When Nat couldn’t sleep, like tonight, she watched Akemi’s dreams. Akemi still had to sleep, despite her lack of a body, because apparently the human mind just wasn’t built for non-stop action. She only needed a few hours every day, but she always disconnected her output feeds when she was going to sleep, because otherwise her dreams ended up as gibberish sent to their glasses.

That gibberish had given Akemi an idea, and she’d fiddled with her settings until she could make a visual recording of her dreams. It had never been tried before with a Spo computer, because trouncers didn’t dream, and even if they did, the Spo wouldn’t have been interested.

The results had gotten increasingly clear as Akemi’s mind became used to the facility, and sometimes the dreams were almost like a movie. It was fascinating, of course, but the main reason Nat watched was to see Akemi.

She would never see her sister again, the bright-eyed, black-haired little imp of a sister that she’d left when she joined the Spo cadets. Her body had died, and Nat had seen it cut and discarded.

Akemi’s dreams, however, were a chance for Nat to see her sister again. In her dreams, Akemi was healthy, whole, and surprisingly often, happy.

As much as Nat enjoyed seeing those pleasant dreams, she also suffered through the terrifying nightmares. Those were even more addictive, however, because it was the only way to know how Akemi truly felt about the things that were happening. Akemi knew how to present a cheerful face when her whole world was falling apart. Now that she was a computer, Nat felt even more helpless to guess her sister’s true feelings.

Nat tried to sleep for over an hour before she gave up and went to the computer in the corner of her room. After nearly losing Akemi in the space station, Nat had insisted on keeping her sister’s bulky computer nearby.

She turned on the screen and put in the short cut she used to see Akemi’s dreams. Perhaps Akemi was dreaming of the explosion again. Nat had not been surprised to see that repetitive motif in the last weeks.

Akemi felt responsible for failing to notice the sabotage, even though Nat told her that it wasn’t her fault. The Spo had examined the debris in detail during the last week, and the explosives had been top quality, skillfully set, and outrageously expensive. Whoever had planned the attack had spared no expense, and that was saying something in a galaxy as wealthy as this.

Akemi was not dreaming of the sabotage, however. Nat saw a sketchy view of a beach with white sand and crystal blue water. There were faceless bathers splashing in the waves and stretched on the sand. It seemed to be a bright day, but the sun wasn’t visible in the sky. Akemi wandered along the beach, and she looked no more than ten years old. It was a childhood dream then... in fact, Nat remembered going to a beach near Tokyo when Akemi was about ten. It had been a pseudo-beach enclosed in a huge dome. It was less than half a mile from the real beach, but many people preferred the controlled waves and clean sand of the dome.

In her dream, Akemi approached the water, but it retreated from her feet. She turned and approached a group of people, but they disappeared as she got near. Akemi spun in a circle, and the whole beach was suddenly empty.

Nat pressed her hand to the screen, wishing she could comfort her. Akemi tilted her head up to the sun, and now Nat could see the shining glass panels between Akemi and the sky, just barely beyond Akemi’s fingertips as she stretched to touch it.

The real dome had been huge, but not this one. Akemi jumped and jumped, trying to touch the glass, but she couldn’t reach it. Nat could sense her growing frustration and panic, as the colors of the dream became more vibrant - the sand nearly orange and the sky blinding white. It saddened her to watch, but Nat would never turn it off.

Akemi gave up her attempt to touch the glass and instead walked toward the water. It retreated from her again. Even when she should have been knee deep and then hip deep, the water pulled away from her. When she would have been shoulder deep, she reached the wall. It looked like pale frosted glass, and there was one small hole in it. The hole had smooth edges and was about the size of an orange. Akemi tried to rip the hole wider, as if the wall was rice paper instead of glass. She didn’t succeed, but with a sudden jerk, a large shard of glass came off in her hand.

Akemi dropped it on the sand at her feet and tried to break off more glass, but she could not. Finally she picked up the shard and looked slowly from it to the jagged hole.

Nat hardly knew what to expect, but she cringed at the expression on Akemi’s face.

Then Akemi knelt and began to hack at her foot with the glass. Nat gasped as the third stroke severed the foot completely. Akemi looked pained (though not enough for the situation), but she rose and pushed the foot through the hole. Then she began to work on her other foot, and threw it through the hole as well.

Nat moaned as Akemi continued, clearly determined to get every bit of herself through the hole.

A hand on her shoulder made Nat jump so hard she cracked her elbow on the table.

“Good God,” Sam said. “What are you watching?”

Nat hit the power button and the screen faded to black.

“Was that Akemi?”

Nat nodded, but didn’t trust her voice yet. She couldn’t shake the image.

“That’s... horrific.”

Nat nodded again and she couldn’t keep the tears from overflowing. “She’s so... trapped. There’s nothing I can do, but how can she stay sane in that computer? Maybe it would’ve been better if she...”

“Better if she died?” Sam pulled her up and wrapped his arms around her. “You don’t mean that. Akemi is glad to be alive. You can’t give more weight to her dreams than her words.”

“How much weight do you have to give that... that butchery before it means something?”

“It’s disturbing, you’re right. But she’s had disturbing things happen to her. If it didn’t bleed out in her dreams she wouldn’t be human.”

“She isn’t human! Not anymore. She’s trapped in that thing,” Nat gestured to the biocomputer, “and she can’t get out!”

“Now, you can’t be sure your interpretation of that dream is right. Maybe she felt trapped by her disease and her escape through the hole is when she got put into the computer. Or maybe it’s just a crazy dream that anybody might have had.”

Nat shook her head.

“I don’t know if it’s healthy for you to watch her dreams.” He tried to lighten his voice. “You’re not a Freudian therapist, last time I checked. You can’t be sure what any of it means.”

Nat sighed. “But it probably means something, and all she’ll ever say when she’s awake is that she’s fine and have I looked at her latest research into the cluster bomb?”

“Maybe that’s really true. Maybe you should believe her.”

“I’m her sister! I don’t have to believe her.”

Sam chuckled, and Nat reluctantly did as well. “You may have a point,” Nat admitted. “But I don’t think I can stop.”

“At least stop for tonight,” Sam said. “You look exhausted.”

Nat checked the time. Four in the morning. “What are you doing up?”

“I had to go to the bathroom and I saw the light in your room.”

They were temporarily back on Earth, at the Pepperdine Academy with the other cadets. She and Sam would be leaving tomorrow for Selta, with Akemi and Shara as well.

Nat had moved back into her old room, although she’d felt strange being here without her roommate. Jia had been killed the night Nat had been kidnapped, but occasionally she still woke up and expected the other girl to be there.

Nat shivered. If she was going to get all Freudian, she should probably admit that her own life was hemmed in by too many motifs of death for her mental stability.

But that was life as an alien cadet.

“Are you cold?” Sam asked, though he was still holding her. “You really should go to bed.”

“I know, I will. Goodnight.”

Sam reluctantly let her go. “I’ll see you in a couple hours. Sleep well.”