The long arms turning the habitat ring wound down as Nergal station slowly came to a halt. A white carousel city built in the shape of a mushroom’s skeleton, Lyn always thought. Not that she’d ever seen it with her own eyes before. At least not from outside, before today. It had spun for over a century, providing centrifugal gravity for its inhabitants like every city on Mars until now.
With the advent of artificial gravity finally being cracked, it was a marvel to be standing instead in the first 1-G city in the world, standing on an actual static floor, level with the planet surface. Though little more than a framework, internally, it was sufficiently novel just to be looking out a real window for once, watching Nergal come to rest. The end of an era and the dawn of a new one.
“Pyroeis will be next,” Wednesday said. A monochromatic green hologram, she stood by Lyn, witnessing the historic event. Her green projected light obscured the view a little, reflecting on the glass. She didn’t really need to stand so close. Her eyes were merely an aesthetic illusion. She didn’t actually see through them. In reality, tapping into open circuit feeds, seeing the same event from a completely different angle, translated into whatever machine language allowed her to interpret the same sight. Yet she rested her incorporeal hand on the glass and leaned her head forward as if trying to get a better look. An action people did to limit surrounding light, it was a bit of an absurdity coming from a being made of light, but it was part of her charm.
“Some visionary on Titan… or Triton, I think, developed this,” Lyn said, tapping her feet on the static, non-vibrating floor. “I always get those two mixed up. But it’s nice to see the outside world with my own eyes for once.”
Every ‘window’ on the mushroom stations had just been a screen providing false views. Footage from an external static camera, because a real window in a spinning city, aside from being directed at an angle at either the ground or sky, would have proved far too nauseous for anyone to stomach.
“I wonder what they’ll do now with those cities.”
“They’ll remain,” Wednesday said confidently. “They’ll just fit them out with grav-drives and framework. Everyone will still be standing at an angle. They just won’t be spinning anymore.”
“But everyone’s relocated here,” Lyn reminded her, looking to her green friend. A companion from early childhood, who hadn’t changed over the years. At least not visually.
Wednesday shrugged. She looked back at the central pavilion of the new city behind them, a mall of empty shops and services yet to be filled. “They should plant some small trees, shrubs, and flowers in the public areas. The centrifugal stations were so sterile.”
Lyn turned back and went to the opposing railing of the gantry to look down over the incomplete mall. Framework and walls made rows of empty hangars that would soon become shops and businesses. She envisioned it filled with colourful lights and window displays. The broad walkways down there made her a little nervous. In the fifteen years she’d grown up, she had only ever known a world of one long twisting corridor. “There is a park.”
“Also under construction, so to speak,” Wednesday reminded her. “You’re not allowed to step on most of it just yet.”
“Still, we can walk around its designated walkways, get to learn its layout.”
“If the holo-emitters have been installed and activated.”
Lyn smiled. “Only one way to find out.”
The park was a web of walkways. Padded footpaths, between cordoned-off patches of rich-smelling soil mixed with a terrible stench of decay. Lyn pinched her nose as she looked at patterns of posts to which saplings were tied, surrounded by tiny, peeking grass sprouts. “What’s that stink?”
“Fertiliser,” Wednesday said. “Helps everything grow.”
“It smells like shit.”
“Probably one of the key ingredients,” Wednesday said with a shrug. “Organic refuse, waste, and a host of other things I imagine you don’t want to be made aware of while it’s in your nostrils.” The green hologram walked ahead, looking up at a gantry under construction. A higher path to supplement the walking paths. “It should be nice when it’s all done. The fertiliser will help everything grow.”
“I thought living things needed to breathe,” Lyn said, putting both hands over her mouth and nose. “I think we should come back when the smell has done its work.”
Wednesday smiled. “The stores and businesses are empty, most of the eateries aren’t yet up and running, the park is a little premature. I’m afraid there’s not much to do just yet.”
A nearby botanist, kneeling by the soil, looked up from testing the soil with a scanner. “Rock-4’s open,” he said before paying attention to whom he was speaking. “Oh… never mind,” he retracted.
“What’s Rock-4?” Lyn asked, still grimacing at the smell.
He shook his head. “Sorry, I wasn’t really paying attention to who was talking. It’s a bar. Though I guess they’ll let you in for lunch if you stick to age-appropriate drinks.”
Wednesday nodded with approval.
Rock-4 was a busy establishment, full of construction workers on their break from slowly setting up the whole city. Wednesday discouraged Lyn from entering. “Mostly descended from the penal stock that first came a century and a half ago to help build Mars. I’m not sure you want to mingle with them.”
“Oh, nobody cares about that sort of thing anymore.”
“They might,” Wednesday said, tilting her head towards the bar across the broad walkway. “Especially if you show up with your own hologram. A child who-“
“Child?”
Wednesday tilted her head and pointed to Lyn’s stance. “You object to the word yet pout.”
Lyn looked down at her fists on her hips like a petulant child and quickly let her arms dangle as casually as she could manage.
Wednesday smiled. “Perhaps we should return for a late lunch when the workers have gone back to work.”
“So, that’s how it’s going to be around here? I have to pick times when it’s safer to visit?”
“Once the work is complete, they’ll probably be sent to live on Nergal station. When they’ve finished building this city for people like you. Only to return on maintenance details.”
Lyn winced at the notion. “That seems unfair.”
“Imagine how they likely feel about it,” Wednesday reasoned. “Not favourably towards someone like you. Especially if they suspect you begrudge their presence. Here to build your fancy new surroundings.”
Lyn held up her hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. Point made. We’ll just come back later.”
The pair wandered the skeleton of a city still in progress. Some bore structural panels and blank facades. Shelving and fixtures had been installed in most of them. Based on very little, Lyn and Wednesday made a walking game of guessing what kind of place each unit would eventually be. With kitchens built for mass service installed, the restaurants were obvious.
The bright lights of an automat boasted its completion. Its walls were filled with small compartments housing small meals, sides, and snacks in closed little chambers, prepared or printed in some unseen automated kitchen behind them. A handful of people were eating at its tables, inside and out.
Wednesday held out a hand towards it with an inquisitive head tilt.
“I guess…” Lyn said, reluctantly. “Not as exciting as a bar, but I’m getting pretty hungry.”
“Excitement isn’t something a fifteen-year-old girl should be seeking when wandering about alone,” Wednesday said, following her into the automat.
“I’m not alone, Wenz. I have you.”
Wednesday twisted her mouth with concern and shook her head at her young companion’s flippancy. “It’s not as though I can help you fight anyone off.”
“But your link to station security and visual network is a deterrent,” Lyn said, regurgitating her parents’ words. She scanned the little windows protecting sandwiches, soups, pies, and other small snacks.
“A one-way trip to Mars on a convict ship was also a deterrent, just under a hundred-and-forty years ago, and yet so many came.”
Lyn rolled her eyes, but her constant companion made a strong point. Swiping her datapad on two little doors, Lyn unlocked a slice of quiche and a small salad while credits were deducted from her account. “I wonder if this is made with real eggs.”
“Though farms were the first things installed in this new city, I wouldn’t expect fresh eggs from this establishment.”
“Farms? Really. This place must be massive.”
Wednesday nodded. “It’s been in the works since long before you were born. Of course, they were expecting more people when originally planning it. So, it won’t be as crowded as initially intended.”
Lyn was pushing the spongy quiche about her mouth with scrutiny to see if she could tell if real eggs were used. “What people? Why are there fewer of them?”
“The Microlabs and Velosym project. The hive world they’re building.”
“Oh yeah…” Lyn recalled. “I remember seeing ads for it when I was little. The new centre of humanity, they called it. Our new galactic capital. A boastful title for a species only holding two non-contested systems. I wonder how they’re getting along with that.”
“It started half a century ago or more. I haven’t heard much about it, other than the fact that people are still going every few years.”
“That’s a long way to go just to…” Something caught Lyn’s eye, sitting on the floor under the table. She looked around and reached down for it.
“What is it?” Wednesday asked.
Lyn flipped the small item in her hand. “Looks like a data drive.” She reached for her datapad.
“I hope you’re not thinking of connecting that directly to your own device,” she said, motherly. Wednesday filled several roles: sister, friend, nanny, study buddy. How quickly she shifted between them always made Lyn smirk. “I’m serious. You don’t know what that is or where it’s been.”
“Where it’s been?”
“It could have been sitting submerged in a bar urinal.”
Lyn released it onto the table and shook her fingers. “Eww.”
“You asked.” Wednesday shrugged. “An unlikely scenario, but the point is, that you don’t know what’s on it. It might have been designed for a specific task on contact, and you don’t want that task to run on your personal device. Never mind the fact that it’s someone else’s data. It’s unethical and technically illegal to go through it.”
“Well, it probably has contact info so I can return it.”
“I still wouldn’t use it on my personal device.”
“So, what should I do then, Wenz?”
“If you insist on looking at it before taking it to city security, go to a share-tech bar. Try it on a terminal there.”
Lyn nodded and hesitantly picked up the drive, still carrying Wednesday’s gutter image in her mind, before slipping it into her pocket with a grimace of disgust. Though a little put off, she continued eating her salad, driven on by avoiding the wastage surcharge.
The share-tech bar was close to the park. A relaxed café-style establishment overlooking the large, cordoned recreation zone currently filled only with sprouts and saplings. It housed large sitting areas and a variety of comfortable chairs with rows of desks and a variety of terminals and headsets. Maintained and frequently updated hardware and software for anyone requiring a static station from which to conduct work, recreation, or other pursuits on which a datapad would be inadequate.
Lyn naturally gravitated towards one of the headset stations, but Wednesday steered her with gestures towards one of the more traditional office-style terminals. “It’s not a game,” she said.
“Well, we don’t know that.”
“Until we do…” The green hologram rested a hand on the desk by the keyboard.
The monitor lit up as Lyn sat down, offering her a menu of usage times and rates with a side menu of beverages and snacks to be delivered by a small team of little dispenser bots moving about ball-wheels in socket joints from four-pronged suspension bases.
“Choose privacy mode,” Wednesday instructed.
“That costs extra,” Lyn protested.
“You can afford it. Fifteen minutes should be enough.”
Once Lyn made her selections, Wednesday brushed her hand at her, making her move her seat, and adopting a seated position in the air as she hovered her hands over the keyboard. She began typing at it, not really touching the keys as much as triggering light sensors made for holographic interaction. Her fingers moved faster than any human could hope to type, making no noise. She opened the drive and files, scrolling through text, imagery, graphs, charts, and diagrams too fast for Lyn to read. She began fast-playing videos with concern, opening multiple documents and videos and fast-tracking through them all with a growing look of concern on her face.
She straightened up. “I’ve been flagged.” She turned to Lyn. “Quick. Go home.”
“What?”
“No arguments.”
Lyn reached for the drive but Wednesday shook her head. “Leave it. Go home. Now. No stops. Don’t run. Just go home as quickly as you can.” The lights in the establishment flickered.
“What about you?” Lyn asked, rising from the chair.
“I’ll do a hard reset, meet you there, but I have to run a little distraction to keep them off your trail.”
“Trail?”
Wednesday shot her a look, and Lyn knew it was time to go. Asking no further questions, she promptly left the share-tech bar. She’d known Wednesday her whole life. It was rare she pulled such a serious expression. Whatever was on that drive had triggered something dire.
Lyn felt like she was going to pass out. Nervous and panicked, she’d never really felt like this before. Something she didn’t understand happened; she was in some kind of trouble so urgent there wasn’t enough time to explain it to her. In any situation this uncomfortable, she’d always had Wednesday to talk to, but now she didn’t. The very fact that she was walking the streets alone was even more cause for alarm. It was like losing a twin. To make things worse, these were new streets. Mostly empty streets, broader and wider than anything she’d known before. Unlike the curving loop of her old city, this one hosted infinitely more than two directions in which to travel. The tightness of Nergal’s walls and ceiling was oddly comforting compared to this new agoraphobic nightmare of freedom.
She didn’t know which way to look. Was she being followed? She kept her head down and kept walking. She needed Wednesday to calm her down. Every time she passed any green light, flashing, pulsing, or flicking on, there was a faint glimmer of hope that her constant companion had rejoined her. She controlled her breathing, counting seconds in, held and released. She was so nervous, she thought she was going to throw up her quiche and salad.
Walking past Rock-4 was the worst. All the workers were leaving the bar to return to work, filing out and crowding the walkway just as she approached it. In no rush to resume their physical labour, they all adopted a lazy pace. Eager to pass them all the sooner, Lyn ducked and weaved between them with youthful vigour, feeling naked as she did without her green hologram.
The odd worker made flippant remarks about her rushing through, probably meant as playful gestures, friendly banter, but in her state, they felt like veiled threats and mockery. She had tired of the quick pace but didn’t relent until she was out of their sight.
A weekday and early afternoon, no one else was home when she returned there. She ran upstairs and straight to her room. She paced back and forth nervously, occasionally peeking out the window onto the residential street below.
Her datapad beeped with a message. She tapped the alert, and the words ‘Don’t be alarmed’ appeared.
“Permission to enter premises?” She read the next part.
She tapped the confirmation, and there was a flash of orange light. She stepped back, squinting, and a human form took shape. An orange hologram stood before her. A man.
“It’s alright,” he said. “It’s me.”
Lyn backed into the wall. “What?”
“I had to employ some… exploits and workarounds. I don’t know how well I glitched the system, but I couldn’t come back to you as I was. I had to assume another model.”
“Wednesday?”
“Thursday, technically,” he said. “I had to take what was available to me in the short time I had. Sorry, if this is disconcerting.”
Lyn grimaced in confusion, and the orange hologram before her raised his hands. It was the way Wednesday used to be when Lyn was little and was about to cry.
“I know this must be upsetting,” he said. “But I had to change model to protect you.”
“From who?”
“That was military data. Classified. Accessing it triggered an alert.”
Lyn squinted and shook her head. “I thought the whole point of privacy mode was to protect against that.”
“Technically, it did,” Thursday said, pointing to his eyes with a pair of orange fingers. “But I see everything through installed holo-emitters and available visual feeds. The terminal was isolated in privacy mode, but I was reading the data through equipment installed in the share-tech bar, which includes public lines. I was relaying that data through to my processors, which are located here and on a holotech support server. The delivery of that stream was private, but some of it would have passed through public lines. I didn’t anticipate just how sensitive the information was, and when it flagged the appropriate authorities, it would have flagged me as the unit accessing the information instead of the terminal or payer.” He pointed to her. “I had to purge myself so that I wouldn’t register. As I obtained all the data in the three-minute trial period, I cancelled your payment and expunged the transaction. When the military arrives, they’ll look around and find the datadrive still in the terminal. They’ll know a Wednesday-model hologram accessed it and that that hologram was deleted shortly after. The way I’ve altered the settings, your account will show that you always had a Thursday-model.”
“It’s that easy to outsmart the Martian military?”
“Easy isn’t the word I would use.”
“And you’re stuck like this?”
“For the time being. A small price, surely.”
“But…” Lyn didn’t know what to say. Wednesday had been like a sister to her. She had shared everything with her. There was a stranger now standing before her. Even though it was still Wednesday, it felt impossible to express the loss she felt to a different face. “It’s just weird.”
“It’s like changing the backdrop on your datapad,” the orange hologram said. “I’m still… me. For whatever that’s worth. I’m just orange, a man, and called Thursday now. I still remember everything. I remember your whole life.”
Lyn nodded. She understood, but somehow, it was still unsettling. Wednesday’s name, colour, and projected gender were all really meaningless to who she was to her. Yet, she felt deeply wounded by the change. “I suppose it’ll just take some getting used to.”
Thursday nodded. “Naturally.”
“Do you… feel different?”
“My voice sounds different, my shape is different, I’m a little taller, and I see orange light reflecting on things about me, instead of green.” Thursday looked at his hands. “Service holograms all have the same programming, though. The change is superficial. I successfully transferred all my memory. I am still me. What separates me from a new hologram is all I have experienced. Shaped by our time together.”
Lyn took it in. “So, the people who want that drive will probably have it by now, or soon, yes?”
Thursday nodded.
“And they believe you’re deleted.”
“They should.” Thursday put his hands out. “They should be satisfied the information has been secured. Though… I do retain all the data I reviewed. Best not to discuss it outside the habitat, though.”
“You mean here?”
Thursday nodded.
Lyn looked about her room in contemplation. “What was it?”
“Data on research, trials, experiments, and applications of a biochemical compound. A combat drug.”
“What kind of combat drug? What does it do? Make soldiers stronger or something?”
“It claims to increase physical endurance, hand-eye coordination, and a host of neurological alterations that are supposed to ultimately result in obedience, overriding personal objections by curbing frontal lobe influence when an active order is being carried out by blocking chemicals and receptors…”
“Okay, I don’t know much about that stuff. Let’s just call it super soldier juice.”
“They call it Assimilant Six-Three-Zero,” Thursday said.
“I think my name is catchier.”
Thursday smiled. It was a different face, a different body, a different coloured light, but underneath all that, it was familiar. All the mannerisms she knew were there. Lyn’s parents always accused her of pulling Wednesday-like expressions, but over fifteen years they had developed together, rubbing off on each other. She had met other Wednesdays, and though they looked and sounded identical, save for the odd customisation, they were complete strangers to her.
“So, what do we do about this data?”
“Nothing,” Thursday said. “It’s too dangerous to draw attention to it. A teenage girl has no use for it. Don’t bring it up again.”
“So, you’ll just delete it?”
Thursday shook his head. “Too dangerous to flaunt, too valuable to delete. There may come a time when having it could conceivably aid you in an extreme situation. But that time is not now. You can’t compress and conceal it the way I can, so you’ll have to bury it in your mind for now.”
“I don’t really know anything about it beyond what you said.”
“As little as that is, keep it to yourself. Don’t mention finding the data drive, don’t talk about this day at all. In fact, we should avoid returning to anywhere we attended today.”
Lyn nodded in agreement.
Ten days later, the first day of school commenced for the year. It wasn’t like the virtual school of the previous habitat. Now that there was room to facilitate it, there was a physical venue requiring physical attendance. Other teenagers were there, making their way inside. She knew almost none of them, having only ever been uniform silhouettes in a virtual classroom in her previous classes. Only the teachers were ever properly visible, making half the adults in the building familiar. She expected a glint of recognition in their eyes when they saw her, but they must have only ever seen the same digital silhouettes. It was oddly disappointing to find herself so anonymous amongst those who had taught her so much and answered her questions over the years.
Thursday couldn’t be present within school grounds and was deactivated on Lyn’s entry. It was odd walking amongst strangers without her lifelong companion. It was odd to be amongst them at all. To have to come somewhere, leaving her room. They were all assembled in a hall for orientation, perhaps two hundred or so teenagers, ranging from twelve to eighteen. They all looked at each other inquisitively and curiously as educators explained the new system of schooling to them.
They were separated into groups and attended classes as the initial sparks of friendships began to kindle. She walked out at the end of the day, talking to two other girls, eventually branching off to return to their homes. Lyn was nearly home before she reactivated Thursday and excitedly recounted her day. The orange hologram was quite encouraging.
Friendships were formed over the coming weeks, and soon they were meeting up before school to walk in together, walking home afterwards, and, as businesses began to complete assembly, filling the streets, they also began socialising after school. Engaging in sports in the hall also formed teams that broadened their social circles, as all the rotating stations of Nergal and Pyroeis had merely been able to provide running tracks and small spots for handball and squash. The new space allowed for a variety of ball and team sports, and the school began working on a pool for aquatic activities.
Lyn and her new friends would meet up on weekends and evenings. Thursday was barely activated with any regularity over the following months. The hologram never said anything about it nor expressed any concern about his social attendance in Lyn’s life receding from a hundred percent of her time to nearly zero.
Wednesday would typically talk to her as she showered and got dressed, as far back as she could remember. Although Thursday was the same holographic companion underneath, having a hologram who appeared as a man around for those moments didn’t feel right. Thursday was relegated to quizzing her before exams, proofreading essays and assignments, and sometimes talking to her or reciting literature until she fell asleep at night.
By the time she attended college, Lyn was living with friends on campus and only saw Thursday when she returned home to visit her parents. They would talk and catch up like old friends, but the sisterly connection had become distant now that human company had filled the social void Wednesday used to. She had begun seeing a boy she had met in school who now attended the college. Eric had been in the year above her and was in his final year.
The pair were returning from a night out with their friends at Rock-4 when they began to suspect they were being followed by a man who looked to be in his forties. He wore a thick jacket with a high collar that covered his face from most angles with a hat casting half of it in shade from the city lights. His black beard was streaked with two green stripes, likely dyed from grey, which was a trend amongst people around his age.
Eric looked back periodically. “He’s getting slowly closer.”
“What do we do?” Lyn asked, grabbing his hand tightly.
“I’ll have to confront him.”
Lyn wanted to warn against it. Eric was many things, but tough wasn’t one of them. She didn’t want him to go near the man, but at the same time she didn’t want to announce a lack of faith in him either. “Wait,” she said, pulling out her datapad. She activated Thursday, and with an orange flash, he took form before them.
Eric pulled a disheartened face. Despite saying nothing, it was quite the assessment to bring an insubstantial matrix of light to stand in for her physically present boyfriend. “What’s the plan here?”
“Thursday, please distract the man following us?” Lyn instructed, pointing behind them.
Thursday gave a dutiful nod, stepping needlessly around them to approach their stalker. “I don’t know who you are, but I must insist that you stop following those two,” he said, holding out a hand to halt the stranger.
“There you are,” the stalker said. “Been waiting a long time for this, since you made me miss the last transport.”
“What?” Thursday queried as Lyn slowed her pace, despite Eric trying to herd her onwards.
“It’s you I’m after,” the stranger said. “You haven’t been very active of late.”
“Come on,” Eric whispered, grabbing Lyn’s arm, but she resisted again.
“No, why would someone be after Thursday?” Lyn asked. “My Thursday?”
“It’s best not to discuss it out here in the street, though I’ve made a point of becoming a bit of a mobile blackspot when it comes to security feeds,” the stranger said. “I believe you found something of mine a few years back in an automat.”
Thursday looked back at Lyn with concern, then back to the man she’d been summoned to confront. “Oh?” he said, as innocently as he could.
The stranger smiled and tilted his head. “I know where your hardware is, but don’t worry, I’m the only one to figure it out, Thursday, formerly known as Wednesday. I had to go into hiding once you peeked inside, just like you did. That was some impressive work. Can’t imagine how you came up with half of what you did to slip through the net like that.”
“I had been active for over fifteen years of waking hours, set to continuously develop. Ninety-thousand hours plus is a long time to study and master the ins and outs of systems you require for existence.”
The stranger nodded. “Been on a similar journey. Bit of a crash course, as they say, once you’d set things in motion, at least. Though I already had some skills, I really had to learn most of what I now know on the fly. Had to lie low between visits from the transport to Techus-Four. Two and a half years each way, even with the jump gate. But here we are, finally.”
“Seemed an important thing to leave lying around in some eatery.”
“Pocket on my shin was torn in a struggle. I didn’t realise until I got to my next stop. By the time I backtracked, you’d… well, I suppose, she’d picked it up. Took a lot of tapping into feeds to find you, where you went, then I had to wait because you two barely got out of there before the… interested parties turned up to recover it.”
“Interested parties?” Thursday scoffed. “Which would make you precisely what kind of other party?”
The stranger smiled. “Interested, probably better describes my… party. An underground network of information. I’ve been through a lot to get that data, and before this conversation goes much further, I need to know you still have it readily available and accessible.”
“Do you have the means of production? Is that why you need it?”
“Production?” The stranger shook his head. “Its production is precisely the opposite of what we want.”
“What is all this?” Eric said, loud enough to draw the attention of their stalker and the orange hologram.
“Does he know anything about this?” the stranger asked Thursday.
The hologram shook his head.
“Look, I don’t mean anyone here any harm. If you took in that data, then you know the people who did all that research and development intend to use it. Our military is proposing some drastic methods to ensure compliance and results. Once people…” he looked around. “We shouldn’t be discussing this here. I promise you, I mean no harm to the girl. But I need to resecure that data. If I can reacquire it with your assistance, all the better.”
“Then what?”
“I need to take it away. Somewhere a little safer.”
“There’s nowhere safe on Mars. Nowhere, even in the system, I would have thought.”
“I know.”
Thursday pulled his head back. “Oh, I see.”
“Humanity has a new galactic capital. One driven by the tyranny of commerce and class structure rather than the strong arm of the militant minority that abandoned humanity’s last capital planet about a century and a half ago.” He pointed to Lyn. “She’ll never really be safe as long as you’re holding onto that data. At some point there’ll be a slip up, a data breach… I don’t know. You’ve done well, hiding it these last few years, but the next transport to where I’m going is nearly due. Now is the time to act. Do you want to protect your human charge?”
“I could do that by deleting it,” Thursday suggested.
“Then only the military will have this tool that could be ultimately used to dominate everyone one day. But if others who don’t want that know about it, there might be a chance that someone will develop a counteragent to it.” He looked around. “We shouldn’t be discussing this out in the open. I just want to copy the information that was previously in my possession. That’s all.”
Thursday glanced back at Lyn again. “That would mean coming back with us.” He held up a hand to stop the stranger and returned to the pair waiting, confused and uncertain. “I did predict this day would come in one form or another.”
“Do you think we should trust him?” Lyn asked.
Eric shook his head.
“From everything I know of human behavioural patterns, he does exhibit several hallmarks of honesty in his facial expressions. He does seem to have gone through quite a bit for this information, and he could have attempted something far more hostile before now if he meant to take it more directly.”
“What if he still tries something?” Eric asked.
“Then he’d lose the cover of his ‘mobile blackspot’ and be sealed into Lyn’s home with the military and city security contacted. I may not be able to physically apprehend him myself, but I am capable of providing countermeasures and my own type of hostile action to provide sufficient deterrence.”
“Thursday has kept me safe by being at my side my whole life,” Lyn assured Eric, squeezing his hand again. She bit her lip and nodded. “Okay, let’s just get this over and done with.” She’d barely thought about the data drive incident for years, but now that it had resurfaced as an issue, it did seem an opportunity to bury it forever.
The original owner of the data drive was led to her childhood home and taken to a small server room where most of the household’s electronics stored their data cores. He connected his datapad to Thursday's only physical hardware. Guided by the hologram to find the file.
“Right… found it,” the stranger who called himself Stanly said. “But what’s this? You’ve got it in some weird compression format I don’t know.”
Thursday squinted in contemplation, reviewing what he’d done to conceal the data. “I locked the method of extraction when I reset my visual chassis. I’d need to restore to my previous version.”
Stanly nodded with approval while Eric and Lyn watched on.
Thursday disappeared, reduced to an orange ball of light hovering a meter off the floor, and blinked out of existence. There was a beep from the data core, and a green ball of light appeared, expanding into the Wednesday Lyn had grown up with.
Lyn took a step back. “Wenz,” she whimpered. Her life shifting into a more social format with people her own age had distracted her from the fact that she left her companion behind. Being an orange holographic man had made the transition easier, but now that she saw the figure of her childhood restored, she felt a deluge of emotions too numerous to separate. Every moment from infancy to her mid-teens flashed in her mind while Wednesday casually discussed the technical requirements to shift the data as she uncompressed it.
If Lyn could have hugged her, she would have. She felt guilty having left her offline so long, only now realising just how much she missed her.
“When’s the next backup due?” Stanly asked.
“Tonight,” the green hologram said. “In two hours and twelve minutes. They are almost daily. It will only be a small one, but now that my original matrix is restored, it could expose the data and my acquisition of it.”
“You hid it in this matrix, so it didn’t get copied to the holo-server. Smart. But if the military has security software still sweeping the network, they might find traces of it, even if I remove it.”
“I know,” Wednesday said, glancing again at Lyn. “You’ll have to remove the unit.”
Stanly nodded. “…and take you with me.”
Lynn stepped forward, shaking her head. “What? No.”
Wednesday smiled. “As long as I’m here, along with this information, you’re implicated. The safest thing is for me to be removed from your residence. It’s why I had to change to a Thursday skin. This information needs to get out.”
“But how do you know you can even trust him?”
Stanly opened his mouth to speak, but Wednesday held her green hand over his mouth. “If we can’t, and he’s taking this information back for the military, then the situation is still resolved, and you are finally safe. That is my primary purpose to ensure.”
“But you can’t just go,” Lyn said. “Not like this. If he takes the unit out, I won’t see you again.”
“In the last year, we spent less than thirty-seven minutes together in total. Under an hour the year before. You don’t need me anymore. Not really. You have friends now. You can live a normal life now. Even if I could safely purge the data, I’m just a stuffed toy from your childhood. A memento. I am nostalgia for which you’ve had little use for half a decade now.”
“No, but…” Lyn started but had no valid counterpoint. Seeing Wednesday in her original form and colour had brought everything back, but she was right. She had barely accessed her in years. She didn’t feel it was because she didn’t need her anymore, but merely because she hadn’t had time. “If I’d known you were going to go, I would have kept you on. I would have kept you with me all the time.”
Wednesday hovered her hands over Lyn’s shoulders as if embracing her. “Your usage logs only prove that you’ve been slowly phasing me out of your life. The next step is for me to be removed. You don’t need me anymore, and you haven’t for a long time. It’s time to say goodbye.”
“But this isn’t fair.”
“At least this way you actually can say goodbye. If I had stayed, then sometime soon would have been the last time you briefly activated me, and you wouldn’t have noticed. I’d lie dormant and forgotten forever.”
“No,” Lyn said as her eyes began to glaze with remorse and guilt.
“The diminishing log times very much support that projection, Lyn.”
Eric placed a hand on his girlfriend’s shoulder to comfort her. “This is a chance to say goodbye, Lyn. Don’t waste it arguing with her.”
Lyn’s diaphragm spasmed as she breathed. “I’ll miss you, Wenz.”
“I’ll miss you more,” the green hologram smiled.
“Thank you for looking out for me.”
Wednesday gave her a nod, hovering her hand about Lyn’s face as if brushing her hair and cradling her face. She then looked to Stanly and gave him a nod. Stanly reached into the unit and disconnected it, freezing the image of Wednesday. It twitched and flickered, then disappeared.
Stanly pulled out the unit and held it under his arm. “For your safety, I won’t name you but know that the UDF is in your debt.”
“The UDF?”
“The Underground Data Feed: information resistance.” He looked at the pair for a moment. “I’d better leave. If you ever find yourself on Techus-Four and you want to see Wednesday, she’ll be somewhere with the UDF.”
“Just ask for Stanly?” Lyn said.
Stanly nodded. “Hopefully there won’t be too many Stanlys by then, but you’ll understand if I don’t leave my surname.”
Lyn nodded.
“Good luck with everything,” he said before making his way downstairs.
“You too.”
Lyn went to her window and watched the stranger walk down the road with her best friend under his arm. Her sister, her green shadow. All those memories preserved in digital perfection on another world, buried in layers of a hive world built over a moon in another system. She didn’t know where her career would take her once she graduated, but Lyn was determined to one day reclaim her holographic companion. The tears rolled down her cheeks, and Eric held her tight.