When Friday came about, Andrew wished he had asked for more time off. His report was still in shambles, written with the grace of a fledgling science project. He hadn't much time or energy to concentrate, let alone form strong conclusions. When he saw Sino in Maya's office, he realized this was but a trivial concern.

"Well, that explains why you weren't open today!" Andrew said to Sino. 

"Hello, Andrew! Maya stopped by last night and requested my presence here. It seems that you all need my help." 

"Really? Why is that... Oh no... " Andrew knew that Maya would not normally turn to the unethical, but she hadn't been herself since that meeting with Rinpoche. Just the day before, she had paid him a visit in the evening. Priya had returned to her apartment in the Second Residential District, so he was all alone, watching a documentary about dinosaurs and wondering if he had been a dinosaur. His existential worries weren't about to end there, for Maya had sprung a question that had kept him up all night.

"If God were real, is there even a purpose to what we're doing?"

"Go home, Maya!" he had shouted at her. His mind was already full of thoughts about that night with Priya, and he was in no mind to fill it in with anything else other than dinosaurs. But it was too late, and counting dinosaurs had not helped.

"Where is she?" Andrew asked Sino, slightly panicking.

"She stepped out to use the bathroom. What's wrong?"

"Sino," said Andrew, placing his hands on the droid's metallic shoulders. "Get out of here before she comes... "

The door swung open as Maya walked in, wearing her usual sweat pants and blazer business. She saw Andrew with his hands still on Sino's shoulders, and pointed to the empty chair by the desk. Andrew was going to have to talk this out.

"I know what you're trying to do, Maya," he said as he half-fell into the chair. "And I'm not gonna let you. Sino's my friend!"

"Oh really," she smiled her usual haughty smile, taking her seat at her desk. "And what is it that you think I want to do?"

"You're gonna give Sino a cloned soul, because he's a droid and therefore a perfect test subject."

Maya nodded slowly. 

"You're correct so far, care to go on?"

"What?" Andrew felt a mix of confusion and dread.

"We're planning to give you a cloned soul," she said, addressing Sino. "And then we're going to see if we can find a way to destroy it."

Sino sat motionless throughout the whole conversation. The two humans in the room thought for a moment that he had deactivated from shock.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand what's happening," came Sino's almost monotone voice. 

"Woah!" Andrew interrupted. "Hold on. That sounds a lot worse."

"Andrew, would you just shut up and let me explain!" Maya shouted. She had never raised her voice at him before. Andrew shrunk back into his chair, shuddering slightly. Sino continued to look like a robot. 

"Now," she continued after calming herself. "I never said we were going to do the full process of soul cloning. We're just going to give Sino an empty soul, skip that God part altogether. It should be fine."

There was silence in the room before Andrew began speaking again, meekly this time.

"Why Sino then? Why not me, or some other droid?" he asked.

"There are obviously risks in a procedure we don't fully understand. Sino was chosen for two reasons. The droid part you know already; if anything happens we can just copy his consciousness into a new body. The second reason is because Sino is the most intelligent droid we know of, from the Sun Dancer organization itself! We'll be able to derive the effects on other, more organic intelligences based on what happens to him." 

Andrew sat back up straight, his eyes and brows now brimming with anger.

"Are you done? Ok, first off, yes, we can copy Sino's consciousness, but his old self still dies. This Sino right here isn't the same Sino I fought in the war with. Yes, I see him as such, and he has all the same memories and personality, but he is still a copy."

"Hey... erm... I'm right here," Sino tried to interject, slowly raising a claw hand.

"Second, even if we synthesize the soul right, what's the point if we don't give it life? Popping a floating balloon is very different from popping one that's lying helplessly on the ground!"

"Exactly! It'll be easier to pop a floating one," said Maya. "Which means if we can pop this one, we can pop anything."

"We don't know how far this balloon analogy goes!" it was now Andrew's turn to raise his voice. "Come on, Maya. I know you to be more careful than this!" 

"I'll do it!" Sino's voice reverberated through the room, causing both Maya and Andrew to jump in their seats. 

"I don't know what the heck is going on, but you said something about soul cloning. This sounds like it'll help Andrew, so I'll do it."

There was yet more silence save for the mechanical whirring of Sino's photoreceptor head, swinging its gaze between the two humans. Even Maya showed some semblance of concern.

"Sino. I think you should at least hear how soul cloning works," she said.

"Is it classified?" asked the droid.

"Well, yes... " 

"Then I don't need to know. Just call me when you need me." 

Sino began making his way to the door.

"Wait, Sino!" Andrew got up from his chair. "We don't know if it'll actually help me." 

"As long as there's a chance. I'll do it." 

***

The door closed behind Sino, leaving Maya alone in the room with a livid Andrew.

"There's no way I'm going to let this happen!" 

He walked to the edge of Maya's desk, leaning over and looking her straight in the eye. She glanced upwards, pupils trained on his accusing gaze.

"There's no way I'm letting you or the CMC sacrifice my friend! He fought against the Lemurians, by my side! He gave his life so that humanity could survive! This is how you all repay him?"

Maya was not bothered by his tone. She had expected this, any reasonable person would. She pointed towards the chair, but Andrew would not back down. 

"I have not yet spoken to Hooke," she said. "This may not happen. I just wanted to see what Sino thought about it."

With that, Andrew's frame relaxed a little. He was still standing, but his glare had softened.

"Well, in that case, he needs to be properly informed. I won't accept helping me as a reason."

"How about helping humanity? You said it yourself, Sino has fought for us before."

Andrew's frown grew deeper.

"Are we having this conversation again? Are you still not convinced that we cannot have such a weapon? Aren't the possession guards enough? We've driven them off once, we can do it again."

"Can we? Do you think they'll come back with the same strength they had before?"

Andrew fell silent, unsure of what to say. He sat back down in the chair, burying his face in his palms.

"Look," said Maya, now the one standing. "This is more than just trying to make a terrifying weapon. Take a look at this."

She handed Andrew a stack of papers with hand-written equations scribbled at random angles and positions. She was not one for tidiness, especially not while working late.

"What is this?" he asked after staring at the symbols a little longer than he cared to.

"Does it not look familiar? That's the formulation for the possession guards."

"You weren't very consistent with your notations. Never mind, what were you trying to do?"

Maya grabbed a spare chair from the corner of the room. She dragged it over to where Sino had been standing, planting herself on it and leaned back, a tired look on her face.

"I can't figure it out," she said softly, just enough for Andrew to hear. "I've tried to find ways to change the equations, flip around the Lagrangian and do whatever transformations I could dream of, but I just can't alter its fundamental form."

"What are you talking about?" Andrew's initial anger was gone, leaving only bewilderment at his advisor's perplexity.

"I can't figure out how to turn the possession guards into an offensive weapon. It just doesn't make any sense!"

Andrew returned his attention to the stack of papers. He looked through the scribbles and scratches, checking for missing minus signs and misplaced exponents. It took some effort, but he confirmed that his supervisor was right.

"How's that possible? The Lemurians clearly have offensive reincarnation weaponry. And didn't you derive the possession guards from those?"

"I did," Maya replied. "Think about it this way. If I know what the sword looks like, how its used, I can design the appropriate shield. It's actually fairly simple. In fact, I can re-invent the basic design of the sword, but what I can't figure out is what swings the sword, what makes it move in for the strike. At most I can make a sword that just sits uselessly on the ground!"

Andrew did not miss the similarities. 

"Are you saying that the missing link... is God?"

"I don't know," Maya said, shaking her head. "God, Gods, some Eldritch horror or some new fundamental particle, I don't know. I just know that it's not the soul doing the swinging. Those things are actually pretty helpless. In order for the Lemurians' technologies to work, some new physics, or metaphysics, has to be invoked."

The light from outside the window began to dim. Rain had been scheduled for that time, and the synthetic clouds from the water processing plant had begun to gather en masse. The two sat in the encroaching darkness, not unlike the time in Maya's apartment.

"I take it you have not spoken to Rinpoche?" Andrew asked.

"No, but he's definitely hiding something from us. I doubt he means us harm, but he clearly doesn't want us to know everything. Considering that he only told us about the soul cloning technique a few days ago, I think there's something bigger at play here."

"So that's why you showed up at my door and threw philosophy at me. Wait, do you think this goes further?"

"Much further," said Maya. "What guides the balloon to its next target? What ties and unbinds it from life in our physical plane?"

"How does a Lemurian soul home in on a possession target... "

The hail of rain fell hard on the windows, shaking the room's molecules with their hammer-like onslaught. Andrew stared open-mouthed at his advisor, terror-stricken by his own revelation.

"We need to speak to Hooke, immediately!"

***

Compared to the top three levels, the Second Residential District, or 2RD, wasn't much to brag about. It was about half the area of 1RD, with less greenery and colors in general. The apartments here were about three-quarters the size of those in 1RD, and the only retail around were small convenience stalls that sold snacks. Located fifty meters below the floor of the Business District, with a ceiling of about thirty meters, it was clearly built as an afterthought. When the CMC realized that they were going to be here for a while, they had to make plans for residents not working in the Sacred Circle. 

The dwellers of 2RD, however, were by no means impoverished. They lived comfortable lives and were only relegated to this level since they didn't meet the qualifications to stay up top. Priya had found this to be unfair. She worked for the Mole, the massive underground rail network that connected the remains of civillization in the Great Lakes Region. If humanity were to return to the surface, it would take the coordinated efforts of every subterranean town, city and village. That makes the Mole a very important part of the recovery! Furthermore, she was senior engineer, in charge of making sure things don't explode unless it's absolutely necessary. It didn't seem right that she was stuck so deep down beneath the ground when her soulless boyfriend got to live the good life. Her colleagues at work were constantly badgering her for news on Andrew's latest discoveries, something she really did not appreciate.

"Maybe if we reincarnate like the Lemurians do, I'll become a cat. Then I can be the loveable asshole I know I'm meant to be," her boss had said, half-jokingly. She was glad he knew that people were less forgiving to other humans.

"Lost his soul... seriously... " she muttered aloud as she wiped down her couch. Dust accumulates as dust does, and having been away for more than a week, she had quite a bit of work to do. It was a fairly mindless task, which freed her up for thoughts on Andrew's farcical reveal. She had listened, she had kept silent, but she did not buy. That afternoon, she had swallowed her pride and stood in the cold chambers of the fusion-scope, thinking that it would help bring them closer. She did not expect Andrew to repay that by taking yet another swipe at her world view. She left the next morning, a day earlier than she had planned.

There was a knock on the door just as she had begun to work on the coffee table. It was Sino, box of treats in hand.

"I got the cheesecakes you asked for, can I come in?" he said.

"Sure! Thanks for coming. Sorry, I'm not quite done cleaning yet," she said with her mask still on.

"I'm sure it's fine. I'm a droid after all."

Sino placed the box on the dining table as Priya handed him a mix of old Canadian and American dollars. 

"Don't worry about it," he said. "Consider this my treat."

"You sure? I don't patronize your cafe as much as Andrew does." 

"Exactly, I'm advertising."

Priya had not known Sino for long. They first met at the mixer a year ago, and only got to know him better by dating his most loyal customer. To her, Sino's face always had that humorless, mechanical distance. 

"Erm... ok... " she said, unsure of how to respond. Sino was quick to pick up on the cue.

"I'm sorry, sometimes I forget that I'm not myself anymore," he said. Priya could not sense the sheepishness in his voice. She however, was not guiltless, for she had taken out two plates.

"Oh... right... I'm sorry too," she said, hastily returning one to the kitchen. She had always wondered how he could make such sugary wonders when he couldn't even taste his own creations. She had worked with intelligent droids before the invasion, but none were as peculiar as Sino. When she asked him about it, he would only say that he might have been a chef in a past life. She didn't know it was a joke at first.  

"I take it you want to talk about Andrew?" said Sino, taking a spot by the table.

"Yes, and I'm sorry for calling you out of the blue like that. It's just that, you fought alongside him during the war and you know all the crazy stuff that's happened to him. I just don't think I'm ready to talk to him about it just yet. I mean, I don't know what new surprises he's gonna spring on me."

"So you want me to tell you everything that I know?"

"Well, sort of. I just feel like I don't understand anything about the man I've been dating for a year. It just feels like we're growing apart and when I try to fix it, something else happens and I'm back to square one!"

For a moment, the only sound to come out from Sino was the mechanical whirring of his head and the clicking of his photoreceptors. He moved slightly towards Priya, motioning to her an invite to try some of the cake. 

"Well, Andrew is a good guy, that I know for sure," he said. "We met when he was conscripted, having just been pulled out of grad school. I remember he was a little excited at first. He told me that he was having a lot of trouble in grad school, and now he had the chance to save the world. That was before things got really bad though. We didn't know about the Lemurians' reincarnation technology then, and for a good amount of time they were mostly rampaging around in the US."

"I think he did tell me about his grad school troubles. Four years in and no results?"

"Yes, something like that. He might have been one of the happier conscripts. Other people were pulled from stable jobs and loving families. I think he picked me to be a friend because I was the only one who would listen to him. He was saying things like 'now everyone knows what suffering's like', which of course did not sit well with many people. But, he did grow, albeit not under the best circumstances."

"I think he briefly mentioned having to shoot some of his friends." 

Priya had just placed a slice of cake on her plate, but had yet to work on it. She dug her fork in when she realized Sino's large eyes were fixed on it. 

"He did," Sino said, hastily looking away. "I saw him gun down Lawrence Koh, his childhood friend. They had grown apart by then, but I knew Andrew took no pleasure."

Priya found it a little awkward that she was the only one eating through such a heavy topic. She left the table to prepare some tea, hoping to hide her discomfort from Sino.

"And what about the whole incident on the ridge, the final battle against the Alien Mother? You were there right?"

"Did Andrew tell you about that? We've never really talked about it much."

Priya returned with a steaming cup of tea. She pushed it towards Sino, a force of habit, before taking it back and apologizing again.

"He told me everything. The whole situation about him losing his soul, about you losing your old body."

There was more mechanical whirring from Sino, his eyes now back on Priya's unfinished cake. 

"What then is there to say?"

"I guess... I just want to understand. I mean... you... technically died! Are you not a reincarnation? I understand that you don't have a soul either."

Priya immediately took a bite out of the cake, yet another apology for the night. She had worked on intelligent droids before the invasion, but none had really thought much about their mortality. She thought she might have crossed a line, but fortunately for her, all Sino did was shake his eyes.

"It's not the same thing. I am a copy of the old Sino's consciousness and memories in a different body, I'm not the same robot that fought by Andrew's side. He does treat me as though I am, but technically, I'm not."

"So what's the difference?"

"There's no continuity for me. When I die, my 'self-awareness' terminates. I will cease to exist, completely. You can duplicate my consciousness and memories right now and put it in another body, that Sino will be a different Sino. Everything that makes me who I am is hardware. The soul is like software which I do not have, metaphorically speaking of course."

"And neither does Andy?"

"No, neither does Andrew. In a sense, he and I are basically the same."

Priya placed her fork down and cupped her fists to her forehead, trying to digest the thought. A robot boyfriend! All this while! 

"You know, Andy doesn't seem to be that concerned about dying. I've seen him pick fights with people once in a while. I would think that he'd try to stay out of such situations as much as he can."

"I know," said Sino. "I had to stop him from killing those SoR kids a while back. I don't think he thinks too much about it, at least not more than is necessary. He's the type to hold back his emotions, so when he pops, he really pops."

The sky outside was a musky dark, a lower quality dusk than the ones in 1RD. Priya glanced at the clock on the far wall, then back at the cakes in the box.

"You know, I really don't know if I can take this for free. Would you at least accept a fifty percent discount?"

"Sure, if that makes you feel better."

Just as Priya was handing the money over, she caught sight of the scratches on Sino's arms. It was so inconsequential to him that he had not bothered to patch it up. She wondered if part of her skepticism towards reincarnation had something to do with the hateful, nihilistic School of Reincarnation, and how she had often mistaken them for the Center for Reincarnation Studies before she met Andrew. She realized her world was never going back to how it was, and she was only going to have more frightful facts thrown at her. Andrew may have been the catalyst, but she knew that she was going to have to face it eventually. 

"Thank you for sharing, Sino. I suppose I can try having an open mind, even if he is a ro... " she gasped when she realized what she was about to say.

"Don't worry about it," said Sino as he waved a hand. "I might ask you for a free Sun Dancer checkup soon."

***

Next: Inevitable Return, to be published 5th September before 12 noon, Singapore Time.

Interlude to be released on 2nd September