Circa Tempore: The Artificial Organic
Copyright© 2026 by E. B. Redfield
Chapter 31 - Who Do You Want to Hurt More?
Craig popped back to the ITSTU and glanced around. Kayla was nowhere to be seen. Dread and anxiety raced through him. Had she already gone?
“Glyph, I’m here where’s...” He paused and looked around. Glyph was also nowhere to be seen. The cyborg had requested he return to the ITSTU, so he had assumed it was something to do with Kayla’s decision to go home, “Where are you?”
“I’m outside! Please open the door!”
Craig raised an eyebrow and opened the door. Glyph rushed inside, slamming the door behind them. They were exhilarated, but also looked completely exhausted. Craig watched as they collapsed into the pilot’s seat.
“Hey, are you alright?” Craig asked, he noticed a thick purple liquid staining their uniform in multiple places. “Fuck, Glyph, is that blood?”
“Syahos,” they replied. Craig blinked in confusion.
“What?” he asked, “Sie-ah-hose? What does that mean?”
“Syahos,” the cyborg corrected, and though they were clearly exhausted they beamed, “It’s my name. The one I chose. I’m Syahos now! The identity matrix worked!”
Craig blinked again, then broke into a huge smile.
“Shit, for real?” he reached out and pulled Glyph back into a hug, “Congrats! That’s awesome! Syahos! That’s a cool name!”
“Thanks!” Syahos replied, “Is Kayla with you? I had hoped to tell you both about it!”
Craig’s smile faltered, so Kayla hadn’t come back to the ITSTU yet. His anxiety was relieved in some areas, but increased now in others.
“Nah, she ... we had a hard conversation ‘bout where things were going from here,” he admitted, “She ain’t reached out to you?”
Syahos frowned and their ears pinned back, “No, she hasn’t yet. She didn’t respond to my request for assistance yet either. Is she ok?”
“I don’t know ... she said she wanted to go home,” Craig admitted, “She tends to knee jerk pretty hard when she’s dealing with emotional shit like this so I was kinda scared you’d already taken her back.” Feeling dampness on his chest, he glanced down and saw the dark liquid that had stained Syahos’ jumpsuit was now staining his shirt from the hug. Syahos also noticed it.
“Oh, I’m so sorry about that,” they apologized, “Use your immediattire to change outfits and it should take care of that.”
“Is that blood?” Craig asked again, “It ain’t human blood, but ... damn it smells like blood.”
“It’s Glyph blood,” Syahos answered, “A younger Glyph across the way was assaulted and I helped them get to their med station. I think they’ll be ok. I had to activate the ID Matrix to cross the tether, though. I wouldn’t have been able to help otherwise.”
“Oh shit!” Craig exclaimed, “Did you see who assaulted them?”
Syahos growled, deep and predatory. Craig’s eyebrows shot up. That was a noise he’d never heard from them before, “It was their user. It’s not uncommon for Glyphs to be abused by users. There aren’t real consequences for assaulting an AO, because we aren’t real people.”
“That’s bullshit, you’re a real person, ok?” Craig countered, “You always were.”
Syahos gave him a tired look, “I wish the rest of the galaxy saw us the way you do,” they replied.
Craig’s arm twitched, in a desire to give them a squeeze on the arm or even a hug. Something to reassure them or to offer them any kind of solace. But he faltered and let it swing back to his side.
“So, how does the new identity feel?” he asked.
“Honestly? It doesn’t feel much different at all,” Syahos sighed and walked to the common area. Craig followed, and his heart sank as he saw the tipperlily sitting next to Kayla’s bed. Her things were still scattered around. His brain was still catching up with the conversation from the bistro. It wasn’t his fault she’d gotten the wrong message, right?
The memory of her dancing at the Gilded Roost intruded on him. His desire in that moment to grind up against her resurfaced. He glanced back at the flower on the table. Exactly what message had he been trying to send?
“I got it bad for you,” her words replayed in his mind, “And it’s not a new thing.”
She couldn’t possibly leave on that note, right? She wasn’t just going to drop that bomb and then leave him forever? He hadn’t even had time to process it.
“You’ve known this for ages, “ his father’s voice interjected, “It might have been the first time she said it, but you knew.” He shook his head like he was swarmed by bugs, trying to quiet the voice.
“Craig?” Syahos asked, “Are you ok?”
Craig snapped back to the room, “Yeah?” he asked, looking over at Syahos. They had grabbed the ITSTU’s operation tablet from the bedside table. He realized they had been talking and he had missed what they were saying. “Sorry, go ahead.”
“When I accepted the identity matrix, I lost my status as the ship’s AO navigator,” Syahos explained, “I have no connection to the ship currently, and that also means I can’t move it. That’s why I had to ask for your help. I kind of locked myself out.”
“Oh shit,” Craig whistled, “That must feel really weird for you.”
“You have no idea,” they replied, “I don’t know if I’ll actually be able to get this running again,” they gestured around at the vehicle around them, “My ability to navigate the ship was tied directly to my status as an AO. Now that it’s gone, this is practically just a giant lump of malleabite.” They opened a drawer in the side of the utility room, withdrew another neural band, and attached it to their head. It wrapped itself around them like it did with Craig and Kayla.
“I thought you didn’t need one of those,” Craig said, confused.
“I need it now that my direct link to the ITSTU is severed,” Syahos replied, “My hope is that I can now designate myself as the primary user and maybe figure out how to engineer some of those lost functions back to myself.” They began fiddling with the panel.
Craig sat on the bed and stared at the partition between him and Kayla’s space. He took a deep breath in and smelled the slightly floral aroma of her deodorant that lingered in the air.
“Are you ok, Craig?” Syahos asked, looking up from the tablet at him.
“No,” Craig muttered, “I’m ... I don’t know how to talk about it.”
“Is it about your attraction to Kayla?”
Craig snapped his head over to them, “What?!”
Syahos gave a half smile and glanced back to the tablet, “Sorry if that was overstepping, I just assumed you would appreciate some directness. I’ve been watching the two of you all week. It was surprising to me at first to learn that you were not romantically involved, based on how you interacted with each other. When you left her the flower, I presumed you were acting on feelings.”
Craig stared at them for a moment, lost for words.
“Maybe if you try being honest with them about it, you can work on being honest with yourself about it, “ the intrusive voice suggested.
“OK, fair enough,” he agreed; though, whether to the voice or Syahos, he wasn’t really sure.
“How long have you been attracted to her?” Syahos asked, as their neural band blipped, indicating that they had synced to it.
“I don’t really know,” Craig replied, “Think I only realized it recently. But maybe for a while.”
“Have you told her that?”
“Sort of? Not really ... it’s complicated.”
“How so?”
Craig threw up his hands, “I mean ... we been friends for a decade and now all a sudden we both just gonna say, ‘I got feelings?’”
“I don’t think that part sounds complicated,” Syahos replied, not glancing up from the tablet, “Shouldn’t your friendship make it easier to say? Given how long you’ve known each other?”
“Yeah, you’d think,” Craig muttered, glancing down at his feet, “But nah, it’s ... scary, I guess. To change what we have so drastically, so suddenly.”
“So, you wouldn’t be friends anymore if you were romantic?”
“It’s more complicated than that,” Craig grimaced, shaking his head. “It’s more like ... I dunno ... what if it don’t work out? Like, we try to make a romantic thing happen and it don’t work, but then we ain’t friends after because of that?”
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