Hikaru checked the pad again in the morning, having neglected it during his two nighttime bathroom breaks. Bright Black was still on the beach, now in broad daylight. Not much happening there. Out here, I've got to get moving. It's my last day here, so it's time to check out.
By the time he was having his continental breakfast, he had realigned his displayed mood to what he thought would be appropriate for a grieving husband. At the space center, he pondered the uselessness of what he was doing, watching the deployment and first system checks. This project has moved beyond me, and me beyond it. I have Kimiko again, and in a few months immigration will be smooth sailing and I'll join her. As for here, they're taking care of things both operationally and long-term. It's all going to be fine.
But after an hour or so he reverted to his usual intense self. He got remote-access credentials so he could monitor the telescope's state, then watched their collaborators do their setup, then looked over Chen and Esmerelda's shoulders as they did the detector's software and hardware checks. They got most things, but he caught some details. For instance, he stopped them from trying some tests while the satellite was facing the sun. They would most likely have been prevented from trying by the software (assuming that the software checks worked) but he was the one who noticed.
During a break, Remy came to him aside. "What's wrong? You were barely here yesterday, but now you're like a laser."
Do I point-blank lie or just avoid the question? Evading would fit, I guess. "When we left, I had a bad feeling about Kimiko. Yesterday, I got a call..." He let it hang so Remy would draw the obvious and incorrect conclusion.
Remy reached towards him, then let his arm drop back. "I'm sorry."
"I... I'm focused now. After this, I'm going to take a little while off."
"Watch it. You're not going to follow her, are you? I've seen what happens when you old guys quit."
Firmly, he said, "I have no plans to die any time soon. I just need some time to get myself sorted out."
Remy looked him in the eyes. After a few seconds, he nodded. "All right."
Hikaru's apartment felt profoundly different now that Kimiko wasn't up in hospice. It had been a place he'd sleep and snack. Now it was going to be his home. The strangest part was seeing it in the dusk light. He'd never spent that time alone here, going to Kimiko to help her through that rough patch of the day (unless of course he was at work).
The first thing he did after putting his things down was set up the Celestia pad he'd brought on the trip. Bright Black was still on the beach. He had Bright Black head back to the cottage while he unpacked the rest of his things. There was no sign of Polychrome. Hmm. OK. Well, I need to go deal with some things about her 'death', so that's all for now.
He went upstairs to the Hospice suite. The common room was packed; Tasha was singing Deep River.
Hikaru slipped by and went to the nurses' station, and found it empty. He looked around and found Stephanie, helping a woman with something behind a curtain. He stepped out and listened. Tasha moved on to Steal Away.
Spirituals. About escape. Originally from slavery, but secret escapes to indefinitely long life also fit. In order to upload Kimiko, there has to have been some sort of help on the inside. Could it have been her, or am I reading too much into it? Well, it won't be helpful for me to try to ferret it out. I'll be brought in if it's helpful. She wouldn't be in the best position to do anything anyway, even if she has been promoted from housekeeping to entertainment. The nurses or doctors would be better fits.
Stephanie came out of the room. "Well hello." She had a harried look on her face. "I'm sorry." She stopped short and blinked hard. She looks exhausted.
"That sounded more like an apology than condolences, but I'm sure you all did your best."
"Yeeeaah." She looked away from him, took a deep breath, "Oh geez, I'm making it sound way worse than it is. There was a bit of a mixup and Kimiko was cremated instead of preserved like she'd requested." If she's in on the uploading, she's really bad at hiding it.
Hikaru sighed. Of course it wouldn't be able to go entirely unnoticed. "What's done is done. I'm rather more concerned with the living."
She replied in a whisper, "Thanks a lot for not making a big deal out of it." Back to normal volume, "Her things are on the cart in the station. Had to get it out of her room ASAP. People are living so long there, we're overflowing."
"The sort of problem you like to have, right?"
She gave him a look that utterly solidified in his mind that she didn't have a clue about uploading. She was giving end-of-life care, not transition-to-Equestria care. And the pads' enabling longer survival was, in that case, only a mixed blessing.
"Sorry", they said simultaneously. Hikaru took the cart.
When Hikaru returned, Polychrome was sitting at the table, writing awkwardly with a hoof. Bright Black took a step forward, and she looked up. "Well, finally."
"Hi. What have you been up to?"
"Oh, learning to fly, meeting the neighbors. Now, trying to write. They say I could do it more easily with my mouth, but..." she wrinkled her nose, and laughed. "I'd like to read my old diaries. I think it would help jog my memory, and I don't think they would depress me now."
"Okay."
She coughed. "Are you home? They're in the long box under the bed."
Oh, right. Hikaru went to the bedroom and pulled the rolling box out with his foot, then got the low stool, sat, and retrieved the books.
Polychrome called in from the other room, "Now that you're handling them... if you want to read them, go ahead. It's more than a bit Walter Mitty-ish." Now that takes me back. Our first movie date. I could barely follow it. And then we saw it on one of the classic movie channels, oh, three years ago. Completely different experience. Anyway, I now know to expect that it's going to bear little relation to the truth.
Returning, he sat down at the pad, selected the earliest-labeled book, and began showing the pages to it one at a time; Bright Black mirrored his actions, having also pulled a box out from under the bed there.
Polychrome laughed. "I can't keep up with that pace. But I see that there are words there, now. Before, there was just a big glowing question mark on each page."
Hikaru kept at work.
After a few seconds, Polychrome said, "Our back yard scares me."
Disappointing. I rather liked it. "We can have it changed."
"For two thousand bits, yes. How many do you have?"
"I can cover that, I think, mainly off of donations from Russians." A small gray rectangle appeared in the lower-left corner of the pad, showing, 'You have 17 bits'. "Or... maybe I passed it all on to the hospice suite entertainment fund." He resumed scanning the diaries.
"Well! I already picked up eleven hundred from this and that. One-time things to get you started, really: 'achievement rewards', they're called, or something. Basically a scavenger hunt for things you've done." Then, somewhat confused, she asked, "You really burned through everything you got from yours?"
"I think I never got them. I haven't really played much per se."
"Really? In that case we might want to aim higher right away. A new house. You've got to admit, this may be... cozy, but it's not exactly, well..." She wrinkled her nose again. "We live in a shack in the woods, Hikuro. Let's move into town."
My friends live right around here. But they do go into town, and it's not far. Now that I think of it, it's really not far. How could I have ever thought for a moment that it was even inconveniently far? I guess I'm just used to 'cd [dir]' taking me anywhere in a moment on computers. Having to walk seems absurd. "Alternately, we could hold onto the land and sell as the town grows."
"Land is not a limited resource here, silly." Oops. She pulled a scroll out of hammerspace. "Look, I got a list of the easier achievements from Narrow Gauge. Such a nice boy. Working on quite the model train set."
Model trains. Almost as bad for wasting time as video games. Speaking of which... "I'm sorry, but you're asking me to play it as a game."
"Yes. Yes, I am. You know, eventually you're going to run out of stars to catalogue."
"There are a lot of stars."
He realized that he had said the most obvious thing rather than the most intelligent, as she replied, "But how many meaningfully distinct kinds of stars and things are there out there? Maybe a million? After you've spent a thousand years finding out everything you can about each kind, then what are you going to do? You're going to have to find something else to keep you busy eventually."
"I use the pad because it's people. Like, say, you."
"And what, you want us to sit around all day and talk? Come on. Let's go jogging. Carve our initials into a tree somewhere. Go skinny-dipping, not that that matters anymore, but we could pretend it did. And if they're going to pay us to, say, memorize the names of twenty ponies... yeah, let's do that!"
He let this notion percolate subconsciously and focused on his work again. After a few seconds, "I finished the first volume of the diary."
Polychrome blinked, then frowned; her wings flared up. "Hikuro, come on. I'm me. Act like it! Where's my tiger?"
Hikaru squinted. "Did you just manage to say 'Hikaru'?"
"No changing the subject!" She tamped down the flareup, clearly biting off more words. "Look. You've always taken care of me. And now I'm going to live a long time. Thank you for that." A deep breath. "But... you sort of finished that off. Now I'm in a place where there are no more things. You'll just have to stick around, and... look at me like you love me, again. I always had that. Just a glance: yup, you're mine. But now?"
I don't have all that direct control over how I look at her. Unless it's even more direct mapping than I thought. Need to focus on that. "I love you."
She sighed and shook her head, showing her age. "Yeah, I know. I just..." She shook her head. "You don't act alive. You stood still for a whole day. Traveling, I guess." She laid her head on the table.
Hikaru reached forward as if she were there, and Bright Black put his hoof on her head. Close enough. Got to start somewhere.
"Ow. That's my ear. But, umm, thanks for the gesture, I guess."
"I guess that scribble tore through the paper." Wait. She can experience pain now? Force of habit?
Without moving her head, she said, "Don't work on getting us a new house. Don't work on fixing up the back yard. Just be with me. How long until you can come properly?"
"Several months at least, she said."
"We've never been apart that long."
"I was without you for basically the last year."
"Hikuro..." Ah! Hikuro! Hikaru/Bright + Kuro/Black. Got it! I wonder if she picked that name with that in mind?
"Yes?"
A sigh. "Never mind. Shouldn't have even thought of asking."
"Kimiko," (the substitution barely registered this time), "I cleared my schedule. I'm going to be here, just for you, for... well, as long as we need."
Another few seconds of sighing. "Well, good. Glad you thought of that on your own, too. Frankly, it's a little incredible. You seem... better."
"Well, it's me." Funny that she thinks I'm the different one.