Post 69

You’re awake. Sort of. Your mouth tastes like blood and electrified wires. Your internal sensors warn of structural damage and some sort of chemical imbalance that is making bile rise in your throat and everything smell like burning hair. 

You touch your head. Nope, the burning hair smell is because my hair is on fire. You pat it out. It was just a little on fire. But now that your eyes are waking up and your processor is coming back online, you can see flames in the distance through the tiny window set into your room. And you are in a room. From the pressurizing seals and the ports, you’d guess that someone threw you (rather hastily) into a backup communications room on some sort of station. A small one, given the limited power requirements that the equipment needed. You sit up a little and take another survey. 

Well. That was stupid. Who puts a Mentem in a communications room? Dummies. You rub your head a little as a piercing pain shoots through your skull and then sits right above your left eye. Ouch. You close that eye. The pain doesn’t improve. Life choices, Kas. Life choices. And this is why we can’t have nice things.

You drag yourself to the communications console and tap the comm-badge. A loud, piercing shriek greets you. You shut it off immediately. The pain over your left eye surges in intensity. You fumble one of the ear pieces off the interface and try to tap into it using your digital audio interface. Another shriek reverberates through your skull and this time you black out. 

When you wake up again, you can feel instantly that the station or ship or whatever you’re on has shifted position, and by a lot. The characteristic whine of engines now pulses underneath and around you, almost comforting. It wasn’t quite Shori’s rhythmic heartbeat, but it was better than the cold nothingness that had been there and your subconscious seems to appreciate the familiarity. You eye the communications console sourly, but don’t try again. Instead, you draw your legs up on the floor and sit with your head against the cold wall, listening to the engines and cataloguing data. 

Your Mentem systems are mostly offline. Some sort of electromagnetic pulse or plasma wave or something has knocked most of you into sleepy-time. The organic processors still seem functional and your chemical body modulations systems are still working. You mentally touch the almost-completed viral carrier code in your databanks for reassurance. Well, maybe we’ll get lucky and Mother has found me, you think a little dourly. I don’t know if I’m going to be rescued though. You take another look out of the tiny viewing window. The stars don’t look familiar and your head hurts anyway. You close your eyes again in defeat that you tell yourself is just rest. Fuck my life. What’s the use of having a magical, superman boyfriend if he doesn’t rescue you? Relationships are a lie. The ridiculousness of the thought makes you laugh a little at yourself. Who would have thought a Shell would even be capable of having a boyfriend? Or a mother. Especially a mother who was trying to kill it and a boyfriend who was trying to save it. You laugh harder. 

After a moment, you glance at the console again and probe whatever electromagnetic field is around the room with your organic sensors, which don’t work nearly as well as your electronic ones. You cross your arms over your chest in irritation and your fingers brush your little laser pistol. You blink in surprise. Who would possibly be that stupid? Take a prisoner without checking their pockets? Maybe they just thought a Mentem wouldn’t be capable of doing physical things? Racist bastards, you think with a smile and start shaking out your pockets. 

Since living with Hoshi, you had starting hoarding useful things fairly consistently. The thought of making him do anything to get your supplies had become distinctly unpalatable at some point and his complete mechanical ineptitude had disturbed you to the point where you were actively capable of making literally anything out whatever trash you could dig up on Shori or on whatever BFE civilization the slutty monster dropped you on. This had obviously proved to be a very successful survival strategy for your new life. 

Before you, you had a small collection of non-Terran coins, a nearly empty plastic credit chip, a delightfully chewed and tangled ball of wire, a wearable eyecomp for Shori’s interface, and a small wooden carving of some Ancient One that you’d picked up accidently from the kit you’d stolen from Zubaida. You didn’t know what it was for or of, but it was pretty in a sort of chaotic, angry way. You steeple your hands on your knees and rest your chin on your fingers observing the messy pile before starting to smile. Someone has profoundly underestimated me. Now then, let’s see what a proper Mentem can do, shall we? 

You don’t struggle when they come for you. It takes a good bit of dumping calming chemicals into your bloodstream, but the faceless uniforms that drag you out of the room are wearing your old uniform and that sets off a whole bunch of feelings you weren’t quite prepared for. It’s extremely uncomfortable and you shamelessly max out your tranquilizers all in one go. It helps less than you were hoping and you decide that getting angry is a much more effective solution than giving into the incapacitating, gibbering fear clawing at your guts as you walk past a series of very familiar hallways. And stop in front of a very familiar set of doors. When one of your ‘escorts’ leaves to announce you, you feel a sudden loss of balance. You can’t tell if that’s because of the intense electromagnetic field being generated from somewhere inside or because you’re pretty sure you know who is waiting for you in the room. 

You would really prefer not to go in. Your escorts don’t seem to care about that opinion, however, and the giant sloth of a man on your left shoves you in without much ceremony at the invitation of his ogre-partner.  

The door shuts behind you and you’re only a little ashamed of the tragic crack in your voice as you say, “Hello, Mother. You’re looking old. Been a rough couple decades, huh?”

She seems confused by your greeting and it heartens you a little. You walk deeper into the room. You remember this place. To your right, her office quarters are inset into a separate room. You specifically avoid looking through the doorway. You know what the stainless instruments and growth chambers in that room look like already and you’re not in a hurry to remember any of that garbage too soon. Her ‘public’ rooms are fairly unremarkable. She waves you to sit in front of her. As you sit, you can feel your organic bits settle and send up little triggers of pain as muscles you didn’t even know you had suddenly relaxed into the chair. You make a little surprised noise and you can sense her amusement at you. Annoying. You scowl.

“Kas, welcome.” She gives you a patronizing little smile. “You’ve been away from home so long, I almost didn’t recognize you.”

“I wish you didn’t,” you bite back. “You could just leave me alone, you know. You have plenty of pets. Why not just let me rot in some backwater of the universe and we’ll call it even.”

She clucks her tongue at you and shakes her head. “Oh, my dear Kas. What am I do to with you?” She shakes her head melodramatically. “Here you are, brain the size of a planet. Brilliant. All the secret bits of Thiel Industries trapped inside your beautiful processors and you want me to just leave you out there, in the cold and dark? There’s no telling what would happen if you fell into the wrong hands. Or what damage you’ve already done.” That last statement comes out sharp and precise and the look she shoots you isn’t patronizing or false. That’s genuine fear, you think, a little surprised. 

“Mother, you know I don’t know anything worthwhile,” you say, carefully. You didn’t quite understand what was going on. You had thought this conversation would be different, somehow, if you’d ever have to actually have it. Mostly, you had hoped to be dead before this scenario played out. “I’m just a Shell. You don’t have to worry about what I know or don’t know. It’s not like I’m a real person.”

Somehow, that seems to disturb her more. She gets up to pace in front of one of her viewing windows that spans the entire back wall of the chamber. You take it as an opportunity to look for her electromagnetic shielding device. It’s annoying and giving you a headache. And if it’s on, it will be harder for you to infect her computer systems. She seems engrossed in her own thoughts or whatever is happening outside her window. 

“Kas,” she says, but then pauses and you reel your attention back to her to prevent suspicion. “Kas, I may have gotten myself into a little bit of trouble.” She turns to you and you can’t recognize the expression on her face. It’s not one that you’ve seen before and you feel a moment of regret that Des isn’t here to explain it to you. “I need your help.”

“What?” you say, cleverly, genuinely surprised. “You need my help? To do what? I thought you’ve been trying to kill me for all these years.”

“Kill is such a harsh word, dear. Let’s just say that I’ve wanted to have you back home, in one way or another for a very long time.” There’s another long pause and your attention is captured by a small, black triangle hooked into the bottom of one of her decorative panels at the side of the room. You get up and, as nonchalantly as possible, slap your improvised disrupter device on it and move to stand next to the woman who made you. Immediately, the whine in your head dies down and you can’t help the little sigh of relief that whistles out of you. 

She looks at you with interest. 

“Pretty,” you say, motioning to the slow sweep of the stars out beyond the viewing windows. “Where are we?”

She chuckles and pats your arm. “I’m not that stupid, my dear. I did not become a CEO of one of the Galactic Corporations by being dumb.” 

I beg to differ, you think, but manage to control your face well enough. “So, if you’re so smart, what do you need my help with?”

She looks back out at the stars and you take the chance to take another quick once over of the room. You need to find an upload port or something since your wireless interfaces still don’t seem to be working. I’ll need a manual data port, you think trying to be as inconspicuous in your survey as possible. 

“I’ve hired a bit of a wild card, Kas. It was to find you, since you are so precious to me.” She flashes you a smile that might actually be genuine. “But now that you’re here, I find that this new employee is a bit much to handle. I think her resources could be managed much more effectively in a new role within the company.”

“Okay,” you say, not really caring. You weren’t going to help her anyway. 

“Do you remember that biochemistry project you helped with ages ago? The last project before you ran away?”

Ran away? For some reason, the patronizing dismissiveness of her sum-up bothered you. You scowl. “I didn’t run away, but yes.” And again, all you can see in your mind are the stainless steel instruments, the dead stacks of Pontifax Shells, the blood and desperate despair in the Sunyata’s eyes as they were harvested over and over again….you shudder a little and rub the special port in your hand where Snow could be administered and the addictive beauty of what it did to you. 

She notices. “We never expected you to be alive, you know. You were very clever to find a way to break that tie. It shouldn’t have been possible for you to survive, dear. How did you, anyway?”

I didn’t do anything, you think. Mom, you should meet my boyfriend. The irony of this relationship could just kill her for us. 

But you shrug. “Black market drugs. The diluted and synthesized stuff. None of it was as good as the pure Essence from the labs, but it was close enough to keep me going.”

“Hmm.” She looks you up and down. “You look good, for what you’ve had to do all these years. What if I could offer you the Essence again?” She reaches over to flip a small switch near the wall. A hidden cabinet rotates out and reveals vials of electric blue luminous Snow. Pure Snow. The literal essence of the dead, trapped in silicate. You shiver with the memories and she notices. You know that a tiny application of the stuff would probably reset your Mentem systems and take away all your pain. Restore all of your systems to full capacity. You close your eyes so you can’t see it anymore. God, it would feel so good to be able to think again. All that sweet information flooding through me. You swallow. “What do you need, Mother?”

“A containment system.” 

You look at her, really look at her and are vaguely surprised by the lines and thinness of her skin. She looks old. Very old and very tired. 

“A containment system for what?” 

“That special employee I was telling you about. Your Sunyata containment systems were too complicated for anyone else to use after you left. The last ones were so clumsy, we ended up just killing all the specimens. We need something that will keep one of the Void creatures alive indefinitely, but still allow us to harvest.” She pauses as if seeing something in her mind that disturbs her. “I didn’t realize how powerful they really were.”

You snort a little. “You have no idea, Mother. No idea whatsoever.”

“What does that mean?”

You shake your head, laughing to yourself at the absurdity of the whole situation. “Nevermind.”

“Kas,” she takes your hands and you're surprised at how delicate they are. Almost fragile in yours. You squeeze experimentally and she doesn't pull away. “Kas, I’m sorry for the past. I really am. I don’t know how to apologize properly or what I can say other than I’ve always thought of you as my child. My real child. Not a Shell or an employee.” 

You start to contradict her, but then remember Des’s lectures about how people lie to themselves to protect themselves and you shut your mouth. 

“Please, Kas.” She motions to the Snow. “All of it is yours. You can have your own lab again. Total freedom to invent, build, whatever you want. Anything you want, if you’ll just come home and stay with me.” She brushes your forehead and you have to fight not to recoil. She seems lost in her own world and you’re just a prop for whatever dream she’s having. It’s a very uncomfortable sensation. You decide that it’s not one of your favorite emotions. She doesn't notice. “I’ve always loved you like my own, Kas. Please stay. Help me.”

You take a deep breath and smile at her. “Of course, Mother. I’d love to come home.” Hoshi, please forgive me. 

Hoshi

So this is madness, you think. Interesting. I mean, not something I would go on holiday for or anything, but interesting. 

Booming, unnaturally loud voices echo around you in the dark only to morph into glowing, slitted eyes that stare at you and catch fire. Space-time folding from dark to light, an ocean to a desert. Your ears pop and then seem to fill with fluid that somehow talks to you as if you're drowning on your own words. Time stretches forever and yet nothing seems to stay where you put it, not even your own body. 

Your Void form dissipates, reappears, and splits itself into multitudes that all scream at you, like the souls of the dead again and again. You can’t tell what is you and what is the remains of one of your failed Heals. Sometimes, you’re corporeal, other times you’re space itself, or a poorly terraformed dust planet spinning around an exploding star. You’re everything at once and something empty at the same time. All the thoughts you’ve ever had swirl around you and through you until you can’t tell if you are the thought or the thought was part of you. There’s only the maelstrom. 

:HOSHI

The word sounds familiar, but you’re already dead. Or a ghost. No, you’re the ocean of the damned with the flexing of the moon….

:JIRO HOSHI

It’s harsh static now, but the words appear like a vivid rainbow in the storm and for a moment, everything is clean and clear. You know who says those words, from the future. No, the past. No, it’s happening now? It was before. :Mercedes? You send back, in the time from the past, when there was a friend to the star. You know that. Your name means ‘star’ and ‘to want.’ Who would want a star? You think in that moment between delusions. Stars can’t be touched. They burn everything to dust.

:JIRO HOSHI, CAN YOU SEE ME?

See? Can I see? What is seeing? There was only the storm. A flush of blood to your non-existent face that flexes and morphs in the mirror of your own mind. For a moment, you’re in your old Pontifax, held together with a space-suit and your HUD flickers and glitches and you see Mercedes, but she’s a dragon hunter and she’s holding a spear and now she’s wearing armor and you’re a hundred feet tall with wings and a tail bellowing fire at St. George and she’s burning. 

You can’t get close to a star, you think in the future. But the future is already dead and you’re walking through the ruins of your own mind, like an archeologist searching for the past. Is this me? What am I?

You hear a bell. Clear and sharp, it keeps reverberating long past when the sound should die. It keeps ringing and the mental fog lifts. The maelstrom quiets. You’re a Sunyata, floating on a cliff over dark gray water, looking at a golden-pink sunset. 

The bell chimes again. You’re in your Pontifax. You can feel the silver cord tying you to a body now. Your body. The one Mercedes and Kas made for you. The familiar road home. You take a breath in and feel your lungs respond, just like they should.

:Hoshi, can you Hear me?

The voice rings out of the sky like the bell. Clean and clear. You open your eyes. 

“Des.” You exhale as you realize you’re in the pilot’s chair in Shori’s command center. Just where you should be. Mercedes is kneeling in front of you with your hands in hers. You smile at her. “Can I just say that you have a lovely speaking voice?”

You surprise a laugh out of her. And you lean your head into her shoulder in tired relief. You want to think of something clever to say, but you realize that hot, unfamiliar tears are rolling down your Shell face and all you feel is grateful as Des pulls you down into a long, soothing hug. “My head hurts,” you manage to grind out of a thick throat. 

She rubs your back, but doesn’t reply.  Which is probably good. You’ve been hearing voices for a while and silence feels like a nice choice.

***

“So, let me get this straight,” you say on a long exhale. “Kas has been taken by Wuxing as a present for Thiel in some sort of Corporate power play and my sister, who I thought was a helpless prisoner in Thiel is actually the Wuxing Prefect, who killed your family to get the job and is actually working for Moira Burkenthiel? Because she’s lonely and misses her mother?” 

You lean your elbows on the table so you can prop your chin in your hands and stare at Des with admiration. “And you found out all this in a ten minute conversation with my sister when she trapped you in a mental illusion of your mother’s ship to try and play some sort of emotional blackmail game with you?” You blink and just let that settle into your own mind for a second. “Wow. You metapsionics are amazing, you know that? How do you live with people, like regularly? How do you do this stuff? It’s really remarkable. I mean, I joke that I’m a people person, but I’ve never heard of a metapsionic battle of wills and suspended manifestation and all that technical crap. Remarkable. Did the monks teach you that or….”

Des raises her hand and clears her throat. “Hoshi, please be quiet. You know very well it’s almost impossible to talk to someone outside your discipline about technical stuff. Just shut up and accept it so we can talk about Kas. And Chiyoko. Quit trying to avoid it.”

“I’m not trying to avoid it,” you sulk, but she’s right and it’d be easier to just face it than try to pretend anymore. You give her a pathetic little glance. “This sucks, you know. I don’t want to deal with any of this.” Des nods and you sigh. “Chiyo was supposed to be an innocent victim held safely in Thiel and Kas was supposed to be with us and everything was going to work out fine.”

“You sound a lot like your sister. And you know what they say, ‘Plans rarely survive the first engagement with the enemy.’”

You look at her warily. “Are you going to kill Chiyoko? For what she did to Lyrandar?”

Des shakes her head. “No, why would I?”

“She killed your family, right? Don’t you want revenge?”

She shrugs. “Revenge is stupid. Power struggles are stupid. We are all going to die. We are all going to die alone. No need to get upset about it. You should know that, you’re practically immortal. Don’t you just go back to the Void when you die?”

You close your eyes, remembering the Bardo and all the dead. “Not exactly. If we have any essence left, yes, we just go back to the Void, but not as ourselves. We stop existing, just like any other death. And it takes a huge amount of energy and the help of someone else to come back in any form after that. It’s pretty awful to see all that emptiness.”

Des nods. “That’s what Chiyoko said.”

There’s a long pause. “Des,” you say finally. “What are we going to do? How are we even going to find Chiyo or Kas?”

“And do we even want to,” she says quietly. 

The statement rocks you a little and you react without thinking. “OF COURSE we want to find them. How could we just abandon them like that? They need us.”

“Do they?” she says, and you can’t understand the undertone behind the question, so you ignore the vague rustling of unease. 

“Well, that’s a stupid question. Of course they need us.”

“Hmm,” is all she says, but she doesn’t disagree with you. She just looks at the Panopticon and then back at you. “Then, I think the new plan is the old plan.” 

You follow her glance. “The tracking system?”

She nods. “We bring Shori back online. I can still pilot decently enough to run the Panopticon guidance system if Shori can keep propulsion. And we just follow the breadcrumbs.”

“To Thiel?”

“Where else would Kas be?”

“And Chiyo?”

Des shrugs. “I would guess that Chiyoko wants to be as close to Burkenthiel as possible, regardless of how much she hates the woman.”

“Why?” you ask, confused. “Wouldn’t she want to be as far away as possible?”

Des shakes her head. “I think she’s come to see Burkenthiel almost like a parent. She’s got some transference issues. And I think she may be trying to kill her and take over Thiel Industries in a coup.”

You frown. “But that doesn’t make any sense, Des. Why would she try to kill her parent? If she does even feel that way about Burkenthiel?” 

Des gives you a look you definitely don’t understand. “You’ve obviously never dealt with women and their mothers, have you?” You shake your head and she sighs. “It’s a very complex relationship. Your head would explode if I tried to explain it. Just go with me on this.”

You let out a low whistle. “Women have it rough, don’t they?”

“You have no idea, my friend. No idea. Now,” Des stands up and hauls you up beside her. “Let’s go be productive. I think Shori needs some new brain cells and your sister did a number on her engine system. Go fix it, please.”

“Yes, ma’am,” you say, feeling in an altogether better mood for some reason. Monks are awfully handy to have around, you think, very useful people, thank goodness.