Date Point: 13y 8m AV
My Other Spaceship Is The Millennium Falcon, Cimbrean System, The Far Reaches
Dog Wagner
“See, this is what you get when you step that pretty-boy face in front of a spotlight.”
There was a second or so’s delay in the signal to Cimbrean groundside from Armstrong Station, but Dog was used to that.
Julian was too, and nodded as he listened with a small chuckle at the end. “I’m surprised Hephaestus don’t wanna shove you in front of the camera,” he said. “Interstellar trade is kind of a big deal…And y’ain’t that ugly.”
Dog showed him an affectionate middle finger between friends, sharing the laugh.
“I’m just a glorified trucker, brother.”
“A glorified trucker who got shot to shit. How’s the Other Spaceship doing, anyway?”
“The My Other Spaceship Is The Millennium Falcon,” Dog said, stressing the full name, ”is doin’ just great. All-human crew, an’ the core systems were fine anyhow. Most of the damage was to the cargo holds, so… we got rid of most of ‘em. we’re covered in shipping containers now.”
“How’s that working out?”
“Expanded capacity by damn near forty percent and cut the mass by ten percent even fully loaded.”
“See? Humanity improving on alien tech with old ideas. If you worked for Byron they’d be yanking you out in front of a documentary crew.”
“Count me glad I work for Hephaestus, then,” Dog replied. “Don’t sound like much fun.”
“It ain’t.”
Julian glanced over his shoulder, looking around the room. Dog had been aboard Misfit just the once, for that Christmas dinner when he’d first met Julian and his girls. The trio lived, worked and slept together in a space that was only barely larger than his own personal quarters, which he’d have found hellishly cramped. Julian either had the patience of a saint, or was dating saints. When he’d been married back on Earth, Dog’s relationship with his wife had mostly involved getting himself out of the house as often as he could.
Technically, he was probably still married. He hadn’t signed no divorce papers, after all.
“Between you and me?” Julian asked, turning back to the camera, “We can’t wait to get the hell out of here.”
“Don’t blame ya, brother. I watch the news too—made me wanna school some punks.”
Julian nodded slowly and scratched at the back of his neck. “Hey…level with me. You think we did the right thing?”
“I think I’m a glorified trucker, brother,” Dog repeated. “The fuck you asking me for?”
“’Cuz sometimes you need the opinion of a guy you could share a beer with. And who ain’t a HEAT operator.”
Dog chuckled. HEAT were an…intense bunch. Even more so than the Misfit trio, who were pretty damn intense by anybody else’s standards. He sat back and considered his reply.
”…God knows your heart,” he said in the end. “You decided to do it in the then-and-there, and ain’t nobody else was around. Seems to me like there’s no point in trustin’ you three with all this exploration an’ shit if we don’t trust your judgement, too….and from what I’ve seen, the people who matter do trust you.”
Julian nodded slowly. “…Thanks.”
There was a chime, and an honest-to-God human voice speaking real American went out across the ship: “Captain Wagner to the flight deck, please. Captain to the flight deck.”
Julian heard it too. “Well. Gonna be a couple years before we see each other again, Dog.”
“Yeah,” Dog nodded. He touched two fingers to his eyebrow and flicked them at the screen, Aiming to look more jaunty than he felt. “Hey. You take care of those girls, take care of yourself an’ take care of your ship.”
“In that order,” Julian nodded. “Promise. And you look after yourself too, Dog. No more gunfights, not until you can shoot straight.”
Dog sat back and laughed properly at that. “Alright, asshole. I’ll see you in two years. First round’s on me.”
Julian nodded, and Dog ended the call with a nagging feeling like maybe it was gonna be longer than two years.
He shrugged it off, stood up and threw on his jacket. Hephaestus had made a lot of changes on his ship, including issuing the same kind of shipboard work-wear that Byron Group had developed for their ships. Cut-proof, flame-retardant and insulating but still breathable. Crazy stuff. In some ways, Dog knew he was going to miss his ET crew. He was going to miss hearing the phrase ‘you are very strange’ and the smell of cqcq cigarettes.
But as he stepped out of his cabin and noted to his satisfaction that all the safety doors were closed and that the gravity holding him to the deck was right…he knew he wasn’t going to look back, either.
This was only the beginning.
Date Point: 13y9m AV
Forward camp, Uncharted Class 11 deathworld, Sagittarius Star Cloud
Chief Petty Officer Daniel Hoeff
Hoeff, if he were honest, hadn’t really understood the reason behind Daar being on team. He liked Daar, who was big and strong and could fight like a demon—the doom-noodle thing was admittedly impressive—but honestly, as good as he was on a lot of things, Hoeff just couldn’t shake the worry that the big ‘coon might still be a net liability.
Then he watched Daar sneak. He was like a totally different creature when he was doing everything he could to be quiet, and boy, was he. He stashed his pack in a big hole he dug with alarming speed, carried just what they needed, and the big bear wormed his way through the underbrush so carefully and so quietly, no audio sensor would have picked him up.
Establishing the sensor ring was an agonizing process. It involved hours of inching forward, making a space to inch into, inching into it, repeat. Ignore the stones poking into his knees, or the roots that always seemed to be placed to put pressure on somewhere sensitive no matter what. All while listening out for the shrill whine of a drone patrol and being prepared to go totally motionless in an instant.
Daar was so much better at the prowl it was almost humiliating. He could crouch low to the ground on all fours in a way a human just couldn’t and it didn’t tire him at all. Hoeff’s ribs felt like the ground was using them for a xylophone, the wet soil soaked just enough moisture into his clothes to be uncomfortable, and the muscles all along the side of his torso were screaming in pain from unnatural overuse.
And that was just the trip out. Now they were on their way back the anticipation of getting back to camp was making all the pain, discomfort and exhaustion that much worse.
Which was probably what inspired Daar to do the thing that earned him Hoeff’s immediate and undying love. He paused at the bottom of the short earth bank that Hoeff thought of as the halfway point. It was the bottom of a tiny gully with a pathetic trickle of dirty water at its bottom, more a ditch than a stream, but it was concealment.
“Climb on my back. You smell like you’re hurtin’,” he whispered.
Hoeff had no will to resist the offer and wasn’t afraid to admit it. He climbed up gratefully, and the big bastard leapt clear over the water without making a sound, then accelerated away along their egress at a hell of a clip…in dead silence.
It was all Hoeff could do to hang on to the rolling form of his ride and not make a sound, and when they’d finally re-joined Coombes and Walsh, Daar still wasn’t tired. Anyone could say what they wanted about Gaoians but that feat, at least in Hoeff’s field-op mind, was impressive as hell. Hoeff climbed off Daar, retrieved their packs from their stash, and they hoofed it back to camp. A hot meal and a chance to rest was all the Motivation they needed.
Thank fuck they’d found the perfect spot for camp. It wasn’t a cave so much as a two-way crack in the hillside, with just the perfect arrangement of terrain to obscure their position from any likely avenue of approach. It was invisible from above, too, especially thanks to the tarps that sheltered all their stuff from both prying eyes and the elements. They approached and made their challenge sound—two sharp clicks that sounded almost like a rock falling—and waited for the response, which was a quiet whistle.
Even knowing where he might be hiding, Coombes still couldn’t detect hide nor hair of Walsh. For a man packing something like four hundred and fifty fucking pounds of lean beefslab onto a six-foot-four frame—he was as massive as a world champion strongman and could whup ‘em all—the big cavebear of a man was really good at making himself invisible.
And Daar was even better at it. Which, considering he was somehow even bigger than Walsh, made his prowling silence a lot more impressive.
When they got close they made their approach with their hands in the clear to guard against any weapons; biodroning was a tactical possibility they’d realized at the last moment, and they’d quickly come up with a solution whereby each team member climbed up separately, laid face down in the dirt, and waited.
Walsh descended on him the instant Hoeff had his fingers interlaced behind his head. He slammed himself atop Hoeff and pinned him head to toe, then pressed the scanner firmly against his head with one paw while crushing Hoeff’s hands together with the other. It was all he could do to keep breathing and hold his whimper of pain under control. Once satisfied, the big fucker picked him up and more or less tossed him into the safety of their little hole.
“…Hey bro.”
Hoeff tried to stretch out his abused spine. Walsh smothering him under his full, moist and sticky weight had done absolutely nothing for his comfort. “Fuck off.”
Coombes threw him an MRE. It was turkey à la King, the good one with hot chocolate in the sundries bag. “He saved that for ya.”
“…‘Kay. I forgive you.”
Walsh wasn’t there, he was instead repositioning himself for Daar, who was making his approach. No surprise there.
“Y’know, I can smell you,” Daar growled. “You need a bath.”
Walsh didn’t reply as he repeated his ambush-and-scan act, though if Daar had been compromised it would have been a hell of a fight. That was why Coombes was standing by with his weapon ready. Either man, if compromised, would have been a serious problem.
Walsh grunted and let Tigger go as soon as his scanner gave him a happy green. “Sure. I’ll just jump in the tub with my rubber ducky,” he snarked. “Which bag is it in?”
“Well, you’re pretty much ready for one already. You’re half naked as it is.”
“Fuck off, this jungle SUCKS. I’ve never managed to sweat in sixty-six fuckin’ degrees before…”
“You weren’t complaining yesterday!”
“He just spent the last three hours moving rocks, don’t listen to him,” Coombes said. He tossed one of the ‘big boy’ MREs Daar’s way. “We do have a nice little dugout now, though.”
“Nava Seafood Chowder? Nice!” These were custom made for their team by Oregon Freeze-Dry, who had produced seventy-five-hundred calorie meals for their two heavyweights that were the same physical size as a normal meal. They did have to be reconstituted, though, and Coombes had Daar’s ‘most favoritest’ flavor already hot and ready to go.
It had nava paste and cod liver oil in it. And fish. And…other things. The genuine heresy was that Walsh liked it, too.
Daar dumped in his vegetable crackers to give the food some crunch, and didn’t bother with the spoon—he just raised the bag to his mouth and scooped out a mouthful with his tongue.
“So.” Coombes reached over and grabbed a meal of his own. “Halfway mark.”
“Yeah Boss,” Daar pulled his snout out of the foil pouch and licked the flavor off his muzzle. “Chimp got another six emplaced today.”
“Been watchin’ those drones,” Walsh said. “No change in their patrol pattern.”
“That’s actually kinda depressing in a weird way.” Hoeff added more Tabasco to his turkey. “I can’t help but think they’re fuckin’ with us.”
Daar sniffed at the turkey and then shuddered slightly. “Sounds like Human paranoia to me. But honestly, that’s not the kind of bluff that makes sense, y’know? There’s no tactical gain.”
“Still.”
“Naw, I hear ‘ya. It shouldn’t be this easy.”
“…‘Easy’ he says.”
“You wait until we come back in a couple months to pick up whatever those sensors record,” Coombes said, digging into a bag of roasted nuts. “‘Cuz that’s gonna be in this planet’s wet season.”
“…You mean this wasn’t the fuckin’ wet season already?” Walsh asked.
“Nope. This was the ‘sweat until your balls rot away’ season.”
“See, that’s the thing about being big,” said Hoeff with a troll grin. “Cube law means I don’t overheat so easy. I feel fine. Or I did until a half-naked Mongo smeared his sweaty ‘pits all over my face…”
“Hey! I’m just a pawn in the game of life, man. And you loved it, you kinky fuck.”
“So what you’re saying is that wasn’t your pistol pressing into my back? It did feel small…”
“Bruh, I am literally three times the man you are,” Walsh said with an amused grin.
“Not where it counts!”
“Still bigger, though.”
Coombes made a pained noise and dug into his meal bag for his drink powder. “Christ, fifteen fuckin’ years in this goddamned Army and this shit never goes away…”
“Meh, all I hear is ‘words words insanely jealous blah blah blah.’ Where the fuck’s my meal?”
“You just crawl ten klicks and back through a swamp? No? Get your own damn food.”
Walsh chuckled and dug out another big boy meal. That one had steak in it, the lucky fuck.
“Eh. Rainy season probably ain’t so bad,” he decided once it was heating up. “And we won’t be here so long next time, right?”
“Hopefully not,” Coombes agreed. “Next run’s in six hours, I think me and surfer bum here’ll take the ones on the far east part of the range. Less sneak but it’s more work…sooner we get them deployed, sooner we go home.”
“Oh, man, speakin’ of sneakin’…” Hoeff gulped down the last of his turkey. “Just so y’guys know, Tiggs here? He’s fuckin awesome. You should have seen how good he is! He’s…”
The praise went down well, even though it was largely unembellished. It sure made the meal go down easy, after which was hopefully an opportunity to give his battered body a rest. The sleeping bags were all set up under a tarp at the back of the camp, where a kind of dry, spongy grass had given them a little more ground comfort. Next to roots, stones and mud it was paradise.
Daar apparently decided that he had a new Most Bestest Friend for the evening and pulled Hoeff into himself, but he decided he wasn’t going to complain. Not at all.
He slept, and dreamed of clean socks.
Date Point: 13y9m1w AV
Mrwrki Station, Erebor System, Unclaimed Space
Vedregnenug
Vedreg had never considered himself a scientist. He had been a lawyer, a politician and had aspired perhaps in the last fifty years of his life to become a judge.
To his surprise, the patient analysis of precedent and the picking-apart of events translated well to a certain staid, prosaic kind of science. The Humans around him boiled over constantly with ideas, wrote them down, invented experimental procedures, tested their ideas…
And Vedreg had found a useful role in carefully reading everything they put out, sieving their work for discrepancies, sloppy methods, oversights or alternative explanations. Even without any formal scientific training he had the patience and focus to pore over every word of a paper and perform the peripheral research until he knew enough to query it, which was slow and painstaking work…but fascinating.
Especially whenever he got to analyze the products of the Coltainer program.
“So it chose…*Nightmare?*”
“Yes indeed. We were all quite surprised, as you can imagine..”
Lewis and the others had returned from Aru in sombre mood. Their findings, hypotheses and accumulated data between them accounted for about half of Vedreg’s ‘In’ tray, and they made for bleak reading. Try as he might, he was finding no hint that the Humans were wrong in their conclusions about how feasible it might be to cure and rehabilitate the OmoAru.
Rather than wallow in it, he’d turned to more pleasant, more successful topics and taken it upon himself to bring Lewis up to speed on how his brainchild was performing.
The “Coltainers” were still in a very limited form for now. Their self-duplication was capped at one child per generation, which meant linear rather than exponential growth. Most were still on a tight leash in flight and harvesting trials at New Enewetak.
Only one so far had been released to go find a planet of its own initiative and set up a colony site, and it had promptly made a bee-line for the highest-class planet in charted space.
“I presume the selection algorithm ignores the existing planet classification.”
“Nah. It’s huntin’ for deathworlds, remember. I guess it just doesn’t give a fuck if the deathworld is a ten or a thirteen,” Lewis shrugged. “An’ hey. Nightmare already had a long-term human occupant.”
“Would it know that?”
Lewis shrugged again. “I kinda threw every fuckin’ datum we could get our paws on at the database,” he said. “Dunno why it’d weight a lone dude scrapin’ by over there for six years so high, but apparently it did.”
Vedreg shook his head slowly and allowed a wave of amused mint green to ripple across his body. “One of those ‘teething troubles’ then?” he asked.
“Dude, for all I know in fifty years Nightmare could be even more of a success story than Cimbrean.” Lewis spread his hands and smiled. “Weirder shit’s happened. How did the actual colony construction go?”
“See for yourself…”
Date Point: 13y10m4w AV
Whitecrest Enclave, Alien Quarter, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Champion Genshi of Whitecrest
Folctha was having one of its rare comparatively hot days, an event which never failed to highlight some important differences between species.
The Humans, for instance, were enjoying themselves immensely. Their weather reports were full of glowing cheerful announcements about how it was a ‘beautiful day for the park’ or ‘nice shirtsleeves weather.’
Earth was a warm planet, on average. And from what Genshi could gather, Humans had evolved on its generally hottest continent. They wore a little less, maybe got covered in a thin healthy sheen of sweat, sighed appreciatively at things like cold drinks or a lick of breeze, and generally got on with their day in a good mood.
Gao, on the other hand, had seasonal sea ice that almost reached the tropics during the winter. Gaoians were well adapted for cold weather, and had a very limited capacity to perspire: generally in their ears, on their nose and, in the brownfurs, along their lower extremities.
It was all Genshi could do to maintain his dignity; he was panting by the time they reached the air-conditioned sanctuary of the Enclave.
The blast of cool air across his nose and ears was beyond welcome. And as for Daar…
The Stoneback Champion had taken the liberty of soaking his fur in the grass sprinklers, much to the mixed scandal and interest of several nearby Females. The heat had already evaporated most of the water, but his coat was still damp to the skin and he flopped to the ground under the A/C vent the moment the door was closed with his ears flattened sideways and his mouth open in a delighted fugue.
Genshi settled for taking a seat nearby, where he could still get the best of the cool air and recover his comfort with a little more grace.
“So,” he said eventually, once they’d both stopped panting away the heat. “One slow and quiet infiltration to install a network of sensors, and a second slow and quiet infiltration weeks later to retrieve the data. Remind me, which of us is the Champion of Clan Whitecrest again?”
Daar rolled his eyes from his puddle on the floor. “Whitecrest don’t got a monopoly on sneaky, Cousin.”
“Maybe not, but it is our specialty.” Genshi’s right ear rotated an amused quarter-turn. “You don’t go to a workhouse for the food, after all.”
Daar had never been able to contain his competitive playful streak, and despite being plainly not inclined to move anywhere just yet he wagged his tail by way of a challenge. “How many Whitecrests do ‘ya know who’d be willing ‘ta paw in with a three-hundred weight pack, Cousin?”
“Willing? All of us. None of us would be able, though,” Genshi conceded.
Daar rolled over and duck-nodded lazily. “Never been able to fault your Clan’s spirit,” he said.
“I would hope not, considering the company you kept as a cub,” Genshi agreed. “Incidentally, Champion to Champion, I intend to promote Regaari to Father.”
Daar immediately sat up in an alert posture and went deadly serious. “That’s not a small risk, Cousin. Won’t the other Fathers fight back?”
“Some of them. Many, even. I am balancing on the edge of my authority…But sometimes abuses of power are necessary for the right reasons.”
“‘Yer preachin’ to a true believer there.”
“I thought as much…You don’t disapprove, I take it?”
“It ain’t up to me t o approve or disapprove. Your Clan, your rules.”
Genshi flicked his claws together fastidiously. “I want your opinion anyway, Cousin.”
“Well…’kay. Here’s the thing. I’ve been payin’ attention, Genshi. You ain’t ever been reckless in the forty years I’ve known you, so I know perfectly well you ain’t being reckless now.” Daar stood up and stretched out the long muscles of his back now that his fur was getting genuinely cold again. “I know you’re up to something. And if I do, so does everyone else. And that means you ain’t got a lotta time left.”
“Do you?” Genshi asked him. “How long can you go on Human operations under a Human commander before your time comes?”
“Not long,” Daar admitted. “Stainless and I talked this out. We’re in a bit of a bind, though. There’s literally nobody else who can do what I do. That’s a problem, but one they can solve when they need to. Until then…I help Bestest Friend, and we get the intel we need.”
“The life of a Champion. Our successors are always hunting us, and they get closer every day,” Genshi said. “The only victory Champions ever have is to retire on our own terms.”
“…Cousin…I’m really hopin’ I didn’t just figger out what you’re planning.”
“Why?” Genshi asked. “Do you mean to tell me you don’t have similar plans?”
“I have plans for a successor, sure, and a backup plan. I ain’t plannin’ to push the issue.”
“Good. Your Clan won’t need it, I think.” Genshi yawned and shook himself: the cold air was making him comfortable now, and after too many busy nights he was anticipating a restful night’s sleep in the near future, for the first time in a while.
“You…you are always welcome at High Mountain. You know that.”
“Thank you.” Genshi didn’t see any need to say more than that. He stood up to shake off his drowsiness instead. “Come on. I’m told it’s a nice day outside. Now that we’re comfortable again I am eager to try these Bao things…”
“Yeah!”
If there was a guaranteed way to cheer Daar, food of any description had to be it.
“And…Daar?”
“Yeah?”
“Good luck with your mission.”
Date Point: 13y11m AV
Dataspace adjacent to Hierarchy Relay Irujzen-4942
Entity, Instance 4
The ship was back.
That fact was lost on the Hierarchy’s passive monitoring systems which, for all their sophistication, lacked the kind of paranoid narrative cynicism of a sapient observer. They looked for facts rather than stories, and fatally failed at basic metacognition.
Then again, an alert sapient observer would probably have missed the clues as well. The Entity was uniquely capable of the right kind of detail-focused long-term alertness, and even it needed several data points before it was satisfied in its conclusion. Random tiny flashes of sensor contact that didn’t reappear when watched for a second time. Little tickles of distorted spacetime that could just have been subtle gravitational waves in the outer system, too faint to be tracked.
The Entity was <Impressed>, just as it had been the first time. That ship, whatever it was, was a ghost on sensors. Not perfectly invisible, but enough so to convince the automated systems that it didn’t exist.
And just like twice before, the Entity itself stepped in to quietly brush over the few traces of its approach that might have been discovered on later forensic analysis.
It lost the target in a burst of high-energy plasma in the planet’s upper atmosphere that looked just like a meteor burning up on entry, and that was that. The Hierarchy hadn’t installed satellites around the planet for the sake of anonymity, which meant that sensor coverage over the horizon was basically nonexistent. There was nothing to do but wait, and listen.
The listening lasted for nearly a week, which the Entity spent performing the conceptual equivalent of nervously double-checking that everything was ready. It had a memory of the night before that fatal vacation with Adam, the last night that Ava Ríos had seen her parents. Unable to sleep from the excitement she had constantly gone back to her suitcase to re-open it and confirm that everything was still present and correct, as though some mischievous critter might have snuck in and stolen her underwear.
It was a strange memory to have kept, but it provided vital context for the Entity’s data management, filing and sorting algorithms. The same ones that it had used to compile its Cypher.
It knew what the human operators would be doing: They would be scouring the network to trace another relay, one that wasn’t so peripheral to Hierarchy operations. Doing that, however, would require them to metaphorically speak the language, and the Hierarchy used a dense and difficult one in their communications infrastructure. Cracking it unaided might have been impossible, or at least hellishly difficult.
If the Entity did nothing else for the human race, this one gift would be valuable enough in its own right.
It finally noticed the team approaching along the outskirts of the relay. That was surprisingly difficult to do. They weren’t sneaking or even being particularly stealthy, but they were being very, very careful. Drones just…never happened to notice them.
Except once, just by accident. One of the drones caught the massive Gaoian urinating against a tree, just for a flash. The Entity quickly scoured the link of this data and subtly realigned assets.
It sent in its own probe and activated its WiFi beacon. This one had been a bit of a triumph. It had spent literal years scrounging the networks of the human world, hunting for all the arcane details necessary to build the hardware. The software had been even more difficult, but in the end, it was able to construct a directional “access point” and manufacture a drone with the radio squirreled away so the Hierarchy wouldn’t notice.
Sure enough, the moment it beaconed, the tablet attempted a connection and supplied the necessary key. This was one of the important details it had communicated to the humans, one it had kept secret from all other copies of itself, and it was the final proof that this wasn’t a sting.
The access app had been installed, too. Human security systems were, in their own way, leagues ahead of anybody else’s. They were so good, in fact, that the tablet in question had to be specifically modified with an app to permit the Entity the quick access it needed.
The team was probably unaware of all this, due to compartmentalization. Oh well, they would find out soon enough.
The tablet was practically sterile inside. Cleansed of anything that resembled sensitive data, right down to saved wifi passwords and user profiles. There were no photos, no apps, no saved accounts…nothing. It was the equivalent of an empty apartment with just the counters and carpets. All it had on-board was a lot of storage and some sophisticated mapping software, and enough information to build a small piconet with the rest of the team’s equipment.
And cameras. It had two cameras: the Entity couldn’t resist accessing the face camera and looking out through a tiny but high-definition lens to get a good look at the world the way a human saw it for practically the first time since its autogenesis.
It called up some archived memories to help it interpret what it was seeing, and the incomprehensible input resolved into…a face. A slim, rugged, sharp one sporting days of mud and beard growth.
Speech was impossible. For whatever reason, the Entity had never been able to get the concepts to mesh. It found, however, that it could understand speech perfectly well, even if generating it was…alien.
It generated a text output.
<:-)>
“…What.” the man’s finger thumped and nudged at the tablet as he tried a few commands. The Entity recalled an emote from Facebook and animated it, waggling a white finger at him.
“What the—-hell.” The man fingered his radio and spoke in a low whisper. “Coombes, Hoeff.”
”Send it.”
“I think our contact just made, uh, contact. It took over my tablet.”
“…What.”
“That’s what I said. Wanna see?”
“You good, got your sighting?”
‘Hoeff’ looked away from the tablet and ran sharp eyes over something that the Entity couldn’t see through the camera, then nodded to himself. “Yessir.”
“A’ight. C’mon down.”
There was a confusing blur of branches, bark, darkness and the quiet noises of exertion. The Entity waited patiently, having already waited for literal years, until the tablet changed hands and it found itself looking at a handsome African-American man with several days of facial hair. It remembered finding that face very attractive indeed, when Ava Ríos had first met it.
<HelloAgainCoombes>
<:-)>
Coombes frowned at it. “…Hello again?” He asked. He moved the tablet away from his face slightly, as if it had suddenly become dangerous. “The fuck?”
He deserved an explanation, at least. The Entity felt that in, for lack of a better word, its gut. It summoned a self-image memory, a clear moment in time when Ava had looked at herself in a mirror. There was emotional context attached to that image that it had never been equipped to understand, but it was the clearest image of her that it had.
It sent the footage to the screen, attached words.
<Egypt>
<StolenKidnappedTaken>
<InterrogatedDecompiledMurdered>
<RebuiltSelf>
<NotSelfNotWhole>
<NotSame.>
“…Jesus.” Walsh’s paler, squarer features appeared over Coombes’ shoulder. “Is that—?”
<HelloWalsh>
The Entity watched without comprehending as the muscles around Walsh’s jaw clenched and worked. Was he about to throw up? That was the closest interpretation it could find.
He didn’t, however. He just gulped down hard and nodded.
“…Hi.”
The Entity needed to act quickly, before it was noticed. While it was conversing with the humans it shoved information into the tablet as fast as the device could take it. Co-ordinates, tables, charts, equations. All the gigabytes it had accumulated that would have been far too much to send undetected via any other means.
“Well…we were told to expect contact, but we didn’t have any details…” Walsh managed. “Given everything, I suppose a…a digital contact isn’t out of the question…”
The Entity called up a thumbs-up emote from the device’s built-in library rather than reply with words. It had memories which said conversation had been easy, it could remember words just flowing off the tongue almost without conscious thought. Somewhere in the process of creating itself, it must have deleted something important.
Uncomfortably, It wondered what else it had unknowingly destroyed.
“Well. This is creepy.”
The Entity wanted to say more, but Hierarchy sniffer programs in the relay were beginning to grow suspicious and it didn’t have the run-time to spare any longer. It selected the easiest form of communication still left to it—a sad face emoticon—then withdrew to focus all of its efforts on obscuring the data transfer and covering its tracks.
By the time it was free to communicate again, the transfer had finished and the device could no longer be found. Whether turned off or hidden in a Faraday cage or for whatever reason the Entity’s first moment of real human contact since its creation had ended all too soon, leaving it thirsty for more.
It retreated back into the safer depths of the relay where it prepared to copy off an instance of itself to synchronize with the prime instance, and watched them go. It replayed the conversation, examining every aspect of the exchange for useful data that might expand its ability to communicate, or at least to understand itself. To its surprise, it succeeded.
It wasn’t much, nor was it pleasant, but it now found that it understood the emotional context of the mirror-memory. Not a positive emotion…but it was a powerful one. A compelling one. And it was a connection to a life it struggled to understand. That made it precious.
For the first time in its existence, the Entity finally understood that it was <Lonely>.