Post 66

Episode 20

Mercedes is waiting for you when you ease yourself down into Shori’s engine room to start making the adaptations needed for a plasma field. Thiel security is no joke. Seeing another person in the dark, cavernous gut of the ship makes you squeak and flatten yourself against the wall. “Des, holy crustacean mandible. You scared me.”

The monk unfolds from her posture and lets out a little breath of what you can only assume is amusement. “Holy crustacean mandible?”

“I’m trying out new exclamations since religion is dead.” You cough a little. “Except for yours, of course. I’m sure that one is still useful.”

“I’m sure it is as well,” she says, but it’s distracted. “I needed some place quiet and out of the way and you seem to like it in here.” She turns to look at you and you’re surprised by the intensity of her stare. You’re caught up in her eyes. They’re silver. Like, glowing silver, in the dark. Have they always been like that? You wonder and you have the disconcerting sensation she’s opening up your skull and rifling through memories or thoughts or whatever is in there. 

:I am.: says a familiar sound in your head. :I needed to know some things.:

“Well, get out,” you say, crossly. “And stay out. It’s rude and unpleasant.” She ignores you. “OUT,” you say again. “What is it about everyone violating my boundaries today. You’re in a snit, Hoshi’s all moody. The only one halfway decent to talk to is Shori and she--” there’s a sudden grind and you both feel the engine sputter to a halt. “Oh for fuck’s sake,” you blurt. “What is wrong with everyone today?”

“Wuxing,” she says. 

You stare at her. 

“Wuxing,” she says again. “I can feel it. Someone knows we’re here and where we are trying to go.” She looks up at Shori’s membranous ceiling for a minute. “I think it’s going to be much easier than we thought to get into Thiel.”

You scowl at her. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Isn’t Wuxing trying to kill you? What does that have to do with us? Can’t you just fly over, do some punchy-punchy and call it a day?”

Des grants you a brilliant smile as she moves past you up into the engine bay. “Punchy-punchy, huh? Why not? I haven’t had anything interesting to do in a while.”

“See?” You call after her. “Why does everyone need me to tell them what to do? Go get ‘em, tiger.” You follow her, the plasma injector forgotten. 

When you both reach the control center, you can see Hoshi in deep concentration. The organic interface is lit up red, which makes his face look sallow and menacing in the relative darkness of the cabin. You glance up. Shori’s neurons are sparking erratically and the normal sunny lighting has disintegrated to a dull orange, only sporadically blipping on and off. You sit in front of the new Panopticon, hoping it’s just an interface glitch, but you're fairly sure it’s not. You do good work, after all, and this doesn’t feel like a mechanical error. Even as you tag the self-diagnostic key command, you hear Hoshi exhale in that soft, high-pitch way he has when he is in deep, profound pain. You scowl. You’ve heard that sound an awful lot lately. Mercedes leans over you to look at the mechanical display, but you haven’t translated it into anything a proper organic can read, so she just sees dribble on the screen. “Kas,” she starts.

“I know, I know. Shush. Give me a second to make it palatable, softie.” You activate your internal translation program and link to the output, giving her visual and a ship condition dashboard. Most of it is not good, but you’re not expecting the little hiccup that comes out of her. 

“What is that?” she says, pointing to a small blip on the cosmo map.

“A gas giant,” you say, reviewing the specs in your mind. “We’ll probably have to set down there. I think Shori has a virus.” You squint as you review the internal landing codes in your mind, not realizing that your internal interface was translating to external body language. It’s a new thing for you, but Mercedes notices. 

“What?” she asks.

“Well. Didn’t you say someone was following us?”

She nods and you run a few more data lines in your head. “This virus looks an awful lot like the one Hoshi was going to use on Thiel. Only, you know, better, and…” you squint again. “I don’t know...more super-villainy?”

You don’t have to look at her to feel her eye-roll. “Kas. I don’t understand what that means.” 

You shrug. “Look, Des, I don’t know what to tell you. It doesn’t feel like a normal computer virus, has definite organic overtones, but it also feels way more virulent. Ask the demented doc whenever he wakes up.” You scowl again. “Although, if Shori is sick, studmuffin is also infected. I don’t know how he could use the same interface and not be.” You glance back at Hoshi, who is still ramrod-straight in the pilot’s chair. The interface was noticeably quieter now, though you are pretty sure that’s not a good thing. You let out a breath and jack into Shori directly.

You’re expecting a cool rush of her personality, the same welcoming interest and affection she normally gives you, but her brain is quiet. And hot. Your digital self registers nothing but heat and a kind of stifling darkness you don’t understand. “Shori?” you call. “Shori honey, I need to do a little anti-virus work, but it’d be easier if you were awake for this.” There’s no answer and the heat is starting to make you feel dizzy and uncomfortable. You shrug to yourself and kneel onto the void, unpacking your clean-up software like a backpack of code into the dark, writing the lines with your finger. Each command glows with different colors where you touch Shori’s mind. But not much changes. You expand the commands and put it on a loop, manually shutting down the organic interfaces, effectively putting Shori to ‘sleep’ and route all physical mechanisms to the Panopticon. 

You open your eyes. Des is peering at you uncomfortably close. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” you say waving her off. “Say, didn’t you mention you were a pilot or something? Back before you got religion?” She nods. 

“Oh good,” you huff and pull her into your place. “Congratulations. I can’t fly this thing with Shori dead. You are nominated to go do pilot-y things.” You point to the planet. “I need to go there. They have a maintenance bay for AI and I want to go to there. Please make it so.” You tap a couple buttons on the Panopticon to transfer visuals to the nice view screen so you have something to watch other than Mercedes botching up the controls and annoying you with her incompetence. 

There are a couple rough moments that make you grit your teeth and hope that Hoshi really is in a coma and not experiencing whatever debauchery Des is doing to the main propulsion system, but eventually, you hear the comforting whine of the mining colony’s AI stationmaster peen into the computer and provide the access codes they were nice enough not to have good security for. You let out a nice sigh of relief as Des bumps and grinds Shori into the landing dock with a minimum of fuss. Though Hoshi is probably going to have to grow her some new skin after that last one, you think, wincing in sympathy. Des must be out of practice. “Hey, Des, I don’t know if you….” you stop, because Des is not paying attention to you. Her complete attention is fixed on the corridor leading to the docking bay for a good four or five heartbeats and then, still without saying anything, she leaps up and takes off in a blur of color and motion. 

You glance at Hoshi, still silent and frozen and to the corridor leading to the docking station. “Fuck,” you say. “Sorry, stud. I’ll be right back.”

When you get to the docking bay, Des is opening the personnel door to the airlock. As the vacuum vents and stabilizes, you come up to stand next to her and anxiously check her face. It’s frozen in some sort of expression you don’t understand, so you look back to the airlock door. Someone opens it from the outside. Des doesn’t move. You scowl. “Hey, from a security standpoint don’t you….” but you trail off because Des isn’t listening and you are too busy processing what has walked into your docking bay. 

A girl. No, wait. Not a girl. A shell? You peer at her. She’s a tiny thing, barely five feet tall, long, silver hair and blue-black skin that looks very synthetic to your eyes. You slip your vision into a broader spectrum and see that yes, she’s a shell. A very good one. Maybe even a Mentem, like you? No, not a Mentem. Not any cybernetic augmentation. But what is she? 

Next to you, Mercedes exhales and says, “Seema.” You look at the monk in surprise. 

“You know this thing?”

The shell smiles at you and says, “Of course she knows me.” She takes a step deeper into the bay. “We go way back, don’t we, Lyrandar?” 

“You’re dead,” says Des. “Have the decency to stay that way.”

Seema shrugs. “Dead, living. The two are closer than you might think. Besides, you weren’t my first rodeo. You think I’m not used to rough break-ups?”

Mercedes seems unable to come up with a clever retort and seems to be having a hard time breathing. You nudge her. “Hey, what’s the deal? Is she friend or foe?” You eye the shell and wish you had Zubaida, though the little pistol on your thigh would do the job. “Are we just letting this shell come on board and offering it tea and crumpets?”

Mercedes looks at you in surprise. “Shell?”

Seema bursts out in laughter. You raise your eyebrows like you’ve seen Des do and it gives you a little satisfaction to see her understand the gesture. “You mean you didn’t know?” You walk forward a couple steps and lightly tap the shell experimentally. She lets you do it, which you appreciate. She doesn’t seem to want to hurt anyone, so you keep going. “Nat shell, just no soulstone implant.” You brush the shell’s hair back a little. “How are you moving around, Nat? Without a soulstone, you must be remotely cont….” But you can’t finish. 

The little natural shell has whirled and stabbed you with something that feels very, very cold running into your data processor. Quicker than any Natural should be, she brushes a tiny sound against your ear before the darkness wraps you up with a bow. “Mother says hello.” No.

Chiyoko

It’s dark, like always. But today the dark feels more intense. Darker. You chide yourself for thinking stupid things. But the quiet is harder on you today than usual. The last session had been particularly bad. And you try to swallow remembering the pain as they cut pieces of your shell out to harvest your Void essence. But then you remember, you don’t have a shell anymore. You can’t swallow. There’s only the ever-dark and the whine of the plasma field containing you here. For how long? No way to tell. For a brief moment, you have a deep, violently bitter hatred of your immortal nature. At least death would be a release, you think, before the usual guilt butts in and demolishes that thought. The plasma burns you, but that pain has subsided to just sort of a background annoyance. It’s the dark that really bothers you. And the quiet. No voices. No sound other than the high-pitched whine, like tinnitus of the soul all around. All alone in the great, empty room. What you wouldn’t do for some kind of intelligent contact. Or the ability to Void-phase. Just go back to that comforting emptiness of non-existence. Nothing like this. You reach out in your mind, like always, looking for Jiro. Sometimes, you can almost see him. Almost hear him. Though, lately, the images you’ve Seen have been disturbing at best. Terrifying at worst. 

You feel another stab of guilt for leaving him alone. Otōtō, I’m sorry for leaving you. I’m so sorry for everything, you think. But it doesn’t help. Nothing helps, just drifting here in a lonesome magnetic field with occasional harvesting days. It’s less painful now that the shell is dead, so that’s something, you try to cheer yourself. But it doesn’t work. Nothing works. You can feel your depression intensifying and you let it. What does it matter anyway?

The room’s door opens. It gets your attention. The harvesters have plasma wands and can do it remotely now. No one comes in with you physically. It’s hard to see through the field binding you. It warps and wefts the air and your sense of time outside. You can’t tell if the woman standing before you has been there a second or a day and her words seem to drift through time and space similarly confused. You can’t understand her. The frustration is almost palpable, both from her and from you. But the containment field is just too strong and in too many dimensions to make communication possible. After some time, the woman disappears and the door shuts again. 

You wish you could still cry. 

Seconds, or maybe decades later, you can’t tell, the door opens again and excitement makes you glow your usual electric blue. Something feels different about today. Something special was going to happen. The usual whine of the plasma field changes tone and then...disappears. Silence and real noises wash over you all at the same time and you drink in the sensation of knowing what is happening when as you finally link up to the same reality with a feeling of snapping a dislocated joint back into place. A sharp, sweet sensation to a creature used to feeling nothing but pain. Instantly, you can hear the thoughts and feelings of everything around you. With a sudden jar, you know you are in a space station ran by Thiel Industries, you know you’ve been there for almost five years. You know the entire crew complement and all the things that you usually don’t want to know. But now, you gulp it down like you were offered water when dying of thirst. 

You also know what the woman standing in front of you is. And it makes you nauseous, or it would, if you still had a body. Jocelyn Burkenthiel. Chief Executive Officer of the biggest genetic megacorporation in the galaxy. What an honor, you think to yourself. And what an idiot. You would have shaken your head with the stupidity of it. She came in unarmored. Unprepared. It’s like she doesn’t even know that I’m a psionic, you think. 

As the woman continues to examine you and make noises at you, you realize that she doesn’t understand what you are. That you can read her thoughts directly. All of them. That the words she’s saying are meaningless, empty constructs. Hope starts rising in your heart. She has no idea what I can do, you realize. And, to be fair, it’s been many years since you’ve been able to do anything. You never got any more than the rudimentary juvenile training before your gifts fully manifested. But you feel strong and very, very superior to the meat sack standing in front of you. But you listen. To both the things spoken and not spoken. And you learn. 

She has lost something. Something precious to her. Something with too much power and too much cost to remain unlost. She wants you to find it for her. The woman walks to the door, opens it, and pulls a shell into the room. She tells you that this could be yours. A body! The thought makes you glow again in excitement and the woman notices. It’s not a Pontifax. She doesn’t trust you and she thinks that giving you a Nat shell will keep your powers contained. Stupid woman, you think. If I wanted to, I could crush your mind like a bug. I could take your body, if I wanted. If I wanted...you stop. This woman had just offered you an escape plan, a life, a whole world if you were clever enough. Could I take her and Thiel Industries? The woman was still trying to convince you to work for her. Talking about wealth and privilege as if those things mattered. But the body….

You let the woman talk, your attention taken up with the shell. It was small, obviously genetically engineered for space work. Skin engineered for radiation protection, low energy stores, but high usage possible. It was reasonably attractive. Black skin, white-silver hair, delicate features. You had to calm your mind from the greed and excitement the thought of taking a body flooded into your system. Your sense of yearning was almost physical. You bring your attention back to Burkenthiel. She had finally stopped talking. You reach out a delicate mental touch to her mind and recoil a little in surprise. Someone had put some strong defenses around her after all. A localized magnetic field in just the right spot meant that she could hear you, but you couldn’t hear her or tap into any of her personality centers. Disappointing. Your attention drifts back to the Nat shell. The pretty, accessible Nat shell. It’s too tempting. Freedom. Finally freedom. And maybe something more, if you can work it right. 

You touch the older woman’s mind again, this time speaking loudly and clearly to her, to make sure she Hears. :I accept.

Her eyes open wide, as if she wasn’t expecting that contact and didn’t find it terribly pleasant, but you don’t care, because you are already rushing into the soulstone of the Nat, breathing with her nose, feeling the air with her skin and wallowing in the thick experience that Material beings take for granted every day. When you finally open your eyes, you are looking up at the woman and admire her face with your new perceptions. She smiles down at you. “Welcome to Thiel Industries, Seema Burkenthiel. I’m sure this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship. It’s a pleasure doing business with you.” You reach out a hand to draw it along Burkenthiel’s face and shiver at the rush of experience and perceptions, both physical and mental that touch augments. 

“Indeed,” you say with your new voice, tasting out Seema’s words on her tongue. “I can’t wait to get started.”