Secret for a Secret
This is chapter eight, have you read chapter one yet?
Simonee followed Bastien, but he didn’t go far. He stopped at the door just across the corridor, and she stayed put in the doorway behind, arms crossed, nails biting her arms. She glanced at the ladder leading down to the lower deck.
And behind her—the girl, a sister. What malady made her say those things—Beware the cannibal.
Bastien shifted the container of spaghetti to his right hand and tapped a code into the pad—she didn’t catch it this time. The light went green, and the door hissed open. A breeze blew out—antiseptic, tangy in her throat. Somewhere inside, a steady beep echoed around a subtle hum.
Scattered blinks—red and yellow like a dying ember—bounced through the dark inside.
Bastien stepped inside, but Simonee held back, stopping in the frame, eyes adjusting. Then the lights glared on full and she blinked back.
A scratch on the floor—Bastien was sitting now, a rolling table pulled up, the lid of the container popped open. A spork came out next.
And beside him was a bed covered in tubes, wires, monitors blinking. Way more than what tended to 90955.
Buried underneath it all was a woman.
Frail, skin pale—almost translucent. Straw colored hair spilled out from a VR headset. Wires spilled out of her head. Tubes ran down from her nose and mouth. Something sour wafted from underneath.
Simonee shuffled forward, and Bastien turned to her. He looked older—smile gone, eyes sagging—tired.
“Simonee Saran,” he said, gesturing at the woman in the bed. “Meet Darlene Faulk, my wife—but she prefers Darla.”
Something tugged at her belly, her jaw loosened, and her hands dropped.
She shuffled closer. “What... what’s wrong with her?”
“ALS—juvenile onset, genetic.” Bastien gently pulled the tube from Darla’s mouth, and ran his fingers along her arm, raising gooseflesh.
He turned back to the table. “She was in a chair when we met at the ZN VR labs. We worked together on this rig—I was hardware, she coded the experiential engines. The brain computer interface there isn’t even on the market yet.”
Simonee stepped sideways, around the bed. “How long?”
Rolling up his sleeve, he tapped at a wrist display, then pulled it off to the table. “Oh, we’ve been out here about eight years now.” He mashed some noodles against the bottom of the container.
Scooping the mash, he brought it to Darla’s lips, and eased it in—then closed her mouth and massaged her cheeks. “She could still talk when we got married—had the ceremony inside the experiential engine—” He laughed. “—
a bug in the chemoreceptor program made the cake taste like strawberries and tuna.”
Simonee put a hand on the foot of the bed. “No, I mean... how long?”
Bastien swallowed as he eased another bite into Darla’s mouth. “Don’t know—most don’t get five years, we got eight. Maybe it’s the work—she’s fully integrated. This ship... it’s her. I’m just the handsome frontman.” His smile stopped short.
Simonee scanned the room—camera, mic. “Is she watching us now?”
Bastien shook his head. “She could but... that’d spoil the game wouldn’t it? The doofy incel and his sexy AI girlfriend—it’s become our... shared delusion.”
Simonee shifted along the bed rail, watched him give her another bite—caught the tattoo on his ring finger. She looked—Darla had one too. She gripped the rail tight.
“Right now, she’s sitting in a restaurant we saw in an old movie once—1990s Chicago,” he said, mashing up more noodles. “The feed tube gives most of her calories, but we never quite worked the tang out of the chemoreceptor inputs.” He nodded at the spaghetti. “So, we play this game. I setup the scene, and she gets a surprise for the day. She really likes Carlos’s cooking.”
Simonee stepped behind him.
He looked at the floor, then blinked at the light. “We make it all a game—you’d be surprised how much easier things are if you don’t take them too seriously. Have to laugh away the gravity, so it doesn’t pull you down too hard.”
She reached—pulled back—reached again and squeezed his shoulder. “Keep playing, your secret’s safe.”
He nodded. “Yours too.” And turned, goofy grin on full blast. “And see, we’re good friends now, aren’t we?”
“The best,” she whispered.
She closed the door behind her. She’d dodged a bullet, but carried something heavier now.
Beware the Cannibal, still echoing through her head.
In a crowded restaurant bar, somewhere in Chicago, 1999, a young woman sits at a table for two. Under dim lights and the rumble of surrounding conversation, she takes small bites from a heaping plate of spaghetti. She’s smiling, but as she chews, a sparkle glides down her cheek.
New to Simonee’s story? The Cannibal of Cloud Ball 9 is Book Two of The Girl with the Cybernetic Eye. Book One—The Ice Princess of Enceladus Station—is complete and free to read. Start here.