“Not now,” I whisper. This time I grip their hand less as a comfort, more as a plea.Please do not decide to develop full-blown anxiety before I’ve even installed a proper personality, okay?
The seller scratches his head. I doubt he can actually feel his nails through his helmet, which means he’s stalling for time I don’t have. “This is very high-level mechanical insight you’re buying.”
It’s one I could easily learn from Hyrra if my stomach didn’t do somersaults every time she and I made eye contact at the repair station, but I swallow my frustration. “I showed you what I’m offering. Take it or leave it.”
The seller releases a deliberately dramatic groan.
“Or I could report you to the Coalition,” I press, “if you make a habit of raising prices after receiving an offer.”
It’s a low blow. We both know it. The entire Morpheus Market functions always and only at the whim of the Coalition. When you break the Coalition’s rules, your Morpheus Market license goes bye-bye. Sometimes your known whereabouts along with it. Maybe a few fingers and/or toes. Your average citizen isn’t even supposed to know the Morpheus Market exists, unless an insider recommended them for a license. Getting kicked out of the market often means getting kicked off this plane of existence, too.
Memories also can’t be stored on a remotely accessible network. Early in Morpheus tech’s development, settlement records report attempts,but the memories went sour like forgotten rations; they turned strange, wrong, like waking nightmares when accessed. So, even if you escape a ban from the Morpheus Market with your life, getting kicked doesn’t just make itharderto obtain new memories for sale. It makes itimpossible.
Aspect’s head bobs. “Kori is mean—when Kori has—maybe important messages—not for Aspect.”
Aspect’s insistence on always calling me by name—even here in the Morpheus Market, where everyone only uses codenames—is also a security risk if anyone connects that name with the monarch’s daughter. If Chloe ever realized this was happening, she’d probably have Aspect reduced to scrap metal. I try not to think about it too often, or else I can’t breathe. If Aspect ruins this trade, I’ll have only myself to blame. I’m the one who couldn’t settle for a mining and general maintenance mech like every other dayfolk citizen. I’m the one who tried building a friend out of wires and metal.
The seller releases the longest, fakest sigh I’ve ever heard in my admittedly short life. Finally, blessedly, he says, “You have a deal.” He presses a shiny Morpheus sphere into my palm.
Somehow, even though we’re both wearing gloves, it feels slick and sweaty. I wince a little as I tuck the sphere into my belt pouch, before handing over my own in exchange. Thankfully, the armor we all wear includes an extensive array of pockets and pouches, primarily concentrated at the waistline, for carrying items. I’ve been told that at one point, the men’s armor had more pockets than the women’s, but the public complained so much, the government officials eventually standardized everything regardless of body type.
The comms tablet buzzes a fourth time.
Aspect raises their free hand to get my attention, but I quickly nudge it back down to their side. Multiple messages shimmer across my tablet.
CHLOE: KORI, WHERE ARE YOU?
CHLOE: I SENT YOU ON ASSIGNMENT, NOT VACATION.
CHLOE: I NEED THAT MEMORY ASAP.
I huff out an exasperated breath. Once again, just like every previous trip to the Morpheus Market, my actual assignment is cutting the visit short before I find a memory I’m confident can begin prying Aspect’s possible self-awareness open. I suppose it doesn’t help any that I don’t know what I’m looking for. A sentient mech has never been—should never be, if you ask the government’s engineers—created. Nor are human memories supposed to be installed in a machine. I haven’t the slightest idea what sort of memory could jar Aspect into being more person than science project, kicking their servos into something more akin to neurological synapses, but I’m determined to keep looking. I will always keep looking. Somewhere in this bundle of bolts, I know there’s potential for the truest friend I have to feel what I feel, to choose me back.
But every visit to the market, without fail, ends with a flat, unfeeling reminder that I’m on a schedule, my mother impatiently awaiting my return with her merchandise—without any knowledge of why Ireallywant to be here.
CHLOE: I MIGHT JUST FIND EXTRA HOMEWORK FOR YOU IF THIS MEMORY ISN’T ON MY DESK WITHIN MY CURRENT SLEEP CYCLE.
Briefly, I tab over on my comms tablet from the messaging module to the hourglass. There’s hardly any sand left in the upper half on my display, and Chloe tracks her sleep cycles more religiously than most, always turning in when the hourglass turns over. My margin for error is rapidly shrinking if I’m going to make it home before she wants to sleep, and I haven’t even picked up my assigned memory yet. In my defense (not that my mother would care), Aspect’s detour became a full-blown digi-game side quest.
I want to ask why Chloe needs her own memory delivery so urgently, or what the memory even is, but I’ve learned the hard way not to pester my mother with questions. It never leads to answers. And it usually leads to an even more watchful parental eye monitoring my every move. Not to mention extra homework.
I stifle a groan. If I see one more math sheet in my next ten sleep cycles, it’ll be too soon.
Another squeeze of cold metal fingers on mine. “Aspect is—”
“Leaving,” I interrupt, tugging them away from the Mechanic Memories booth. “Kori is leaving, and so are you.” The secondMon the seller’s sign sparks and dies entirely as we depart.
We’re immediately sucked back into foot traffic.
The Morpheus Market is a hub of constant motion, but it’s confined to a limited space. To evade notice by unauthorized dayfolk (or too-curious nightfolk), it’s miles beneath the planet’s surface, with a singular elevator entrance connecting to four narrow, stacked floors.
Each floor is piled with vendors in a very literal sense. It’s a strange, metal vegetation gone wild, booths overlapping like shoddily stacked teacups. Every wall blossoms with merchants, each of their spaces encroaching on one another’s territory. Walking at all means asserting yourself through an ever-shifting horde of bodies, everyone here for their own glimpse of someone else’s life.
No two vendors are the same. Some stalls offer secondhand tastes of rare cuisine, others a recollection of advanced education few can access, and so on—the embrace of a lover like you’ve never had; the thrill of victory in a contest you’d never dare to enter; an understanding of depression’s bleakest depths.
Neon signs hum at varying frequencies. Voices chatter, mumble, and curse all around. Aspect locks one cold, metal hand around my wrist and doesn’t let go.
I check my tablet again for Chloe’s specific instructions. Per usual, she’s provided coordinates for a certain booth and the salesperson’s code name, but nothing else. Because the universe hates me, the person I’m looking for resides on the fourth and bottom floor, while I’m currently on the first. I break into a sprint, Aspect in tow, spiraling back toward the central elevator units, various vendors’ setups passing rapidly through my peripheral vision in jagged sweeps of color andlight. An elevator is bound to be faster than running multiple flights of stairs down to the fourth floor, and I don’t want to risk losing my hold of Aspect in the dash—or gamble the integrity of my finger joints from how tightly Aspect grips back.
