Now that we had all the information on our competitors that we were reasonably going to be able to get, our next major hurdle was going to be actually implementing all the upgrades, adaptations, and features our organisms were going to need in order to handle what they’d be going up against. Probably the most complicated and difficult to make work properly would be the coexistence routines, so that’s what we were going to work on first.

Wesseck had of course trotted out the iterated prisoner’s dilemma for modeling the situation, and both Queen and I had agreed that it was probably one of the better ways to handle the whole situation.

That said, one of the first things I noted was “We can’t just use straight tit-for-tat, it’s too forgiving. But a grudger algorithm is also stupid.”

Wesseck idly rubbed one of their pedipalps under their mandibles as they thought, “You’re right, Yures. We’ve got to program our organisms with an algorithm for this that actually understands nuance. Personally I think some variant of the reputation score system would probably work the best; that way our organism trio could keep track of which organisms have a track record of unrelenting hostility and which ones are more cooperative and respond intelligently.”

I finished the bite of porridge I’d been chewing, then commented “Going to need a few different parts to make that work. We’re going to need inter-organism comms which we’ve already got handled. We’re going to need a directory of various organisms with reliable means of identification to make sure they don’t get mixed up, and we’re going to need a range of responses that our squirrels and bushes can deploy to smartly respond to threats.”

Queen mused on the notion for a bit as she ate the last bite of her egg wrap “Bare minimum we want coexist, remove from territory, kill on trespass, and exterminate at all costs as responses. That’s a decent range of options that should cover almost anything we need to worry about, though we need to figure out the thresholds for what triggers each response, and how quickly we want the squirrels, bushes, and microbes to calm down after a while.”

I opined “Speaking quite bluntly, stepping down from exterminate should only happen after at least twenty Megaseconds of no contact. Much sooner and we’d be at risk of the artillery squirrels getting wiped out by an organism that they simply couldn’t coexist with due to being too soft on them, but keeping a permanent program of genocide going would be a waste of resources when there’s no need for it.”

Wesseck nodded as they tossed their empty tub of ice cream into the waste bin “Yeah I can see that working out pretty well. Stepping down from kill on trespass and remove from territory meanwhile should require significant periods of contact without malfeasance; that way an organism only gets put on the nice list with genuine evidence of being cooperative.”

Queen nodded at that, replying “Seems fairly reasonable. Anyway, I think that plants should start in the coexist category and animals should start in the remove from territory category. That seems like it would result in the least unnecessary resource expenditure without letting our organisms get rolled over.”

As the drone took away my empty bowl, I shrugged and commented “Seems pretty reasonable to me. Still, now we’ve got to actually implement it.”

Wesseck of course took the opportunity to spring to all eight of their mechanical feet and dramatically proclaim “To the organism deployment simulator!”

And so we all made our way from the kitchen area to the laboratory, more specifically the server rack. I immediately booted up the computing cluster and we got down to the business of programming in the coexistence behaviors.

I spun up a virtual copy of the Thundersnow Steppes with organisms based on the data we’d collected earlier, and then we ran simulation after simulation of our trio of artillery squirrel, boomnut bush, and symbiotic pathogen. We quickly found that surviving would require being very quick to escalate from coexistence to removal from territory or killing on trespass, but that escalating to extermination was only really warranted in the case of prolonged unrelenting hostility that no level of territory enforcement would really fix.

We got so sucked into the behavior simulations that when Wesseck noted “Huh, looks like sixteen kiloseconds have passed. We should maybe think about breaking for lunch.” I was legitimately shocked to realize they were correct when I looked at the clock.

I awkwardly wrapped my wings around me as I suddenly felt an urge to go swap bodies right then and there. Meanwhile Queen shrugged and remarked “I’ll leave the evolutionary sim running for a while as we eat.”

I quickly started making my way to the stairs, even as I replied “I’ll be down in a bit. Just need to swap out of my enby morph real quick.”

I quickly reached my room and the morph closet within, selecting the masculine morph from the three I had and performing a quick mindcast.

Gender identity issues temporarily resolved, I quickly glided back down the stairs to the kitchen, arriving to see that the lab drones had apparently been brewing up a spicy bean and meat stew while we were working on the coexistence algorithm.

I sat down at the table and asked Queen “So, is the stew any good?”

Queen shrugged her wings and answered “Don’t know; haven’t tried it yet since we were waiting for you.”

I nodded and plunked myself down at the table, the drones quickly serving me a portion of stew. I took a bite, and hummed in pleasure as the flavors exploded through my mouth.

Wesseck meanwhile had gone for another of Queen’s custom yogurt blends instead, apparently not much liking spicy food. Between bites, they noted “So, what should we do next anyway? Personally I think we should deal with the low-hanging fruit in regards to adaptations first. Stuff like proofing against the corrosive vapors and shooting down Howitzer Tree shots.”

I mulled the idea over for a little while as I chewed up the beans in my current mouthful of stew. After a bit I swallowed, the said “Sounds like a decent enough plan to me. Get that sort of easy but impactful thing out of the way first, so we’ve got time to focus on the remaining big issues before the tournament date.”

Queen then raised the important point, noting “We actually don’t have all that much time remaining before we’ll have to freeze the design and send our organisms down to Blackwood’s surface. We’re probably going to have to prioritize what issues we deal with there, since there’s a solid chance of not getting to everything before we run out of time.”

Wesseck and I both nodded, and I noted “Guess we’ll get to dealing with the corrosive gas issue right after lunch then. It’s a relatively easy solve and we don’t want to have that become a problem during the actual tournament later.”

Wesseck shrugged, replying “I’ll go get the boomnut bush proofed against it if you’ll proof the squirrels, Yures?”

I shrugged and answered “Sure. Queen, what are you going to be up to while we work on that?”

Our draconic teammate hummed and replied “Going to make sure the immune systems can deal with that parasitic fungus the Mushroom Kingdom cooked up. It would be really embarrassing if after all the effort I put into our critters’ immune systems they got taken out by that sort of group.”

I cheerfully replied “Well then, guess we all know what we’ll be working on for this afternoon. Let’s get to it.”

Despite my earlier bravado, making a corrosion-proof coating for the outsides of our artillery squirrels was going to be immensely difficult. Not only were acids and bases corrosive for entirely different reasons, but there were several other classes of compound that could easily cause massive problems.

There were a few different options for coatings that could protect against them, such as the infamously nonreactive platinum group metals; but that had the problem of making our squirrels far too shiny and not being suitable for eyes. Another option would have been fluorocarbons, which were so unreactive that they could be used to store chlorine trifluoride, but the Thundersnow Steppes didn’t have enough bioavailable fluorine for that to work. Ultimately what I went for was aromatic stabilization and some amphoteric molecules, trusting in the six membered carbon ring’s notable stability to buffer against corrosion for long enough to get out of the area while the acidity buffer would keep pH from getting too out of whack.

Wasn’t corrosion-proof sadly, but it was a heck of a lot better than not having any defense against corrosive substances at all. I quickly saved my work, and went to go check on how Wesseck was doing.

As it turns out, my robotic spider teammate was at wit’s end trying to get a hundred percent corrosion proof boomnut bush, since obviously the plant wouldn’t have the option to get up and move.

After a bit, I asked Wesseck “So, I managed to make the squirrels pretty corrosion resistant. What if we just put that dissolving vapor tree on the kill on trespass list and have the squirrels blow it up?”

Wesseck sagged, replying “Yeah, that’s probably the best option there. I’ll get the comms open for that no problem.”

And so the rest of the afternoon passed as Wesseck and I coded a behavioral solution for the problem of corrosive fumes poisoning the boomnut bushes, making sure to properly integrate it with our earlier adjustments to the coexistence routine.

At dinner, Queen had a big happy grin on her face as she replied “Good news, I managed to proof the immune systems against every last pathogen on the list of competitors already, and I even started to have time for upgrading our microbe to infect them back.”

As the drones flew out with a steaming hot pot of veggie noodles with sausage bits in, I commented “Glad it went so well for you. Corrosion proofing our organisms proved to be surprisingly difficult, but I think we probably kind of managed it in the end. Still, it took all afternoon.”

Queen nodded solemnly, “Figured. Chemical hazards are a major problem to try and tackle in an afternoon, but I’m glad you managed it. Anyway, we’ve only got a couple more days to work on stuff, so let’s eat up and get cracking.”

That’s when I put my metaphorical foot down, replying “No. We are not going to be putting in crunch for the tournament. That is just going to result in degraded quality, sloppy work, and misery for us. No crunch.”

Wesseck nodded, “I’m with Yures on this one, Queen. I know you want every single possible thing to be perfect for the tournament, but that’s just not going to be possible, and even if it were putting in massive amounts of crunch time isn’t the way to do it.”

Reluctantly, Queen relented “Alright. I guess you both have a point there. Still, let’s eat up and get some rest so we’re ready for tomorrow, I guess?”

And so we all partook in dinner, enjoying the meal greatly before packing up and getting towards bed. I did the regular routine of swapping to my enby morph and letting the morph closet maintain the one I just left, and then I flopped into bed.

That’s when my phone rang. I quickly checked the caller ID, and noting that it was from Chitin I accepted the call. I was about to speak, but the spider girl from earlier cut me off with “Honestly we’re not even mad. Spying on other teams is just part of the game and we did it to you first so fair’s fair. Absolutely going along with the coexistence strategy by the way.”

I just stared at the phone in shock as I processed that, before asking “What. How!?”

Chitin chuckled on the other end of the line as she noted “We snuck smart dust into the food shipments for all the competitor’s labs right at the start. Honestly surprised you didn’t notice that way back when, but what’s done is done. Anyway, you got time to talk now, or not really?”

I hummed “Actually I’m just getting ready for bed at the moment. I’ll probably end the call soon enough, but I’ve got a question that’s been bugging me a little.”

Chitin’s voice changed tone slightly as she asked me “Oh, what?”

“Are you a system by any chance? It’s just I don’t think I’ve ever heard you using singular pronouns.”

Chitin’s answer was a simple “Yeah, talk to you about it later. Bye.” and then they ended the call.

On my part I simply set the phone down on the side table and turned over, draping my left wing over me as I started slowly drifting off to sleep.

After another couple days of work on various adaptations I realized I’d actually fallen asleep on my right wing and cut off the circulation to it, the limb being completely numb as I levered myself upright. I quickly determined that I felt like wearing my female morph right now, shuffled myself through the morph closet to the clothing closet, and quickly got myself dressed for the day.

I came downstairs to find Queen busily at work directing cleaning drones to check the lab for smart dust, and I found myself asking “Cleaning up that smart dust Chitin mentioned?”

Queen simply nodded as she replied “Yes, I am. Not too upset about the smart dust everywhere, but now that we know it’s present we’d be foolish not to get rid of it. So, I’m having the lab cleaned.”

On Wesseck’s part, they were busily working away at yet another tub of ice cream, apparently eager to get back to work on the boomnut bushes. Still, they took a moment between bites to note “Still, nice to know Chitin’s planning on going along with our coexistence strategy. Makes that whole part of the effort feel a bit less risky, and it’ll be nice to have an ally team.”

I nodded as I got a plate full of stir-fried noodles delivered to my spot at the table, replying with an absentminded “yeah”.

Queen looked at me for a moment, before asking “Something wrong, Yures?”

I shrugged my wings as I poked at my food a bit, “Honestly I’m not even sure. We’ve done so much to get our organisms ready and I’m honestly not sure if there’s more of any actual use we can do in the two hundred kiloseconds we have left leading up to organism deployment.”

Queen nodded understandingly, replying “I’ll be honest I’m feeling a lot the same. I’ve come about as close to crafting a perfect microbe and immune system as I’d ever thought possible, and within my specialty there just isn’t much else to do.”

Wesseck thought for a moment about what else needed doing, before they replied “There’s still a tiny bit of fiddling left to do with the boomnut bush that I want to get done, but I should have that done before lunchtime. Why don’t you all take a break, and I’ll join you when I get my part done?”

I shrugged, replying “Sounds like a decent enough plan. Queen, anything you’d want to do with the extra time?”

Queen thought for a moment, eventually coming to the conclusion “Want to see my source?”

I blinked, and asked “You’re a fictive?”

Queen grinned as she replied “Yep, final boss too. Want to see?”

I thought for a moment and answered “I can’t see a reason not to. What game are you from anyway?”

Queen simply sent a command to the entertainment system to download a game, and a few moments later we were looking at Dragon Adventure Three.

I quirked an eyebrow at Queen given the immensely generic title, and simply asked “Queen, is this game any good?”

Queen laughed and fired back “No way, but the old adage about finding diehard fans for anything certainly held true here. I ditched the guy in question, but I absolutely wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for his obsession triggering his brain’s ‘make a person’ routine.”

I shrugged and replied “Huh, makes some amount of sense I guess. Anyway, if you want to play that’s fine, but I think that I’ll just watch, thank you very much.”

And so I flopped onto the couch as Queen started up the game, went through character creation, and then immediately started speedrunning the whole thing. She exploited numerous glitches to skip boring levels, shredded whatever combat encounters she deigned to actually involve herself in, blew through what puzzles were there with contemptuous ease, and soon enough had reached the final level.

Having sat through all of that, I asked “So, why did you bother getting that good at such a generic and boring game?”

Queen grinned as she blitzed through the level “So I could have an easier time showing people the only actually good part of the game. Behold, me!”

I was tempted to fire back with a witty remark along the lines of “Egotistical much?” only to find myself knocked silent by how actually legitimately breathtaking the arena was, the virtual version of Queen stomping forwards off her throne and immediately tearing into Queen’s avatar.

Or, she would have if the Queen I was on the couch next to weren’t an absolute master of the game’s mechanics, utterly demolishing her counterpart. Still, even then the game was making her work at it, and I found myself asking “Any idea why they made the you fight so much better than the rest of the game?”

Queen shrugged as she scored another couple hits on the version of her in-game. After a few moments she replied “I honestly don’t know. Maybe it was deadlines, maybe there was a change of creative direction part way through, could have been anything. Still doesn’t make up for the rest of the game though.”

I mused on that for a moment, then said “Yeah, I guess that makes sense. I’m going to go check on Wesseck while you finish up.” as I watched Queen completely dominate the boss fight without much difficulty.

Queen fired back a quick approval gesture, and I made my way off to the lab in search of the robotic spider on our team. I quickly found him tinkering away with the bush in question, apparently trying to squeeze another tiny bit of efficiency out of the metabolic pathways.

After watching for a few minutes, it occurred to me to ask “Wesseck, are you actually making any meaningful improvements to the design at this point, or is this just busy-work to feel like you’re doing something of use?”

Wesseck briefly put down the tablet and thought for a bit, before replying “Honestly it’s probably busy-work. Just let me get this tidied up to a final version and I’ll come join you and Queen on break time.”

I said “Okay Wesseck. See you in a bit, then.” and went back to the lounge area where Queen was currently dealing the finishing blow to her video game counterpart. I sat myself down and watched for a moment without feeling much need to talk.

Of course, Wesseck finished up fairly soon after that and made their way to the lounge area. As they arrived, they said “Well, I think that’s everything we could plausibly do to make our organisms more viable for the tournament. Any ideas for things we could do with the rest of today and tomorrow while we wait for tournament launch date?”

I remarked “I’d normally say testing, but with the time remaining we probably wouldn’t be able to fix any flaws we spotted before we’d have to deploy the organisms anyway, so what’s the point?”

Queen thought for a bit, and simply answered “Personally, I want to go out to some really nice restaurant. One with some actual artistic flair to the food they serve.”

I smiled at the thought, but made a point of noting “That’s only for mealtimes though. Any other ideas for the rest of the time?”

That’s when Wesseck suggested “How about we visit the Immigrant Cultures Museum tomorrow?”

I mentally tried out the idea. It didn’t have anything to do with bio-engineering which would be a nice change of pace, it had a truly vast array of art in styles from all over the settled galaxy, there were interesting facts to learn about the many and varied cultures that had moved here over the Gigaseconds, and all in all it had a lot going for it.

So I answered “Yeah, that actually sounds pretty great for something to do tomorrow. Not so sure about the rest of today, though.”

Queen hummed and asked “Do we actually need to do anything? We’ve been doing loads of stuff for the past several Megaseconds now, and I think it’s about time for us to take a proper break and rest for a while.”

I leaned into Queen’s massively muscular chest as I thought about it, eventually replying “You know what, I think I really like that idea. Let’s just take the rest of today off to kick back and relax.”

Wesseck of course objected to this idea, saying “Aww, but I was hoping to go do something exciting today.”

I chuckled “Wesseck, not everyone has your boundless font of energy. It’s okay to just sit back, relax, and take a break.”

Wesseck held abnormally still for a moment, then eventually replied “Okay. Let’s watch some streams then while we wait for dinner time.”

And so the rest of the afternoon passed with us arrayed on the couch, watching the seconds tick by as we simply sat and rested after a long, long period of very hard work.

After a while it was of course time for dinner, and we made our way to the kitchen. It was roasted sausage with legumes tonight. Pretty tasty, but I’d definitely had better.

---

This is the free edition of The Blackwood Tourney. It is entirely pre-written, and will have one chapter released each week on Saturday. 
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