"The Holy Star," by Hannah Sauerwein

I took my first steps into Springfield on a Wednesday morning. There wasn't a lot of traffic on the highways, and on the walks that ran parallel to the motorway there were only a few people, mostly drifters. I smiled at every one I passed.

It isn't very much of a contribution, all things considered. For a person to take up all that oxygen and water and food mass, I mean, just the basics, not even clothing or electric or anything, that's a lot. And maybe natural-born people, real people, don't feel like they've got to earn that, but I was born in a saline tank like a clumsy four-finned fish, stupid and empty. For us they spend a good year of hab – a whole year – and it seems like a waste, Momma would say “A Real Shame,” if we don't do anything for the world.

Me, I smile at people. Like I said, not much.

Anyway, Springfield. A month previous, my boy Luke had transferred over there – he's a murse; we met because I was always in about my lungs – and finally I got the transfer filled too, but I couldn't really afford the move, so I took it walking and mailed my stuff to Luke's place. He said I could stay with him.

I remember sitting on his couch in the old place back in Greenville, looking out the window at the tall city and the colored lights, wanting to say to him, “I'm a real boy!” in my best Pinocchio voice, but the moment wasn't right and then he kissed me and, well, I wasn't talking for a while, anyway. That's the thing about Luke; he treats me just exactly like a person and acts surprised every time I point it out, like what else would he do? Like he doesn't know. He's worked ER before; he's seen it.

And it's handy dating a medical health professional anyway. All us synths have our own trouble, and mine is my lungs. Momma and her scientists say useful things like, “the lungs didn't develop properly,” which is kind of like a pretentious verbal shrug. On the other hand, they're not with the crowd that buys into the one existing explanation: divine providence.

I wouldn't say I believe it, the whole 'punishment from God' racket, but it makes sense to me that nature would look after her own, and do nothing for those who defy her. I wasn't born from a human; why should I claim to be one? I said I'm afraid of being a waste of air, and Luke would tell me that's silly, but Luke was born, and he doesn't remember learning how to walk, hooting like an animal because he couldn't figure out the details of his tongue.

Momma's like Geppetto; she's convinced I'm a person too, so she doesn't see it. Maybe it's because she's not religious, either, or maybe it's just because she's not the skeptic she dreamed me to be. Momma makes people; she can't have room to wonder if we're real. I've seen those synths, brain and body both misfired, the way they sort of stagger around and die at practical-30 at the oldest. Five, six years of life?

But here I am, prac-25 but I've been alive nearly a decade now; I don't think I'm missing what I need to live. I'm just not sure that's enough to justify--

So, I smile at people.

In Springfield proper there were people everywhere, draped like wet newspapers over every available surface – it was maybe 10 am, too late to be going to work, early enough to be sleeping off a hangover. They were really everywhere. All the pictures on the network were a lot nicer, probably pretty old, but I kinda liked it this way, grunge Springfield that smells a little like urine when you stand in one place too long.

I had all day til Luke got off, so I just wandered. I got out of the business district pretty quick, spent a while wandering a garden. There are tons more trees in Springfield than in Greenville, and I think I would never get tired of just sitting under a tree, but it was a day for wandering. I had the whole city to explore, blocks and blocks, finding soup kitchens and daycares and florists and those funny houses painted oh-god colors of green and pink, alleyways and old statues. I had the whole city, so there was no time for just sitting.

After an hour or so of this the smog was getting to my lungs – or the walking was getting to my lungs, or basic existence was getting to my lungs – so I decided to find a place to settle for a bit. I was in the middle of one of those near-downtown residential places, which is high-end shit neighborhoods, low-end family neighborhoods, the kind of place with lots of trees and roads without any lanes marked out.

There was a big stonework church, and I found the 'Synths Welcome' National Equitable Treatment Stamp on the sign, so big I almost missed it. Thank God for NET – and not only for the rights it gives me. Just because the places I shouldn't go don't post the stamp and the bigots and I stay out of each other's ways. The wooden front doors were open, so I walked in.

It was an old church – judging by the copious amounts of natural stone – and all of the internal seating had been stripped except for some squeaky wood benches along all the walls. There were pillars, of course, and the pulpit and stage at the far end, but otherwise it was all cleared out for standing room, or in this case kneeling room. It looked more like the wind had blown a pile of ratty leaf-people across the floor than that a congregation was praying but I could hear them, rustling and murmuring and some people wailing and rocking.

Once I'd settled in an unoccupied patch of stone, I touched the seven points of the Holy Star on the block in front of me and then just sat. I'm not much good at praying, and I always have the feeling I shouldn't pray – that it's a waste of God's time like I'm a waste of air. But I can't help it; I can't help that high thin keening that seems to hum through my body in pulses like a heartbeat, the way the old churches draw me back. Mostly they're closed to me and mine, but the new generation of half-breeds will make religion ask the question again, and NET will catch up and maybe it won't matter who was born and who was made.

Oh god, that bothers me.

I stared at the floor. Nothing was drawn there, but I could still see my fingers moving, the places where I'd touched the Star's points. There were lines between the blocks, but not a dimple in the stone. It was worn shining from feet and feet and feet. A stain marked the topmost point, and they just traced down from there in my head. I thought the shape of the Holy Star, which was like a prayer to me, even if there were no words to it. One two three four five six seven, an unbroken and six-bent line that meets itself again. Like a circle, but not so simple. Never so simple. That's how I pray.

My timing was bad, for the first time in my life.

There's lots of riots and hate violence but I've never actually been hurt before, generally got far away fast enough because I'm pretty good at moving like I'm real. But from the coughing, just the sheer volume of coughing in the room, you had to know we were all synths, or mostly synths, and while I was staring at the rock and deciding how to pray someone opened fire on the room with a semi-automatic something.

I screamed like a kid, which is terrible for my lungs but I do it anyway. I curled up on the floor and people tripped over me and then one guy died over me, and his shirt with a badge was hanging right in front of my face, and it said “NET – I'm a person too!” so I knew he must be a synth. I kept staring at the orange badge and staring at the orange badge until I could feel his blood running down my whole body and the shooting turned into shouting and the shouting left the building.

I was trying really hard not to cry.

I sat up and it was a mess. You see people die lots, with a nurse boyfriend and a penchant for hanging around the slums, but not like this, not all sharp and messy and sprayed across the wall like graffiti or modern art, not on top of you being heavier than living people ever are. I had to shove and crawl to get out from under him. I gagged a minute, and then I took his badge because I sometimes have fits where I assign significance to everything, and today it was the badge. I wiped it off on my shirt and put it in my pocket. It was orange like a construction cone, like a caution sign, it was orange screaming “HEY!” only what it said was “I'm a person too” and no one read it as danger, danger.

There were people crying, but I got up and left anyway, like a person floating or imagining or in some kind of smoke and I just walked away and kept walking, all bloody and wheezing.

I went to the address Luke had given me and it matched the picture from his message, and I sat in the door frame and I cried until I fell asleep there. That's a bad idea, that much crying, because it makes my throat all tight and I was having trouble breathing. Not that I cared; I held my caution-sign badge so tight that it cut into my hand.

What am I bleeding, I thought, I'm bleeding blood, but is it real blood? It's synthetic blood. Only my body made this. And Luke's body makes Luke's blood so is he synthetic too?

Things got strange and fuzzy; I came and went and came and went and during one of my absences the sun set. I would stare at my hand bleeding until my eyes couldn't take it any more and then they'd close again.

I was awake when Luke got home, though, because the smog and the crying and things were getting to me, and my nose was all stuffed shut and I was starting to choke when I tried to breathe. It's that feeling you get like you can only inhale halfway and then you just hit a wall, and you want to pant like an animal because you know you need the oxygen.

To me, it was vaguely satisfying, it seemed just. I thought maybe the badge killed the synth guy in the church, I thought maybe it was going to kill me. I thought we were all kneeling asking forgiveness and we must have gotten as close as we're allowed. I wasn't taking up so much air anymore, is what I thought. This is forgiveness.

He couldn't see me because of the door shadow, at first, and he flicked on the porch light and made a noise like I was standing on his throat. Then he must have gotten his throat back, because he said, “Myra?”

I opened my eyes. He probably wanted words, or something, because here I turned up all bloody on his doorstep and scared him so bad he almost choked. Probably.

“Myra, what happened?” Now Luke was kneeling, his hands on me, sometimes comforting like I'm his girl, sometimes professional; I could feel him checking for broken bones or cuts.

I handed him the badge, and when he took it I felt the metal sliding out of my skin. I realized I must still be crying because my face was wet, but my lungs were like a racket bouncing around my head and I couldn't hear anything else except the wheeze-hiss in and out.

He stared at the badge.

“He was praying,” I said, because it would make sense if I spoke it just right, I thought, or maybe my throat would work again, “and God sent forgiveness.”

“Are you hurt?” Luke was trying to figure out where all the blood was from. Then he looked at me again and said, “What?”

I tried again; it was getting harder. My fingers started to tingle and tell me I should be scared, but I wasn't scared. “He was praying,” I finally got out again.

“Myra, can you breathe okay?”

My mouth cracked itself out of where it was lodged and made a smile that felt like it was splintering under great pressure. “Nope,” I said.

Everyone says that synths dream differently than real people, though I guess I don't really know any different. On the network there's a lot of people who have the same kind of dreams as me, though – early dreams, paralysis dreams, remembering what it was like to be put together in our maker's heads, remembering what it was like to have muscles for the first time.

This one was a body dream from hab, all bright blue-tinted lights and hard feelings on my skin and behind my eyes, but locked, unable to move, disconnected so I don't know if I even have muscles. There's a rocking sensation, comfortable, and I can hear Momma's voice.

Like all the Creators that dream up the minds for the synthetic bodies, Momma is an optimist and a very affectionate person and wildly contradictory and pleasant. She liked to sit back and pet my hair and sing to me my first weeks in hab.

That's what this dream was like, like my first day of being.

I woke up because Momma was really singing to me and petting my hair, which meant Luke called her which meant it was bad. But I could tell that from the tube in my trachea, the way my chest and my stomach were rising and shifting without my instruction. Maybe the first time I got on a respirator it was an intrusion, but now it's a relief, to know someone else is handling the breathing for a while.

“Hey, Myra.” Momma kissed me on the forehead. She's more maternal than most; I suspect it to be a product of her loving nature. Instead of adopting, she dreams up her babies.

I tried to sign to her but the thick feeling wasn't gone yet and my arms lolled about in defiance. For a panicked second I thought I'd regressed, I thought I'd have to spend months learning how to use my fingers again. Real people don't get scared of that every time they're sleepy.

She petted my hair again. “Go to sleep, Myra. Luke will wake you up when he gets back.”

Which means, I don't want to have that argument with you again. Of course she knows what I'm thinking.

Luke woke me up and there was nothing in my throat and I was breathing all alone again. Damn. “Hey, you. Take it easy, okay?”

“Hi.” I was raw on the inside. I think having a respirator out feels like being turned inside out. People reach for my shoulder and I'm scared they're going to scrape my throat with their fingertips.

“Your Momma says you're down on yourself.”

“I didn't say anything.”

“So you are?”

I didn't answer.

“I heard about the shooting.”

More forceful this time: “I didn't say anything.”

He rubbed my cheek and then kissed me right on my chapped lips. I didn't kiss him back, and he tried again, but I didn't, I couldn't. “I'm sorry.”

“Don't be sorry,” I said, and I sounded sharp to myself, and I must have been sharp because he flinched. “We were asking God for something and He gave it to us.”

“You wanted that?”

“Hubris,” I said, and I was wheezing again, and he was flinching every time I wheezed like he did when I snapped. “Hubris.”

“That's why you took this?” He held up the badge and it was clean, clean like his white coat and his face and his eyes, so clean. NET – I'm a person too! Danger, caution. “You think this is hubris?”

I started crying.

“Shh, Myra, you're going to have another attack.” Luke started shaking an inhaler he must have been carrying.

“Then don't give me the meds,” I panted. “Save them for someone who will get better.”

He kept shaking the little tube like I hadn't said a thing.

“Luke.”

“Yes?”

“You don't know what it's like.” My mouth was getting clumsy; he was right about the attack. “You don't know what it's like; I couldn't even regulate autonomous functions, I couldn't do anything except have machines pump my organs around. I'm borrowing this, Luke, I'm borrowing--”

“Exhale,” he said, and put the inhaler to my lips. “You'll get better.”

When I breathed again, it was a cloud of steroids.

Luke bent down and kissed me on my lurching gasping failing throat. “You'll get better.”

It was a Sunday when we went back – Luke says that's safer, there will be more people around. On Sunday there's a whole swarm of congregation and they're not all synths and they're not all real and from person to person you really can't tell. It really was standing-room-only, even after an incident like that.

We waited till everyone was leaving and then let ourselves in. I found the stone I knelt on to pray, and he took my hand and knelt down with me and reached out to touch the seven points on the floor.

“Not there,” I said, and immediately felt strange to say something like that, but I couldn't very well unsay it. The words had almost spoken themselves; it was just that he'd been tracing the star in the wrong place, in a different place, and all the blood had made the floor holy and he couldn't do it wrong.

But Luke is always very patient with me, not because he's patient but because he's actually interested in what I have to say. “Where did you do it?” he asked, because he can read me almost as well as Momma can.

I reached out and he put his hand under mine so that when I touched my fingers to the seven points of the Holy Star his fingers were touching them in between mine. Then he bowed his head to pray, and I did too, but I couldn't sit here by him and pray. Not because I couldn't pray, but because I couldn't sit here.

The walls and the pillars had flecks and chips from the bullets, but it wasn't much damage because it was natural stone, after all.

My brain flinched at the word natural, and I followed the wall, walking on the unsteady seats of the wooden benches, the fingers of my left hand trailing along the stone and feeling the chipped places. It was empty in here except us, he and I and the chips in the walls and all of us were praying. Then Luke's voice, worried like he gets when I'm so quiet: “Myra-love?”

I stopped and watched him walk over to me.

“What's that in your hand?” He touched the knuckles of my right hand.

I opened it, and the lettered orange face of the badge stared cockeyed at him.

He ran his fingers over the plastic, and then over my fingers, and then stepped close and lifted me to the floor beside him. He put a hand on my cheek and kissed my lips, a light dry fluttering kiss. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” I said, and smiled at him.

The smile made his whole face melt into softness, and he kissed me again.

“We're in a church,” I said, and made as if to push him but didn't.

He looked me in the eyes until the previous exchange melted away and it was just the quiet again. “What are you doing?”

Then I reached out for the wall again, touched one of the fresh rough hollows, and he touched it too. We explored it together, fingers pressing on each individual dip of the scar, and then I turned around and looked at his chest, very close behind me.

I pointed my face to his. “I'm praying.”