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“I don’t like that your duplicate outfits have the number right on them.”
“How is that any different than the cheek markings? I don’t understand.”
Miku tugs on Teto’s arm. “It feels like you don’t care at all how scared I am of losing you!”
“I didn’t number them at first.” It’s a protest. “When previous ‘me’s started getting infected, I had no choice but to start tagging each new one I generated. There’s nothing reflective on the bridge, and the tattoo isn’t ridged or bioluminescent. What was I supposed to do instead?”
“Clothes are like… what we have to express ourselves. So it feels like you’re saying you're just your number, like this is all you are anymore. Like there's no future for us except this. I can’t stand that…!”
"I'll get new clothes. Okay?" The okay is said in a conciliatory tone.
She's listening to me, but she's not listening to me...
Even trying coming from her should be enough; why isn't it?
Stupid, jealous, clingy, avaricious, incorrigible, hanger-on,
maniac -
None of those things were things Teto had ever called her.
Miku clutches the side of her head that hosts the infection. They'd managed to hold it in abeyance for now with an antivenom that neither of them really fully understands except that it was derived from the body of Teto 127 after Miku Prime embraced her and then attacked. They both remember taking every effort to get the theory right before fine tuning the application any other time they've done something, but they seem to have become desperate. It doesn't make any sense that Teto 127's tissues would continue to produce antibodies after the central brain activity shut down. Neither of them liked it, but they had to put her in the suspended animation chamber anyway in case they learned something.
Teto in particular will try anything in quick succession until she finds what works. Miku can only see some of her obsession with rhythm and ratios left, somewhere in the part of her unconscious that is unresponsive to new brain connections. Does something that does that even resemble Teto very much anymore? The Teto who chided you for being too spontaneous, pointing out the right way through. Preparing it fully so that you didn't have to think or participate if you didn't want to. Where is she? You've lost her forever, haven't you?
It's like brainfreeze over her right eye and a resonating siren, sounding distant now, there at about the level of tinnitus. The red of the lab falls over half her vision in what is otherwise a concrete grey, and she remembers the look that Miku Prime gave her as Teto 127 lay twitching at her feet, trying to gather the strength to end everything and just too far gone. She remembers her own internal injuries at that point, blood with nowhere to go. Chills breaking through her body as it tried a fever against a disease that only clamped its jaws down further the faster the death parade marched.
Even now Teto is too uncautious around her. There aren't going to be any more. No, if that happens, it'll be salvageable. From what Teto told her, infected Teto are individually docile and only become a concern during swarms. Some kind of trickster. One wouldn't be impossible to tame. Stop with the fucking contingency plans, you have to be an active player in your own life -
Teto leans in and puts her hand against Miku's cheek soothingly. Miku feels the fabric of the half glove through her skin, something that before then only happened when she was sick enough for her autonomic nervous system to jumble around inputs until every pore on her phone screen was too open to her touch.
She takes a deep breath, then two, then says: "Okay."
-
They go into a store that sells dresses. Miku lingers on a long, frilly one. Mostly white. Teto looks around and sighs. "Dressing room?"
"Yes, please." There’s not really any expected reason she can’t change out in the open under these conditions. It’s probably more dangerous to be trapped in an enclosed space and more likely to cause an ambush, but she feels trapped worse by the idea of losing access to the bells and whistles of life in human society.
Teto shows her over. She takes her time. At the moment the injuries on the right side of her body seal over extremely quickly, but friction causes them to reopen and pour. She doesn’t want to do that to this. She puts it on over her leggings, since she’ll have to wait before applying clean bandages.
She steps out. It is a very long dress; she can barely see her boots beneath. “Do you like it?”
It’s a moot question. Teto always lets her wear what she wants without much interest in the particulars. Or did. “Is it going to be warm enough for the temperature outside, and do you think you can move in it?”
“I probably can't move in it...”
“Do you want to own it anyway? We have space.”
“I—um, I think so…”
“Hold on. Ugh. Others already took all the fucking tote bags. Change out of it and I’ll carry it for now until we find a luggage place.”
“Teto? I’ve been thinking that something bad probably happened here. It’s not picked over… it’s like everyone left in a rush and didn’t come back. Even though you’d think it’d do well as a shelter.”
“Everyone has a tendency to assume that just because people are doing something in the aggregate, they must prefer doing it. Pluralistic ignorance. It’s not hard to get a whole group to leave and not come back even when conditions change.”
“Yes, but I think we should keep it in mind…”
—
Teto did what she said she would do and picked out different sportswear (both kinds).
They’re both keeping their distance staring at a fountain outside a restaurant. The circulator broke or the filter overfilled, leading to standing water, and a corpse has been dunked in it. Whatever chemicals the infected transmit, the water has turned an opaque blood red that isn’t explained by blood loss. Something, Miku thinks, is incubating in it.
“There’s someone here.” Miku turns her head in the direction of it.
“…? I don’t hear anything.” She isn’t saying it like she’s trying to pre-empt Miku. Teto just does that to show her perspective.
“Neither do I. But I know there is.” She feels too nervous to say that she knows by smell. She doesn’t want the way Teto looks at her to change.
“Do you want to go?”
“It’s just one person…”
—
“What are you doing?” Teto asks it very bluntly...
“It’s public access. Don’t believe the signs, there’s no one here to make the rules.”
“Sure, but… what?” Miku knows Teto is just trying to get information, not to be passive aggressive. But she is going to believe everything this person says until he gives her a reason to think he’s not trustworthy. That’s usually fine, but people have more reason to keep their motives hidden once societal norms break down, not less. It's the zombies that can't help but say exactly what they mean. She wonders if she should worry about what people do. She trusts Teto not to turn to abject violence against people. She doesn't trust those other people to have her and Teto's best interests at heart. No matter how much they do for them. They always ask for more, they always condition their grants, they always try their luck until there's nothing left. It's unsafe.
“Cooking and controlled temperature storage, mostly.”
That brings something to mind. “Actually, why is the electricity still on?”
"Oh, yeah, that! It was going towards being shut off for a little while, but the flickering bothered me too much, so I worked it out."
"You?"
"Like it's hard? I had literally nothing else to do but eat astronaut food. Finding the supplies to get everything hooked up was the worst part. The electronics reseller here isn't worth its salt."
Teto's face is blank. "Your name?" Oh no. She's starting to stare...
"Kagamine Len."
It doesn't ring a bell. (For Teto.)
"Kasane Teto."
Something crosses Kagamine's vision. "And you?"
"Hatsune Miku. It's nice to meet you, Kagamine-san."
"I knew it! You two are the ones who made all those advancements in hormone therapy! Thank you for my life. I love only having to worry about that once a year!"
"I would have looked into sex chromosomes themselves next, but I've been temporarily derailed."
"Woah. By baseball?"
"No, by the infection."
Kagamine starts laughing so hard he has to wipe away a tear. He isn't cautious at all with self-inoculation. "Oh, yeah, no, I got that. I was kidding. What is the last thing you were working on, though?"
"Cloning."
"The stem cell thing?"
"No, entire organisms."
"I'm not judging, but if you wanted that as some kind of base for future stuff, wouldn't it be way easier to work on genes instead of going straight for the whole thing?"
"Our policy is to set goals that are considered 'too ambitious' by our colleagues, so that we don't have to deal with press releases until the last second. We started with that, then moved to organs in isolation."
"Hold on..." Kagamine narrows his eyes. "Is that what the numbers are about?"
"Yes. I wanted to do a barcode system, but... public opinion pivoted hard against human replication. The scanner access could have been revoked at any moment. So we needed something readable."
"Oh, whoops! That makes a lot more sense than what I was thinking."
"What were you thinking, exactly?"
"Hm..." He taps one arm with the fingers of the other like he's thinking whether he should say it. "I was thinking it could have been a kink thing?"
"I suppose I could see how someone might arrive at that conclusion..."
"...it wasn't?" Miku is so surprised she can't keep it at a private volume. It sounds more dejected than she meant.
"Miku, if I wanted to serenade you, I would have chosen something more personal to you."
Miku forces a change of subject. "Are you the one who's been cutting down low-light plants? I noticed some of the tiling was cracked."
"It's how I deal with frustration, yeah. Though sometimes I wonder if I should let them stay... they're just trying to live too, you know? And it would be pretty interesting to see which species can handle all that red through the skylight, too."
It's bothering her. "Then why did you not remove the corpse in the fountain?"
"It generates power."
Anyone's first thought would be to say they were scared of getting infected.
He isn't scared? "Kagamine-san. I'm sorry if this is out of the blue, but... aren't you the only child of the Kagamine family?"
"You got me. I cook for other people."
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything, but... it was the subject of a lot of discussion, what you went through." It was a pre-eminent family. That person was the subject of countless interventions. The intention was to get a person who was perfect in every way imaginable. An example. Every part of his future was decided for him before he was even born. Study plans, profession, cybernetic augments to improve productivity and function with the partial intention of reducing autonomy and required parental involvement...
his gender, which was supposed to be female.
What he went through was the primary example against Teto's and Miku's research. A drastic one. And people still took the Kagamine family's word that it would have been better if it had succeeded. Scared of the money and power, maybe, or wishing better for their own children.
"Public discussion?" Teto is confused.
"Debate. About the ethics of... you're the best one to explain it, right?" Miku looks at him. Really looks him over for the first time. He does look so much happier, even under these conditions. And it's not surprising. She herself took a while to get infected because she had to go through so much to stay positive - no, to even stay alive - before she met Teto.
"Don't worry too much. From my perspective, it wasn't about 'experimental ethics'. It was pretty rare for anything I saw to say that something shouldn't have been done to me, and even when I saw that someone had it was usually with the recommendation that something else be done instead. Everything felt more like it was about the responsibilities I owed my family and the world. But what has the world done for me, you know?"
"That's an inconsistent philosophy. Why are you taking travelers into your hospitality?"
"Things don't magically get better. Ever. We're all stuck working towards the world we want. You'd know, yeah? And I want a world where nobody is just left to die. Much less killed." The 128... Miku nervously folds her hands.
...it fails in Teto's estimation, which Miku knows because Teto's eyes cross over to her. He should be thinking bigger, Teto must believe, because he has all the resources to do it, and he is using the results of the things he hates to produce certain effects. Miku wants to tell her that she doesn't have to always work so hard, but hesitates doing it in the presence of someone else for too long. It's a critical part of Teto's identity, and she doesn't want to undermine it even if it causes trouble between them. She remembers trying desperately to get Teto to look away from her computer screen to give her some amount of attention or affection, and doing this frequently.
Her endless drive was part of what Miku loved about her, but it had been responsible for so many rifts.
Teto had changed into her new clothing, but was still carrying around the dress Miku had wanted. "We have to go. It was nice meeting you."
"Oh. Hatsune-sensei. Before you go, I gotta tell you something. You have to be extra sure not to eat any meat with brain tissue. Not just human. I think there are two parts to any infection; the bite venom only injects some kind of lure that make people more receptive to dangerous contact... you look pretty stable, so you should be okay as long as you don't do that."
"We have it under control. Thank you."