Second Suicide: A Short Story (Kindle Single) Read Online Free Page A

shower. “The
reason Lum offed herself was because of her
demotions. She was in High Command a few raids ago. Got bumped down, and she’s
been getting bumped down ever since. Causes too much trouble.” Lum screws up her eyestalks. “ Speaks her mind ,” she
says, as if this is a great sin.
    “Seems
weird,” I say. “Two suicides in a cycle. Taking on that much debt.”
    Lum eyes the shower. The steam
is, blessedly, cloaking her lower half.
    “You ever
done it?” I ask. “Ever . . . you know.”
    “No,” she
says, smiling. She looks down at herself. “I’m all original. And I’m wasting
water. You wanna come in? I can tell you about my crazy ex-bunkmate and you can
scrub the barnacles off my back.”
    “I’m good,” I
say. “Just curious is all.”
    Lum seems, if anything,
relieved. I can’t get a bead on her. “Suit yourself.” She starts to pull the
door shut, then sticks her head out one last time. Considers something. I’m
waiting.
    “You were in
Intelligence,” she says.
    “Still am,”
I say. “Gunner is just this one time.”
    “And other
races, they do it too? Off themselves?”
    “A lot,” I
say.
    “But it’s
final death for them,” Lum says.
    “Yeah.
That’s the point,” I say. “They do it when they get depressed.” Here, I’m
drawing more from my own experiences than any of my studies. I remember feeling
like I wanted to sleep for a long time. Forever, if I could.
    The steam is
filling our bunkroom. I feel sweat gathering on my back. Lum studies me for a painfully long while.
    “I don’t
think Mil was depressed,” she finally says. “I think she was . . . satisfied.
Content, maybe. Or resigned. Or maybe . . .”
    “Maybe
what?”
    “Or maybe
she was scared out of her senses, and she couldn’t get anyone to pay attention.
So she finally gave up.”
    #
    The next morning,
I find what may be a clue. It is discovered by my sensitive back: a lump in my
mattress or a spring bent out of shape. This is two mornings in a row with an
ache in my spines (my mother would, again, call me soft of tentacle). I tear
the sheets off my mattress in search of the answer.
    All the
springs are in fine shape, but running a tentacle across the mattress, I feel a
lump. A very hard lump with sharp corners. It turns out to be a small data
drive sewn into the fabric of the mattress. This is most curious. I wouldn’t
think my beloved Mil would be into sexing vids, which is all I have ever used
these for. The drive is locked. I try to access it with the wall terminal, but
it refuses my tentacle. Coded to Mil’s secretions, unless it belongs to someone
else.
    One mystery
is solved, and that’s the second suicide. Even with Mil’s memories restored to
some prior, stable state, she would have found the drive and accessed some
reminder. She had left a note to herself before the first deed, and upon discovering
it, gave a repeat performance. Maybe her superiors knew she had left some
memory behind, and so they sent her to another ship. To my bunk. Where she is
being sexed by Kur .
    The only
problem with my brilliant theory is that Kur says
she’s still trying to hang herself. But that could be explained by the sexing!
I chuckle to myself. I will have to tell Kur that
one. I bring up my messages on the terminal to pass this joke along and to tell
him about the data drive, when I see a message waiting in my inbox from him,
saying that he has thwarted another attempt on her life.
    Why does my
heart go out to her? Why am I not disturbed? And what if she kills herself yet
again and they are out of bodies for her in the vats here? They might bring her
back as a man, and now it is too late and I already love her.
    Listen to
me. A cycle ago, I was dreaming of saving enough for a plot of land and a
settlement pass, of making a permanent home on some ball of mud. Now I am
worried over a woman with a career of demotions and a pile of debt.
    I study the
locked drive, this lone token of hers. It was sewn into the