Soulmates

The object had two components: a long thin chain attached at both ends to a geometrically shaped thing around the size of her thumb. It was made of metal, but Lana wasn’t certain what kind. Of course, finding that out was the whole point of her job. She took it to the metals station and began the usual tests.

Identifying steady-state matter wasn’t for everyone. You couldn’t just read the tessaratic core settings. You couldn’t reprogram it, either. Steady-state atoms had a set number of protons, neutrons, and electrons, and stayed that way. It was up to you to figure out what the stuff was and use it in some limited way based on its fixed properties. Terribly inefficient. No wonder their ancestors on Earth had done poorly.

“Found something interesting?” asked Christopher from his spot at the organics station. He got up and joined her at the metal station, peering at the object under examination with his usual good-humored curiosity. “Oh - we’ve seen that before, don’t you remember?”

“No,” admitted Lana.

“It’s the ancient symbol for love. As the metaphor goes, you start with two halves,” he raised his hand and curled his index finger into a hook, straightening the thumb away from the other fingers, “go on, make the other half.” Lana raised her own hand and contorted it into a mirror image of his. “Then, you put those halves together and make a whole.” He touched their fingers together, index to index, thumb to thumb. Their hands made the shape of the thing attached to the chain. “The ancients believed in ‘soulmates’,” Christopher continued quietly. “Two people made especially for one another, who completed each other.”

Lana snorted abruptly. “Like they had the logistics for that,” she scoffed. “There were billions of them, and each person was supposed to be paired up with one other specific person and they all had to find each other wherever they were on Earth? How were they supposed to run the database? They didn’t even have quantum computers.”

Christopher shrugged. “It was just a belief.”

At that moment, the apparatus at the metals station intoned the completion of their examination. “Weakly magnetic, melting temperature, density, electric conductivity…” Lana glanced briefly at the data before reading out the result. “It’s silver.” Dropping the item into an inventory bag, Lana noted the composition and tossed the whole thing into a transportation chute. “We’re on ID T-392-50 already? Last I looked we were still in the R- range. Gosh we’re fast. Lunch?”

She retrieved their meal while he reprogrammed the laboratory’s tessaratic core. Around them, the machinery and shelves of equipment melted as the tessaratic core sent pulses of instructions through the room’s eternium layer. Some atoms ejected a part of their components which were incorporated into other atoms. Molecules restructured. Matter transformed. Within seconds they were in a comfortable lounge with plush chairs and a table set for two. The ceiling manifested a skylight complete with a view of a brilliant blue sky and artistically placed bits of white clouds. Leafy green plants populated the room in decorative pots. These were premium eternium forms. In every perfect leaf were orderly veins through which actual water ran. It was as close to real life as eternium could get.

On the table was a feast of perfectly compiled sandwiches. Christopher sat down eagerly. “Real food first,” reminded Lana, handing him a clear vial of liquid containing a mix of nutrients tailored to the exact needs of his body. She had an identical vial for herself. They downed these concoctions before digging in. The “food” turned back into white eternium powder inside their systems, but it was inert and passed harmlessly out the other end. Eating was enjoyable, if pointless from a nutritional standpoint.

Halfway through, Christopher said, “Oh, I forgot, a shipment’s coming in today. No, don’t worry about it. I’ll sort it out. Be back soon.” Flashing Lana a smile, he exited the room. Christopher was generous like that, offering to do all the messy exchanges with dispatches from the mother planet so Lana could be spared the tedium. She hadn’t laid eyes on another person besides him for some time now, and she liked it that way. Christopher was all she needed.

Lana had just picked up another sandwich when she spotted Christopher’s key card on the table. Brushing crumbs off her hands, she picked it up and headed for the door. He could manage without it, of course, but biometric authentication was such a hassle. She would run it down to him.

Trotting down the hall, she caught up with him at the unloading dock where he was talking with the two dispatches. “Chris,” she called cheerily. “You left your card.” She held it out.

And then something happened. It felt like the lights had cut out for a split second before resuming as though nothing had happened. A glitch in the system. The male dispatch was tall and handsome, she supposed. But the female dispatch was… Lana couldn’t find any words. She just stared.

The woman was small-framed and slender. She wore the standard issue dispatch uniform, but was anything but standard with her vibrant violet hair. It swished gently as she turned around to look at Lana. She stilled, her crystalline blue eyes wide.

“Violet,” said Lana. The woman jumped. “Oh - I meant your, um, hair. It’s really pretty,” Lana blurted.

“Thanks, Lana,” said Christopher, taking his card. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Alright,” said Lana, still a bit mystified, and turned to go.

“That’s my name,” said the woman. “Violet.”

Lana laughed. “That’s so fitting. Nice to meet you, Violet.”

From that day on, something was different. Lana couldn’t say exactly what. She kept thinking she had forgotten to close her sock drawer, of all things. But of course she hadn’t, and it was a strangely specific thing to be worried about, anyway. She was fairly confident that whatever was going on, it had to do with Violet. Finally, she came to the conclusion that she wanted to see Violet again. Maybe then it would come to her.

“I’ll go,” Lana offered the next time a shipment came in.

“Oh, no, I couldn’t take you away from your strawberries,” said Chris, waving at her to sit down.

“It’s alright,” she said, getting up anyway. “I fancy stretching my legs.”

“No, I’m going,” said Christopher, and his tone gave her pause. He was smiling amicably as usual, but his words held a distinct sense of finality. “Alright,” said Lana slowly, sinking back down into her chair. The door closed behind him. She didn’t continue eating. Something was not quite right. Something to do with Violet? A vague feeling of unease flooded her gut. She stood resolutely and strode to the door.

The door was locked.

Lana yanked hard at the handle in disbelief. Fishing out her key card, she attempted an override. The words “Access is denied” blinked at her from the console. “What do you mean, denied?” Lana demanded. “This is my lab! I have full admin rights!” She tried a few more things, but the door didn’t budge. She was still going at it when it suddenly swung open and Christopher came in. “What’s happened?” he asked.

“That door wouldn’t open,” she said irritably.

“What?” Christopher said, frowning dubiously. He let the door close and pulled the handle. It opened immediately. Lana was flabbergasted. She even locked it again and attempted the same override, and this time everything worked. “It wouldn’t open, I swear!” she insisted. “I don’t know,” said Christopher, raising his hands in defeat and returning to the table. “Glitch, probably.” “Must’ve been,” agreed Lana, though she didn’t believe it for a second. She’d practically designed that system herself. Her biometrics should have trumped everything else in the permissions hierarchy.

Something was most definitely wrong.

That night when she got home she went straight for her bedroom and to her sock drawer, which was shut tightly. She pulled it open and stared hard at the rows of neatly folded socks. There was a small empty space at the back. She supposed it could be that she didn’t have that many socks. But she was pretty sure that wasn’t it. Something had been kept at the back of that drawer.

“I need to pee really bad,” Lana lied and rushed out the door on the day of the next shipment. She hurried into the unloading dock. The hatch door hissed open. Violet stepped out.

Their eyes met, and both stopped in their tracks. There was something. Something. Lana moved first, slowly approaching until she and Violet were face to face.

“Do you remember me?” whispered Violet, lips trembling.

There was something that should be there but wasn’t. Like in the space at the back of her sock drawer. “I should,” Lana realized.

Violet’s eyes filled with tears and she took Lana’s hand in hers. Stepping closer, Lana, raised her other hand to cup Violet’s cheek. Violet began to sob.

“Don’t cry,” Lana heard herself say. Then, in a move that took her completely by surprise, she pressed her lips against Violet’s.

There it was. The thing that was missing.

Violet gasped and kissed Lana like the world was ending. Lana’s heart pounded like it was about to burst, her whole body tingled as though she was approaching an overload -

A hand yanked her back and away.

“Chris!” she exclaimed.

Christopher didn’t look at her. He was glaring at Violet, angrier than Lana had ever seen him. “Don’t touch my things,” he snarled at Violet, and proceeded to drag Lana away.

“Chris!” she said, trying to tear herself free. “I know her! I don’t know how but I do. I - I -”

“Please,” wailed Violet, a long, anguished wail ripped from the back of her throat. She sank to the ground. “Chris, I’m begging you, don’t do it!”

“What is wrong with you?” Lana said angrily, still trying to wretch her arm out of his grasp. Christopher said nothing. Eyes blazing with fury, he marched her back toward the lab and then into the bathroom. He pushed something, and then before she could get over the surprise of there being a secret room in the bathroom, Lana was dragged into said room. Christopher finally let go of her and started digging through a drawer.

“You psychopath!” she yelled at him. “What did you do to her? What is this place? Why - “

Slowly, she looked down. A long knife protruded from her torso. At the other end was Christopher’s shaking hand. As Lana gaped, fresh blood seeped radially out into her clothes. Then, Christopher yanked the knife out. She screamed and fell to the floor. In the next few rare moments of lucidity she experienced while not consumed with pain, she heard him on the phone.

“It happened again!” he snapped. “How? We wiped her database! She shouldn’t even remember meeting that woman!”

Lana’s hand, which had been pressed against her wound, fell limply to the ground into a pile of white eternium powder where her blood had been.

“Well, do it again! Hard-delete whatever you need to! Make it go away!” Having said that, Christopher threw the phone against a wall. Then, he knelt beside Lana and watched her disintegrate.

“You were made for me,” he said in a voice that would have melted her heart had he not just stabbed her. “Every aspect of you was designed to be perfect for me. Only I can complete you. Why don’t you understand that?”

Lana breathed her last as her lungs crumbled into the dust from which they had been made. The collapse into eternium chased the electrical current in her brain carrying her last conscious thought:

Next time.