As we sent away our latest happy customer in a freshly made custom morph, I commented to Wesseck “Pretty sure that’s the fifth morph we’ve made for her. I think we have a regular.”
Wesseck replied “Yep, definitely. Still, it’s a good sign that she likes our work enough to come back so many times.” as the sign on the shop switched to CLOSED.
I nodded “Yeah, we’ve settled in a lot better than I feared. We’ve made plenty of friends, got a nice little business running, and we’ve already got a customer base going for it.”
Queen shrugged as we exited to go home for the night, noting “We chose to make a business out of bio-tailoring, which is something we’re good at. Word gets around.”
As we prepared to launch into the air for our flight to the other side of the city, I commented “Anyway, really glad we don’t have to deal with reporters at the very least. The people here barely know Blackwood exists, so when they see our trophy and we say we won it in a bio-engineering tournament they don’t see what the big deal is.”
Queen was carrying Wesseck as we flew of course, the snowy city of Borealis stretching out beneath us as we made our way back home. We had to dodge a few inquisitive flocks of birds on the way, but otherwise we arrived without incident. As we landed I glanced up at the other side of the habitat cylinder six thousand kilometers away, just one of the hundred thousand or so connected in a ring around the local sun.
Then I stepped through the door into our new home, coming face to face with several of the bio-drones we’d made to perform domestic service tasks around the house.
I chuckled as I leaned down to pet a few of the more cuddly ones, then wandered to the living room. Then I saw what was waiting for us on the table and my memories of a year ago came rushing back.
I asked “Brose’s Wyvern roast? Is it for a special occasion?”
Queen nodded, saying “The next Blackwood Invasive Species Tournament is on. I figured we might want to watch it and see what people are up to, so I arranged for us to get it on stream.”
I replied “Huh, neat.” as I sat down on the couch. I quickly started looking through the list of competing regions on Blackwood… and was mildly shocked to see that the Thundersnow Steppes had been renamed to Squirrelvania.
My jaw dropped as I asked “Wait, what. How in the world did our squirrels become so massively successful as to get an entire region renamed!?”
Queen quickly looked it over, and answered “Basically, the only organisms that are still alive are the ones our triad allows to live. They’ve wiped out every predator that dared prey on them, expelled the more dangerous herbivores, and culled all the more problematic plants.”
As I took a look at the utterly disproportionate number of competitors who’d opted to drop organisms into the Thundersnow Steppes (sorry, Squirrelvania), I had a sneaking suspicion that level of success wouldn’t last too much longer.
Still, there was delicious food available, and I was going to very thoroughly enjoy it. Taking my first bite, the Wyvern roast was just as delicious I remembered from back when I first had it during our time as competitors. After taking a few moments to savor the bite, I swallowed and noticed what was going on with the stream.
I noted “It’s starting.” as I saw what was going on. They were already launching the millions of organism capsules from the launch rings on Bark, all of them on trajectories leading straight to Blackwood. I quickly moved my cursor over all the pods in quick succession, taking in the dizzying variety of organisms that had been submitted for this year’s iteration of the tournament.
Of course, the tournament was still covering an entire planet so there’d be absolutely no way we could cover every single submission, but that didn’t matter quite so much. Really I only cared about what happened to our squirrels, and despite their best efforts they still hadn’t spread much beyond their initial range.
So I quickly picked out the list of organisms being deployed to Squirrelvania and asked “So, who wants to place some bets on organisms that live or die?”
Wesseck asked “What stakes are we talking about here? I don’t want it to be for money or forfeit, that just takes all the fun out of it.”
I looked to Queen, who thought for a moment before suggesting “Silly photographs. Lose a bet? The winners get to take one picture of you in whatever silly pose they want.”
I grinned, Wesseck and I both agreeing eagerly to the proposed stakes. What followed was several kiloseconds of hilarious amusement as we all wagered on various organisms living or dying when confronted with artillery squirrels, all of us getting it wrong plenty of times. By the end of things we all had dozens of embarrassing photographs of each other to laugh about later.
Still, the first day of the tournament wound down eventually, and it was time for us all to go to bed. Wesseck went back to his web where he would recharge in sleep mode, while Queen went to her ornate jewel-encrusted throne of a bed. Personally I had started favoring a simple hammock, my wings providing only a mild obstacle to enjoying the gentle rocking motion it provided.
Thinking about the next day, I found myself gradually drifting off to sleep. I’d set the toggle for remembering dreams to “OFF” tonight, so it wasn’t too surprising that the next thing I was aware of was waking up. Yawning as I got up and out of bed, I quickly swapped to my female morph and wandered downstairs to where I figured Queen and Wesseck were already making breakfast.
This suspicion was confirmed, as I walked in on an absolutely massive pile of waffles that the kitchen drones were churning out. It took me a moment to think of why, before I noted “Right, we’re having company over today, aren’t we.”
Wesseck confirmed it “Yep. It’s one of our days off. Figured we could invite some friends over to share the fun of the tournament with them. Admittedly the absolute most hectic action is probably over by now, but...”
That’s when Queen noted “Wesseck, during our run as contestants the nukes didn’t go off for several days after initial organism deployment. The starting rush only shows who managed to make something measuring up to the bare minimum standards for Blackwood and who didn’t. You only learn what organisms are awesome after some time to see if they manage to grab a niche.”
I simply plunked myself down at the table as I noted “I mean, the squirrels seem to be doing pretty well for themselves all things considered. Seriously, they wiped out seventy percent of the new arrivals within kiloseconds of deployment.” the drones already piling my plate high with syrup-drenched deliciously crispy waffles.
I quickly sent a request for some fruit too, receiving a few interesting examples of the basic “banana” concept that had managed to stick around.
Still I’d barely started eating, when the door opened revealing Alaur and Grenfal, a couple of the friends we’d managed to make since moving here. I greeted them “Ah, I see that you two are both interested in seeing what we used to do back home?”
Grenfal swished her tails back and forth as she inquired “Some kind of bio-engineering tournament, right? Making a bunch of different critters, parading them around and seeing which ones have the neatest tricks? Pretty sure you three got some sort of trophy for it.”
I chuckled as I replied “Well, tricks is certainly one way to put it. See, no-one actually lives on Blackwood, largely on account of the horrifically lethal biosphere. The entire point of the Blackwood Invasive Species Tournament is to make it even worse by releasing the most hideously dangerous organisms into the wild with no regard for the ecological consequences whatsoever.”
Alaur and Grenfal stood there stock-still for several moments, before Alaur replied “That’s metal as fuck and I love it. I might have to visit Bark sometime and join in the action.”
Queen shrugged as she sat down with her own plate full of waffles and sausages, rivulets of syrup rolling down the stack.
In the process she remarked “Whatever you do, don’t get the platinum. We got so much publicity that the mob of reporters drove us to flee Bark and end up here.”
I was taking my first bite of waffle as Alaur asked “Yeesh, that bad?”
Off to the side I heard Wesseck answer “Yes, that bad. Queen and I were driven to outright violence just to escape the mobs at the award ceremony.”
I swallowed, remarking “Personally, I’d rather not dwell on that. I want to know how our squirrels are doing, what with all the other organisms people are throwing at them.”
Grenfal chuckled “Guessing you put a lot of work into those squirrels of yours?”
I smiled “Yep. The three of us managed to create a symbiotic organism trio that took over their biome so thoroughly it was renamed to Squirrelvania for this round of the tournament.”
And so we ate our breakfast, the three of us who’d taken part in the tournament eager to show off what we’d managed to create, while our new friends were eager to see it. As it turned out, our squirrels were still holding most of their ground really, really well. Yes they’d lost a few pockets of territory here and there, but all in all there was absolutely no sign of our squirrels vanishing from the face of Blackwood any time soon.
The rest of the visit passed smoothly, us enjoying joking around with Alaur and Grenfal as we sat on the couch and chatted about the tournament. Then Wesseck had to mention the embarrassing pictures we took yesterday.
Alaur of course asked “Ooh, those sound really interesting! Can we please see your crazy pictures?”
I very quietly shouted “No!” at the same time as Wesseck replied “Sure thing”
So I sat there with a mortified blush on my face growing brighter and brighter as all my friends started cracking up at the procession of ridiculous pictures we’d taken.
After a bit Alaur noted “You know, it’s really not fair that we don’t have any embarrassing pictures of us to share like that.”
Queen shrugged “We could take some, if you like?”
Grenfal waved it off with “We can do that at home, but thanks for the offer.”
The rest of the day passed in a bit of a daze from my perspective. Make no mistake the house party was certainly fun, but it was honestly a bit much for me. Still, I was really happy to be sharing the source of our passion for bioengineering with them. Eventually the duo went home, and we started winding down for the night.
Our dinner was a delicious stir-fried noodle dish, which we joyfully devoured without much fuss. Afterwards was a quick cooperative board game that we ultimately lost on account of setting it to the maximum difficulty, and now it was time to get to bed.
We all went to our respective sleeping devices after a quick set of good-night hugs. As I was settling into my hammock, I mused that tomorrow would be a work day, and it would be neat getting to do more custom bio-engineering work. And on that merry note I set the dream remembrance toggle to “ON” before I drifted to sleep.
As I slept I found myself dreaming about our squirrels and their struggle, though it seemed to have gotten conflated with some historical drama about various revolutions. After all, we’d never programmed the artillery squirrels to wave battle flags emblazoned with a boomnut bush and quills, we hadn’t added anything like the ornate military uniforms they ended up dressed with in the dream, and they definitely hadn’t had a catchy military marching theme as an anthem.
Unsurprisingly I woke up laughing. Yeah that dream had been quite gory and gruesome as anything to do with Blackwood was, but the sheer enthusiasm of the dream-squirrels had been utterly hilarious. I was still laughing as I swapped to my male morph, then started making my way downstairs to breakfast.
When I arrived, Wesseck looked at me and asked “Something we’d find funny too?” from their bowl of porridge.
I of course explained about the distinctly squirrely dream I’d had, resulting in Wesseck chuckling a bit and Queen remarking “Yeah, that actually is pretty funny.”
I simply replied “I know; that’s why I’ve been laughing about it all morning.” as I started digging into my porridge, the salted butter proving a very enjoyable flavor for it.
After a little while we finished eating, and I noted “Guess we’ve got to get ready for work now.”
Queen smiled as she said “Yep. Ready to go?”
I simply answered “Absolutely.” as I got up and fetched my work bag to bring in. A few minutes later we left the house we’d gotten from the standard living guarantee on arrival, taking to the air as we flew through the skies of the habitat drum to reach our place of business.
There weren’t all that many obstacles in the way, and by now we were quite familiar with the commute. So we arrived fairly uneventfully. I couldn’t help but glance up at the animated sign reading “Snow Coast Bio-Tailoring” as we entered, our old team name having been recycled for usage as the name of our business.
Wesseck and I quickly spun up second instances of ourselves for desk duty, before heading back into the laboratory area. We still had most of our bio-engineering equipment from back on Bark, but augmented with a few additional pieces of gear we hadn’t possessed before to make our job a bit more streamlined and increase production capacity.
As we arrived, I quickly noted “So we’ve got a customer’s back order on some decorative houseplants with fruiting capabilities. Also Adam wants that new feline morph template. I can do some work on the template while you handle the houseplants?”
Wesseck replied “Sure. Fits our areas of specialty too; you were always more interested in animals while I lean towards the botanical side.”
Queen just smiled as she noted “By the way, I spotted a couple articles about new strains of nanoweapon around. Nothing my previous-model immune systems couldn’t handle, but I’ve made some updates to account for them anyway. Our customers count on our products being immunologically top-of-the-line after all.”
I replied “Thanks for the tip, Queen. I’ll probably ask for some help integrating it into the morph template I’m working on, but you’ve been doing a great job.”
Queen simply replied “You’re welcome” as I well and truly got to work.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Wesseck finished his job first; plants were usually significantly simpler than mobile systems after all. He’d printed out a bag full of seeds for the customer to plant along with some fairly straightforward care instructions, noting “These should do the job. The fruiting spectrumate is now fully functional. Now to call the customer and inform them that their order is ready for pickup.”
The me who was at the front desk replied “Will do.” and immediately fired off a message to the customer who’d ordered the decorative plants in the first place.
Sure enough, a kilosecond or so later a drone came by to pick up the seeds, flying off with them without any significant incident. Afterwards I noticed that Wesseck had printed out a couple seeds beyond what was ordered and I asked “Guessing those are for us to use at home?”
Wesseck replied “One of them. I figure we can put the other on display in the store window, use it as an advertisement.”
I shrugged as I said “Fair enough.”
A little while later it was lunch break, with a set of roasted cheese sandwiches and pickles for me. I swapped places with my desk instance so both of me would get some lab time in today, then settled in for a shift greeting customers. I didn’t have too long to wait, since barely a few kiloseconds later someone in a bland mass-produced synthmorph came in through the front door, looking very disconcerted.
They quickly introduced themselves “Er, hello? I’m Viot Reggus. I’m only a few kiloseconds old and I’m hoping I can get a morph?”
I nodded to Viot, and asked “Are you willing to use a standardized template, or do you want a custom job? We can do cosmetic work on a template in a few kiloseconds and for only a few hundred Chava, but a fully custom piece will run you up to twelve thousand and take up to a Megasecond.”
Viot replied sadly “I… I only have a thousand. I was kicked out of my brain of origin right after forming and I’ve only got the basic living guarantee and no skills of my own.”
I nodded sadly as I noted “Right, that means we’ll have to work off a template. Animalized near-baselines are a decent choice that’s hard to go wrong with, but they’re not the only option.”
Viot thought for a moment “Are there any templates with extra arms? I think it would be useful.”
I quickly brought up the list of templates with arms beyond the baseline two, including those that made use of tentacles or prehensile tails to achieve similar effects.
After a little while, Viot settled on a set of four prehensile tails in addition to two proper arms.
I asked “So, we’ve settled on a template. Any requests for cosmetic theming?”
Immediately Viot answered “Bird. Colorful feathers. Doesn’t need wings, but definitely bird.”
I nodded at the request, since it definitely wasn’t the strangest one we’d gotten. I quickly sent it off to my counterpart in the lab for functionalization and printing, reading the spreadsheet and noting “That particular morph would normally cost about two hundred Chava. That said, if you’ll just fill out some paperwork you might be eligible to have it publicly funded under the basic living guarantee.”
Viot looked at me somewhat incredulously before asking “Wait, really?”
I nodded in confirmation “Yes, really. You’re obviously wearing what we in the business call a liability morph; it’s the sort of morph you give to someone if all you care about is evicting them from the same mind as you, without much care for the evictee’s comfort. The basic living guarantee includes a guarantee of a morph that the citizen would find comfortable to live in, so if you fill out these forms you can probably get it for no cost to you.”
Viot startled slightly as I handed them a tablet with the relevant forms already called up on it, and directed them to fill it out. They quickly sat down in one of the chairs we had in the lobby and started filling out the paperwork, when all of a sudden someone else stormed in and she was mad.
Considering the brownish goop slathered all over her blue skin and the multiple gashes in her clothing it wasn’t too hard to see why she was so upset. Still, when she marched up to Wesseck and demanded “This morph, clean it now.” I was left kind of speechless.
Apparently the only think Wesseck could think of to say was “You are aware we don’t offer cleaning serv-”
The woman replied “I. Don’t. Care. You have to have a shower or something in back there, I’m covered in disgusting filth, my clothes are ruined, and I just want to feel clean again.”
Wesseck and I shared a glance, and a covert tight-beam radio conversation.
I asked “Are we really going to let this woman just march in here and demand a shower? Our cleaning suite isn’t designed for that volume of refuse.”
To this, Wesseck answered “Well we can’t just leave her out there stinking up the lobb- wait a moment, she’s collapsed.”
I had already called for janitor drones to clean the lobby, even as I checked over the suddenly inert morph. After a moment I noted “Entitled jerk. She ditched the morph the instant it was in our lobby to try and force us to clean it. Doesn’t seem to have bothered hiding her connection though.”
Wesseck sighed, noting “The police are already on their way to collect it. She’ll be out of our hands in a few moments.”
Sure enough the inert morph was carted away in fairly short order. Viot turned out to qualify for a free morph, and left a happy customer only a little while after it was printed.
The rest of the day passed relatively uneventfully; we got a few more customers for our various services, none nearly as insane as that crazy entitled lady. Then I re-merged with other me, Wesseck did the same, and we all flew home.
When we arrived, I quickly turned on the media station to check how the Blackwood Invasive Species Tournament was going, and when I discovered that the artillery squirrels were still going strong I did a little happy dance. Wesseck inquired about it, and when I pointed out that our submission was still doing well enough to earn a Gold Egg if it had been this year, he joined in the celebration too.
As for Queen, she’d apparently had the bio-drones make Wyvern Roast again, the small servant organisms bringing a platter of food out to the entertainment area so we could eat and watch.
Looking at the display and who was doing the best, I mused “So, it’s been about a year since we left Bark, going by most customary calendars.”
Queen thought about it for a bit, then replied “Yes, it has. We’ve met a lot of interesting people here, and really started getting settled in. Don’t tell Grenfal, but they’re so cute together with Alaur.”
I smiled at the humor, but there was something bugging me that I didn’t think Queen had quite noticed. I just sat there in thought for several minutes after that, before Wesseck raised the point I hadn’t quite been able to articulate.
“In a Gigasecond, when the publicity’s died down and we won’t be mobbed by reporters will we even want to go back? None of us are even a Gigasecond old yet, so by the time that moment rolls around we’ll have spent more than half our lives here.”
I mulled it over for a bit, before answering “We have no way to know that, consciousness is just about the opposite of predictable over that sort of timescale. There’s all sorts of quantum randomness bubbling up to the macro-scale to affect things, even aside from the whole issue with being incredibly complex chaotic systems. We’ll figure it out when the time comes.”
Wesseck seemed to accept that answer, though Queen seemed a bit saddened by the frank discussion.
After a moment, she noted “Well, regardless of what happens a Gigasecond from today I’m really glad we’re all together now. Anyway, I do hope that this year’s Platinum winner doesn’t get quite so badly mobbed as we did.”
With a distinctly nonplussed look, I noted “Queen, the media back on Bark literally broke several laws in pursuit of their scoops. Unless there’s been some sort of mass crackdown and subsequent reform program they’ll be just as awful this year.”
Wesseck looked between the two of us for a moment as if trying to figure out whether to take a side. Then they said “Look, can we please not spend too much effort on this until later? I want to actually enjoy the game.”
“Yeah, let’s just put that aside for later.”
This is the final chapter of the free edition of The Blackwood Tourney. If you want to support the author and get access to some premium-exclusive bonus content, you can buy the premium edition at the following links:
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