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◆Mallea◆

Mallea’s morning started bright and early as usual on Quintlyber 2nd. Without missing a step, she crawled out of bed, did a few specific stretches to ward off fatigue, then started ironing her uniform for the day. Now in freshly straightened and warm clothes, she headed to the kitchen to start breakfast. She frowned a little when she saw Phon waiting for her, hoping that some day she’d just be able to make breakfast in peace.

Phon had a dish waiting for her, and Mallea immediately took a bite and rated it. She graded it quite harshly, as she did every day. It was actually quite good, food second only to her own, but Mallea would never admit that. She made sure to point out every flaw and potential areas of improvement, because this was the only way Phon would improve. If it was anyone else, she wouldn’t be nearly this harsh.

It wasn’t because Mallea hated Phon. While it would be lying to say it was the same level of affection as Drim, Mallea loved Phon like a daughter. Which, she practically was given their relationship. However, Phon never really needed a mother figure, even back then. Ever since Mallea knew her, Phon had the mental capabilities of an adult, and she was told it was a weird genetic trait of the Drazah bloodline.

When they were reunited not long ago, Mallea was immediately able to tell the kind of person Phon needed her to be. It still wasn’t a mother figure since Phon was trying to be one herself. No, what Phon needed was a rival; someone to challenge her and force her to get better, not allowing her to settle in her ways. Mallea felt she’d done a rather good job in that regard, riling her up like no one else could.

Mallea looked into the fridge, acting like she already knew what she was going to make, but honestly had no plan. She grabbed a few ingredients on a whim, then selected a recipe that matched them from her internal database. Normally, she would have planned a meal ahead of time, but she had been too focused on her work last night. Even without a proper plan, Phon still admitted defeat and ran away, flustered.

With that out of the way, Mallea could finally get to work on the actual breakfast. It was honestly her least favorite meal of the day, since everyone would eat it at different times. Phon would abstain, full from the contest. Xard would usually come around shortly after her, pretty good at sticking to a schedule. Drim was a bit more random, but would still come before too long. By the time Kada ate hers, it could barely be called breakfast anymore.

She wished that they’d all come at a set time, since that way she could provide them their meals in the best condition at just the right temperature, but knew they had hectic lives. What she’d make greatly depended on the rest of her duties. If she wasn’t too busy, she’d make something that could be heated quickly, and only cook it once someone arrived. If she was going to be busier or out of the house, she’d settle for something that could be reheated without too much quality loss. This generally applied to every meal, and she only ever made foods for Ahvra that could be reheated.

Before Xard showed up, Mallea made food for the scientists: breakfast for nathym, and a day's worth of reheatable meals for Ahvra. She understood why Ahvra wanted her portions small, but it still pained her to see someone eat so little. Nathym would be awake at any minute, so she needed to hurry and get it delivered. When she returned from the Lab, she heard the elevator moving meaning Xard was headed back to his room, making it the perfect timing to get his meal ready.

Drim was on an overnight trip, so she didn’t need to make breakfast for him, but he’d be home around lunch time. After getting Kada’s prepared so that all it needed was to be heated, she began her daily chores. She cleaned the kitchen, and the rest of the downstairs, before heading up into each individual’s room. If they were in there, she’d save them for later, and always saved Kada’s for last.

Mallea entered Kada’s room at precisely [400] and could do nothing else but sigh. Kada was still asleep, but that wasn’t all. She had managed to melt the entirety of her bed in her sleep, covering the floor in various goo. Kada was currently sprawled out on a layer of gel. Nathym had put it under her floor to catch her and keep her from falling through it. Gel was hard for Kada to melt, but still dense enough to keep her afloat. Mallea got quite close to Kada, and blew in her ear, causing her to jolt upwards into being wide awake. She then left Kada’s room and would return later to clean it.

Now that the general work had been done, she’d start on lunch. There were no errands to be done in town today, so she could take her time and create a lavish meal. Drim rolled in right when she finished, so she happily served him immediately. He was clearly tired from his trip, but still politely accepted the food and ate every bite. She thought it would have been better for him to go get some rest first, but it seemed he wanted to eat it fresh.

After setting a plate aside to take to Nathym and eating some herself, Mallea placed the rest of the food on a warming tray for the others to eat at their leisure if they were going to eat it at all. They rarely had leftovers, and even if they did, someone would likely eat it as a midnight snack. If there was still any food left the next day, she’d take it to either the homeless shelter or orphanage in town since she knew the gesture would make Drim happy.

Mallea delivered Nathym’s lunch, but then instead of heading back to the mansion, she headed to one of their construction sites to see what needed to be done. Nathym was the head architect on these projects, and was the one who completed the buildings, but Mallea was a one-woman workforce who took care of all the general labor. She then headed to her shed, which had mostly been relegated to material storage, and cut lumber precisely to the needed specifications, and made a few other important preparations.

After that, she worked on the framework for the new building for a while, since she didn’t need special Fiend powers to make her one of the best contractors in the world. She was envious of Nathym’s power, and wished her own ability would let her copy his. It was frustrating when she saw him install or invent something she was unable to make herself. She was supposed to be capable of anything, that’s what the hell she went through was for, but it seemed her creators were unable to account for the idea of Fiends popping up one day.

After completing all the work she could in the time allotted, Mallea headed back over to the workshop. A proper helipad had been built on top of it, where Kada was waiting for her. It was time for their flying lesson. Mallea had to admit Kada was a surprisingly good student. Her maneuvering still wasn’t the best, but Kada had a capability to memorize anything that was thrown at her, another thing Mallea was greatly envious of. She had started to fantasize lately about stealing Kada’s brain and seeing if she could add Kada’s memory capacity to her own.

The two of them flew around for an hour, swapping out about halfway through so Kada could get some hands-on experience. Since Kada was going to be operating a flying car, it would probably be better to train her in a skycraft, but a helicopter is what they had to work with. Once The Tourist got upgraded, she’d make sure Kada could handle the change before fully signing off on allowing her to fly it.

Kada ran off as soon as they landed, claiming she was going to do something in town and that she didn’t need dinner. Mallea made note of this, but there was a good chance she’d forget and make her a portion anyways. She returned to the mansion, expecting to meet up with Drim and take him on his driving lesson now, but she found something unexpected. He was napping on the couch. Mallea only had limited time so far to get to know the new Drim since they were reunited, but it was enough to know that this was a weird situation.

Drim was a very cautious person. This meant he would always need to find somewhere secure before he could fall asleep. The fact that he was sleeping out openly like this was a testament to how safe he felt here. This made Mallea happy, and looking at his sleeping face, she just couldn’t bring herself to wake him. Surely he wouldn’t get upset if they skipped just one driving lesson. Instead, she’d go mend his cloak, which she’d noticed was torn when he returned home.

Just as she was about to walk away, Drim spoke behind her. “I’m sorry that it’s come to this Mallea, but we’re going to have to let you go.”

Mallea’s heart and mind both shattered simultaneously. What had she done to cause this so suddenly? Was waking him just now some kind of test? Had her faulty memory caused her to do something unspeakable? Had Drim been harboring ill-feelings towards her this whole time and had only been letting her stay out of kindness? Tears were streaming down her face. She turned around to face him, about to beg him to reconsider, when she saw him with an unnatural, disgusting grin.

Drim was holding up his tablet, and took a picture of her. He then burst out laughing. “Ahahaha, you should see your face.” Mallea understood now as she clenched her fists, unable to do anything to retaliate.

“You really shouldn’t abuse his body like that!” Mallea scolded the puppeteer.

“Geez, lighten up Mallea,” Eleen goaded her. “I know you won’t tell Drim about this either, since it would just upset him. This little beaut is going in my private collection though,” Eleen said as she fumbled around with the tablet.

“You keep your own secret files from him?” Mallea inquired.

“Of course,” Eleen wasn’t even remotely remorseful. “It’s mostly just pictures he’d get in a tizzy over if he saw them. Even a spirit like me has to have hobbies.”

“Then perhaps you should do everyone a favor and move on to the afterlife already,” Mallea gritted her teeth.

“It’s not like I know how,” Eleen rebutted. “Besides, now that I know what Drim’s plan is, I’d like to see it to the end… Oh, he’s about to wake up. I look forward to tormenting you again later.” Eleen smiled at her, which repulsed Mallea since she was using Drim’s face. Then she laid back on the couch and Drim woke up a moment later.

“Oh, hey Mallea,” Drim greeted her as he rubbed his eyes. “Guess I dozed off. Is it time for our lesson?” The lesson proceeded normally, and Drim didn’t seem to have any recollection of the altercation. However, Mallea couldn’t help but torment herself with thoughts of what she’d do if that had been real.

After dinner, Mallea returned to her room, sat on her bed, and opened up her laptop. She had also changed into loungewear, since she only allowed herself to dress down when in the privacy of her own room. Rather than loading up videos or looking at funny pictures to unwind like a normal person after a long day, she opened up a special program she had made herself. It was a control interface for her brain. While the others were off on their trip, Nathym created a special chip for Mallea which Ahvra attached to her brain through surgery.

Apparently, Mallea had actually died during the surgery due to a mistake from Ahvra, but she had been brought back to life as if nothing had happened. Even the hair that they’d had to shave off had been regrown. Mallea now had full access to her brain, and all it had cost her was letting Ahvra poke around her corpse for a while. It turned out that her brain worked almost identically to a computer.

The reason she could perfectly recreate skills every time is because they were saved to her brain as executable programs. However, the whole thing was dreadfully inefficient, and now Mallea was working to optimize how her brain functioned. A big step was archiving. She could take the memories she wanted to keep, along with the programs, and compress them to free up a lot of brain space. Then, she could apply shortcuts to them which would have her brain temporarily unpack and load them without any form of lag when called upon.

Mallea was still sorting through it all. It turned out that a lifetime of skills and memories was a lot to process. She had even come across several memories she’d thought she’d forgotten. It would likely take her months to get through everything, but she had freed up a lot of space already. This also made it easier to dump useless information compared to doing it subconsciously, such as old security details for the Drazah compound that were now entirely obsolete. It was also nice to have a quantifiable number to know how much space she had, and it seemed she’d been more reserved lately than she needed to be. The rate at which it increased each day also exceeded her expectations.

After sorting for a while, Mallea opened up a coding panel within the program. This was another bonus to her new chip. She could now create her own programs and adjust the way her brain processed information. Unfortunately, the program she was trying to make was outside of what she knew, and coding a brain was a bit different, meaning she had to try and figure it out on her own. It was taking a lot longer than she’d hoped, but it should be worth it in the end, and any new programs she’d need to make in the future would be a lot easier from this experience.

The program she was trying to make was one that would allow her to temporarily remember all contextually important information for the period of a day. For instance, the location of her phone had been a big problem for her. With this program, if she thought about her phone, she would be able to recall all information about it for the past ten hours. Having a picture-perfect memory of a full day would surely take up a lot of space, but since it cycled through it and dumped the information once the time limit passed, she could justify the amount.

Mallea was deep into working on the program when her phone chimed. It wasn’t a text or any normal alert, but instead a doorbell noise meaning someone was at the gate. Mallea looked at the clock, her fatigue catching up to her now that she’d been pulled out of focusing. Who the hell wants to visit at… [080]? When’d it get so late? Whoever was there was terribly rude to come in the dead of morning.

She pulled up the gate camera on her laptop to see what mannerless vagrant was waiting, but she saw no one. However, there was something at the foot of the gate, around the size of a decently large package. Normally, those making deliveries had automatically approved access and could come into the compound, dropping off any packages at Nathym’s workshop. Whoever dropped this off clearly wasn’t a regular. Mallea was almost tempted to call the police, thinking it could possibly be a bomb, but figured it would be best to check it out herself.

Mallea changed back into her professional attire, and then hopped into her golf cart to drive to the gate. She yawned on the way, and was debating on whether to go to bed or continue working on the program when she got back. With her sleep technique, she could go for quite some time, but she knew a proper night’s rest would be better for her. It was hard to preach others to take care of themselves if she didn’t give herself the same amount of care.

Even up close, Mallea still couldn’t quite make out what the package was, since it was so oddly shaped. Only once she’d opened the gate did she finally understand. Her face scowled, since it was the worst thing she could possibly imagine. Cosmos, if you’re real, why have you forsaken me?! You know how much I hate children! Before her was a baby sleeping in a portable bassinet with a card that read ‘Please Take Care of Me’.

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