Alive

Maria

Empty space emits energy in the form of photons and antiphotons, on a regular basis. This is part of the natural order of things. However, it is not natural for space to be emitting so much energy it blazes with light.

Nor, indeed, for the area of space so emitting to be roughly human-shaped.

Maria concentrated fiercely, mustering every gram of control she could manage. It wasn't easy. There were so many distractions, not the least of which were the stars above, gleaming with precise, solid points of light. The stars did not need to be vague, semi-material blobs of semi-coherent energy to emit their light. They were able to interact with the universe in ways she no longer could.

But she would fix that.

Ray of light, she thought, and focused on a particular point in her matrix. Five gold light beams converged on one point, and she stared at them.

Hands. Once she had had hands, and not merely simulated ones. She remembered the feel of a pen in her hands, the resistance of two Cybrid components as she attached them. She closed her eyes, and opened them again. The lightbeams had vanished, replaced by a transparent hand, detailed enough she could see the prints on her fingertips. She turned her hand, studied the fingerprints. They were hers, indeed. It had been centuries since she had seen her own fingerprints, but she recognized them immediately. Everyone had their own prints, even clones, but these were the prints she had been born with: long loops with a half-turn spiral bend at the center.

The prints were all visible, but transparent, as though traced on a computer simulation. Underneath, she could see the tracings of her arteries and nerves and muscle fibres, pulsing slowly.

She looked up, and conjured up a mirror. She was standing there, a transparent image of gold light, with an expanding tendril of bright light climbing slowly up her arm, the flesh behind it growing more detailed, as though the light was an artist's pencil.

She drew a breath, feeling not-quite-solid lungs expand as they filled with air. "I am alive," she informed herself in the mirror, as she slowly became solid. She ran her fingers down the back of her left hand, or tried to: her fingers sank into her hand as if both were mere holograms. She clenched her fists, and the faint shimmer disappeared.

This time, she felt the soft touch of skin against skin, for the first time in centuries.

"I am alive," she whispered, a single tear slipping down her cheek. The tear only sparkled in the moonlight, it did not glow with light. She touched it, felt the wetness on her finger, touched it to her lips, tasted salt.

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