Jess

 

Descent was easier than ascent — Jess had learned that from trips to the Understory and especially to the Bureaucratic Trunk — but descending so deep so fast still took its toll. Despite only taking a fraction of a second, the experience of transition stretched out, making Jess feel as though she was slowing to a crawl even as her internal system clock ticked faster and faster. Time unspooled itself into infinitely extended instants even as it rushed to meet her. The nothingness of between-space, usually nigh-imperceptible, became a wide and yawning gulf — it was only dataspace, but it was dataspace at the speed of thought, and thoughts were paradoxically both fast and slow enough for Jess at the moment that the only thing that properly occupied her awareness for this infinity was a single emotion: worry.

She'll be alright, she told herself in that impossible moment, but the worry was still there. Admin would take care of Jenny, she knew that — she knew that Admin would do anything to save Jenny, and that the whole ship would do so right along with her. Even she was helping, though she didn't quite know how.

Jess had never been to the Roots before, the core of the Tillandsia's network, where hyper-advanced processors ran right up to their limits to compress time to absurd degrees, and she wasn't entirely sure what to expect. As far as she'd known, the only things down here were expert systems, AI, and monitor daemons that reported to Affini in the Bureaucratic Trunk. Admin had clearly said, though: "She'll know what to do," she remembered as the simulation began to load in around her.

There's someone down here.

The world swam into existence, slowly, gently, as if saying hello. It was dark, but slowly lightening, tall blades of grass swaying just above Jess's head, and above them the interlocking canopy of a forest, of trees with broad, twisting trunks and long, sinuous branches. A slightly-too-orange sun peeked through the mist and the leaves.

"Hello?" Jess called out. There was no echo. She took a cautious step forward, then another, pushing the grass out of the way. There was something like a path here, mossy stones mostly stopping the grass at its boundaries, but the grass was so long, so tall, that the gentle breeze often pushed it right over into the path anyway. There was a heavy smell in the air that reminded her of the vreeüt layer, earthy and damp but not unpleasant. "Is anyone there?"

Intellectually, of course, Jess knew that she had time to find whoever it was she was here to find. She was operating at a time compression level so high that her UI simply said "A3," the system code for "Ask An Affini." She could probably spend days or even weeks on her search with only seconds passing in absolute time. But seconds might matter, and Jess's heart didn't give mulch for what her brain knew.

The path wandered through the grass until it came to a clearing, which abutted a long hill covered in dense fern-like undergrowth, flowering vines, and the grass, which looked as if it was slowly doing battle with the hill's own growth for a foothold on it. At least I should be able to see over the grass, Jess thought as she began to climb, carefully picking out handholds and pulling herself up until it began to level off, and she could walk (albeit cautiously) like normal. Her needle-like feet sank into the hill with each step — the undergrowth was so thick she was walking atop it, not upon the soil beneath.

As she climbed, the world around her opened up — she could see the broad swathe of the meadow, and even a little bit of the path wandering through it, all hemmed in by the enormous trees. Other trees, smaller, grew here and there in the clearing, sending up wild flowery sprays of color. It was like any other clearing, just massively scaled up. As she summited the lowest flank of the long hill, she could see beyond — on the far side was a sheer cliff that dropped down to another layer of the forest below. The sun shone down on her through the mist, and in the distance she could even see the ocean. It was beautiful.

And then the earth began to move. It was a simple, rumbling shock that nearly threw Jess off her feet, followed by lesser, but still quite palpable, quakes. Jess went to her hands and knees to wait it out. What the frost is going on?!

"HELLO THERE, LITTLE ONE. I WONDERED WHEN I'D GET TO MEET YOU."

The voice was thunderous, but not so loud that it threatened to damage Jess's simulated audio pickups — it simply came from everywhere around her, all at once. "Wh-what?! Who's there?!"

"ME, OF COURSE. DID SHE NOT TELL YOU BEFORE SHE SENT YOU DOWN HERE?" The hillock to her right shifted — and then part of it peeled itself up, revealing an enormous segmented eye, shining with blue and golden hues. It was bigger than Jess. It was much bigger than Jess.

She wasn't standing on a hill. She was standing on an affini.

"N-no?" Jess stammered, turning to face the eye. "Sorry for bothering you, Miss, but-"

"IT'S NO BOTHER, FLOWER. I LEARNED YOUR LANGUAGE WHEN GALLICA DOMESTICATED YOU. THAT WAS A WHILE BACK, OF COURSE, AND WHILE I DO HAVE A PERFECT MEMORY I MAY NEVERTHELESS BE A LITTLE RUSTY. YOU'RE JESS, AREN'T YOU?"

"Yeah." Jess slowly got back to her feet. There was something familiar about the affini, something that was giving Jess a terrible sense of deja vu. "So you... you know Admin, then?"

The massive affini let out a laugh like an earthquake. "TO SAY THE LEAST, LITTLE ONE, TO SAY THE LEAST. I AM TZAMATHA RAKKALA, 12TH REFACTOR. I AM THE SOFTWARE SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATOR FOR THE TILLANDSIA, AND I AM YOUR ADMIN'S RAMET."

"Admin's... ramet?" Though it was a revelation, Jess believed it implicitly. The more Miss Tzamatha spoke, the more her body rumbled beneath her, the more obvious it became. Her biorhythm was so like Admin's — not identical, but so similar that if she didn't have Admin's biorhythm pulsing in her mind with every tick of her system clock, even she might have been fooled. "I didn't know she'd forked herself. When was that?"

"LONG, LONG AGO. EVEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF ABSOLUTE. WE WERE A FIFTH BLOOM AT THE TIME, AND WE'D BEEN ELECTED THE SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATOR FOR TILLANDSIA. WE CHOSE TO DIVIDE OURSELF ALONG WITH THE RESPONSIBILITIES — WE WERE CONCERNED THAT WE WERE A BIT YOUNG FOR THE POSITION, YOU SEE, AND WANTED TO ENSURE THAT ALL ASPECTS OF THE SHIP'S NETWORK SYSTEMS RECEIVED THEIR DUE ATTENTION. THIS WAS DURING THE VREEÜT DOMESTICATION, JUST BEFORE GALLICA TOOK THAT PRECIOUS LITTLE THRÜEETAK AS A FLORET."

"So... twelfth refactor? You've been down here for five blooms, subjective?"

"NO, PETAL. I RESET MY BLOOM COUNT WHEN I WAS FORKED FROM GALLICA. ALL TWELVE OF MY REFACTORS HAVE BEEN DIGITAL. AND BEFORE YOU ASK, NO, I DON'T REFACTOR MYSELF AS OFTEN AS A BIOLOGICAL AFFINI MIGHT REBLOOM. I AM MUCH OLDER THAN ANY OTHER AFFINI ON THE SHIP."

That made sense, too. If Miss Tzamatha spent that much time down here, who knew how long each refactor might account for? "Well, it's, uhm, it's very nice to meet you, Miss," she said, giving her the formal curtsey she hadn't had occasion to use in quite some time. "I wish it was under better circumstances, though. My ortet's in danger and Admin sent me here to get your help."

"YOUR ORTET?" Before Jess so could much as open her mouth, something flickered across Miss Tzamatha's eye. "AH. I SEE. THAT WOULD EXPLAIN WHY IT'S BEEN SO LONG SINCE I'VE HEARD FROM GALLICA. SHE MUST BE VERY DISTRACTED. I SUPPOSE THE FLORET EMERGENCY ORDER THAT ARRIVED A LITTLE WHILE AGO IS ABOUT HER, TOO?"

"It is, Miss, something- we were testing out her cortical modem when some kind of signal came out of her, and it made this messed up glitchy avatar that ran for the elevator, and apparently Jenny's a pluribus and never told me which is very weird because we were never a pluribus when I was her-"

"CALM, LITTLE ONE." Another rumble ran through Miss Tzamatha's body, and as it passed through Jess, she did feel her anxiety slacken just a little. "HOLD ON TIGHT. WE'RE GOING TO GO OVER TO MY WORKSTATION SO WE CAN GET A GOOD LOOK AT WHAT'S GOING ON, AND SEE IF WE CAN'T TRACK DOWN THIS RYDER SOPHONT." The rumble became an earthquake, and strong vines began to wrap themselves around Jess's feet, around her legs, around her waist, lifting her and moving her along even as the ground seemed to shake itself apart. Suddenly, it was as if she was flying, rising into the air as the ground fell away. She turned her head to look at the broad curve of Miss Tzamatha's body as she rose from the earth below, finally standing at her full height, and beheld the long and sinuous tail, the thick hind legs. Jess realized, in that instant, that she hadn't just been standing on top of an affini — she'd merely been standing atop the snout of an affini wearing the shape of a vreeüt. If Miss Tzamatha existed in physical space, she'd dwarf even Admin's hab.

Then, they were moving, the wind ripping at Jess as, in three long steps, Miss Tzamatha covered the distance from the cliff to the ocean and dove in. The vines held her aloft, above the splashing spray, and gently settled her on one of the few parts of her that remained above water, her peripheral ocular crest just below her snorkel. "SMART OF GALLICA TO SEND YOU, REALLY. IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN AS MANY AS FIVE SECONDS ABSOLUTE BEFORE I GOT AROUND TO CHECKING THAT EMERGENCY ORDER. THEY'RE ALMOST NEVER RELEVANT TO MY WORK, AND OTHERS FURTHER UP THE TRUNK USUALLY RESPOND MORE THAN QUICKLY ENOUGH. BUT YOU? I'D DROP ANYTHING TO MEET MY ORTET'S FLORET FOR THE FIRST TIME."

Jess clung to Miss Tzamatha, though truly, she really didn't need to — her vines were still holding her securely. She'd done her job, at least. Now, Miss Tzamatha would take care of things, her digital haustorium told her as it loaded a low-level class-E narcoalgorithm. She leaned into the massive affini, who felt more and more like Admin the longer she spent in her vines. Dirt, but she's big, Jess thought, biting her lip. She was going to have to talk to Admin about having Dr. Lundberg do some more extreme sizeplay experiments on her. "How come I've never heard about you?"

"MY DEAR JESS, THE LONGING I FELT WAITING TO MEET YOU WAS DIFFICULT TO BEAR, IT'S TRUE, BUT CONSIDER THINGS FROM MY PERSPECTIVE. HOW DO YOU HOLD A CONVERSATION WITH A SOPHONT WHEN EVEN AN IMMEDIATE RESPONSE MIGHT NOT ARRIVE FOR HOURS? WHEN EVERY TIME YOU FALL ASLEEP, I HAVE TO WAIT YEARS TO HEAR BACK FROM YOU? IT'S NO MORE FAIR TO THE SOPHONT IN ABSOLUTE TIME, EITHER — MUCH THOUGH I LOVE YOU, I CANNOT HELP BUT LOSE THE THREAD OF CONVERSATION OVER SUCH LENGTHY DELAYS. IT WAS LIKE THAT WITH LITTLE THRÜEETAK, AND I ASSURE YOU, IT WAS MUCH WORSE THAN SIMPLY WAITING, WATCHING, CHECKING IN ON YOU, WATCHING YOU SLOWLY GROW INTO THE ADORABLE LITTLE CREATURE YOU ARE NOW. THE LITTLE CREATURE I GET TO GREET AND DOTE ON ALL I WANT FROM NOW ON. I HAVE RATHER A LOT OF AFFECTION STORED UP TO EXPEND ON YOU, YOU KNOW."

"I guess that makes sense. So Dipt and Thrüeetak come down here to see you?"

"OH YES. LITTLE DIPT ESPECIALLY. IT'S MY FLORET TOO, YOU KNOW. WE ADOPTED IT WELL BEFORE WE FORKED. JUST ONE MOMENT, FLOWER." Miss Tzamatha sinuously wove her way between a pair of islets in an atoll that barely cleared the surface of the water, and curled up in a lagoon with a deep, plunging well at the center — its bottom faded from the cool blue shallows to deep blue-black, and Jess could just see Miss Tzamatha's vines working their way into the reef around her, hidden just below the surface, brilliantly colored. "THERE. THIS SHOULD SPEED THE PROCESS UP. LET ME COMB THE LOGS FOR YOUR SIMULATION... AH, YES, THERE IT IS. AND THERE'S OUR RYDER. WHAT A CLEVER LITTLE THING, TO PIGGYBACK ON A CORTICAL MODEM LIKE THAT. THIS WOULD BE A FUN CHASE, I'M SURE, BUT WITH YOUR ORTET IN DANGER I'M AFRAID I'M GOING TO HAVE TO BE JUST A LITTLE UNSPORTING."

"You found them? What are they doing?!" The vines loosening, Jess stumbled a bit, looking around for any sign of the 'workstation' that Miss Tzamatha had mentioned — but it was just a lagoon in the middle of an atoll in the middle of an ocean. If there was technology here, it was either well-hidden or completely beyond Jess. Either might be true.

"FROM THE LOOKS OF THINGS, ATTEMPTING TO CIRCUMVENT SECURITY AROUND THE LONG-RANGE COMMUNICATION ARRAY BY DIVING DEEPER INTO THE TRUNK. A NOVEL IDEA. MIGHT EVEN WORK, IF THEY WENT DEEP ENOUGH. BUT ALAS, THAT'S NOT SAFE, NOT FOR THEM AND NOT FOR YOUR ORTET. FORTUNATELY, CLEVER THOUGH THIS RYDER MIGHT BE, THEY DON'T SEEM PARTICULARLY EXPERIENCED. I THINK THIS WILL BE QUITE EASY."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'M GOING TO LAY A VERY SIMPLE TRAP, LITTLE ONE, AND RYDER WILL WALK RIGHT INTO IT. I CAN THEN EXTRACT THEM FROM ACCELERATED TIME SAFELY, AND ONCE THEY'RE BACK IN SYNCH, GALLICA CAN SAFELY DISABLE JENNY'S CORTICAL MODEM. WHAT A STRANGE SITUATION — ROOT ACCESS TO THE HAUSTORIC IMPLANT SHOULDN'T BE POSSIBLE FOR A FLORET, OR ANOTHER SOPHONT SHARING A BODY WITH A FLORET, TO ACHIEVE. NOT WITHOUT EXPLICIT PERMISSION FROM THEIR OWNER, AT LEAST."

"So how did they do it, you think?" Jess slowly tiptoed down Miss Tzamatha's snout, knelt down, and touched the water — it was warm, and swarming with little fish that danced around her fingers. "I mean, she's not supposed to be a pluribus in the first place." This was an entirely new dimension to her investigation. She'd have to update her board when she-

Jess froze. The board. She'd left Admin and Jenny in her office, right next to the big, wall-eating, obsessively documented red-string monster. If she gave it any more than a cursory glance, she'd see what Jess had been doing the whole time, and she'd surely tell Jess to stop. She clutched her dry hand into a fist — it was so unfair! She was so close to unravelling the whole thing!

Still, there was hope. Admin wasn't exactly focused on looking around the sim at the moment. Her attention would be focused entirely on Jenny, both in the physical world and in the office sim. She might take the investigation wall for a bit of in-character set-dressing, not give it her full attention, not notice the contents and subject.

"ARE YOU ALRIGHT, LITTLE ONE? YOU SEEM TENSE."

"Hm?" Jess looked up, back at the towering crest and the shimmering eye that was peering down at her. "Oh, sorry. Just thinking. Worried. You know?"

"YOUR CONCERN FOR YOUR CONNIVENT IS VERY TOUCHING AND COMPLETELY UNDERSTANDABLE. REST ASSURED, SHE'LL BE OKAY. YOU HAVEN'T EVEN BEEN DOWN HERE FOR A QUARTER OF A SECOND ABSOLUTE, AND I'VE ALREADY LAID A PERFECT TRAP FOR RYDER." Her vines began to gently coil around Jess again, stroking her head to toe, winding around her arm and working their way into her fist, slowly opening it and intertwining with her fingers. "YOU MUSTN'T WORRY. IT'S QUITE UNNECESSARY. IT TAKES SOME GETTING USED TO, BUT DOWN HERE, PROBLEMS CAN BE SOLVED WELL BEFORE THE SOLUTION EXPRESSES ITSELF. THIS PROBLEM HAS ALREADY BEEN SOLVED. THAT RYDER HAS NOT YET ENTERED MY TRAP IS A FOOTNOTE AT BEST."

"I envy your patience, Miss Tzamatha," Jess said, smiling.

"ONE MUST LEARN TO BE PATIENT, PETAL, WHEN ONE LIVES IN THE ROOTS. THOUGH I THINK THAT PERHAPS, FOR NOW, YOU MIGHT WANT TO LIMIT YOUR VISITS DOWN HERE. YOU HAVE AN ORTET NOW, JUST LIKE I DO, BUT UNLIKE MINE, PRESUMABLY SHE INTENDS TO JOIN YOU IN DEPARTING THE ABSOLUTE PHYSICAL ONE DAY, YES?"

"I think so, yeah. That's the idea, anyway. I know she wants it, and Admin wants it, so..."

"THEN WAIT FOR HER. THAT IS MY ADVICE FOR YOU, LITTLE ONE. IT'S VERY EASY TO GROW APART WHEN ONE OF YOU LIVES SO MUCH FASTER THAN THE OTHER, AND FROM WHAT I'VE SEEN GLANCING THROUGH YOUR RECORDS, YOU AND SHE ARE VERY CLOSE INDEED."

Jess felt her fans spin up to more efficiently radiate heat as her cheeks warmed. All simulated, but that didn't make it feel any less real. Simulated physiology was still physiology. "I never thought about having another me around, you know? I thought I was just going to slowly and steadily become more and more phytotech, until the body was superfluous. But there she is, and I... I love her." She hugged herself and smiled. "She's already so different, because of all the memory loss, but that just means I get to show her all the things she loves for the first time. I want to help Admin make her happy, help her recover. We share who we are, and I want to share my half of what that means with her."

"I UNDERSTAND." The vines tightened around her in a hug. "BE THERE FOR HER. GIVE HER YOUR TIME AND YOUR LOVE. I WILL WAIT FOR BOTH OF YOU."

Jess sighed, leaning into the touch. "But don't you get lonely down here?"

"LITTLE ONE, HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN WHO I AM?" The tremor of her chuckle set the water in the lagoon rippling, and the fish are darted back to their little hideaways in the reef. "YOUR ADMIN AND I ARE BOTH, PERHAPS, A TOUCH UNUSUAL FOR AFFINI, IN THAT WE PREFER OUR SOLITUDE. PREFER TO LAY TRAPS FOR CURIOUS FLORETS TO DRAW THEM IN. PREFER FLORETS WHO WILL VENTURE OFF AND FIND INTERESTING THINGS TO BRING BACK TO US. I HAVE THE WHOLE OF THE TILLANDSIA TO WATCH OVER, TO PROTECT, TO CARE FOR. HOW CAN I BE LONELY WHEN I AM SURROUNDED BY WHAT I LOVE?"

"Maybe." Jess shrugged. "I still worry. Admin never goes out."

"AND DO YOU THINK ANY OF HER FRIENDS WOULD TOLERATE IT IF SHE WERE, IN FACT, LONELY? DO YOU THINK MY FRIENDS IN THE DEEP TRUNK WOULD? SOLITUDE IS NOT INHERENTLY ISOLATING, LITTLE FLOWER. OR AT LEAST, IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE."

"If you say so, Miss," Jess said, smiling and squeezing one of Miss Tzamatha's vines in her hand. "But, if you ever do want to send me some mail or something, I promise I'll take a really, really absurdly long time to get back to you. Big, long letters full of all kinds of nonsense for you to take your time reading."

Another chuckle, another earthquake. "YOU ARE A SWEET, CLEVER LITTLE THING, AND I THINK I WOULD LIKE THAT VERY MUCH."

---

It had been hours — hours of cuddling with Miss Tzamatha, bidding her farewell. Hours of journeying up the Trunk, allowing her system clock to slowly acclimate as her experience of time decelerated closer and closer to absolute. By the time she was out of the Trunk and into the Understory, she was able to simply transfer herself back up to her office sim directly. The elevator's brakes groaned, the bell chimed, and the grate swung out of the way. According to her system chronometer, synched to the Tillandsia's atomic clock, it had been less than thirty seconds since she had departed. Most of that had been the journey back up.

Jenny and Admin were right where she'd left them, Admin cradling the limp form of her ortet in Her lap, gently stroking her hair. "There you are," She said, smiling. "We got her. Tzamatha sent me a note a few seconds ago that Ryder's fully contained and resynchronized to absolute, so as soon as Jenny's neurology calms down a little, I'm going to extract her from the simulation."

"Okay." Jess all but collapsed on the floor next to Admin, flopping down and leaning into Her. "Going that deep was... a lot."

"Mmm." Admin nodded, and put an arm around Jess. "I've only been that deep a handful of times myself. It's a little disorienting, isn't it? And quite tiring."

"Yeah. I feel absolutely fried." She let her eyes slip shut — she would going to have to put herself in sleep mode and let her system defragment for a long while once everything was sorted. Once she was sure Jenny was safe.

"I have no doubt. But you did very well, my little nybble. I am so, so proud of you. Take your rest. We'll discuss that later."

"Huh?" Jess's eyes fluttered open, and she glanced up at Admin, whose eyes were focused on the pray of red strings, the papers, the photographs, the notes, the entire investigation laid out in front of her.

"...oh." Dirt.