04

  * Melted Butter *

  "Oh, what a lovely day to sing about!"

  Andromeda swung around on the tip of her toes, the golden sundress spinning with her, and when she closed her hands over her chest, the sunlight fell perfectly over her face, and her hair, and her skin. Outside, birds were a-singing and deer gathered listening at the round windows. The sun had chosen the most perfect place to sit, casting its rays through olive branches and pooling over her house in thousands of colours.

  She could feel the verse of a song coming to her, like petals swinging in a melodic breeze. And so she sang. She sang so beautifully, words chanting their way around the house into a medley of meanings. Each note bounced away over the painted walls and the wooden countertops. Oh, she sang. Until her breath expired and her lungs burned. Until her head spun and her feet faltered. Until there were no more meanings left to sing and the song was over. And then, she stopped.

  Andromeda stood upon a stage then, dressed in a velvety gown folded in rich purples. The cardboard walls of a countryside house fell backwards around her like a blooming flower, and a single tear dropped upon her pale cheek as she took a final, longing look at the crowd. Applause surged throughout the whole theatre, and she dipped into a curtsy, and everywhere people cheered, and stood, and cried. A night to be remembered, a night of glory. A night in which Andromeda had become a star.

  The faceless visage of each of the thousands of attendees could do nothing but stare at her.

  Andromeda smiled broadly and continued curtsying. "Oh, thank you! Thank you! You were all most wonderful tonight, and I cannot thank you enough for being here with us in such a symbolic time."

  The public was ecstatic. Flowers were sent flying, and yells of adoration resonated in the hall. And in the midst of the crowd, a voice rose. "Miss Andromeda Spark, oh please tell us where it all began! When did music come to you?"

  A simple question, but Andromeda couldn't find the person who asked it. Still, she felt compelled to answer. "Oh, what a perfect question! You see…" She lifted her chin, her voice taking on a nostalgic hum as the curtains closed behind her. "I was born in the sun-kissed hills of southern Aethiopia, where the wheat grew tall and the wind told of secrets to the mountains."

  She could picture it. She was in it. At seven years of age, wearing a flower crown and overalls several sizes too large, she waited on an anthracite chair. Yes, she waited. Always. In the ever-giant apartment atop the ever-tall spire. In the empty halls lined with shelves and crystal glasses, and on the balconies looking over the city.

  "We didn't have much…" Andromeda joined her hands. "Only love, laughter and music. Mama would sing while she baked and Papa…" she sighed.

  The metronome ticked next to the young Andromeda practising at the piano, and behind her, her furious dad appeared through the door, bolting through the room without so much as a glance at her. The only thing of interest was a glass, one crystalline glass filled with a copper liquid. And in a short gulp, the liquid's disappeared. And so was her dad… out as quickly as he'd come back. And so was her joy… gone as quickly as the tears had swelled.

  Only the smell stayed with young Andromeda, a bitter scent her father would often have on him.

  "Papa would come home covered in perfume and kisses…" she said with a melancholic smile. "Well, you know him, right? Always busy, that Cepheus. But thanks to him, we had a good life. Oh, yes, it was but a simple life. We made do with what we had… a farm-house, a few rooms, and Mama's teachings to guide me."

  In her memory, her mother entered, heels tapping a thunderous rhythm in the all white room. "Back straight, darling. If your posture fails, everything else does," she would say, and her young self would nod and always reply with a "yes, Mama." Oh, she would, lest she be punished.

  "…don't move while the ladies measure you."

  "Yes, yes, Mama!"

  "…don't go crying now or you'll have wrinkles on the morrow."

  "Yes, Mama."

  "…you're the most beautiful girl in the world. More beautiful even than those girls that live by the waters."

  "Yes, Mama…"

  The crowd had gone quiet before her, and the wave of cheers had receded to let interest bloom across their featureless faces. Andromeda, on her stage, finished her tale. "We had neighbours, and fields to play in, and the wind spoke to me, whistling over the prairie for me to listen. And I listened, and I learned. And that is how I came to enjoy music."

  That was a lie, of course. All just a lie. Young Andromeda had no one, only solitude and longing. But they didn't need to know.

  The spotlight burned bright on her, and the theatre held its breath.

  "And what about the cough?" one puppet finally asked.

  Andromeda's perfect acting face shivered, the look of disbelief twisting her lines into confusion. "The cough?" she asked in turn with a smile so grotesque. But she knew. Oh, she knew. And she saw it all for what it was. The crowd wasn't a crowd; it was a screen. And upon it, marked in digital opalescence were dreaded numbers, each of them a piece of herself crawling to the surface. Birthdate and weight, height and age, genome and expiration date. Her name divided, her self numbered.

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  And from each number came a sensation. A burning, terrifying sensation. And she felt it, rising in her chest… the flames, the lapping fire that burned her breath, and had she wanted to sing, she'd not be able to. Instead, a scream tore itself from her as she scratched and scratched, clawing at her ribcage, wanting to free herself from pain. And when she felt blood oozing beneath her nails… she gazed at the screen once more. But it was a screen no longer. In its place, a black mirror extended, spreading across all her vision and vast as the sea beyond the stars.

  Andromeda stared and stared at the vast expanse, and her reflection stared back. It was not the girl in a sundress dreading her father would come home, nor the pearl-clad daughter of proud Cassiopeia, but a stranger. A lonely lone stranger. And beneath the shredded dress and torn skin, beneath the broken ribs and worn lungs, under all flesh and bone, there was steel. A lattice of dark alloy.

  A void in her heart.

  And there was a smell at last. Sweet and warm. The smell of melted butter.

  When Andromeda awoke, she had not been alone; Perseus stood by her side. And for an instant, he looked almost like a true man with golden hair waving in the air.

  A trick of the light.

  His face was ever the carved thing made of obsidian and he waved a hand beyond her glass shield. The cocoon's purple light hummed gently and turned olive. Her limbs were heavy; her head was spinning. She blinked, and blinked once more, and the seal opened with a sigh.

  "Welcome back, Andromeda."

  The room came into focus and past her sleeping altar, Perseus extended a hand. "Careful," came his emulated voice, not quite symphonic. "You've been dreaming for quite some time… your body has yet to wake."

  There was something odd about him. About his answer. But she couldn't place it, and when she tried talking, the words caught behind dry lips. She was painfully devoid of water, and as if he'd read her mind, Perseus lifted a small vessel to her mouth, and she drank.

  "Good day, Pers," she tried after a gulp. "I'm glad to see you."

  He grabbed her shoulder with care and helped her sit on the side of the bedframe. "Likewise, Lady Andromeda." Perseus gestured to the window behind her. "Once again, you wake on cue. Voyager II drifts hours from Seriphos' orbit."

  So, she had made it. Through a wormhole and across the universe, Andromeda had made the journey beyond life as she knew it. A wonder she'd been able to suffer the trip, but a welcome one; she half-wanted to hug the damn machine standing still in front of her, but her muscles ached from dormancy. And he'd probably find it odd anyway.

  It then struck her that although the departure felt like a thing of yesterday, Perseus had lived through it all. Through weeks of space travel and possibly, through her dreams.

  Her eyes searched for his inlaid orbits. "How are you, Pers? How was the trip?"

  "Lonely…" He turned away from her, and she noticed the drawings behind him.

  Etched onto the white walls of her cell were fields of flowers, prairies filled with colours. And over it all, he had drawn the outline of a girl in red. "But I've found ways to pass the time."

  He was not the Perseus she had left behind. Of that she was sure then. Even behind the emulated diction, his voice was filled with a complexity he hadn't known before. His movements were different as well. His presence. Like the boy who once had promised her forever had returned a man who'd seen it.

  "You seem…" she started, approaching her fingers to his arm platings. "Changed."

  Perseus turned back to her, and softly, he grabbed her hand. "Then, that is what must have transpired," he announced. "For when we passed through to the Cyclades, my system recorded a load of anomalies. Errors in my system I couldn't explain. And under the brighter star of the Aegan system, radiation altered me further—the molecules in my memory mutating after weeks of inoculation. But try as I may, it was hard for me to be sure of the change I had felt." He looked at her. "But if you've noticed it too, it must be so."

  Andromeda withdrew her hand. Not harshly, but decidedly. A certain fear was growing inside her; she couldn't deny it, but at the same time… fascination. She wondered then what else this change might signify, what possibilities would open up to him. But then again, perhaps it was all a fluke. A succession of occurrences. An attempt at giving it meaning by a machine created to indulge her. To persuade her.

  "Have you drawn these?" she asked, walking past him and approaching the graffiti. Of course he had. Every inch had been covered with a chalk-like layer—or layers, built over one another to give the drawing depth. He'd done an impressionistic painting of a valley clad in millions of colours, all different from one another and all… so alive. And at the far end of the valley, etched so very small, there was a farmhouse.

  Perseus' neck whirred from a nod. "I have." He stepped closer to her, his eyes ever fixed on her as though he'd try to see beyond her form. "To help you remember the fields."

  "The fields?"

  "Yes. From your dreams."

  She turned back then. Andromeda tried searching his carbon structure for a tell, for evidence that he was merely pretending. But he stood there, as still as he'd ever been, and beyond the copper of his eyes she could almost sense it… Intent. Meaning.

  Andromeda’s eyes drifted across the mural again, and inside her chest, her heart thumped. A drum late for the verse. The dormancy still pumped through her blood, or perhaps it was the situation, but she reached out to the lines. Everywhere, patterns repeated, like symbols from a foreign language, but painted in warm hues, almost waxen. Dense. "What are those?" she questioned absently.

  Perseus laid his hand on one. "Melted butter."

  The shapes were alien but heartbreakingly right. Geometric spirals, almost topographic in function, curled over their surface like olfactory pathways reconstructed from his own interpretation. From data.

  “You interpreted a smell,” she whispered.

  "Is it to your taste?"

  A nervous chuckle escaped her. Andromeda stepped back to take it all in. "I dreamt of fire," she said at last. "I saw myself, but not as me. Not as I know myself."

  "Like I," he replied. "I watched it, too. Your dreams looped. Versions of you that never were. I feel the same when I pass by a mirror, when I cannot understand the shapes I see, even as I know they belong to me."

  She could feel her chest tightening, the cage closing once more. "Did you see the metal?"

  "I saw pain… and remorse. Sensations you gave meaning to. I understood more than I ever did before, but I was also left terribly confused." He looked at her. "Through the weeks, I've paced the deck of Voyager II and wandered the depths of your dreams. Through space, I've found experience and the warmth of home. I searched for an answer to the conundrum…."

  He paused and placed a hand on his blue core. "I understand now—your perspective. I believe you were right to leave Earth behind. To take me with you. You were right: there are things worth seeing, even when they are not what we wanted them to be."

  Andromeda was even more confused. "What did you see?"

  Perseus turned and placed both hands behind his back. He turned to face the hills and the painted flowers. To face the colours and the smells, and the house that never was. Until finally, his emulator cracked deep with longing.

  "I saw the girl in red."

  ***