The immigration officer puts down his pen, takes off his spectacles, and presses unhappily at the inner corner of his eyes in a presumable effort to relieve whatever kind of headache he has.
“Explain this to me again,” he says dolefully.
“I’m seeking asylum,” says the Imperial mech pilot, sitting bolt upright and coolly confident in the interviewee chair. Her overwrought Imperial mil-chic uniform is all anachronism, self-aggrandisement, brass buttons, and long, long leather boots. “I’m a conscientious defector.”
“Right,” the immigration officer says. “You’re—” he consults his written notes, and the subtle contextual popups in his retinas. “Mistraal Vanderplaatz. Marquise Mistraal Venderplaatz. Mech ace apparently renowned under the epithet The Bloody Marquise.”
“Yes, I’m Mistraal Vanderplaatz,” the mech pilot says.
“And this is your wife—”
“No,” the woman seated to the mech pilot’s left says firmly, “you’re not paying attention.” She’s wearing a severely-cut dress, winter-weight. The climate here is too hot for it; she must be uncomfortable. Nothing of that shows on her face. “That’s not correct. The Old Country recognises no marriage or equivalent partnership not in-principle child-producing; we could never have married. That’s one thing we’re hoping to get out of—” she waves a sarcastic hand at the office— “luxury automated gay space communism.”
“But in practical terms,” the officer says hopelessly, “in social terms that our society would couch our understanding of your relationship, you’re — you’re Mistraal Vanderplaatz’s — wife-equivalent domestic partner?”
“No,” the woman says. “I’m Mistraal Vanderplaatz.”
“This is where I begin to have trouble,” the immigration officer says dolefully, and switches his attention to the third woman, to the mech pilot’s right. She’s wearing a military uniform, too; some kind of officer, but less gaudy. “And you’re—”
“Mistraal Vanderplaatz, yes,” she says, smiling.
“So there are three different people, all named Mistraal—”
“No,” the woman on the left says impatiently. “We’ve been over this. There’s one Mistraal Vanderplaatz.”
“Look,” the immigration officer says. “I am desperately trying to rubber-stamp you out of my office, ladies. Luxury automated gay space communism is eager to welcome you, I just need to fill out this form to say who we’re letting in, that’s all, and I don’t know how to make sense of what you’re saying in any way that I can put — on — this — form.”
“It’s simple,” Mistraal Vanderplaatz in the middle says, legs carelessly crossed, shiny leather heel idly kicking. “You know the saying about safety regulations being written in blood?”
“Yes,” the immigration officer says, with long-suffering foreboding.
“Well, property laws,” she says, “are written in the grasping lawyer-fuelled squabbles of old men with money.”
“There are three of you claiming to be the exact same person!” the immigration officer says.
“I am,” the mech pilot says, unperturbed, and taps the side of her head. “The piloting interface causes a lot of upset,” she adds, in a condescending, lecturing tone. “Tampering with the authentic human, all that. Man ought not to wot of. Convenient insinuations that if one’s elder sib, in line to inherit, has unnatural machineries stuffed into his brain, he’s no longer man enough to count, you see? But of course corresponding countermeasures develop, against being nudged out of the line of inheritance.”
The immigration officer knuckles at his eyes again. “Go on,” he says wearily.
“There’s a somewhat controversial legal manoeuvre,” the woman on the left says crisply, “in which the mech pilot incorporates. Charters themself as being not a human person, but a legal personality.”
”…Mistraal Vanderplaatz is a corporation?”
“Yes,” the mech pilot says, while simultaneously the woman to her left says, sharply, “No!”
“It’s a grey area in which the case law is still being established,” the woman to the right offers kindly. “Sort of, I think you’d say. It’s blatantly an attempt to retain, while eating, one’s cake: still counting as a person, except specifically where the status could be stripped or devalued.”
“Hmph,” the woman on the left says, scowling.
“There’s three of you,” the immigration officer says plaintively.
“I expanded the board,” the mech pilot says airily, examining her nails.
“You—” the immigration officer looks between the three of them. “You added board members. To yourself?”
“Well, you can’t really quite do that,” the mech pilot says, looking smug, “so my lawyers argued quite persuasively that I remained a single legal personality—”
“I’m something of a test case,” the woman on the right says cheerily.
“Incorporating all three of you,” the immigration officer says heavily. ”…Why on earth.”
“Property rights,” the woman on the left says crisply. “Haven’t you been listening? It’s always property rights.”
“Legal decision-making authority over my assets,” the woman on the right says softly. “In the event of, say, medical procedure. To, say, some hypothetical future incapacitated mech pilot.”
The immigration officer picks his pen up and turns it over in his fingers, to have something to look at other than them. “Because the Empire,” he says, in resigned recognition, “recognises no marriage or equivalent partnership…but, look, we do—”
“I’m not the only case,” the woman on the left says firmly. “And I’m not going to be evidence, you hear? The second she defects she’s three people, so she was always putting it on…no. Not having it. You take me as I am.”
The immigration officer looks at them, and at his paperwork. “Well,” he says forlornly, “this form is clearly inadequate for your…situation. I’m going to have to ring the district foreman and get them out of bed to handle this. Can I offer you tea? This may be — a while....”
