Work Text:
Jo, Age 29
Jo was a wreck waiting for Pepper to get the info-chip. She'd not attached any note. Just the chip, sent express.
Pepper called her on the sib the day she got it. "Jo, what the fuck?!"
"Hi, Pepper," Jo said.
"You found Owl!?"
"I know where the shuttle is," Jo said. "It's powered down. Owl isn't there."
"Bullshit Owl isn't there," Pepper said. "We go in and we get her. You have museum credentials, right? We go in, and we get her."
This was what Jo was afraid of. She put her hand on her forehead, rubbing the spots where tension built. "Pepper. That ship has been powered down for ten years. There's no way Owl is still alive."
"Stop saying that! We'll have to take the core pedestal out."
"Pepper..." Jo wasn't a comp-tech, but she'd lived in that ship and cleaned it and cared for it. She knew how large Owl's core pedestal was. "You can't just go into a museum exhibit and take out the core pedestal. You'd need a push cart or a drone dolly to carry it out. That's more than a bit obvious."
"That's fine. I can fry the security feeds."
"Pepper!!!! Stop. There's another way. I'll apply for a restitution of property. The museum has a process for this, for items taken by plunder or violence from minority cultures."
"That won't work. Our ship was taken legally, as Counsellor Lukin reminded me again and again."
"I can make a case. We weren't able to advocate for ourselves at the time. It happened while we were comatose. I'll pay for a very good solicitor."
"And when they say no, AS THEY WILL, we'll never be able to get near Owl again!"
"Pepper, I'm not stealing from the museum."
"It's Owl!"
"It's just the place where Owl used to live," Jo said. "And it's the place where Owl died. She wouldn't want us to destroy our lives trying to recover her corpse."
"I hate you!" Pepper said, and the call ended.
Jo wished she still had sim dragons to turn to after a fight with Pepper. Instead, she went to her treadmill and put on a hiking sim, letting herself imagine she was walking on another world. She walked and walked and walked, until she got a chime saying she had another sib call.
She stepped off of the treadmill and went back to the console. It was Pepper's sib address.
"Hello?" It was unlike Pepper to call this soon after a fight, and Blue usually messaged by text to get around his speech disability.
"Hi, Jo. It's Sidra. Pepper doesn't know I'm calling you."
Sidra was Pepper's ward. Pepper had been cagey about where Sidra had come from, and Jo had only seen her a few times on a sib call. Never unsupervised. So this was surprising.
"Oh?"
"I thought I should explain some things that she probably thinks you understand because you were part of her world for so long. But you're not a tech. You did tech work as a child, but it was mech tech work, not comp tech work. Pepper lives among comp techs and works with comp techs. I think she's assuming knowledge on your part that you simply don't have."
"That's possible," Jo said. "Go ahead."
"I am a comp-tech, though not certified. Organic life dies without constant energy to the brain. But non-organic life doesn't work the same way. Owl really could still be there. She could have written herself deep into her core and shut herself down before the power ran out. If that happened, it's possible she could be restarted, and she'd be herself. Not a fresh installation, but the same Owl you knew."
"... oh. I didn't know that."
"But it's also possible she's dead. And Pepper won't accept that without proof," Sidra said.
"No, she won't. But we still can't go in and vandalise and rob a museum exhibit on the chance that she's alive. We'd just go to prison - which would be worth it to save Owl. We owe our lives... our everything to her. But it isn't worth it to fail."
"Don't worry. I understand that. I'm calling for information," Sidra said. "Tell me about this restitution of property process..."
Dr Jo Athena, Professor of Sociology and Colonisation at Alexandria University, associate member of the Reskit Institute of Interstellar Migration could easily get access to the exhibit. She didn't even need a specific study - just interest from one colleague's work to another's. She got the fastest transport available to Kaathet. She had to get to Kaathet first, and if Mars wasn't significantly closer to Kaathat than Port Coriol, then it would never work. She knew Pepper's ship was faster than legal. She was also depending on Sidra and Blue to delay Pepper's own journey from Port Coriol. She estimated she'd have at least a tenday.
Jo walked into the exhibit, just as she had through the virtual tour, but this time, it was real. This time, she could go inside the ship that had been their home.
It had been cleaned inside as well as out, but their belongings were all inside. Pepper's tools. Jo's mending. The blankets, worn and tattered.
In one corner, a coffin put together with plastic sheeting. A placard read, "This is believed to be a fringe funeral practice, carrying the bones of the family."
Jo went outside to find a bench to sit down and cry. She still couldn't bring herself to touch a museum exhibit, even though it was hers. Maybe if it had still been dusty she could have. It would have felt like home. But like this... it felt like a weird mock up of the place she'd lived for so long.
She went to find Head Curator Grixith.
"You are filing a restitution claim?" Grixith asked. "On whose behalf?"
"My own," she said.
"But you're Martian."
"I'm not," she said. "I'm a refugee from Aganon, one of the Enhanced Humanity worlds."
She saw Grixith blink his internal eyelids, taking in information she'd never publically disclosed until now. It had been safe to be Martian. It had been normal to be Martian.
But now this was going to be public, at least in the academic community. They were going to re-evaluate all of her work based on the fact that she was an Enhanced refugee.
"I see. I was not aware we had acquired any of our collections from those worlds."
"I have a story to tell you," she said. Sing to me of a cunning girl, who wandered lost in space... "There was a girl named Jane 64, and she was created to fill a need..."
The story took hours to tell, and by the time she was done, a few other Curators had been called in.
"So those skeletons... they were escaped slaves," one of the under-curators asked. "Oh stars... I interpreted that so wrong!"
"I always meant to give them a proper funeral," Jo said. "And you didn't have them on display, so at least it wasn't disrespectful." Just incorrect...
"No, we never do that with sapients, unless it's part of their culture!"
"All of your work on the Enhanced... that's why," another said.
Jo tried not to flinch. She knew people would judge her work differently.
"I mean, that's why it is so conscientious and scrupulous. It shows more care than an outsider normally would."
Right. Sometimes people would judge it differently for the better.
By the time she left that day, their ship had been locked up. It was still in the exhibit hall, but not available for anyone to go inside while the case was pending.
Four days later, Pepper arrived.
Pepper had told Jo that Sidra wouldn't be coming with them, and gave some vague reason about how she'd have to watch the shop. Sidra had told Jo that she would be coming, whether Pepper liked it or not. Jo didn't understand why Sidra wouldn't be coming, if she was at least unofficially a comp-tech. Wasn't that what they needed? Blue wasn't going to be able to paint Owl out of the core!
Sidra slipped her a message a day after Pepper's ship left Port Coriol to say she'd successfully stowed away. Then a tenday later to say she'd been caught by Pepper, but it was too late to take her back.
Then they were here. And there was Pepper. It was the first time Jo had seen Pepper since she and Blue had left on the Yo'ton.
The two of them just stared at each other for a moment. Pepper looked the same. Still pink. Still bald. Still so thin. Jo knew she looked like any other human from Martian stock.
They had come from the same origins, but they were such very different people. Pepper had never hidden who she was, while rarely speaking of her origins. Jo openly studied the Enhanced Humanity movement, while passing as Martian. She didn't tell people she was Martian. But she let them believe it. It was easier for her..
She just hated the look of pity in people's eyes when they heard that she was born as a slave, ran away with another girl, and grew up in a scrapyard? How do you make that okay? How could that ever be okay?
Jo remembered waking up nose to nose with Pepper. Remembered pulling her out of a hole in the ground. Remembered all the fights they had - stars, so many fights.
They were in each other's arms without a word.
"Holy fuck, you smell different!" Pepper said.
"It's called soap, gearhead."
"No, I mean..." She touched Jo's hair, dark and thick. "This carries a scent. And wow... your arms. There's hair on your arms. And your eyebrows. And you have eyelashes."
"You could have hair too if you wanted," Jo said. Even though Pepper wasn't a G.C. citizen, she had no doubt that Pepper could arrange for it from a private doctor by now.
"Ugh, no thanks. I'm used to how I look."
Jo waited until they got to her lodgings in Kaathet before telling Pepper that she'd filed the case.
"You WHAT?!"
"It's done. I'm doing this the legal way. And the best way you can help is for you to add your name to the case."
"Fuck you, Jo!"
"This is going to work, Pepper!"
"My way would have been safer! It still can be safer. The ship is still there, right? So we'll go back to the original plan. You'll get me in. I'll come up with some way to fry the security cameras..."
Jo quietly let Pepper rant for a while, until she realised she was subconsciously waiting for Owl to say something. Owl was always the one who stepped in when Pepper got this manic. And Owl wasn't here. (Probably would never be here again.)
"Ja- Pepper!" she said, standing up and going toe to toe with Pepper. "You can't do this."
"Yeah? You don't even care about Owl!"
Jo switched to Sko-Ensk. "There is no world where I wouldn't come for you, or for Owl."
She knew Blue understood the words she spoke. She doubted that Sidra did. But it didn't matter. It wasn't about speaking words secretly. It was about reminding Pepper where they came from. Reminding her that Jo remembered.
She switched back to Klip. "Do you know what Owl made me promise the night I went to look for you? She said that if I found your body and you were dead, I was to come straight home. Even if it meant dogs would savage your corpse. Because it would have put me at risk to recover a body in the dark with dogs around."
"Owl isn't dead!"
"Right now we don't know what Owl is. She could be alive or dead. Just like I didn't know the night you fell in a hole. So you go in like this? You're falling right in the same hole, only the hole is called Aandrisk prison. You're throwing yourself in that hole
"It's worth it for Owl!"
"No, Pepper. It isn't worth it when it wouldn't work. My way will."
"Your way is bullshit."
Pepper and Blue went to a separate hotel, because "I just can't stand to be with you right now, Jo".
Sidra stayed. She had apparently read every single paper Jo had published. Most of Jo's students hadn't even done that. She asked detailed questions. She understood in a way that few of the people in Jo's life did.
"Pepper said you aren't a citizen. Are you from an interdicted world?" Jo asked.
"I think I can trust you," Sidra said. "If I disclose something to you that is..."
"I won't report you," Jo said. "If you've got an illegal patch or whatever."
"Oh, it's worse than that."
"Still won't," Jo said. "You're Pepper's friend. You'd have to be doing something pretty horrible for me to turn on a friend of hers. Something that was hurting other people, not just breaking a law."
"Alright," Sidra said. "I'm an AI in a memetic housing."
"Oh... I don't really know what that means," Jo said. She knew AIs could be sapient - how could she not? But she had never heard of a memetic housing.
"This body is artificial. That's illegal in GC space. If I was discovered, they'd destroy this body, including the mind inside it."
"They'd execute you."
"That's not how they'd see it, but yes."
"Why would you trust me with something so dangerous?" Jo asked.
"I read your work. It told me a lot about the person you are," Sidra said.
It took Pepper several days to come around to adding her name to the petition for restitution. Blue added his own part of the story as testimony that the ship had been theirs. Jo hired an Aandrisk counsellor who specialised in cultural restitution to make their case. She got testimony from Counsellor Lukin, who she'd always remained in touch with, and Lukin put her pack in touch with Commander Hoae who was back on Sohep Frie. She got the medical records from Han'foral Lookout Station showing that they were all minors when they'd arrived, and that there had been a delay getting them a representative. Then they were put into medical comas so soon after arriving in the Galactic Commons that they couldn't speak for themselves.
They had a good case. But they had to wait for the system to work.
It took nearly eight tendays for the evidence to be gathered, heard, and decided upon. Eight tendays while Jo navigated the impact to her career of her background being known. While Blue began working on a new series of paintings. While Sidra absorbed every bit of knowledge she could from the Museum of Interstellar Migration. While Pepper drove everyone crazy until she got a job at the ship docks.
She spent more time with Blue and Sidra than she did with her own sister. They were present with her in a way Pepper wasn't willing to be. As she discussed how one of the other Enhanced worlds, Inia, had a caste of people that were hunted for sport, Blue interrupted her.
"St-stars, Jo. How do you - how do you have the heart to l-learn all this?"
"Because someone should," she said. "Sometimes Parliament discusses it. I want them to have all the information. I don't know what they can do. Maybe they can't stop it there. Maybe they can only stop it from happening again. But that's something."
"Yes," Blue said. "B-But you can't tell Pepper." He flipped a page and sketched again, a tiny bald girl sitting with a piece of scrap in her hands. Behind her a Mother looked over her shoulder. "I don't show these to Pepper."
"Blue... I could use these to illustrate my reports," Jo said. "If you were willing."
"Y-y-yes!" he said. "I want to help! I'm j-just an artist."
"Art is important, Blue. People engage with art. It would make all of this... approachable."
"Art can change the world," Sidra said. "Look at Big Bug."
"It's so much more." they quoted together, and laughed.
Finally, the Institute announced the results of the petition. "The Reskit Museum of Insterstellar Migration recognises the prior ownership of the modified Centaur 46-C to Pepper and Jo Athena. You will have six tendays to make arrangements for this item's future care."
Pepper jumped up. "Can we go see it now?"
"There are really only two things we want out of the ship," Jo said. "The AI pedestal and the bones of Astra and Stella. After we take those, we've agreed to make a permanent loan of the ship to the Museum."
Pepper hadn't been thrilled with that idea. But she also hadn't wanted to take the ship back to Port Coriol either, to live in her back garden and haunt her. Jo hadn't wanted it on Mars. If Owl was alive, they would give her a better installation, that was in better repair. And again, not one that was haunted.
But if it was left in the museum, it could be left with their story.
Sidra carefully moved Owl from the old pedestal to the AI core in Pepper's ship. It wasn't a permanent home for her, but it would let them wake her up and see if she was still alive. If she still had any damage.
Pepper had used the time while they were waiting for the petition to install a display screen, which had gone out of fashion for AIs.
Owl was given control of the cameras, and then the screen came to life.
"Jane? Jane! Is that you?"
"Owl..." Pepper said, her voice going choked.
Jo was quiet, until Owl said, "Oh stars, stars, is that you Jo? You've changed your appearance!"
"Yes, that's me. I had this done while they were fixing my foot. Pepper - Jane's name is Pepper now - she never wanted any changes."
"Oh my girls... How long has it been?"
"Ten years. It took us that long to find you again."
By the light of their scribs, they emerged from their ships to greet the cunning girl with open arms. They kissed her hands and danced her welcome. She knew them all, and she knew that she was home.
The Odyssey was ended.