So she pulled her hair back up, securing it tightly and re-tying the ribbon around it, making sure the bow was even.
Why am I so nervous?
Staring at herself in the mirror, Diana’s insecurities crept in. Green skirt, ivory shirt and bow, red sweater and shoes – did she look silly? Everyone knew it was Christmas; it wasn’t like she needed to go with a full-blown color scheme. And her brooch, a cat in a stocking, was it too childish?
“I thought you were all set?”
Her heart still skips a beat sometimes when she sees him. Dark green pants with a white sweater, tight enough to show off his physique. Dark hair peeking out from under a Santa hat.
And a silver ring on his finger that matched hers. Why did she feel so unsettled?
“Is the stuffing ready to go?” she deflected.
“Phi has it packed up.” Sigma tilted his head slightly, but didn’t say anything more.
“We should head out then.” Plastering a smile on her face, she went up to him and squeezed his arms gently. He stopped her before she could walk past him, questioning her with his eyes.
“You are anxious about this.”
“I know it’s stupid,” she bristled. “I just … I don’t understand why she’s here.”
“Well, we’ll get to -”
“If you guys don’t get down here right now, I’m leaving.”
“We’re coming,” Diana shouted down to their daughter. She swept through the kitchen before heading to the front door, grabbing a bottle of wine to add to the basket. She tucked it in next to the carefully packaged, ready for the oven, homemade stuffing. Phi was more simply dressed, in jeans, a t-shirt, and a hoodie.
Sigma looked worried as he came down the stairs, but said nothing as he threw on his jacket and grabbed his keys.
“It’s a party, not a funeral, you guys,” Phi chided them. Diana put on her best fake happy face as she hauled the picnic basket out to the car. Once inside, she quickly switched to the Christmas station, humming along as Carol of the Bells came on.
-
“I hope the neighbors are okay with us parking here,” she mused as she got out of the car.
“Should be fine,” Phi said. “They don’t own the street.”
With one last worried glance at the building - the Owens lived there, according to the sign - she turned to walk the few blocks to Lotus’s house. It was just chilly enough to make her sweater comfortable. Sigma took the hand that wasn’t holding the basket and squeezed it gently.
It was so silly.
Mamoru opened the door, looking frustrated for a second before his face burst into a huge grin. Exclaiming her name, he embraced her in a giant bear hug. She felt unbelievably small, even more so than when Sigma held her. When he released her, she awkwardly held out the basket.
“Stuffing is all ready to go; it just needs 30 minutes or so at 375.”
“Uh…” He put his hand on the back of his head. “The mac and cheese is in there now and I think it’s at 425… Nona, I might need some help with the oven!”
“But I’m the dungeon master!”
“It won’t take long. Please?”
There was a heavy sigh and then, “Two minutes or less.”
He shuffled off towards the kitchen, belatedly shouting out behind him, “Oh yeah, coat closet is right there.”
“We’ve been here before,” Phi said, already putting her hoodie away.
“I hope I made enough stuffing.” Diana glanced into the living room, seeing every sitting spot already full. Lotus was on the sofa, talking to a woman with familiar red hair. Her heart caught in her throat. Lotus pointed at her and Diana wanted to just melt into the floor. She heard her husband’s sharp intake of breath behind her as Luna turned to look at them.
My god.
She … she knew that Luna would resemble her. And she wasn’t a perfect match. The nose, the eyes … but …
Luna looked almost as nervous as she felt. The other woman got up off the couch, clasped her hands in front of her and peered out from under fallen bangs. Diana moved across the floor and couldn’t stop herself as she blurted out, “Why are you here?”
“To enjoy Christmas dinner with us,” Lotus said as she stood. “Speaking of, I should make sure my boyfriend isn’t burning everything.”
“That doesn’t count!” Ennea’s voice carried over from the dining room.
She heard Maria pipe up. “What, just because it hit the floor?”
“If it doesn’t stay on the table, it’s not real.”
“If I had rolled a one, I bet you wouldn’t care.”
“It’s the rules!”
“A real rule, or a Kashiwabara rule?”
“I don’t know if it’s a rule rule,” Phi interjected. “But it’s a generally accepted principle.”
“I’m totally getting killed by poison darts, aren’t I?”
“Just re-roll,” Ennea said. “You might get lucky.”
The next thing she heard was dice hitting the table and a set of collective groans.
“Um, Diana?”
Her attention turned back to Luna, who looked even more anxious than before. It should have comforted her, just like her husband’s hand on the small of her back, but it didn’t.
“I’m also curious why you’re here, Luna,” Sigma said. “Did you need to warn us about something?”
“No, that’s not it at all. I was just … I was lonely.”
She blushed. The android actually blushed. Diana frowned at her.
“So you just decided to get in the transporter and come here because you’re lonely? How do we know you’re not a spy? Or assassin?”
Sigma uttered something behind her that sounded like gibberish and Luna went limp immediately. One of the other guests gasped from behind them. He lurched forward to catch her and guide her onto the couch. Lotus must have heard or seen something, as suddenly she was also back in the living room.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“It’s a kill code. ‘Birthday’ in Russian followed by ‘happy’ in Chinese, since I can’t imagine anyone will ever say that normally.” Sigma pressed a spot on the back of Luna’s left ear and a panel opened up on her forehead. He quickly tapped a few buttons and Luna came back to life. Diana found herself breathing a sigh of relief.
“I see,” Luna said. “You wanted to see if I had been altered.”
Sigma sat down next to her on the couch. “It’s not perfect, but I thought perhaps it would put my wife at ease.”
Now Diana was surely the one with red cheeks. It wasn’t an unreasonable question. You’re making me sound paranoid.
Lotus placed herself on Luna’s other side, asking permission before touching the panel that was still open on her forehead. “Not like I’ll really understand anything I’m seeing, I’m sure,” she muttered under her breath.
There was a small ruckus from the dining room. Diana couldn’t make out much, but she heard “flame trap” and “third damn time.”
“Why did you decide to come here?” Sigma was asking his creation. “This timeline, I mean.”
Before answering, she carefully closed her head panel; Diana found herself trying to look for the seams in the artificial skin that would show where it was. But her skin was flawless.
“It was a guess.”
“How do you define a ‘guess’ in your mind?” Lotus said.
Luna set her hands in her lap. “The transporter map showed my current location in space time. Using that and Dr. Klim’s data, I made some conjectures on what directed the branches to fork off as they did and attempted to choose one that wasn’t headed down a disastrous path. Obviously, the further away I got from my location, the less certainty I had. I only had about a 15.67% chance that this would be a truly good timeline, but there was a 43.34% chance that it would at least be better than the one I was in. In mine … everyone is gone.”
“In the Rhizome?” Sigma interjected.
“Everywhere. Humanity is extinct.”
They sat in silence for an uncomfortable amount of time, until excited eruptions from the other room broke it.
“Don’t put it on before analyzing it,” Ennea warned.
Maria snorted loudly. “I’m not stupid.” Then, after a moment, “Don’t give me that look. You would have tried to steal that book too.”
“Yeah,” Phi said. “But I’m a thief.”
“How exactly did humanity die out?” Sigma asked, bringing Diana’s attention back to Luna.
“I’m not certain of all the details. There was another outbreak. Something worse this time. Then war broke out. The sky went black. I hadn’t attempted to make much contact with Earth after Dr. Klim …”
Lotus glanced around at the rest of them. “Did you not tell them what year you came from? I think you should have started with that.”
Luna slumped slightly, staring down at her hands. The knot in Diana’s stomach grew.
“2745,” she said finally.
Diana couldn’t quite believe it, and from the expression on Sigma’s face, she could tell he felt the same. That would have been, what, almost seven hundred years without Sigma? Or even Akane. Living alone, not knowing if your body would ever shut down naturally. Not knowing if you could or would ever die.
The silence was broken, this time not by the game, but by Mamoru shouting from the kitchen that dinner was almost ready and they better clear the table. No one in the living room moved, even when the twins brought in the Dungeons & Dragons paraphernalia to place on the coffee table.
“Nobody can possibly understand what she went through,” Lotus said softly as the girls left. “She can’t go talk to a therapist about this and you guys are essentially her only family. I get we’re hypervigilant and the timing seems strange.”
“Come on guys!” Mamoru poked his head out of the hall. “Dinner’s gonna get cold.”
Luna stood up. “I don’t want to ruin your party. We can talk later. I can go back to the facility.”
Sigma opened his mouth as if to say something, but closed it as he turned towards Diana. She knew he would defer to her if she protested. And part of her still wanted to. But the part of her that was a mother …
“You should come eat dinner with us - if you eat, I guess - and then come back with us. We have a spare room and I know Sigma has missed you.”
Rather than wait for a response, Diana looped her arm through Luna’s and guided her to the dining room. There were two tables set up, one very neatly done, the other more hastily thrown together, with dice still sitting out by the centerpiece. She sat at the slightly sloppier table, with Luna on one side and her husband joining her on the other. Mamoru and Lotus were hauling food out of the kitchen and placing it anywhere there was room. A giant turkey, stuffing, macaroni and cheese, yams, green beans, with more coming out.
“Sigma’s getting over his little cat tic,” Diana volunteered to her near-doppelganger. “We found a sweet little stray kitten outside about a month ago. I named her Fluffy.”
She pulled out her phone and opened the cat picture folder.
“You can scroll through if you want.”
“Oh. She’s so small and precious.” For the first time since Diana had met her, Luna was smiling. It … it was silly to be paranoid. Or jealous. Sometimes coincidences are just coincidences. Looking at the way Luna’s face lit up as she swiped through picture after picture of the little hairball, she couldn’t believe she had anything to do with … the incident.
“Dig in everyone,” Lotus said. “If we have leftovers, they’re not staying here.”
“I am designed to be able to consume food,” Luna told her as she handed the phone back. “I can even taste. Or at least I think I can. I’m not really sure what human taste is like.”
Lotus slid into the spot on the other side of Luna. “I would love to have that discussion with you, if you’re okay with that?”
“Of course.”
Sigma placed his hand on her thigh and squeezed gently. She covered his hand with hers and returned the gesture.
I’m fine, she thought in his direction. It’s going to be okay. But … if I keep getting a new child every year for Christmas, our house is going to get crowded.
(fin)
