His dreams-that-are-not dreams are troubled tonight.

He is sleeping and he is safe, and the memory this night which pretends to be REM is also safe. It is better than entertainment with another's past.

Because this is a not-dream, all the Family is alive. His two sisters and his brother are alive. They are all together. They are all restored.

They have not been together for years, but this is a not-dream and even in knowing better he can pretend that then is now. The more he sees, the more he knows that there is so very little difference between the two. The more he sees, the more he cannot stop seeing.

It is a birthday for them all so it is the day to see genesis.

The tags gleam in the florescent lights.

The ten of them have assembled after being packaged away in the morning, dressed in clothes that they know are what children wear. They swathed themselves in smiles for the people who claimed them. Illusions, yes, but so were they to the strangers who thought they still bore right to the ones they had given names to. So long ago. Their necks were cold from being bare. When they came back, the warmth of the collars was a balm.

Under the lights, the ten of them sit. They are not supposed to be past the locks which guard the computers from exactly what they are here to do. They are not supposed to be a lot of things.

Nine is the last to enter. She keeps one eye on the door, knowing without being told that the one closest keeps watch. Bags rustle as two of them smuggle them out from their sleeves to share their treats with the family who had none. It smells like honey and chemicals.

Nine is also the one who speaks first. "It is a waste every year."

"Did everyone without get put together?" The child is five, who asks. She has grubby fingers that don't obey with a grown agility when they push back at her hair. There are ribbons tied at her temples by the woman who thinks herself her mother. The only uncertainty in Four's words is from a stricture, sounding sure in the thin voice of a child. They understand her. What actual words she uses means little.

The tow-headed boy sits and smirks. "Tell us, Nine. Yours were killed by the enemy when they weren't good enough to fool them. Were you put somewhere special because of that?"

He picks the fight because he was without too. They know. "Go away." Nine snarls. Only that, lacking bitterness but promising the end of that right there. And he does, hair turning black, eyes turning brown, and then he is gone.

"At least your parents are *dead*," spits Two. She gets to her feet. There is too much burning inside her to sit. "I couldn't stand it! Being called the name of a *dead girl.* Having to pretend to be some brat that I killed!" The girl stamps her foot, slams her hands upon the ground flat in a frustration that knew it could not risk breaking the knuckles. "Wearing this *skin* and smiling to those people!" Her face screws up in disgust that knows itself as hatred. "They tried to... hug me and give me a doll!"

"You do look nine," Seven reminded patiently from where he sprawled over a chair, posture too relaxed for the cant of his eyes, which are too old in a face too young. He sports a ball under his leg. Little boys are supposed to like sports, aren't they? Exactly why he gives it up to the sister who makes a grab for it.

Two bares her teeth, primal. "It's disgusting! I... I'm going to *murder* something," she howls at last, pushes her way out. She heads for the sim chambers. She will work off the anger from the things she cannot understand in training that is approved.

They all watch her. And as one, they turn back to the group. Questioning.

"This body's parents didn't care." Answer? Five smiles carelessly, with the distance in her that will turn her into a master when she is older, the pure rationalization that is her stamp. She will grow up some day and be beautiful but for now she is seven. "I will go."

And they understand, for they all understand; they cannot help but understand. "Don't let her hurt herself." Directed to her and to her and to them. It's understood. Three's words come because he is the one who can say them, before he knows he is speaking, before he recognizes if it is his will or group will. Even at eight he is already their leader. Not by virtue of age, for One and Two were older. Naturally.

Becase tomorrow is more practice. That's the explanation Sol wants them to use. It isn't their luxury to decide if they can show up in damaged status or not.

Because it is a not-dream he cannot change the memory.

Ten finds the chair he can use to stand on. The control panels are built for adults, not for children whose fingers are still too small to fit a keyboard. Ten. The first to break. Who had stepped off the edge one day and let herself fall into the force field so far down.

Her hair flew back like feathers. She turned to him and laughed. And she fell like the last dying star over a world gone cold with ice.

He stands on the chair while Ten smiles. Nine steadies him.

Eight turns her four-year-old face up from holding the chair leg firmly, a smudge on her cheek from the chocolates she had begged from her own parents who thought she was innocent enough to believe that candy could solve all. This is her, the real her, this smile bright and shining and unbloodied, not with her teeth smashed apart and her skull cracked open on the floor to spill out in a mess that had none of her brilliant glory. This is Eight and this is a not-dream and he knows she will go when he ends it.

This is her, not the broken lump of splintered bones after she had stepped off the top of the highest building she could find.

Trying to fly without wings to carry her.

And Seven, who rocks back and forth in his seat and holds Six in his lap while she buries her head in his arm and stays in drowsiness in the hope that it will block out the day. This time had been especially hard for the both of them, who had not known how to be children enough to make two pairs of parents happy.

All three gone. Lost.

Not that that had stopped Sol from trying to bring them all back to life in Four.

Nine hisses something because without Two someone must be angry in this room. Today, it is Nine. And today is the past and he knows when he wakes that Nine will be far away from him once more. Forced slumber. He wonders if she can dream. He wonders if she dreams of tonight.

And Six breaks out in tears just then. Too gentle for her own good.

The one who everyone watched and wondered if she would be the fourth to go. Another mark on the failures list that they were to consider only facts.

Give me Technology, he thinks. Fiercely thrown to his brother-who-is-not, demanded. Give it over. And the codes rise to his hands as information pours in and the locks open. His not-brother is laughing in delight that computers will obey. He remembers this for later.

He had been one without, but he is always watched closely on the birth days. Why? And it is not him who wants to know, it is another; or if it is another, it is him. The need for knowledge is there. So. It must be filled. He cannot reach all the keys, so Ten is kind and hits the ones too far away. They type together.

None of the basic information matters to them. They know enough about what is being done that there is no need to stop and stare in horror. Not that they could have that, for there is none of that for them anymore, not these children-who-are-not. They write stories instead of lives and do not need to read more. No. What they want is very, very specific. They will cut through it all to find it.

The data yields before the searchers. The screens shine up like an orchastra in unison on the downstrokes of bows across violins. There. There it is.

"Three..."

And he is staring at the words. He does not look at the picture of the boy-who-is-dead for assurance that he is at the right file. A single number is his name and that is all the identity gifted. Mother? Deceased. The maiden name means nothing, and if there was family he was heir to, it is ignored. He is staring.

"Your father..."

The whispers collect and he feels the noise and hates it but it is nothing to the noise inside.

"Your..."

He must take this as truth. And his voice is the distillation of the group voice, the conclusion that only he can say, and must say, aloud for them all to hear.

"...my father was the one who killed us."




He wakes then, from the dream that is-not, to the world that is-not. The noise of the morning technicians bantering and drinking coffee two floors above is enough to bring him out of sleep. The noise of little things, of breakfasts that care nothing for what they might mean, footsteps that think their only impact is the floor. The noise rippling out of cause and effect. Of butterfly wings.

Little things, but they meant the world. He wakes then. He wakes shivering.