Learning to stand took practice. Learning to take a few steps was just as difficult. Yet I found it an oddly smooth process in the end. The body I now possessed knew how to balance, how to jump, and how to run. It was just a matter of syncing up my mind with my new body.

  I hoped whatever consciousness had inhabited this body before was gone. Being puppeted around would be a horrible experience. But the body was no longer sending fear signals. And what signals were being sent, I was… intercepting?

  It was rather lucky that I had already learned to use one body. In some strange sense, clearly, I made for this.

  My uxor body had been designed for a specific purpose, reproduction. But me-me, whatever I was beneath all that, I was some kind of… body controlling parasite. A much nastier and more brutish life, perhaps, but not a short one anymore.

  I hopped out of the trap. My head throbbed somewhat from previous attempts to make it through. I landed feet first, through off balance enough that the rest of me soon followed, sprawling onto the floor.

  After a short struggle to stand up again, I was free.

  I awkwardly stumbled towards the tent flap. Even like this, I moved faster than I had while pregnant. It was kinda fun. One hopping, bouncing step after another. I could be quite fast.

  I ducked under the flap, only momentarily getting stuck before I shook myself free and emerged into the night.

  I was breathing. No mask, nothing, just breathing. The air was crisp and clear. I could smell too much. Salt, earth, and so much more, I had no understanding of. Then there was the rain. I had not even heard it at first, sound working differently in a way I couldn’t quite explain. Several raindrops pelted me before I skittered back to safety.

  I braced myself for the burn, utterly lost as to how to escape the evil water. But…. nothing. The rain did not harm me.

  Of course it didn’t. My body was from this planet. I was… made for this now.

  I hurried back outside. My legs now walked with an ease that impressed me. Actually, I was really proud of myself. Before I died, I would have been a snotty, desperate mess, but I had changed. I had learned what I was capable of. I had lost so much. My world had been turned upside down, but I had found my way through it.

  Nicole was nowhere to be found.

  Oh no. I searched desperately in the darkened camp. There were some lights, and I could see surprisingly well, but I couldn’t find her anywhere.

  Carefully, I left the shadow of the tent, skittering through the camp.

  It wasn’t really a camp anymore. Cabins, makeshift structures, even now fancy robots that whirred and clunked as they tirelessly worked on a foundation.

  The salvage mission had been a success. I was really glad, without that, everyone probably would have died. I couldn’t recommend the experience.

  The bridge of the Euphorion looked large and intimidating. I might have been smaller, but it still looked unfamiliar. Everything looked unfamiliar. The buildings, the structures, the shapes of the whole thing, the colours…

  Though the colours were probably me, right? Different eyes?

  My eyes were wider, my sight was wider. I could see around me more. Everything was brighter in the dark but blurry, all much more gray. Blues and greens still popped, but the vegetation I knew to be red just looked muted, fading into the background. The most notable issue as I searched for Nicole was that I couldn’t see far. Everything in the distance quickly just faded into a blur. Though the fact that I could see distance at all in the suffocating dark was a win in itself.

  My head hurt. Every new attempt at something revealed a hidden depth, more and more to learn and master to function in my new body.

  Where was Nicole? I just wanted her to hold me. I wanted her to know it was all okay now. Or, well, as good as it could be. Oddly, the whole being a weirdly shaped furry dinosaur thingy wasn’t so bad.

  I imagined I kinda looked like those two-legged guys that hunted in packs from that old retro movie about a park. Except much smaller and furry. And not a lizard. Was I a lizard? What made a lizard a lizard?

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  I decided I didn’t feel like a lizard.

  Nicole. Right. Shoot. My head was spinning from so much stuff. I needed to find her.

  I sniffed the air… and smelled… stuff. How in the world did animals use their noses? It was all Greek to me, well, all words were Greek to me. I let out a strange coughing snort. Human movement patterns that didn’t superimpose well onto a furry dino body.

  I ran back to Nicole’s tent. I had one more idea. I had… seen it in a movie. But I was hopeful.

  I really needed to start learning for myself. Having my entire understanding of things shaped by the old movies Tobias showed me wasn’t good.

  Oh Tobias. Was he sad? Did he miss me? It must have been horrible to hear about… my death.

  Where was my body? Or… my first one. Was it just floating around in space?

  What about my son?

  Maybe he wasn’t dead. That could happen, I was fairly sure, the baby surviving where the birthing person did not. But he was dead. I had known he was dead for a long time.

  Perhaps I should have been sadder. But I was just happy to have eyes again.

  Lacking any more ideas, I did what I had seen an animal called a dog do. I looked around the medical tent for something of Nicole’s. Except she didn’t have any stuff. In the movie, the animal had somehow used a piece of clothing to track down the person. But Nicole only had one set of clothes, the ones she wore.

  I found an open and empty first aid kit on the ground. Whatever had been inside it smelled terrible; a thick, slimy crystalline substance coated the inside. Whatever that was, I wanted nothing to do with it.

  Maybe I was just better off running around aimlessly to find her. But I would definitely get lost.

  My search brought me under another tent flap, into a separate little corner of the tent. I smiled to myself, my face… not doing it right. I recognized her repair pod; I had seen her in it once upon a time. It had been kinda horrifying. She looked to be sleeping, but then it had started to take her apart and rummage around inside. I shuddered at the memory. But if there was anywhere that smelled like Nicole, that would be it.

  I paused, noticing a jar tucked away on the shelf that had… hair in it? Not the colour of her hair.

  The same colour that my hair had once been…

  Okay. Had she collected my hair? Was she trying to clone a new me? That was totally the kind of thing Nicole would get up to in that crazy scientist brain of hers.

  I scampered over to the repair pod and sniffed around it. Once again, I just smelled all sorts of other things which I didn’t understand. Admittedly, I had paid attention to how Nicole smelled, but she didn’t smell like much. She didn’t exactly have a scent profile. No convenient perfume or anything.

  I did smell more chemical plastic things around here. But no moment of everything clicking into place. If Nicole weren’t a synthetic, it might have worked. Drat.

  Now what?

  I settled on the only thing I could think of. Running. Nicole couldn’t have gone far. But where would she have gone? I couldn’t open doors like this. What if she were on the bridge? Shoot.

  Slipping back out of the tent, I trotted around the up-and-coming settlement. It was shocking how much it had changed even the second time around. I had… missed so much.

  I scurried down to the beach once more. There were no fresh footprints in the sand, which could have indicated that someone had headed for the stairs to the bridge. The tide had come in and erased what had been. That meant she wasn’t on the bridge.

  I had also seen a detective do that in a movie once. But as silly as it was, it was coming in useful.

  I turned back the way I had come and doubled back through the circular heart of the settlement. I stopped in my tracks as I smelled something in the distance. Something like a sizzling steak, well, kinda, but there was a weird undertone I didn’t understand. A bit more snooping discovered where the smell was coming from: one of the cabins.

  They must have figured out the whole food problem then. At the very least, they were cooking something interesting.

  I was hungry. Well, not me, but the furry dino. And now I was leeching nutrients from its body. How long would this body last? Keeping it properly fed would be necessary, probably overfed just to be safe. Except I was now far worse at hunting than the furry dino would have been, and now required even more food.

  How did whatever I was do it? I guess we didn’t. We were always supposed to stay one with our bodies. I had just desynchronized, and it had eventually killed me.

  I wasn’t a natural being. Just a brain given arms and stuck in a brain-dead body to move around. I didn’t know what to make of any of it.

  How long would I last like this? How long until I would need a new host? And then another? And then another?

  Just this new one was dizzying.

  I was tired and hungry. Yet I kept running, kept searching. I only tripped a few times, only falling once; I was getting better at moving.

  The moons were high in the sky. There would be hours until people started waking up, and with the rain, no one would be up to much. I had time. I had time, and I just needed to be smart about this.

  If I were Nicole, and I was… scared, where would I go?

  I would want to be alone. Somewhere only I knew. My silly, grumpy robot. She resented biologicals; she didn’t want their company. She would be somewhere far from them.

  I turned my attention to the fields and the thick jungle beyond, nothing but a blur of green to my new eyes.

  Oh, please don’t be in there.