Chapter 8

Translated by SkyTL Edited by SkyTL

Chapter 8: Imitation

Lacey and I looked at each other in silence, unable to speak.

The fruitcake on the table is chilled, while the synthetic tea is still hot and steaming.

When Riza showed me the list of Simulants, the first thing I noticed was the girl in front of me. How could I not have noticed Miss Whitford?

But the Miss Whitford I know is supposed to be a real person. I was told she was the subject of a cryosleep experiment in Astoria.

At least that’s what I’ve been told all my life.

Then who is this girl?

Who is this girl who looks exactly like Miss Whitford, talks exactly like Miss Whitford, remembers the video letters she exchanged with me and is not human?

Lacey looks at me, her face slightly uncomfortable.

I take a quick breath, exhale, and smile, trying to change the air somehow.

“Um, let’s eat first. I’ve always wanted to have dinner with you.”

“But I’m…”

“It’s okay, we shouldn’t worry about that now, we’ll do it all later. I just asked Riza to make them for me.”

“…Yes.”

She nodded modestly.

The fruitcakes are cut ahead of time for me and Lacey to eat easily.

Lacey stares at my hand. I wonder if she doesn’t know how to eat.

“There are only two of us, so you can eat whatever you want.”

I cut a bite off my tart with my fork and put it in my mouth.

The slightly overwhelming sweetness is oddly balanced by the complex acidity. The flavor is slightly weaker than real sponge cake dough, and although harder, it crumbles in the mouth. Most remarkably, the texture is really like real fruit both in the mouth and on the tongue.

Yuri, the man who developed the recipe for this tart, is a passionate lover of physically reproducing texture, and he even claims that you can fool people with sweeteners and flavors if the texture is perfect. This cake, however, is a rare example of Yuri’s uncompromising approach to flavor.

Lacey follows my lead and pops a cheese-flavored blackberry into her mouth.

“Wow …”

The girl’s expression softens with a small exclamation.

Good, I think she liked it. This tart is a more complicated process than an apple pie. Riza baked it without complaint, but the truth is that it’s not so easy to make that you can eat as many of them as you want every day.

I had to make a bit of an effort to fulfill my decades-old wish to enjoy a little tea time with her over earthly sweets.

“Delicious, isn’t it?”

“Yes, very…”

The way she eats is very careful. She eats each bite with care. Charlotte did the same thing yesterday.

Lacey is the type of girl who expresses her emotions with restraint, but only when she eats does her facial expression visibly change. Maybe it wasn’t just because of the bad eating environment, but also because she didn’t have much entertainment other than eating.

She sips her mango – or something like that – and sighs a little enviously, and I ask her further.

“There’s a small room at the food factory in Eos, I can make you breakfast tomorrow if you want.”

“Are you sure?”

Lacey leaned forward and looked up, stiffening for a few seconds before slipping back into her position, slightly flushed.

The fact that she, who gave me the impression of being polite, calm, and even expressionless, looked down at the floor with an embarrassed expression on her face amused me strangely.

“Yeah, let’s do that. And for Charlotte, of course.”

“…Yes.”

Then, wordlessly, we delved into the task of eating the fruitcake in front of us.

It wasn’t exactly the chatty teatime I was expecting, but watching Lacey’s face light up was a happy time for me.

Then the last piece disappeared into Lacey’s mouth.

As she enjoyed it, she inhaled slowly.

“…Thank you so much, Lyle-sama. Now I know why Charlotte was in such a good mood when she came back yesterday.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

…Actually, it’s not the same as the one I served Charlotte, but I guess I don’t need to tell her that.

I poured some synthetic tea into her empty teacup and turned back to her.

“Can you tell me what’s going on here? Are you the Miss Whitford I know and love?”

“She’s…”

In response to my question, Lacey stuttered as she tried to say something. She looked confused and worried.

For a brief moment, the thought occurred to me that I could use the second principle to command her to speak, but I quickly dismissed the thought.

In other words, I expected an answer that she, a real person, had somehow survived her demise and was now standing in front of me, so I wanted to put out of my mind the three principles that a real person would not have understood anyway.

However, I already suspected a bad answer after what she had just said.

“She is …”

While I’m still thinking about it, Lacey looks up at me as if she’s already made up her mind.

“She, the original Lacey Whitford, no longer exists. I am merely a substitute created to take over her experiments in place of the original.”

“Her… Substitute.”

“Endurance experiments in prolonged cryosleep. Plus the psychological effects of the combination of cryosleep and ultra-long-range communication and the communication experiment with Lyle-sama.”

I check her words in my head.

I see. Substitute.

And I wanted to laugh at my own stupidity. I wanted to laugh and laugh and pretend it was all a joke.

In other words, Miss Whitford was already dead, and the Lacey in front of me was an imposter who had probably been replaced by her since the last video letter or even earlier, and I didn’t even know it.

I’m a fool, after all.

What had I seen of her? To me, Miss Whitford was such a person that I would not have noticed if she had been replaced by an impostor.

It must have been easy to deceive such a fool. Apparently, the human palate is easily fooled by sweeteners and flavors, as long as the texture is perfectly rendered.

Despite these self-ironies, I maintained a reasonable amount of composure, probably because I was always reasonably aware of it. And also because the girl in front of me, who looked exactly like Miss Whitford, was staring at me.

I smiled bitterly and continued with my question.

“How long have you been switched? It’s funny, isn’t it? I didn’t even realize it.”

“I’ve been substituted twice. I accepted Ira’s suggestion so as not to hurt Lyle-sama. But I think it was a false shift of the problem.”

“…Not really, because if I had known that at the time of the accident, I wouldn’t have wanted to survive.”

I shake my head and make fun of myself.

I think I guessed it when Riza showed me the picture the day before yesterday. Even now, the first thing that comes to mind is that I knew. I’m sure I put off interviewing Lacey until today because I just didn’t want to face the issue.

Ira and Lacey’s decision was the right one if only to avoid hurting me. If I had known then that Miss Whitford was already dead, I would have died first, because I lacked the will to live.

But if it had been someone else, like Fred or Marina, then it would have been better than me surviving.

I wonder how I survived. The fact that my friends trusted me with everything seems like a terrible inconvenience. If they had decided to deceive me in the first place, they should have done so to the end when I left Astoria.

I sighed heavily. This is not a good state of mind. I need some kind of closure.

“Hey, Lacey. Can you please take me to Miss Whitford’s grave tomorrow?”

“Lyle-sama, I’m afraid we weren’t able to recover her body. There are very few places on this ship that Ira has control over. We don’t know exactly where or when the occupants died.”

“…Wait a minute. Then it’s possible that there are survivors outside the area controlled by Ira…”

“The ship’s environmental maintenance systems have been out of service for more than twenty years.”

My subtle expectation or lack thereof was flatly rejected.

Because the civil war between the inhabitants had damaged the hull of the ship and the environmental maintenance systems, the ship was no longer in a survivable condition for humans, according to Lacey. All compartments had run out of air, and the resource recovery system had shut down.

There was no room for humans on the ship for about twenty years before Ira was able to repair some of the damage. There are many areas of the ship that Ira can’t see because communications are down, but the power grid is also down, so survival there is even more hopeless.

There is a good reason why Ira, whose highest principles require him to give top priority to protecting people, has given up and believes the human race to be extinct.

“Lyle-sama, there is a cenotaph for the victims in the Simulant settlement. If you want, I can take you there.”

“Yes, I would like to meet… Other Simulants and I will see them tomorrow.”

It’s hard to make eye contact with Lacey.

She looks the same. Her voice is the same. But the girl I saw in the video letter and the girl standing in front of me, upon closer inspection, had a completely different vibe. Miss Whitford was a quiet and reserved girl, but she was much more strong-willed than she looked. At least that was my perception of her.

The Lacey who stands before me is different. She is humble and obedient. She has no sense of her own will. The only time she shows emotion is at dinner. In the video letter, she even went out of her way to imitate Miss Whitford for me. That was a great performance. And for me, it’s a shame I didn’t notice.

But it’s not her fault.

“…I’m sorry, I’m just tired of everything that’s happened. I think I better call it a night.”

Finally, I couldn’t continue the conversation for some reason, and I said it without looking Lacey in the eye.

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