Yes. Conservation done well was to survive when others would perish.
Longevity, she thought in silence.
Then she stroked the back of Dalton’s neck, smoothing the tension from his vertebrae.
“You saw something,” she said. “In Libby’s… in that thing.”
It had been ha
unting her a bit from night to night. First the image of Libby on the floor, bleeding out, contorted. Then what Dalton had done, launching the corpse upright, making it dance.
An animation, he said. For which he was briefly the puppeteer.
“What is it?” she asked him again, and in the moment Dalton’s eyes met hers, she thought she caught a glimpse of the familiar. Not the man in her bed from time to time, but the one she sought like firelight, drawn to him like a flame.
“Only one person could have made that animation,” Dalton said.
“Who?”
She knew the answer before he said it.
“Me.”
There was no point asking what he remembered. If that animation had ever been his creation, he clearly didn’t know. Whether Dalton was indeed some god descending from machines was outside his existing mind’s jurisdiction, and now he was pleading with her in silence. Begging for her to take away the guilt unearned.
Parisa slid the contents of the desk aside, replacing them with herself, and Dalton leaned forward to breathe her in, a wrench from his throat like a silent sob to bury in the fabric of her dress.
This was the difference between life and longevity; somewhere between a car crash and a splintered soul.
“I’ll get you out,” Parisa whispered to him. To some distant him, to his little fractures. The solution dawned like clarity in her mind.
If he was in pieces, she would take whatever rubble remained for herself.
REINA
“Help me with something.”
Nico looked up from a long distance. As far as Reina could tell, the introduction of a new subject hadn’t distracted him or eased his guilt, but something had. He was less aimless now, more determined, properly sleeping again. Impatiently waiting, but waiting nonetheless.
“Help you with what?” he asked.
“I have a theory.”
She sat across from him in the grass, which protested as it always did. For once, she was glad to hear it. It served as a confirmation of sorts.
“Okay. About what?”
“I was thinking about what Callum said about sentience. Naturalism,” Reina said, gesturing wordlessly to the whispers of MotherMotherMother that ached below her palms in tiny, willowy blades. “And about that medeian, her specialty of longevity.”
“What about it?” Nico wasn’t leaping to curiosity, but he was interested enough.
“Life,” Reina posited, “must be an element. I can’t use it, but maybe someone could.” She fixed him with a careful glance. “You could.”
“Could what?” He looked startled.
She sighed, “Use it.”
“Use it?” he echoed.