a headboard might have been. Outside, beyond a speckling of wind-driven rain droplets, was dense, temperate rainforest. That explained the wood, but raised another question: why was this facility the only human-made feature she could see? The vegetation was dense, but not that dense—unlike the close, even ranks of timber farms she’d visited at home, these trees were gnarled, leaning, and fallen, opening gaps for bushier species, and something like a line of sight over the understory.

“Penstemon, please verify no one has found my location or locked out my codes, then tell me about the planet we’re on.” Sienna’s throat felt as if it stuck to itself, trying to form the words, and she pushed to her feet instead of waiting for the answer. Personal quarters must have a bathroom. Would the water still be running?

“Oh, the sleeping beauty awakes,” Isachne’s voice said. “Don’t worry, they’re still running a search through sensors before they put boots on the ground in this section of the facility.”

Sienna caught herself on the bathroom doorframe, clenched her fingertips into the metal as if its hardness would differentiate dreaming from waking. She was awake right now, wasn’t she? Simply by virtue of asking the question? Unless she was hallucinating. “Penstemon? Did you just speak to me?”

“Yes, I’m speaking to you at the moment. We’ll see if that changes, I might decide to spend some more time watching my wife sob her eyes out.” The acid of the Near-AI’s tone etched holes into Sienna’s thoughts. She didn’t—that didn’t make sense, no Near-AI acted like that—

Unless maybe it wasn’t so near anymore. With memories placed in Penstemon’s core storage...

And this whole situation had somewhere become absurd, and she refused to defend herself to a fellow victim of LSF.

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