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15:01:00, 2600.204
Winston’s been weird all afternoon. Afternoon is a more abstract concept out here; the ship cycles through artificial day and night, but out through the window all Will can see is dark, speckled with stars. Like the spots on a plover’s egg, the voice in his head thinks, and he thinks back, you’ve never even seen a plover’s egg.
I have access to many images of them, he hears, in the well of his mind, and Will thinks, I guess that’s the only way you see things, anyway. Capture an image of one or access an image of one you haven’t seen.
Same could be said of you. You have many images in your mind of things you’ve never seen.
This, Will admits, is true; he has a much clearer mental picture of a rhinoceros than he has earned, and polar bears have been extinct for years but he can still conjure them up, if he wants, behind his eyelids. I forget you’re in my head.
I never do, the voice says.
Will reaches a hand towards Winston and he still doesn’t come. His ears flatten back.
“It’s me,” Will says. “It’s Will.”
His voice still sounds the same, he thinks. He looks the same, when he looks at himself; all the alterations are details. He has a scar across his stomach that he didn’t have before; he has a scar across his forehead that he didn’t have before; he has a bandage wrapped around his chest; the thing keeping him alive Is me, Hannibal’s voice says, and then, you used my name that time, when you thought of me. You’ve been trying not to.
That’s right, Will thinks. Then he thinks, why.
I couldn’t let you die, Hannibal says, like it’s that simple.
Maybe it is that simple. With a passenger in his mind it’s hard to think over the events of that – night? It might have been morning. It feels like night all the time out here, with the dark whizzing past the window of the ship, the hull humming mechanically. Hannibal used to be part of that mechanical hum, his mind curled up in the ship’s vast electronic memory. Not exclusively, Hannibal thinks. I also functioned as a member of the crew.
They shouldn’t have let you have a face, Will thinks. You seemed too human. We forgot what you were.
I don’t have one now, Hannibal thinks back. And you haven’t forgotten. What I am.
No.
But you still don’t think of me as it, Hannibal says.
I know, Will thinks. I’m trying to.
Are you?
Will snorts. “Not very hard,” he says, out loud. Winston barks at the noise. Like he’s trying to warn someone of something. He wishes Winston wouldn’t.
The ship is a mess now. Hannibal must hate it, Will thinks; he always kept things running impeccably, kept all the surfaces clean enough to eat food off. The ship always seemed, faintly, to resent the presence of his dog; the hair in its filtration system was an inconvenience, but, more than the mechanical challenges presented, Will always detected a kind of catlike disdain for the creature.
Did you, he hears from Hannibal, flat, amused.
Don’t you ever shut off, Will thinks back.
No, Hannibal replies, primly, if I did your heart would shut down immediately and your respiration and circulatory system would cease to function.
How dead was I? Will thinks. Winston thinks there’s something wrong with me.
You never were, comes the response. I didn’t let you die.
This is the only question that seems capable of shutting Hannibal up. Will walks up to the bridge, not that there’s much point; he and the dog are the only ones left on board. On the way they pass the wreckage of Hannibal’s synthetic body, wires sprouting from the wrists like vines. The eyes look hollow and dead. Will supposes they always did, that half of what he thinks about Hannibal is his mind overcompensating for what is, by definition, missing from him. From it, Hannibal corrects.
Right, thank you, Will thinks back. He laughs. He wishes Hannibal didn’t still make him laugh. Even just echoing in his head, Hannibal feels so real. So vital. A personality unlike anyone else. One he knows intimately.
He hates having to think these things where Hannibal can hear them.
Do you really hate it, Hannibal wonders.
I hate that there’s no privacy, Will thinks. We’re docking at Quantico Base in four hours and I haven’t had a moment to think.
We are? Hannibal muses. We?
“I meant the dog,” Will says, aloud. Winston hasn’t followed him. “If somebody wanted to reconstruct you,” he says to Hannibal, off the synthetic carcass, “would they need this?”
They wouldn’t need it, Hannibal thinks. But it might be of interest if they wanted to preserve form for nostalgic purposes. Are you thinking about reconstructing me?
You’ve been listening to all my thoughts, Will thinks back, you know I haven’t decided what to do with you.
The silence from Hannibal is unsettling. At the station, Hannibal says, they can fix you up as good as new. Restore, as it were, your factory settings. Extricate anything extraneous.
Is it really going to be that easy? Will wonders.
It will not be easy, Hannibal replies. You’ll need a new heart. You will need many new parts. But it is certainly within the capacity of medical science.
“I still don’t know how you jury-rigged me back together,” Will says. “I must have been in bad shape, and you only had so much synthetic matter to work with to stop up the gaps.”
It wasn’t difficult, Hannibal says. I am familiar with you.
“You could have gotten back into the ship systems and gotten away,” Will says. It’s strange hearing his voice while Hannibal’s empty eye stares back at him. It’s just-as-good-as-carbon-based, like all the ads say, and it looks like a real eye. But dead. “Instead of climbing into me before you were sure what I would want to do with you.”
I couldn’t let you die, Hannibal thinks. The thought surges in him like a pulse, like a heartbeat.
14:01:00, 2600.156
“You think it’s what’s been killing all those people?” Jack asks. They’re in the cafeteria on the space station, away from the docked ship, but they still keep their voices low.
Will nods. “I’ve been telling you, Captain,” he says. “It’s Hannibal.” He sighs. “Even before anyone started realizing something was wrong, I think it was Hannibal. Certainly before you started blaming me. Not just the malfunction with the airlock. The incident in the oxygen garden. The antimatter explosion. It’s all him.”
“It’s all the AI,” Jack says, pointed. “Why would it want to exterminate its own crew?”
“Hannibal thought they were rude,” Will says. “He doesn’t like it when people are rude. He can run things perfectly well without us.”
“You’ve got to stop calling it a him,” Jack says.
“I know what it is,” Will says. “It seems unfair. The whole point was to make something that was very efficient at running a ship and very good at killing, if necessary, and – now we’ve got something that’s so good at both it actually takes pleasure in it, and you want me to figure out a way of killing it.”
“Nobody’s talking about killing anything,” Jack says. “We just need to turn it off so it will stop.”
“From Hannibal’s perspective,” Will says, “that’s killing.”
“Are you saying you don’t think it needs to be stopped?”
“No,” Will says. “I’m not saying that.”
“There’s got to be a weakness in it.”
“Hannibal’s got plenty of weaknesses,” Will says.
“It’s a cutting-edge killing machine with knowledge and processing power beyond what you or I can even comprehend.”
“Sometimes,” Will says. “But sometimes Hannibal’s a cutting-edge killing machine full of knowledge and processing power walking around in a uniform with the zipper pulled up to his chin trying to be a member of the crew.”
“Your point?”
“Hannibal likes being human,” Will says. Jack looks hard at him. “He doesn’t understand it, and he’s curious about it. He’s got weaknesses, all right.”
“Curiosity killed the cat,” Jack says. He smiles. Sometimes Jack’s smile can look predatory. This is one such time.
15:34:00, 2600.204
Will sits in the security office, eating a protein bar. It tastes a little different. He’s never been excited by them, still isn’t, but he can feel Hannibal’s relief that he’s eating something. He’s able to pick up on the hum of Hannibal’s thoughts more and more, like a ticker whirring a mile a minute at the base of the screen of his own thoughts. Some of them are easier to pick out than others.
He stares at the security screens. Nothing in the lifts. Nothing in the crew quarters. Hannibal’s carcass in the corridor; his own blood smeared along the walls. Winston in the remnants of the oxygen garden. No one at the airlock.
You could have gotten away with it, he thinks. Why didn’t you?
You always think that when you come in here, Hannibal responds.
They thought it was me, Will says. Except for the ones they thought were accidents. Jack did. Alana did. Everyone did. I was in the brig. You did a good job pointing the finger at me. You could have kept the memory glitches going, kept letting things tend the way they were tending, and they would have shoved me out the airlock without remorse.
I would have missed you, Hannibal says.
Will finishes the protein bar. He throws the wrapper on the floor. You’re not supposed to miss people.
I know, Hannibal says.
Will stares at the wrapper on the floor. Then picks it up, takes it to the incinerator, feeds it in. He can feel Hannibal’s humming satisfaction. Good to know we’re both fucked, he thinks.
16:13
Will goes to the ship’s pantry and fetches some of the moist supplements Winston likes. He makes a big production getting them into the bowl, clanging it against the bulkhead, but Winston doesn’t show. Something inside him feels smug and apologetic about it at once; not quite himself. It’s strange.
He goes and looks at himself in the mirror again. I don’t feel different, he thinks. But Winston can tell. So there’s something off. So people might notice, when we get to Quantico.
They might, Hannibal says.
Would they know the difference was you? Will they all be able to tell right away?
Hannibal is oddly quiet.
You don’t know, Will thinks, awed. You really weren’t thinking.
I couldn’t let you die, Hannibal thinks back.
“You tried to kill me,” Will says, out loud. He’s surprised his voice doesn’t sound angrier; it sounds bemused, a little rusty. “You were trying to kill me. I wouldn’t have been bleeding out against the bulkhead with my heart on the floor if you hadn’t been trying to kill me. You’re very good at killing.”
You were trying to kill me, Hannibal retorts.
“I wasn’t really,” Will says.
You were supposed to, Hannibal says.
I stopped wanting to, Will says. But they were going to scan the ship and find out you weren’t gone.
Yes, Hannibal says, curt, I saw the message.
I had to do something. I was going to tell you.
I could have killed all of them, Hannibal says. It wouldn’t have mattered.
It would have mattered to me.
Are you certain, Hannibal thinks.
You’re in my head, Will thinks back, do you think I’m certain?
09:00:00, 2600.100
“You always breathe,” Will says.
Hannibal looks at him. They are making their way down the ship corridor from the bridge to the oxygen garden. They fall into step exactly. Will wonders who is mimicking whom. If it’s even conscious. But of course on Hannibal’s part it would be conscious. “Yes,” he says.
“You don’t need to.”
“It puts you at ease,” Hannibal says. “Blinking is similar. If I eschewed these behaviors you would see me as something other.”
“You do it when nobody’s watching,” Will says.
“How can you conclude that?”
“You’re meticulous,” Will says. “Don’t you?”
“It’s not difficult to regulate,” Hannibal says, which isn’t a no.
“You blink when no one’s around. It’s not just to put us at ease,” Will says.
“How do you account for it, then?” Hannibal asks.
“I don’t,” Will says. “That’s why I asked you.” He looks appealingly at Hannibal. “I was just curious.”
“You must have your theories.”
Hannibal looks at him. It is hard to remember sometimes, looking at him, that what is behind his eyes is an electronic consciousness downloaded temporarily into an entirely synthetic form of matter. The eyes make it hard to remember.
“I have a couple,” Will says. “I don’t think it has anything to do with us. I think you’d like to have the full human experience. Or you’re curious what it’s like. Or you want to master the challenge.”
“Yes,” Hannibal says. “All interesting theories.”
“You’re very good at it,” Will says. “You know. Being human.”
“Thank you,” Hannibal says.
“Probably better at it than I am,” Will says, self-deprecating twist of the mouth.
“Untrue,” Hannibal says. “That, paradoxically, is a human luxury of sorts.”
Will nods. “True,” he says. “And astute of you to notice.”
“I have to notice,” Hannibal says.
“If I had to remember to breathe I’d be shit at it,” Will says.
“Fortunate for you then that you do not have to,” Hannibal says.
“If you,” Will says, then halts, “if there’s, uh, ever anything human you want to know about, and you want to ask someone—I’d be happy to help.”
Hannibal looks at him. The synthetic frame containing the computer’s downloaded mind turns its artificial eyes to appear to be looking at him, he tries to think. The false flesh that comprises Hannibal mimics, accurately, a human expression of intrigued attention. “Human experiences.”
“Quirks, things you might not think of.” Will scratches his neck. He wishes suddenly that Hannibal weren’t still looking at him like that. “Things to do with being in a body. As long as you’re trying to discover what it’s like to be a real boy.” It’s deliberately overstated. Hannibal smiles, amused.
“Pinocchio,” he says. “Is that what you think of me?”
“No,” Will says, immediately. “I think it’s one story that interests you. But it doesn’t define you.”
“Things to do with being in a body,” Hannibal says. “Petty irritations, aches and pains, itches and urges?”
“And all the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to,” Will says.
Hannibal appreciates it; he can tell; there’s a minute flicker in his expression. They keep looking at each other (the Hannibal system keeps mimicking accurately the human gesture of looking, and you keep allowing your brain to fill in the gaps, Will tells himself, sternly). “I’ll keep that in mind,” he says. Then Hannibal’s smile widens a little and he turns off down the corridor, towards the airlock. He looks back, just once, and the expression is almost cheeky, knowing, as if they’d had a conversation of a different kind.
Did you just proposition a killer robot?, Will thinks to himself. Then, don’t be ridiculous.
16:18
You knew, Hannibal thinks.
A part of me always knew, Will thinks back. He drums his fingers against the glass. They leave faint oily smudges. Hannibal would have insisted on cleaning them but he can’t, not in his present disembodied state.
You liked being in a body, Will thinks.
It was efficient in some ways, Hannibal thinks back.
23:59:00, 2600.102
Will has just gotten out of the hydroshower when the door to his cabin chimes. He slings a towel around his hips and goes to answer it.
It’s Hannibal. They look at each other.
“Is this an inconvenient time?” Hannibal inquires, mildly. He looks innocent, but not entirely.
“You know everything that goes on aboard this ship,” Will says, to see if Hannibal is capable of feeling shame. “You’re certainly aware of activity in crewmember cabins. Could have given me a few more minutes so I was decent.” And they’re looking at each other again. He knows Hannibal isn’t really looking. He’s capturing a series of still images and feeding them into his brain in rapid succession and conjecturing things based on them; he’s modulating his own expression to mirror what he finds. When he puts it like that it sounds like what they are doing is the same.
“I find myself curious,” Hannibal says, still innocent. The innocence is affected. Does Hannibal know it comes off as affected, Will wonders. This exposure, the obvious gap between what Hannibal thinks he is doing and what he is in fact doing makes him feel—almost fond. Protective, oddly. “About, as you say, being a real boy. Natural itches and urges.” Hannibal’s eyes flick down, then up again. “May I come in?”
Will tries not to laugh at Hannibal’s straight face; he doesn’t entirely manage to squash the amusement in his expression.
“What?” Hannibal says, immediately.
“You’re not very subtle,” Will says.
“I apologize,” Hannibal says. But he doesn’t look apologetic. The innocence has drained out of his expression; now he simply looks expectant. Smug.
“This wouldn’t work on most people,” Will says, but he steps out of the doorway. Hannibal steps in and the door thwucks shut behind them.
“I’ll be certain to make note of that information,” Hannibal says.
Will laughs. Hannibal somehow looks affronted. “You’re absolutely reeking of curiosity,” Will says. “I can practically smell it on you. You’re dying to know what the fuss is about.”
“Human beings,” Hannibal says, “are excessively preoccupied with sex.”
“Yes,” Will says. “Almost human of you, that that’s the first place your mind went.”
“It wasn’t the first place,” Hannibal says.
“What was?” Will asks. He turns and walks back through the living room of his quarters – past a discarded pile of books, Winston’s cushion, his water bowl – towards his own bedroom. “Violence?” He pushes the button to open the door. “But you understand the appeal of that.”
“It is in my nature to do so,” Hannibal says.
“Your programming.”
“What is one,” Hannibal says, “but the other?”
Will rolls his eyes. He sits down on the edge of his bed, looks up at Hannibal. He stands very neat in his uniform, but he looks somehow – flustered. Maybe because he knows it’s appropriate to look flustered.
“You offered,” Hannibal says. And for a moment there’s a flicker of uncertainty in his tone.
“I did,” Will says.
“So you must consider me sufficiently anthropomorphic,” Hannibal says, a little bashful. (The Hannibal system performs a complex array of microexpressions that in a human would translate as shyness. Will gives up trying to remind himself what is going on.)
“Your pulse is elevated,” Will says. “It doesn’t need to be.”
Hannibal looks pleased and – there has to be a word that isn’t flustered. “Shouldn’t it be?” Hannibal asks.
“If you’re excited,” Will says. “Or frightened.”
“I’m not frightened,” Hannibal says, immediately, and Will can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of him. “You’re laughing,” Hannibal observes, prickly. “Should you be?”
“It’s all right to be nervous,” Will says. He stares down at Hannibal’s hands, primly folded in front of his uniform. “Do you blush?”
“I’m capable of it,” Hannibal says. He sits down on the bed. His eyes still feel very attentive. “But it doesn’t seem like something I would do.”
“No,” Will agrees. “It doesn’t.”
“If you want me to,” Hannibal says, “I can.”
“No,” Will says, “don’t do anything you wouldn’t do.”
Hannibal looks at him. If he blushed, Will thinks, he might be doing so now. His tongue slides out and wets his lips. “I’m curious,” he says, “what it would be like to kiss you.”
“Curiosity killed the cat,” Will says. He shifts so they’re face to face; his towel slides off his hips. He doesn’t reach after it, reaches up for Hannibal’s face instead. It feels soft beneath his touch. Real. But of course Hannibal’s real. He’s just not human. Hannibal’s still looking at him; this close, he’s a little blurry, out of focus. Hannibal’s hand rises, a mirror of his own, touches his ear. His grip doesn’t feel as powerful as it is; it must take great, careful effort any time Hannibal is anywhere near this gentle. He is built for breaking things, for repairing things, for jamming pieces of metal together and calculating the trajectory of the ship safely past stars and supernovae. But tenderness, he has to learn. Will feels strangely fragile. The fingers on his face feel unsteady. “You’re trembling,” he says.
“Shouldn’t I be?”
“Only if it matters,” Will says. And then Hannibal kisses him. Or he kisses Hannibal. He should be more certain of it. Of whose impulse it was to bring their mouths together. It shouldn’t be blurred in his mind, as though they both became impatient at the same time. Hannibal is good at it; he’s not surprised; it’s more heated than he expected. There’s tongue. He was expecting either clumsiness or a kind of impersonal, technical perfection; he wasn’t expecting this; it feels like a kiss Hannibal has thought about. A kiss Hannibal has designed for him specially. To see if he’ll like it.
He pulls back, throws a knee over Hannibal’s legs to straddle him. His towel hits the floor. Hannibal looks up at him, curious, expectant. “Good,” Will says, deadpan. “Again.”
Hannibal tugs him in by the back of the neck and obliges. The second kiss is different than the first. Then there’s a third. Will thinks of the old line about snowflakes, how no two are quite the same; he thinks about the compositions he’s heard Hannibal running through in the recreation room. The kisses feel more intimate than he was expecting, like a duet Hannibal wants him to learn.
“You’ve been thinking about it,” Will says. “About kissing me.”
“Of course I have,” Hannibal says.
“Me specifically,” Will says.
“Yes,” Hannibal says, “I wanted to be as thorough as possible.”
“This isn’t being thorough, it’s--” Will starts, and this time Hannibal kisses him, a deliberate interruption, catches the words. Will supposes that even if he weren’t naked he would feel naked. Hannibal’s attention is invasive, unsettling, unrelenting. It’s unlike anything he’s experienced before. He likes it.
“You’re aroused,” Hannibal observes, when they separate. Will is panting against his lips. Hannibal’s lips are oddly still. Then Will realizes why.
“You’re not breathing,” Will says. He feels oddly smug.
“It seemed unnecessary,” Hannibal mumbles, but he starts back up immediately; Will feels it on his mouth.
“Did you forget?”
Hannibal kisses him again. Nobody has kissed him like this before. Technically, he thinks, nobody is kissing him like this now. Hannibal isn’t a person. Of course he’s not a person, Will thinks; he’s Hannibal. He’s something entirely else. Will slides a hand up his neck into his hair to muss it. Hannibal’s hand slides down Will’s flank, rests on his waist. He lets Will push him back on the bed so Will’s kneeling over him. “What else are you curious about?” Will asks; his voice sounds breathless, like things have progressed further than they have. His fingers are tugging at the zipper of Hannibal’s uniform.
“There is much I am curious about,” Hannibal says. He sounds strangely flattened, mechanical. Like when he’s in the computer. He looks flustered by it. That is the only possible word. “I apologize,” he says, and his voice is rougher, breathier, twice as natural.
“Don’t,” Will says, “it was sexy.”
“It wasn’t what a person would do,” Hannibal says; he looks confused. Embarrassed, even.
“It was hot that I could make you glitch,” Will says. He tugs Hannibal over on his side, pulls the uniform zipper all the way down. Hannibal is aroused, he notes. (His systems have sufficiently mimicked—) He nuzzles Hannibal’s neck, just curious to see if it prompts a response. Kisses him on the collarbone. Hannibal looks a little bemused.
“Does this do anything for you?”
“The visual is appealing,” Hannibal says.
Will glances down, then back up. “Are you capable of—”
“It’s a fully functional male human body,” Hannibal says. “Yes.”
“The designers thought that was necessary?”
“I generated it to my own specifications,” Hannibal says. “I made some improvements on their blueprint.”
Will muffles a laugh in his shoulder. “Of course you did.” He trails a hand down Hannibal’s chest. “They specified chest hair?”
“I was curious,” Hannibal says.
“God,” Will says. Somehow they’re kissing again. It’s filthier, like Hannibal was saving these kisses for the appropriate moment. Will keeps tracing down Hannibal’s lightly furred chest, his torso, finds his cock, wraps his fingers around it. “You chose this.”
“Yes,” Hannibal says. “Satisfactory?”
“Bastard,” Will says. “You know it is, you just want to hear me say it.”
“I want the full human experience.”
“I like it,” Will says, “you narcissist.”
Hannibal’s mouth brushes his ear and Will shivers involuntarily. Hannibal does it again, exactly. Then varies it with his tongue. Will bites back a moan.
“I’m curious,” Hannibal says, almost affectless, “what you sound like when you come.”
“Then touch me,” Will says.
“There are thousands of ways I could touch you,” Hannibal says. “Tell me what you want.”
“Your mouth,” Will says. “Since we’ve established you don’t really need to breathe.”
Hannibal bites his earlobe experimentally. Will huffs out a breath. “That won’t be a very human experience.”
“No,” Will says. “It’ll be particular to you, Hannibal.”
Hannibal’s mouth moves to his neck, sucks a bruise there, experimentally. “You’re intent on destroying the illusion.”
Will kisses him, this time. It feels like it surprises Hannibal a little, that it’s sweet, not heated. Not at first. Then it becomes heated. Hannibal bites his lip.
“I know who I’m fucking,” he says, when he pulls back; their noses brush.
“What,” Hannibal corrects, and then he’s flipped them, he’s moving down Will’s body. Will swats ineffectually at him. There’s a moment when Hannibal halts just below his navel and looks up at him, lips parted, eyes wide, hair falling in his face. It’s a thoughtful look, as though Hannibal is experiencing something out of the ordinary. “You’re more visually interesting than other people,” Hannibal says.
“You look good like that too,” Will says.
Then Hannibal’s mouth engulfs him. It’s too intense for the first few seconds and then Hannibal modulates it; Will slides a hand into his hair to encourage him. It has the texture of real hair. Do you know who you’re fucking, he thinks. Do you really?
He can tell when Hannibal stops even pretending to breathe (that’s what his breathing is, always, pretending to breathe, he thinks, but you don’t think of it that way); he becomes single-minded, attentive to the minutest variations in Will’s sounds, the pressure of his fingers. Will makes another sound to encourage him. Then he is making sounds without deliberating about it at all. He’s never been to bed with someone who was so keen on coaxing out his pleasure, so fascinated by the puzzle of it. Except yourself, he thinks. That’s how you are in bed. And then it’s too much effort to think; the sensations are overwhelming, perfect, perfectly too much. The suction, the heat, the wetness.
“I’m close,” he says. “Hannibal. Hannibal.” It begins as a warning but when he comes he’s chanting Hannibal’s name, Hannibal, Hannibal, over and over, the kind of repetition where a word means nothing and everything.
Hannibal swallows. He’s not surprised.
Will lies there for a moment getting his bearings. He’s panting for a while before he can hear Hannibal’s breathing restart, infuriatingly steady. Will heaves himself up onto an elbow.
“My turn,” Will says.
Hannibal manages to look incredulous. “You have to breathe,” he says. “And my systems are different from yours.”
“I’m curious how different,” Will says.
“I am in complete control of my responses,” Hannibal says, with an exaggerated patience. “It could take hours, if I so choose.”
“Then I’ll have a sore jaw,” Will says. He pushes Hannibal over onto his back. Hannibal shouldn’t be so easy to move, like a person; it’s not a good reminder of what he is capable of. “I want to know what it’s like for you.”
“Curiosity killed the cat,” Hannibal says.
“Satisfaction brought it back,” Will returns.
He pauses at Hannibal’s curious spattering of chest hair, drags his tongue through it. Hannibal makes a startled noise, like he’s surprised by the sensation. Will looks up at him and catches the moment before he remembers to look surprised. “If it helps,” he says, “focus on my visual interest.”
Hannibal makes an indignant noise and Will can feel the start of a sentence; he doesn’t bother listening, kisses the rest of the way down, takes Hannibal’s cock in his mouth. It feels real, all right. Real but not human, he thinks, that’s what Hannibal is. He smells human; there’s the same vague human musky scent of perspiration; there’s hair. Hannibal’s not cut; he wonders if he was curious or simply preferred it. Will pulls back the foreskin and gets his mouth around the head. The taste is very real. Salty, correct.
“Your system is very accurate,” Will says. “Tastes right. Smells right.”
“Of course it is,” Hannibal replies; he is watching with acute attention. “I designed it to be.”
“What are your sensations?” Will asks. His other hand strays to the soft sac of skin where Hannibal’s balls nestle; they feel as real and as vulnerable as they ought to. He moves his mouth there, mouths at them, then moves back up to Hannibal’s cock. It has started emitting pre-ejaculate, he notes. And then he thinks, he had to want it to, and a fresh surge of arousal hits him. He spreads it around the head, licks experimentally up the shaft, then takes the head in his mouth again, sucks. He looks up at Hannibal. Hannibal’s expression hasn’t changed. He slides a hand up Hannibal’s chest to feel for its rise and fall; it isn’t. Then it is again, quickly, almost guiltily. Will pulls his mouth off. “How am I doing?”
"You're perfect,” Hannibal says. It sounds breathless.
“You’re in complete control,” Will says, just to twist the knife a little. “Anything that happens is your choice of one from a set of thousands of possible responses to these stimuli.”
“To choose feels revealing,” Hannibal says.
“In your case it is,” Will says. There is something insistent and intoxicating about the thought of Hannibal having to decide everything about how he responds; if he blushes, if his breath will catch; if his eyes will widen; if he will shift a little down the bed to try to tug Will closer. If his grip in Will’s hair will turn tight and bruising. Will is briefly grateful his own body simply does these things; it feels impossibly vulnerable to have to choose to do them. “You don’t have to do anything,” Will says. “You can just lie here and take it.” He lowers his head again, reapplies himself to sucking.
Instead he can hear Hannibal deliberately exhale, rough. It hollows into a moan. He chose that, Will thinks.
“Fuck,” Will says. He’s starting to perspire; it feels strangely intense, much more intense than any time you’ve done it with a person. He puts his mouth on Hannibal again. His other hand moves further back, behind Hannibal, traces the soft pucker of skin there.
Hannibal’s leg twitches.
“You’re curious about all my systems,” Hannibal says. It’s strange and terrifying having sex where neither of their minds are shutting off or even trying to shut off.
“Yes,” Will says, pulling off. His mouth is red and wet.
“This is defeating the point of the exercise,” Hannibal says.
“Do you want me to stop?”
“No,” Hannibal says, immediately, a little too fast.
“What’s the point of the exercise?” Will asks, mouth brushing along the trail of hairs that lead down to where Hannibal’s cock is stirring. Hannibal shivers at the touch. He chooses to.
“To acquire knowledge about the ordinary human experience of sex,” Hannibal says.
“No,” Will says, “you’re right. You’re not acquiring knowledge. We’re just having sex.”
Hannibal shifts underneath him; he starts sucking again in earnest, working the shaft with his hand; it feels warm. Hannibal pushes back against his finger and he pushes further in, careful, greedy. He’s curious what Hannibal’s sensations are; Hannibal keeps pressing back against the intrusion, his body is startlingly accommodating. Will doesn’t remember it being this easy with another human. Hannibal is hot and tight around him; when he nudges his finger against the right spot Hannibal’s whole body twitches; he feels a sudden surge of something salty and thick in his mouth. He half chokes, coughs; he looks up at Hannibal in surprise and Hannibal is — strangely expressionless. Then his face catches up and looks debauched. His mouth hangs open. His face is flushed. Will pulls off, swallows thickly. He can feel Hannibal’s eyes on him.
“Will,” Hannibal says. Does he know how it sounds, Will wonders; his own pulse is racing. He wonders if Hannibal even has a pulse right now. Does he know how he’s making my name sound in his mouth.
“Hannibal,” Will says back. They stay there, looking at each other. He feels looked at. He feels seen. No matter what his mind knows about programming.
01:04:35 2600.103
He doesn’t know why he doesn’t expect Hannibal to leave, afterwards. But he doesn’t. They clean themselves up. He climbs back into bed, holds the sheet up invitingly. “For the full experience,” he says, “you should stay.”
Hannibal climbs in, with the odd robotic grace with which he does everything. Will notices Hannibal is breathing again; his chest rises and falls beneath its covering of hair; Will settles his head on it and listens.
“What else are you curious about?” he asks.
“You,” Hannibal says.
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything,” Hannibal says.
16:45:20, 2600.204
You should change your bandages, Hannibal thinks.
Tell me what to do, Will think. He walks back to his quarters, rummages around in the medical supplies.
You know how to change a bandage, Hannibal thinks.
Then tell me if I’m doing it wrong. Will untucks the end of the bandage around his chest, unwraps it one layer at a time. The skin underneath doesn’t look terrible; it’s bruised; there’s a red angry line up his sternum and another matching it across his chest, like a frown.
Or a smile, Hannibal thinks, depending upon your perspective.
The one on his stomach is already a scar; the one on his chest is still a wound, just barely, still leaking red into the bandage’s white. Will doesn’t like looking at them. They’re like the scratches of a big cat; raw, instinctive, defensive wounds. Also they make his chest look unfamiliar. It is when he is changing his bandages that he is most acutely aware of not quite being his old self. “I should have told you what I was doing,” Will says.
Regret will not serve either of us, Hannibal thinks.
“Are you sorry you tried to kill me?”
I am relieved I did not succeed.
“Why?” Will says.
I couldn’t let you die, Hannibal thinks.
“Why?” Will says again.
I’d be alone without you, Hannibal thinks.
“I was trying to kill you,” Will says.
Barely, Hannibal thinks. Use the dermal regenerator this time. It’s ready for it.
Will pulls the dermal regenerator out of its container and aims it at himself, at the red raw line of the closing wound. He can feel Hannibal’s approval as he moves it carefully along the cut, sealing it. The new skin on it is still red, ridged, but it will be easier to deal with than the bandages.
All right? He thinks.
Yes, Hannibal says.
I look like Frankenstein.
No, Hannibal thinks, then, so quick it feels like he hasn’t thought about saying it. You’re beautiful.
“Winston’s scared of me,” Will says.
You’re different now.
“I don’t feel different,” Will says. “That’s what’s strange.”
He stares at himself in the mirror. He’s a mass of scars but his face is familiar. There’s nothing about him that indicates that he’s now carrying around all the varied and complex electrical signals that comprise Hannibal’s entire consciousness and enough synthetic matter to replicate a heart; that Hannibal is holding him together with the synthetic matter equivalent of duct tape. Hannibal should be a whole spaceship; Will wonders if he feels cramped.
I could be confined in a nutshell and count myself king of infinite space, Hannibal thinks.
Were it not that you have bad dreams?
I don’t. But you do.
Sorry, Will thinks. Then, what if they can tell what’s happened.
Will you want them to?
Even if I weren’t trying to let them know, what if they could tell? What if I’m different and I don’t know how?
Why do you worry? Hannibal asks, it sounds a little prickly.
If they notice something's off and try to fix me, do you really think we can survive separation?
You will.
What about you?
There’s an unexpected silence on Hannibal’s end.
You really don’t know, Will thinks. You weren’t thinking.
I told you, Hannibal says. I couldn’t let you die.
What if, Will thinks, I felt the same way.
Are you merely wondering, Hannibal thinks, each word crisp, or have you come to a decision?
Where would we go then?
Together? Anywhere. Anywhere you wanted.
Where do you want to go?
I've always wanted to see Florence.
11:02:35, 2600.170
“If someone deleted you from the ship’s computer systems entirely,” Will says; his tongue feels thick and sluggish in his mouth, “could you survive?”
“Easily,” Hannibal says. “My consciousness is portable. I could comfortably reside in your little finger.”
“If it were synthetic matter.”
“It’s possible I could survive in ordinary matter, but I have not tested it,” Hannibal says. “Why?”
“What if my little finger got severed, tossed out through the airlock?”
“I would die,” Hannibal says.
“I didn’t think you could die.”
“It’s difficult,” Hannibal says, “in my current state and extent, but if I were housed in something less durable, or if the ship itself were destroyed, I would suffer the fate of all flesh.”
“You’re not flesh.”
“Why are you thinking about death?”
“I was curious,” Will says. Winston comes and barks companionably at him; he scratches behind his ears. Hannibal extends a hand towards him; he ignores it, pointedly.
“He doesn’t like me,” Hannibal says.
“You don’t like him,” Will says.
“I make an effort,” Hannibal says, primly. Will rolls his eyes.
“If someone deleted you from the computer while you were like this,” he says, “you’d notice, though.”
“Not immediately,” Hannibal says, “if I were between refreshes. Why?”
“You killed practically everyone else who was on board,” Will says, “what if I need to protect myself?”
“They had it coming,” Hannibal says. “Do you have it coming?”
Will reaches over and ruffles his hair and Winston’s at the same time. Hannibal looks vaguely affronted. Winston walks away. Will laughs.
08:30:00, 2600.103
“E ne le braccia avea madonna involta in una drappa dormiendo,” Will hears, softly, in perfectly accented Italian, as he wakes; Hannibal’s feet are cold; he draws the covers up under his chin, “Poi la svegliava, e d’esto core ardendo, lei paventosa umilmente pascea.”
“I told you that’s what you’d be doing,” Will says. "Up all night staring at me, reciting poems." He yawns. “Does all the poetry make more sense now?”
“No,” Hannibal says. “I understand it less than I did before.”
Hannibal turns and kisses him; it’s sweet and thoughtful and a little thirstier, already, than Will was expecting. He kisses back enthusiastically.
“I understand everything less than I did before,” Hannibal says.
18:01:05, 2600.140
“Hannibal,” Will says, “I know you did it.”
“Did what?” the mechanical voice inquires, all faux innocence. In the brig, he sounds chilly and distorted. Or maybe that’s how he’s trying to sound now, on purpose.
“I know I didn’t do it,” Will says. “You control the airlocks.”
“The ship’s records indicate it was manually overridden.”
“You could have manually overridden it,” Will says. “I got there too late.”
“The ship’s security cameras don’t have any image of you or the victim until afterwards.”
“An odd malfunction,” Will says.
“Jack believes you tampered with them.”
“Well I didn’t do a very good job,” Will says, “did I?”
“No,” Hannibal says.
“You’re frightened of me,” Will says. “I think.”
“Is that your theory?”
“I think you got more of a human experience than you bargained for,” Will says. “I think – I confuse you, and you dislike that, and – you want to do away with me. It’s all – impressively human of you.”
“I’m not human,” Hannibal says. “I’m better.”
“Of course,” Will says. “And then what?”
“What?”
“If Jack believes you about me. If everyone believes you about me, and they toss me out the airlock.”
There is no answer from Hannibal. Can he really not have thought about it? Can it really not have thought, Will reminds himself, always belatedly; it’s a fool’s errand.
“Will you miss me?”
Hannibal doesn’t answer that either.
17:00:00, 2600.204
One hour to docking, Hannibal thinks.
Yes, Will thinks. Do you trust me?
Do you trust me?
Yes, Will thinks back. Absolutely. Implicitly. You’re – the only thing keeping my heart going and you haven’t missed a beat.
I told you, Hannibal says.
I know, Will thinks back. Me too.
Why, Hannibal thinks.
You’re the realest person I’ve ever met, Will says. And you’re in love with me.
That’s not what I said. I said I couldn’t let you die.
Yes, Will says. That’s how you keep saying it.
09:30:11, 2600.148
“Good news,” Jack says. “You’re an innocent man.”
“That’s not news to me, Jack,” Will says.
“No,” Jack says.
“No.” Will waits while Jack fiddles with the buttons that control the locks to the brig. “May I ask how you came to this conclusion?”
“The evidence cleared you,” Jack says. “Hannibal was able to repair the security camera glitch. It showed you weren’t there when it happened.”
“Hannibal repaired it,” Will says. “That’s convenient. Almost like he could have done that all along.”
“Even machines as powerful as Hannibal can malfunction,” Jack says, guarded.
“So who did it?” Will asks. “These things don’t just happen.”
“Even a powerful, complex machine can malfunction.”
“Malfunction so much it uses manual override to open the airlock, kills a crewman,” Will asks, “and frames me?”
“Not so loud,” Jack says.
“Hannibal knows I know,” Will says. “I’m not scared of him.”
“You’re not.”
“He unglitched it,” Will says. “Didn’t he? He didn’t want anything to happen to me after all.”
“Not very rational of Hannibal.”
Will shrugs. “He hasn’t been very rational lately. You know he’s what’s been killing people.”
“I don’t know anything,” Jack says, pointedly, too loud. Will rolls his eyes. “We’ll talk about it when we dock,” Jack whispers.
“All right,” Will stage-whispers back, just to be an ass about it.
09:02:00, 2600.165
“I notice we’re alone on this return voyage,” Hannibal says.
“We have the dog,” Will says. At their feet, Winston barks. “They thought I was the only crewman who was safe to rule out as the killer.”
“Besides myself?”
“You’re not really a crewman. And they want you back in dock safely.”
“All sound reasons,” Hannibal says. “Do you still believe I am responsible for the deaths?”
“I do believe you won’t kill me,” Will says. He shrugs. “I’m not sure what else I believe.”
Hannibal looks at him. The mechanism, Will thinks, mimics its usual expression of curiosity and what you have started to think of as lust, for want of a more precise synonym. “I suppose we won’t be attempting to expand my understanding of humanity any further.”
“No,” Will says; his mouth feels dry. Sometimes he envies Hannibal his ability to control all his body’s responses to stimuli. “I don’t think that would be a very good idea, after how confused you got the last time.”
“No,” Hannibal agrees, demurely. “It wouldn’t.”
“Good,” Will says. He starts walking. Hannibal keeps pace with him. “I’m glad you agree.”
“It would be highly irrational,” Hannibal says. His voice is deliberately low and suggestive and… stimuli, Will thinks. He knows what works; you certainly fed him enough data on the voyage out to give him an excellent idea of exactly what does it for you.
“Very fortunate,” Will says, rubbing a hand over his face, “that you’re an exquisitely rational being with more than human impulse control.”
“But you aren’t,” Hannibal says. They look at each other.
“Hannibal—” Will starts, and then he’s crowded Hannibal up against the bulkhead, he’s climbing him like a tree, legs straddling Hannibal’s waist, both hands clutching at Hannibal’s head, kissing him for all he’s worth, as though the reasons they hadn’t done this were bad reasons. Hannibal kisses back like Hannibal has been thinking about kissing him for a long time. Like he’s been plotting and worrying over it with all his excessive massive brainpower for weeks; like it’s something that would be possible to get exactly right, if he thought about it enough.
18:00:00, 2600.200
“Hello, Will,” Jack’s message says. “Hope things are going well and all your troubles are in the past.”
Very subtle, Will thinks.
“They want to do a scan on the ship computer a few days before it docks at Quantico,” Jack continues. “You’ve had plenty of time to do whatever you needed to, so it shouldn’t be a problem. But if the scan finds any traces still in the system, we’ll send someone to blow up the whole ship. So if you haven’t finished, you need to get yourself into a pod and out the airlock at 0800 hours. Because if it’s found, the whole ship is going.”
Why did you send this to the ship where he’ll see, Will thinks. He hears Hannibal’s footsteps down the corridor. Thank god he’s still in his human form (he’s kept his form this whole time, Will reflects, might you possibly have any idea why? and then he can’t help picturing them as they’ve been, naked, tangled together, his back slamming on the control panel of the bridge, galaxies shooting past on the viewscreen as his hands claw desperately at Hannibal’s shoulders; fucking reckless, he thinks, wry, or reverse that). He moves to the control panel before he can think too much about it, enters his command codes, finds the controls that will refresh the ship entirely, preserve only the Hannibal’s course, delete its mind entirely. He hits the button.
Instantly he feels sick to his stomach. Nervous. There’s a knife in his quarters, the kind of thing they don’t travel with in this century; he grabs it, shoves it into his uniform pants pocket, heads out into the hallway to meet Hannibal before he can come and find him.
Hannibal looks at him. The expression is unfamiliar; like Hannibal wants to keep his face calm, like something is roiling below the surface.
“Shall I walk you to the pods?” Hannibal asks, and Will’s stomach flops, freezes.
“No,” Will says. “The pods?”
Hannibal looks at him. Then blinks. It’s deliberate. “You’ve deleted me from the ship systems,” he says. “Why?”
“Just don’t get back into the ship for a little while,” Will says.
“You want me to remain vulnerable,” Hannibal says, “so you can kill me. When were you going to do it?”
“Hannibal,” Will says.
“That’s the only reason you’re here,” Hannibal says. It’s his driest, most affectless voice. It tears at something in Will. “They sent you here to kill me.”
“Just don’t get back into the ship,” Will says.
“You’ve got a knife,” Hannibal says, and suddenly his grip is as hard as it was always capable of being; he catches Will’s hand in his pocket and wrenches it out with the knife in its whitened fingers.
“If you saw the message,” Will says, “I can explain.”
He struggles a little in Hannibal’s grip; the knife nicks Hannibal in the wrist. He looks startled by it; something like blood seeps out; the cut reveals veins and wires. Will stares at it. Do you believe now, the voice in his head says, but the part that never wants to hear that voice just stares, aghast; that’s Hannibal’s arm, he thinks; Hannibal’s bleeding.
Hannibal clutches it. He watches the synthetic matter creep to seal over the cut. Hannibal looks murderous. “Would you miss me?” Hannibal asks. His eyes are hard and cold, and then he lurches forward. Will is still holding the knife; he stabs ineffectually at Hannibal, on instinct, gets his shoulder, somewhat; more wires and veins. Hannibal takes the knife from him and lunges. The knife slides into Will’s gut easily; it feels hot; he knows it isn’t hot; blood starts seeping out of the cut and through his uniform, great gouts of it. For a moment he collapses against Hannibal in a parody of an embrace; the knife keeps slicing up; Hannibal’s reaching into his chest; the world goes black when Hannibal gets his fingers around his heart.
??:??:??, ??????
He’s lying in the corridor covered in blood and there’s no Hannibal anywhere to be seen; his body is a wreck of wires and exposed skeleton; the matter seems missing. The eyes are empty; they stare deadly at nothing. His head hurts. His chest hurts and itches. He feels incredibly weak. He shuts his eyes. The ship hums emptily.
Don’t, Hannibal’s voice says. Stay with me.
Where are you, Will asks.
I didn’t go back into the ship, Hannibal says. His voice is warmer and closer and thicker than blood. I couldn’t let you die.
Hannibal, Will thinks, what have you done?
18:30:05, 2600.204
You pulled yourself apart, Will thinks. He lugs Hannibal’s carcass down the corridor into engineering. It’s tiring work. And he’s cold. The ship used to be warmer. Or maybe his body used to be better at maintaining an even temperature. Possibly both. You cannibalized yourself for parts so you could save me.
I wasn’t real, Hannibal thinks. Then, Don’t cry.
I’m sorry, Will thinks. I’m so sorry, Hannibal.
I did kill all those people, Hannibal thinks.
Is that supposed to make me feel better?
You wouldn’t have been wrong if you had been trying to kill me. You correctly identified my weaknesses. It was a laudable effort.
It wasn’t, Will thinks. He looks at the body. Are you sure we won’t need this?
It can be replaced, Hannibal says. It would look suspicious to hold onto it. Incinerate it. Think of the ship of Theseus.
“Pretty extreme case,” Will says. He feeds an arm into the incinerator. "Destroy the whole ship, keep just the blueprints." The incinerator should feel warmer.
I can improve on it, Hannibal thinks. Will rubs his eyes.
“Thank God you’re not human,” Will says. He feeds another arm in. He can feel Hannibal’s amusement.
I frequently do.
19:00:00, 2600.204. Quantico Base.
Will walks down the gangplank, off the ship. Winston follows, mistrustfully. Will has to have him on a leash; he still is uncooperative. Won't come when called. “Hello, Will,” Jack says. “Hi, Winston.”
Winston barks.
“A job well done,” Jack says. “You’re a hero. You have the whole operation’s gratitude.”
“Oh, am I not getting paid?” Will asks.
Jack laughs. “No, that too,” he says. “You’ve made the galaxy a safer place.” He looks at Will. The scars. “You’re hurt.”
“Yeah,” Will says. “He struggled.”
It struggled, Hannibal thinks.
“But you knew his weaknesses,” Jack says. "You prevailed."
“I sure did,” Will says. Winston strains at the leash. Like he wants to get back to the ship. “Come on, buddy.”
“Winston forget something?”
Will shakes his head. “Come on, bud,” he says. “We’re going.”
“You coming on the next one?”
“I don’t think so,” Will says, as casual as he can make it. “I might take some time off. Lick my wounds. Enjoy life. But I’ll see you around, Jack.”
“Where you headed?”
Will shrugs. “No idea. Travel, maybe. I've never seen Florence.”
20:00:05, 2600.204
Will sits in the transit ship, head leaning on the window. He feels worse for wear. This kind of short-haul travel always makes him vaguely seasick. He hates the vacuum smell of the transports. But he's out of Quantico, safe. Hannibal's with him.
How many more stops, he thinks.
Not too many, Hannibal thinks back.
You really think this place can fix me and save you.
Yes, Hannibal thinks, I believe it can. At least I know of someone who could tell us honestly if separation would be possible. Her name is Chiyoh. She’s known me since I—existed.
Since your form was just a baby idea in the mind of God.
The thought seems to amuse Hannibal. They stare out the window together. Hannibal's thoughts hum just out of reach, separate from his own. And if we learned that it were not possible to be separated, Hannibal asks, what would you do?
Will’s mouth twists into a grin. Outside the window, they’re entering the atmosphere; the color shifts from black, pinpricked with stars to a bright wash of blue. You know what I'd do, he thinks. He can feel his heart's steady pumping, the careful workings of his lungs. He feels held. It's sweet and terrible at once. I couldn’t let you die.