Antimatter Blues (Mickey7, #2)

by Edward Ashton

“We’ve been over this. I wasn’t Eight. Eight wasn’t me. He was just a guy who looked like me and talked like me and put his hands all over my stuff.” “Maybe,” she says, and I can hear in her voice that she’s already sliding back into sleep. “It kind of seems like your brain disagrees, though.”

I’m speaking with the thing that’s captured the giant creeper, the thing that holds it like a fly in a spider’s web.

Like Solaris ocean and Fiasco mounds and web connection by Lem

This is easy. I know what I want. I want Nasha alive. I’ve already opened my mouth to tell him to go with the conservative route when a second question pops into my head. What does Nasha want? I know the answer to this one too, of course. Nasha would have given her answer as soon as she heard the word aggressive. Nasha wants to be exactly who she was before. If she can’t have that, Nasha wants to be nothing.

I’ve had a good run. Hell, for an Expendable, I’ve had a great run. I’ve been alive for over two years. I’ve explored a new world. I’ve had adventures. I’ve communed with an alien intelligence. I’ve spent nearly every night of my life with Nasha wrapped around me. Honestly, who could ask for more?

As I’m walking out of Medical, it occurs to me that I never thought about the pieces that Theseus left behind. That’s what I am now, isn’t it? When my next iteration comes out of the tank, the person I am at this moment won’t be a part of his narrative. Mickey Barnes will still be alive, but me? I’m already a ghost.