#distantfiction

Technology is his specialty. It always has been. Coming to this world, this Minecraftia, this almost backwards place--little houses built of wood and stone, animals penned in with nothing but fences, tools of wood and iron of all things; he'd never seen anything like this outside of history books before. It was all just so...quaint.

Stranded on this godforsaken planet with a crashed ship and a broken communicator, with a plasma gun and a sword whose blade was made from metal finer than this world had ever seen, he thought for a moment about just killing everything around him. Maybe everything, including himself.

Maybe he would have, if the loneliness led to insanity. He's read enough to know how it goes down. Psychotic breaks, the loss of one's conscience; it happens. He's strong, but he doesn't think he's stronger than that.

As fate would have it, he didn't have to be. He wasn't in this world for more than a day when he stumbled into the dwarf--stumbled onto him, rather, as an unfortunately hidden root sent him tumbling into a hole. Imagine the dwarf's surprise when a man--quite a tall man, and one obviously foreign at that--literally fell into his lap. It wasn't the most auspicious start to this mining adventure. But he took it in stride, holding out a hand to shake the spaceman's.

With one most at home deep underground and the other most at home lightyears away from Minecraftia's surface, you would think they wouldn't get along. But as soon as Honeydew introduced himself to Xephos, the spaceman felt the aggression and frustration about his crash melting away. He was still stranded, but he wasn't alone. For someone who had been travelling alone for weeks--months? years? time means little when you move from sun to sun--companionship meant...everything.

So with the dwarf by his side, Xephos took it upon himself to make Minecraftia home. It started by visiting the shelter Honeydew had built. It was small, built of warm wood, and lit almost entirely by the fire roaring in the hearth; Xephos could not figure out if it was comfortable or not. The warmth he enjoyed, the browns and greens of Minecraftia, but he missed the cold whites and blues of his home. He didn't know until later, when Honeydew told him, that his eyes had been glowing a bright and icy blue until he fell asleep.

He spent the next few days mining with Honeydew, helping him cut down trees and picking away at stone until his arms tired--he didn't have the dwarf's muscles, and Minecraftian tools were so heavy--but it was all terribly inefficient. It didn't take long to convince Honeydew to try out a bit of crafting. Xephos' ship wasn't going to fly him anywhere, but its parts could be recycled into new engines and furnaces. The ores most things were made out of on Xephos' home world didn't exist on Minecraftia, but similar alloys could be developed. The experiments very quickly outgrew the forest in which Honeydew had made his home; taking their materials with them, they moved to the mountainside.

They worked on and in the facility for months, expanding it into the mountain, collecting testificates and wildlife from the surrounding areas until it became the sprawling complex it is now. This is where Xephos is most at home: the walls are stark and white, the same as his ship and as the buildings of his old city. One would think the dwarf would be uncomfortable here, but his surroundings were never as important to Honeydew as the people he was with.

They were, it turned out, quite well matched after all--neither was really fussed about the fact that for all the achievements YogLabs was making, it was having an effect on the land around them that no one would call positive. They also didn't think too much about the testificates and animals that went into their research; it was all in the name of progress, after all. Besides that, Xephos and Honeydew themselves often played the role of test subjects, and they were fine. Mostly. Besides that, there was a fine stock of clones ready and waiting for respawn. Their collection had grown once the government found out what they were doing; Minecraftia had many a hero, and they were all secured in the Clone Sector at YogLabs.

Or at least, Xephos thought they were secure.

In all honesty, he should have known better, should have known that dissent would creep through the ranks at some point. It was a part of the job, on this and every world--the nature of living things does not change, not even between species and solar systems. People don't like taking orders from others.

But he'd always assumed that he would be the first target, not Honeydew. It's Xephos who makes the decisions, signs the contracts; Honeydew is the spirit of the company, its heart, not its head.

But here they stand with the body of a traitorous researcher lying cold next to the chilled body of Honeydew's master clone, both bearing matching blade marks across their chests.

It wasn't fair, it wasn't how things were supposed to be, the events of YogLabs were supposed to be under his control, this wasn't supposed to happen, this was never supposed to happen, never--

Wishes don't change reality. They don't change the past.

With the Honeydew master clone gone, there was only one choice. If Honeydew wanted to live--if he wanted any chance of coming back in case of an accident or a renegade skeleton or anything of the sort, he had to take the master clone's place. Objectively, his memories were a small price to pay for immortality.

No matter how much of an engineer Xephos was, he was not a scientist. Objectivity was never one of his skills.

It broke his heart to see Honeydew come back with no memory of their friendship, nothing but a feeling that they had known each other, perhaps in a different life. Xephos didn't know how to tell Honeydew that for him, it was this one. He led the dwarf around the facility, showing him the places where they had spent their afternoons, but he couldn't pretend that it was the same. Coming into it gradually, step by step, Honeydew had understood what they were doing at YogLabs. All at once, the technology overwhelmed the dwarf. TNT was a near miracle for this newly reborn dwarf--anything else was just too much.

No matter how hard Xephos tried, he couldn't rekindle his friendship with this Honeydew. The facility became too cold for Honeydew without it, too bright, too clean. He needed the wilderness he was used to. He needed the company he remembered.

Honeydew without his memories was not inclined to spend his time at YogLabs--he was too uncomfortable here, and Xephos too much at home. They were no longer on the same level, and they could both tell. But that is not what you tell a stranger who feels like he should be a friend when you leave him. There were pigs to be ridden and holes to be dug, Honeydew said, taking nothing but a pick--diamond, not even anything they'd developed at the facility--and some food with him as he left. He'd be back in a few days, he told Xephos, maybe weeks--you know how time flies when there's work to be done.

Cold white walls have no warmth in them with no one by your side.

There were other people at YogLabs, but Xephos knew and had always known that Honeydew was the only one that mattered. Without his friend, Xephos had nothing. The facility might as well be empty.

Without Honeydew, there seemed to be no point to YogLabs, no point at all. Loneliness crept back into him, for the first time since he'd landed on Minecraftia, and with it came the urge to clear the area around him. But he knew he couldn't do that, not here, not with the master clones so close.

The master clones, they were the cause of all this. They weren't well enough protected. If they managed to get past the doors, anyone could just break in and--

And.

Xephos stood before his master clone before he even realized what he was doing. He looked peaceful, that clone; he wondered if he couldn't sense how close his friend was. That was something he didn't have in common with his clone, not yet.

But he could.

It would only take a moment.

He was sad to disturb the peace of his sleeping clone, but it was the only chance he had.

His eyes glowed blue in the reflection of the ice water that poured from the clone chamber, but he barely noticed it. He had a heart that both was and was not his own to stop, he had a life to begin again.

Xephos stepped inside his master clone's tube, casting aside the old clone--now it too had a sword wound to match the others who had died in this room--and took a deep breath before speaking the command that would seal him inside and generate a new Xephos somewhere inside the facility, one who wouldn't know what had happened in YogLabs, one who would befriend Honeydew the way they had the first time--out in the wilds of Minecraftia, with no space technology, no knowledge of clones and explosives and corporate betrayal.

As the seal clicked in place, Xephos turned to his left. He had just enough time to focus on the fiery red hair in the pod next to him before the ice froze over.

He watches his boyfriend's face as he tries to pick out the right note in the harmony (it's impossible; the layers meld together too well, but he likes to pretend he's got it figured out). He already knows how much singing means to him, and even if he didn't, it's written all over his face. There's a light there, a spark in his eyes, a radiant glow that could light a room; this is where he is most at home.

There's only one other time he's seen that look: with moonlight filtering in through the open window to spill onto white sheets, the only shadow on his face coming from the hand stroking his cheek. The memory smiles and leans in to kiss him, skin warm against skin.

He can't join the chorus, but that doesn't really matter, not in the long run. Because what he can do is hold his boyfriend's hand, make his boyfriend laugh, fit his body into the curves and spaces of his boyfriend's.