"Parse," spits Ashil. "Oh, I have quite a few things to say about Parse."

"I'd be interested in hearing them," I say.

Ashil doesn't respond immediately. They pace around the room, obviously thinking. Finally, they stand still, antennae twitching in agitation. "Tell me... how much do you know about Parse?"

"I know some things. But I'd like to know more. That's why I've come to you."

They turn around suddenly, eyes fixed on me. "How'd you hear about them? I don't think they're very well known."

"That's true. But they do have a reputation in some circles."

"I suppose they might," Ashil mutters.

"Do you have a story to tell?" I ask. "Or would you rather just discuss Parse?"

"No, no. I have a story. It's about my brother. Waralekka. Well, kind of."

I turn on my recorder. "Whenever you're ready."

*

Waralekka. He was certainly an interesting guy. Very aloof, most of the time. Sometimes passively friendly, sometimes painfully apathetic. The one thing he liked to do was to go to Hacking Club every five days. It was an organization of about twenty people, mostly Hamalians like me, but some other species too. It was also extraordinarily sketchy. Not necessarily the hacking part—I've never had any reason to believe that they ever got up to anything seriously illegal. Well, apart from the time they all tried to program while tripping on acid. But it was mostly the attendees of the Hacking Club that I didn't trust. About half of them ran some kinds of shady businesses. Wonder where they got the acid? One of the guys is a drug dealer. That sort of stuff.

Okay, that's just some background. It'll be important later. Well, some of it. Most of it.

Anyway, the story properly starts on the crowded streets of Vega Prime. That's where Waralekka lived. Not on the streets. On Vega Prime. I was visiting. We'd met up a couple days before, but I hadn't seen him since.

Suddenly, I spotted Waralekka at the end of the street. He looked confused. I noticed smears of dirt on his clothes. He saw me a couple seconds later, and we met up at the corner of the block.

"Funny to see you here," I said.

"I need your starship," he responded.

That was not what I was expecting. "You... have a starship."

"Not anymore, I don't."

"What happened to it? What happened to you?"

"It's not important. Can I borrow yours?"

"To go where?"

"The Hacking Club is having an important off-planet meeting."

Obviously this was a weird situation. But that was one of the weirdest parts. The Hacking Club never had off-planet meetings. It just wasn't something they did.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

Waralekka looked me straight in the eyes. "Trust me."

And that wasn't something he did, either. Unnerved, I directed him away from the main street. "I parked it a couple blocks down. Not saying you can borrow it—"

He pushed past me, heading in the direction I was pointing. I quickly followed.

We got to the ship soon enough. Waralekka made to go inside, but I pulled him back.

"Where is this meeting, anyway? What planet?"

"Tarazed," he said.

"Tarazed! That's lightyears—"

"Sorry. It's a very important meeting."

I sighed. "Okay. You can go to Tarazed. One condition—I'll take you there."

Waralekka's eyebrows shot up. "Thanks, but—"

"You don't need help? You know how to get there yourself? I know. I'm just a little bit suspicious, Lekka, and I want to make sure nothing happens to my starship."

That shut him up, and he nodded silently.

Before long, we were cruising along. I'll spare you the details of the first couple hours, because they were completely silent. I piloted for a bit. Then I let Waralekka pilot, and I read in the back.

At some point, I intended on checking our progress and taking over the piloting for a little bit. But as soon as I tried to walk over to the front of the cockpit, I felt a sudden jolt of static electricity, and a shield of yellow light sprung into being in front of me. A forcefield. One of those energy walls that they put around prison cells and the like.

"Uh, Lekka? Did you make this?"

No answer. I felt the forcefield again, and got another shock. It certainly couldn't be penetrated easily. I also was completely unaware that my starship was capable of erecting a barrier like this.

"Waralekka?" I said, more slowly.

"Sorry," he replied, without looking at me.

"Did you—?"

"Yeah. Sorry."

"Why the hell—?"

"I didn't think you would notice."

I might've laughed. Instead, I walked up as close to Waralekka as the forcefield would let me. "You aren't going to Tarazed, are you?"

"Actually, I am."

"For the Hacking Club?"

"No."

I sat. "Why, then?"

Waralekka stood, walked over, and crouched down on the other side of the forcefield. His eyes bore into me in a way they'd never done before. "There are... resources on Tarazed that I desperately need. I'm going to go down to the planet. I have an autopilot set up that will bring you back to Vega as soon as I leave. The forcefield will dissolve too."

Silence. Waralekka stayed where he was, as if expecting an answer. Finally, he got up, and made to walk away, but I called back to him.

"My brother Waralekka would never do something like this."

He froze.

I'd meant it as some sort of guilt trip. I don't know. It wasn't literal. But what I didn't expect was for Waralekka to turn back to me with a perplexed face.

"How did you know I'm not Waralekka?"

Oh.

"You're not?" I breathed.

He sighed heavily. "Well. I suppose you were going to find out one way or another."

I watched him closely. He—or perhaps I should now say they—did look exactly like my brother. But now that I thought about it, their facial expressions and inflections were different from Waralekka's. "Then... who are you?"

"It's not important."

I sprang to my feet. "Not important? Just how you lost Waralekka's starship, how that wasn't important either? Or how you got so dirty? Or why you're going to Tarazed?"

"It doesn't concern you."

"If it concerns my brother, it concerns me."

"It doesn't concern your brother."

"Why? Where is he?"

They stared into my eyes again with an emotion I couldn't place. "He's dead."

Everything around me seemed to freeze. I stared at the person in front of me who was not Waralekka, unable to speak.

"I'm sorry," they said, and I do think I saw a flash of true sympathy on their face.

"Are you... are you in his body?"

"Yeah."

"How? No, don't tell me. It's not important."

They explained anyway. "I'm an AI. I can download myself into pretty much any body. It's... convenient."

"Convenient to kill a living person and take their body."

"I didn't—"

"Shut the fuck up. I don't want to talk to you."

They did indeed shut up, and said nothing more for the rest of the journey.

Again, I'll spare you the details of the trip. I had a lot of thoughts. Most of them were bad. I cried a bit. What do you expect? My brother was dead, and some robot had just come and taken his body. I found out later that he'd died in a fight with a couple of the Hacking Club members. Told you they were sketchy.

We got to Tarazed. The AI sent a comm down to the surface: "Hi, this is Parse. I'll be landing in a couple minutes. I'm in a Hamalian ship."

So their name was Parse.

I could see some mountains on the surface through the viewscreen at the front. We dove down into them, and landed in a valley.

As soon as we had touched down, Parse stood. "I've erased all the ship's internal scans and data from the last day, including the coordinates where we've landed. Hope you don't mind."

"It's fine," I murmured.

"And... I really am sorry about your brother."

I said nothing. Parse looked at me for a second, then left.

Minutes later, the autopilot engaged, and the starship blasted towards the sky. True to Parse's word, the forcefield fizzled out of existence as soon as I'd left Tarazed's orbit.

On the way home, I did some research. Parse wasn't mentioned in any official databases, or indeed anything other than personal accounts of random encounters. It was hard to find any information on them at all. But you know that, of course.

*

Ashil drifts off into a kind of contemplative state. It's clear that their story is done.

"That was... intense," I say finally.

"It was," they agree.

"I see why you don't like Parse."

They nod absentmindedly, then suddenly furrow their brow, looking at me. "You said you were doing some sort of... research?"

"I'm collecting stories."

"If you have more about Parse, I'd be interested in hearing them."

"I do have more about Parse," I tell Ashil, "but I can't share them with you. I promised my other interviewees that the only people hearing the stories would be me and a friend of mine."

They shrug. "Fair enough."