She didn’t know what she’d expected to find down below, but seeing Sidra jacked back into the core didn’t answer a single damn thing. She hadn’t stuffed herself into a cupboard this time, though. She was sitting cross-legged with her back against the pedestal, eyes closed, looking like nothing in the world was or had ever been wrong.
‘The fuck is going on?’ Pepper said. ‘We have looked everywhere for you. It is four hours after we were supposed to go to the museum, so, okay, I guess we’re not doing that tonight. I don’t know what personal whim you’re entertaining right now, but whatever it is, I really don’t—’
Sidra’s eyes opened, and something in her face made Pepper lose her train of thought. Sidra looked . . . she didn’t know what Sidra looked like. Serene. Happy. Nurturing, somehow. ‘I think you should sit down,’ Sidra said.
Pepper stared at her. Was she fucking kidding? Sidra blinked, waiting. Okay, clearly, she was not. Pepper huffed, but she sat, hoping that might get her somewhere. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Hooray. I’m sitting.’
Sidra pressed her head back against the pedestal, like she was concentrating on something. ‘I haven’t allowed access to the voxes or cameras yet,’ she said. ‘I had to check the code for instabilities, and I figured a relatively slow adjustment would be ideal. Besides, I thought it’d be better if you were here.’
What the hell was she talking about? ‘Why—’ Pepper shook her head, exasperated. ‘Why are you back in the ship?’
‘I’m not,’ Sidra said. She smiled, smiled like Pepper had never seen. ‘I am so sorry I didn’t tell you where we went . . . but I think you’ll forgive me.’
She handed Pepper her scrib. It, too, was plugged into the pedestal, and was running some sort of vid program. The screen was blank, though.
Sidra’s eyes went somewhere else, somewhere far away and deeply focused. A moment later, Pepper heard the click of cameras. They swivelled toward her, zooming in fast.
The scrib brightened. An image appeared, and in an instant, there was no air in the room, no floor beneath her. She would have fallen had she not been sitting. And even so, she still felt like she was falling, but now, there was a pair of arms that would catch her at the end, a warm pair of arms she’d always imagined but could never feel.
‘Oh,’ Pepper choked. ‘Oh, stars—’
The vox switched on. The face on the scrib was overjoyed. ‘Jane,’ Owl said. ‘Oh, oh, sweetheart, don’t cry. It’s all right. I’m here. I’m here now.’
OWL, ONE STANDARD LATER
Many cultures, no matter where in the galaxy they originated, had mythologies that spoke of an afterlife – a non-physical existence waiting after death, generally presented as a reward, a sanctuary. Owl had once thought it to be a rather sweet notion. She’d never imagined that she’d experience one.
Tomorrow was a big day for Sidra, and everyone was helping to the best of their ability. Tak was setting up multispecies chairs around the tables, trying to figure out what arrangements would be best. Pepper was up a ladder, fixing a fussy light panel. Blue was painting the finishing touches on the sign that would hang over the front door, out of sight of Owl’s external cameras.
HOME, the sign read. A place for kick and company.
Owl swivelled one of her internal cameras to focus behind the bar, where Sidra’s core body stood, predictably fretting. ‘I don’t think I ordered enough mek,’ she said. She chewed her lip and frowned.
Pepper glanced over and removed a wrench from between her teeth. ‘You got two cases.’
‘Yes, but it’s very popular,’ Sidra said. ‘I don’t want to run out.’
Owl switched on the nearest vox. ‘I don’t think you will,’ she said.
‘You’re not going to go through two cases of mek in your first day,’ Pepper said, tying off some cabling in the ceiling.
‘If you did,’ Tak said, ‘that’d be a great problem to have.’
Sidra leaned her core body back against the bar, assessing the spread of bottles behind it. She’d opted for a simple yet diverse stock. You wouldn’t find every drink in the GC at Home – the bar wasn’t big enough for that – but Sidra had done her best to provide something to most species’ liking. Grasswine. Salt fizz. She even had gherso on hand, in case any exiled Quelin dropped in (or someone with an adventurous palate).
In front of the bar, one of Sidra’s petbots – an Earthen cat model with a sleek purple shell – ambled up to where Blue was working. ‘That looks fantastic, Blue,’ Sidra said from behind the bar. Her core body continued to fuss with the bottles.