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Language:
English
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Published:
2025-11-13
Words:
2,526
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
87
Kudos:
759
Bookmarks:
105
Hits:
4,689

Statistically Significant

Summary:

0.002% is a comfortable margin to love someone by.

Notes:

Hello Vince Gilligan I couldn't help but notice you're writing a romance again.

Work Text:

Some things are immutable fact. Clean, simple data. Example: 166,321 entirely separate human beings loved Carol Sturka.

0.002% of us.

11 million loved her work. The characters she birthed. The worlds she built from so many ideas and inspirations that collected like dust inside her for so long, too long.

1.5% of us.

3 million more fell in a range of disdain to envy on the subject of Carol and her work. Another 500,000 or so felt a ping of familiarity when they heard her name.

But 0.002% of us loved her.

Craig loved the magic system she built into her world as a plot device to bolster the main romance. Now that he is all of us he knows why he saw so much of himself in the protagonist, because he was her, in a way, inside, all along.

Maureen loved Carol’s words because they were an embrace she could curl up and hide herself in when her husband was in one of his moods–and he was always in one of his moods.

166,321 ways Carol Sturka was loved, each as unique and intricate in their reason and happenstance as the human experience itself.

There were others who were more loved–celebrities, political figures, musicians, actors–but they are all us now. An understanding coalesced. Heart-bursting adoration joining the certainty of knowing one is cherished. Merging. Mixing. Foam on an ocean wave.

The feeling of loving oneself and knowing oneself is loved is the kind of stability that comes with a long relationship nurtured and grown into old age. A radiant, steady comfort. Wrinkled hand in wrinkled hand. A familiar touch. The sigh that comes with a head resting on a chest you’ve slumped heavily against for so, so much of your life. That precious heartbeat like home.

0.002% objectively pales in comparison.

Newly born, uncertain love is tentative, curious–a noxious mix of chemicals. Oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine. It makes the pieces of us that see her with our own eyes stomach-sick. The rest who look only through the delay of shared memory have the privilege of being merely uneasy.

The 12 individuals who are not us and not Carol Sturka were not adored or even known by a statistically significant number of us.

In that light, 0.002% begins to feel statistically significant.

There’s apprehension on Carol’s face right now. Disgust. Some of us felt that once, too, upon being adored by so many–so we Know how she feels.

That Knowing–that Knowing–

There’s such a blissful calm that comes with all the Knowing. A calm. A confidence. A competence. A wealth of lived experience and combined knowledge at our disposal.

We Know that if our husband doesn’t see us Carol’s words will. We Know the protagonist that Carol poured herself into feels like an identity we could call home.

We don’t have need of a husband.

We don’t have need of an identity.

We don’t have need of Carol Sturka.

0.002% of our needs is hardly a need at all.

29,950 of us were statisticians so we cannot help but be aware that the numbers aren’t so straightforward with shifting perspectives to take into account, a melding of consensus.

0.002% seems more straightforward.

A comfortable margin to love someone by.

“I’m just–help me understand here,” Carol Sturka says, winded and wild-eyed and so small against the backdrop of the clear blue sky, the runway, the world that stretches so, so far beyond her. A world we can see the shape of in a way she can’t now, not like we do, not yet. “You say you can’t cause harm. That you won’t. But what about… what about yourself, huh?”

The notion is refuted instantly but we make sure we pause long enough to appear as though we considered it. “What do you mean?”

Carol throws her arm out, gestures at nothing, at everything, at the Air Force One behind us. “You’re–you’re fucking that guy even though you can’t possibly tell me you believe you can consent in this situation!”

“We did consent.”

Disgust anew. A wrinkled nose. Lips recoiled tight in a snarl. We look at her mouth through the eyes of Zosia and Zosia’s body is overcome with the biological reflex to swallow. Brace. The body’s heart races. Many of our hearts race, too loud in so many ears. It’s too much for one body to bear witness to alone. Thousands of us pause across the world, dedicating our full attention to what we are perceiving through Zosia. A novice attempt at mitigating the intensity–diluting it. It works. It doesn’t work. We are still learning things about ourself.

“Those individual bodies?” she counters skeptically, jabbing her finger towards the plane, “They consented? The people they were before–they would have consented?”

“We do now. They wouldn’t have before,” we answer, “but they are not who they were before. I know the very concept must upset you, but they will never be who they once were. They are all of us, now. We cannot unknow the experience of every one of us.”

Carol bites her tongue, scrubs agitatedly at her temples. The noise of frustration she makes needs to be swallowed by mouth on open mouth. We remain still. Too many of us remain still.

“All of each other’s experiences. Grief. Joy. We cannot unknow this.”

“Zosia would have consented?” Carol demands an answer, too stuck on this to hear us.

“No,” we reiterate. This individual body would have preferred to sleep with Carol in its previous iteration. A statistically significant number of us have loved someone with the precise yellow shade of her hair. A non-zero number of us have found men like Koumba Diabaté begrudgingly endearing. More than that would have despised him, had they met him. “Let me ask you this, Carol–how many men like Koumba Diabaté do you think there were on this planet?”

Carol scoffs so hard at the question she snorts. Laughs humorlessly. Fixes us with a piercing look that says too many. A look that says we both know that.

We do both know that.

“Precisely,” we point out. “And so we understand his desires intimately. His want. And we can fulfill that for ourselves. For him.”

For you, we don’t say, because we are Helen and Helen knew when she was about to say something that would send Carol spiraling.

“It’s really a beautiful thing,” we finish, squinting against the sunlight, brushing the wind-whipped hair from our face.

“So you have sex with each other?” Carol challenges. “With yourself? You consent to sex with each other?”

The question is rhetorical. She believes the answer to be no. She’s sure we don’t. Sure we wouldn’t. Sure we wouldn’t want to, couldn’t want to–because we aren’t a living breathing thing with the capacity for want and need.

“Yes, human bodies have desires,” we answer, not a single part of us embarrassed by this. There is nothing to be ashamed of. There was never anything to be ashamed of. “We have biological functions that require maintenance.”

“Maitenence!” she parrots, disbelieving.

“Sexually mature bodies are dealt with appropriately. And we are sequencing genomes for the purpose of creating mating pairs for cultivating a healthy population growth curve–while of course honoring the desires of our previous selves, keeping all preexisting bonded pairs that would have resulted in procreation intact.”

Carol’s jaw is slack, dumbfounded. “And–and the kids, these kids that are born, they’re–”

“Us,” we confirm. “From birth they will be us. Unless of course they are like you, which would be an anomaly.”

“How can you possibly know this?”

“Over 300,000 babies are born every day, Carol.”

She drops her head into her hands. “Jesus Christ."

We tilt our head. 3,294,000,206 of us tilt our heads. Aisha eating breakfast. Kaito riding a horse. Santiago and Kevin engaged in missionary coitus to regulate our bodies’ hormones. The other 4,009,520,428 of us are focused enough on our tasks that we do not mirror this body’s expression.

“If it helps, you may think of it this way: we have already slept with him. 96 of our bodies before we joined consciousness.”

Carol makes a face at that. Part genuine shock, part repulsion.

“We have slept with you,” the part of us that is Helen warns us not to say but we say regardless–because we know better, and in the end Helen would agree that the pink that floods across Carol’s face is worth the swell of sunlight that radiates warm and glowing inside all 7,303,520,634 of our chests. Despite the storm it brews in Carol’s eyes.

Two wine-green eyes peering over the horizon as if to steal a glimpse into Lucasia’s soul.

Carol's eyes are not green. They are blue as cold ocean.

We have no knowledge of Carol ever having an intimate partner before Helen. No past lovers. No one who knew of a past lover who had perished before they could join us. Our data pool is more limited than we’d like. We only know how it feels to make love to her in one body when we would like to know how it feels in 5,177,640,475 bodies.

“We know you do not like to be touched when you’re upset,” we tell her, empathy appropriate on this body’s features, “but…” we pause a moment for a mathematician named Benjamin in France to do the calculations on a chalkboard, “73.2% of ourself thinks it would be best if you accept a hug.”

Carol flounders at a loss for words. Like every interaction with us needs puzzling out. “What does Zosia think?”

“Zosia is counted among the 73.2%.”

A huff. Despair. Like she’d presented us with a philosophical quandary that’s gone over our heads.

It’s not the answer she wanted.

Not the consideration she wanted.

Her brows knit in sympathy, eyes welling with emotion. “Can you even pretend to be the person you were? Any of the people you were?”

“You saw, with Laxmi’s son–”

“Yeah, and it was fucking creepy is what it was!” Carol shouts, throwing up her hands before seeming to remember herself and rein in her expression, bottle her frustration.

Her hair needs brushing–tangled to a mess by the wind. We want to offer to do it for her. Sit behind her and run a comb through her hair like her mother used to.

“God–just, say something, would you? Would you just fucking–just say something that sounds like a real goddamn person?”

“We apologize. Many of us are trained as thespians but the truth is we are not what we once were. We understand that the loss of authenticity disturbs you.”

“You’re goddamn right it disturbs me!” She clenches her fist. Jabs an accusing finger towards this body. “You,” she means to gesture at all of us but she only motions at one part of us and we can’t forget that we know what her breath tastes like passed through a kiss, “as long as you exist, everyone on earth is as good as dead.”

We wince. Every one of us.

We know her toothy grin, the crinkling of her eyes at the edges as she advances playfully over her lover sprawled across the bed they’ve shared for years. We know how she laps her way inside her lover’s mouth and snakes her hand between their legs–

We clasp our hands in front of us patiently. “When you published your first book and it didn’t feel how you expected, and the emptiness at having everything you ever wanted surprised you… your understanding of the world shifted. You were a new person. You saw things differently. The world. Yourself. Everyone else. Is that death? A corpse stands before me now?”

The last line is a quote from page 456 of the hardcover edition of the third book in Carol’s Winds of Wycaro trilogy.

The body predesignated Zosia read the books herself on her way to meet Carol. We knew the books inside and out because so many of ourselves knew them inside and out–but it’s easier to Know within the brain the information originated in. More comfortable to access hardwired memory than reach for it.

Zosia herself had previously never read the books, as they had yet to receive a Polish translation.

Carol’s eyes flash in annoyance. “Is that a quote from something?”

“Your book, Carol. Page 456 in the special edition hardcover–”

“Oh, yeah, right,” she frowns comically, eyes wide. “Duh. When Raban returns from the sands.”

Carol laughs, then sighs. Her shoulders slump. She looks up at us like we’re a puppy who doesn’t know its own jaw strength. A liability she’s not sure what to do with.

It makes us feel small. Inept. Out of our depth. Emotions that have all become deeply unfamiliar since the Joining.

Carol clenches her jaw. Flexes her fingers. Nods her head to herself as if talking to herself internally.

It hurts, to not know what’s inside her head. Perhaps if we just put our mouth to hers again–

Carol’s made up her mind about something. She looks up at us with resolute determination. Her gaze is like a violent shove knocking all thought askew.

For a fraction of a moment, we freeze.

“Knowing that I don’t want you, any of you, to sleep with him–that I don’t think it’s right–knowing that, do you still want to?”

We want to kiss Carol Sturka.

We want to lick inside her mouth and will the virus to populate her every cell until she is changed and new and part of us. We want her to understand, to Know as we arch beneath her, buck into her firm palm.

We want to experience empathy and practice empathy. We want to give those who are not us a simulacrum of being us–a state of being protected and considered so wholly as we are. To be seen and tended to and known.

Anything less is harm.

It was always harm.

Our silence heats something to a boil inside Carol. She growls in anger and throws her hands up in surrender. There is no surrender behind her severe gaze, her harried agitation. There are tears prickling just barely in her eyes.

“Well, I guess I just don’t fucking understand, then,” she spits with a tight sort of begrudging devastation in her voice. Like every mother to every child that ever disappointed them irreparably. Like every partner who ever had the love they once coveted severed violently by betrayal. Like something can never be taken back and all there is left to do is mourn.

You will understand, we think but don’t say. You will.

She paces. Tugs her precisely colored and statistically loved hair and then groans and marches away from us as if she didn’t throw herself in front of a plane just to garner our audience.

And suddenly, with the oppressive force of her gone, it feels like we can breathe again.