La Double Inconstance (2030–31) — Episode 7

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La Double Inconstance (2030–31) — Episode 7

15: Transit Phase: +2 months

The mission clock is running, we’ve been in space now for two months, the days blend together. We get up and breakfast. We deal with our messages. Then it’s into the day’s schedule. We exercise. We do combat sims, the most bizarre they can throw at us.

Tania’s ‘partner’ is a woman: I suppose the clues were there. Tania is more hedonistic than I thought. With me she’s taciturn and professional but our apartments are not totally soundproof, doors not always completely closed. I hear the raucous laughter, the giggling and sometimes the sounds of bodies moving. I smile to myself: welcome to the new Tania, the one that I don’t see.

She doesn’t restrict herself to just one companion. I wasn’t aware that this was even permitted but Tania has at least two. I haven’t met either - there is a kind of tacit privacy protocol - but I catch glimpses. One is broad and buxom, the other slim and elfin; one noisy, the other quiet like a bird.

I cannot imagine what this says about Tania’s psyche.

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We are two light minutes from Earth which has devastated conversation: calls with home have become impossible. If Sylvia were to say something, I would not hear her until two minutes later and she would receive my reply four minutes after her words were uttered.

Instead we swap video messages but it’s a stilted substitute.

So this brings me to the topic I’ve been skirting around, Sylvia-X. To say I’m conflicted would be an understatement - I’m in a hall of mirrors. Considered coldly and dispassionately, she is an engineering marvel - Sylvia’s twin in appearance and movement.

When we’re in each other's arms in the darkness, differences dissolve and I’m home again.

I know that’s what they intended.

So we talk, under the covers. She gives me family news, tells me how she’s feeling; I discuss my day (I mean here in the module of course). We gossip and make jokes and tease each other: it feels natural.

Other times I wonder how they do that. We were never trained on the engineering principles (need to know, they said) but it seems obvious that they’re debriefing Sylvia-back-home every day and sending updates on the uplink. It’s the obvious way of dealing with the time lag.

Provided Sylvia-X can precisely emulate Sylvia’s own way of talking.

Which she kind of can.

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The engineers must have had a dilemma: should they make their simulacrum faithful to Sylvia’s core personality or should they let her drift, mutate, towards my own ideals. No-one’s partner is perfect, after all.

I showed Sylvia-X this eBook on the wall-screen: "Positions et techniques sexuelles illustrées pour les couples mariés", which I thought was the least sensationalist publication.

“Perhaps we could work through some of these? For variety?”

She reacted just as Sylvia herself would have done: a little frisson of shock, then a plainly artificial smile. A pause and then: “I don’t think so. You should appreciate me for what I am.”

“OK…”

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More about our arrangements here as they have evolved for ‘partners’. Neither Tania nor I have felt comfortable about introducing our partners to the other. (There is no official doctrine about this).

Here is how I’ve puzzled it out. The ‘partners’ do not have general conversational skills; they are very much focussed on the personal. I imagine the psychologists call it ‘social grooming’. So having four (or five) of us around the breakfast table would be incredibly awkward. You can imagine the potential for faux pas.

I think, also, there could be implications for social cohesion (I’m trying to be delicate here). For example, I can admit to myself that I find the slim, elfin one quite attractive. You can see why I don’t want to go there.

I say to Sylvia-X: “What do you think of this mission?”

She says: “I miss you and I want you back home.”

Things like that make for cognitive dissonance.

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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.

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