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The alert arrived just past 01:17 station time, a discreet ping that cut through the silence of Herta’s private lab. She glanced up from her console, annoyed by the interruption, then more annoyed by the context of the message.
Unregistered automaton detected – Storage Wing C.
Unregistered.
On her space station.
Inside her personal storage wing.
She exhaled through her nose, expression flat. The station’s systems shouldn’t have been capable of misreporting something like this. And yet here she was, dragging herself away from a particularly interesting sequence of Simulated Universe anomaly logs to deal with a wandering machine.
“It had better be worth the teleportation” she muttered.
A quick gesture, and blue light enveloped her. A moment later, she materialized at the entrance of Wing C.
The lights flicked on automatically, humming to life in crisp rows. The facility around her stretched in gleaming steel corridors, flanked by glass-fronted displays of her doll collection: dozens of perfectly crafted marionettes, automatons, anthropomorphic constructs–each an expression of her ingenuity, her curiosity, her boredom.
Each silent. Unmoving. Behaving exactly as she designed them to.
Except tonight.
Herta had made it only five steps into the hall when she noticed it. A tilt of the head. A shift in posture. A flutter of fabric where there should have been none.
Her eyes narrowed.
At the far end of the wing, one puppet –small, elegant and robed in fine lilac cloth– stood with its chin slightly lifted, as though it had heard her approach and chosen to acknowledge it.
Not one of hers. At least, not one she remembered creating.
She approached with measured steps, arms loosely crossed, mind moving faster than her pace. Materials analysis, origin possibility, infiltration risk. None of the hypotheses were satisfying. Nothing explained why the construct turned its head toward her when she stopped in front of it, or why its expression, static yet strangely intent, felt eerily deliberate.
“You’re not in my registry” she said, voice low and blunt.
The puppet blinked.
Herta froze. Her irritation evaporated so quickly she almost felt insulted.
“I know” the puppet replied softly– in Ruan Mei’s voice.
Herta stared at it. The construct’s posture was relaxed, almost welcoming; the intonation unmistakable. Not perfectly mimicked, but close enough to bypass coincidence. Ruan Mei’s voice carried a warmth that seemed entirely wrong coming from an uninvited marionette.
“Explain” Herta demanded. “Who programmed you?”
The puppet’s smile was gentle, wrongly so. “No one. I wanted to see you.”
That was almost too much to comprehend. Even if puppets like these could somehow voice its immediate desires, if they were even remotely close to hers, they shouldn’t have the capacity to discern between a mere thought and a want.
Herta stepped back and immediately opened a comm channel.
“Ruan Mei” she said flatly when it connected “come to Storage Wing C.”
“Oh?” Ruan Mei sounded intrigued, not concerned. “Am I being summoned?”
“Yes.”
“That sounds serious.”
Herta took a moment, stealing a long glance at the puppet she was looking at before replying “It is.”
A soft laugh. “I’ll be right there.”
Herta shut off the connection with a swipe.
The puppet watched her with stillness so calm it grated. Artificial constructs were not supposed to be this self-directed. Not even the ones she designed with advanced cognitive modules behaved with this much… intent. There was no glitching, no uncertainty, no wandering protocols. Just clear, focused awareness.
And it was centered on her.
Unsettling.
And unacceptable.
Minutes later, a ripple of silver-blue light filled the hall, followed by Ruan Mei’s graceful arrival. She brushed imaginary dust from her lab coat sleeves and looked around with the curious air of someone entering a garden rather than a restricted storage wing.
“Herta” she greeted warmly. “You sounded unusually urgent.”
“Look.” Herta pointed at the puppet, annoyed that the gesture felt childish.
Ruan Mei’s eyes landed on the construct. For a heartbeat she didn’t react at all.
Then a quiet, delighted hum left her lips.
“Oh, how charming.”
Herta’s expression flattened. “It’s trespassing.”
Ruan Mei approached the puppet with slow steps, examining it from several angles without touching it. “The craftsmanship… the stitching… even the hairpins.” She crouched slightly to inspect its face. “This is quite intricate. It resembles me, but–” Her smile curved. “an idealized version.”
“Not one of mine” Herta said sharply. “Before you suggest that.”
Ruan Mei straightened, eyes bright with fascination. “Not one of mine either.”
Herta didn’t respond immediately. For once, she didn’t have a counterpoint ready. Whoever–or whatever–created this construct had access to restricted areas, and more importantly, had replicated Ruan Mei’s likeness with enough precision to produce an uncanny sense of familiarity.
The puppet tilted its head, this time toward Ruan Mei. “You left a resonance behind.”
Ruan Mei blinked. “I… beg your pardon?”
Herta’s mind accelerated. Residual energy traces. Emotional signatures. Fragments lingering from their most recent experiments in the Simulated Universe, particularly the one involving overlapping authority projections.
“Resonance” Herta echoed slowly. “Of course.” She exhaled, annoyed that she hadn’t considered it sooner. “It’s an echo of your authority.”
Ruan Mei turned to her, interested. “You think so?”
“It’s either that” Herta said dryly “or someone on my station has disturbingly accurate taste in dollmaking.”
Ruan Mei laughed under her breath, soft and melodic. She gestured at the puppet. “May I speak with it?”
“No” Herta said instinctively,then immediately frowned at herself. “Fine. Yes. But don’t encourage it.”
“I would never encourage bad behavior” Ruan Mei said. Then, to the puppet: “Why did you appear here?”
The puppet looked at Herta again, its expression beginning to waver, subtly at first, as though some fine-tuned calibration were slipping out of alignment. The perfectly composed features softened in minute, almost undetectable increments, like a model losing resolution, or a mind momentarily forgetting the precise arrangement of a mask it had worn too long. It was the smallest suggestion of uncertainty,focus thinning at the edges, intent blurring into something unprogrammed and fragile.
“I wanted to see you” it repeated softly.
“Her or me?” Ruan Mei asked, surprisingly gentle.
The puppet hesitated, its movements slowing as if caught between conflicting directives, head tilting a fraction to the side in a gesture almost too delicate to belong to something engineered. For a moment it seemed to listen,to the room, to Herta, or to some quiet internal question it had no language for.
“Herta.”
Ruan Mei’s brows lifted, the motion subtle yet unmistakably sharp– an expression that suggested she had just observed an unexpected variable enter the equation, one she found both intriguing and faintly amusing.
Herta’s stomach dropped in a way she did not appreciate, a small internal lurch that felt irrational and therefore deeply inconvenient, as though her body had decided to react ahead of any logical analysis she could provide.
“Ridiculous” she muttered.
Ruan Mei stepped closer to her, amused. “It seems your presence left an impression as well.”
“I don’t leave impressions” Herta snapped. “Not sentimental ones.”
The puppet only smiled, faintly flickering now, as though its edges were growing translucent.
Herta didn’t like that either.
“Come on,” she said, grabbing its shoulder. Not roughly, but firmly. “We’re taking you to the lab. Before you disintegrate all over my floor.”
Ruan Mei followed, hands clasped neatly behind her back, amusement simmering beneath her calm exterior.
The walk to the lab was short, but heavy with unspoken questions. Herta refused to meet Ruan Mei’s gaze, knowing the other woman was already forming unnecessary interpretations.
They placed the puppet on an examination table. Ruan Mei watched quietly as Herta activated a series of diagnostic tools, her fingers moving in efficient, clipped motions.
The construct sat obediently, expression serene. Too serene.
“You’re being unusually meticulous” Ruan Mei observed.
“I don’t want stray data corrupting my collection” Herta said.
“Of course.”
Her tone suggested she didn’t believe that for a second.
The scans ran silently. Herta leaned in, eyes narrowing as readings scrolled across the console.
Residual authority, yes. Simulated Universe bleedover, yes. Quantum imprinting from their last experiment– specifically from the resonance field that had briefly entangled their individual authority signatures.
And layered over all of it, faint emotional coding. It was messy, unstable, not belonging to either of them intentionally.
Untrained sentiment.
Herta swallowed, throat tightening with a pressure she immediately tried to categorize, as though naming it might make it less intrusive. “This construct is temporary” she said, forcing her voice into the flat cadence she trusted more than any emotional response.
“Yes” the puppet whispered. Its voice, once perfectly modulated, now carried a thinning quality, like sound stretched too far over failing circuitry. “I don’t have much time.” It paused, eyes flickering with something neither mechanical nor fully human. “I wanted… to look at you before I disappeared.”
Herta stiffened, the reaction automatic, her body going taut as though bracing against an unexpected shift in gravitational force. Something about the phrasing, simple, unadorned, and undeniably directed at her, created a fault line she had not prepared to measure.
Ruan Mei watched her with quiet curiosity, not pity, not amusement. It was clouded with interest, as though observing an unexpected chemical reaction.
The puppet’s form flickered again.
“I existed because she cares” it murmured.
Herta’s head snapped up. “I do not–”
The puppet’s smile wavered. “It didn’t say who.”
Silence crashed into the room like a wave.
Herta didn’t move.
Ruan Mei didn’t speak.
The puppet’s outline shimmered.
Then, with a soft exhale of static, it dissolved. Its form breaking into faint strands of light that scattered into the air before fading completely.
The lab felt unbearably quiet.
Ruan Mei stepped closer, her voice dipping into something soft but still scientific in tone. “Fascinating. Emotional resonance strong enough to form matter… That shouldn’t have been possible.”
Herta didn’t respond immediately. Her gaze remained fixed on the empty table where the construct had stood, as if the outline of its presence still lingered in the air like afterimage or heat distortion.
“It shouldn’t have” she said at last, her voice steady but stripped down, as though she had removed all unnecessary components to keep it functional.
Yet it had.
And it had spoken with certainty about something Herta found decidedly inconvenient to examine.
Ruan Mei’s gaze slid to her. “Herta… may I ask something?”
“No.”
“You refuse very quickly.”
“Habit.”
Ruan Mei smiled, too gently.
“Would you prefer the companionship of a perfect imitation… or the real version of me?”
Herta’s shoulders tensed. A small reaction, but undeniable.
Silence stretched again, soft and delicate, as though the air itself was waiting.
Herta looked away first.
“…The real one” she said quietly.
Ruan Mei’s eyes warmed, her voice softening in a rare display of sincerity.
“Then I’ll make time to visit more often.”
Herta said nothing.
But she didn’t object when Ruan Mei walked beside her on the way out, close enough that their shoulders brushed, a contact Herta didn’t move to avoid.
The next morning, the space station felt unusually quiet, as though some subtle shift had settled into its corridors overnight–an almost imperceptible hush that suggested the machinery was waiting for its occupants to catch up with whatever had changed.
Not objectively, Herta knew the ambient noise levels were unchanged–but rather conceptually, as though something in her perceptual field had shifted. She dismissed the thought immediately. Feelings were unreliable variables, and she disliked accommodating them.
Still, she took her breakfast at her console instead of the cafeteria. Routine, she told herself. Efficiency. Certainly not avoidance of possible conversations with a certain scientist who tended to appear at inconvenient moments.
Her terminal chimed.
Incoming message: Ruan Mei – Subject: “A Curious Aftereffect.”
Herta rolled her eyes before she even opened it.
Ruan Mei:
Good morning, Herta. I trust you slept adequately.I’ve been analyzing the energy traces left behind by our unexpected visitor. The results are… compelling. The resonance patterns persisted longer than expected–far longer than typical SU residue.
I think we should meet to compare notes.
–R.
Herta considered ignoring it.
She lasted eleven seconds.
Herta:
Fine. Lab B.
She closed the message quickly, irritated at herself for replying with more brevity than usual. She didn’t enjoy feeling reactive.
When Ruan Mei arrived, she carried a datapad and an expression that was, annoyingly, both serene and bright with curiosity. She greeted Herta with a small tilt of the head.
“Thank you for agreeing to meet so early” she said.
“It’s 09:00” Herta replied. “Not early.”
Ruan Mei smiled faintly. “For most of the station, perhaps. But for you, considering you were awake until at least three…”
Herta stiffened. “You were monitoring my terminal activity?”
“No” Ruan Mei said pleasantly. “I merely guessed.”
Somehow, that was worse.
Herta gestured sharply toward the console. “Your data. Show it.”
Ruan Mei handed her the datapad. Herta scanned the readings, eyes narrowing as she parsed the information.
Layered resonance. Feedback loop formation. Identity imprinting.
It was worse, and more interesting, than she expected.
“This shouldn’t be possible” she murmured. “Resonance fields decay too quickly for stable materialization.”
“Yes” Ruan Mei said softly. “And yet it did.”
Herta didn’t like the implication. Not because it defied logic, but because it implied a variable she didn’t want to analyze too closely.
“So you believe emotional energy contributed to its formation” she said flatly.
Ruan Mei clasped her hands behind her back, posture straight but relaxed. “It’s the only explanation consistent with the data.”
Herta scowled slightly. “That’s imprecise. Other explanations exist. We may have overlooked external contamination or–”
“Herta” Ruan Mei said gently, “your hands are shaking.”
Herta froze.
They were. Minutely. Barely visible– but Ruan Mei noticed everything.
“I’m not shaking” Herta said, her tone clipped.
Ruan Mei stepped back, giving her space. “If you insist.”
“I do.”
Silence settled between them again, the air thick with what neither of them wanted to state plainly. Herta turned back to the datapad to regain focus.
“So, the puppet was a product of residual emotional resonance” she said. “Mostly yours.”
“And yours” Ruan Mei added quietly.
Herta refused to react. “Mine was incidental.”
Ruan Mei looked at her with a softness that wasn’t unprofessional–just unnervingly perceptive. “Perhaps.”
Herta opened her mouth to argue, but the lab door slid open.
A junior researcher poked her head in. “Um–Director Herta? Doctor Ruan Mei? There’s something you should see.”
Herta hated cryptic phrasing. “Show us.”
They followed the researcher down the hall to Recovery Room A2, where SU-generated anomalies were typically assessed. The moment the doors opened, Herta’s annoyance dissolved.
Sitting calmly on the observation table was another puppet.
Smaller. Simpler. Less refined.
But shaped unmistakably like Herta herself.
Ruan Mei inhaled quietly.
Herta felt her pulse jolt, an uncomfortable, unwelcome sensation.
The puppet looked up at them. Its eyes, unlike Herta’s sharp blue ones, glowed with faint, unstable light.
“Hello” it said in a voice that was flat, analytical, and tonally wrong–like someone attempting her cadence through static.
Ruan Mei stepped forward first. “This one is new.”
“Clearly” Herta said.
The Herta-shaped puppet tilted its head a few degrees, mimicking her most iconic gesture of irritation. “You look troubled.”
The original Herta stared at it. “Of course I’m troubled. Why are you here?”
“I wanted to understand” the puppet replied.
Herta blinked. “Understand what?”
The puppet pointed at Ruan Mei without hesitation. “Your reaction to the first construct’s dissolution.”
Herta felt her stomach twist.
Ruan Mei’s eyes widened slightly, not in shock, but in fascination. She opened her mouth, likely to say something unbearably gentle or perceptive, so Herta cut in immediately.
“That is not an acceptable reason for your existence” she snapped at the puppet.
The construct blinked, then looked between the two women. “Emotional feedback from both sources remains high.”
Ruan Mei pressed a hand softly to her chin, thinking. “It’s mirroring you beautifully.”
“I do not behave like that” Herta said, affronted.
The puppet attempted to cross its arms like she did. The motion was slightly off, limbs too stiff.
Ruan Mei smiled, warm amusement rippling beneath her composed exterior. “Perhaps not exactly, but the resemblance is undeniable.”
Herta turned on her heel. “We’re taking it to the lab. Again.”
Ruan Mei nodded to the junior researcher. “Please log its arrival and secure the observation room.”
The employee looked relieved to leave, her posture loosening the moment she stepped past the threshold, as though proximity to the construct–and to Herta’s piercing scrutiny–had pressed on nerves she didn’t have the training to manage.
Back in the lab, Herta placed the puppet on the examination platform with deliberate precision, pretending not to notice the faint tremor in her fingers, a betraying vibration that had no logical justification whatsoever.
Ruan Mei watched her carefully, the kind of still, focused observation she usually reserved for rare samples under glass. The quiet hum of the lab filled the space between them– machines calibrating, monitors blinking in slow, steady rhythms.
Herta felt that gaze like a probe against her ribs.
“What?” she snapped, sharper than she meant to be, fingers tightening around the edge of the examination table.
Ruan Mei didn’t flinch. She tilted her head slightly, studying Herta with the patient curiosity of someone tracing the outline of a pattern she already suspected was there.
“You’re distressed” she said simply, as if reporting a data point.
Herta’s jaw clicked. “I’m irritated.”
Ruan Mei’s lips curved– barely, almost imperceptibly– as if she found the distinction academically amusing. “Those are not mutually exclusive.”
The soft whir of the overhead vents shifted, cooling the air as Herta’s silence thickened. She stared stubbornly at the puppet’s inactive shell instead of at Ruan Mei, refusing to give the observation oxygen.
She refused to dignify it.
The puppet watched them silently, head tilted. “Your resonance is unstable.”
Ruan Mei stepped closer to the construct. “Can you define unstable?”
“Unmeasured variables” it said. “Undefined parameters. Stimuli exceed rational thresholds.”
Ruan Mei’s gaze slid to Herta– slow, soft, patient.
Herta crossed her arms so tightly it felt like a brace.
“You don’t need to interpret that” she muttered.
“But it’s data” Ruan Mei countered quietly. “And data is meant to be understood.”
Herta looked sharply at her. “Not all variables are useful.”
Ruan Mei’s voice softened. “Some are simply unfamiliar.”
The lab fell quiet.
Herta swallowed. Her throat felt tight, which annoyed her even more.
She turned away, staring at the readings on the console–anything to avoid that too-perceptive gaze.
“We should deactivate this one” she said. “Before it destabilizes.”
“Agreed” Ruan Mei murmured. “But before we do… may I ask it one question?”
Herta hesitated. “Why?”
“To understand” Ruan Mei said simply. “As it wished to.”
Herta didn’t object. She stepped back just enough to give Ruan Mei space, arms crossing in a posture that looked defensive only if one knew her well.
Ruan Mei moved with calm purpose, lowering herself slightly until she was close to the puppet’s eye level. The ambient lights reflected faintly off the construct’s polished surface, giving its stillness an oddly expectant quality.
“What exactly caused you to manifest?” Ruan Mei asked, her tone gentle but unmistakably clinical, as though she were conducting a delicate interview with an unstable anomaly.
The puppet’s expression remained fixed–neutral, composed–but its answer came without hesitation.
“The same thing that caused the other construct to form,” it said. Its voice reverberated with faint distortion, like circuitry straining to articulate something beyond its intended vocabulary. “Emotional resonance exceeding containment thresholds.”
Herta exhaled sharply, the sound slicing through the quiet. “Meaningless.”
The puppet blinked, a small mechanical flutter that somehow seemed offended. “Meaningful.”
Ruan Mei set one hand on the edge of the table, the gesture steadying, grounding–as though anchoring the conversation before it could drift into dangerous territory. She leaned in slightly, her eyes warm with curiosity that bordered on uncomfortably perceptive.
“And what emotion created you?” she asked.
This time, the puppet turned its head fully–slowly, deliberately–until its gaze locked onto Herta with a precision that left no room for misinterpretation. The quiet in the lab thickened, every machine hum suddenly feeling like a heartbeat held too long.
“You were afraid” it said.
The words were simple–no inflection, no accusation–but they hit with the precision of a scalpel. Herta’s composure faltered; she stumbled back a half step before she could stop herself, before she could force her body to obey the cold, rational detachment she trusted so much.
Ruan Mei inhaled softly. The sound was quiet–surprised, almost tender–like she was watching a crystalline structure fracture in real time. “Herta…”
“I was not afraid” Herta said, the denial snapping out of her too quickly, too tight. Her pulse spiked, an inconvenient, infuriating betrayal of her own biology.
The puppet merely blinked, head tilting with that small, unnervingly perceptive motion it had copied from its predecessor. “Fear of loss.”
Ruan Mei’s breath caught–not loud, not dramatic, just a tiny hitch that carried a devastating amount of understanding. Her eyes flicked briefly to Herta, the kind of glance that saw too much, catalogued too much, drew conclusions she didn’t want drawn.
Heat surged under Herta’s skin–anger, embarrassment, denial, something sharper and far less nameable. It crawled up her neck, settling under her collar like static. She despised not being able to classify the sensation on command.
“That’s enough,” she said, the words cutting and precise.
She turned sharply toward Ruan Mei, refusing to meet the puppet’s gaze for even a second longer. “Deactivate it.”
Ruan Mei didn’t argue. She reached out, clicked a small sequence on the puppet’s back panel, and the construct’s eyes dimmed. Its form dissolved into soft pale light.
Silence fell again.
Only now it settled heavier, thickening the air between them like a pressure drop.
Finally, Ruan Mei turned toward her. “Herta.”
Herta kept her gaze fixed on the console, refusing the invitation. “Don’t interpret it.”
“I’m not interpreting” Ruan Mei replied, her voice calm in a way that made it impossible to dismiss. “I’m observing.”
Herta’s fingers curled around the edge of the console, grounding herself against the unwelcome tremor running through her. “Observations can be wrong.”
“Yes” Ruan Mei said gently, “but they can also be revealing.”
Herta didn’t answer.
Silence was safer.
Ruan Mei stepped closer–not too close, but enough that Herta felt the shift in the air between them.
“You fear losing something you do not yet have” Ruan Mei said softly.
The words were gentle, but they struck with a clarity that made Herta’s breath catch–just once, sharp, involuntary. She hated that reaction immediately; it was too revealing, too biological, too far removed from the clean logic she preferred to occupy.
Ruan Mei noticed–of course she did. Her eyes warmed, softening in that way that was never pity, never condescension, only quiet understanding sharpened by the precision of someone who studied the world down to its smallest trembling particles.
“And that… is human.”
Herta went perfectly still.
She didn’t speak.
She didn’t move.
She didn’t even breathe for several seconds, as though freezing would let her regain control of something already slipping through her fingers.
The room felt suspended around them–machines humming, lights glowing, data streams continuing in indifferent rhythm–while Herta tried, and failed, to assemble a response that wasn’t an admission.
At last, with a voice that had lost its usual edge, she said quietly “I don’t want to discuss this.”
There was no irritation in it this time. No cold dismissal. It was closer to a plea–barely audible, raw in the smallest possible way.
Ruan Mei inclined her head in a single, respectful nod. “Then we won’t.”
She stepped back–not far, but just enough to give Herta space, enough to show she understood the territory they were crossing and would not push farther than invited.
And yet–despite the silence returning, despite the physical distance reestablished– something had undeniably shifted between them.
A variable neither of them could deny any longer.
───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────
The following morning on the station’s upper deck, the artificial daylight hadn’t fully brightened yet, leaving the modular hallways washed in a pale, bluish glow. It was the hour when human staff were still half-asleep and automated systems did most of the work.
Herta preferred it that way.
Fewer variables
Fewer interruptions.
Fewer people doing inexplicably inefficient things in her field of vision.
She walked quickly, coat swishing behind her, arms folded as if protecting herself from drafts that didn’t exist in the climate-controlled corridor. She told herself it was because she had a new line of calculation to pursue, not because she was unconsciously heading toward the lab Ruan Mei had borrowed the previous night.
She arrived before she’d fully decided whether she intended to.
The lab door slid open with the soft hiss she had personally calibrated years ago. Inside: a room filled with quiet, steady motion. Screens glowed faintly; data strings floated midair; a softly oscillating containment sphere illuminated the center like a small synthetic sun.
Ruan Mei was already there.
Of course she was.
“You’re early” Ruan Mei said without turning around. Her voice was gentler this morning, sounding like someone whose mind was already two steps into her next hypothesis. “Or perhaps I misremember your schedule.”
“I don’t keep a schedule,” Herta retorted. “Schedules imply I care what time it is.”
Ruan Mei chuckled lightly. “Then you arrived when you intended to.”
“No” Herta said, walking forward, hands still tucked under her arms, “I arrived when I happened to.”
Ruan Mei finally turned toward her, smiling as though this distinction delighted her. “Correlation without causation. Very characteristic of you.”
Herta narrowed her eyes. “Is that supposed to be a compliment or an observation?”
“A useful observation.” Ruan Mei turned back to the hovering sphere. “Sometimes the lack of declared intent reveals more than intent itself.”
Herta disliked how that sentence lingered in the room, pressing into her thoughts as though trying to nest there. She changed the subject.
“You never explained your choice” Herta said. “Of specimen. Of sample.” She pointed at the swirling, luminescent sphere. “Why a copy of me?”
Ruan Mei folded her hands behind her back–a posture so relaxed and graceful it made Herta suspicious. “Because you were the most complicated variable.”
“Most complicated” Herta repeated, unimpressed. “You could at least pretend to be flattering.”
“I’m being precise.”
“That’s worse.”
“Well.” Ruan Mei exhaled through her nose, amused. “I could say you were also the most interesting.”
Herta blinked once. Slowly. Her internal processes stuttered. She blamed insufficient caffeine.
“…Interesting how?” Herta asked, careful, restrained, as if prodding something potentially volatile.
Ruan Mei approached the sphere and adjusted the control ring surrounding it. “Your thought patterns exhibit a curious blend of impatience and meticulousness. Your theories are elegant but your methods are chaotic– only at first glance, mind you. They snap into alignment with such force that it borders on violent.”
“Violent?” Herta’s mouth twisted, the word landing somewhere between disbelief and irritation.
Ruan Mei nodded, unbothered. “The elegance of a phenomenon isn’t diminished by its force. If anything, the contrast makes it more compelling” Her voice carried that maddening serenity she used when discussing unstable reactions–as though Herta herself were a fascinating anomaly worth charting.
Herta crossed her arms tighter, shoulders rising in defensive precision. “You’re talking like I’m one of your experiments”
“I am a scientist” Ruan Mei replied, her tone soft but edged with unmistakable truth. “Everything is an experiment.”
Herta’s eyes narrowed. “That doesn’t give you permission to analyze me”
Ruan Mei tilted her head ever so slightly, as if considering the claim. “I don’t recall asking for permission”
Herta stared–flat, incredulous, searching for a retort sharp enough to cut through the smug composure in front of her.
Ruan Mei’s lips curved into a small, measured smile.
It was infuriating.
Unreasonably so.
Before Herta could devise a more cutting retort, the containment sphere flickered. The luminescent matter within twisted violently, then shuddered. Both women’s eyes snapped toward it.
Ruan Mei moved first. She raised her hand and several command lines spiraled out from her wrist device, interfacing directly with the containment system.
“That’s not normal” Herta snapped.
“No” Ruan Mei agreed, her expression sharpening. “It’s accelerating on its own. That shouldn’t be possible.”
Herta stepped toward the controls, posture tight, shoulders drawn in with the kind of focus that didn’t allow room for anything as trivial as breathing. “It’s predicting the next iteration faster than projected.”
Ruan Mei leaned in beside her, eyes narrowing with interest. “It’s not just accelerating– it’s bypassing the model entirely. A perfect copy of you shouldn’t be able to–”
“Stop calling it a perfect copy,” Herta cut in, too quickly, irritation sharpening the edge of her voice. “Nothing is perfect.”
Ruan Mei turned her head slightly, studying her with a quiet, unhurried curiosity. “Not even you?”
Herta’s breath hitched–only for a fraction of a second, so small she almost convinced herself it hadn’t happened. But Ruan Mei noticed.
Ruan Mei always noticed.
“I’m not engaging with your rhetorical detours” Herta said, forcing her voice back into something clipped and clinical. “I’m focused on preventing the unit from destabilizing the entire deck.”
She didn’t look at Ruan Mei.
And she definitely didn’t acknowledge the silence that followed–one that felt a little too knowing.
But Ruan Mei’s eyes didn’t leave her, not for several seconds–not until the sphere pulsed again with a surge strong enough to shake the control platform.
Ruan Mei returned to the interface, hands flying across luminescent dials, weaving commands with smooth, practiced precision. Herta mirrored her movements on the opposite side, their combined inputs forming a lattice of stabilizing force around the sphere.
For all their differences, they worked together flawlessly.
Not because of harmony– but because incompatibilities often produced the strongest corrective vectors.
Ruan Mei spoke again, softer. “I chose you because I could trust the outcome.”
Herta scoffed without looking up. “You trusted a thing that shouldn’t exist.”
“No.” Ruan Mei’s tone dropped even softer, the edges gentler, more deliberate. “I trusted you.”
That sentence landed too neatly, too precisely. It felt like a scalpel sliding under a seam.
Herta pretended she hadn’t heard it.
A moment later, the sphere finally stabilized, its pulsations slowing until it once again resembled a contained, shimmering nebula.
Only then did Herta exhale.
Ruan Mei tapped her wrist, pulling back the interface. “It’s adapting faster than expected. Its predictive algorithms seem to be recursively modeling your decision-making at an accelerated rate.”
Herta raised a brow. “Then your ‘perfect copy’ is overfitting.”
“Perhaps it is.” Ruan Mei smiled faintly. “Or perhaps it’s simply learning you.”
Herta’s ears grew warm. She refused to acknowledge the sensation.
“I think you underestimated it” Herta said.
“Maybe” Ruan Mei conceded. “Or maybe I underestimated how compelling your variables would be.”
Herta had no idea what to do with that sentence, so she filed it under nonsense Ruan Mei says when she wants to derail me.
Later that afternoon, the two of them stood shoulder to shoulder at the central console, reviewing the data logs from the anomaly. The lab lights cast a soft blue glow across the screens, reflecting off their faces in uneven flashes.
Ruan Mei scrolled through the readings with a shifting expression–fascination blooming into delight, then settling into something thoughtful, like she was watching a rare phenomenon perform new tricks entirely of its own accord.
Every few seconds she leaned closer to the monitor, fingers hovering near the glass as though tempted to touch the waveform itself.
Herta, in contrast, tapped through the data with brisk, irritated efficiency. Her brows were drawn tight, her mouth set in a thin line–yet the speed of her calculations, the precision of her adjustments, and the intensity with which she revisited anomalies made her look suspiciously like someone exhilarated.
Ruan Mei noticed, of course.
She always did.
She broke the silence without looking away from the display. “Do you know,” she mused, shifting her stance so their elbows nearly brushed, “for all your posturing, you’re actually very predictable.”
Herta didn’t pause in her typing. “I’m insulted.”
Ruan Mei’s smile flickered, amused. “It’s meant as praise.”
Herta clicked to the next data set with unnecessary force. “Don’t praise me.”
“You dislike praise?”Ruan Mei tilted her head, eyes sliding to her.
“I dislike interruption.”
“Ah.”
Ruan Mei leaned in closer–close enough that Herta stiffened, close enough that their shoulders touched for a brief, electric second.
Her voice dropped, warm and intrusive in the quiet.
“Then I should only compliment you in silence?”
Herta nearly dropped her datapad.
She exhaled sharply, forcing her composure back into place. “You are being intentionally aggravating.”
Ruan Mei smiled–slow, mild, amused. “I find the reaction scientifically valuable.”
“You’re collecting data on me” Herta accused.
“I collect data on everything.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“Oh, I think it does.” Ruan Mei tapped the screen. “This spike here–see how the model corrects itself whenever you change approach mid-calculation? It’s adjusting to anticipate your unpredictability.”
“Unpredictability cannot be anticipated.”
Ruan Mei tilted her head. “Yet here it is doing exactly that.”
Herta hated the tingle of pride that rose in her chest. She hated how Ruan Mei could pull reactions out of her like threads.
“And” Ruan Mei added, “I believe it’s beginning to mimic your emotional response”
Herta froze. Not visibly–just enough that Ruan Mei sensed it.
“That’s impossible” she said.
“Is it?” Ruan Mei’s voice turned thoughtful, not dismissive. “You may not treat your emotions as primary data, but they are still part of your patterns”
“I don’t have a pattern”
“Oh, Herta” Ruan Mei’s tone softened with fond exasperation. “Everyone does”
Herta stepped back, the movement small but unmistakably defensive. Her expression tightened, a flicker of something wary pulling at the edges of her features.
“…You talk like someone who knows more about me than you should.”
Ruan Mei didn’t pursue her. She simply rested her hands lightly behind her back, posture relaxed, eyes steady. “Do I?”
Her smile wasn’t sharp. It held no triumph, no challenge–only a quiet, disarming warmth, as though the idea of understanding Herta was neither intrusive nor forbidden, but simply… natural.
Herta hated that even more.
She turned away under the pretense of checking another display. “You’re overstating things”
“Am I?” Ruan Mei asked.
“Yes”
“Then allow me to phrase it differently”
Herta did not want her to phrase it differently. Which was why she did not interrupt quickly enough.
Ruan Mei continued, voice gentle, analytical, almost tender in its precision:
“I have studied many brilliant minds across civilizations. But you–your constraints, your contradictions, your focus, your arrogance, your clarity–your entire structure is uniquely fascinating.”
Herta’s pulse jumped. Her fingers curled slightly around the edge of the terminal.
“That” Herta said with a strained monotone, “is an overfitted conclusion.”
Ruan Mei smiled softly. “I’m still gathering data.”
Herta didn’t trust her voice enough to answer.
───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────
The containment sphere dimmed, its soft glow fading like the last trace of a thought losing coherence.
A second later, the day-cycle lights brightened with a slow, programmed rise–white illumination washing over the consoles, the floors, the edges of their shadows.
The lab exhaled into stillness, the kind of calm so delicate it felt as though even a breath could fracture it.
And standing in the middle of that fragile quiet, Herta pretended very hard not to notice that something in the equilibrium between them had shifted yet again.
And for the first time since meeting her, Herta found herself wondering– truly wondering– what it meant that someone like Ruan Mei had chosen her as a variable worth studying.
And what it might mean if Herta chose, even a fraction, to study Ruan Mei back.
Nightfall on the space station was an engineered illusion: lights dimmed, console activity slowed, the automated halls entered low-power cycle. But for Herta, the sensation of nighttime was mostly defined by the absence of people.
Fewer voices. Fewer inquiries. Fewer interruptions to her thinking.
Yet that night, she found her steps drifting– not toward her usual observation deck or her personal workspace– but back toward the lab where the copy rested.
She told herself it was for data.
It was not for data.
Except it was. Except it wasn’t. Herta disliked this ambiguity.
When she arrived, she expected a dark room, the hum of dormant equipment, silence.
Instead, she found dim golden light, a faint melody–something wordless and delicate–and Ruan Mei, sitting cross-legged on the central platform, surrounded by floating screens.
Ruan Mei looked up before Herta could retreat or commit to entering.
“Oh” she said softly. “I hoped you might come.”
Herta froze mid-step. “You… hoped?”
“I find late-night hypothesis checking is a habit of yours.” Ruan Mei smiled slightly. “Your routines tend to form elegant loops.”
Herta rolled her eyes. “Stop analyzing me when I walk into a room.”
“Then stop being so analyzable.”
“That’s not how that works.”
“It is exactly how that works.”
“Ruan Mei–”
But the other scientist’s expression softened, sincerity slipping through her usual composure.
“Sit with me?” Ruan Mei asked. Not coaxing. Not demanding. Simply offering space.
Herta hesitated–calculating the cost, the implication, the variable shift.
Then she crossed the room and sat across from her, legs tucked neatly to the side, posture rigid.
Ruan Mei swept her hand through the interface, and the floating holo-screens dimmed one by one until the lab glowed with the warm, low light of something almost like candlefire. The shadows softened around them, the brightness fading into a gentle amber that made the room feel smaller, more intimate.
Herta didn’t look up; she stood rigid beside the central console, fingers tapping a rapid, agitated rhythm against its edge.
Ruan Mei watched her, eyes reflecting the soft light. “You’re still thinking about the anomaly from this morning” she observed, voice low, almost quiet enough to be mistaken for concern.
Herta’s jaw tightened. “I’m thinking about the model’s instability” she corrected, refusing to lift her gaze from the data feed that had stopped updating ten minutes ago.
“The model is stable now.”Ruan Mei stepped closer, her movements slow, deliberate.
Herta finally glanced up–briefly, sharply. “For the moment” she countered, the words clipped. Her hand hovered near the console again, as though she might reopen the logs just to have something to do.
“And you’re still uneasy.”Ruan Mei folded her hands behind her back, studying her with the patience of someone assembling a delicate puzzle.
Herta straightened, spine stiffening “I don’t get uneasy.”
“Then what word would you prefer?”Ruan Mei tilted her head, the soft light catching on the strands of her hair.
Herta hesitated only half a second–small, but noticeable. Her voice lowered.“Curious.”
“Mhm.” Ruan Mei folded her hands lightly. “Curiosity rarely drives people to return to a lab at 02:19.”
“It drives me to go everywhere.”
“That’s true.” A soft laugh. “You’re terribly consistent for someone who claims not to be.”
Herta huffed, but her irritation lacked its usual teeth.
Her eyes drifted to the containment sphere. Now inactive, its surface reflected their silhouettes, slightly distorted, side by side.
She did not like how symbolic that looked.
Ruan Mei followed her gaze. “You’re still bothered by it.”
“I’m not bothered. I’m–”
“Curious” Ruan Mei supplied.
Herta shot her a glare. “If you keep finishing my sentences, I’ll start speaking in incomplete clauses just to spite you.”
“I would adapt to that too” Ruan Mei said pleasantly.
“Of course you would.”
Their banter dissolved into a quiet that was strangely not uncomfortable.
The hum of old machinery filled the room, a low, rhythmic vibration threading through the floor like a pulse. The containment sphere shifted faintly, light rippling across its surface in slow, deliberate waves. And through it all remained Ruan Mei’s presence–steady, composed, a quiet constant amid the lab’s restless energy.
Finally Ruan Mei spoke again, voice lower, contemplative.
“Herta… may I ask you something?”
“You just did.”
“May I ask you another, then?”
Herta hesitated. “…Fine.”
Ruan Mei’s eyes, bright in the dim light, softened in an unguarded way Herta rarely witnessed.
“When you saw the copy yesterday” she asked slowly, “what was the first thing you felt?”
Herta stiffened, shoulders locking with the reflexive precision of someone bracing for an impact she couldn’t calculate.
Emotion as a subject–her least favorite variable. Her most avoided field of study. The one domain she could not model, quantify, or force into predictable behavior. It was untidy, uncooperative, and–worst of all–uncomfortably present.
“I evaluated its integrity” Herta said immediately.
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I assessed the risk.” Herta’s voice came out flat, polished, the kind of statement designed to end a discussion rather than invite one.
“Herta.”
She hated– deeply, viscerally– how gently Ruan Mei said her name. There was no reprimand in it, no condescension. Just softness. Understanding.
The worst part was that the gentleness worked on her–slipping under her defenses like data she hadn’t secured properly.
So she exhaled, long and carefully controlled, the kind of breath meant to stabilize both her posture and her logic. The lab lights hummed quietly overhead, reflecting off the containment sphere as she wrestled her reaction back into order.
“…Fine.” Herta tapped her fingers against her arm in a restless staccato. “My first reaction was… irritation.”
Ruan Mei blinked. “Irritation?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you did it without asking me” Herta said, more sharply than intended. “You used my patterns, my mind, my variables–without informing me first. It was statistically reckless.”
Ruan Mei’s expression shifted –not offended, not defensive– just quietly thoughtful.
“…I see” she murmured. “Then I owe you an apology.”
“I didn’t ask for a–”
“Still.” Ruan Mei lowered her gaze, hands folding neatly in her lap. “You deserved that courtesy.”
Herta swallowed against an unexpected tightness gathering in her throat. She refused to label it emotion, absolutely refused, yet the sensation pressed beneath her ribs like an unwelcome knot tightening with every breath.
She redirected her gaze immediately, turning toward the containment sphere, toward any neutral object that did not require vulnerability or conversation or acknowledgment of what had just passed between them.
The sphere pulsed with a faint, rhythmic glow, its shifting surface offering a far safer focal point than Ruan Mei’s eyes. Herta let the silence extend for several measured seconds, buying herself the illusion of control. Only then, with clear reluctance threading through each word, she finally said:
“I wasn’t… only irritated.”
Ruan Mei looked up. Hope flickered–but it was subtle, like someone trying not to intrude.
“Go on.”
Herta rubbed her temple. “It felt… strange.”
“Strange how?”
“Like the algorithm was predicting me too quickly. As if something was looking back.”
Ruan Mei nodded. “That’s valid. A copy of you, particularly one built from your neural signature, can mirror recognition patterns. It would feel like being seen.”
Herta flinched.
Ruan Mei’s expression softened further. She shifted closer–not enough to invade space, just enough to be present.
“Herta” she said quietly, “I didn’t create the copy to unsettle you.”
“You did it because I was an interesting problem” Herta said, trying to regain a barrier of logic.
“Yes” Ruan Mei replied calmly, her voice carrying the same steady cadence she used when presenting well-supported conclusions. “But also because I trusted that you would engage with it. That you would understand.”
Herta’s breath hitched – the smallest break in her otherwise precise rhythm of breathing. She stared down at the floor, somewhere between avoidance and an attempt to reorganize her thoughts into something safer.
“…That’s a high expectation.”
“You’ve exceeded every expectation so far.” Ruan Mei shifted a little closer, not quite touching, but near enough that Herta could feel the quiet assurance in her presence.
Herta’s head jerked up a fraction, her expression tightening in something halfway between alarm and irritation. “That’s– don’t say things like that.”
“Why not?” Ruan Mei asked gently, her eyes narrowing in a thoughtful, searching way rather than confrontational.
Herta’s fingers curled at her sides, her posture rigid. “Because they’re destabilizing.”
Ruan Mei laughed, soft, warm, like light hitting glass.
“You’re worried about destabilization” she said “and yet you revolutionize half the station every time you get bored.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“Because those destabilizations are intentional.”
Ruan Mei met her eyes. “And this is accidental?”
Herta opened her mouth. Closed it. Failed to find a stable answer.
After a long silence, Ruan Mei spoke again, voice tender in its precision.
“If the copy unsettles you, we can shut it down.”
Herta flinched again, but this time in protest.
“No.”
“No?”
“It’s a valuable model” Herta said quickly. Too quickly. “It would be irrational to discard it.”
Ruan Mei raised a gentle brow. “Then what do you want to do?” she asked, her voice low and steady, as if she were encouraging a fragile experiment to continue unfolding at its own pace.
Herta shifted her gaze to the containment sphere. Its surface shimmered softly, the light bending across it in slow ripples that made the entire structure look alive in a restrained, breathing way. Her reflection wavered on the curved glass –distorted slightly, stretched at the edges– yet unmistakably hers. And beside that faint outline stood Ruan Mei’s reflection as well, their shapes leaning toward each other as though the sphere itself insisted on acknowledging their proximity.
Herta absorbed that image with an uncomfortable awareness. The glow from the sphere washed over her hands and coat sleeves, tinting them with pale blue light, while the quiet hum of the machinery surrounded them like a pulse no one had commanded but both had learned to anticipate.
She did not answer immediately. She let the silence settle, let the sphere’s gentle radiance reflect possibilities she had not allowed herself to articulate. She felt Ruan Mei waiting beside her–still, attentive, unpressured–like a constant in an equation she had not yet solved.
“…I want to understand it” Herta said.
Ruan Mei smiled, slow and soft, like she had been hoping for that exact answer.
“Good” she whispered. “Then we’ll understand it together.”
The quiet that followed was no longer fragile– but full.
Full of shared hypotheses. Full of something Herta refused to define, but could no longer deny existed.
Ruan Mei shifted, turning one of the screens back on. “The next sequence begins in two minutes. We can observe from here.”
Herta nodded. “Fine.”
But she didn’t move away.
And neither did Ruan Mei.
They sat, shoulder to shoulder without touching, two brilliant minds watching a projection of one of them come alive– not a threat, not a mirror, but an equation they would solve together.
And for Herta, that was enough to make staying feel… not unpleasant.
Maybe even something else.
She refused to name it.
───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────
The next forty-eight hours unfolded in an unusually stable rhythm. Not calm, Herta never operated under calm, but balanced.
The days moved with an evenness she rarely trusted: diagnostics completing without deviation, the anomaly maintaining its parameters, and Ruan Mei moving through the lab with a measured grace that did not intrude yet somehow shaped every space she passed through. It was a rhythm constructed from quiet footfalls, muted system alerts, and the dependable glow of the containment sphere as it pulsed like a heartbeat held in stasis.
Every few hours, she and Ruan Mei returned to the containment chamber to observe the copy’s development. They spoke less at first, falling naturally into parallel focus–two minds orbiting the same problem, occasionally brushing close, never colliding.
Herta found it… tolerable. Which for her meant nearly comfortable.
On the third day, the copy began producing predictive sequences not just of Herta’s reactions, but of Ruan Mei’s too. Beautifully complex data branches, like fractal nerves unfurling through simulated space.
Herta stood with her arms crossed, eyes flicking sharply across the equations. “It’s learned you.”
Ruan Mei, standing beside her, didn’t look surprised. “It was inevitable.”
“Inevitable is a strong assumption.”
“With you contributing half the observation patterns?” Ruan Mei smiled faintly. “It’s almost surprising it took this long.”
Herta’s gaze stuttered between the copy’s predictive model and Ruan Mei’s face.
“…Why is it learning you at all?” she murmured. “You’re not its template.”
“No” Ruan Mei replied softly. “But I am part of its environment… because I am part of yours.”
Herta froze.
Her breath stopped–caught mid-cycle like a skipped frame of thought.
Ruan Mei didn’t look away.
“That is not…” Herta said slowly, “a rigorous explanation.”
Ruan Mei stepped a little closer. Not enough to breach personal space–just enough that Herta felt her more than saw her.
“Then let me offer a more rigorous one” Ruan Mei said. “Its model stabilizes fastest when we’re both nearby. When you speak. When you focus. When you react.”
“I react normally” Herta objected.
“You react consistently” Ruan Mei corrected. “Consistent data is a treasure.”
Herta pressed her lips into a thin line. “You’re anthropomorphizing again.”
“I’m contextualizing” Ruan Mei replied.
But her voice held warmth–far too much warmth to be merely scientific.
The copy pulsed, its data branching into something almost elegant. A projection of intertwined variables: two distinct sets, intersecting, adjusting, correcting, mirroring.
“Look” Ruan Mei said softly. “It’s modeling our interactions.”
Herta frowned. “That’s irrational. Models don’t construct unnecessary relationships.”
Ruan Mei’s eyes shifted to her, slow, thoughtful.
“Are they unnecessary?”
Herta opened her mouth, prepared to offer some sharp retort or at least a reasonable deflection. Nothing arrived–no logic, no shield, no precisely constructed counterargument–and the absence startled her more than she would ever admit aloud.
She closed it again, jaw tightening with visible frustration at her own uncharacteristic loss of coherence.
Ruan Mei did not press her, simply watching with the patient, steady warmth of someone who understood far more than she intended to reveal.
Instead, she lifted her hand to adjust the interface–nothing dramatic, just a simple motion–but Herta watched the movement too closely, as if her attention had been magnetized without permission.
And she didn’t like that. Not at first, not in the instinctive way she rejected anything that slipped outside her carefully controlled parameters.
Except she didn’t hate it. Not truly, not in any way that held up under scrutiny, because a quiet part of her recognized the unfamiliar sensation as something almost–dangerously–welcome.
Which was the real problem. Because contradictions demanded examination, and examination demanded honesty, and honesty was the one field Herta had never intended to explore with Ruan Mei standing so impossibly close.
───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────
Later that night, Herta sat alone in her personal observatory, legs drawn up to her chest, chin resting on her knees. She often came here to think, but tonight her thoughts refused to compress neatly into solvable problems.
Ruan Mei’s words echoed relentlessly: “I am part of your environment… because I am part of yours.”
Herta disliked sentences she couldn’t quantify.
She especially disliked sentences that made her chest feel warm.
The door to the observatory slid open with a hydraulic sigh. Herta didn’t need to look to know who it was.
“You’re not subtle” she said flatly.
Ruan Mei’s voice answered with a soft laugh. “Neither are you.”
She came to stand beside Herta, leaning lightly against the railing.
The stars outside the glass were cold and brilliant, but their reflections in the window overlapped–Herta’s small silhouette and Ruan Mei’s taller one, side by side.
It irritated Herta how natural that looked.
“I came to tell you something” Ruan Mei said quietly, still looking outward.
“If it’s about the model, I already optimized–”
“It’s not about the model.”
Herta’s pulse jumped.
Ruan Mei’s voice stayed gentle, unhurried, precise.
“I think I misjudged the nature of my own experiment.”
“That’s unlike you.”
“Isn’t it?” Ruan Mei smiled faintly. “I thought I was studying the copy. Studying you. Studying your reactions.”
She paused. “But somewhere in the process… I began anticipating your presence. More than the results.”
Herta swallowed. Her throat felt too narrow.
“That’s inefficient” she said. The words came out thin. “You shouldn’t… do that.”
“Perhaps not.” Ruan Mei turned her head slightly, still not fully facing her. “But I think I would like to continue doing it anyway.”
That sentence hit Herta like a variable she had not accounted for.
Her heart skipped–an involuntary misfire she would have punished in a machine.
She did not look back at Ruan Mei. She could not bring herself to.
Instead, she fixed her gaze on the stars outside the viewport–cold, distant, wonderfully impersonal–until the points of light blurred and the shapes dissolved, her eyes unfocusing as if the universe might offer an answer less dangerous than the one standing behind her.
“…Why are you telling me this?” Herta asked, voice softer than she intended.
“Because I believe a flawed model should be acknowledged” Ruan Mei murmured, her voice low and composed, each word deliberate in the dim, humming quiet of the lab. “And because I trust you with mine.”
Herta blinked–once, sharp and involuntary, as though her system had momentarily misfired. The simple act felt too loud, too revealing.
Her breath echoed in her ears, a tight, uneven sound that didn’t align with her expectations of her own composure. It drowned out the machinery, the soft shifting of the containment sphere, the faint electrical hum that usually kept her anchored.
For a moment, she stood perfectly still, every thought flickering too quickly to catch, as if her mind–so meticulously ordered–had been abruptly shuffled out of sequence.
Ruan Mei finally turned toward her. “If this is uncomfortable, we can end the project here. No consequences.”
Herta jerked her head toward her, sharply. “No consequences? Ending a model prematurely is wasteful. Illogical.”
Ruan Mei waited. Calm. Patient. Too patient.
Herta looked away again, fingers curling around the fabric of her sleeve.
“…I don’t want to end it” she whispered.
The words tasted dangerous.
Reckless.
True.
Ruan Mei’s breath caught–barely audible, more a shift than a sound, yet Herta heard it with startling clarity, as if the air between them had suddenly become a conductor.
The silence that followed was thin, stretched, expectant. Ruan Mei’s voice, when she finally spoke, was quieter than before–gentle, deliberate, careful in the way one approaches a fragile experiment with unpredictable reactions.
“Then what do you want?” Ruan Mei asked, her eyes steady, her posture still, her entire presence focused with a precision that made the question feel less like a challenge and more like an offering.
A terrible question.
Herta’s mind raced for an answer that didn’t sound like confession.
“I want–” Her voice faltered. She forced it steady. “I want the data. I want to understand. I want to know why the model shifts when you're near.”
“That is… very Herta of you” Ruan Mei said softly, smiling. “To want understanding instead of reassurance.”
Herta frowned. “Reassurance?”
“That I…” Ruan Mei paused. Her next words came out barely above a whisper. “That I care for you.”
Herta’s breath shattered. Quietly, internally–but enough that she felt the shock ripple to her fingertips.
She stared straight ahead. Her gaze locked onto the far wall, onto anything that was not Ruan Mei, because even the smallest shift in eye contact felt like it might trigger a cascade she was not equipped to quantify.
Afraid to move, not because movement was inherently risky, but because any motion might betray the instability inside her chest–instability she could not chart, could not isolate, could not adjust for. She remained perfectly still, every muscle held in quiet rebellion against the turmoil beneath her ribs.
Afraid to interpret the trembling in her chest as anything other than a physiological glitch.Because the alternative–that it was emotional, that it was linked to Ruan Mei, that it meant something–was a hypothesis she refused to entertain.
Her mind raced to frame it scientifically: elevated cortisol response, minor autonomic misfire, oxygen differential, anything that could be measured and explained without implicating her heart.
“…You shouldn’t say things like that” she whispered, the words slipping out before she could refine them into something colder, something safer. Her voice held a thin edge of strain, the kind that appeared when her neatly organized thoughts began to scatter.
Ruan Mei tilted her head, expression open. “Why?”
“Because you mean them.” Herta’s fingers curled tightly against her own coat sleeve. She forced herself to breathe evenly, forced herself to answer with something resembling composure.
The admission felt like stepping onto unstable terrain–calculable, but not entirely safe. A quiet pulse of something she refused to name tightened in her chest, a sensation that did not fit neatly into her charts or models. She hated how aware it made her of the distance between them, and of how easily a few honest words could collapse it.
Ruan Mei’s eyes softened. “Is that bad?”
The question lingered in the air like heat, pressing against Herta’s carefully constructed boundaries. It was not rhetorical. It was not a trap. It was simply earnest–and that sincerity was far more disruptive than anything else Ruan Mei could have said.
“It’s unpredictable.”
“Most important discoveries are.”
Herta pressed a hand to her chest–subtle, hidden, as if checking for malfunction. Her voice emerged small, tight, honest in a way she rarely allowed:
“I don’t understand how to reciprocate.”
“You don’t need to.” Ruan Mei stepped closer, slow, respectful, giving Herta every microsecond to pull away. “You only need to let yourself learn.”
Herta inhaled sharply, processing, calculating, failing to calculate.
“…Learning is acceptable” she whispered. “Learning is… manageable.”
Ruan Mei’s expression warmed–bright, relieved, quietly overjoyed.
“Then we can start there” she said.
They stood together in the soft glow of the observatory– close, but not touching. Quiet, but not distant. Two brilliant minds, two flawed models, two intersecting paths.
Slowly, Herta turned her head toward Ruan Mei. Their eyes met–carefully, curiously–and Herta felt the tiniest flicker of stability forming in her chest where instability had lived for days.
A hypothesis.
A new experiment.
One she would study with all the precision she had– and, for once, with no desire to end.
───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────
The lab was empty when they returned.
Not dark – just dimmed, the way a room settles after hours of thought.The containment sphere hovered silently in its cradle, like a star placed there for safekeeping.
Herta stepped inside first, her shoes clicking once against the polished floor before the sound was swallowed by the room’s stillness.
Ruan Mei followed a moment later, pausing at the threshold as if tasting the air, her gaze sweeping the space with quiet curiosity.
The soft hum of the equipment greeted them, familiar now, almost comforting. The copy’s interface flickered as if acknowledging their presence – variables shifting in a recognizable pattern, projecting branching models of two people who had stopped pretending they were unaffected.
Ruan Mei smiled. “It seems the model has correctly predicted we would return together.”
“That’s not impressive” Herta muttered. “It’s statistically common. We return to continue the research.”
Ruan Mei’s gaze slid sideways, warm, amused. “Is that the only reason we’ve returned?”
Herta’s breath hitched, not dramatically, just a small, precise disruption of her internal rhythm. She hated that it happened. She hated even more that Ruan Mei noticed. But Ruan Mei didn’t tease her. Not this time.
Instead, she stepped toward the central console. Herta followed, until they stood side by side, watching the swirling lights within the sphere. Their reflections shimmered on the surface. Two outlines converging, the space between them smaller than before.
“Herta” Ruan Mei said quietly.
“Hm.”
“You said earlier that learning was acceptable.”
“I did.”
“And that you were willing to… understand.” Ruan Mei paused – a flicker of uncertainty crossing her expression, brief enough to be almost imagined. “May I ask something of you? Something simple.”
Herta folded her arms, more to keep them steady than to appear indifferent. “Ask.”
Ruan Mei shifted toward her, facing her without any barrier of half-turned shoulders or diverted gazes. Her voice, when it came, was softened. Not with fear, but with intention, as if she was taking care not to disturb the air between them.
“Would you allow me to be close to you?”
Herta’s breath snagged before she could stop it. A hundred calculations spun up at once–distance, consequence, the precise weight of the moment–but none of them produced anything useful.
“You are close to me.” she said, quieter than she meant to.
Ruan Mei shook her head, a small, aching gesture “Closer” Ruan Mei whispered.
Something in her voice made the room feel smaller, as if the walls themselves paused to listen. She wasn’t asking for permission to touch, nor for anything dramatic or sweeping. It was a request carved out of trust– almost scientific in its clarity, almost fragile in its hope.
Herta felt the tightness in her chest sharpen. Ruan Mei wanted proximity not of bodies, but of truths–of being let past the last ring of defenses Herta kept hidden even from herself.
Her brain, for once, was too full to compute. But her body – the rigid shoulders, the quickened breath, the warmth rising like data overload – those spoke first.
“…What degree of proximity are we discussing?” Herta asked, stiff as a formula.
Ruan Mei exhaled something like a laugh. Gentle. Fond. “Herta.”
She reached out. Slowly. Slowly enough that Herta saw every millimeter of motion and could have stepped back at any point.
She didn’t.
Ruan Mei’s fingers brushed a stray lock of hair back behind Herta’s ear, barely touching her skin. A touch so light it might have been imaginary, if not for the way Herta’s pulse stuttered unmistakably beneath it.
“Does this make you uncomfortable?” Ruan Mei asked.
“…I don’t know” Herta whispered.
“Then I’ll stop.”
“No.”
The word left Herta faster than she intended, no hesitation, no calculation. She blinked, startled by her own decisiveness.
Ruan Mei’s eyes widened, a soft, surprised shine blooming in them.
“Then” she murmured, “may I show you something? Something gentle.”
Herta’s throat felt tight. “Define ‘gentle.’”
“A hypothesis,” Ruan Mei said, her voice was warm gravity. “A careful step forward.”
Herta nodded – once.
Ruan Mei stepped closer, just enough to enter Herta’s immediate orbit, enough that Herta felt the faint warmth of her body in the cool lab air.
Her hand rose again, pausing near Herta’s cheek. This time, Herta leaned – not obviously, but infinitesimally – toward the warmth.
It was enough.
Ruan Mei bent her head–slowly, deliberately, as though adjusting the course of an entire world–and Herta felt the air change before anything touched her.
The kiss itself was nothing dramatic, it was soft, precise… Barely more than a breath. A touch so light it could’ve been a breath mistaken for something more.
But something in it carried a question, a promise, an understanding long in the making. It wasn’t hunger; it wasn’t haste. It was recognition, quiet and certain, as if Ruan Mei were saying I see you without ever speaking the words.
Herta didn’t startle. She simply stood there, feeling the exact point where their worlds met, feeling the shift inside herself she hadn’t prepared for but couldn’t reject.
Herta inhaled sharply –not pulling away, but freezing in the moment like data crystallizing into clarity. Her fingers curled at her sides, then slowly unfurled.
A second passed.
Then two.
Herta closed her eyes, a surrender so gentle it barely counted as surrender at all.
She kissed back.
Not with passion, not with certainty – but with the fragile, cautious honesty of someone learning a new language syllable by syllable.
When they parted, it was by a distance no wider than a pause in thought.
Ruan Mei whispered, “Are you alright?”
Herta opened her eyes, irises steady, clear, luminous.
“I think” she said slowly, “that was… pleasant.”
Ruan Mei laughed – very softly, as if afraid to break the moment. “Pleasant. I’ll take it as the highest praise.”
“It is not praise” Herta said, flustered. “It is classification.”
“Oh? And where do I fall in your classification?”
Herta’s gaze dipped to Ruan Mei’s lips – only for a second – then snapped upward.
“…Undetermined” she said quietly. “Pending further study.”
Ruan Mei’s smile grew. Warm. Bright. Absolutely impossible to quantify.
“Then we’ll continue the study,” she whispered.
The containment sphere glowed softly beside them, its light casting delicate reflections across the lab. The models inside shifted with quiet precision, the branching data streams aligning and intertwining in patterns that had never existed before.
Two patterns converged–not perfectly, not symmetrically, but in a way that felt complete.
For the first time, Herta didn’t correct them. She didn’t reach for logic, for control, for certainty. She simply watched, allowed herself to observe without interference, and felt the subtle, unquantifiable resonance of connection settle alongside her– steady, fragile, and undeniably real.