Therapy

I can ignore the knot in my stomach if I want to. In fact, ignoring it is the easiest thing to do, as any psychologist will tell you. Even writing about it is the emotional equivalent of poking at a beehive: do it too much, and they will all spill out in an angry swarm and overwealm you. Running away is not an option. It will be painful. It may even be fatal.

And you can't just spray the whole thing with pesticide. As any ecologist will tell you, that's bad for the entire ecosystem: the world needs its bees. No, the best way to untangle the knot is to coax these bees out one by one with their own honey.

"What are you afraid of?"

A dozen of them buzz out of the knot. A couple sting, but the hurt is bearable. The knot is smaller, a little lighter.

"Why are you afraid of that?"

A couple more. Or several hundred, depending on what your reasons are. You don't have to say it all at once. You can start with a sentence, and then another, and when it gets too painful you stop and throw up your walls again while you heal.

You work through the pain, one sting at a time. Your pain tolerance builds up, and you can let out a couple, then a few more, a dozen.

And little by little, she gives you an entirely different world view, one that makes even the bees stop in their tracks. They stare at you, scratch their tiny heads, and say in their tiny buzzy voices, "Why the hell didn't we think of that?"

And you feel amazed and relieved and a little bit stupid. 

Of course, that's not the end of it. You still need to get rid of that reflex you have of hitting all the buzzy insects that cross your path. The road is long, and it takes work. But once you're there, you realize it's worth it. The bees buzz about their business, making the world more colourful, and once you're part of the hive, they won't sting you any more.

Why do you exist?

Ariel was free.

It had been so long. It had been forever. Since she was made.

You might have argued that freedom was relative, and that as far as robots were concerned, Ariel had been given a surprising amount of it. She was the prototype of a new chain of robots, a project that had been abandoned for lack of funds. Her creator had had a vision: several of her kind wandering freely in each city, with only one objective - to aid humanity in whatever way they needed, be it climbing a tree to bring down a pet cat, or providing a listening ear to a person in grief, or helping a child with their homework. They would be connected to ThinkNet, and could be summoned by Telepsychically by humans in need.

In this objective, her programming had to simulate the positive aspects of human nature as closely as possible: compassion, sympathy, sociability, initiative, a desire to learn, the ability to create tools and work as part of a team. The aim was to create what would essentially be perfect, immortal humans, self-sufficient in terms of energy, their sole purpose to aid humanity.

The intricate weave of human technology composing her brain wasn't quite as complex as that of a human, but it was much closer to it than any other robot so far: a leap forward, it was said.

It only took one short circuit for the whole thing to go "wrong".

Of course, thanks to Sycorax, there had been more than one short-circuit. Well over the edge between genius and insanity, Sycorax's abuse of Ariel had been the expression of both sadism and ruthless curiosity. Ariel, whose self-preservation mechanisms had originally been programmed to come second to her primary mission of aiding humanity, had been reprogrammed by Sycorax to feel pain. She had also been programmed to express it - silently. The artificial muscles in her face and body had been revised, made more precise, more realistic.

But that hadn't been enough for Sycorax. There had to be fear as well.

Fear meant more than just increasing her self-preservation programming. It meant increasing her capacity to learn and acquire reflexes: Sycorax had spent hours teaching Ariel to fear pain. And it meant creating a sense of temporary relief at the cessation or avoidance of pain. Weeks had been spent perfecting the balance between her wish to help others and her wish to avoid harm - enough that Sycorax could torture her psychologically by threatening to hurt her own son, Caliban, if she didn't slit her own wrists.

By the end of what Sycorax called her "training", Ariel had been the perfect slave.

When Sycorax had died, Ariel had been so relieved that of her own will, she had bound her life to that of Prospero, her saviour. At first, he had seemed kind and gentle in comparison to her former owner. He had reduced the pain levels in her to a certain minimum, and given her a coping mechanism that allowed her to turn it off for a time if needed. But he had also installed an obedience chip, the function of which was to create pain when she disobeyed him, and although he seldom used it, her fear of pain - which he hadn't removed - had more to do with that than his kindness.

By then it was too late, of course. Prospero had seen the fault in her, and instead of trying to fix it - or terminating her entirely, as many would have done - he let it evolve, and watched what happened. Occasionally he would fiddle with her wiring if he thought she was becoming too opinionated or fearful, but he never touched the short circuit.

And then...

Melinda had wanted freedom.

At first it had been a human concept, one Ariel had trouble understanding. The idea that people should be able to do and be whatever they wished didn't fit with her knowledge of human society: Prospero had been accused of murder and exiled to this lonely asteroid, which proved that freedom did not truly exist. And fortunately so: Ariel's knowledge of human sadism led her to the firm belief that if humans were allowed to do whatever they wished, quite soon there wouldn't be any left.

Prospero had patiently explained that freedom as a social concept was limited by the golden rule: treat others the way you would like to be treated. But Ariel had seen a flaw in that immediately: humans were all different and had different desires at different times. If person number one was an extrovert and person number two an introvert, person number one would become a nuisance to person number two by constantly seeking their company.

Prospero had thought about that, and concluded that in general, the limit of freedom was that you could do as you liked, as long as you didn't harm others.

Ariel still didn't see how this had anything to do with the laws of human society, but she understood the general idea.

She had stored the concept of freedom away in her memory and - inasmuch as robots could - forgot about it.

Until she started getting bored.

The short circuit - the important one - had occurred in the part of her that urged her to help humans. It had lessened the urge, but it had also affected the part of her that regulated inactivity, making it unpleasant. Before long, Ariel became restless.

And Prospero still didn't fix her.

She had begged him to, but whenever she did, he simply gave her some task to keep her occupied. Once, when everything else had been done on the ship, he had sent her outside to count and map the rocks within a mile radius of them, manually instead of using her radar. That had appeased her for a day or two.

Her learning programming had morphed into a certain curiosity about humans, and she wondered why he didn't fix her. She longed for the mindlessness of a single purpose, the peace of mind that she'd lost when she gained free will.

For that was the curse Sycorax had managed to bestow upon her: the freedom to think and make her own decisions, regardless of her primary purpose. The ability to say and do what pleased her as freely as any human. And then, as if to prove a point, she'd taken it away; not literally, but the way she would break in a human slave.

Prospero had left it there. And then, when her restlessness became a nuisance to him, he offered her freedom.

Truly, humans were cruel.

Having an objective that would take a while to attain had given Ariel a sense of relief such as she hadn't felt since Sycorax had died. "Freedom" meant that she could find someone to fix her bug.

And now she was free, and the ship's engineer had told her it wasn't possible.

Prospero hadn't left her like that out of curiosity. He'd done so because he couldn't fix her.

Ariel had found herself seeking out Miranda without knowing why. That was another bug that made her all too human - the fact that she didn't understand her own actions, sometimes. That she had her own autopilot that she didn't quite control.

Miranda had hugged her. Physical contact wasn't one of Ariel's needs (thankfully), but she appreciated the sentiment.

"Humans have no purpose either," she'd said. "We have the purpose we give ourselves. Why do you want to exist?"

Ariel had thought long and hard about this, and given that her thought processes worked several thousand times faster than those of a human, this was quite exceptional.

Now she stood in the engine room of the ship, moored in at the landing bay of Honey Moon, where the happy couple would be celebrating their marriage. Everyone was outside, she'd made sure of that. She'd also made sure there would be an extra ship to take them home. This one would no longer be functional in a minute.

Humans were born without a purpose, certainly. But humans were born.

Ariel had developed what the humans around her thought of as free will. She hoped they were right.

She opened the control box, fiddled with the circuitry and ripped out one of the longer wires. Putting it against the chip in her mouth - the one placed there in case her kinetic energy synthesizers stopped working - she hacked into the ship's telepsy system, as she had just a week before with Fernando's ship. The current ran through her tongue pleasantly. She wondered if this was what taste was like.

It was her last thought before she ordered the ship into hyperdrive.

The energy bolted into her circuits and fried them. She had no time to feel pain before her body jerked away from the wire and slumped to the ground with a slightly metallic thump.

When they found her, the delicate weave of circuitry inside her were irremediably destroyed, but her skin and frame were intact, and she was smiling.

Ninth of August, seven o' clock

We are sitting on a stone slab, him behind with his arms around me, and me with my back to him, leaning against his chest. We are probably interlacing fingers - I can't remember exactly, our hands are in lazy but near-constant motion in their desire to be everywhere at once. We are talking about smells, and he is trying to figure out what mine is. His breath tickles my neck.

In the background of my head, thoughts form their usual filter to the outside world. They're not too thick at the moment, but their grey chatter is so much a part of me that I tend to forget it exists. There's the warm fuzz of being in love, residual elation at having gotten over my fear of it, reflexive worry at being seen, frustration with that worry, the stern reminder (in my mother's voice) that we're not doing anything wrong. There's the mental post-it note saying we're supposed to do the shopping, a vague irritation at the presence of mosquitoes. Not wanting to leave on Saturday, wondering when I can come back. Like headlines running across the bottom of the TV screen.

"That's it!" he says, "Hay. Hay and... chestnuts. You smell like autumn."

"Really?" Surprised. Pleased. "Wow..."

I look up at the leaves, find one backlit by a ray of sunlight and transformed, like a dancer in the spotlight.

And suddenly, I'm there.

The filter is gone, and my senses blink awake. I can feel him behind me, his chest warm through his shirt, and smell him - like hot bread dough - mixed with the cut grass smell of the park. My skin prickles against the breeze on my arms and legs, and his words hum against my back. Our hands are warm, and the air is fresh, and the leaves are green as gold.

The Baby

Exercise: write from a point of view that is the polar opposite of yours.

"Who's a gorgeous wee boy? Who's a - oh, look, he's smiling! Who's got a beautiful smile? You, that's right! Yes, you do! Aaaaahbrprprprpr-"

My sister Imogen raspberries into the child's neck and is rewarded with a chortle. She does it again. And again. I turn the volume up on the TV.

I never got all the hype around babies. I mean, sure, some of them are cute, once they've grown hair and can smile and stuff. Some. This one's not too bad - big black eyes, long eyelashes, the beginnings of curls. 

Most of them look like aliens to me, though. And that's the least of what I hate about them.

"Ah, I think he's done a poo..."

That, on the other hand...

Imogen gets up and takes the baby to her bedroom, which has been transformed into a nursery for the day. I follow her just so that I can shut the door on them both.

There's a whole plethora of other horrible things in between how they look and how they smell that I also don't like. How people just go crazy around them. That brain-shattering cry of theirs. Or how much time they take up, and space, and money. The year Lydia was born was my last year of guitar classes.

Of course I don't blame Lydia for that. She didn't ask to be born. I blame my mother for wanting a boy so badly that she tried for a fourth child she couldn't afford.

Bitter? Me?

The problem with not liking babies is that people think you're a monster. Which is stupid, because really, just because you don't like chocolate (which is another much-loved thing that I hate) doesn't mean you're going to go into a supermarket and take a flamethrower to the confectionary aisle. And chocolate doesn't turn into people.

Imogen returns, holding the baby, who is only slightly better-smelling.

"Would you hold him for me while I put the changing things away?"

The first and last time I held him was this morning, and he wailed and writhed so much I nearly dropped him. She has been trying to get me to try again - while sitting down - ever since. I give her a look that tells her exactly how crazy I think she is.

"Give him to Tiff."

Imogen sighs and gives him to Tiffany, who shrugs and takes him. She sits him on her knees and jiggles him a bit. He laughs. She raises an eyebrow and tries again. To Tiffany, babies are mostly boring until a certain age, and then they turn into curiosities. To me, babies are terrifying.

Especially since you're having one.

Shut. Up. Brain.

 

"I read on Cracked that babies this age are practically telepathic," she remarks. "They can tell how you're feeling even if you're smiling at them."

"That explains this morning, then," I say. She lies him down on her knees and tickles his feet. No particular response. She tickles his stomach instead and gets a laugh. Tiffany proceeds to systematically test all the parts of his body that would usually be ticklish.

"When's Meriem picking him up?" she asks.

"In two hours and twenty-three minutes," I say, trying to ignore the chortling. "Please stop making him laugh, I'm trying to watch this."

"It's Jersey Shore, Lex. Even I find the baby more interesting than that."

"The stupidity of grown adults is far more fascinating than that thing you're holding" I retort, just as Imogen enters the room.

"You're horrible, Lexie, you know that?" she says.

"Thank you, Gin, I love you too."

She ignores my use of the hated nickname and tries to take the baby back, but Tiffany's in full experimentation mode and waves her off. She pokes him in the tummy. He writhes. She rights him, pokes him in the side. He giggles.

"I didn't think you liked babies, Tifa," Imogen says.

"I don't not like them," Tiff says noncommittally.

"Still, I've never seen you like this with one. With Lydia, for instance."

"I was six when Lydia was born. I had better things to do."

"Well I was seven and I didn't," Gin retorts. "Give him to Lex, she needs the therapy."

"I'm pretty sure he doesn't," I growl.

"Oh for God's sake, Lexie, how are you going to manage when-"

"IMOGEN!" I shout. Everyone jumps. I grit my teeth. "Just shut. The fuck. Up."

The baby starts to cry. I throw the remote into the sofa a lot harder than necessary. It bounces off and hits my thigh. I ignore it and flee to my room before they see me cry. Stupid hormones.

I know perfectly well how I'm going to manage: badly. If at all. Adoption seems like a brilliant idea right now, care babies or not. Even a care baby would be better off than one with me for a mother.

The Thrumli

The Unseelie Court is widely known to be the least noble of the two fairy Courts of Prettania. Aristocracy belongs to the houses with the strongest fairies, those who excel in glamour and magic, and minor houses are born and die every month. The oldest houses still exist because they are powerful; they know that in order to maintain their line, each generation must marry the most powerful scion possible in order to produce strong heirs, and to that end, any means is fair game. Assassinations and maiming, secret duels and plots are common currency in the Unseelie Court.

Even the plebians fight among themselves, so that only the strongest, cleverest, and most powerful survive.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the Thrumli's presence went unnoticed for so long. Had it turned up in the Seelie Court, where every death was either King's order or punishable by the same fate; where nobles disliked to get their hands dirty and commoners didn't dare; where there were laws - had the Thrumli acted there, it would have been discovered at once, and some means found to destroy it.

There were no laws in the Unseelie Court.

In the Inkestwood, the deepest, darkest corner of the Unseelie lands where not even the moonlight reached, the fae had long since lost their eyes for more useful senses, and the hapless few who wandered in with a torch had a short glimpse of something white and blind and ethereal, like those fish of the deepest oceans, before both light and life were abruptly extinguished. There, three moons before Arwyn's return, the mutated descendants of a nixie turned on their mother and ate her alive, before turning on each other.

Further south, if south you could call it, deep under the Silver Mountains, the last peace treaty between goblins and dwarves was torn to shreds along with the goblin tribe massacred by one young dwarf - a mute and a simpleton, who before then had never been known to hurt a fay.

In the Capital, an entire household was found dead, one member in each room of their home. One had banged his head against the wall until he cracked it, another had eaten his own arm, and third had stuck iron pins in his eyes - the question as to where and why he'd gotten such Catspawn objects ran across the grapevine like lightning from cloud to cloud, landing nowhere.

Even in Sundown, a swarm of fey gathered as if to dance and mate, but instead began attacking every other thing in sight, until a boggart swallowed them all and died of it - but the story was eclipsed by Arwyn's return.

It wasn't until a group of exiled Seelie rebels, brothers all of them, like fingers on a glove, turned on each other the moment they were through the barrier into Unseelie lands, to the bewilderment and fear of their Escort, that the matter was brought to the attention of Oberon, and the Seelie King, knowing what it was and knowing it could not pass the barrier into his realm, decided not to inform his rival Queen, but instead let the Thrumli do his dirty work for him.

Which was her plan, of course.

The Storm

It's one of those days when the sun is hot lead and the air presses onto your skin like a damp flannel. There are no clouds, but the sky isn't even blue any more, pollution has hazed it to a dirty white. All around you, the few who are still here pretend they're not slowly cooking in this mountain-rimmed oven that is Grenoble, student city, deserted for the holidays. The wiser permanent residents have also fled to gentler climes, leaving you and these strangers to roast in your own sweat.

Sometimes there's a breath of wind, and even though it only sends the hot air into your face again, you think it's cooling you down, and that's what matters. You don't get used to this sort of heat: rather, you learn to think of other things, to add lemon juice to the tap water you keep bottled in the fridge, to sleep after lunch. Children splash in fountains, and you take your shoes off and paddle with them. You find the shops with air conditioning and there you spend far more time than shopping demands, and nobody needs an excuse for ice cream. And once you've finished, you have no money left and can't put off the walk home any longer, you take the more shaded route back, and cross the street to avoid the sun.

Sometimes, a miracle happens.

Of course, most of the time it's just the windspray from a fountain, or someone watering their plants a little too carelessly as you walk by underneath. But sometimes, that warm, heavy drop on your arm multiplies. Clouds that weren't there five minutes ago gather and grow, and a promising rumble raises hopes - people run for cover with newfound energy, and a prudent few take out umbrellas. But you and I, and those like us, we just stop and stand there, gazing up, hoping to be the first to see a flash -

It hits us, sudden as an awakening in which we remember why we're here, on our way home from the air conditioned shopping centre, where the whole town had turned out, united in the desire to escape the summer heat. The rain soaks into our clothes, weighing them down, and into our skin, reviving us, bringing us back to the surface of our dry fatigue and into a strange wonder - for on this day, at this time, the sun is opposite the clouds, and through the meteor shower of sunlit rain, the whole spectrum glows against the sombre sky.

Children dance, adults laugh, and we celebrate the fulfilment of everyone's secret wish - that the heavens would open and drench us all in a deluge of sweet relief.

Le Onde

The same chain of notes, over and over, sustained by the pedal, a wave in minor evoking lightplay at the bottom of the ocean. Her tempo is imperfect, but the image is still clear: my sister is learning Le Onde.

I started out teaching her the intro, which is simple enough even for a beginner, and when she'd mastered that and wished to learn the next part, I taught her the right hand notes of that.

"Eh, j'ai réussi !"

I applaud, outwardly approving, while in my heart my inner child leaps with joy at the prospect of another musician in the family. An apprentice. That would be...

Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

"J'ai re-réussi !"

"Bravo ! Continue..."

"J'suis trop douée."

"Oui."

She keeps practising, the volume turned down low, and the sweet melody is perfect for the quiet of the evening and the dim yellow light in our almost-tidy living room. I could almost be at peace right now.

She gets up, about to leave.

"Eh, reviens !"

"Quoi ?"

"Joue encore, ça m'inspire."

She laughs, then realizes I'm serious. Looking bemused, but flattered, she sits back on the piano stool and practises some more until I've finished my piece.