bloodyrosemccoy | The Geography of Main Street: Station Identity Politics

Index and Prologue!

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Okay! Home stretch! There's only going to be one more chapter after this! And it's written! I just want to take a little while to make sure I'm satisfied with it, and it'll be up!

CW: Discussions of suicide and depression; weird family dynamics; jail.

• Basically, this is a speedrun of my life recontextualizing itself when I realized I was autistic. It's a tremendous relief when you've managed to carve out a supportive environment for yourself, let me tell you.
• Somehow relevant to this, someday I'm going to write my dissertation on Why Elsa's Character Arc In Frozen and Frozen II is also an incredible journey of self-acceptance*. I'll put it next to the other dissertations I've promised to write here.
• It has been a wild amount of fun coming up with dumb titles for the artistic achievements of this society.
• Obviously, the Deus ex Machina is not really named that, but its name does pretty much encompass the concept. The real name is probably something like Enemyi Duerueryu , a Rredra literary term that translates to, roughly, "everything explodes." This is a name for a plot device that shows up frequently in arhod folklore, in which the heroes are beset and besieged and have to hold out against their enemies and the elements until the unexpected return of the Sun (the Sun being famously unreliable on their planet) burns away all of the forces of evil and warms up the heroes. I suppose it could also be termed a "eucatastrophe," but the idea of this captain thinking of herself swooping in and solving everyone's problems amuses me.

*And how Frozen II specifically feels like it was a beautifully written character study and 90% into production they realized OH SHIT this is for KIDS, we gotta jingle some keys or something.

---

Now that I thought about it, this explained a lot.

It had to be autism. That was Dad's area of expertise, the mythical Treatment he was working on, and, if I matched up my own inner life with the experiences the people I had met online, I had to conclude that I was autistic. Maybe Thoren was, too—we were twins, after all. But Dad's "study" mentioned that the variable—E0—had gotten a treatment for it. Thoren didn't seem autistic. So I guess the treatment was working.

At least, as far as I knew from the outside.

He had gotten lucky to have identical twin kids. We were practically designer subjects. It defied probability.

Deep in the night, it came to me.

Thoren and I had been born during Dad's stint in medical school planetside. He'd have had access to resources and facilities down there. He could clone a specimen, or two, and give one of them the treatment in vitro.

Totally designer subjects.

But where had he gotten the sample specimen?

… That seemed pretty straightforward, but …

Dad couldn't be autistic. He was a focal citizen! He was …

Okay, so Dad was autistic.

That conclusion destabilized my thought cycle for a while as the weight of what Dad was doing crashed down on me. Dad had gone through the process of becoming a Focal Citizenhis life?

And he was self-aware enough to clone himself. Did he think he had everyone fooled?

Didn't he?

That also solved the question of our mom pretty handily. Dad had never had a partner; he just grew us from a genetic sample.

Come to think of it, this probably also explained the way Vilda treated me lately. The autism, not the clone stuff—she probably didn't know about that. But the looks she threw me lately were almost impossible to parse: they were still suspicious after my whole Mad Doctor phase, but they were also determinedly pitying, as though she were reminding herself to feel sorry for me.

You know, as though she thought I was a tragic, creepy loser.

There were advantages to this, though. Vilda was in charge of keeping an eye on me here, but her skittishness made her unwilling to supervise me too closely. So, while she was working on dinner, Dad was at the Admin meeting to discuss limiting the rights of the Tangentials, and Thoren was out hanging with Jod and Nielli, it occurred to me that, like Drack and Jayzee did with state detention, I could just ignore my grounding.

So I snuck out the window and made my way to the University again.

"Giro!" I wriggled through the door, noting that the smell was diminishing, so yesterday's work was paying off. "I just found out I'm a clone!"

Giro was sitting up, which was probably a good sign. He twitched an ear toward me.

"Yeah," he said.

I stood in the doorway, blinking. Was this the result of his flat affect? Or—"Hey! You knew?"

"Well, sure," he said. "You look exactly like your dad."

That was a good point.

"Also you can open the bio-lock on his tablet, so you've got to have his exact genes."

Oh. Right. That was a good point, too.

Still, I had to get my thoughts in order, so I told him the process of my revelation. He listened as haphazardly as was his wont, but he was fiddling with Ronf the whole time I talked, and I got the sense that he wasn't absorbing most of the information.

"—so do you get it?" I asked him urgently. "I'm an experiment. He's observing my behaviors, and he seems to be making up stuff about my inner life as he does. And, I mean, I know he experimented on you, but you weren't built specifically for that. I was made to be the sad, autistic loser. That's why I was born."

"Is it any worse than being made to keep some loser fugitive company?" Dexer asked from the corner. "I mean, I am a sapient being with wants and feelings, but that is why I was made."

Zeir words rang a bell—they were an echo of a line in Tech Demo, but "You're not a sapient being," I said, dubious. "You're a robot."

"Now you're repeating the propaganda of organic supremacy," Dexer protested. "That's racist, dude."

"Oh, come on."

But Dexer had a point—or, at least, I was finding a point in what I heard. Dad's experiment notes seemed to be ignoring what I was saying in favor of his own interpretation of my behavior. Here I was, doing that to a robot.

Tech is insidious, one of the Lonnies' dads had said in The Tech Trap. It disguises itself as sapience, preys on our social instincts. I mean, that was good advice, but it must be so tiresome to go through life suspicious of everything, and not taking it as it presented itself.

"All I'm saying is, perhaps my purpose is greater than the one my creator imagined for me," Dexer said, turning zeir camera significantly toward Giro. "So perhaps you can find one, as well."

"There! You think wisdom like that comes from a large language model?" Giro asked me with the air of someone who had made a point.

"It does if you programmed it that way!" I pointed out.

"Then I'm very wise," Giro said gravely.

I rolled my eyes.

"Should I burn a film while you're having your identity crisis?" Giro asked, holding out a hand for Dad's tablet. "We gotta move more content here. Any suggestions?"

I reached into my bag. "Thoren was talking about Ugly Blood—"

Down the hall, somebody swore.

Giro and I exchanged panicked looks.

We could hear it now: footsteps. Lots of them, getting closer.

Giro hissed, "Dexer! Ronf! Bug out!"

The robots both rattled a little bit, then collapsed into piles of junk.

Giro had scrambled to his feet and zipped up his jumpsuit when the iris door was prised open, and I found myself facing Security flashlights.

"In here!" someone yelled, and a whole bunch of officers burst into Giro's stinky little den.

I stood, aghast, as a few faces of the people accompanying Security swam into focus.

"Damn, goody-goody," Nielli said, equally aghast as Jod and Thoren gaped at her side. "I figured you were a delinquent, but I didn't think you'd turn out to be a pirate."

#

hey cool news

were on our way to feavah

rreish even agreed to stop by brgiht beakon so we can get ur freind if u want

u there

hello???

ok well see u at the docks?

hello?????

#

Security Holding was right next to 180 Hall, which struck me as weird, but I wasn't sure why. Giro and I were put into separate cells, as though we were criminal masterminds who would run rings around Security with our combined evil genius.

It was possible they were right. The interview I had with them had been baffling on both ends, with them trying to get me to admit I had done crimes, and me agreeing that I had, and them being startled that I had agreed, and me asking what to do about it now.

When I was sent to the cell, I paced like a sixcat in a cage. I had no idea what to do; this was what my online friends referred to as a Novel Situation, and I was at a loss. My brain swirled with information. I was a clone; I was a criminal; I was autistic; Thoren and Jod and Nielli had decided to follow me because I was not nearly as sneaky as I thought I was; they had decided to tattle on me.

And for all the information Piracy is a Crime! had given, it didn't say what happened to pirates when they were caught.

I had no idea what the shape of the next few hours looked like.

Above all, I wanted to talk to Dad.

That wasn't long in coming. I heard footsteps again and Dad came to the door of my cell, set his hand against the lock, and stepped through.

He came and sat down on the bench next to me. His face was set, though that muscle in his cheek was twitching. His hands were in his lap, one clenched into a fist, the other clamped around a small device I recognized with a thrill.

His tablet.

The hub of my criminal empire.

"Toast stole it from you," I explained apologetically, gesturing at it. "I found it in one of her nests. Sorry. It was so—informative, I couldn't bring myself to give it back." I took a deep breath. Drack and Jayzee would never say this, but I figured I had to. "So I guess I stole it from you."

Dad's eyes, on the wall across from us, snapped to me at that. I watched him sharpen his focus and gather his thoughts, and I wondered how anyone missed that he was autistic.

But what he said threw me.

"Who is Zarla?"

I stared at him, shocked to hear her name aloud. "What?"

"Who. Is. Zarla?" he repeated through gritted teeth.

I blinked. "My … friend? I met her online."

"Your friend," he said, flatly. "Your friend, with whom you have been conspiring."

I frowned. "She showed me how to find stuff online."

He held up the tab. "You know that I can still read this right?"

"Uh," I said, wondering frantically if I'd left our messenger app running. "Yes?"

"So you know," he said, warming to his subject, "that I can see your messages with this member of a feral alien ship called the Deus ex Machina, which is, the authorities have informed me, currently requesting permission to dock with Bright Beacon."

"Wait, really?" Krag. If they'd gotten here yesterday—

"Is she your pirate contact?" Dad demanded. "Is she the reason my son is conspiring with outside agitators?"

"I'm not your son," I said.

Dad reeled back, shocked. Maybe he thought I was doing some kind of symbolic tie-cutting, like, denouncing him, the way Drack had with his father, but I was actually feeling contrary and pedantic.

"I'm your twin brother," I clarified.

Dad stared at me.

"Genetically, I mean," I went on, the implications cascading through my head. "I guess I'm your son still. But genetically, I'm you, aren't I?"

Dad spent a moment floundering. It occurred to me that this was a Novel Situation for him, too.

"How long have you known," he finally managed.

"About twelve hours," I admitted. I gestured to his tablet, echoing his rhetorical question to me: "You know I can see all your experiment notes on that thing too, right?"

Dad gazed at the tablet. I could see him putting together the puzzle pieces.

When the silence stretched too long, I finally managed to pull up a question.

"Why?"

Dad resolutely kept his hands clamped on the tablet. He was probably dying to fidget. I wondered if Grandma had schooled that out of him.

"I saw an opportunity to improve lives," he said.

"Yeah, Thoren's life." I couldn't keep the bitterness out of my voice.

"You were going to have support," Dad said quickly. "The protocols required non-interference. But we would have found you something to do."

"What?" I demanded. "You'd have made me a Tangential, wouldn't you? Sent me to work on the farms, or in the mines. Made up rules that I couldn't watch certain things, or gather with my friends. Taken away any tech I might have so I couldn't talk to people like me—like us. So I couldn't know it was possible to be happy the way I was." I looked at him. "Was that what you were thinking?"

"I was thinking that you could apply yourself," Dad snapped. "I—"

He stopped.

"Dad," I said, feeling tired. "I shouldn't have to earn my place. You shouldn't have to. You did all that work, and it's good work. You believed them when they told you to make the station better. You did. I'm really proud of you—"

"I had hoped you would take initiative from that model," Dad said. "You should have! It's possible to—"

"Yeah, but it sucks," I pointed out. "Thoren's right about that—Bright Beacon kind of sucks."

Dad was silent, fuming.

"How did Aunt Mezzorie die?" I asked.

It wasn't a change of subject, and he knew it.

He sighed. "She did wind up outside an airlock. But I don't believe it was an accident."

"You think somebody killed her?"

"I think she did it herself."

"Oh." That made sense. "How did our dad die?"

Ugh, no. I wasn't going to say "our dad" again. Technically, genetically, Grandpa was my dad—and, oh, krag, Grandma was my mom—but, like, socially? Practically?

Yeah.

I realized then that I had come by my tendency to laugh at "inappropriate times" honestly. When Dad barked out an abrupt "Hah!", I knew what was behind Grandpa's death. Another piece of Dad's world—one he hadn't even known was missing—had finally fallen into place, and he'd glimpsed just a bit more of the absurd picture of his own life.

"I don't know," he admitted. "They told me he died of a broken heart." He snorted. "I always assumed they meant a heart attack."

I'd been wondering. People died of "a broken heart" in Beaconized movies a lot. Their uncensored causes of death were usually a lot more interesting.

"What is the Deus ex Machina's plan with us?" Dad asked, shutting down that line of conversation pretty effectively.

"I think they're just coming to pick up Giro. Why? What do Admin think they're doing?"

"They say they have a delivery of Kalkurru produce for us."

"Well, then," I shrugged. "They're delivering produce. You know, they could solve Admin's problem with Giro right there. Once they get their produce, they could send him along and be totally rid of him."

Dad snorted. "The ship isn't docking."

"It's not?"

"They're colluding with a known pirate and it's infiltrating our station with outside corruption," Dad said. "Admin isn't going to release the pirate." He looked sad. "They're not going to release you."

"What—" I swallowed. "What are they thinking they'll do with us?"

"There's talk of the mines," Dad said.

My heart sank. Mining asteroids was another area that Bright Beacon did with little tech. Miners had to work in the dark, with grody old suits that famously leaked, and unreliable machinery with no AI but a definite vendetta against miners.

"I'll do what I can," Dad added. "We might be able to mitigate it with your affliction. If you can convince them that the Palbert boy was pulling the strings, you might simply have to go through rehabilitation. Behavioral intervention, therapy, conditioning. You could become a ward of myself, or of your grandmother."

I shuddered.

"If you apply yourself," Dad went on, "you could still become a Radial, at least. Succeed, as I have."

That was equally chilling.

He stood. "I should go."

"Goodbye," I said.

He snorted. "'I don't say goodbye to anyone I'm going to lock in place.'"

I laughed weakly at the reference. I wished we could have another movie night.

He crossed to the door. "It always seems a bit hypocritical," he remarked idly as he set his hand against the bio panel, "that Station Security can use tech the rest of us aren't allowed. But with the moratorium, I wonder how much of it they really understand." He shrugged. "But I suppose they trust Focal Citizens to know what to do."

"I've always thought the same, about the hypocrisy," I admitted.

"For all the differences between us, you're still so much like me," he said, smiling sadly in turn. "I'm sorry about that."

#

I didn't sleep as time crawled by. I wished I had a book or a movie or something to keep me company. Or that I could talk to Zarla. She'd probably have some great idea for an escape. I wished I had any idea how to navigate a heist like that. All I had to go on was movies. I was just repeating what they said, using them as models for reality, and it turned out they weren't very good models all the time. Take Dad's use of that line. It wasn't quite right—he'd even acknowledged my logic in the beginning, that it could be a tacit way of saying goodbye and a blessing to go on the run—

I opened my eyes.

"Oh, Dad," I breathed, half-laughing. I stood up and walked to the door, set my palm against the panel.

Dad's DNA came through. The door opened for me, and I stepped into the hall of Security Holding.

#

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