Ludo Brax: Intergalactic Gig Worker (Chapter 36)

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I stuttered nervously, shocked by the directness of Saman-'s question. Had she seen us come in? How did I even begin to explain what was going on?

The most straightforward route was probably to hoodwink her entirely, assuring her that her precious, stupid child mind had imagined the whole thing. But that just didn't feel right.

In my childhood, I had been bamboozled like this on countless occasions, assured by my family and a team of mental health experts that my early memories of being a member of a traveling baby circus were figments of my imagination.

It was only later, on my thirteenth birthday, upon performing the rite of passage that is uploading all of my memories to The Database for Tailoring, that I discovered my preternatural talent on the trapeze was no accident.

My parents had lied to me entirely — trying to protect me, no doubt, from some reckoning with the cruelty I suffered at the hands of The Ringmaster (may he burn in hell). But it was wrong just the same.

It was a wonder I had turned out so well-adjusted — an anomaly, really. I couldn't subject my favorite kid to that.

So I figured I'd level with her. Lie to her the way I would to any other person, no matter their age.

A good, old-fashioned bald-faced fib. Respectful. Considerate.

"That's uh… that's my brother. Your uncle. He's staying with us a few days."

She beamed from ear to ear. I guess I could understand that. Having an Uncle is exciting, at least until they join Authoritarian political movements. Then it's mostly tribunals.

She'd probably want to meet him, which simply couldn't happen. Thinking quickly, I continued on.

"But here's the thing, Saman-, and this is really important. You can't go down there and talk to him. Not yet. He's very busy."

She seemed to accept this outright, the wide-eyed little fool.

"And most important of all... You can't tell your Mom he's here. It's a surprise."

"A surprise? Like how what time you're gonna come home every night is a surprise?"

I cringed. This simulation had clearly been preloaded with a granular understanding of my shiftiness.

"That's right, just like that."

She stared at me a second, trusting and loving. I could practically see the gears turning in her head as she turned over this new information in her gullible brain.

Then, after about ten seconds or so, she simply said,

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Yeah. Makes sense to me."

I stared at her in disbelief. It had worked — and I felt awful.

She was such a good half-kid. What right did I have to convince her she hadn't been dubbed the Flying Fetus in the proverbial Baby Circus?

Parenting was tough.

Desperate to make it up to her, I rifled through my catalogue of sitcom cliches, hoping to find something fatherly to say.

I was hoping for something wise, loving, and perhaps punchy enough to become a catchphrase beloved by millions.

What I came up with instead was...

"Want to uh... play catch?"

**

And so we did.

Father and daughter, we had a catch. If you could call it that.

Mostly I threw the ball, it sailed over Saman-'s head, and she dragged herself to retrieve it, over and over, with the same gusto and excitement each and every time.

It was really something to see. Not just because it was the saddest, most absurd game of catch anyone had ever had. (Which it was.)

But because, somewhere along the way, watching that plucky little half-kid slither after a ball she knew would be thrown right back over her head the second she grabbed it, I began to feel something stir in me I'd never felt before:

Pride.

I'm not sure how it snuck up on me. I knew she wasn't really my daughter. The law was very clear on the kinship status of overly literal System-borne creations like her.

But still, every time she staggered upright and tried to throw that ball back to me — before invariably being knocked off her axis by the horrifying physics of her existence — my heart swelled with feeling for the kid as the ball rolled pathetically back in my direction.

Maybe she wasn't mine, strictly speaking. But there was something there I recognized — or, maybe, wanted to recognize — as similar to me. The kid was resilient, plucky, unbowed by everything stacked up against her.

A Brax.

I knew it was a Simulation. That her mangled existence, however real it was, was a direct result of some evil math done on my account. That she materialized one day from the ether to decorate the walls of a prison designed for me that even I didn't fully comprehend. That one day, just as easily, she could be sent right back into nothingness.

And yet...

I guess it's true what they say about having a doomed catch with your abomination of a daughter after being involuntarily uploaded into a simulation: Happiness really does come in the strangest, most legless forms.

I don't know. Life is like that, isn't it?

You spend so much time rushing around, stashing clones in basements, just narrowly avoiding the Big Bad Thing you're certain is nipping at your heels, desperate to escape, to move, to get somewhere.

But it's the small moments — the mundane, awkward ones we'd rather have spent hooked up to the BrainTickler — where, somehow, someway, a little bit of beauty sneaks in.

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AUTHOR NOTE: We've reached a point in the story where my daily posting here has almost caught up with my posting on Royal Road. If you're reading this, you're theoretically interested in continuing to read the story, and I would like your feedback.

My current plan is to continue posting here, three times a week, one day after a chapter goes live on Royal Road. However, I'm open to any and all feedback and would love to hear in the comments if anyone has a better idea.

Thank you for reading and hope to hear from you soon!