"Would get sent home if turned up to school wearing skirt that short," was all I said in channel, and moved on to wondering if they’d gone to Muina to film this, since it was quite obviously hills in the same region as Pandora, except just starting to turn colours – wherever they’d sourced the images from, it wasn’t in the late Autumn of the last few weeks. I could hardly believe they’d managed to produce a whole program about me in the short time since news of my existence was released.
Other than the silly outfit, I didn’t mind the way they were portraying me. Upset, but not totally hysterical, calling out in a nonsense-language and looking bewildered and sitting down for a while before growing resolute. She picked a direction and started out that way, scoring marks on the trees with a rock, which I hadn’t thought to do. I was impressed with the relative correctness of her school bag and how the first problem she ran into was blisters, and they even had her doing an inventory of what she was carrying, and writing in a diary as the sun set.
Her writing was nonsense characters which looked like shorthand to me, with subtitles translating fragments such as: "Where is this place? I’m sure this isn’t Urth. All I can do is keep pushing on until I find civilisation – but what if I’m the only one here?"
There was a commercial break after that, and we chatted in-channel about how the actress was good at looking scared and lost and determined, and the things I’d done which they obviously hadn’t thought about (mainly checking my mobile, and finding out that I had not nearly enough tissues to serve as toilet paper on an alien world – though I didn’t bother to mention that to everyone), and we made guesses at the mechanics of how they’d created the program, since they were all sure that no on-location filming had or would be permitted for some time. Glade was full of explanations of how they’d have done the computer simulations based on the officially released surveys.
After that fake-me’s journey was fast forwarded, cutting several days into a series of shots of worse blisters, and trying random berries and nuts, attempting to weave a basket and a mat and make a hat, and avoiding animals, then staring at the moon with its very un-Earth-like hole. I started to be less impressed about the accuracy of the show around the time the actress climbed up a tree to avoid a pack of small yellow dogs, and they went to the next break after a longer scene where she was lying under a mat of woven reeds, the screen filled with darkness and all you could hear was something walking toward her, the crackle of the reed mat bending under the unseen thing’s weight, and its breathing as it stood above her and she tried to hold her own breath and not to cry. Extremely effective.
I couldn’t even talk after that. Not for the bad memories but because I’d told only Isten Notra about the yellow dogs, and only Lohn and Mara about that horrible night when I nearly died from the sheer anticipation of being eaten. That was the same time I’d talked to them about how upset it would make me to be cloned. Mori and Glade were being impressed with the show, but when they started to chat I said in text: "That really happen. Only told that two people. Lots of this happen."
There was a brief pause, then Glade said: "Are you in quarters, Caszandra?" He wouldn’t know because Fourth’s still on leave and most people don’t have the rights to do pinpoint location tracking.
"Yes. Supposed to be asleep. How many people can access complete KOTIS file about me?"
"I’ll ask," he said. "Don’t leave the channel, all right?"
The ad break had only just finished when Ketzaren – the only member of First Squad not asleep – sent me a text saying: "Can I come in?"
I released the door and made the lights go from black to dim. I didn’t feel like getting out of bed – I felt sick and awful and hot – but didn’t want to wait there like a kid clutching a teddy bear, so I met her at the door and she took one look at me and made me sit on the couch. She was dressed in a shirt and shorts, had obviously been in bed herself, and she sat down with me and squeezed me hard as Mori brought her into the channel we were sharing.
"I think mainly I’m angry they didn’t warn me they were going to release so much," I said out loud, but that was a mistake because my voice sounded nearly as rawly betrayed as I felt and I missed a lot of the next bit because I was concentrating on not crying. It was about finding Pandora, and searching out my tower and setting up a home there. I began to calm down, for while it was still accurate, except for a dramatic Ming Cat stalking which hadn’t happened at all, there wasn’t anything in it which I hadn’t described to several different people. Ketzaren rubbed my shoulder and watched, and when the next ad break came, just after the first moonfall, she said: "Mara’s bringing us something hot to drink."
"Didn’t want to wake people up," I said, unhappily. Part of the reason I was upset by then was because I’d gotten upset and caused a fuss, instead of just asking Maze about it the next day. "Feel like an overwrought baby lately, always having dramas."
"Stop holding yourself to such an impossibly high standard," Ketzaren said. "This whole year has been an extreme for you. You’ve adapted better than we could have hoped, but being lost again, hurt and alone and in such danger – you’re not going to just get over it. Why are you expecting that of yourself? Are you still having nightmares?"
"Not as many."
"But too many, right? And now this. Believe me, this goes well beyond the limits of what’s been officially released about you. And you end up feeling violated, feeling you can’t even trust us, to talk to us and not have what you say repeated. And yet we’re the only people you know enough to want to talk about it, and then you feel like you’re burdening us by being upset."
"That transparent?"
"You’re a straightforward person." She tugged at a wisp of my hair. "Myself, I’d be furious and want to hit things, but you don’t seem to respond that way. Are you sure you want to watch the rest of this?"
"Will never get to sleep without knowing what else is in there." But then there would be next episode, and next episode. I realised I was shaking, literally sitting there shaking because of a TV show, and there was no way to hide that from Ketzaren.
The show played up the drama of me slowly getting sicker while trying to do practical survivor stuff. Mara arrived with some mugs of a hot drink which bore a vague resemblance to tea. Lots of sweetener. She and Ketzaren squeezed me between them even though they’re not supposed to both touch me at once and we watched the improbably pretty girl decline into a exhausted and ill but possibly even prettier girl, and apparently have some prophetic visions of Pillars and stone gates during the second moonfall. Mara and Ketzaren felt me react to that, too, but there was no way I was explaining.
"It amazes me that she’s still wearing those socks," I said into the shared channel during the next ad break, and my voice was almost normal. "The number of useful things I could have done with thigh-length socks, and all she does is wear them."
"Useful things like what?" Mori asked, sounding greatly relieved that I’d stopped having a breakdown.
"Could probably have made a sling – a way to throw rocks and things really hard and fast as a weapon. Or used one as a bag. Make good straps, too. She didn’t even double them over as padding when she had blisters."
"Part of the image they’re marketing," Glade said. "I expect the entire outfit can be purchased as cross-promotion."