The Longest Strip

The jump ship was damaged. The distress claxon screamed like a sick cat and the sharp tang of burning fuses filled the stale air of the cramped vessel. None of it told Shailaja anything she didn't already know.

The ship's control panel popped open and bashed Shailaja on her forehead. She reached up a hand and felt the trickle of blood before the wound sealed. The itchy sensation of her surface nanobots, like spiders crawling, tickled then stopped. Shailaja sat down and took a deep breath while the nanobots worked.

She remembered the first time Kapardin had touched her. She'd tried to hug him, while he'd been brave enough to try for a kiss. When she'd tried to switch movements, they'd knocked foreheads. He'd laughed, rich as coffee. Gentle hands captured her face, resettled her, and then he'd moved his lips over hers. The memory sent a rush of warmth through the anxiety coursing through her system. She dragged herself back to the present.

It was going to be a hell of a ride home.

She exhaled, floated up to reach the control panel above her head, and disengaged the comm. Silence descended, the absolute quiet of deep space.

Shailaja braced her legs against the console and pressed her back against the wiring panel. Three wrenches and a screwdriver floated past and entangled in her sleep sack. She longed for more space; already the ship cramped her, made her feel closed and tight. Curled there, substituting pressure for gravity, she stared out the porthole. The depth of space gaped back. The scent of ozone in the air reminded her of the calm after a spring storm.

They'd sat in the rain one day, arguing.

"Would you give up teaching physics?" she'd asked Kapardin. The rain dripped into her eyes and she shook it away.

"It's not the same," he said. His hand took hers and he ran a thumb in circles over her palm.

She caught her breath.

"I wait for you. Every jump, every new wormhole you open, I wonder if this is the one that you won't come home from. Or that you won't make it home until I'm old, or dead." His voice cracked and to cover it, he drew her hand to his lips and sucked on her index finger.

She'd looked away, not wanting to continue down the familiar path. He'd told her often enough how he yearned for her, but she wouldn't give up her stars. Something inside of her, past the training and the modifications, had always driven her into the abyss. She remembered her first jump, the red-shift fading into blue, the exultation of success. Even more than love, it had proven addictive.

Shailaja damned the ship and the goat's whore of a scientist who'd calculated the portal wrong. Every jump pilot knew danger was part of the test flight to explore the wormhole. They all knew the risks, had seen others limp home after years of travel, with some pilots still unaccounted for, but that was the point of her altered synthetic body. No matter what happened, she would get home. But how long would it take?

Shailaja went back to work on the control system. She'd already used the spares of the ship to fix the propulsion. Further spare parts were available, if she had the courage to use them. Her skin, flexible with a rich layer of surface nanobots, could be used to repair the wiring.

She held her left arm out in front of her. "Pain is a sensation," she reminded herself. Without pain she wouldn't be able to feel Kapardin's touch.

Shailaja set her fingernails against her skin and picked. A shard pulled loose, exposing a few drops of blood, before her system blocked the tiny vein. She hissed. Reaching into the toolkit slung against the port window, she pulled out a razor. The stars shone steady and she knew they had no pity for her.

The edge of the razor gleamed. Where she rested it against her forearm, a line of red blood rose, morning dew against her dusky skin. The first cut surprised her. The pain strobed more than she'd thought it would. It lanced through her system and made her hesitate, but memory forced the edge back.

Shailaja set to work and ignored the sweat that bubbled on her forehead. Lights flashed in her eyes and she forced herself to take a deep breath. The strobe effect of the pain dimmed. She returned to the cut, the razor edge pressing against her skin.

When she offered the piece of her flesh to the unit's transponder, the nanobots massed, millions of them made visible by their sheer numbers, like ants over a loaf of bread. The dots circled the wires and as programmed, swarmed and made the connection. She flipped the relay switch on the control console.

This time one light shone green on the board. One system functional. One part of her gone, unable to heal without the technological intervention lacking in the spare design of the test jumper.

The edges of her arm twanged as she set to work exposing the wires for the jump drive system, but the hole in the skin itself, where veins shone through in pulsing blue and arteries carried oxygen to the heart, had stopped hurting. She couldn't feel anything there.

Was the ship going to eat all of her?

She'd taken the skin from her left leg all the way up to her thigh and the calf on the right--even her feet. The skin around the toes had taken time but the nanobots inside had been enough to fix the second relay switch.

She'd flayed both arms, except for her hands. That skin had gone into the recycle unit and now air circulated, carrying the tang of sweat and metal: salt from her skin, copper from her blood.

Yet still the control panel beeped when Shailaja activated it. Much more, and she'd return to Kapardin muscles and skeleton, her precious skin and the healing nanobots fed to the hungry ship. If she returned at all--there wasn't much skin left and Shalaija didn't know if it'd be enough.

She'd be unable to feel his touch as anything but pressure on exposed systems, doomed to spend years in the healing tanks.

She ran her left hand over the curve of a buttock, the muscles gone soft from the months of zero gravity. Memory of his hand in the same location, the same slow movement, shivered her. She cupped her hand against her vulva, imagining the warmth of his long fingers nestled there. Moving up to her stomach, she caressed the taut skin and stuck a finger in her bellybutton. It tickled. He'd laughed, warm gasps against her abdomen, when he'd found how his tongue there had clenched her body.

"Kapardin," she said into the air, just to hear his name. Determination waned. Five months of agony and nothing to show for it except less of herself. The ship ate like a newborn, suckled at her, demanded more and more. She flexed her hands and tightened them into a fist; her nails cut into her palms. She should go into hibernation, let the time flow over and around her, shudder through the stars, so when she arrived back at New Calcutta station no more than a few dreams would remain.

A hundred years if she slept. Twenty years if she skinned herself. Kapardin sat alone and suffering, waiting for her arrival. Perhaps his hair had turned gray by now; perhaps he stooped a bit and walked more slowly.

Every moment he was dying. So was she. In the eternal scheme of the universe, entropy ruled, but Kapardin faded faster. She'd made the mistake every jump pilot made sooner or later, fallen in love with an ephemeral.

"I wish you'd stay," he'd said to her in bed the last night. Crickets chirped at the window and in the distance Shailaja had heard the moan of a red banshee.

Shailaja drew away from the heat of his body and turned to the screen. A faint breeze washed over her, rippling tiny hairs on her back. Dim moonlight filtered through the screen's grid.

"It's my job," she replied. She wanted to touch him, even let her hand hover in the air, but didn't.

"It's your love." He rolled over and curved his body, tucking his legs away from hers.

She dropped her hand and clenched the comforter. The embroidered flowers on it scratched at her palm. The stars winked at her through the screen.

They'd laid the rest of the long night inches apart, neither asleep, listening to the sound of awake breath.

Despair boiled over her at the memory, steeled her spine straight, and thumped in her head.

She forced her hands open and picked up a fresh blade. The razor glinted, promising pain in the sharp edge. Shailaja took a deep breath and laid the blade against her right thigh. Sweat slicked her palm. She started to cut. Half her mind stayed with the slice and the pain, the other half with Kapardin, in their bed of silken green curtains, the light of early morning oozing through the purple flowers of their butterfly orchid tree. The skin she sliced off would never feel his touch again.

Shailaja's shoulders slumped. The skin from her back, removed with the use of a mirror and an extension taped to the scalpel had started the drive back up. Now just the jump calculator remained--and a few square inches of skin. The rest of her pulsed veins and arteries, striated musculature, and the silver of chrome-encased bones.

She had the patch of her breasts; two round ovals with crinkled nipples, her lips, her sex, the skin of her cheeks and forehead. The rest she'd surrendered, all those square inches Kapardin had touched, licked, caressed. They were eschewed until she reached home, until they regrew her in the vats, more years without his touch.

He would think her mad, she knew, to skin herself. Would say to her, "You should have waited, oh my angel, my darling, what you have done to yourself! You should have let me alone in time to die than do this."

Too far gone now to back up, to rethink a decision made. But which skin to sacrifice, and which to keep? The nipples he'd suckled, stretched, coaxed, bitten? The labia and hidden flower within, the power of his tongue almost enough, even in memory, to make her climax? Her hand rose to her lips, but stopped short.

She would leave her lips, to kiss him with when she arrived. She would taste the sweat of his skin, feel the smooth texture of his chest, run lips over the ripple of hair leading down like a pointer to his soft penis curled up in a nest of hair.

But then, not to experience the power of orgasm, the rush of joy as he entered her, scared her. Fear of losing him had kept her going, but the parts of her that hadn't fallen under the razor each held a piece of him.

The razor wavered in the light. She couldn't decide which piece to sacrifice to the jump calculator, her thoughts a whirl of pain, Kapardin, and raw edges.

Oh gods and goddesses, she missed him. Needed to hear his voice tell her everything was okay in his warm chocolate tone. What was left of her skin itched with longing to feel the stroke of his fingers massage their way up her spine, one slow knob at a time. She wanted to drown in his hug; their two lean bodies meshed together, his thigh against hers. She knew already how she'd say hello to him, the way that was theirs and theirs alone. Other lovers had touched him and some her. Their greeting, forehead to forehead, gazing for a moment into each other's eyes pretending they could read the love of their souls, transcended.

Shailaja made her choice.

The crowd surrounded Shailaja as she exited the port on unsteady legs. In their gasps of breath, she could see herself, reflected. Skinny, more machine than woman; grotesque with her surface raw and open, she stalked past the medics, eyes focused for Kapardin. Flashes popped as reporters took pictures. Their lights burned red dots in her vision.

The babble of their voices beleaguered her ears. She couldn't make out the words but knew what they said from the tones. Keeping her head high, she scanned the crowd. Perhaps he had already forgotten her, she thought, perhaps twenty years was too long.

He shoved through the surge of people, his coiled gray hair bobbing. The mass parted for him. She raised her head and met his blue eyes. His sagging cheeks glistened with moisture.

In his face, she could see the horror of her appearance pass over him, her skin gone and insides bare to him. Shailaja flinched and dropped her head.

Numbness filled her, surrounded her. Her breasts, her lips, her sex, all devoid of sensation, sacrificed to bring her home. Only a few inches of skin remained.

She felt the bump of his forehead against hers. Opening her eyes, she gazed back at him as he pressed against her temple. Tears streamed down his lined face and his eyes were red, the skin around them swollen and haggard.

Shailaja's shoulders sagged in relief. "You remembered," she said. Elation soared through her with the warmth of his brow.

Kapardin's forehead embraced hers. He stared into her eyes. "You're home," he said.

Calie Voorhis is a life-long fan of the fantastic. An alumnus of the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop, she is currently completing a Master's degree in Writing Popular Fiction at Seton Hill University.