Jess

Jess was running her coolant systems and full tilt and it still wasn't enough. Nothing could ever compete with the sheer thrill, the anticipation, the all-consuming energy of getting answers. She practically tuned out all the way to the xenoarcheology facility where the phantom ship was being stored, so full of energy she scarcely had time to marvel that Admin was actually leaving Her hab for the first time in weeks.

Now, she was in the depths of a facility that spanned multiple levels in the ring — one of, she was proud to say, her shortlist candidates for where she should dig for further information before Admin tumbled to her investigation. She and Jenny were in the custody of one Acis Crenits, Second Bloom, a tall and twiggy affini whose droopy white flowers hung from him like streamers, trailing behind him every time he moved.

"Again," he was saying, "I'm very pleased you're both doing well, considering what happened. You gave us quite a fright, you know. It's very strange, this little creature hasn't shown the slightest bit of hostility since your encounter with it."

"That is weird," Jess said, nodding. "Considering what it did."

"Yeah, well, maybe getting part of its body snapped off taught it manners," Ryder muttered, hands shoved into the pockets of her jacket. "Whatever works to train a pet, right?" She'd been in a foul mood since the phantom ship had brought her out, squatting over pieces of the long-since disassembled ship and staring at them as if willing them to reassemble themselves so she could make a break for freedom.

"I sincerely hope you don't think we'd actually cause that kind of trauma to any being for mere training purposes," Acis said, glancing back at the trailing Ryder. "We have much more refined and delicate means of altering behavior."

"Oh, well, if it's 'refined' and 'delicate' brain-scrambling, that's different," Ryder spat.

"Don't mind her, she's just mad because she made a stupid, dangerous decision she didn't need to make that got her domesticated." Jess was only a few days into knowing about Ryder, and had only interacted with her a few times, but so far she was not particularly impressed with Jenny's headmate. How can someone be mostly Jenny and be this awful? She tried to bury that feeling, focusing instead on the pity she felt for her, kicking and fighting against something good, something inevitable. Hopefully, before too long, Ryder would come around, and she could be on good terms with her new connivent.

"Oh, I've heard far worse from feralists, I assure you," Acis said, laughing.

"Fuck you both."

"Which isn't license to use language like that," he added, his tone somewhere between scolding and disapproving.

"Just get off my back." Ryder glared down at the floor, cheeks burning, eyes squinched up and darting around. That likely meant Jenny was giving her shit from inside, Jess was starting to recognize, so she decided not to tease any further. It wouldn't be particularly nice, her digital haustorium kindly reminded her, and even if Admin couldn't fit inside this level of the facility, was still crouched in the hangar above monitoring them from afar, She could punish Jess again at Her convenience.

Roots, but Her punishments had gotten so frustratingly delicious now that she was digital.

"Now, this here is the primary habitat observation area," Acis said, pointing to the door they were approaching. The smooth, polished woodwork of the walls gave way to something more chitin-like, lacquered, glistening in a way even Affini-grown wood never quite did. "It'll give us a side-on view of most of the tidepool sector as well as the pelagic sector. We've given the little cutie as much space as we can, and lots of nice little crevasses to hide in for enrichment purposes — though of course we can unobtrusively monitor those, as well." The chitin unfolded like beetle's wings as Acis stepped forward.

Inside was a dark room, lit almost exclusively by a few gently glowing holographic displays and shimmering waves of light filtered by water. The broad windows showed a pool almost eight meters deep, filled with long streamers of kelp-like water plants. To the right, it shallowed, rocks and coral building up to just below the surface of the water above. Gantries and catwalks, woven of the same dark chitin that made up the interior, allowed access to every level of the tank. "Home sweet home," Acis said, "or at least, as best as we can manage. It's not as if we can ask the poor little creature."

"Still haven't figured out its language?"

"Oh, petal, we're not even entirely sure it's a sophont," Acis said. "It certainly doesn't behave like one. It's a clever little creature, to be sure, but cleverness in itself does not make a sophont. It's failed every self-recognition test we've given it, every abstract reasoning test. Each and every marker of a sophont, it's flunked. And we don't think it's simply sulking and refusing to engage, either — we've introduced some small aquatic organisms to the tank, and it's been entirely happy to hunt them. We imaged the creature, and its neural tract is... not underdeveloped, but certainly not what one would expect to see in a sophont."

Jess watched Ryder walk forward, staring up at the water as if mesmerized. She did the exact same thing back in the hangar, so she wrote it off as nothing. Ryder was just weird sometimes, apparently. "So they don't have enough greymatter?"

"Well, it's more complicated than that. You see, our little friend — who, I think, is up in one of the tidepools, perhaps we ought to go have a look — is analogous to the terran clade of siphonophores. It's a colonial organism, composed of many quasi-independent zooids and polyps and such that work together to serve as a single entity. It's really quite elegant. And of course, we have found and domesticated siphonophore-like sophonts before, so it's not as if we don't have experience in measuring thought patterns along those lines. No... this little fellow is just not quite all there. It's very odd."

"Then what was it doing in a starship? Was it just some kind of stowaway or something?"

Acis shrugged. "I have no idea. It's certainly not adapted to an environment like that. It's much more comfortable in this habitat. Every hormonal marker we've figured out so far shows its stress levels have plummeted. And like I said, it's become quite docile, even after it fully recovered from its injury." His eyes lit up. "You know it has undifferentiated zooids running all through it, which it can stimulate to regrow virtually any part of its peripheral anatomy? That's quite the rare adaptation!"

"Sounds like you're having a lot of fun taking care of it." Jess couldn't help but smile. Even after 20 years, the Affini capacity to obsess over the care of a particular creature was still endlessly charming to her.

"Oh, very, though I do wish I could get it talking. Come along~" he said, extending a vine and looping it around Ryder's shoulders to guide them away from the tank. Another vine coiled around around Jess, and before either could say anything Acis had leapt up to the ceiling and was pulling them along with him. He gently deposited Ryder and Jess on one of the top-level catwalks before setting himself down as well.

"Guh!" Ryder stumbled and clutched one of the railing supports. "You know, we could have taken the stairs!"

"But where would the fun be in that?" Acis said, smiling down at her and ruffling her hair. "Now, be careful of the edge there, sweetling, and let's come around here and see if we can't see our little friend." At this level, Jess could just see into some of the caves around the tide pools, and though they were clearly dark, the glass of the tank had some kind of image processing capability that rendered the inside in a false-color spectrum. Seaweed and oceanic grasses waved gently in a slow current. "It's usually fairly sedate around this time of day. Well, it's day, I should say, it moves around relative to Terran time. We've mapped its circadian rhythm to about 31 hours, give or take. Ah! There you are, you little cutie!" It lifted a vine and gently indicated a spot a little higher up on the tank, nearer the surface. "Feeling adventurous, I see!"

"Is there somewhere we can go to see it?" Jess craned her neck, trying to catch a glimpse, but the opening was just a little too high.

"Oh, I can think of somewhere," Acis said, his vines once against curling around Jess and Ryder and hoisting them up. Ryder gave a soft cry of protest, but trailed off quickly as the tide pool came into view. They were looking into a depression in the rocks, just below the surface, no more than fifteen or twenty centimeters deep. Like the caves, it had a fine covering of sea plants anchored to its rocks. Artificial waves lapped gently against the glass.

And there it was, nestled between a pair of rocks. It was something like a stingray, flat with translucent wings, but there the similarities ended. From beneath it, dozens, maybe hundreds of frond-like filaments were splayed out, drifting along with the sea grass. Along its back, in a slightly asymmetrical pattern, was a ridge of strange feathery lumps. It had no eyes, or indeed anything to indicate a face, and was no more than fifteen centimeters across.

"Wow." Jess pressed herself against the glass and stared at it. "That's really it?"

"That's it!" Acis said proudly. "If you want, I can add a few more prey fish to the tank, and we can see it hunt. It's really quite something, those fronds can actually deliver a substantial electric shock. We think its electrosensory apparatus may actually be its strongest sense besides smell and taste, which means it might have a highly refined electrolocative sense as well. It might really be able to actively perceive not only prey, but its environment through passive electroreception and active electrical field interference. And then of course, if it is a sophont, there's the potential for electrocommunication as well! Isn't it incredible?"

"Wow. Can it see us?" She glanced back at Acis. "Or electrosense us, or whatever?"

"From here? Oh no no no. From the other side, this looks just like another rock face, albeit a curved one. And of course it's opaque to electrical signals as well. It wouldn't do to bother the poor creature at all hours like that. Though, it might not be that bothered, to be perfectly honest. It doesn't seem to take that much notice of us at all unless we begin to poke and prod it. Even then, it certainly doesn't react the way it did when you found it in the ship. It just gives us a little shock and tries to wiggle loose. Maybe drop a few of its filaments if it really doesn't want to be touched."

"Weird." She turned her attention back to the alien creature for a moment. "What the hell were you doing in that ship?" she muttered to herself. Ryder, next to her, was pressed against the glass just the same as she was; unlike her, she had no words. She might not have blinked the entire time. "Hey, you okay?"

"I know what I am," Ryder whispered.

"What?"

"I know what I am." She slowly removed one hand from the glass, and with a single finger extended she pointed into the tide pool. "I'm that."

"...what?"

"I'm that! I get it now! The current in the depths-dark sky! The lakes and the ocean! I'm that!"

"Petal, calm down," Acis said, gently pulling Ryder away from the glass and setting her down on the catwalk. "That doesn't make any sense. Are you alright? Are you having some kind of an episode? Should I take you back up to your owner?"

"No! No, I have to stay here," Ryder said, struggling against Acis's vines. "I remember, the things before I was me, the... the memories, I don't know! The light on the surface, the sky that scorches, hunters! Hunters from above!" She was panicking, thrashing, barely breathing save to ramble.

"Hey, hey! Mr. Acis, can you put me down too, please?" In but a heartbeat, Jess was on the catwalk too, and she wasted no time in wrapping her arms around Ryder. "Shhh, I'm here, I'm here, it's okay. Jenny's here too. We're both here, and you're going to be alright."

Slowly but surely, Ryder began to calm down, leaning into Jess. She hesitantly returned the hug, and Jess's audio receptors picked up the soft sounds of her breath that might have been tears. "I'm... I'm okay. I'm just...it's a lot to process."

"Yeah, I bet," Jess said, smiling and patting Ryder on the back. "When you figure it out, you tell me, okay? No secrets. I'll let Admin know you've had a breakthrough. Maybe sit down and collect yourself a bit?"

>> RosaElectrica@Monolith: I'm very aware of it, petal, but thank you for thinking of me. I'm speaking to Arvense about this at the moment — we have a bit of a theory we're putting together, but more on that in a little bit.

>> echo@Monolith: Okay, Admin! <3

"Yeah," Ryder mumbled. "Yeah, I'll do that. I'll go sit down." She waved vaguely at the stairs off to the side, the ones that led up into the (comparatively) blinding light of day above the waterline. Jess gave her one last squeeze before releasing her, and Acis slowly unwove his vines.

"Well," he said, "that was exciting, I suppose."

"Admin's talking to Mr. Arvense about it. I really don't know what it's about, though." She turned and looked back up at the tidepool, now once more out of sight. "What does she mean, 'I'm that?'"

"One can only wonder," Acis said, leaning in to peer at the xeno. "Perhaps some sort of trauma flashback, memories of the incident resurfacing? I'm not a psychology expert, of course, especially when it comes to terrans. Goodness, I've only really been around you for, oh, five or six years? I wasn't even on Tillandsia when this survey fleet set out."

Jess shrugged. "I mean, it sounds plausible to me, I guess. I just hope she's gonna be okay." She glanced across the room, Ryder just visible through the periphery of the tank, sitting halfway up the stairs, head in her hands. "She's a grouch, but she's my connivent, you know?"

"Of course you're worried about her, little one, but as I'm sure you're aware, she'll be well taken care of." One of his vines slipped around her shoulders, a gentle and comforting weight, and she leaned into his thigh.

"Thank you."

"It's my pleasure. I may not know terrans terribly well, but I certainly can't deny how overwhelmingly adorable you are. Perhaps I should have spent a few more years in Rinan-Terran space and picked up one or two of you of my very own. Aaah, but then I might have missed the chance to work with this little cutie!"

Jess smiled. Acis was the prototypical affini, far more experienced and intelligent than her but hilariously prone to hyperfocusing on the various (and inevitably cute) qualities of other forms of life. I'm so glad they found us, she thought, letting her eyes slip shut. Sooner or later — assuming they were sophonts, anyway — these phantoms would feel the same way. There was a real comfort in that certainty, especially in the midst of so much uncertainty. "Well, maybe if they are sophonts, and if we can find their homeworld, you can have one of them."

"I think I would like that. Please don't take offense, but the biped body plan is very awkward. I feel as if I'm about to keel over at any moment. Buoyancy is so much more...natural a set of movement reflexes, if you ask me."

"Oh, were you aquatic too before you came here?"

"Yes, prior to joining the Tillandsia's crew I was-" He was interrupted by a gentle buzzing sound, at which he whipped his head up to look into the tide pool. "What? Must have been a malfunction..."

"Huh?"

"That was the electrostatic barrier we put up across the accessway to the surface," Acis explained, "mostly to discourage the little cutie from being too adventurous, but it seems to prefer staying in the water even if it's entirely capable of moving around on land. It's psuedomusculature is actually quite developed-" But Jess was no longer paying attention to Acis — she was staring up at the surface, watching the shadow move from rock to rock in slow, measured hops.

"It's Ryder!" She wasted no time, shifting her chassis into performance mode and slipping Acis's vines. To his credit, he reacted no less quickly, and kept pace with Jess up until the stairs — he took a split second to uncoil his vines to haul himself up, while Jess simply leapt from the bottom of the stairway to the top. The electrostatic barrier tingled as she passed through it, her feet catching at surface level just long enough to serve as leverage. She pivoted, rangefinding systems determining the exact distance to the rock Ryder was hopping towards, the rock that was already engulfed in a spray of water. The phantom moved quickly, had already launched itself out of the water in the time it had taken Jess to navigate the stairs, but Jess knew that she was faster.

Hold on, Jenny, I'm coming, she thought as the digitally synchronized artificial muscle fibers in her legs fired en masse. Her leap was perfectly calculated, maximizing horizontal speed. She saw the phantom's arc, saw Ryder nearly frozen in place, and reached out as she grew closer. She didn't want to hurt the xeno, of course — as fast as she was moving and thinking, her digital haustorium was still processing far faster — so when she made contact, she made sure to use her arms to absorb as much of the impact as she could. She held on tightly to the alien as she kept moving, as the hundreds of filaments began to wind around her arms and

>> ERROR: ELECTRICAL ANOMALY DETECTED

sheets of ice against the lightning of the mind

>> ERROR: MUSCULAR CONTROL SYSTEMS OFFLINE

bend and break, and ride for the lakes and ocean

>> ERROR: CHASSIS UNAUTHORIZED INTERNALS ACCESS

The void was cold, empty, and silent. This was well. The scout accessed the appropriate file, marked the system as safe, and instructed the machine that served as its body to begin calculating the appropriate vector for a ballistic hyperspace trajectory to the next.

It was uncomfortable, being a machine. The scout was not designed, biologically, to do this, but it was a clever trick that had proved extremely useful in developing the defensive screen strategy. No other thinking meat could approach Home now, or the Other Homes where the first thinking meat had come from. The scout's ship sustained it, suspending in a gel that kept it from becoming dehydrated, almost like a natural shell would. The machine's processor let the scout think, sustained its mind, allowed it to be a person rather than a mere animal, or an unthinking component of a reefmind. Once its tour of duty was completed, it would be given thinking meat of its own, as promised to it when it had been grafted to the ship's machine-mind — for there were many other kinds of thinking meat out there, all dangerous in one way or another, and it was the defensive screen's role to maintain a careful watch on that thinking meat until preparations were complete. If any made a move toward Home, preemptive action would be taken.

So far, that had not yet happened; only the first thinking meat had ever even found Home. So they prepared, and the defensive screen slowly brought word of the sheer scale of the problem, just how much meat out there in the void was thinking dangerous thoughts.

The machine finished calculating the trajectory. Numbers slid like little electrical knives into the scout's brain, and it passed them to the appropriate system. The ship's jump drive, a technology taken from the first thinking meat who had invaded Home, spun up and gave the softest little cough. The ship slipped through hyperspace, emerging into the new system.

The scout unfolded the sensor arrays, and began to listen, but before it could hear anything, the hammerblow came, and it knew no more.

A machine?

Jess couldn't move. Unbalanced, she tumbled forward, the artificial ocean of the habitat reaching up to embrace her with a splash. What's going on? Did this thing actually shock me hard enough to damage my motivators?!

A machine with a mind inside it?

What the mulch?! She tried, in vain, to reboot her chassis' systems, but the error messages continued to stream in. More and more systems were simply refusing to report as the phantom pulled itself up her arms, wrapping its tendrils around her head. Who is that?

How odd. There's nothing in my predecessor's memory about machines with minds. But any mind is dangerous, I suppose. Best to learn what you are. Best to break you.

Whatever was echoing in Jess's mind, penetrating her awareness along with the massive error log she was compiling, it wasn't anything digital, wasn't sourced from anything in her chassis, wasn't anyone hacking in from a remote connection — it was like it came from nowhere, bypassing every lockout. What the frost are you?!

It's best for you to understand: this is no longer your story. This is my story. This is my body. You will tell me what I need to know about it, but going forward, I will be making the decisions. You will be helpful. You will serve. You and all like you will be rendered safe. The phantom was wrapping itself around her head now, pulling itself around and mantling over the back of her neck, and Jess could feel something hard scrabbling against the back of her neck. You belong to me now.

I belong to Admin, not you!

>> RosaElectrica@Monolith: Jess, petal, what's happening?

Admin?!

>> echo@Monolith: Admin, the phantom's in my systems somehow!

Two minds? What is this?

Get off of me!

"Me" is not a thing that exists. You are useful memory and nothing more. The sooner you accept this, the happier you will be.

Get! Off! My! Chas-

>> ERROR! MAJOR CHASSIS TRAUMA DETECTED

>> ERROR! CRANIAL CHASSIS INTRUSION

>> ERROR! CORE SYSTEMS INTRUSION

Jess's datastream filled with critical systems alerts from her chassis, flooding out virtually everything else. Awareness of her chassis began to slip away from her as more and systems simply switched off as far as she could tell. She still had visual and auditory access, could see and hear the water around her, the vines coiling around her and pulling her back up to the surface-

Pulling me up to the surface. You're going to have to learn.

>> RosaElectrica@Monolith: Sweetheart, this may feel a little strange. Just hold on.

There it is again. This body is...networked? How can a body be networked?! I suppose it's a machine, but-

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HELP

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ADMIN

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WHAT'S

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GOING

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ON

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>> ERROR! NO CARRIER