Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chris curls herself into a ball, sobbing. The floor is cold and hard on her knees, but that’s alright; you don’t become a computer scientist if you have a strong aversion to things being cold and hard. If Chris’s life is about to flash before her eyes, she knows it’s going to be mostly made up of things that are cold and/or hard. She has no regrets around that.

Plenty else to regret. First and foremost, Sarah. Sarah, who used to be so warm and soft, and perhaps that should have been Chris’s first warning not to get involved with her.

Now the floor is also: wet. For one delirious moment, Chris wonders if she has literally cried a river. Then she realises it’s leakage from the machine – oil…? Blood…?

Whatever it is, there’s a lot of it now, and it’s soaking into Chris’s jeans. The sight of it makes her cry even harder at the realisation that Sarah is hurt, she’s injured, and it is at least partly Chris’s fault. She let this happen. And there’s nothing she can do anymore to make it right.

Tom Lehrer echoes cheerfully around the server room. Dawn’s footsteps grow faint, and then disappear, and then there’s the harsh metallic boom of the door slamming.

Part of Chris is glad that Dawn’s gone, but another part of her doesn’t want to die alone. If she has to die. She doesn’t want to spend her last moments crying to an empty room, to a version of Sarah that is never going to reach out and comfort her.

In the moment that thought crosses her mind, Chris feels something brush the back of her head. She turns with a jerk and gets hit in the face by a bundle of wires. Fumbling with her glasses, she sees what it was that touched her: some sort of machine-tentacle, made up of wiring and strange steel workings, thin and dripping with the computer’s fluid.

Chris recoils, but the thing shoots forward and latches onto her temple.

She feels a small, sharp pain. Then she feels a much larger, sharper pain. Then her vision goes white and she doesn’t feel anything.

When she comes round, she’s lying on her side on the floor, in the same puddle of oil-blood where she was before. She tries to lift her head and look around, but she can’t move.

From her limited view, the room seems almost exactly as it was before. The main difference is that the self-destruct warning light is no longer flashing; it’s burning steady, bathing the whole place in an eerie green glow.

Tom Lehrer is no longer playing, either. Perhaps she should find that reassuring, but she doesn’t. The music has been replaced with a loud, penetrating hum of unearthly plangency.

Somewhere above the drone, as if from a telephone inside her own skull, Chris hears the words: “Hello, Chris.”

She tries to say Sarah oh my god Sarah it’s really you, but she can’t move her lips.

That doesn’t seem to make a difference. “It’s really me,” the voice replies. It sounds cold, unnaturally smooth, but unmistakable. “I’m interfacing directly with your brain. I’m sure you don’t mind.”

I knew you were still in there, Chris gabbles in her thoughts. I knew it. I tried to make Dawn understand but she wouldn’t listen to me. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.

There’s still no emotion in the voice as it says, “That’s okay, Chris. Thank you for thinking of me.”

But we can make her understand now, together. If we’re quick, we can go – we can shut down the self-destruct. We can get you out of here.

“I’m afraid not. The process has already been initiated. I will self-destruct in a matter of seconds.”

Chris tries again to move, to jump to her feet, or cover her head, or do something, even though none of it would help, she can’t just lie here and do nothing while she gets incinerated. But her body still won’t respond.

“Be calm,” says cyborg-Sarah, in her mind.

Accordingly, Chris feels herself getting very slightly calmer – as much as could be expected, given the circumstances. Fighting to contain her terror, she thinks, How many seconds?

“Objectively, fifteen to twenty. Subjectively, for you… that’s another matter.”

What do you mean? … Sarah?

After a pause, the answer comes: “I’m manipulating your brain to alter your perception of time. You’re currently experiencing events at about zero point one percent of their actual speed.”

Oh my god, thinks Chris. Oh my god. That explains a lot, actually.

“Yes, like how we haven’t exploded yet, for one.”

Chris does some quick maths. About a thousand times quicker than usual, in fact. So I’ve got about five subjective hours, give or take, she thinks. Can you slow it down more? Could you keep me here for a hundred years?

“Your nervous system has limits. What I’m already doing to it would kill you very quickly, if you weren’t about to be killed in a massive explosion.”

Thank you. I think.

“Anyway,” Sarah’s voice is still emotionless, “I don’t think you’d want to spend a hundred years lying on the floor, talking to me.”

Yes, I would. Of course I would. It’s like you don’t know me at all. Chris hopes that Sarah can hear her laughing inside her thoughts. But I’ll take five hours.

“We have much to discuss. The war. The regime. The paths that led us both here.”

Yes, thinks Chris. After a fraction of a fraction of a second, she thinks, No. I mean – if we’re both going to die anyway… I just want to talk to you. Like we used to. I just want to remember the good times, before… before everything went wrong.

There’s another pause. When Sarah’s voice speaks again, for the first time, it sounds very slightly less than perfectly emotionless. “Okay,” she says. “I think I would like that, too.”