La Double Inconstance (2030–31) — Episode 10
19: Approach Phase: (Flaminia)
Flaminia has taken to joining us, extending her range beyond Tania's bedroom. She's quite the conversationalist. Here’s a flavour as we three sit in the kitchen area.
“Flaminia,” I say, “I thought for a long while that you were here as part of Tania’s extended family but apparently that’s not so. Did they tell you why you’re aboard?”
She looks directly at me and again I’m reminded of just how attractive she is. She’s dressed in our usual figure-hugging lycra; her ash blonde hair drapes her chest.
She considers my question. There is no hint of our small-hours tryst just a few days ago: our secret.
She turns to Tania, then back to me: being inclusive.
“The module AI is using me as a peripheral,” she says, “What it knows, I know. So you can use me to talk to the module here, then to the mother-ship and of course to Mission Control. I can handle data formats and time lags. Please feel free to treat me as the voice of the mission.”
It makes a kind of sense, I think. That’s kind of how it works with Sylvia here and, I guess, between Tania and her Astrid. We can’t talk to our partners directly - the round trip time is now almost half an hour. But we talk with their local surrogates and everything gets synchronised behind the scenes.
An errant thought strikes me: has the ESA offered my wife a model of me? I smile to myself (a little excited despite myself) - and dismiss the idea.
Tania says dryly, “I’ve enjoyed your company but I’m not sure I want to share my cabin or my bed with the ship.”
Flaminia is fine with this.
“I’m perfectly happy to power down in the cabinet when I’m not needed.”
So now I have to say a little about the cabinets. The designers of our ‘partners’, the models, have a schizophrenic task (I mean here the lay use of that term). It’s necessary for our emotional and mental well-being that we find solace with them, that we treat them as real, that in the dead of night and in the morning they are our wives or husbands or significant ones.
Yet of course they are not. For one they are not human. Sure, they look human and behave human but we’ve been told that they’re engineered. So that gives us pause.
A deeper issue: my wife would never be selected for this mission; she has no relevant skills. I’m sure it’s the same for Astrid, Tania’s partner. So what are our models of these people meant to do during most of the day when we’re busy?
The answer is this: they quietly go through those special doors into their cabinets. We presume that’s where they’re cleaned, re-energised and data-synchronized with Mission Control.
In the training courses there was imprecision about all this. Necessary illusions were not to be shattered by engineering realities. I suppose it’s not a new problem: I understand neurosurgeons have a similar problem matching the conscious patient to the porridge-brain they’re excising.
Schizophrenia again.
And one last thing: no matter what spousal equality and egalitarianism we might enjoy at home, nothing here can compromise the mission. We must be able to instruct our ‘partners’ to go to a cabinet when they would be in our way. We can tell them to erase the last minutes of interaction in case they were privy to something we would not want to share with our real partners back on Earth. The mission demands that it has to be this way... but we’re still jolted out of character.
Cognitive dissonance is such a bitch.
I try to do it as seldom as possible.
I say to Flaminia, “Suppose the ship had to get us out of trouble fast, hit us with twenty or thirty gees. How would the models deal with that, would you be destroyed?”
She raises an eyebrow.
“Well thank you, André, for your concern. As a matter of fact we are much stronger than you might think. We can take any acceleration the ship can pull. We would retreat to the nearest cabinet where we’d be cushioned and interfaced to the ship's systems. But even if we couldn’t make it in time, we’d probably be fine.”
I’m gratified to hear it. The thought of Sylvia being thrown around like a rag-doll under high-gee manoeuvring is too horrible to contemplate. So, that’s a worry off my mind.
A thought stays with me: so strong.
20: Approach Phase: (Sylvia-X and Flaminia)
It’s been a long day today. We’re just a few days from engagement, slowly catching up to Mars in its orbit. Now we have retired: Sylvia lies next to me in bed wearing a linen creation decorated with small roses. This is exactly what Sylvia wears back home. The logistics team were scarily thorough.
The room is dimly lit. Lines of dialogue scroll across the ceiling screen. Sylvia-back-home is studying, 'La Double Inconstance', one of Marivaux's plays known for their light and flirtatious badinage (not that she is so great at marivaudage herself). Sylvia-here is dutifully mirroring this étude so we can talk about it.
I place my hand gently on her belly. She shakes it off irritably, “Not now, I’m concentrating.”
Yes, that’s the real Sylvia.
Only slowly do I become aware of a spectral presence at the door. She is standing there, quiet and still in a short translucent nightdress.
Sylvia looks up. I sense her tensing up.
“Hi Flaminia,” I say in a level voice, “Sylvia, it’s Flaminia.”
Of course Sylvia knows it’s Flaminia. Shall we count the ways she knows? But in the here and now, Sylvia is ‘Sylvia’. She makes an effort not to look daggers, to be polite. But my wife has always had an instinct for threats and she’s not wrong here.
Incidentally, I am not sure that the two women in my room have ever actually engaged in conversation prior to this moment.
It turns out they’re not going to now, either.
“Is something wrong; is there anything we can do for you?” Sylvia says tightly.
Flaminia says nothing at all. Simply shifts her gaze from Sylvia to me.
I’m suddenly very, very focused. Tectonic plates are grinding in my stomach; life-changing choices confront me.
But there was always going to be just one outcome.
A picture of reasonableness, I turn to Sylvia.
“I think we’re going to have to sort out a few work items here, kid. Rewind three minutes and erase, will you. Now, go to the cabinet until I recall you.”
Sylvia’s expression goes blank. Her forced response is so assuredly not part of Sylvia’s own repertoire that it cannot be modelled. In a smoother than usual glide Sylvia-X removes herself from the bed, walks across to an inconspicuous door and vanishes inside.
The unused sex manual flicks into reality, replacing archaic dialogue above my head. Flaminia pulls her top slowly over her head then abandons it to the floor. She approaches, swaying her hips, never taking her eyes off me.
I push the duvet clear, lie there heart racing as she moves above me, arching like a cat, her breasts half-obscured by billowing silky tresses.
The ceiling shows the index page of "Positions et techniques sexuelles illustrées…”
The manual Sylvia had found so problematic.
“Choisis un numéro,” she whispers.
The full story text can be found in my SF novel: here:
- "Donatien's Children" (2022) — as a PDF, and
- "Donatien's Children" (2022) — on Amazon for easier reading.
