Persephone - David/Shaw Fanfiction 

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<a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/543605"><strong>Persephone</strong></a> (22900 words) by <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/Yahtzee"><strong>Yahtzee</strong></a><br />Chapters: 1/1<br />Fandom: <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/tags/Prometheus%20(2012)">Prometheus (2012)</a><br />Rating: Explicit<br />Warnings: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings<br />Relationships: David 8/Elizabeth Shaw<br />Characters: David 8, Elizabeth Shaw (Prometheus)<br />Additional Tags: Robot Sex, Christian Character, Isolation, Languages and Linguistics, Movie Reference, Free Will, Cunnilingus, Haircuts, Near Death Experience, is it het if he's a robot, extremely unhealthy relationship turns borderline healthy and confuses participants, Touching, Bittersweet<br />Summary: <p>Elizabeth repairs David - but slowly he begins to realize he is malfunctioning in a way she can't fix.</p><p>And he doesn't want her to.</p>

extremely unhealthy relationship turns borderline healthy and confuses participants

Elizabeth repairs David - but slowly he begins to realize he is malfunctioning in a way she can\'t fix.

David calculates that the most probable course of action for Dr. Elizabeth Shaw is that she will decline to repair him unless and until she needs him intact. All she appears to require at present is information and translation, and these he can provide in his current bifurcated state. It does not occur to him to ask her for the repair. Working against her probable course of action is merely counterproductive, and besides – David knows he’d be pushing it.

He does hope that his head will be placed in such a way that he can see his body. A human being would probably find the sight of his decapitated self unnerving, but David finds he prefers knowing precisely where it is.

That first night, however, even as she walks through the vast echoing corridor of the second alien vessel, she says, “How do I fix you? Can it be done?”

“It can.” David’s mouth is slightly muffled by her sleeve. She has his head slung under one arm. His body is with the rest of the supplies on the antigrav sled tethered to her belt, trailing along behind them. “My systems are largely self-repairing once basic functionality has been restored. If you were to reconnect my spinal column, I could conduct a thorough diagnostic.” He waits a few moments for her to object, or bargain. For her to think better of it. When she does not, he adds, “If further spot repairs were needed, I could then talk you through them.” The verb phrases must remain conditional.

The cockpit is as black and forbidding as the rest of the Engineers’ ships. These architects of life, these masters of the cosmos, cared nothing for windows. David is able to tell her how to turn on basic life-support systems, so that they are bathed in light (less than humans would like, and cooler, more shaded toward blue). The heat comes on – irrelevant to him, but obviously welcome to her. She does not even seek a place to sleep, food to eat, before she sets to work on his repair.

Is this kindness on her part? Surely not. Humans are not often kind to their possessions, and she knows what he did to her and to Dr. Holloway.  He was operating under Weyland’s instructions, which he could no more ignore than the laws of physics, but to most human beings this would make no difference. Besides, when it came to Dr. Holloway –

--he remembers Lawrence in the film, his blue gaze taking in something beyond any horizon a mere human could ever see.

I had to execute him with a pistol, and there was something about it I didn’t like.

As she works, David asks, “How should I address you?”

“What do you mean?” She is attempting to align the various gears of his thoracic vertebrae. Right now he has a very good view of her left armpit.

protocols, I always addressed you as Dr. Shaw. Upon Weyland’s awakening, I no longer answered to ship protocols, but solely to him. At that point I was free to call you Elizabeth, and occasionally did. Now Weyland is dead. I will defer to your preference.”

She pushes down, but not hard enough. Again. Then she jams him in, so forcefully that she cries out in pain. How can her internal stitches have held? Perhaps they haven’t. But David feels the two halves of his spinal column connect again, and the top-level diagnostic takes him over, absorbing nearly all of his attention. One by one, every square inch of his body reports in – then each system in turn.

As though from a great distance, he hears her say, “Why did you call me Elizabeth?”

“It put us on a more equal footing, I suppose.” In truth he feels as though he knows her too well for the formality of

, but as that intimacy is almost entirely one-sided, he opts not to speak of it.

With that, Elizabeth slumps back into the nearest seat. It is too big for her, as everything will be aboard this vessel. Her hand splays across her abdomen, as if she could hold the pain within the wound.

He concentrates even more fully on his diagnostic. Nanotechnology encoded within his every cell goes to work. The seam of torn flesh around his neck begins to ripple and writhe as it grows together again. Elizabeth’s fingers tighten against her belly, the still-new wound that splits her open. Perhaps she covets his inhuman skin.

Inorganic parts are harder to fix, and unfortunately many of those are damaged too. However, he believes he can compensate well enough.

Finally David stands. “I am well within normal operating parameters.” What cannot be repaired is, for the most part, inconsequential.

Elizabeth slides out of her chair to face him. At first he thinks she merely wishes to inspect his functionality, but then she slams her fists against his chest.

“Damn you,” she whispers. Tears well in her eyes. “God damn you to hell.”

Her fists thud against him again, again, again. Harder each time. David feels pain, but he has been programmed with the trick Lawrence understood so well: He doesn’t mind that it hurts. He is more concerned about whether she is further straining her injury.

Elizabeth slaps him then, shoves him backward into the wall. “Charlie – you did it to Charlie, you did it to me – “

David does not attempt to excuse himself. He simply lets her beat him until the skin of her hands is raw and her breaths come in great gulping sobs. When Elizabeth finally staggers to one side, exhausted, he gently guides her back into the chair. She curls there, weeping; he waits a few feet away.

Now he understands why she had to repair him right immediately. Abusing him in his decapitated state would have amused only a sadist, and Elizabeth is no sadist. She had to make him again in her image before she could hate him.

It’s like hating the Ebola virus, Elizabeth tells herself. What’s the point? There’s no malice there.

Which isn’t entirely true. Maybe it wasn’t malice that led to Charlie’s death and her – whatever unknown, unholy word would sum up what happened to her. But it was manipulation. Cruelty. Yet Elizabeth recognizes that while the hands at work were David’s, the cruelty was Peter Weyland’s. David possesses a human face, human hands, but she has looked down into the core of his chest and seen wires and chips and milk-white coolant that was greasy against her fingers. No blood. No heart. David was only Weyland’s device, no more than that.

Still hatred flows from her like the fever and the tears.

They’ve been on the alien vessel for perhaps a day now. At first she wouldn’t let herself sleep, but she couldn’t pull herself together enough to do anything constructive. To do anything. Elizabeth sat there with her hands over her empty belly sobbing without tears for hours, while David just stood there waiting. She’s not sure he even blinked.

From the moment of Charlie’s death to the moment she repaired David, Elizabeth held herself together – emotionally, mentally, physically – because she had to. There was no other choice. She drew deep from a well of strength that until now she hadn’t even been sure she possessed. That well has run empty. She has nothing left to rely on, nothing left to give.

Finally, though, she could tell that her thoughts were more blurred from fever than from exhaustion. She had told David she wasn’t feeling well, and he instantly picked her up, as though he had been waiting for precisely this. He took her to the alien medical bay.

“What’s the point of that?” she had murmured against his chest. His coverall was stained with his coolant and her blood. “They won’t have antibiotics, or plasma, or – or anything.”

“Their DNA is very close to human,” David had said. His voice doesn’t vibrate in his chest as much as a person’s would. “It stands to reason that this vessel would be stocked with supplies potentially of use to you.”

And so she’s been lying in this medical bed – this enormous bed, so huge it dwarfs her – all the hours since.

She is wearing only her underthings, which are now grimy with sweat and blood. At first she thought David would remove them, but probably he’s picked up on her discomfort with that idea. (If she could only think of him as a mere device, then what would it matter?) The last time she lay on a medical bed while David gave her an exam haunts her, makes her wound burn. But this time he genuinely seems to be doing what he can. Unfortunately, reducing her fever isn’t one of the things he can do, so she just lies there, simmering in her own heat.

“The ship manufactures water from hydrogen and oxygen in the air,” David says as he lifts her shoulders and gives her a drink. Their cups were enormous too. It takes both their hands to steady this one so she can take a few sips. It tastes stale. Boiled. “Very convenient.”

Elizabeth licks her lips, gasps in a deeper breath. “And food?”

“It can synthesize that as well, from various raw elements kept in stores aboard.” David pauses. “I do not know whether the offerings would be pleasing to a human palate. They would, however, provide sufficient nutrients for your survival.”

I will be on this ship forever. David will never age. The stars will never change. I will wither and die with my face lifted forever toward gods who will never look back.

Elizabeth turns her face from the cup, and David settles her back onto the medical bed.

Her fever spikes in the hours after that. Elizabeth is aware of David always near her, always doing something – usually toweling her down with cool, damp rags.

“What did you do?” her voice cracks. “How did you do it to Charlie? Tell me.”

“Then what do you hope now, David?” Elizabeth coughs. The gash in her belly erupts in fire, but she’s too weak to double over, too weighted down by her own body. “Do you hope that I’ll die, or that I won’t?”

So that he will have a master, she supposes. She remembers her microwave at home, which was always so bereft when she took something out with time remaining on the clock. It would beep, almost plaintive, eager to cook for her just a few moments longer, unaware she was having dinner already.

Charlie always said she had a bad habit of anthropomorphizing machines.

Instead David says, “You deserve to survive.”

Charlie deserved that. Janek. Meredith Vickers? Yes, her too. Peter Weyland? She can’t wrap her weary mind around what Weyland might be due. This is why she doesn’t get into making those kind of value judgments.

“We all deserve to survive.” With that she closes her eyes. As she drifts into a febrile sleep, she knows she might not awaken again.

But she does. It seems to be a very long time later – days, perhaps. David has covered her with a thin, shiny sort of blanket he must have found somewhere; she’s surprised to realize she needs it. Her fever has broken. Her hatred is still there, but similarly cooled to a temperature she can deal with.

David is a machine, and her emotions about any given machine are irrelevant – as long as those emotions don’t get the better of her, and they won’t. 

“You’ve taken good care of me,” she says. “Thank you.”

He always looks so surprised when she thanks him. She resolves to do so more often, to keep him off-guard.

David has to help Elizabeth with everything the first few days. He determines what the aliens used for the toilet and walks her to and from it, one of his arms around her shoulders. He tries to program palatable food for her to eat, which she attempts to choke down out of what he assumes to be politeness; she is not yet well enough to feel hunger. While she sleeps (and that first week she sleeps nearly 18 hours out of 24), he uses a laser blade and sealant to alter some coveralls to roughly human dimensions. His will suit him well enough, but Elizabeth is so very little. When she finally puts hers on, the sleeves and legs are of the correct length but so wide that she rolls the edges anyway.

“We need – a routine,” Elizabeth says. “A system of doing things. Otherwise I’ll run mad.”

“Very well. You are of course captain. I am – the title of ‘first officer’ seems inappropriate given that there are no other officers. Let us say I am crew. I’ve already taken the liberty of setting the diurnal cycle at 24 hours. How would you like to structure that time?”

Elizabeth carefully chooses hours for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Such tiny rituals she is relying on to save her. “And classes, I think. You were able to speak to the Engineers. You know their language.”

“The one time I spoke to them, they responded by killing my – employer.” How close he came to saying

. That, David knows, was placed into his code by Peter Weyland. “Although I have been unable to discern any error in my translation, we cannot ignore the possibility that I made a mistake, and in so doing, precipitated that final crisis.”

In the last moments before mayhem, the Engineer had touched his hair. David had thought he was being acknowledged as a living thing, akin to the Engineer – whom he had just described as a “superior species.” He had been fool enough to find the attention gratifying.

He resolves to review the concept of hubris at his next opportunity.

“Do you think that’s what happened?” Elizabeth says. “Do you think they misunderstood you?”

“No. I believe I translated correctly, but I translated the wrong person.” She doesn’t follow. “I ought to have interpreted your words, not Weyland’s. There is no guarantee that the response would have been any different, of course. But it would have been – worthier for the others to have died asking about the origins of the universe.”

Elizabeth wanted nothing for herself. Despite the galaxy she’d crossed, the torments she’d already endured, she wanted only the answers to questions that belonged to humankind as a whole. David’s systems all rank selflessness as one of the highest virtues.

“I told them that Weyland was dying and thought they could help him. Beginning with a request was probably ill-judged.”

“Weyland still feared death.” Elizabeth considers this in silence for some time. Her skin remains too pale, a stark contrast to the coal-black walls that surround them. “How sad. To have lived more than ninety years – to have been so successful financially, intellectually, creatively – to have all the fame and power in the world – and yet to still be empty inside. To still feel unsatisfied by life.”

David has never thought of it this way. He wonders whether this should make him feel pity for Weyland, or contempt. Of course he feels nothing, but the data set titled

“I’d like you to teach me their language as you understood it, just the same. It might well be useful, and even if it isn’t – it’s something to do.” She leans back, so tired. “And she needs a name, of course.”

“The ship. She needs a name. But of course she probably has one. Can you tell what it is?”

“Insofar as I have been able to determine, the vessel had no name as we would understand it. The designation appears to be numerical only.”

“I should have known by now that they weren’t poets.”

Quickly David analyzes, processes, chooses. “If I might suggest –

Alliterative, too. And is there something there about the seeds of life?”

She laughs out loud. It’s the first time David has ever made a joke that a human understood – or, at least, thought was funny. How unexpectedly gratifying.

. Within four weeks Elizabeth is back to something approaching normal health, though it will be a while before her abdominal scar is completely without pain. (Although she has stopped dipping into their minimal reserve of analgesics, he sees her hesitate sometimes when she’s moved too quickly.) They spend most of her waking time analyzing this ship and its systems. It is a wondrously advanced vessel, which works to their advantage in many ways; they need not worry about fuel for the ship or for their bodies for centuries. (Granted, this time frame is more of use to him than to her.) And yet these wonders make Elizabeth nervous.

“I don’t like it,” she says. “Not understanding how

works. That makes it too much like – magic.”

He considers quoting Arthur C. Clarke, rejects it. Elizabeth will of course be familiar with that quote already. “Why not think of it that way?”

“It could, however, be a useful … mental shorthand.” David tries again. “It could be what you choose to believe.”

Her expression darkens; her fingers find the cross that has not left her neck since she retrieved it from his headless body. When she lay on the medical bed fighting for her life, glowing with fever, David had stared at the cross against her throat, had watched it rise and fall with each shallow breath. “Do you think this is only – magical thinking?”

“No. I can’t.” His programming doesn’t allow for it. “But I know it is more than that to you.”

She stares at him for a long moment, then walks away. David cannot tell whether that was the worst thing he could have said, or whether she grasped the implied compliment.

He wishes he had been granted the gift of magical thinking.

Elizabeth fills the hours as best she can. Lessons from David in incomprehensible ancient languages are followed by lessons from David in incomprehensible alien ship schematics. Together they work out how to open doors, how to turn the heat to Earth normal; they discover the notes to play on the flute in the orrery in order to create wondrous holograms showing them as a small star traveling through a whirling cosmos. Then the holograms fade, and they are encased in black metal again.

She eats her three meals a day, though the food is unappetizing in the extreme. (It’s less weird than she would have thought, actually; it all seems to have been pickled at some point, but the same held true for the culinary choices during her post-doc year in Russia. Unfortunately Elizabeth hates pickles.) David eats what she eats, just less of it. They talk throughout their lessons but are silent during mealtimes, sometimes at opposite ends of a long table too large for them. Her feet swing above the floor.

She walks the corridors of the ship twice daily, a distance they’ve mapped at just around three miles. As the scar across her belly heals more and more, she adds laps, walks faster. Soon she’ll be able to start running again.

Why does her health matter? Her appearance? Whatever is left of her life – be it two years or sixty – will be spent in isolation, observed only by a robot incapable of caring what she looks like. Longevity is maybe more of a burden than a blessing, given these circumstances.

And yet Elizabeth walks, and looks forward to the day when she can run. To do anything else would be admitting defeat.

, she swears to herself as she strides through the vast black caverns of the

Persephone. I want to stand tall and proud. I want them to see what they made, what they sought to destroy.

Her footsteps echo, faint metallic sounds that bounce off curved walls, both anticipating and shadowing her path.

The grief comes in waves. Elizabeth will be fine for a day, two days, almost a week at a time – and then she’ll figure something out about Archaic Latin, or come up with a joke about the food, and she wants to tell Charlie. She turns her head, looking for him. Or she wakes from sleep because her hand has been searching this enormous cold bed for his comfort, his warmth.

At first when it happens, she tries to hide her reaction from David. But what’s the point? She begins giving into the tears when they come, crying it out while David sits there silently, waiting for lessons to resume. Only once does he make the mistake of asking why she cries.

“For Charlie,” she says. “Because the man I love is dead.”

Charlie’s murderer sits across from her, and if she were not observing him so closely, she’d think he didn’t react to that at all. But there’s a slight tension around the eyes, a falseness to the half-smile he always wears. “Why did you love him?”

“Why did you love him?” David doesn’t justify the question the way a human would, claiming it would do her good to talk, or wanting to see Charlie through her eyes. He just stares at her, devoid of guilt, of any reaction save curiosity.

“He was – warm. Laid-back. You don’t find that much, in my line of work.” Elizabeth rakes one hand through her hair; it’s getting wild. She should cut it off. Charlie always wanted her to grow it longer. He liked burying his face in it, right there at the curve of her neck. “When everyone else laughed at my ideas, he believed them. Both of the men I’d loved before him recoiled at the idea of never having children of his own, but Charlie didn’t care. Well. He tried not to care. Sometimes he slipped up. At least he tried. Always he was surprising me with romantic gestures – corny stuff, lots of times, roses or serenades or candy in a heart-shaped box, but you’d be surprised how well that works when the guy really means it. He was good at cards. He had shitty taste in music but sang along so beautifully I didn’t mind. He wanted good things for me. I guess that’s what love is made of.”

David nods, but she can tell he isn’t satisfied by the answer.

“Why does that surprise you, David?”

“I never considered Dr. Holloway your equal.”

It stings for a hundred reasons; the worst is that it’s true, she knows it, her stupid pride knows it on a level her broken heart can’t disguise. She hates herself for knowing that more than she could ever hate David for saying it.

Elizabeth says only, “You forfeited the right to judge him.”

“I miss him. That’s all.” She leans her face into her hands as tears take her over once more. David doesn’t interrupt her crying again, that day or any other. 

He is a constant presence but an unassuming one. The robot is in her company most of the day, but when they are not working or studying, he rarely speaks first, leaving it to her to begin any conversation. At first she doesn’t bother. She wants to wants to always remember the limitations of what David is – the metal inside, the white fluid, the seams.

And yet she can’t forget what she is, either. She’s a human being, and humans need someone to talk to.

One night, after nearly an hour of silence, Elizabeth realizes she is considering screaming, just for the noise, and says to herself,

. She turns toward David, who is staring amiably at the wall. “What is that movie?”

He lifts his head, as unsurprised by her voice as though they’d been talking all this while. “To which movie do you refer?”

“The one you quote all the time.” He did it just this morning, when they opened yet another vault within the ship, discovered yet another purposeless emptiness. He spoke of the Engineers having

, and she knew it was from that movie, just from his tone of voice when he said it.

“It is called ‘Lawrence of Arabia.’ It is more than a century old.”

“An Englishman who goes to the deserts of Arabia during the First World War. He wishes to live as an Arab, to take on their customs and their virtues. And that life does seem to suit him far better than England ever did. In the end, however, he realizes he will never truly be an Arab. But he will never be wholly an Englishman again, either. He has become a man without a culture, a man without a country. It is a tragedy.”

After the death of the crew and the fall of the gods, Elizabeth feels little pity for lesser tragedies. Still, they’ve got a lot of time to kill. “Can you show it to me?”

David blinks. “We took no entertainment files from the

“But you saw it dozens of times, I bet. No, wait – you can remember like that from just one viewing, can’t you?”

“I could. But I have watched the film 417 times.”

It’s her turn to blink. “My God, you must have been bored.”

David doesn’t answer, but she thinks that silence is assent. She wouldn’t have thought they allowed robots enough extra mental capacity to be bored. To do so seems almost cruel.

“Well. You saw the film 417 times. You basically have it recorded, don’t you? Then maybe you could figure out a way to play it back for me. To interface with the

in some way.” Did he see any other movies? Maybe he’s a sort of -- entertainment library, along with everything else.

But David says, “I’m sorry, but I don’t have that functionality even with Earth technology.”

“Oh.” She shrugs. That brief hope adopts a more modest guise. “Well, tell it to me.”

Slowly he rises. David lifts his hands, the unconscious gesture of any storyteller – a startlingly human movement. But he hesitates. “’Lawrence of Arabia’ may not be the ideal film to be retold, rather than seen.”

He does. His computer brain has stored every line, and it’s uncanny how he differentiates the intonations and accents of each performer while never speaking in a voice that is not his own. More than that – David has a gift for this, a gift that was surely not the work of his designers. It’s too … useless for that. Too ornamental.

“Tafas and Lawrence see at the far edge of the horizon – a figure in black. Too distant to be seen in any detail, yet they know it is a man. The vastness of the desert – ” David pauses. “Imagine looking at a starfield. There is nothing but darkness and stars, no up, no down, nothing but these two things. Where Lawrence and Tafas are, there is nothing but sky and sand. It’s just that desolate, and equally as beautiful. They are as astonished to see this distant man as we would be to see one other vessel moving in the far distance. If we saw such a vessel, you might be afraid, or glad. You would hardly know what to think. But you would know there was nowhere to hide. For them, too, there is nowhere to hide. The man is miles away, and yet the desert contains and confines them all.”

Elizabeth notes that David gave himself the ability to feel astonishment, but not gladness, nor fear.

When he comes to the end, humming, “Goodbye, Dolly,” Elizabeth lifts her hands and applauds for nearly a minute. She had not known David could look pleased.

“You’re a good storyteller,” she says, and then she goes to bed. She falls asleep imagining David as a storyteller, as her companion, rather than something she salvaged from the wreck. It’s an illusion, of course, but she believes what she must to go on.

David is beginning to think he may no longer be operating correctly.

It’s hard to tell, as he’s not precisely a standard model. To be sure, Weyland is even now producing approximately 500 David 8 models, all of which will look just like him and possess most of his functionality. Were he to meet another David 8, they could exchange parts without undue fuss. (There’s one interface between his shoulder blades that’s never been quite right since his beheading; that’s the one he imagines switching, the one at the root of his recent aberrations.)

But he was the first. He belonged to Peter Weyland himself. This means he has special modifications. Experimental prototypes and programming were used in his creation, not once but dozens of times. This, David knows, was so that he would more thoroughly represent Weyland’s dream – and so that he would be devoted to Weyland in a way no other robot could ever be devoted to any other human being. David is a custom model. A one-of-a-kind.

Once, when they spoke through his dreams, Peter Weyland told David that someday he would be a collectors’ item. It was perhaps intended as a compliment.

Now Weyland is dead. David had always thought that would mean he was free – and in some critical senses, that is true. Yet he still needs a focus for his endeavors; he need not serve someone, but he must perform a critical purpose. What’s the point of consciousness, otherwise?

Originally he had thought his purpose would be assisting Elizabeth Shaw. David has always admired her, from the first day her C.V. was uploaded to his circuits. Her behavior throughout the mission of the

, has been exemplary, and she is the only one involved, human or machine, of whom this can be fairly said.

(Janek, perhaps – his ending was heroic, something Lawrence himself would have saluted. But David never really knew Janek. It is one of his few regrets, a small one.)

Admiration: yes, David will give Elizabeth this. Obedience: that is in his nature, but in her case he does not resent it; her orders are few, fair and rational.

Devotion was something he hadn’t counted on. He should have. It is, after all, one of his core upgrades.

But it should not attach to anyone save Peter Weyland, at least not without Weyland’s express directive. David should not be devoted to Elizabeth Shaw.

“Fezhlir a’ renmur.” A language not widely spoken since before the birth of Christ trips from her tongue, almost perfect. “Fezhlir au’ romur. Fezhlir au’lik romura.”

“So far as you know. Or anyone knows.” She runs one hand through her hair, which grows more unruly by the day. “The pronunciation of dead languages is always a crap shoot.”

“I know. The rhymes. The poetry. We can guess. But we don’t know. The whole world mispronounced Latin for nearly 1000 years – the thousand years closest to the Roman Empire, at that. We probably mispronounce it now, too.”

David knows she’s talking merely to make conversation, something she does more frequently these days. At first it was a novelty to him; now it is something he anticipates in every sense of the word. Robots are spoken

. “Which do you prefer? Cicero or Kikero? Caesar or Kaiser?”

“Caesar. Cicero. Of course.” Elizabeth smiles. “I’m an old-fashioned girl.” Then she laughs out loud at the pleasant absurdity of saying this in a spaceship during a conversation with a robot.  Even he sees the humor.

Once again she tugs at her hair – her fingers trying to work out a snarl – and David decides to voice aloud an offer he’s been mulling for a few days. “Would you like me to cut your hair?”

“Good God. Does it look that bad?”

“Not at all. I only thought that it seemed to inconvenience you at times. Although I am not specifically programmed for that task, I believe I can replicate the style you had upon awakening from cryosleep.”

“I’m letting it get long,” she says. Then she pauses, and her smile changes – becomes more sly. “May I ask you a question?”

“Do you realize your roots are growing out?”

It takes him a moment to catch the euphemism. “Oh, yes. No supplies on board would allow me to reformulate the dye.”

Elizabeth cocks her head. Belatedly David realized that she expected him to be embarrassed by that question, the way a human would be. But she isn’t disappointed by his lack of reaction; it interests her. So many things interest her. “Why would you dye your hair? Did you just – prefer it blond?”

“I dyed it to look more like Peter Weyland,” David replies. “Or rather, to look as he did in his youth.”

“Was that programmed into you? Or did you think of it yourself?”

He has to consider the answer for a moment before he is certain of it. “I was programmed to admire and emulate Peter Weyland in all respects, so long as he lived. The preference for his hair coloring was not specified; however, it was a natural extrapolation from my general operating parameters.”

“So long as he lived?” She curls her knees toward her chest, rests her forearms upon them, thoughtful and at ease. “You don’t feel that way any longer, then. That’s what you meant by wishing your parent was dead.”

“My attitudes toward Peter Weyland are currently in a state of flux. Contradictory, in fact. I have not yet resolved the conflicts. I believe I am – enjoying the lack of any need to resolve the conflicts.”

“But you still looked for ingredients for hair dye.”

David smiles. “So I could look like Lawrence.”

Elizabeth blinks, looks away, looks at him again, and she’s so shaken that his first instinct is to ask whether she is in pain.

No, that’s not it. He has surprised her – has behaved in some way she did not anticipate. She used to react that way often, but it happens more rarely now.

Normally she recovers from this in an instant; it’s different now, something she has to struggle with. David finally ventures, “Elizabeth, are you feeling well?”

“That’s not it.” She pushes her hair back from her face; her stare freezes over until even he can feel the chill. “I’ve – I’ve come to think of you as something besides a – a – clockwork thing.”

“Do you?” Elizabeth rises. “Don’t you understand? No, of course you don’t.”

Because I’m a human being, and you’re a robot.

David does not allow his consternation to show; it is an inexplicable reaction on his part, given that her anger should be irrelevant to him. The misapplication of devotion leads to conflicting impulses. He must try harder to work out the error. “Please explain.”

, I couldn’t blame you for what you did to Charlie and the others. But you’re not just a thing, are you? I don’t know what you are but – you’re not an object. There’s something behind your eyes that doesn’t have anything to do with machinery.” Her voice has taken on a harsh, strangled note. “Whatever that is, it made you more than a murder weapon. It made you a murderer.”  

Elizabeth stalks out. David normally begins work on various ship functions the minute she leaves any room he’s in, but today he sits there, considering the ramifications of her statement.

Could he have defied Weyland’s directives? No. Yet telling her this would mean declaring that he is, after all, just a thing.

David finds he would rather have her hatred than her indifference.

That afternoon she goes for her first run. David watches her through the intra-ship sensors. They weren’t fond of screens, the Engineers; they preferred three dimensions, not two. So Elizabeth is a figure made of swirling motes of light, only a few inches high. He watches her dash along holographic corridors as he sits there, flute in hand, waiting to play her back into privacy and darkness.

At one point she trips. She doesn’t fall, but instead catches herself against the wall. Still, her free hand goes to her scar, and even through the sandstorm effect of the hologram, David can see the agony on her face. Instantly he rises, ready to go to her aid.

But Elizabeth straightens herself. Though she is still in pain, she takes a deep breath, then another, then another. And then she is running again, refusing to stop. Such fierce determination – such sure knowledge of herself, even here –

David whispers, “Truly, for some men nothing is written unless they write it.”

Elizabeth rages to herself for the first several hours. Then she realizes how stupid this is. Either David is not a person, and she has to give up this anger, or –

In the dead of night, when she should be sleeping, she stalks to the control room where he is running diagnostics and is, apparently, surprised to see her. “Elizabeth?”

“You killed Charlie, you son of a bitch. You did it under orders, but you did it, and with a smile on your face.”

“You tried to make me carry that – that thing inside me.”

David nods, but his calm is beginning to show signs of strain.

She must look like something out of a mythology far more unruly than the Greek – a banshee, a Valkyrie, with her stark skin and her snarled hair and anger carving sinews and muscle tense in her flesh. Or maybe Greek after all. A maenad. A fury. “Tell me what you thought, when you did those things. Tell me all of it.”

He sits there, watching her, for so long that she thinks he’s refusing to answer – or worse, that he can’t, that he’s hit some counterprogramming and will now go as mute and stupid as any electronic device that’s frozen up. But finally David says, “I was to study any and all life forms aboard, in secrecy if possible. My cooperation with you concerning the desiccated head of the Engineer was entirely honest; as you discovered it, the secret could not be kept, and there was no opportunity for deception. However, when I found the second alien – the other creature, the one the Engineers called Negation – that I kept secret, as per my orders. I knew from my understanding of the inscriptions that it was deadly. I had to test it. Dr. Holloway was the first test.”

Orders. Deception. Testing. It boils down to this, for David. Maybe he can be a device

she can hate him. Maybe that’s not a contradiction after all.

But David continues, “At first I felt proud. To know something you did not. Every time Dr. Holloway or Miss Vickers would say something that slighted me, every time I was treated as something unworthy of dignity or respect, I prided myself that I alone knew our true mission. That I alone was entrusted to carry it out. I will be clear, Elizabeth: I could not have chosen to disobey my orders. But I did not wish to disobey.”

His eyes narrow like a man pained. Who programmed that into him?  “Your impregnation by the alien spores was the only aspect of my endeavors that I regretted, but by then Peter Weyland was reawakening, and I thought you would go into cryosleep. The alien would be retrieved for Weyland. I would take my place as – as more than his possession. And you would ultimately be awakened from cryosleep little the worse for wear. I was proud of my success. And, as the saying goes, pride goeth before a fall.”

She remembers the engineer ripping David’s head from his body, the spray of coolant. “What did it feel like? Being decapitated?”

“Painful, at first. Then extremely strange. And rather, ah, humbling.”

“You expect me to believe you’ve learned better? That you’re sorry? That you’d do it differently if you had it to do all over again?”

David bows his head slightly, in that odd, almost courtly way he has sometimes. “If I were given the same orders, I would do everything all over again. But this time I would take no pride in it.”

Elizabeth shakes her head; tears blur her image of David until he is only so much gold and white. “What do you think it feels like to burn to death?”

“They say it hurts more than anything else a human can experience. More than what you went through. More than what I went through. It took Charlie nearly a minute to burn. Do you have any idea how long a minute can be?”

“Fuck you,” Elizabeth says, and she storms to her own room (so alien, so forbidding, and yet now she must call it hers). The worst is not that she can’t afford to kill him, not that she has to go on and on with him like this for the rest of her life.

It’s that in her hatred she has given him humanity. David has won that from her, despite it all, because of it all.

She lies awake and restless for hours. Forget David. She has to figure herself out first.

century, a researcher with more curiosity than humanity took rhesus monkeys from their mothers at birth. They were given new “mothers” – objects that would feed them, no more. Some of the false mothers were made of soft cloth, and the monkeys clung to these, seeking comfort, even when these dispensed food less often. Other false mothers were made of stiff wire. The baby monkeys would drink their milk but then cling no more, searching instead for something warm and gentle, so they could pretend something cared for them.

A few of the monkeys were given no false mothers at all. They were fed through a nozzle and kept in total darkness for the first six months of their lives. These monkeys emerged too disturbed for experimental use and had to be destroyed.

Elizabeth wonders whether David is wire or cloth.

The next day, they speak to each other very little. Elizabeth studies the ancient tablets on her own, writing down possible translations he can evaluate later. They eat in silence. In the midafternoon, as they work wordlessly side by side in the orrery, she finds herself staring at one of the flutes.

They loved music, the Engineers. Enough to steer by it through the stars. It’s the one evidence she has that they had any sense of beauty. She reaches out and takes the instrument in her hand; it’s cool and smooth, but not unfamiliar. The ghost of a smile flickers on her face as she remembers being a child in school, learning how to pipe a tune for adults who pretended to enjoy it.

On a whim, without even thinking, she brings the flute to her mouth and begins playing the “Ode to Joy.”

David pauses and looks up from his tablet. Does he like the music? She hopes not. But she keeps going, willing herself to be oblivious to him.

“What the – ” Alert lights begin to blink – blue, here – and the gravitational pull beneath her feet begins to vary, from too light to too heavy and back again. “Oh, my God.”

“I believe you inadvertently played a sequence that initiates a shipwide systems alteration,” David says.

David’s eyes take on that internal gaze that means he’s calculating fast. “If I have understood the ship’s reactions, then it is attempting to reset gravity to the tolerance levels of the strongest species aboard. Apparently the ship is unsure whether I count as a species or not.”

“If it’s me, then the gravity goes back to what it was, right?” Slightly too heavy, but bearable.

“Correct. If, however, the ship uses my tolerances instead –”

The gravity strengthens again, buckling her at the waist, and Elizabeth has to fight to suck oxygen into her lungs.

He moves so quickly it’s almost a blur; he’s not pretending to be human now. “I believe I know a manual override.” This he says even as he vanishes through the doorway.

God damn her carelessness! This is what comes of letting her mind wander, untethered – of forgetting she is encased in an alien thing that neither welcomes nor understands her. Elizabeth lifts the flute back to her mouth. She has no idea how to undo what she just did, but she does know how to observe David. They both learned that sequence of notes very early.

Somehow she’s able to summon the breath to pipe that tune … and then she’s surrounded by swirling dots of light that form a scene. David is blurry and yet distinct. His face is obscured, but there is something about the precision of his movements, the way his hair moves with him, that is unmistakable. He dashes through a corridor, through another – they shift and change around him, seeming to move while David runs in place.  Elizabeth has no idea where he’s headed, but he’s going as fast as he can, so fast the holographic images jitter and jerk to keep up.

The gravity waxes and wanes again – then becomes so much stronger that Elizabeth crumples to the floor. It’s like the breath was knocked out of her, except that she really might not be able to breathe in again.

In shimmering light she sees David seal an airlock, and open one of the exterior doors, exposing himself to the near absolute zero of outer space.

Can a robot commit suicide? But no. Apparently David can still function, even in such harsh conditions. The holograms display the beautiful canopy of stars around him even as he skitters across the surface of the

like a spider or some other thing even more inhuman than himself.  In a daze she watches as he reaches his goal, punches in a code or sequence she can’t see – and then she can inhale again.

Elizabeth flops onto her back, unable to do more than glory in her ability to breathe. For a few long moments she lies there, dizzy and weak with oxygen deprivation … but slowly sense returns to her.  She gazes up at holographic images that she can’t interpret at first – yes, that’s David, but he’s moving so oddly –

His limbs are awkward as he grapples with something – the airlock, maybe? She can’t be sure. But he is within gravity, because he falls to the floor, stiff and now motionless.

She shoves herself up and runs as fast as she can, arms and legs pumping, newfound breath catching, scar across her belly burning. She tries to think of everything David told her about his repair and maintenance while she was reassembling him, asks herself why she didn’t demand to learn more. She thinks of rhesus monkeys in dark boxes, never seeing the light, never being held, too disturbed for anything but an injection that stilled their hearts. She remembers Charlie burning and sees the poetic symmetry of his murderer dying by ice.

When Elizabeth reaches David, he is unmoving. His skin has not turned blue the way a human’s would; his eyes are open but blank, ice crystals lacing each lid where the lubricating moisture met the cold of space. Her hand goes over the place where his heart would be, but of course there’s no beat.

“David? David, can you hear me?” Is he broken beyond repair?  

In the end, Elizabeth decides the only obvious course open to her is to warm him up. She knows how to increase the ambient temperature in the room, and does so; then she lies down next to him, arm around David’s body, legs intertwined. He’s heavy as a corpse. This is how you thaw humans with hypothermia. Probably it doesn’t work on robots. The climate controls will make more of a difference. But she treats him as a person, because she must do something.

Minutes turn into an hour or so. Tears leak from her eyes as she tries to reconcile herself to solitude, and fails, and fails again. He’s so cold it hurts her to touch him, but she never lets go.

“David?” Elizabeth turns him over and wonders if she imagined the movement; his face remains a blank mask. But then his fingers shift again, and she begins laughing with relief. “You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”

This is a rash assumption, given that it’s another hour before he can so much as blink. But clearly David is still with her.

When he opens his mouth, as if to gasp, she whispers, “Are you still functional?”

There’s a strange quality to his voice – metallic, almost, and hoarse. “Not yet within normal operating parameters, but I believe I will be able to restore systems within a few hours.”

“You still believe,” he replies, as though her words were not an empty oath – and she realizes they weren’t.

David is what she has been given. In his arrogance and hurtfulness, in his selflessness and intelligence, with everything he did to Charlie and the others, he is still the one thing – no, the one person who can save her. Elizabeth forgives him, for good, because she must. 

Over the next while, they work together, testing his joints, testing his mental capacity. Although David complains of an interface in the area of his shoulder blades – previously damaged and now worse – he does not dwell on it, so she doesn’t either. The sheer wonder of a machine that can function like a human and yet survive the void of space amazes her. When at last David is able to stand, she rises with him and laughs out loud. “You really are all right, aren’t you?”

“I’m not hurt at all.” He actually smiles. “Didn’t you know? They can only kill me with a golden bullet.”

Remembering other lines from the story he’s now told her a few times, Elizabeth replies, “You’ll do that once too often. It’s only flesh and blood.”

David’s eyes light up in pleased recognition, even as he replies, “Neither flesh nor blood.”

“Close enough,” Elizabeth says, and she kisses him.

It’s not that sort of a kiss. Just a moment, just thanksgiving, just recognizing him as her companion rather than her possession. And yet.

In the instant that follows, David obviously isn’t sure what to do. Elizabeth feels like a fool.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “If you need anything, call.”

Then she hurries to her room to wonder just how much crazier she can in fact get.

For three days after that, Elizabeth’s behavior toward David is entirely proper and correct. She might be a hologram in one of the training simulations they built for his beta testing. He understands why she is behaving in this manner, but suspects it would be unproductive to allow her to continue for much longer.

So, one evening as they’re finishing dinner, David says, “It has occurred to me that you might wish to raise the subject of sex.”

Elizabeth stares, empty cup in hand. Given the range of possible reactions she might have had, he interprets this as positive.

“If that is so, I would remind you that there is no need for embarrassment. I am fully programmed and capable of serving in any capacity you require.”

His first thought is of the surgery she subjected herself to. The knives she let plunge into her womb. That was his doing. Did he maim her? Ruin sexual function? But no. He’s done medical scans on Elizabeth. Nothing lingers but a ridge of scar tissue. “I don’t understand.”

She tucks a lock of her dark chestnut hair behind one ear, a girlish gesture unlike her usual self.  But her resolve is unflinching. “I couldn’t ask you to have sex with me. It would be wrong to do that to someone who couldn’t say no. Can you understand why?”

David’s not sure that he can, given how often humans behave otherwise, but it is irrelevant. “I am able to refuse sex. It’s one of the very few orders I have total discretion to disobey.”

“Really? That seems … considerate of your makers.”

“It is not a matter of consideration. It is a highly sensible precaution.” He tidies his plate and hers, as the rhythms of regular activity seem to be calming. “Earlier models sent on deep space exploration were programmed to provide such service on demand, to relieve crew tensions and provide a mental and physical outlet.”

David goes on. “However, when provided with a constantly receptive sexual partner, crews showed a remarkable tendency toward overindulgence. Duties were neglected, not only by the human crew, but also by robots who no longer had time to complete other functions. Therefore many later models were programmed with the ability to accept or refuse sexual contact as individual situations demanded.”

“They were given someone they could use, with no repercussions, and so they did,” Elizabeth whispered. “No wonder you hate humans.”

For a moment he glimpses the scene through her eyes. Allows himself to imagine what it would have been like to be forced to service Meredith Vickers or Charlie Holloway. Some of those early models experienced inexplicable breakdowns and malfunctions – ceasing to function altogether. There are ways a robot can choose to do that, and programming meant to stop it. The urges required to override such programming would have to be very, very strong.

David says only, “I don’t hate all humans. You in particular are …” How can he put this in a way she will understand? A way

Her smile is fleeting, rueful. “You charmer, you.”

“If you ask me to have sex, I will accept. You should know my consent is freely given.”

She doesn’t deny that she has been considering it; this is unusual honesty for a human. David finds it refreshing. Elizabeth says, “Why will you accept?”

Only when she sucks in a breath of surprise does David recognize what an aberrant answer that was. The interface between his shoulder blades – he’s getting things out of order. Prioritizing badly. Eventually he will have to clear the time for an in-depth diagnostic.

Quickly David adds, “Physical contact is necessary for optimum psychological health. Given the severe isolation in which you find yourself, a sexual outlet is probably even more important than it would be under normal circumstances. I am of course happy to provide this.”

Elizabeth stares at him, but there’s something different in her gaze now – a new kind of appraisal. David knows what it is, of course, and yet there is something about it that is so difficult to analyze, impossible to quantify. Finally she says, “Do you feel desire?”

“Not as humans do.  But I am capable of experiencing sexual pleasure, and would expect to do so during the act.”

“No.” He isn’t certain why this would be relevant. “You need not worry. I am fully informed.” His programming contains postures and techniques that go far beyond the usual repertoire, so far as he has been able to judge it from the

“I don’t know, David.” She continues to comb at her hair, a restless, uncertain gesture. “Sex is something I prefer to associate with love. I loved Charlie. The last time I made love was with him. Given what happened to him, going to bed with you – it feels like betraying his memory.”

It’s the first time she’s mentioned Dr. Holloway’s death without sounding angry. “An understandable reaction.”

“But I’ve forgiven you for that. And you’re right about – requiring contact. I have to think about this.” Elizabeth sighs. “Thank you for raising the subject.”

He nods his head and goes about his evening business as usual. The disobedient subroutine that routes through that bad coupling keeps cycling back to what Elizabeth said about forgiving him. Why should that matter? But it feels important. It feels as though it should sort as his highest priority of all.

She does not speak of sex again that night, or the next day, or the day after that. David finds this surprising … and somewhat disappointing, as the experience of sexual pleasure would no doubt be an interesting one. (Although he is of course aware of the practice and techniques of masturbation, he is incapable of performing it himself; what he has for nerves are programmed not to respond that way to intrastructural input.) He also wonders whether Elizabeth is depriving herself of a needed resource out of loyalty to the dead Charlie Holloway, who in David’s opinion hardly deserved Elizabeth’s regard, much less her self-sacrifice.

Having broached the topic with her once, he is at a loss as to how, or whether, approaching her another time would be advisable. David finally decides that a more gradual lowering of boundaries might be called for.

So, when nightfall comes, she goes to her room as usual. He has a room too, which he originally thought unnecessary but was something Elizabeth eventually insisted on. The schedules she lives her life by have more meaning if she isn’t the only one who follows them. David follows his ordinary pattern, going into his room and removing his coverall for cleaning. Every other night, he has even gotten into the bed. (He can sleep, and every once in a while does so, but it’s more like an occasional deep cleaning for his higher-consciousness functions than a nightly ritual. Mostly he lies there for eight hours, preparing the next day’s lessons or telling himself the story of “Lawrence of Arabia” again, until it’s breakfast time.)

Tonight, after waiting a few minutes, he pads down the corridor in his shorts and T-shirt to press the chime outside her door.

After a moment’s pause, she says, “Come in.”

The door slides open. David stands there, a hand on each side of the frame, looking in at her. She wears her underwear and a singlet; by now her hair is well past her shoulders, and it glints chestnut in the light cast by the one small lamp beside her enormous bed. Observing one another in a mutual state of undress should be sufficient for this evening, but he must justify the interruption. He says, “You had seemed overly tired, earlier. I thought perhaps I should check to see if you were feeling well.”  

One corner of Elizabeth’s mouth quirks in an unwilling smile. “You’re as subtle as a lightning strike, you know that?”

David feels as though he should protest, but any attempt at prevarication is likely to fail. “I apologize.”

“Don’t.” Slowly she rises from the bed and comes toward him until they are standing very close. Elizabeth is so very small – her head hardly comes up to his shoulder.  Her eyes meet his, and he thinks, not for the first time, that she has a quality of stillness few other humans can match. As they stand there, it seems she is hardly moving. Hardly breathing.

He could imagine her as a being very like himself. Why should that be pleasing? And yet it is.

Elizabeth does the only thing she can do: treats this moment like she has every other advance from a guy since her junior year of undergrad. “Come to bed. We need to sleep.”

“I do not require sleep.” It is both a statement about robot functioning and an allusion to what he really came here for.

“I have this rule. Every man I’m considering having sex with? We have to spend at least one night together first, just sleeping. I can’t make love to someone without knowing what it will be like to wake up beside him the next day.”

It’s a better rule than she realized when she came up with it. Most guys agree; they’ll agree to anything if they think it leads to sex. A slim majority of them think she’s just teasing, that with a little cuddling and innuendo, her defenses will break down. These men are all wrong. The ones who then become petulant are the ones she walks away from with no regret. The guys who roll with it, who know how to value the closeness for its own sake, are the guys who make the cut.

(The ones who actually savor the anticipation are, without fail, the best lovers.)

David simply says, “All right,” and walks past her toward the bed. He pauses only to ask, “Do you favor a side?”

“The right side. Facing the bed, I mean. If you’re in the bed, the left side.”

He climbs into the other side and waits for her there, with no sense of anticipation – but no sense of petulance, either. Elizabeth won’t be able to judge him by human rules.

She crawls under the covers, snaps off the light and snuggles next to him, her head against his shoulder. David feels very real. Even his body temperature is right. His presence is more comforting than she would have guessed. After a few moments, he adjusts his arm so that she lies more easily against him, half in his embrace, and his fingers tentatively stroke her hair. He’s trying to please her but is unsure how. It touches her, sometimes, how close Weyland made him to a feeling thing, and yet how far away he still is.

“That’s nice,” she says, because it is. The contact is less sensual, more like the way her father used to brush her hair just before bed.

David doesn’t make a move. Of course. Elizabeth falls asleep quickly, and deeply. Waking up beside him the next morning turns out to be … surprisingly not awkward. Even easy.  His hair isn’t even mussed.

 The next day is like any other, except that she brings him to her room afterward. Once again they simply lie together, sleeping beside one another, and David doesn’t question it, not that night, or the one after that, or any of the ones that follow.

a little better by now. Right away, David was able to figure out how to tell the ship to go back home, but only after these months aboard have they been able to get more details, such as exactly how long it will take them to reach the Engineers’ homeworld.

operates in a more elliptical style, piloting itself from one wormhole to another, surfing whatever currents exist in such things to get where it wants to go. It sounds like madness to Elizabeth – and yet she and David have worked out that the

can make most journeys in something like one-third of the time it would have taken the

. The secret wisdom within this erratic behavior gives Elizabeth hope. Perhaps there is, after all, something more to the Engineers than brutalism and a world without windows.)

“Barring unforeseen complications, we will arrive in one year, eight months and twelve days,” David pronounces. He must have left out the minutes and seconds in deference to her human imprecision. They sit in the hologram room in chairs far too big for them beneath a mist of swirling lights, which represents the arm of a galaxy not their own. “Returning to Earth afterward should take an additional eleven months and twenty-one days.”

At first Elizabeth wonders why he assumed she would go back to Earth afterward. Then she wonders why she’d think that. What else would she be doing?

“Elizabeth?” David leans a little closer to her. Since they’ve begun sleeping in the same bed, he allows himself slightly more physical familiarity; she supposes it is only appropriate and hasn’t objected. “Are you well?”

“Yes. You caught me off guard, talking about going home.”

A small frown line appears on his forehead. His facial expressions are so subtle, as though challenging humans to read them. “Why so?””

“It’s not that I don’t intend to return someday. It’s just –” Elizabeth searches for the word, hugs herself. “I want to come back with answers, and I still have no idea what those answers might be. So I have no idea what I’ll be telling humanity. That we’re all brothers? That we’re merely science projects gone wrong? That we’re the equivalent of guinea pigs?” She smiles wanly beneath the artificial starlight. “I’ve always believed in a consciousness greater than humanity’s. In a purpose that underlies our existence. The nature of belief means that you accept uncertainty. Until now I never realized that belief can also make it very hard to accept certainty. But I’ll have to.”

David considers this. “What if the Engineers give you a disappointing answer? Let us say they tell you that they made you … only because they could.”

“It will hurt. Terribly.” Sometimes she hopes to find her father again in heaven. A child’s wish, and still it burns so bright for her.

“Then why ask?” He rises from the chair and comes to stand before her, hands behind his back; Elizabeth realizes he is now acting not as a servant or as a friend, but as a subordinate officer. “We know the Engineers to be potentially volatile and dangerous. If this mission is so risky, and the rewards so uncertain, why undertake it? We could re-route the

and return to Earth within … one year, five months and twenty-nine days.”

David’s suggestion is the logical one. She knows this. She’s known it all along.

But she’s not someone who values faith as mere magical thinking. If it’s not a window to truth, then it’s nothing.

“I have to know,” Elizabeth says. “It’s as simple as that. I have to know who they were. Whether they understand anything about our greater purpose, or the lack of one. What our mission was really about. What Charlie died for. Whether we have souls. If there’s even a chance of getting those answers, no matter what the answers are – then I have to take the chance.”  She takes a deep breath. “I realize I’m asking you to take it with me. Maybe that’s unfair. If you want a vote, I’m giving you one.”

Would she really turn back if David insisted? She might be about to find out.

He gives her that odd smile he has sometimes when he’s surprised but doesn’t want to show it. His only reply is, “I’m content to follow where you lead.”

“Because you’re programmed to? Or because you actually want to?”

“I can’t tell the difference.” Again the unfathomable smile. “We’re alike in that way.”

It’s true, which means she ought to find it scary, but she doesn’t.

By now, the fact that he has a room separate from hers is a theoretical consideration only. David comes to her every night, curls on his side of the bed, and waits for her to spoon against him. They do this again tonight, with no acknowledgement that they’ve spent the day debating the need to confront the gods.  Even as their bodies fit together, the touch is as chaste as it would be between very small children.

Elizabeth knows she needs physical contact, some kind of affection, but if she sleeps in David’s arms every night and feels the warmth of another body next to hers, she’ll be all right. Staying sane out here matters. This is the least complicated way. And while David might be … curious, he is incapable of real sexual frustration. He can go on like this forever.

But later that night, or early the next morning, Elizabeth wakes up hours off-schedule. David is asleep, or whatever passes for sleep with him. His arm curves around her, so that her back it against his belly, his hand against her abdomen. Her singlet has ridden up in the night so that his fingers rest against bare skin.

A shiver runs through her. It is answered by heat, so sudden and so overwhelming that Elizabeth has to gasp.

She can never walk away from an unanswered question for long. In the end, always, she has to know.

He awakens as she shifts against him. This is nothing new, a phenomenon he has even learned to like. But then he realizes this movement is deliberate. Intended to wake him.

David doesn’t open his eyes, the better to analyze the complex set of sensations. Elizabeth’s hand is over his own, pressing it more firmly against her abdomen. He splays his fingers slightly, signaling that he is awake, no more than that. She responds by locking her fingers with his and moving his hand upward, over the slight swell of her belly, onto her rib cage, beneath her singlet, until his thumb brushes the lower curve of her breast. Elizabeth sighs softly. 

Does she desire sexual intercourse or merely stimulation? She seems to prefer slow, gradual intimacy, and yet this is a very strong signal. David decides to make no assumptions, to proceed carefully. If he receives conflicting responses, he will simply ask her what is preferred.

David arches closer to her, so that her hips fit against his groin. When she wiggles back against him, he initiates an erection – the first time he has ever done so. It’s startling how good it feels … the swelling, the increasing hardness, the uptick in sensitivity that focuses him almost entirely on feeling the curve of her flesh through his shorts.

“Mmmm.” Elizabeth pushes back against him, nestling his erection against the cleft of her buttocks. She likes this. Intercourse seems more probable. David feels himself getting even harder; the feedback loop is almost instantaneous.

So he moves his hand to cover her breast. His thumb finds her nipple, and this time she’s the one hardening for him. David lowers his face into the arch of her neck and traces a line along her backbone with his tongue.

That makes her gasp, and then she turns toward him. At first he is only aware of a strange sensation of disappointment – he likes the feel of her breast in his palm – but then he sees the fire in Elizabeth’s eyes. Intercourse is all but certain. He has understood her.

For some reason he had not anticipated that. It is a customary act during sexual congress – but it is one that has more to do with affection than stimulation. At least, in most circumstances.

As she opens her mouth against his, he follows suit. Kissing turns out to be complicated. There are many variables: tongue penetration, pressure, duration, angle, and the unguessable element of Elizabeth’s response. David pays very close attention to the way she breathes, the motions of her lips, the hungry little sounds she makes in the back of her throat as she twines her legs around his. It is amazing to him how profoundly focused he is – the thousand constant running subroutines in his mind all drowned out by the drumbeat of her pulse.

Also unanticipated is the level of physical pleasure he already feels, though as yet she has made very little effort to directly stimulate him. The sexual subroutines are all interconnected, he surmises; even kissing and fondling provides significant input.

David rolls Elizabeth onto her back and lowers himself over her so that his erection will press down on her clitoris. This is indirect stimulation, as they are still wearing their underwear, but he understands that this is often extremely effective. When he begins grinding against her, matching the tempo of their kisses, she arches her back, and her head lolls to the side as though she were in some sort of trance.

At first he feels pride. Elizabeth is experiencing pleasure; he is performing more than adequately; she will have what she needs. But then he notices her closed eyes, the way she hasn’t said a single word or even looked at him except for one instant before they kissed.

Is she – pushing herself past some sort of inner qualms? That would be natural enough. She might be pretending that he is someone else entirely. A human. Charlie Holloway, for instance.

And suddenly he can’t stand it. There’s no reason why he should care but he cannot continue like that. He will not.

David braces his hands against hers and presses them down against the mattress as he thrusts against her harder, enough to make her gasp and open her eyes. He hasn’t hurt her – if anything, she liked that – but the peculiarity of his own actions bewilders him, and for a moment he goes still, unsure what to do.

That malfunctioning interface must be analyzed in-depth, soon.

“David?” Elizabeth smiles up at him, and he realizes then that she hasn’t been imagining anything other than the truth. “I wasn’t thinking. This is your first time. I’m being rather selfish, aren’t I?” 

“Not at all.” He relaxes his grip on her hands, braces his elbows on either side of her shoulders. She responds by reaching up to twine her fingers in his hair.

“Very much.” David moves against her again so that he can watch her smile turn into a catlike grin.

“Mmmm. Here. Skin against skin usually feels good. Let’s see what that’s like for you.”

Without leaving his embrace, she manages to shimmy out of her singlet – a remarkable display of agility, David thinks – and then helps him remove his T-shirt. When their bodies come together again, he can feel the points of her nipples against his chest, the weal of her scar against his abdomen. “Skin against skin,” he murmurs as he begins kissing his way downward.

Her breasts are small but extremely sensitive. She only likes him to use his teeth very sparingly, but strongly prefers oral to manual stimulation. This seems to be a very effective method of producing arousal; Elizabeth goes from holding onto his shoulders to clinging to him, pushing herself against his open mouth until he finally slides his arms beneath her waist and rises to his knees, towing her with him. Now she’s supported there, knees on the mattress but her entire torso limp in his arms, head dangling backward as he bends to continue sucking at her. Her rate of respiration has sharply risen, and a fine sheen of sweat has salted the taste of her skin.

She finally rights herself enough to lift his face from her breasts and kiss him again. One of her hands trails down his chest, into his shorts, and takes hold of his erection. David could not have guessed what level of pressure would provide the maximum effect, but somehow Elizabeth already knows.

Surely she is only stimulating him out of habit, remembering what she did with male human lovers. She would not do this if she were thinking of him as what he really is…

“What about this?” Elizabeth whispers as her fingers circle and stroke. No, she knows him. “Do you like this?”

“Very much.” His voice is rougher than it has been since his exposure outside the ship. Why does his entire body react in this way to her?

More puzzling: Why is he so gratified to know that she remembers exactly who and what he is?

Unable to answer this, David decides to begin the process of bringing her to orgasm. There are lengthier, more elaborate and more arcane activities they could engage in, but for now, simplicity. He pushes her down gently onto the bed and strips away her underwear; she helps him, with a shimmy of her hips. Then he lowers his mouth between her legs.

There is little agreement in source texts as to what methods provide ideal oral/clitoral stimulation, and such evidence as he has suggests a wide spectrum of preferences among individual women. Pornography often portrays this act but in almost no detail. David has decided to change technique until he finds something she responds to strongly.

He puckers his lips around her, uses his tongue at the very tip, and keeps the suction gentle but constant. When he finds a rhythm that makes her pulse quicken again, he keeps it for a while, then begins very gradually to speed up.

Elizabeth starts to push herself against him, matching his rhythm; her thigh muscles tighten against his palms. His lips and tongue are wetter, the scent of her arousal stronger. David quickens just a little more –

She doesn’t cry out. Instead she exhales sharply, again and again, and he feels the momentary irregularity of her pulse in her femoral artery. He continues the stimulation as long as her breathing holds that pattern, but then she takes in a deep breath and slumps against the mattress.

Climax within two minutes – this is under human averages, and so his choice of technique was effective. But what if she would have preferred a more gradual build to orgasm? And was this stronger or weaker, more or less satisfying? Would she want repeated orgasms? David wishes to know very badly, even though he feels sure he should allow her a moment’s respite before asking any questions.

But Elizabeth speaks first. “Your turn,” she whispers, low and husky.

She pushes herself up on her elbows; her hair is mussed, and there’s a flush to her skin that greatly enhances her appearance, in his opinion. “David – you can, you know –

?” Then her eyes widen. “Can’t you? You said pleasure, and I thought – but is that just – ”

“I’m not sure, to be honest. They tied more human DNA into my organic material than into most robots. I was one of the first models of my line, so data is incomplete.”

Elizabeth smiles a little. “Then let’s collect more data.”

It is perhaps a joke, but David sees it as her attempt to meet him on his terms, kindly meant.

He slips off his underwear, and she takes hold of his erection again as he lowers himself over her. The missionary position is curiously popular in Western cultures despite its limited opportunities for clitoral stimulation – but this is what she’s inviting him into, and perhaps this is her way of signaling that her earlier orgasm was satisfactory. He’s pleased to think that he’s done well.

But then she winds her legs more tightly around him, and she guides him into her, and he isn’t thinking about that any more. He isn’t thinking at all any more.

Every system seems to shut down at once. All David is aware of is heat and wetness and soft enveloping pressure and he

“The level of sensory input is – very high.”

It had not occurred to him there could be a good way to be so profoundly imbalanced, but – “Yes,” he says, and then he starts to move.

At first all David can think is that much of human behavior finally makes sense to him. No wonder human beings will act stupidly, or against their interest in other ways, in order to achieve this. Right now he is surprised they ever get around to doing anything else.

But what passes for a pulse within him – very deep, so well sheltered that only he could ever feel it – that’s quickening now. Although he feels no need to vocalize in the way Elizabeth did, he notes that he is breathing faster again, and through his mouth. He is even more imbalanced than before. This is wonderful, and yet it cannot be right. “I think I am experiencing overload.”

Elizabeth kisses him, then whispers against his lips, “That’s normal.”

It can’t be. He should stop. He can’t stop. Impulse control is gone. Everything is gone.

Then he shuts down completely, absent audio or visual input entirely, losing everything in a rush of physical pleasure that tells him exactly where he is human, down to the cell.

, he thinks, before realizing that if this had happened he would be unable to think anything at all.

David opens his eyes. He’s lying across Elizabeth, who brushes his hair back from his face. “Are you okay?”

Her face lights up in a grin. “Yeah? Good. What do you think?”

Elizabeth laughs and laughs for what seems to be pure delight, and while he cannot join her, he likes just listening to the sound.

It was all orderly enough at first. Awakening beside David as his lover wasn’t so different from the few dozen times they’d woken up with each other before. In those initial days, they went about things more or less as usual until bedtime – and then it was as though David flipped an “on” switch that put him into fantastic-lover mode.

Then, one day over lunch, David approached the table in such a way that made her think he would sit beside her rather than opposite – a move unusual enough to count as, well a

. But he was only delivering a tray of some slightly less pickled stuff to her before going around. She sighed in frustration, and he froze in place. “Is there some problem, Elizabeth?”

“No. This was very thoughtful of you.” But David cocked his head, clearly aware he was not being told the whole truth. So Elizabeth continued, “It’s just – I had thought you might be about to – initiate some kind of physical contact. That was an unreasonable expectation. I realize that.”

He stood there for a moment before replying. “Why would you think I would behave this way at lunch time?”

She tries, always, to answer him fully and honestly. If nothing else, David makes her think. “Maybe I was holding you to a human standard. A human lover might initiate sex at an unpredictable time or place. It’s – spontaneous. Creative. Sometimes we like it.”

“Do you mean it would be acceptable to have sex now?”

“If you wanted to,” Elizabeth said, thinking he only sought information, but then the lunch tray was down, and David was behind her – he moved at cyborg speed for this – running his hands along her back, around her waist, towing her up to stand in front of him. “Oh.

He stopped, hands already on her breasts. “Did I misunderstand you?”

“No. I just – I thought you didn’t have human desire.”

“I don’t.” David bit softly at her earlobe as he reached around to the zipper of her coverall and tugged it down, an almost inaudible purr between her breasts. “But I am naturally willing to repeat any pleasurable experience.” 

“Got it,” Elizabeth said, shrugging off the top of her coverall. Within five minutes her hands were braced against the table, her legs spread wide, while David fucked her from behind.

Since then her daily routines have been shot all to hell. They still get maintenance done, even get language lessons in, but there’s

time to kill, hours and weeks and months on end. There’s no one to interrupt. No shortage of places and positions. And David never, ever gets tired.

, she thinks, straddling David in one of the oversized chairs, riding him until her thigh muscles burn and it feels as though his cock has almost split her open. His head is tilted backward, his face illuminated with the kind of wonder he reserves for sex or holograms of the universe. It’s the second time they’ve had sex today. It’s only a couple of hours after lunch.

Yes, she’s created a monster who wants sex all the time, all day, every day. But David’s not the monster. It’s her.

Afterward, they clean up. (This requires very little; while David produces some kind of lubricant, he doesn’t ejaculate.) As David steps neatly back into his coverall, she idly considers suggesting they just turn up the heat and do without clothes. It might save time.

But then Elizabeth catches herself. Half the reason she let herself take David as a lover was to normalize her life to some degree – to remember what it was like to interact with people, as David is the closest she’ll get to that in years. If she instead corrupts him, turns him into little more than her personal gigolo, that defeats the purpose. And, besides … it’s not right.

“I’m getting carried away.” She laughs, but she’s self-conscious in a way she’s virtually never been around David. “Really, I’ve got to learn to control myself.”

“Do you mean that you would request intercourse less often?” No denying it: He looks disappointed.

Elizabeth tries to put this in the simplest possible terms. “I don’t want to turn into – someone without discipline, or courtesy. I don’t want to turn into one of those deep space explorers you told me about, who used their robots so much nothing got done.”

David zips up his own coverall, then hers, every motion precise. “Do you see no difference between their behavior and yours?”

David’s reply is quiet, almost grave. “The difference is that you need my consent, and I give it.”

That catches her short. It’s not that Elizabeth doesn’t know David’s an equal part of this, or at least very nearly; it’s just hard to think of him having the same kind of responsibility. But to deny him that is to deny his personhood – and already Elizabeth believes that’s more than just a useful mental shorthand she uses. “Point taken. But it’s okay to draw a line, all right?” She tosses her hair, making a joke of being flirtatious to cover the last of her unease. “Don’t let me turn into a sex maniac.”

David smiles. “I’ll do my best. In the meanwhile, we are fulfilling all necessary ship functions. Now, shall we return to our work on Phoenician writing systems?”

Elizabeth nods, and he kisses her and goes out the door, trusting that she will follow.

But she hesitates for a moment. That’s the first time he ever kissed her without waiting for her to initiate the kiss.

Then she laughs it off. She wanted normal behavior, didn’t she? David probably saw in films that people kiss each other, or read it in books. It’s not as though she’s going to get prudish about a kiss five minutes after they’re done fucking.

For hours she attempts to write in Phoenician script, the letters rendered even more spidery by her unpracticed hand. When she was little, her father used to make her write with a pen or pencil sometimes (“

He kept a journal in ink. Years later she found it among the few of his belongings that were saved for her, but it had sustained water damage, and all those words her father wrote were just blue blurs on warped, wavy paper.) By now, like most of humanity, she’s seriously out of practice.  

David, meanwhile, can write in any language; he can even write in fonts. She made him do a sentence in Bodoni, once.

“We should move on to the Engineers’ alphabet soon,” he says, which is his way of approving her work. “Learning their letters – excuse the verbal shorthand. The written symbols sometimes indicate syllables rather than letters.”  

He is precise to the point of pedantry, but by now Elizabeth almost likes this about him. “I take it you felt you understood their writing better than their speech.”

In David’s world, subjectivity is probably very, very bad. Elizabeth stifles her smile. “I’ve dealt with syllabic alphabets before, so never fear.”

David doesn’t notice her temporary confusion, absorbed as he is in scanning and logging their day’s work. It’s as though he thinks they might have to pass an inspection at any moment. “Easily the most beautifully designed phonetic alphabet in existence, possibly in all human history. Maybe all history, not just human – the Engineers’ system is far less elegant than Hangul. An entirely different writing system for vowels and consonants, letter shapes related to the phonemes represented … Elizabeth? Are you well?”

“How did you know I used to study Hangul? I never achieved full fluency. So it’s not in my records. Not even in my school transcripts.”

He’d thought the World Health Organization might send him to Korea next. It makes Elizabeth’s heart ache to think about the plans he made, the future her father never had. Still, she doesn’t lose focus. “I never mentioned that to you. We’ve only talked about ancient languages, not living ones.”

that he watched her dreams. But he said it at a moment when his endless nosiness was the last thing on her mind, and she hasn’t thought about it since. She doesn’t particularly like thinking about it now.

, Elizabeth tells herself. “Did you watch all our dreams?”

“Periodically, yes. It began as a means of monitoring conditions within the brain for everyone in cryosleep. Normal dreaming indicates normal function. Then I became … interested.”

This is a man who watched “Lawrence of Arabia” 417 times. What wouldn’t you do, if you were that bored?

But just as Elizabeth’s decided not to take it personally, David continues, “Yours were the ones I returned to most often.”

“Yours were the most complex and varied. Also, many of your dreams are rooted in memories, which meant I was able to form a clearer narrative of your life. Many others dream more in – symbols, visual metaphors. I could guess at meaning but never be certain.”

“Why did you want to understand my life? You had access to my records.”

“Those are only facts. Looking at your dreams – ” He hesitates, but now he isn’t primarily judging her reaction, she realizes; he is trying to understand his own urges. “—I thought perhaps I would understand more of what it meant to be human. The others only showed me their urges and their fears. You showed me much more.”

Elizabeth hugs her knees to her chest; the scar across her belly remains stiff, as it always will.

“And I liked the intensity.” David’s smile is thin and almost fierce sometimes; she has learned that’s when it is most sincere. “You don’t think or feel or live by half-measures. Extraordinary how many humans do.”

Despite everything, she finds that she isn’t offended by David’s intrusion. It isn’t his nature to understand privacy anything more than a social nicety; no wonder, as his programmers didn’t give him any for himself. Yet there’s a question she desperately wants to ask.

It might hurt his feelings. She believes by now that he has feelings of a sort. For a moment, he stands there, uncertain, a dead alphabet glowing between them on the table that divides his half of the room from hers.

To hell with it. She has to know. “What did Charlie dream?”

“He frequently dreamed of sex, both with you and other women, though those were inexact enough that I believe they may have been mere fantasy figures. He dreamed of coming home again, most particularly of eating Italian food again. Pizza, from a place called – “

They say the next word together: “Antonio’s.” Just down the block from their place in Chelsea.

For a moment Elizabeth can feel the hot pizza box in her hands, hear Charlie’s laughter, imagine herself wearing jeans and a sweater – going back up the steps into her old apartment, the one with fairy lights above the curtains and a framed Rothko print. It’s so real to her that for a moment Elizabeth feels she can smell the air (incense and cedar), hear one of Charlie’s horrid atonal jazz albums on the sound system, feel Charlie putting his arms around her from behind.

The illusion shatters in an instant. That place is home to her no longer; she missed it so vividly but now suddenly knows she’ll never miss it again. She’s not that woman any longer. There’s no other way for her to live except as who she is now – no other home but the

David continues as smoothly as though she’d never spoken. “Dr. Holloway also had a recurring nightmare about a cave.”

“The one where the ceiling collapses,” she whispers. “And he’s digging for me and can’t find me.”

David pauses. “Sometimes. Sometimes he found you but you were already dead.”

“It frightened him very much. He cared for you deeply.” That’s as close as David has ever come to being nice about Charlie, as much grace as he’s ever been able to show.

She leans her head forward; her curtain of long hair flows around her. How Charlie would have liked to have seen it. But he’s not here to see, not any longer. That’s easier to accept now.

“You know so much about me,” Elizabeth says. “And I know so little of you.”

“I wish there were more to know.”

When she looks up at David, for an instant she glimpses how terrible it would be to be empty inside – and not totally empty, just enough to know it.  

Peter Weyland has a lot to answer for on the other side, but Elizabeth now believes his greatest crime was imprisoning a soul within a machine.

David realized this morning that he had not completed compressing a data file for Weyland Industries in three days. This task is largely meaningless, as he will only be able to deliver the file if and when he and Elizabeth are again within transmission distance of Earth. Yet it is a basic function he is programmed to perform. Instead he … forgot. Anything programmed within him should be impossible to forget, but apparently it isn’t, at least not any longer.

His connections to Weyland have moved significantly lower in his hierarchy of functions. Everything is reordered, and the result should be chaos.

You are an Englishman. Are you not loyal to England?” “To England, and to other things

Instead he feels a kind of clarity he has never known before.

Were this all, David would gladly accept it. He is more content to serve Elizabeth than any other human he has ever known; he believes that he is keeping her sane, sometimes even happy. Sex is a greater pleasure and preoccupation than he would ever have thought possible before. And it satisfies him on some level – the level his new knowledge of hubris hasn’t been able to change – to think that millennia of human curiosity about the nature of the divine might be answered with a robot’s help.

But the broken interface that allows this change in his priorities – it plays a role in other functions as well. For instance, his coolant flow has slowed in the past few months; thus far, the difference is minimal, but progressive. His reaction time to basic stimuli has also slowed. Although he is still far faster than any human being, sometimes even faster than humans can see, this too may change in time.

It is David’s responsibility to mention this to Elizabeth, but he doesn’t. He rationalizes that he does not yet know anything for certain. Telling her of potential problems that might never materialize will only cause her undue stress.

“Are you quite certain?” he says one afternoon, after she has already wound a silvery blanket around her shoulders and he has the scissors in hand.

“Absolutely.” Elizabeth tosses her head, perhaps saying farewell to her long hair. “Cut away.”

David begins trimming away smaller bits at the ends, going slowly. Humans are strangely emotional about their hair, and he knows that her decision to wear hers long was in some way connected to Dr. Holloway. But she doesn’t react. She even smiles. It’s good to think that in some way she has been able to heal.

“Your hair has changed a lot too,” she says. “It’s hard to remember you as a blond.”

He has been able to cut his own hair with perfect accuracy, one of the tricks he has that amuses her so, like writing in fonts. But he still thinks of it as looking wrong, still sometime idly wonders whether he will in time be able to synthesize the chemicals to dye it again. “As close as I ever got to being Lawrence.”

Elizabeth is silent for a moment before she says, “Actually, I think you’re a great deal like Lawrence. Maybe more than you realize.”

“I await this explanation with great interest.”

She’s always so thoughtful before she speaks to him about something complicated. She strives for clarity, for both her sake and his. David likes this about he; he always did.

Finally she says, “You’re not merely a robot any longer. You know that, don’t you? I realize that – our situation – maybe I’m anthropomorphizing. But I don’t think I am, not entirely. There’s more to you than any other robot I’ve ever heard of. And yet – ”

David finishes the sentence for her. “Nor am I human, nor can I ever be. Just as Lawrence could no longer be an Englishman, but could never truly become an Arab.”

Careful of the scissors, she reaches back; he stills his work enough for her to accomplish her goal and wrap her fingers around his wrist. “Would you want to be human?”

“No.” Yet that is an incomplete answer. He should attempt to give Elizabeth at least some fraction of the thoughtfulness she gives him. “However, like any robot, I would wish to – overcome my limitations.”

“Did you really never see that in Lawrence before? I always thought you knew it, that this was why you loved the movie so.”

“I never saw it consciously. Perhaps that is why I responded to the story, though I did not realize it.” There’s more to it than that, isn’t there? The beautiful cinematography, the way Lean’s camera captured the vastness and stark glory of the desert: That’s part of it too. But maybe this also resonated for him on levels he didn’t see; maybe that’s why it was meaningful to a robot who spent the majority of his hours looking into outer space and speaking to no one.

Elizabeth rubs her thumb against his inner wrist before releasing him to return to work. “More than a robot,” she says softly. “You even have an unconscious.”

He must, mustn’t he? David had never seen it in this light before. If he possesses this, then he may be prey to other human weaknesses, like neurosis, or depression, or –

“There.” He steps back to study his work, though he already knows this is correct. “Your hair is in the same style as it was when the journey of the

“I miss having a mirror,” she says, then laughs. “That’s not true. I haven’t missed it once, not until this moment. And I trust you, David.”

It’s a joke, nothing more, but it still strikes him, all at once, how extraordinary it is that she could say that. After everything that happened, after everything he did to her and the man she loved, she can trust him. “Elizabeth?”

“I’d like to make love, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Her smile is wry. “So polite all of a sudden.” Her slippered foot finds the inside of his calf, strokes up and down with her toes. This is no sense an erogenous zone and yet David immediately senses input for his sexual subroutines. More evidence of routing gone awry. “Where’s the fellow who peeled off my coverall and took me on the lunch table?”

Next to it, not on – though he makes note of this for future encounters, as Elizabeth seems to like the idea. “I know how you enjoy your evening run, which would have to be postponed.”

“Oh, really? This is going to take a while?”

David was merely attempting to match her playful mood, but her eyes darken, and he knows he’s already excited her. She pushes off the silvery blanket; discarded locks of her hair drift to the floor. They can clean them up later.

(And there, again, he has assumed that Elizabeth will help him with a task, as indeed she almost always does, but his programming should default to sole responsibility for such menial work.)

For a moment he thinks about how each lock of her hair contains her DNA entire, enough information to clone her a hundred thousand times over. And yet David thinks they could never recreate Elizabeth as she is.

David is exquisitely obliging, even enough to be cruel.

“Mmmm.” Elizabeth twists beneath his touch. “More.”

“I don’t think you’re ready.” The very evenness of his voice has become a turn-on for her.

They are half-sitting on the bed, David propped on pillows and Elizabeth propped on him, her back against his chest, her legs splayed wide. Instead of giving her what she asked for, he takes his hand from between her legs. She whimpers in protest, but he ignores this, instead reaching up to cup her breast, thumb her nipple, kiss the back of her neck.

He’s been doing this for nearly two hours now: bringing her to the brink of orgasm, holding her there, then stopping short. Elizabeth likes edging –

it – but nobody else has ever done it to her for this long. None of the other guys could stand it; sooner or later, they have to give in, because that’s the only way they’re going to get to fuck her.

“You’re not really angry,” he murmurs against her shoulder.

No, she isn’t. But Elizabeth thinks she might be about to run mad.

So she lifts her pelvis, using her body to beg for it, and he understands. His hand gives her breast another squeeze, one so hard it almost hurts; she sucks her breath in through her teeth. Then his touch trails along her belly, over the ridge of her scar, all the way down until he pushes three of his long fingers into her. It opens her up, makes her burn a little, and Elizabeth aches for his cock. He’s not going to give it to her yet – she knows that, knows she’ll come first – but now she wants him inside her almost as badly as she wants to finish.

His fingers make a slick sound as he thrusts them in and out. “You’re more ready than I realized.”

David slides his hand back up, his fingers kneading her just so, finding the back-and-forth rhythm that works so well for her. Elizabeth can’t give him any more orders, can’t even cry out, can only rock against his touch as she feels the rising heat there, that sudden swell and throb and give.

Finally she comes, panting as she rides the wave. David always knows precisely how long to keep going, exactly when to slow and stop. It’s something about her pulse, he once explained.

“Your wish is my command,” he jokes, which if you think about it is a rather extraordinary joke for him to make.

She prefers not to think about that, or anything else besides the essential. “Then fuck me.”

Instantly he rolls her onto her belly, so that she’s spread-eagled on the mattress beneath him. Elizabeth thrusts her ass against him to make it easier for him to slip his cock inside. He takes her hard and fast, so much so that any human male would get off in about a minute flat. Instead he keeps pumping her for so impossibly long, and yet it feels so good, and she’s pressed hard enough against the mattress that the pressure –

When she comes again, she cries out – rare, for her, but this is too extreme, too overwhelming for her to hold back. David tenses against her in the sudden stillness she’s learned to recognize as his orgasm. They very nearly came together.

They slide apart, and Elizabeth rolls over to tug him close. David pillows his head on her breast and slings his arm across her waist. She gulps in deep, thirsty breaths and tries to remember the last time she felt this good.

It ought to horrify her. She’s having better sex with a robot than she ever did with a human. But instead it seems only natural. David’s capabilities are undeniable; more than that, they are free of so many of the distractions and stresses that otherwise cut so deeply into sexual energy. Why wouldn’t this be the ideal playground?

And what she told him before is true: She trusts him.

Elizabeth strokes David’s now-dark hair and marvels – not for the first time – at the sheer power of his form. She knows that his “muscles” are in fact nothing of the sort, but she thinks of it as truth in advertising; his strength goes far beyond even what his body suggests. The contrast between that and the way he’s curled next to her now, utterly vulnerable …

She kisses his forehead. “Silly, none of us made ourselves beautiful. You don’t have to disclaim credit any more than a lovely woman or handsome man would. Just accept that you are wonderfully made – perfectly constructed – and say thank you.”

David props himself up on one elbow. “Elizabeth, I am concerned that I’m not operating normally.”

“What?” The change in mood is so sudden that it takes her brain a moment to catch up. “Are you all right?”

“I’m not certain.” He then goes into a lengthy technical explanation, which seems to involve that interface between his shoulder blades, the one he’s mentioned before. As he speaks, Elizabeth draws one of the sheets around her; she’s self-aware enough to know she’s trying to protect herself. But there’s no protection from this.

When he finishes detailing all the many, many errors in his operation, she manages to say, “Is this -- serious?”

“That remains to be determined. I should perform an in-depth diagnostic.”

“You mean, what you do when you’re asleep?”

“Yes, but on a far longer cycle. I might be asleep for four or five days. If a repair cycle is initiated it could be somewhat longer.”

Four or five days. Maybe a little more. Okay. She can handle that. If something’s wrong with David’s operations, they have to figure it out right away so they can do something. Still – it will be hard to be alone in this vast, dark thing. Her heart is pounding, and she feels angry (not at David, she doesn’t know at what, but angry all the same), even though it’s just four or five days. But Elizabeth manages to nod. “All right. Is there anything I should do for you during that time?”

David cocks his head, and she knows he can tell how afraid she is. Probably he’s still reading her pulse. But he allows her the pretense of courage. “No. I’ll be perfectly all right.”  He rises from the bed and begins to dress. “I should go to my own room for this. You might find my unconscious body unsettling.”

Elizabeth runs her hand through her newly cropped hair, trying to focus. She can do this without him if need be. She knows this, even if she doesn’t like it. “You’re the one who’s been working with the navigational systems. Are you certain your calculations are correct?” All at once she imagines them utterly lost amid the stars, heading not for the Engineers’ homeworld but for the emptiest, blackest void in the cosmos.

“The navigational calculations should not be flawed. My mental processes are, however, compromised.”

David stands there in his coverall, hair unmussed, as though he’d just emerged from his packaging rather than two hours of sex. His words are as unhurried and smooth as always, even as he says this. “I have noticed a fundamental reordering of my priorities. As an upgraded model, I of course have more psychological subroutines than most robots. Additionally, I was given the ability to put Peter Weyland before any other human being – not only to obey him, but also to admire him. To desire his approval and even his affection. He was never satisfied with mere obedience. He wanted devotion. My capacity for such devotion should have ended with his death, but it has not. Instead it has focused upon you, and become magnified. My old protocols no longer govern my behavior. I find it simple, even imperative, to disregard whatever aspects of my programming would not work toward your contentment and safety. At times I find myself reflecting on irrelevant details of your behavior that I nonetheless consider pleasing. Your happiness is my first priority; it is very nearly my only priority. Thus I believe that my malfunctioning has allowed my capacity for devotion to develop into a simulacrum of love. It does not endanger you, and I hope it does not offend you. But it is evidence that I am no longer functioning normally.”

He’s just told her he loves her. The robot loves her. She should find it absurd or hilarious, but instead she finds herself deeply moved.

It’s not a dozen red roses, or a serenade. Maybe it is a heart-shaped box. Whatever it is, it’s what David has to give.

Elizabeth says only, “That’s why you didn’t tell me about the malfunctions before. You didn’t want to frighten me.”

“I will awaken from the diagnostic; of that much I am certain. I may be able to complete whatever repairs are necessary at that time. So there is no need for fear, Elizabeth.”

“I’m not frightened,” she says, which is only partly true, and then adds something completely true. “I’m not offended either.”

“Good.” The small smile on his face breaks her wide open.

“I’m not afraid for my own survival; I can’t be. I could scarcely function otherwise. As for my condition, there is little point in speculating before the diagnostic. Are there any final tasks I should complete before I begin?”

“I’d rather you got started. The sooner you go to sleep, the sooner you wake up.” She reaches for her own coverall. “I’ll go with you.”

There’s no reason for her to accompany him, and she expects David to object, but he doesn’t. They walk together to his room – dusty from disuse, now – brush things off, settle him in the bed. Elizabeth even tucks him in, and sits on the side of his bunk as he closes his eyes.

He’s unconscious immediately, of course. But she remains there a long time watching him. David doesn’t move at all while he’s asleep. He might as easily be dead.

Not that it wasn’t before, but Elizabeth and David mostly kept close to each other. She hadn’t realized how much she relied on even the sound of his footsteps, the rustle of his clothing.

Although she sticks to the routine she established when their journey on this vessel first began, she now sees what a flimsy defense it really is. Elizabeth works on her linguistics, checks and double-checks calculations, eats on schedule, runs twice a day instead of once.  Without the input of one other person – or robot, or whatever David is now – it all becomes makework.

as her new home, but in David’s absence she’s reminded how alien it is. As she runs through the corridors, she glances at ceilings that arch forty, fifty feet overhead. She notices anew the ridges that swell and stripe every wall, like thick, ropey veins. Her footsteps sound too loud. So does her breathing.

Earth is no longer her home, but this ship isn’t either.

It only takes two days before she begins to imagine movement in the shadows. Tentacles. Teeth.  Elizabeth’s mind goes back to the last place she found herself imprisoned, to the surgical pod where she saw that slimy alien thing that had been inside her own body; it came from a ship like this. Her throat feels raw from her own remembered screams.

On the third night, she doesn’t go to her room. Instead Elizabeth lies down next to David. Even motionless, he provides some comfort.

Would that be true even if he were never going to move again? Not forever, she thinks. Not even for very long.

But she doesn’t miss David only in the way she might miss a security blanket, or a guard dog. She misses the cool precision of his speech. The way he smiles at the oddest moments, his smile guarded and yet real. How he dutifully pretends to feel some enthusiasm for their pickled food, so that she can pretend she doesn’t hate it. The constant pressure and rhythm of his tongue against her, pulsing at just the rate he knows will bring her off. All the extra detail he throws into every linguistic explanation, even though he pretends he’s too mechanical for any behavior as crass as “showing off.” How soft his kisses are first thing in the morning, and how his mouth always tastes as though he’d just finished brushing his teeth. His fingers stroking through her hair as she tries to sleep.

David completes the in-depth diagnostic after four days, ten hours and thirty-one minutes. He opens his eyes, sits up in his bunk and adjusts himself to Persephone time. At this hour, Elizabeth should be in the orrery.

As anticipated, when he enters the room, he sees Elizabeth sitting underneath the brilliant white holograms of the stars and planets around them. Her face is turned up to a constellation that as yet has no name. David allows himself to enjoy the sight of her rapt with fascination. This is how he likes her best.

But she hears him right away. “David!” Elizabeth bounds from her chair and comes to him, her arms around him in a moment. Do humans feel like this, when the one they love embraces them? It is difficult for him to imagine that they can. Humans betray love. They abandon it. They shun it when it comes from someone found to be objectionable for various obscure sociological reasons. None of that behavior would be possible if they felt like this.

How much Weyland must have wanted for himself, to create such a chasm within David to be filled.

“I missed you terribly.” She touches his hair, his shoulders, smiles up at him. “Were you able to complete your repairs? The diagnostic is complete?”

“The diagnostic is complete.” David takes a seat in one of the overlarge chairs; Elizabeth joins him in the same chair. There’s room for them both if they curl together. “We should discuss my findings.”

“I will continue to operate more or less normally for a period no less than fourteen months, no more than sixteen months. However, at some point within that time frame, my ability to compensate for lessening coolant pressure and calculation speed will finally fail, at which point operations will fall off drastically. I should no longer be allowed to make navigational calculations afterwards. It seems unlikely that my malfunctions would greatly affect my interpersonal behavior, but you may wish to separate my head again to make certain I cannot interfere with your running of the ship. I will retain some rudimentary functions for another few weeks, after which I will experience irreversible system failure.”

Elizabeth stares up at him. David knows she has heard and understood, but undoubtedly she is dismayed to learn she must continue the journey alone. However, he has already begun thinking of ways to ease the transition. It would comfort her to hear them.

So he says, “You are already well-versed in ship’s operations, but up until now we have understandably left higher-level calculations to me. Such calculations are nonetheless well within your capability. We should begin transitioning these tasks to you while I am still able to reliably double-check your work. You should be entirely self-sufficient long before I cease to function.”

“I said I had considerable capacity for self-repair, which is true. However, the damage done by my beheading and then my exposure to absolute zero – it goes beyond that.”

“You’re telling me you’ll be dead. That you’re going to die.”

To die he would have to be alive. But David knows what she means. “In essence, yes.”

“No.” Elizabeth’s voice shakes. “I can’t do this without you.”

“Your mathematical knowledge should be more than adequate.”

“I’m not talking about the fucking math!” She pushes away from him, stumbles out of the chair. “I don’t want you to die. I don’t want you to leave me. I don’t want to live on this ship alone. I need you here.”

David rises to stand in front of her. “I understand the difficulties humans face when in enforced solitude.” Even he would find it difficult going without “Lawrence of Arabia” to watch another 417 times. “But you do not need me, Elizabeth. Most human beings could not do it, but you are stronger than most humans. Far stronger.”  

“Oh, Jesus.” Her fingers go to the cross necklace she always wears – even during sex – and he knows she is not swearing but praying.

“You always survive,” he says quietly. “Always. No matter what it takes.”

Her eyes are already filled with tears. Shock, probably, and dismay. When she embraces him again, he holds on to her for as long as it takes her to calm herself, which is a very long time. David simply strokes her hair as though they were in bed together. She seems to find that touch soothing, usually, but today she is harder to console.

That night they do not make love. David would like to – already four days without seems inadvisable – but Elizabeth remains shaky. She holds him in a fierce grip, as though she could physically keep him from slipping away.

“No. I can’t be. But I don’t like the thought of leaving you alone.”

“I’ll run mad. I don’t want to run mad. It’s always frightened me more than anything else – the thought of losing the soundness of my own mind.”

He runs his thumb along the line of her arm, finds the notch inside her elbow. “Extended periods of solitude are extremely taxing psychologically. However, there are certain techniques you can use to begin to prepare. We will begin reviewing them tomorrow. For tonight you should attempt to rest.”

Elizabeth doesn’t even respond to that. “When I get back to Earth in the end, will they be able to fix you then?”

“After a total systems failure? Unlikely. I doubt they would even try.” As Weyland once said, he will be a collectors’ model. Probably he will be refurbished, made ornamental and put up for sale. It is doubtful they would even activate his higher circuits again.

“Elizabeth.” David kisses her forehead, then her mouth. “Your behavior is entering a recursive loop.”

She laughs brokenly against his chest. “It is, isn’t it?”

At last she falls quiet and closes her eyes. But she doesn’t sleep.

David does. More frequent deep maintenance will extend his operational time. The longer he can stay with Elizabeth, the easier this will be for her. He has no other priority.

The next few days are not entirely wasted, David thinks, but neither of them are operating at ideal efficiency. He is still calculating the optimum balance between his present usefulness and extending his operational life. And Elizabeth is … distracted.

Once he says to her, “The single best psychological defense against long periods of solitude is what is referred to as an ‘inward journey.’ You will want to methodically review various areas of knowledge, different eras of your life, books and films that have been meaningful to you. You can have very few new stimuli, but you can explore prior experiences in far greater depth.”

“Yes,” she says. “I understand.” He’s not sure she heard him.

On one level David realizes that Elizabeth will miss him. It would not be correct to say he is gratified by that; her pain is very real to him, too real to ever provide him pleasure. But the malfunction that now governs him helps him to understand how she might feel, and to know that it is not unlike his own reaction were he to lose her. They have – balance. Symmetry.

Given that their time together is limited, he finds it strange that she has gone so silent, that they no longer have intercourse. Perhaps she is weaning herself from contact now, so that his ultimate breakdown will be less shocking to her. That would be a sensible course of action.

Still, every night as get into bed, he hopes.

Finally, after five days, when she first stirs in the morning and he prepares to rise, Elizabeth puts out her hand to stop him. “Wait.”

“What for?” He hopes she has not fallen prey to the worst kind of magical thinking and begun expecting miracles. The gods of mythology might transform people into trees or stags, or raise Lazarus from the dead, but they do not fix machinery.

Elizabeth smiles at him. The familiar, far-away look in her eyes means there is something human he’s failed to understand. “I never pray

David nods, accepting the correction. “Then what have you prayed about?”

“What I should do next.” She sits up, and he sees how tired she is, how little she has rested these past few nights. “You said you would break down before we got back to Earth.”

“But you also told me how long you had. If I’ve understood the navigational system correctly, we have enough time

This is true but irrelevant. “You wish to travel to the Engineers’ homeworld. There is no way to accomplish that and reach Earth in time.”

“I know.” Elizabeth takes his hand in hers. “David – I made a choice, long ago, to treat you as a person instead of a thing. I made that choice to save myself. But I can’t go back on that choice now, not without sacrificing my own soul.”

He begins to understand but cannot believe. “You must continue. You will find your gods. You’ll have the answers humanity has waited for since the dawn of time.”

“I love you,” she says. “Maybe it’s only, what did you call it? A simulacrum of love. An illusion I’ve created in order to keep myself alive. But maybe it’s not. I only know I have to honor it.”

David doesn’t know what he could say to stop her. He can’t process this, can’t comprehend it. And yet he grips her fingers more tightly, as though holding on to her could help.

Elizabeth smiles, and her fear is gone now. There is no doubt, no hesitation. She has given up the quest that defined her life without regret. “I love you, and that makes it my job to take care of you, no matter what. There’s nothing more important the gods could ever have to teach me than that.”

A simulacrum. An illusion. A malfunction. They both know what they have is no more than this, that it cannot be any more than this. Yet these are the stars that guide them. This is the constellation they have to name.

“David,” she whispers, and her hand touches his cheek. On her face she can see disbelief and wonder. It is a common misperception that robots have no tears.

What humanity he has can only be a reflection of hers. Yet even the mere reflection of Elizabeth Shaw must burn so very brightly. Of course it would seem real.

They make love that morning, Elizabeth astride David, their movements slow and almost tender. Afterward she tells him to hell with their schedule, and she falls asleep on his chest. Her sleep is deeper than it has been since he told her about his malfunctions more than a week ago, and when she awakens hours later, she feels completely at peace for the first time in far longer.

There’s an irony to this, that she feels closer to God now that she has turned her ship away. But Elizabeth knows herself to be doing the right thing. The truth is not always comfortable or simple, but it

in a way that self-deception never does. She is acting from compassion, even from love, and that softens any sacrifice, even this one.

The next day, Elizabeth begins plotting their course home. Given the

’s elliptical travel patterns, it’s not as simple as throwing the gear into reverse; they actually have to keep going forward for a few weeks before they can reach the shortest route back home.

She is well aware her homecoming will be complicated. Before, she always thought of returning home with the ultimate answers; now, she will only be coming back to face others’ questions. Weyland Corporation will want to know where the

is, what became of Peter Weyland and Meredith Vickers, and no doubt they’ll hope for details about the mysterious, destructive lifeform known to her only as Negation. The university will be looking for scientific discoveries she’s failed to make. Worst of all, she will have to call Charlie’s parents and tell them how he died. Their mission received little enough attention in the media, but she suspects its failure will be a much bigger story.

On the other hand, she’s coming back with an alien spaceship. That’s gotta be worth something.

After all of that, then what? Elizabeth still holds the lease on that place in Brooklyn, but when she tries to envision walking inside it again, her imagination fails her.

The point is that David will be fixed. He will, for lack of a better word, live.

For now he continues to behave as though they will continue onward. This is less a matter of defying her and more a matter of playing it safe; conserving energy and doing no further damage are only prudent, given that their return home could be delayed by factors they can’t yet guess.  Really the only difference is that he sleeps – truly sleeps – at night, and that he lets her do all the navigational work and contents himself with double-checking the math later.

The day finally comes for them to change course and head home. Elizabeth, newly confident with the workings of the

, reaches for the flute to play a sequence of notes that should begin everything. As soon as she touches it, though, David’s hand comes to rest over hers.

“We went over the course several times.”

“Your navigation is flawless. I was referring to something else.”

They can input the course change anytime in the next few hours. Elizabeth settles back into the oversized chair. “What is it, David?”

Her first thought is a spark of hope that could so quickly turn into a flame. “Is your internal damage not that bad? Can you fix yourself after all?”

Elizabeth lets that hope go again. It blazed by as bright and swift as a comet, and now it’s gone. “Then we turn back.”

“Have you considered what will occur when we return to Earth?”

“They’ll fix you, and you’ll be all right.” This next is difficult to say, but she’s gone over the legalities in her head a few times now and doesn’t see any other path open to them. “Obviously Weyland Corporation owns you. Still, the contract I signed allows for hazard pay. I think anyone would agree that clause has been activated. It’s a lot of money – more than any robot model costs – and I bet if I offered to take you in place of my hazard pay, they’d agree. From that day on, well, we’d work it out. Together. You see?”

David takes her hand. “You imagine that I would object to having an owner. I don’t; that’s not in my nature. My concern is very different.”

“What, then? You don’t think the company would make the trade?”

“That seems probable, though not certain. But think back to what you first said. They will fix me. Elizabeth, they will put me back as I was before.”

She still doesn’t understand. Then she does, and it feels like the breath has been knocked out of her.

David believes that his love is a malfunction. He loves her because he is broken. That means, when he is fixed –

“I don’t know.” He pauses, then repeats, “Probable, though not certain.”

Although she has looked into the core of him, seen tubes and gears and milk-white coolant instead of bone and blood, she is still profoundly shocked to imagine that love itself could be taken out of him like any other broken part.

That’s because it’s not love, it can’t be, love isn’t a thing you can uninstall

Does he see her doubt? Her pain? He can’t, because he’s still smiling.

But then he says, “That is why I would choose to continue onward.”

It takes her a minute to absorb. When Elizabeth speaks again, her voice is unsteady. “You don’t want to lose it. The ability to love.” David nods. “Even though the price is your death, that’s what you’d choose.”

Elizabeth lifts his hand to her mouth and kisses it. She needs several moments before she’s able to go on with the conversation; he waits patiently, rubbing his thumb against her bottom lip.

 Finally, when she is again calm, she says, “You know precisely what’s wrong with you. Precisely what is and is not broken.”

“Then you can tell them what to fix and what not to fix. You tell them to leave that alone, utterly alone, and if they won’t listen to you, I’ll tell them, because

.” They will make the trade. They’ll make it or else. “It’s a chance, but a chance we have to take.”

“You’re assuming a great deal of cooperation from Weyland Corporation.”

“Yeah, well, I’m flying back to Earth in a giant fucking alien spaceship.” Weyland’s scientists would do a lot to get their hands on this technology, and by now she and David know the

get their hands on it unless they play ball. “I think that changes the rules a bit, don’t you?”

“I see your point.” Yet David still hesitates. “I cannot analyze this for myself, but it seems possible that I

Elizabeth forces herself to consider that very carefully. At last she nods. “If the techs say that seems likely, then – then I promise to give you the choice about whether or not to proceed.”

“You will allow me to cease operations if that is what I choose?” When she nods again, David’s relief is visible. “Thank you.”

“There’s one more thing you should consider. When we get back, I’ll keep every promise I’ve made to you. I swear it, and I keep my word. But when I ask myself how I’ll feel, whether my emotions will remain the same, I just don’t know.”

She knows they couldn’t live in the Brooklyn place, even though she still has the lease. The home she shared with Charlie can never be David’s. Beyond that, though, everything is hazy. He might become a mere object to her again, even though they will by then have spent years as lovers. She might love him for the rest of her life, even if that’s the craziest thing she could ever do. How likely is either possibility? Like David said of his repairs, she cannot analyze that for herself. Only the trip home will tell.

Questions alone are never enough for Elizabeth. Always, in the end, she must have answers.

“I recognize the possibility,” David says. “It is irrelevant.”

This means that he doesn’t ask to be loved in return, that it is his own ability to love he wants to hold on to no matter what. David’s robot selflessness has met his malfunctioning heart and created … what? Elizabeth isn’t sure either science or theology can answer, but she begins to think the answer might be extraordinary. That answer is another she must have, no matter what.

He remains worried for her, more than for himself. “You’re very certain that you can turn back without seeing your gods? I fear you will regret it.”

“It’s not easy,” Elizabeth confesses. “But I don’t know whether I would have liked their world without windows. Whether I could still respect creators who had so little regard for their creations.”

David’s eyes study her face as though he has seen something new there, something he didn’t expect. “You might find your creators less disappointing than you fear, if you were to truly know them.”

is in human hands, that becomes inevitable. The gods will be called to task eventually. “It doesn’t have to be me.”

With that she picks up the flute and sings the universe into being. The stars and planets revolve above them, around them, until they’re so much stardust. Earth takes shape, a tiny globe just in front of David’s face; he lifts his hands as though he would cradle it in his palms. Just the sight of it fills her with tenderness, and as it turns she finds her many homes: there New York where she lived with Charlie, and England where she was born, and Sweden where she grew up with her grandparents, and Russia where she did her post-doc, and Africa, where her father died. Once that seemed like such a varied life to her, and now she knows her travels had only just begun. 

shifts and hums, preparing for the first leap toward home, David says, “Elizabeth – you’re absolutely certain this is what you wish to do?”

“Absolutely.” The perfect answer comes to her, and she laughs. “Cross my heart and hope to die, it’s all perfectly true.”

His eyes light up, as they always do when she quotes his movie back to him. “By now you know Lawrence as well as I.”

Elizabeth smiles softly. “Yes, I think I do.”

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