Justin Stanchfield's fiction has appeared in various publications including Boys Life, Paradox and Gothic.net, as well as numerous anthologies. He lives with his wife and kids on a Montana cattle ranch, and is currently serving a one year sentence as Treasurer of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America.

     They say the first breath is the hardest. That awful dragging moment your lungs collapse, hard vacuum tearing the delicate tissues to froth. You imagine your flesh burning in the sun's unshielded glare, skin blackened and peeling as you wait to die. Of course you don't die, because you can't die. This flesh is illusion, a carapace of machinery and program loops stretched over a titanium frame, no more alive than the lunar dust underfoot. The carbon me, the working, breathing, oblivious mold known as Danny McAndrews goes right on with life, blissfully unaware. Someday we will be rejoined, he and I, reunited in an epiphany of pain. But not today. This is purgatory, my own private Hell.
      They say the first breath is the hardest.
      They're wrong. It's the next breath, and the one after that, and the one after that.

#

      You meet others on the trail, pilgrims like yourself, condemned to shuffle the empty wastes. It's six-hundred kilometers between Tycho and Copernicus, an endless road measured not in days or weeks but in footsteps.
      "We don't look like this to them," the woman said.
      "Look like what?" I struggled to form the words.
      "Ourselves." She was tall, painfully gaunt, short brown hair edged with silver that rippled when she moved. She stared at the rover crossing our path, the rubber treads packing the gray dust into twin furrows stretching unblemished to the vanishing point. "All they see are metal stick-men."
      "Maybe they're right." I wanted to end the conversation and get on with my journey. "Why should they care what we feel? We're criminals to them. Nothing more."
      "We're not even that much." She stumbled forward, slipping into the shadow of a tall, pitted boulder. "We're curiosities. Side-show freaks. Ugly monsters they tell their kids about to make them eat their spinach."
      "Let them." The boulder's shadow cut my thigh neatly in half, burning above, freezing below. A vision of my leg snapping like a twig flashed through my mind. "Why do you care what they think?"
      "I don't." The corners of her mouth twisted into a lopsided smile. "Not anymore. What were you sent up for?"
      The question pulled me up short. I hadn't given a thought to the why of my punishment. Suddenly, I realized with ass-biting clarity, I had no idea. Nothing. Not a single memory. Panic speared my brain, spinning in endless, pointless cycles. She gave me a knowing, arrogant look.
      "Ah, so you're one of those."
      "Those what?"
      "A volunteer," she said.
      "You actually think I choose to do this?"
      The rover moved past us, picking up speed. Faces pressed against the windows, real people scorning the damned. The woman spoke as she walked, croaking out the words. "You, my friend, are doing therapy. ‘Working through,'the psychs call it. Not only did you volunteer for the walk, you are paying through the nose for the privilege."
      "You're insane." I was sick of her, tired of her condescending tone and mocking eyes. "You don't know the first thing about me."
      "Don't have to. If you were sentenced, you'd know damn well what you were sentenced for." She laughed, bitter as arsenic on the tongue. "Trust me. They don't let you forget." The resentment in her eyes faded. "What's your name?"
      "Daniel McAndrews," I said, not even sure if that memory could be trusted. "Most people call me Danny."
      "Well, Danny, it's a sad pleasure to make your acquaintance." Earth hung above the horizon, a half-globe so close it seemed you could reach out and crush it between your fingers. "Most people call me Rhea."

#

      We traveled together, unspeaking, lost in the endless wash of pain. It drove me down, crushing me like the tide. Blankness. Oblivion. I craved emptiness and called it salvation. The sun was sinking, the terminator line spilling down like oil off the jagged alps. Soon it would be cold.
      A knot of pilgrims lay ahead of us, huddled around each other, clustered like ants. Rhea craned her thin neck, stretching to see further down the bone-white trail. "What are they doing?"
      "We'll know soon enough."
      One foot ahead of the other. Lift it, drop it. Lift it, drop it. Don't count, don't think. I wanted to be numb, but one after another, memories flared, spoon-fed tastes of myself slipped into the algorithms. I was incomplete, a caricature, a page erased. I didn't want to remember. Whatever I had done to deserve this was best left buried.
      I counted five standing, three men, two women, ringed around something stark and silvery in the dying sun, another pilgrim, stripped of its visage, joints twitching, jerking against the sterile soil. Only the eyes seemed fully alive, following every movement, begging, imploring, like a dog asking to die.
      "Don't touch it." A short man, his burned face covered in pale, weeping blisters edged aside, letting Rhea and I join the circle. "He shorted out. He might burn you too."
      My knees protested as I knelt beside the stick-man. "Who is it?"
      "How should I know?" the man said. "It was here when we came." He stumbled away. The others followed, leaving Rhea and I beside the crippled wanderer.
      I reached toward the poor bastards face. Rhea stopped me. "He wasn't kidding. Short circuits happen. It could happen to you too."
      "We can't leave him like this." My fingers stopped just short of the metal skull. The eyes rolled in their sockets, following my hand. Despite myself, I couldn't touch the damned thing. "How long until someone comes for him?"
      Rhea laughed. "Try never. It costs more to retrieve a stick than it does build a new one."
      "But, he's still functioning."
      "So?"
      The eyes blinked, open, shut, open. A code. A plea. "We can't walk away. Do you realize how long the strontium pellet in his core will last? He could be stranded out here for decades."
      "We can't help him." Rhea stepped across the spindly corpse. For just the briefest moment, just as her foot passed across the dying machine, I saw through her, saw the metal bones beneath her electric illusion. "Stay if you want." She walked away, stumbling into the gathering darkness.
      I waited, kneeling beside the husk until the shadows engulfed us, my joints stiff, already freezing. "I'm sorry. I am, but I have to go. Do you understand? I have to leave."
      The eyes blinked once, then turned away. I stumbled down the trail, alone on a lonely world, memory dogging my steps. Some hells are deeper than others.

#

      A vision came to me. A dream. Cool shadows, rich, polished wood, dust motes dancing in sunlit shafts. A woman sat in front of me, honey colored hair spilling around her perfect face. She seemed so real I could smell the soap on her skin. Her eyes were wide and moist, impossibly blue. They haunted me, dragging like chains.
      I caught up to Rhea hours later. She was resting against a low rock wall, hugging the upthrust granite, milking the last of the heat from the cooling stone. She never mentioned the pilgrim we left behind. Neither did I. We were each of us corpses, to one degree or another, sent out here to die the small death. Earth still hung low on the saw-toothed horizon, a gleaming oasis. I hated every man woman and child safe upon it. Most of all, I hated myself.
      "Thank you for waiting," I said.
      "Whatever." Rhea stepped away from the rocks and started back down the winding trail. I followed her without question. A realization had dawned on me during the long hours alone. As unappealing and caustic as this woman's company might be, it was a thousand times better then being left alone with my thoughts. We walked on in silence.
      She had a stiff legged way of moving, anger driven, every step a strike at her fate. It sustained her. I found it harder and harder to keep pace, pushing myself beyond limits. I wanted to stop, to surrender and lie cold and still in the deepening shadow. "Slow down, would you? I can't take much more."
      "Get used to it." She spun. "None of this is real. Understand? Not you, not me. They want us to hurt. They want us to give up."
      "How can you say this isn't real?" I shivered so badly I could barely get the words out. I had never in my life been so cold, my feet and hands throbbing stumps.
      "We are circuits. We are downloads. When this is over, some technician will pull our files out of these bodies, and dump some other poor fucker's back in. All we feel are ones and zeroes. Don't let them beat you!"
      Suddenly I understood. "This isn't your first walk, is it?"
      "Not even close." Rhea started moving again. "Go ahead, ask? You're dying to know, right?"
      "I don't care what you did."
      "Yes you do. At least be honest."
      The trail was steepening, winding with the terrain. Thousands of feet had tamped a rut into the dust, finger deep, an unmistakable line. We topped a narrow ridge, a rill thrown up by some forgotten impact. The shadows weren't as deep here, the last sunlight reflecting off the mountains ahead. Stars burned, trillions of them, diamond points undiluted by atmosphere. They framed Rhea's face, shining through her, outlining the machine beneath her simulated flesh.
      "I hurt my children." She said it without emotion. "The first time I took the walk was for shaking my son. The second time I slapped my daughter for swearing at me."
      "What about this time?" I asked quietly.
      "I slapped the social worker who wouldn't let me see them." Her eyes were dark, empty pits. "Shocked or disappointed?"
      "Neither," I said. "I'm just cold."

#

      I had another walking dream. The girl and I, seated around a table, fresh coffee steaming in porcelain cups. Other smells, too. Leather and furniture polish, and the dusty scent of old books. She wore a blue dress, conservative but clinging. The white of her brassiere peeked through the thin fabric, more alluring than if she had sat naked in front of me.
      She had been crying.
      In my vision I reached toward her, covered her hand with mine. Soft, warm, a crippled bird sleeping in my palm. I could have crushed it with a breath, it seemed so fragile. The girl stared at the floor, trembling, speaking so low I couldn't make out the words. I leaned closer and caught a reflection of myself in a glass bookcase, my face, blurred and indistinct. Dark jacket, dark shirt. A thin white collar circled my throat, rigid and binding.
      "You all right back there?"
      I nodded. "I'm fine. Just stiff, that's all."
      "Keep moving. Don't let your joints freeze."
      My left knee was grinding, dragging slower with every step. I didn't know how long it would last. All I could think about was falling, broken like an old watch, lying cold and frozen on the barren regolith. "Tell me about the download?" I said, desperate for distraction. "What's it like after they dump these memories into your real body?"
      "I'm not sure I can explain it." Rhea paused, brows knit together. "If you were a woman, maybe. Then you'd understand. It's like giving birth. You never forget the pain, but after a week or so, it fades into the background." She started walking again. "Tell you this much. It hurts like hell."
      A monument lay ahead of us, a gleaming bronze cylinder ten meters high. They scattered them along the trail, distance markers, guideposts, beacons in the lunar night. All around it, on every boulder, names were scratched, initials, here and there a few simple portraits left by passing pilgrims. Even in hell people couldn't resist the urge to leave their trace. Flesh may wither, but ego never fades.
      "How far have we come?" I stumbled to the marker.
      "Do you really want an answer?" Rhea studied the simple map riveted to the base of the structure. "Another couple days and we should break the half-point."
      My heart sank. "I can't do this. I can't keep this up."
      "You don't have a choice." For the first time since we had met, I heard compassion in her tone. "Listen to me. Sooner or later, everyone on the trip gives up. Some sticks give up four or five times a day. But you know what? They go on, because it's either move or drop, but either way the pain doesn't end."
      The map caught my eye. The trail wasn't straight, winding serpentine between the craters and foothills. "If we cut across here..." I traced a simple line. "We could shave hundreds of klicks off the distance."
      "Forget it."
      "But..."
      She threw her arm past my face, pointing. "Look out there. Is that what you want to cross?" The bleak landscape, so sharp, so surreal, stretched right to the edge of the black sky. No dessert on Earth could hold a candle to this desolation. "Hold to the trail. Hear me? Get lost out in that and know something? You're there forever."
      I took a last look at the map. "All right. But just tell me this much. Has anyone made it across that?"
      She waited for what seemed an eternity. Finally, she answered. "Yes. I did. Once. I won't do it again."
      We moved away, the monument behind us, the trail ahead, my crippled leg dragging further and further in the dust. I couldn't stop thinking about the short-cut. Not even the thought of being stranded forever seemed as real as the thought of ending this damned walk.
      Or the girl's face spinning in my memory.

#

      The Crying Girl had opened a floodgate, dim memories streaming through, a steady trickle. Lying awake on Christmas Eve listening for reindeer. My first communion. Standing alone at a school dance. The shame of every woman who cut me down. The pride when I took my vows. And above them all her sweet face, tears raining down, glistening.
      "They're coming back, aren't they? Your memories," Rhea said. It was darker now, Earth nearly set, the shadows making a caricature of her thin features. "I've seen that look before. So, tell me, how much do you remember?"
      "Enough."
      "But not all?"
      "No."
      She nodded. "That's how it works. Drop by drop. So tell me, Danny McAndrews, what does the real you do for a living?"
      "I'm a priest."
      "Well, I'll be damned." Rhea started to laugh, cold, knife-edged and bitter. "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned."
      "Do you have to mock everything?"
      "Why not? I mock myself, if that means anything."
      The ground had leveled again, the trail threading across a rock strewn plateau. Another band of pilgrims approached, wandering in the opposite direction. We passed without a word. On and on, one foot in front of the other. The pain in my leg rose and fell, ebbing like waves against a shore. Another monument stood out on the horizon, an obelisk against the setting Earth. Rhea stood staring at the blue and white crescent, her chin tilted up, trembling just the slightest bit.
      "See that black spot, right beside the night-line?" She pointed at it like a child showing me a butterfly. "That's Salt Lake."
      "Home?"
      She nodded.
      "Wonder what the real us are doing right now?" I asked.
      "Cooking supper. Watching TV. Drunk if I'm lucky." She started back down the trail. "I'm probably scheming some new way to get my kids back. Jesus, they won't even tell me where they are."
      I wanted to hold her, offer some comfort. But I didn't. The thought of touching her metal body, reaching past the illusion of flesh and skin and feeling cold machine beneath made my stomach curl. Even that was an illusion, another flavor of pain. "I'm sure it must be difficult."
      She snorted. "What would you know about it?"
      I stopped dead. The Crying Girl was back, taunting me. "She was pregnant."
      "Who?"
      I turned, unaware I'd been thinking out loud. "A girl. I don't know her name."
      "Was it your baby? Is that why you're here?"
      "I honestly don't know. I don't seem to know a hell of a lot, do I?"
      Rhea shuffled away, staggering, the weight of the world pressing down on her. "Consider yourself lucky."

#

      We plowed ahead, hour after hour, moving without speaking, marching without thought. Maddeningly, the flow of memories had once again shut off, stanched at the very edge of awareness. I began to build a fantasy about the Crying Girl and I, forbidden meetings and long, tender kisses. I imagined her warm flesh against mine, the heat of our bodies driving us to madness. I thought about conversations we may have had, tearful outpourings of pure, unbridled emotion. I wanted so much for them to be true.
      "You're lagging again." Rhea waited ten paces ahead. "Is it your leg?"
      "Yes," I lied.
      "Do you need to rest?"
      I didn't answer. The trail forked, a scattering of footprints breaking away, threading north toward a sharp V shaped gap in the mountains. The imprints were as sharp and unblemished as the day they had been made. "Is this where you broke away?"
      Rhea sighed. "I told you, it's suicide to leave the trail. No, it's worse than suicide, because machines can't die."
      "You made it."
      "I was lucky." She walked toward me. "Five of us left the trail. Two of us arrived in Tycho. Understand? We left three sticks out there. For all I know, they're still out there, feeling every second of hell until their cores finally wear down."
      I wasn't listening. I'd had my fill of this walk, this self-imposed exile. For the first time since I'd found myself damned in this metal body I was ready to take back my life. There were no revelations, no bursts of bravado. Just a simple half-turn and step off the trail. The dust was thicker, soft and powdery. It drug at my injured leg.
      "Danny! You're a fool. A God damned fool."
      Her voice was fading with distance, becoming tinny, the simulation transparent. Another few meters and I would lose her completely. I slowed, hoping she might change her mind and come after all. I turned around, but saw nothing in the darkness. I was alone.
      It's six-hundred kilometers between Copernicus and Tycho, and I didn't care anymore. I wandered the new path, struggling to follow the meandering footprints. I was cold, sick with fear, driven by the simplest of needs. Whatever distance this short-cut shaved, whether one klick or fifty, it was worth it. Lift, step, lift step, all the while thinking of the girl with the crying eyes, building card-house dreams around her.
      The paths forked and rejoined, circling back on themselves, slipping steadily toward the gap in the mountains. Steeper and steeper the ground rose, broken and jagged. Towers of cold granite thrust out of the ground, left standing by the ancient impacts that had forged the mountains ahead. They dotted this stark land like the hand prints of God, sentinels barring my way. The footprints in the dust were fewer now, attrition taking its dispassionate toll.
      I was lost.
      The ridge I straddled was narrow. It curved, slicing northward until it merged with a hundred ridges just like it. This was the Wilderness, this my Gehenna. If only a wind would blow, hot and relentless, the illusion would be perfect. This was Hell and I had embraced it willingly. Ahead lay the gap, no closer now than it had been four hours ago. Behind me lay nothing at all.
      "Now do you understand?"
      I spun, startled. Rhea staggered to the top of the ridge and stood staring at me. "I tried to warn you."
      "I should have listened."
      She pointed toward the gap, the edges brighter by degrees than the sky beyond. "You're veering too far south. Come on, we need to get out of these hills."
      I followed her, too relieved to care if she sent me stumbling into a pit. "I was trying to avoid the steeper ground to the north."
      "You don't know what steep is." She snorted. "Yet."
      "Rhea?"
      She paused. "What?"
      "Thank you."
      "Keep your thanks." She shivered. "Before this is done, you'll most likely hate me. And I will definitely hate you."

#

     On Earth, the climb would have been impossible. A last deep chasm lay between us and the narrow gap, barring us from the pass. Down we slid, rocks plunging, falling slowly in the gentle gravity. I tripped a dozen times, rose and tripped again, the sensors in my stick-man body pushed beyond tolerance. Rhea was more agile, but still managed to fall, tumbling down the rocky slope. She didn't pause at the bottom, but immediately started up the other side, pulling, arms and legs scrabbling for grip.
      The rocks were cold, bone-dry and brittle, breaking loose without warning. I had climbed once, years earlier, and still had vague impressions of hanging terrified in the middle of an enormous stone slab, shaking from exhaustion. If I had done it since, my down-loaded mind carried no recollection. Hand over hand I pulled myself upward, trying to follow Rhea. An unsteady stream of jagged pebbles clattered down from above, torn loose by her passage. I hugged the cliff face to avoid them.
      "I can see the top," she said, her words distorted. These bodies weren't designed for anything this strenuous. I strained, fingertips wrapped around an outcrop of sulphur-yellow rock. It snapped loose. A hard jolt ran up my spine as I crashed against an out-thrust ledge ten meters below.
      "Danny!" Rhea slid fast, using her body as a brake, until her foot dangled in front of my face. I snatched at it, desperate, panicked. "Easy," she said. "Don't pull us both over."
      "Sorry." I was shaking, unable to do more than let her drag me to safety. " I'm sorry."
      "Forget about it. Come on."
      She stayed near me, guiding my movements, directing my hands up the cliff. Finally we breeched the top. I crawled on hands and knees, forcing myself upright, staggering, joints stiff, and looked down the slope on the other side. Lights beckoned, pin-points of red and blue and harsh electric white. Ship lights were slowly sinking out of the black sky toward the landing field spread across the wide crater floor.
      "Is that Tycho?"
      "Yes," Rhea said, her voice flat. "Count yourself lucky, Danny McAndrews. We made it."
      I had never seen such an awesome sight as that first distant glimpse of the Tycho dome. It was a toy, a jeweled miniature, a prize lying twenty easy klicks ahead. "My God, it's beautiful, isn't it?"
      Funny thing. I'd grown so use to ‘hearing' her voice simulated in my ears, I had forgotten it was electronic trickery, an artifact of synthesizers and radio frequencies. No real sound could travel across this airless wasteland. I never heard Rhea fall. The surface here was fragile, huge empty bubbles left by rapidly cooling lava covered over with a brittle crust. She simply fell through, tumbling into the dark pit below. I rushed to the edge. She lay thrashing at the bottom, surrounded by debris and loose rock, body bent double, legs twisted beneath.
      "Rhea!" I bounded down the slope, picking my way as fast as I dared. "Damn it, can you hear me?"
      She moaned, an animal sound. The fall had snapped her metal frame, tearing her nearly in two. Fat blue sparks snapped between the torn sections. The simulation was fading, her features, her humanness, fading in and out. I had a last view of her face, wrenched in pain, before the illusion failed completely, leaving nothing but a stick-figure writhing on the unforgiving stone.
      "Hold on." I covered the last distance in a short, slow arc. "Can you move?"
      "No." She turned her featureless skull toward me. "Don't touch me!"
      "But..."
      "I'm shorting. You want both of us to stuck out here? Don't touch me."
      "You don't know that for sure."
      She twisted, unable to sit. "Do you really want to take that chance?"
      "I won't leave you down here to die."
      "You still don't get it, do you?" There was no mouth to move, no flesh to frown. Nothing but a dented metal skull and a pair of tortured eyes. "I'm not real. Neither are you. We're fucking machinery. We can't die."
      "I won't leave you."
      She tried to sit up. Another shower of sparks burst out the place that should have been her pelvis. "Stop saying that. Go. Get home. Get downloaded and live happy ever after."
      "Rhea..."
      "Don't be an idiot. What do you think will happen to me? Huh? Think it through. I don't show up, so what? They down the real me into another stick, and I start again."
      It was so easy to listen to her, to follow her icy logic. "And meanwhile, you, this you," I pointed at her. "You sit her for decades until your reactor wears out."
      "No." She looked up at me. "No, I won't. The CPU, my brain, is located just below my left shoulder. Trust me, I've checked. Pick up a rock and hit me hard. One good jolt should do it. Understand? But, for God's sake, make it quick."
      "You want me to kill you?"
      "I'm not alive!" she screamed, the pain rising past what she could endure. "Please, if you ever had an ounce of pity, finish it."
      "I can't."
      She looked away. "You have to. It's what friends do for each other."
      No tears fell from my eyes. I had none. No heart to break. But I felt it, the searing agony of betrayal. Now, I knew what Judas knew. Hundreds of dark, hard-edged boulders lay. I picked a heavy one and hoisted it above my head. Rhea lay at my feet, head turned, unable to even close her eyes.
      "Rhea, forgive me."
      The rock swung down, driven by my machine body and crashed against the pit wall, breaking into harmless shards. I reached down and scooped what was left of her into my arms.
      "What are you doing?"
      "Shut up," I said. "I'm saving your ass."
      She was lighter than I expected, no heavier than a bundle of dry sticks. I slung her broken frame over my shoulder and started up the steep side. A few more sparks flared from her torn body, flashing without effect against my face.
      "That was stupid," she said.
      "I know. You already told me." I crawled out of the pit and started toward Tycho. "It's what friends do for each other."
      The trip lasted forever, this final leg down the empty gray slope. My bad knee was worse, the servos unable to flex the twisted metal. Rhea lay slung across my shoulder, crying, her voice fading in and out, long periods of silence punctuated by gasps of electric pain. I fell, I stood, I traveled on, bone-weary, too tired to think about anything but finishing. I was starting to understand all the things Rhea had taught me. Endure the pain. Don't ignore it. That was impossible. Just accept it and move on, one foot at a time.
      "Talk to me," she said, somewhere in the endless hours.
      "About what?"
      "I don't care. Anything. Tell me about the girl?"
      I stopped. I hadn't thought about the Crying Girl in hours. All of the fantasies I had so carefully built around her came crashing down, memories cascading, deluging me. I let them. Somehow, they didn't seem to matter anymore.
      "She was just a girl. She came to me for help, and I gave it to her."
      Rhea cried again, a tortured gasp like a wounded rabbit. "For Christ's sake, keep talking, okay? I can't take the pain."
      I told her the story, as much as I remembered, dragging out the details as we foundered across the empty plain. Told her about a girl pregnant with a baby she didn't want and a religion that allowed no options. Told her about a priest who traded his doctrines for his conscience and helped arrange an abortion. Told her about a man who'd had more than his soul could bear and broke down under the weight of it. I told her everything I remembered, and when I ran out of truth, I made up lies. Like I said, it just didn't seem to matter anymore.

#

     We stumbled into Tycho, Rhea over my shoulder, my left leg dragging long, uneven marks in the lunar dust. Technicians rushed out to greet us in the airlock, faces hidden behind bio-filters and masks, bodies insulated by thick white suits. One of them lifted Rhea off my shoulder and held her at arms length like a leper. They led me toward a wide bright door. I paused beside it and turned. Rhea lay on a cart, twisted and broken, a thing to be down-loaded and tossed aside. I waited until they rolled her closer.
      "Thanks," I said.
      "Anytime," she said, her voice faltering. For a brief moment her illusion flared back to life, wavered, then vanished forever. Just another machine. "Think we'll remember each other tomorrow?"
      "I don't know." I smiled, reached out a hand and brushed her cold metal face. "But I hope so."

© 2005 Justin Stanchfield