Chương 7: Pants

Looking at the overlay. At the numbers. Before and after. At the bottom, it said, "WARRANTY EXTENDED." A receipt for a service I hadn't ordered. Awe hit first. The knees, the knees, the C-minus hinge-pretending-to-be-a-pivot, were fixed. Smooth articulation. Clean movement. Someone had actually read the complaint and issued a full revision. Then fury. Cold and bright. Because this thing had taken me apart and put me back together while I was unconscious, and it had not asked.

A few dozen seconds of warning and then go, and now I was something other than what I'd been, and that choice had been made for me. And underneath both, the question the fury couldn't drown out: Am I still me? Intelligence 28. Focus 30. Thoughts faster, cleaner, more parallel. Was that still Morgan thinking? Or something that used to be Morgan, running on better hardware?

"Okay," I said, and my voice was quiet. The dangerous kind of quiet. The kind that V would have recognized immediately: the process had been run, the threshold had been crossed, and whatever came next was going to be delivered with absolute precision. V would have recognized it. V, who was standing on the other side of the wormhole. She had the stabilization equations on my whiteboard. V should have been first through the threshold, and wasn't, and I'd never asked her why. Filed that. Under later.

This later folder was in a drawer that was getting full.

"We need to talk about what just happened." I walked. I sat. I stood. And that was different too: no stiffness, no transition. A single fluid motion that ended with me vertical, balanced, the powdered sand barely disturbed beneath my feet. My body had known a more efficient path from down to up than the one I would have picked, and taken it without consulting me. On-brand.

"First: thank you for the knees. I mean that. The knees are... the knees are genuinely appreciated." My rebuilt hand flexed once, involuntarily, testing the joint that used to click on cold mornings.

"Second: you just rebuilt my entire body without my consent. You announced it less than a minute before you did it. You didn't tell me the odds because they were fifty-fifty and you knew I would say no to those odds. You changed what I am, not what I have, not what I know, what I am, and you did it while I was unconscious and couldn't object."

"Where I come from, that has a word. Several words, actually, none of them good. I understand you thought you were helping. I understand that from your perspective, fixing a warranty issue on your... ride... was logical. But I am not a car. I am not a system. I am a person. And where I am from, people get to decide what happens to their own bodies." Two people now. Two people, in one day, decided what my body was for without asking me. Heat behind my ribs.

Older than the principle, less articulate than the person arguing principles. It wanted to break things. I took a breath. Let it pass. The anger was real. The gratitude was also real. They were coexisting in my jaw, my chest, my shoulders, two cats in one carrier.

"So here's what's going to happen. You are going to answer question one, what are you, and question three, did you choose me, right now, without deflection, without interruption, without discovering some new emergency in my biology that requires immediate attention. And then we are going to establish rules. Because if this is a partnership, and the fact that you're in my head and I can't get you out suggests it is, then it's going to be a partnership with consent protocols. No more modifications without permission.

No more fifty-fifty gambles on my life. No more waking up naked and covered in what you charmingly called packaging material." Looked down at myself: still slimed, still nude, now also beyond human specification.

"Also, I'm going to need clothes. A shirt. Pants. At some point. Whenever it's convenient. No rush. But clothes would be... clothes would be good." * A heavy pause. The processing hum of someone who heard a very passionate speech and latched onto the last sentence.

"A shirt. Yes. The shirt I understand. The thoracic cavity contains the heart, the lungs, the major vascular junctions, the structures most expensive to repair and most catastrophic to lose. A covering there is logical. Protective. I will note that for fabrication priority." A pause. Shorter. The processing hum of someone hitting a category error.

"Pants." The word just sat there like cargo shorts at a funeral.

"The legs are already covered. I covered them. The skin I gave you is denser than most fibrous coverings your species produces, and it is more thermally regulated, and it does not abrade. And yet. Pants. You... all of that, the fury, the consent, the autonomy, the very moving speech about personhood, and the thing you ended on was pants?" You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"Pants," I said.

"Then clarify one parameter. Your species produces the garment in two statistical families. I have attempted to determine what sorts an individual into a family. Your smaller individuals appear in both. Your longer-haired individuals appear in both, and some of your longest-haired individuals are your largest. I ran a regression. The regression failed. I am filing the distinction with the colors until the data improves."

"The colors."

"Categories your species reports as obvious that my instruments cannot locate. The file is growing."

"Gray. Tube-shaped. Pants. The variable you're looking for can wait." It stayed in the file. I found out later how long. Something that might be a sigh. Or the higher-dimensional equivalent of pinching the bridge of a nose.

"Fine." The silence of something buffering, pure computation.

"I am attempting to address your consent protocol, your emotional state, your biological requirements, and your philosophical position on autonomy simultaneously. In my native processing, these would be a dozen parallel responses resolving into a single chord. In your language, they become four sentences that distract each other."

"I will begin with the pants." Then it answered. All the questions. The answers landed like stones dropped into still water.

"One. I am old. Very old. I was a person once, like you, but that was before your planet existed. Now I am... less than what I was. More than what you can see. I am in the gem, the anchor, which is in you. I have been alone for a very long time, and I needed help. There are others, other anchors, other parts of what I was, scattered. I need to reach them. I cannot do that alone. That is the short version. The long version would take months and years to explain, and I would get distracted halfway through."

A flicker. Almost too fast to catch. But improved perception caught it anyway, a fast, sharp flash of something that looked exactly like the feeling you get when you've done something you can't undo and you're not sure yet whether it was worth it.

"The short version." A few words for a life that predates my sun. What's in the long version that's too heavy to hand me?

"Three. Yes. I chose you. The gem was not an accident. I am sorry about that. I am less sorry than you want me to be, but I am more sorry than I expected to be, and I am still... calculating the difference." But I heard the answers. Both of them. And I held them carefully. Two data points, volunteered, from a source with every reason to volunteer nothing. In my experience that is not generosity. That is a vendor spec sheet from someone who wants the contract and knows you will read the footnotes.

I was a person once. The loop engaged. A person. Before my sun existed. I ran the math because I can't not run the math; it's like breathing. Billions of years, minimum. A person, once, who had lived and been someone, and then... wasn't. And had been alone. In a gem. In the sand. For... I didn't want to calculate how long. The number would be upsetting. I am less sorry than you want me to be, but I am more sorry than I expected to be, and I am still calculating the difference. Almost smiled.

Because that sentence, the framing of emotional states, the honest admission that the calculation was still running, was the most me thing anyone had ever said to me. And it hadn't come from a human.

"Okay," I said.

"Those are honest answers. Incomplete, and we both know they're incomplete, because 'the short version' is carrying more than it looks like, but honest. I can work with honest. But I need a mechanism. A hard veto on any changes to me." It chose its next words.

"I can do that." And then, immediately, before I could press further, the tone shifted. Brighter. Almost helpful. Like a salesperson who senses the customer's attention drifting.

"Now. The clothes. The shirt I will make. That one I understand. Your skin is... You understand your skin is stronger than most of what you would call clothing, yes? The pants part of the cultural requirement still confuses me, but I am told it confuses me, and I will defer. And I think I know where you can find materials for both. There is a structure. Underground. Not far, perhaps two hours walking inland, past the vegetation line. It is old. Very old. But it should have materials. Coverings. Things you can use."

Carefully casual now.

"We should go there. For the pants."

"For the pants," I repeated. A deep breath.

"The pants were never doing any work in that sentence." The wind off the dunes carried a faint geological hum. Neither of us acknowledged it.

"I will absolutely follow the pants. Because I am an engineer standing naked on an alien beach and you just said the words 'underground structure,' and that is the most exciting combination of words I've heard since 'the math works.' You could have told me the structure was full of venomous alien snakes, and I'd still be walking toward it right now.

The fact that you're dangling pants as the incentive when you could have just said 'ancient alien installation' tells me you're still figuring out how to manage me, and I respect the effort even though it's completely transparent." Looking down at myself. The slime was drying in the alien air, tightening on my skin. The dust layer gave me the general appearance of a glazed donut dropped on a construction site.

"My skin is stronger than clothing. Great. That's... that's a fact I now possess. Thank you. I will treasure it. But we're going to get the pants anyway because there are some cultural aspects that should transcend species, and 'don't explore alien ruins with your whole situation just... out' is one of them." I started walking inland. My body felt like it could walk for days without complaint, an adjustment from the body that used to need coffee and a stretch after a couple of hours at the workbench.

Every step was fluid and efficient in a way that took some getting used to; my legs knew things about locomotion that my brain hadn't taught them.

"While we walk," I said, "you're going to tell me the medium version. The long version would take longer, and I accept that. But more than a few dozen words. You were a person. You're in the gem. The gem is in me. You've been alone for... I'm not going to ask how long because I think the number would make me sad, and I need to be functional right now." Stepping past the corkscrew bushes. The powdery sand whispered under my feet, and I could hear every grain of it, a cascade of tiny collisions, each one distinct.

It was beautiful and overwhelming, and I was not going to think about it. That was a conversation for a quieter moment.

"But I want to know: how did a person become this? And what does 'needed help' mean?" A glance at the overlay, still hovering in my visual cortex. My vastly improved focus. The loop was running clean, fast, and hungry. Very aware, as I walked, that this ancient, lonely, pants-deflecting person-that-was had an agenda that extended well past getting me dressed. You don't extend the warranty unless you're planning a very long trip.