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Caspian was cursing in his mind as he lumbered his robot body down the path. The invention itself was brilliant, but the sensation was…distorting, to say the least. He knew that his body was covered by flesh, but also that underneath the flesh was just a robot wearing human skin. It disturbed Caspian, and the fact that Ellen and Waxman seemed so used to it confused him further of this far too developed future.
As if on cue, Ellen glanced back worryingly at his stumbling figure.
“Yeah, takes a while to get used to,” She offered empathetically. Neither her nor Waxman slowed down, however, and the trio continued their path towards the Logorhythms main building. Caspian suddenly halted, arms reached out to balance himself. He had half a mind to ask them to wait for him to adjust, but decided that finding Maddie should be the priority. Bracing himself, Caspian forced his arms and legs to work as they would on a normal human body, and finally managed to catch up to Ellen and Waxman.
The newly reached fluency of his body saved him from physical embarrassment, but freed up his mind enough that it began to wonder to the person who built this body in the first place.
Maddie.
He had so much questions about her that he didn’t dare ask. How did she react after his ‘death’? What was her journey like in helping create this world of UIs? How is she now?
Did she ever move on from him?
Despite the weight of the situation, Caspian found that the last question dug at him the most. He should probably know what to expect, really. It’s been 20 years, and everyone thought he was dead. Maddie had only properly known him for little more than a month, so it made sense that she’d had found someone else during that time. His Maddie, the Maddie he seemingly just saw mere minutes ago, might’ve loved him, but right now he had to steel himself to prepare to see a Maddie who grew out of her teenage feelings.
As hard as he tried to think logically, the thought of Maddie with someone else hurt him to no end. She was the first and only significant person in his life who wasn’t a spy or an actor, and he found it hard to breathe when imagining his life without her. Not that he’d even have much longer though, according to MIST.
Now more or less adjusted to walking, Caspian tried to strike up conversation to free his mind.
“Thought Logorhythms was shut down,” He commented, looking around the site.
“I thought MIST brought you up to speed,” Ellen replied. Caspian couldn’t see her face, but he could tell from her tone that she was skeptical on how much he had caught up on.
“She said I have to take it slo——“ He faltered over his last word as his legs tripped over air to come to a stop. The three of them looked at each other and unanimously decided to not comment on it.
Waxman held open the glass door and entered, Ellen and Caspian following close behind. He had never been to the Logorhythms building in his time, so he couldn’t tell how different it grew during the two decades.
Immediately upon entering, people began to stare at the trio and whispering under their breaths in what they thought were discreet voices. Caspian did his best to stare back hostilely.
A strange blue light in the shape of a diamond appeared on the back of his hand, and as he examined it in curiosity, Ellen explained that it was to inform others of their UI status. It invoked a weird feeling in him, knowing that UIs are separated from the Embodied to the point where they needed a sign to warn others of them.
“Grandma?”
Caspian froze as Ellen turned around. This was it, then. Maddie’s son. The proof that she had found someone else and now lived a separate life which Caspian can never intervene.
He balled his hands into fists inside his pockets and tried to look anywhere but the interaction between the Ellen and Maddie’s son, until he felt the eyes of the boy turn to him.
“Who…Who’s this?” The boy asked Ellen, glaring at Caspian judgementally. Caspian glared back, determined to not show weakness in front of this boy who looked the same age he was. God, Maddie must’ve moved on fast. The boy even looked like Caspian. Who the hell is his father?
A tense moment passed by before a look of pure horror took over the boy’s face and he hurriedly looked Caspian up and down. Then backed up and looked him over a second time.
He must’ve recognised Caspian, then. Idly (and still glaring), Caspian wondered if Maddie ever mentioned him to the boy.
For a second, Ellen looked confusedly between the two, then her expression morphed into annoyance as she silently muttered “Oh my God, MIST,” under her breath, pinching the bridge of her nose. Right, because she obviously expected MIST to rip the bandage off, instead of having to explain to her daughter’s resurrected ex-boyfriend that said daughter now had a family of her own.
“‘Take it slow’. She could’ve warned him!”Waxman remarked disapprovingly from where he stood with his arms crossed.
“Warned us. She didn’t…” Ellen spluttered, looking between Caspian and the boy again.
Caspian thought he had expected what was coming, but the combined strange behaviour from everyone except him still had him feeling out of place.
“I’m getting tired of hearing myself say this, but…” He turned to Ellen, who now had her face in both palms, “What is going on?”
She slowly raised her head.
“Caspian,” Her voice was exasperated but also cautious, “This is Dave,” She gestured to the boy whose face was tightened.
Ellen turned back to Caspian.
“This is your son.”
Oh.
Caspian’s mind went blank.
He registered what she said. This was his son. His and Maddie’s son. This boy, no, young man, considering that he would’ve been 20 years old——
Oh God, his son is two yeas older than him.
Before he could string together a coherent question about the situation, he heard the sound of footsteps behind him.
The group turned to the source of the sound, and Caspian’s eyes widened even further when he saw who was making their way down the stairs.
Maddie.
The first thing that hit him was how beautiful she looked. Her purple-black hair was long and sleek, resting on her shoulders like a curtain. She was wearing makeup, not heavily, but the black colour scheme was striking on her pale face, bringing out her smoky eyes.
She looked so different, yet he could still see traces of his Maddie on her.
This Maddie, too, was short, and she wore a pair of black high-heeled boots to appear taller. This Maddie also donned dark coloured clothes, and the expression on her face barely changed save for the fact that her features had obviously matured.
Caspian was staring so much he thought his eyes might fall out of his socket from pure concentration.
A voice yanked him out of his shock.
“Mom, what is this?” Dave demanded, stepping forward.
Maddie had made her way down to the ground floor, and she dodged around Caspian’s gaze to confront Ellen.
“I don’t know. Mom, what is this?” She demanded to Ellen.
It seemed that this Maddie had a strained relationship with her mother, not entirely unlike 20 years ago. Caspian moved closer, trying to capture Maddie’s attention as she and Ellen exchanged venomous comments. It didn’t seem like it would stop soon, and he eventually decided to intervene.
“Maddie,” He said softly. “It’s me.”
Maddie’s eyes widened for a split second upon hearing his voice, but was then immediately shut tight.
“Your registration is barely a day old,” She stated briskly. Her eyes swivelled to him for an instant before immediately moving back to glare at Ellen. It was like seeing his face pained her.
Caspian couldn’t bear it.
“Our first kiss was on a Greyhound bus. The bus driver reminded you of Bowser.”
“MIST was there for that,” Maddie retorted, though her tone was weaker now, and Caspian saw the brief shock which crossed her face.
“MIST is who brought me back,” Caspian clarified, determined to prove himself.
He explained to her how MIST had underclocked and archived him after the fight, then restored him that morning.
Annoyance still clouded Maddie’s face, and Caspian hoped it was directed at MIST, not him. She seemed to believe him after the explanation, at least.
“Did she come with you?” She asked Ellen.
Ellen didn’t answer, but her guilty expression revealed what Maddie already knew.
Ignoring Caspian, Maddie began to draw away from the group.
“Wait!” Caspian called, reaching forward. He heard a simultaneous voice from behind him and looked back to realise it had been Dave. Truth be told, he forgot Dave was still there, having been far too engrossed and focused on Maddie.
A group of formally-clothed people came down the stairs just then.
“Chancellor Kim, is there a problem?” One of them——the only woman of the group——enquired solemnly.
“Are these the emissaries? We’ve been waiting for two hours,”The man beside her said, voice dripping with dissatisfaction.
Maddie asked them to give her a minute, then finally turned to Caspian.
“Will you escort me back to the load-in bay, please?” She asked wearingly.
This was the first time during the entire encounter that she had held eye contact with him while speaking. Caspian found himself staring like an idiot for a beat too long before nodding once. She stared back, unimpressed. It was bizarre, how embarrassed he was in front of her. When Caspian was with his Maddie he was still tongue-tied at times, but nowhere to this extent.
Dave approached before they could leave. She stopped and glanced at him without turning.
“I just need a moment.”
“I wanna to know what’s going on,” He muttered firmly.
“And you will, we all will, but I need a minute first,” Maddie gritted out impatiently.
“Just because you don’t want me to talk to MIST——“
“I don’t want MIST to talk to you,” Maddie corrected, turning to face him. “There’s a difference. Why don’t you talk to Grandma?”
Caspian was startled at her disdain of MIST. Sure, the Maddie from 20 years ago wasn’t always the kindest to her, but Caspian would’ve never expected it to go to the point where she would ban MIST from coming in contact with her son. He decided that there must’ve been some history behind this, like there was between Maddie and Ellen. That doesn’t mean he was going to ask Maddie about it, though. He still remembered Maddie’s anger (directed at him most of the time) and it wasn’t a fond memory for his. Any memory of Maddie with negative emotions made their way to Caspian’s least favourites.
He went up to Maddie and Dave when he figured the conversation was coming to an end.
“Right. We both know I can wait,” Dave mumbled crossly as he walked away.
Caspian looked at Maddie, who glared at the floor with a pained expression. He wasn’t sure what his own face conveyed in that moment. All that remained in his head was how little he now knew of Maddie’s relationships with the people around her now. How little he knew about the new her and their son.
She met his eyes but didn’t say anything about the expression on his face. Turning around once more, she made her way to the other side of the lobby as Caspian followed behind.
The silence between them was tense. Caspian didn’t know what to think anymore. Guilt racked at him the most, berating him for his own death and his lack of presence in the last 20 years of Maddie’s life. The knowledge that they had a son from that one reckless night before he uploaded made everything worse, and the specific thought that Maddie might’ve kept the child because he was Caspian’s made him want to die of self-reproach. Maddie must’ve hated him over the years. Maybe that was why she made no reaction towards his return, even after being convinced that it was truly him.
“We’ll take the breezeway. It’s shorter,” Maddie said shortly. He didn’t respond.
She suddenly stopped in front of him. Caspian didn’t want to look up, convinced that she was going to proclaim her hatred or anger, or whatever justified feeling she had towards him.
What he didn’t expect was for her to turn around and throw her arms around him tightly, burying her face in his chest.
Caspian looked down at the top of Maddie’s head as his arms hovered at his side. Only one thought hit him:
She’s still so small.
He wrapped his arms around her and closed his eyes as he hugged back. She was warm, and she still felt like his Maddie despite all the physical changes.
They stood like that for a short while, and the embrace grounded Caspian for the first time that day since he woke up. He still found himself loving her, even though this wasn’t the Maddie he remembered.
His mind wandered back to the last memory he had of the Maddie from 20 years ago. When she covered her mouth and turned away as tears spilled over her eyes. The Maddie who was only a teenager but unknowingly carrying his child.
“I’m sorry,” He murmured. It wouldn’t be enough, he knew it wouldn’t, but it was the only thing he could think of saying. Maddie drew away from him, and Caspian mourned the loss of her warmth.
“I...” He tried, “Look, MIST did not tell me anything about——“
“I know,” Maddie interrupted. “She pissed me off on purpose, to pick a fight. And she’s gonna get one.” She continued down the path, this time faster and striding with a newfound anger.
“Hold up,” Caspian said as he picked up his pace. Once more, he wondered what had happened between Maddie and MIST.
Maddie didn’t slow her pace.
“We haven’t spoken in two years,” She explained. “I guess this is her way to break the ice, with a sledgehammer.”
Caspian felt his robot body stiffen and tense up as she spoke, and eventually fell to the floor with a “Woah”.
Maddie knelt down beside him. He avoided her eyes, embarrassed.
“Your accelerometer’s underactuated,” She commented, holding up his right hand to inspect the blue diamond. Caspian vaguely registered how her hand felt slightly coarser, probably from all her work with the machineries.
“Here, this should help,” Maddie offered as Caspian felt a whirring noise coming from inside him. He shook the strange feeling off.
“I need help,” He fumbled over his words. “I mean, I… You… We have a son!”
Maddie looked away. “For now,” She said quietly. Caspian hated to see her face so overwhelming with sadness.
“Talk to me. What happened?” He urged, putting his hand over hers.
She talked. She recounted the initial reactions after his death, her grief, how Joey informed the powers of everything that happened, and when she first found out she was pregnant.
“I don’t know if it would’ve been easier with you there or not,” She confessed.
Caspian wasn’t so sure, either. Ellen would’ve definitely rained down hell on him, and him being an UI would’ve made the process so much more complicated for everyone. Still, he wished he was there for her.
“What…um…What made you decide to——“ To keep the baby?
“Become a teen mom? I didn’t.” Maddie turned around again and kept walking. Caspian followed and waited for her to speak.
Maddie explained that she had initially considered adoption. It hurt him, knowing that it had probably hurt Maddie too. She didn’t go with it in the end, but it sounded like a last-minute decision.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Caspian apologised again. It was useless, but also the only thing he could do. He paused in his tracks. “Must have been hard,”
In a resenting tone, Maddie explained that Ellen and MIST helped her raise Dave while she was completing her education. Caspian couldn’t help but feel a surge of pride once hearing that Maddie had gotten into Stanford, then dropped out to presumably start her own business. He felt another jab of guilt, aware that he should’ve been there for her, but buried it under so it wouldn’t conflict with his feeling of pride.
“Why didn’t you go live there? The Cloud?” He asked during a pause, though he knew an approximate answer.
A long stretch of silence followed.
“It was the same day I decided about Dave,” Maddie finally said. She recounted how she stood for ten minutes in front of the iron meteorite at the rock museum, and how, in those ten minutes, decided that if she couldn’t live forever then her mistakes wouldn’t matter.
She didn’t state the other obvious, but Caspian knew her well enough that she didn’t have to.
If she couldn’t live forever, then the pain from her mistakes wouldn’t follow her forever, either.
He didn’t comment on that.
Hours later, MIST would suggest Caspian convincing Maddie to let Dave upload, and Caspian would reject.
There was no way, after the 20 years of pain he had given Maddie, that he would cause another wave of pain to hit her a year early.
Dave would choose to upload after he turns 21. That wasn’t just a possibility, Caspian was sure of it, and it would no doubt break Maddie’s heart, but he wanted Maddie to have at least one more year with her son before she remains behind on earth as the only one left of her family. It didn’t matter that if Dave uploads a year early he could save Caspian from the antiviral. It didn’t matter because even if Caspian survives, he’d remain as a UI. Maddie would still be utterly alone.
He’d never willingly bring that fate to Maddie, and he knew that her stubbornness would never allow it to happen either. Dave was all she had in this world and she would hold onto him, even if their time was limited to less than a year. It broke something inside Caspian, knowing that he wasn’t a part of Maddie’s life now, but he decided that he would live with it for his remaining days if it meant that he saved Maddie from another heartbreak, even if it’s just a year early.
MIST agreed to give him a proper download, in the end. Caspian braced himself, knowing that his meeting with the council tomorrow would and had to be his main priority. The lives of billions were on him, Maddie and his son’s included.
He hoped they could talk, all three of them, once this whole ordeal was over. He hoped he would have enough time. He hoped that Maddie will eventually evade pain.
He hoped.