enneavista

"So, like, why is your name Mira?" asked the imaginary Lin with absolutely no filter.

"I dunno," said Mira. "I'm just...me."

I think I was back on Earth with the rest of humanity, Mira thought. I think I remember building the ship. The ship! A real sharkjet, if you'd ever seen one and if it could be fairly called that. Certainly, it carried more high-flying passengers than a jet normally did, but would humanity ever bother to build Boeings again?

(Had they even brought the Boeing CEO, or hadn't that one been shot, somewhere in the upper 2020s? And never reinstated, it served to reason.)

Definitely, I remember waiting to get here. I remember the long, long star trek, embarrassingly mundane, to get via jump to the fated sanctuary of Mira.

Oh, what's that?

"You're not Mira Torres, are you?" asked Elma, stern as she should have been but with that touch of gentility (gentleness, gentleness, she treated Mira well).

"Why would I be Mira Torres?" Again, I'm just me.

Around in circles, like talking to oneself, always. Now, Mira couldn't be sure that that wasn't what was actually happening, right now. It didn't bear bursting of the illusion.

Mira looked at Elma. Elma looked back at Mira. Mira threw a glance to Lin. Lin pursed her lips, put her hands on her hips, and flicked her eyes right back to Mira.

Tatsu stepped forward, with a stance in rotation, to touch Mira's dangling right hand with his wing. "Ah! Hot! Like Sandy Bum Canyon!" He then returned to dancing.

Mira smiled. "Well, but that would be a different part of me, wouldn't it? And I don't think I've sat in or around any sand, lately."

"Mira might just be nervous from all our intense questioning," Lin pointed out. "When I get really nervous, my palms get all clammy - that's why I don't try to clap when the commander comes over to have dinner."

Tatsu shook his head (dance cycle paused). "No, no! Friend Mira's hand is hot and dry - that why Tatsu say it like Sandy Bum Canyon, and not like Ouchy Hot Lava Land." His glasses shone with the excellence of his explanation and the soundness of his reasoning.

"Speaking of..." Elma frowned. "Forgive me," she said, reaching out to lay a hand to Mira's forehead. Mira twitched, but didn't object. Maybe mims could be impervious to fever, and by that same token just oblivious to a burning sensation up top. Maybe there was a bug or a target there. Maybe Elma was feeling sentimental. While investigating.

The frown remained as Elma drew back her hand, remarking, "Cooler than human standard, which is replicated by the mims within a couple of degrees in either direction. That feels more like Earth room temperature."

"Earth room?" asked Mira. A room in NLA even more tightly tuned to the conditions of the gone-but-not-forgotten planet? An experiential escape room carefully curated to be full of turf?

"Room temperature," Lin explained by isolating the term. "That's...what, twenty-five degrees Celsius? And seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit, of course, but we try not to use the imperial systems too much anymore." She laughed softly, thinking about it. "Even though nobody here is British."

"Well, if we're taking an inventory, I guess I'll mention that these boots" - Sakuraba Medium, strapped all the way up to the knee and then some - "are incredibly stuffy. Not uncomfortably so, but getting there."

"Let me guess..." Elma's frown hadn't disappeared, but it had contorted somewhat. "Your chest is a comfortable level of humidity, not congested, and your nether regions hardly feel like they're even there?"

Mira stopped, swallowed, considered. "I suppose so, yeah. Not that I was thinking too hard about my...pelvic area anyway."

"It's hotly debated among BLADEs," Lin put in, matter-of-fact but shaving toward a conspiratorial whisper. "Whether or not the, ah...equipment works correctly."

"You shouldn't know that," Mira said, swiveling gaze to train on her.

Tatsu covered his forehead and shrank in an extended expression of shame. Meanwhile, Lin just shrugged. "Yyyeaaah, but...I do?"

"Never mind it, Lin," sighed Elma. "We've got a much more pressing issue on our hand - why Mira, the individual, seems to have a body composition matched to the five continents of Mira, the planet, plus the habitat unit."

Ah, so NLA was temperature-controlled. That would explain the total lack of small talk about the weather.

"Are you going to ship me into the MMC and examine me?" asked Mira, straying a tone somewhere west of hopeful, but not anxious either. Just curious.

"Do you want us to?" replied Elma. "If you don't know who you are, and you do know that you are somebody, then there's no sense in us trying to pry it out of you. You were born on Earth?"

Born. Like, babies, et cetera? First screaming, then crying, then gumming and crawling? "Well, I didn't say that. I remember being on Earth, sure."

"Do you remember me?" Elma queried, ultra-steady, quick as a shot. As if her very presence didn't sear itself into your memory instantaneously by the very fact and force of it. Forgetting Elma would be like forgetting a freight train that passed in front of you, or a comet, or a meteor.

Mira had never been hit by a train, however. Mira wasn't so unlucky as to be...well, Earth. And Mira had seen plenty of cosmic ultrafauna.

"What's the right answer?"

"Yuuup, to the MMC with you," nodded Lin, offering her commentary.

Mira didn't need to be shepherded. From out of the barracks, it was just a quick left turn. It was actually exceedingly rare to encounter any BLADEs just walking through the roadways (well, maybe the occasional Skell, and then of course the cars), so Mira jogged, for appearances.

All the signage was arcane glyphs. All the signage was perfectly plain.

All the faces were uncannily small. All the eyes were uncannily plain.

And Mira had no eyes at all.