Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
When her alarm sounded, Anita rolled over. Capheus’ bunk was empty, and the blankets were neatly folded at the foot of the bed. She walked into the kitchen to see him standing in front of the heater, preparing a bag of eggs, meat, and herbs. He smiled as he looked up. “Good morning, doctor. I hope you slept well. I thought I’d get a head start on breakfast, I hope you don’t mind. I need to leave within the hour.”
Anita nodded, and gave a wavery smile. Did he know? She felt as if her mental tumult from the night before were printed on her face for anyone to read. That’s silly, she told herself as she sat down at the table. Nothing happened. You did nothing wrong. Desire is a normal human thing, especially after extended isolation. You have nothing to be ashamed of.
Breakfast was quiet, but pleasant. The sheer craving for warm food had passed weeks ago, but it was still a nice contrast to the chilly air inside the base. Getting food into her system woke Anita up and helped settle the remaining unease in her mind.
Capheus helped clean up after the meal, then reached into his own pack and brought out a small packet, which he handed to Anita. She unwrapped it to find several packs of pills, carefully labelled.
“Dr. Knowlton has been researching the effects of isolation, especially as it affected prisoners subjected to solitary confinement in the early twenty-first century, before such barbarism was banned. They realized that you might begin to suffer some of the same effects, and found some treatments you may need. This one is for digestive upset, a common complaint. This one is for nausea. This one is for the possible mental difficulties. They said you might begin to lose an ability to focus, or begin to focus to the point of obsession. There are also possible social difficulties. This won’t replace human contact, but it will help keep your hormonal and chemical balance stabilized until we can get you out of here. They wanted me to assure you that they are working their hardest to bring an end to your confinement here as soon as is safely possible.”
Anita turned the packs over in her hands, trying to sort out her mixed feelings. On the one hand, she hated the thought of needing the medications. She was doing fine. Mostly. On the other hand, it was so thoughtful of Jay to do all the research on solitary confinement and to realize that she might need these and to make sure she got them. That was so like them. Many people thought Jay was showy and narcissistic, but Anita knew them well enough to know that they were extremely perceptive and generous to a fault. She nodded to Capheus and mouthed “thank you.”
He slipped into his suit and moved toward the door, then turned and caught Anita up in a tight embrace. She felt a jolt like electricity zing through her body from head to toe, acutely aware of every inch of her body and how it felt to be held for even a moment. Capheus whispered in her ear, “I know. It’s ok. You’re going to make it through this. You are strong, and we will be strong for you, too.” He held her for a moment more, then stepped away and snapped his helmet into place. He waved one last time, and stepped into the airlock, closing it behind him and sealing the hatches.
Anita was frozen where she stood, overwhelmed with physical sensation. It wasn’t everything she wanted, and in some ways it made the desire worse to have tasted a little touch and then be bereft again. But it was something. A memory that she could call up in the dark nights to remember what touch felt like, how warm it was, the connection between bodies and minds that it communicated.
When she looked up again, Capheus was gone, aloft in the dusty skies and moving toward his scheduled goal. She was alone again.
It was terrifying.
It took a day or two to settle back into her usual rhythm of work, exercise, and rest. Anita ramped up the exercise routine, trying to exhaust her body so that it would fall asleep faster, without making her lie awake for hours, remembering and craving touch. There seemed to be no relief from it. It wasn’t always sexual, either; most of the time, she simply wanted to feel another human being there, to hear the sounds someone else made just from going about their daily life, the mundane small talk partners and friends made. Those were the hardest to live without.
Where the surface of Titan had once provided relief and escape from the lonely confines of the base, it now made the isolation worse. How nice it would be, Anita mused one morning, to have someone to help man the airlock, to have a light on for you when you came in from the darkening surface. To help you brush away the sand. It’s not that I can’t do all of that, I’m just very tired of doing it alone.
The suit was growing faster on the table, intricate pieces being joined together daily, brought to life with current, tested for functionality. The basic shape of a human being was there in skeletal form, lines of circuits, chips, and wiring. This suit had turned out a little small, so it would probably fit Frida best. Jay had sent the measurements from their system last week, so all that was needed was the fabric. Tohru was next up on the delivery schedule, but it would be days before she arrived. Just call me Doctor Frankenstein, Anita thought, eyeing the electronic figure on the table.
There was no mirror on the base for Anita to see herself in, but she could tell that her increased exercise regimen was having an effect. The muscles on her arms that had been well-toned but subtle now stood out from her body in defined swells. Her suit was now tight in a few places around her biceps and thighs. She had rigged up a punching bag out of her spare clothing and the netting that she had ridden to the base, wrapped up in some plastic sheeting that threatened to crumble with every blow. It wasn’t much, but it was a good way to work through nervous energy or the occasional burst of sheer rage that came along.
Jay sent a message every few days now. There was no sign that Perses was able to track messages that came into the base, as long as no signal originated in the base itself. Jay’s messages usually had a pretext of delivering some information that Anita might find helpful, but they also included a fair amount of Jay sharing stories about their day, interesting things that had come up in the course of their research. Anita usually watched them while eating dinner, replaying old messages on days when no new missives beeped through. It wasn’t exactly like a dinner date, but it felt a little like human contact, and it helped. At least, she could pretend that it did.
Three months into her stay at the old base, Anita watched from the hatch as Tohru landed outside, then helped her into the airlock before sealing the lock and filling the small room with atmosphere from the base. After they had moved into the base itself and Anita had removed her suit, Tohru’s eyes widened. “Wow, doctor, you’ve been doing something differently. I don’t think I’ve ever seen muscles like that on you. Working out to fill the time?”
Anita nodded, glad she didn’t feel the need to explain why she worked her body to the point of exhaustion daily. If everyone thought it was only to have something to do because work on the suit designs, so much the better. Tohru unpacked the small crate she had been able to carry. The usual food supplies, a few toiletries that Anita was running short on, and… fabric. Meters of it, folded tightly and vacuum sealed to take up as little space as possible. Enough for at least two suits, maybe three.
“Doctor Knowlton says they’re sorry it took so long to get this to you, but it should last you a while. We’ll get you more when we can, but it’ll be noticed if too much goes missing at once.”
Anita beckoned Tohru into the kitchen, and showed her the work that had been done on the first suit. “This is fantastic! I mean, I know you’ve got a long way to go, but this is so much done. Sometimes I thought the whole thing was a long shot, creating new suits from scratch? But this is so much more than I expected!”
Her excitement was contagious, and Anita was soon showing details of the suit design off to Tohru, and showing her some of the photos she had taken of the lake and the landscape around the base.
“Doctor Sensharma, you know I love photography, and I’ve been working on this series in my downtime, trying to capture the real sense of the people who live here, who left regular lives behind to sort of push humanity forward. I know we wouldn’t be able to show anyone the pictures until it’s safe, but could I take a few of you?”
Stunned, Anita considered the request. She had never been considered beautiful, and only had her picture taken at irregular intervals, usually for identification purposes. And Tohru was right, the photos would have to remain completely secret for now. Any little thing in a photo could be used to identify the base, and Tohru couldn’t be caught with photos that proved she had contact with her. But if the camera memory was wiped afterward, and the photos stayed here at the base… Anita nodded.
Tohru took half an hour poking around the base, setting up the background of the shot. First, she had to find a spot with lighting that would work, and then the items that would be behind Anita had to arranged just so for the composition to work.
Anita watched Tohru at work. It was a side of her colleague she had never seen; usually Tohru was testing new gear for its durability in the field, or finding new ways of using the Titan environment to survive in the worst case scenarios. She was relentlessly practical at work, and this artistic side had never come out while Anita was around before. In some ways, Tohru was as ruthless as an artist as she was a survival expert. She knew exactly what effect she wanted, and several ways to accomplish it, moving efficently to reach her goal.
Finally, the setting was ready, and Anita stepped into the light. Tohru had chosen the kitchen as the best spot, and the suit was visible on the table beside Anita. Tohru snapped pictures quickly, offering a few words of direction from time to time, but mostly letting Anita stand as she felt comfortable, or sit as if she was at work. Anita’s eye caught a part of the design that suddenly made her realize she could create a more elegant solution than she had previously found for the design. “Can I do a little design while you’re getting photos?” she signed to Tohru.
“Of course. Do what makes you comfortable, or makes you excited. That’s what I’m looking for.”
You really don’t want to see me doing what excites me right now, Anita thought, but kept her thoughts to herself and settled in with her tablet. A few sketches into the design program confirmed her inspiration: yes, this was a better way of doing things. It was only a few minutes to build the piece she would need and send it to the printer. Then a little while to properly connect it… As she worked, she was vaguely aware of Tohru taking pictures at the other end of the room, but she faded into the background. The suit was the important thing right now, and this would put her work ahead by at least a few days, if not more.
Finally, Anita looked up from the suit and realized that an hour had passed. “I’m so sorry, I got focused and lost track of time. Shouldn’t you be getting on your way? I don’t want you to get in trouble for being late to where you’re supposed to be.”
“It’s ok,” Tohru said, connecting the camera to the computer banks to transfer the photos. “I’m working alone this time, and I don’t have to report in until my first few tests are done, so no one’s watching too closely. Let me just take a look at these.” She paged through thumbnails that were too small for Anita to see well, deleting most of them. “These aren’t really worth looking at, I didn’t catch what I was looking for. Or sometimes they’re just blurry. Either way, not worth editing. Ok, here are some of the good ones. I’ll want to edit them in detail later, but this will give you an idea.” Tohru tapped the screen, and the first image filled the display.
Anita didn’t recognize herself. Her face had become more defined, but also more wrinkled. Her hair, which had formerly been dark brown and curly, past her shoulders, was streaked with grey at the top, and looked disheveled. Her gaze was focused in the middle distance, as if she had been pulled away from an important project and was still thinking about what needed to be done. Her sleeves were rolled up to the shoulder, and the muscles on her arms stood out clearly, made even more obvious by the obvious tension she held. All in all, not someone I would want to mess with, Anita thought. What’s happening to me?
“Here, there’s this one, too.” Tohru tapped to bring up the next image, one of Anita working on the suit. It was clearly the same person, but all the defiance and aggression were gone, replaced with a laser focus on the work in front of her. There was an aura of happiness about the scene, even though Anita’s expression was neutral. The light made it look as if her worktable was surrounded with a halo, an aura of light. Her focus was entirely on her work, every muscle attuned to the suit spread on the table in front of her.
Anita felt a jumble of emotions all at once. It was odd to see herself from the outside, a way she could never see herself in the course of normal life. It was an aspect of herself that was usually hidden from her by the constructs of consciousness. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling.
After Tohru had left, Anita sat down at the table and stared at the suit. It felt strange to work on it not, knowing how it animated her and brought her entire frame to life. It didn’t matter that no one was in the base to see her, she would know it.
But the suit had to be done, and there was no one else to do the work. So she sat and tried to focus, and after a while, began to forget about everything except the work. After a few hours, her back began to ache, and she straightened up. Everything had returned to normal, for better and worse.
When her alarm sounded, Anita rolled over. Capheus’ bunk was empty, and the blankets were neatly folded at the foot of the bed. She walked into the kitchen to see him standing in front of the heater, preparing a bag of eggs, meat, and herbs. He smiled as he looked up. “Good morning, doctor. I hope you slept well. I thought I’d get a head start on breakfast, I hope you don’t mind. I need to leave within the hour.”
Anita nodded, and gave a wavery smile. Did he know? She felt as if her mental tumult from the night before were printed on her face for anyone to read. That’s silly, she told herself as she sat down at the table. Nothing happened. You did nothing wrong. Desire is a normal human thing, especially after extended isolation. You have nothing to be ashamed of.
Breakfast was quiet, but pleasant. The sheer craving for warm food had passed weeks ago, but it was still a nice contrast to the chilly air inside the base. Getting food into her system woke Anita up and helped settle the remaining unease in her mind.
Capheus helped clean up after the meal, then reached into his own pack and brought out a small packet, which he handed to Anita. She unwrapped it to find several packs of pills, carefully labelled.
“Dr. Knowlton has been researching the effects of isolation, especially as it affected prisoners subjected to solitary confinement in the early twenty-first century, before such barbarism was banned. They realized that you might begin to suffer some of the same effects, and found some treatments you may need. This one is for digestive upset, a common complaint. This one is for nausea. This one is for the possible mental difficulties. They said you might begin to lose an ability to focus, or begin to focus to the point of obsession. There are also possible social difficulties. This won’t replace human contact, but it will help keep your hormonal and chemical balance stabilized until we can get you out of here. They wanted me to assure you that they are working their hardest to bring an end to your confinement here as soon as is safely possible.”
Anita turned the packs over in her hands, trying to sort out her mixed feelings. On the one hand, she hated the thought of needing the medications. She was doing fine. Mostly. On the other hand, it was so thoughtful of Jay to do all the research on solitary confinement and to realize that she might need these and to make sure she got them. That was so like them. Many people thought Jay was showy and narcissistic, but Anita knew them well enough to know that they were extremely perceptive and generous to a fault. She nodded to Capheus and mouthed “thank you.”
He slipped into his suit and moved toward the door, then turned and caught Anita up in a tight embrace. She felt a jolt like electricity zing through her body from head to toe, acutely aware of every inch of her body and how it felt to be held for even a moment. Capheus whispered in her ear, “I know. It’s ok. You’re going to make it through this. You are strong, and we will be strong for you, too.” He held her for a moment more, then stepped away and snapped his helmet into place. He waved one last time, and stepped into the airlock, closing it behind him and sealing the hatches.
Anita was frozen where she stood, overwhelmed with physical sensation. It wasn’t everything she wanted, and in some ways it made the desire worse to have tasted a little touch and then be bereft again. But it was something. A memory that she could call up in the dark nights to remember what touch felt like, how warm it was, the connection between bodies and minds that it communicated.
When she looked up again, Capheus was gone, aloft in the dusty skies and moving toward his scheduled goal. She was alone again.
It was terrifying.
It took a day or two to settle back into her usual rhythm of work, exercise, and rest. Anita ramped up the exercise routine, trying to exhaust her body so that it would fall asleep faster, without making her lie awake for hours, remembering and craving touch. There seemed to be no relief from it. It wasn’t always sexual, either; most of the time, she simply wanted to feel another human being there, to hear the sounds someone else made just from going about their daily life, the mundane small talk partners and friends made. Those were the hardest to live without.
Where the surface of Titan had once provided relief and escape from the lonely confines of the base, it now made the isolation worse. How nice it would be, Anita mused one morning, to have someone to help man the airlock, to have a light on for you when you came in from the darkening surface. To help you brush away the sand. It’s not that I can’t do all of that, I’m just very tired of doing it alone.
The suit was growing faster on the table, intricate pieces being joined together daily, brought to life with current, tested for functionality. The basic shape of a human being was there in skeletal form, lines of circuits, chips, and wiring. This suit had turned out a little small, so it would probably fit Frida best. Jay had sent the measurements from their system last week, so all that was needed was the fabric. Tohru was next up on the delivery schedule, but it would be days before she arrived. Just call me Doctor Frankenstein, Anita thought, eyeing the electronic figure on the table.
There was no mirror on the base for Anita to see herself in, but she could tell that her increased exercise regimen was having an effect. The muscles on her arms that had been well-toned but subtle now stood out from her body in defined swells. Her suit was now tight in a few places around her biceps and thighs. She had rigged up a punching bag out of her spare clothing and the netting that she had ridden to the base, wrapped up in some plastic sheeting that threatened to crumble with every blow. It wasn’t much, but it was a good way to work through nervous energy or the occasional burst of sheer rage that came along.
Jay sent a message every few days now. There was no sign that Perses was able to track messages that came into the base, as long as no signal originated in the base itself. Jay’s messages usually had a pretext of delivering some information that Anita might find helpful, but they also included a fair amount of Jay sharing stories about their day, interesting things that had come up in the course of their research. Anita usually watched them while eating dinner, replaying old messages on days when no new missives beeped through. It wasn’t exactly like a dinner date, but it felt a little like human contact, and it helped. At least, she could pretend that it did.
Three months into her stay at the old base, Anita watched from the hatch as Tohru landed outside, then helped her into the airlock before sealing the lock and filling the small room with atmosphere from the base. After they had moved into the base itself and Anita had removed her suit, Tohru’s eyes widened. “Wow, doctor, you’ve been doing something differently. I don’t think I’ve ever seen muscles like that on you. Working out to fill the time?”
Anita nodded, glad she didn’t feel the need to explain why she worked her body to the point of exhaustion daily. If everyone thought it was only to have something to do because work on the suit designs, so much the better. Tohru unpacked the small crate she had been able to carry. The usual food supplies, a few toiletries that Anita was running short on, and… fabric. Meters of it, folded tightly and vacuum sealed to take up as little space as possible. Enough for at least two suits, maybe three.
“Doctor Knowlton says they’re sorry it took so long to get this to you, but it should last you a while. We’ll get you more when we can, but it’ll be noticed if too much goes missing at once.”
Anita beckoned Tohru into the kitchen, and showed her the work that had been done on the first suit. “This is fantastic! I mean, I know you’ve got a long way to go, but this is so much done. Sometimes I thought the whole thing was a long shot, creating new suits from scratch? But this is so much more than I expected!”
Her excitement was contagious, and Anita was soon showing details of the suit design off to Tohru, and showing her some of the photos she had taken of the lake and the landscape around the base.
“Doctor Sensharma, you know I love photography, and I’ve been working on this series in my downtime, trying to capture the real sense of the people who live here, who left regular lives behind to sort of push humanity forward. I know we wouldn’t be able to show anyone the pictures until it’s safe, but could I take a few of you?”
Stunned, Anita considered the request. She had never been considered beautiful, and only had her picture taken at irregular intervals, usually for identification purposes. And Tohru was right, the photos would have to remain completely secret for now. Any little thing in a photo could be used to identify the base, and Tohru couldn’t be caught with photos that proved she had contact with her. But if the camera memory was wiped afterward, and the photos stayed here at the base… Anita nodded.
Tohru took half an hour poking around the base, setting up the background of the shot. First, she had to find a spot with lighting that would work, and then the items that would be behind Anita had to arranged just so for the composition to work.
Anita watched Tohru at work. It was a side of her colleague she had never seen; usually Tohru was testing new gear for its durability in the field, or finding new ways of using the Titan environment to survive in the worst case scenarios. She was relentlessly practical at work, and this artistic side had never come out while Anita was around before. In some ways, Tohru was as ruthless as an artist as she was a survival expert. She knew exactly what effect she wanted, and several ways to accomplish it, moving efficently to reach her goal.
Finally, the setting was ready, and Anita stepped into the light. Tohru had chosen the kitchen as the best spot, and the suit was visible on the table beside Anita. Tohru snapped pictures quickly, offering a few words of direction from time to time, but mostly letting Anita stand as she felt comfortable, or sit as if she was at work. Anita’s eye caught a part of the design that suddenly made her realize she could create a more elegant solution than she had previously found for the design. “Can I do a little design while you’re getting photos?” she signed to Tohru.
“Of course. Do what makes you comfortable, or makes you excited. That’s what I’m looking for.”
You really don’t want to see me doing what excites me right now, Anita thought, but kept her thoughts to herself and settled in with her tablet. A few sketches into the design program confirmed her inspiration: yes, this was a better way of doing things. It was only a few minutes to build the piece she would need and send it to the printer. Then a little while to properly connect it… As she worked, she was vaguely aware of Tohru taking pictures at the other end of the room, but she faded into the background. The suit was the important thing right now, and this would put her work ahead by at least a few days, if not more.
Finally, Anita looked up from the suit and realized that an hour had passed. “I’m so sorry, I got focused and lost track of time. Shouldn’t you be getting on your way? I don’t want you to get in trouble for being late to where you’re supposed to be.”
“It’s ok,” Tohru said, connecting the camera to the computer banks to transfer the photos. “I’m working alone this time, and I don’t have to report in until my first few tests are done, so no one’s watching too closely. Let me just take a look at these.” She paged through thumbnails that were too small for Anita to see well, deleting most of them. “These aren’t really worth looking at, I didn’t catch what I was looking for. Or sometimes they’re just blurry. Either way, not worth editing. Ok, here are some of the good ones. I’ll want to edit them in detail later, but this will give you an idea.” Tohru tapped the screen, and the first image filled the display.
Anita didn’t recognize herself. Her face had become more defined, but also more wrinkled. Her hair, which had formerly been dark brown and curly, past her shoulders, was streaked with grey at the top, and looked disheveled. Her gaze was focused in the middle distance, as if she had been pulled away from an important project and was still thinking about what needed to be done. Her sleeves were rolled up to the shoulder, and the muscles on her arms stood out clearly, made even more obvious by the obvious tension she held. All in all, not someone I would want to mess with, Anita thought. What’s happening to me?
“Here, there’s this one, too.” Tohru tapped to bring up the next image, one of Anita working on the suit. It was clearly the same person, but all the defiance and aggression were gone, replaced with a laser focus on the work in front of her. There was an aura of happiness about the scene, even though Anita’s expression was neutral. The light made it look as if her worktable was surrounded with a halo, an aura of light. Her focus was entirely on her work, every muscle attuned to the suit spread on the table in front of her.
Anita felt a jumble of emotions all at once. It was odd to see herself from the outside, a way she could never see herself in the course of normal life. It was an aspect of herself that was usually hidden from her by the constructs of consciousness. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling.
After Tohru had left, Anita sat down at the table and stared at the suit. It felt strange to work on it not, knowing how it animated her and brought her entire frame to life. It didn’t matter that no one was in the base to see her, she would know it.
But the suit had to be done, and there was no one else to do the work. So she sat and tried to focus, and after a while, began to forget about everything except the work. After a few hours, her back began to ache, and she straightened up. Everything had returned to normal, for better and worse.
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