That One Guy's Ship

Jack had never appreciated just how comfortable a warm bed could be, even a low quality motel bed. He hugged the blankets and settled his head into a pillow and nearly fell asleep on the spot. It easily beat out sleeping on the streets while on the run.

Apparently his travel companion didn’t care as much. Instead he sat on the foot of his own bed, nose (or apparently lack of it) buried into one of his books. Jack took a look in one of them but found it too difficult to comprehend, as they had come from a mad scientist. But Denzia had no problem whatsoever, save a few words he needed clarification on. The thing seemingly had an understanding of language from the get-go, but reading had to be learned. Inhumanely quickly, apparently.

“Hey Jack,” Denzia said, still looking at his book.

“Yeah?”

“I think you’re going to leave me soon.”

“Why’s that?”

“Says here that humans and other beings of nature instinctually reject my kind. Staying with someone for too long will cause them to grow fearful or enraged.”

Jack grunted. “I’ve made a lot of really powerful enemies in the past few days. I’ll take any friend I can take right now. Even if he’s some Look-See looking freak of nature.”

He looked up to see Denzia shoot him a glance, and for a second Jack could see the real him. A horrid, fleshy corpse with mouth pulled back, teeth sharpened like spikes, fingers overly long and clawed, and that’s only what poked out of his stolen clothing. The mad scientist who created him was certainly creative, in a way.

It sent shivers down his spine every time he caught a glimpse. But despite it, Jack almost felt pity for the thing. He was so horrible-looking past whatever magic gave him some semblance of normalty, Jack figured he’d always be alone. And right now, he could seriously empathize with that.

Also Denzia was way smarter than him, and was far more likely to figure out how to get the Technocracy off his back. Figuring out how to earn money before the mad scientist’s wallet ran out would be nice too.

“Here,” Jack continued, noticing that Denzia didn’t seem to be convinced. “Look, I’m not completely human either.” He waved his bionic arm in the air. “So like, we got that in common.”

“Just because you have an arm replaced doesn’t make you not-human.”

“Oh yeah? What about… you know, that one guy’s ship?”

Denzia’s confused stare informed Jack that he needed to explain.

“Ok, so there’s this one guy. He’s like, important and stuff. And he has this ship. So every day he replaces one plank of his ship with a new one. And then, he realizes one day that his ship is now made up of completely new wood. So, is it his ship?”

Denzia tilted his head like a dog would. “Yes?”

“Ok new example. What if you replaced all my organs one at a time with bionic ones? Am I still me? At what point am I not me?”

Denzia opened his mouth as if to speak, but then stopped and considered it for a moment. He hummed to himself and scratched his chin.

Ha, Jack finally did something smart. In a way.