I don't wake up. Waking would imply I was asleep, but I wasn't. I know that, deep in my bones. I am simply aware. Aware of the passage of time, not just minutes or hours or days, but years. Aware that I'm not cold, or hungry or... anything really. I just am. Aware too, that I'm no longer in the stasis unit, that at some point in the unknown passage of time since Grea found me, I was moved. Not under my own power, with my own two legs, but that someone or something picked me up and put me here, wherever here is.
And I am not alone; there are other beings with me, minds that brush against mine that seem familiar and strange at the same time. Their names hover on the edge of my tongue but the restless coils of energy I sense don't belong to the faces playing behind my eyes, not entirely. It's the colours permeating them, the kaleidoscope of blues and greens and the colours for which there are no names, that ones I didn't know existed until I met Aeotu.
There used to be more of the others, filling the space with questions, things I wanted to answer but couldn't, but they've faded, disappeared one-by-one. Those that are left don't talk anymore.
Or maybe I simply don't hear them over the heartbeat; the deep, steady ttthruum echoing in the space beyond my chest, my being. It is mine and yet it is not, like my lungs.
I breathe and my lungs are… strange. They don't expand or contract but there's a rush in and then out, gases flooding a million tiny filters that make a giant-sized whole. More than that though, I... feel isn't the right word. There's a whole load of new somethings in my head, a universe of sensations all coming to me at once, every one of them different and yet just alike enough that I know they're mine.
I don't have names for them, don't have a way to describe how they slide into my awareness, finding places to dock, pathways through my brain, like microscopic cargo palettes running on newly laid mag-lines.
And still, as strange as all of this is, as weird, it doesn't feel strange. It just… is.
It's like how I know I haven't been asleep, how I know this isn't a dream and I'm not in the stasis unit anymore, floating in vacuum as I slowly freeze to death. It's the same way I know it's been a long time since Aeotu took Citlali, since I lost Dude, since I talked to Grea.
A very long time. The span stretches out behind me, a shadow on my awareness, a sense of things happening but no real memory of them.
Is this how an AI feels when it comes online? Reading the logs, knowing things without conscious memory of them?
Discomfort rolls through my spine, but the need to move is stifled by my own body, a blockage in the nerves, stopping the need to wriggle my toes and flex fingers, from making it to my muscles.
The discomfort builds, growing teeth and gnawing on my bones. I need to move. The sensation rolls through my being, the teeth turning to flames, the flames to magma, the molten rock bottled up at the base of my skull, burning through my neurones. My scalp tightens, trying to hold it in.
But why? Why can't I move?
I try to turn over, try to lift my head, my hands, but none of it responds and the pressure grows. I'm going to explode, going to shatter into a million tiny fragments.
I just need to… Move!
Something gives, exploding outward. Fire runs down my spine, through my chest, fills my hands with magma, burns through my legs, pulls a scream from my throat.
The sound echoes.
Echoes and echoes and echoes.
And suddenly I'm free, or almost.
I struggle to open my eyes, to see. There's something holding them shut, something sticky plastered over my eyelids, melting over my cheeks and skull, and it's moving.
Wriggling and crawling, tickling my nose, brushing the sides of my mouth. It's not just on my head either. Now that I've recognised it, I can feel it everywhere, coating my body, parts of it pressing into my stomach, wrapping in coils around my legs, holding my arms to my sides.
What's going on? Where am I?
'Grea!' Again, my voice echoes like I'm in some kind of cavern, or the Ag deck – one of the massive sections that seem to go on forever, with rows and rows upon rows of growth walls, my voice bouncing between them.
Grea doesn't answer.
But something does, something that starts as a rumble and builds, inaudible, felt instead of heard. Starting in my toes, shivering in my legs, a hum under my skin. The stuff around me, holding my eyes shut and my muscles in place, rolls with the sound/feeling, pulsing and squirming until it reaches my ears.
It's a hum at first, a tickle in my ear, and slowly it grows until I can almost hear something, a faint sissss. And I think, I think I know what it is... I strain toward the sound.
'Sissss...ster.'
No.
'Sisster,' it says again and my insides go cold.
I want to shake my head, to pull away, to run, but the sticky moving stuff holds me tight.
'No, go away!'
A breath of air against my cheek, a movement like lips pressing against flesh. 'Sister.'
'No!' I explode.
Not an actual explosion, not blood and flesh and bone shooting out in a wet red mess of meat and tissue, flying outward at two-thousand pounds per square inch, but a psionic one; an explosion of fear.
It rips out of me on a shockwave of bright screaming yellow, sticky and hot. Acidic. Coating everything it touches, burning through its defences, sinking beneath its skin, diving deep into its bones. Inescapable.
The emote takes all of my fear, all the pain, the doubt, the loneliness. The moment Dude leapt from my shoulder; Core/drone pushing me into the stasis unit; the hatch sealing, the "DANGER, VACUUM" sign over the emergency release. Grea in her pod, surrounded by fug and darkness. P’Endr dying. Lyn Captain with her hand reaching out of hardened stasis gel. The sour, musty scent of rot and death. The CRUNCH of critter skeletons under my elbows.
Everything. The emote takes everything.
Somewhere distant, a scream rends the air. High and piercing, a knife in my ears. Inhuman. As I lose consciousness, slip back into the not-sleep, I sense something… familiar, white around a core of boiling black.
Onah?
Kuma? My name is an explosion of joy and surprise, carried on an image of qwan chicks, bright and fluffy, huddled in a nest. I have the sense that Onah is searching, that he is not alone and that... Sadness, it hovers under the brightness of the other emotions, coats his mind in a layer of blue-black, weighing him down, making his wings heavy and his talons slow. There is something else behind it, another emotion twisting his insides.
Guilt.
Why? It's not his fault I am here, and I want to ask what it is that pulls at his heart, but the darkness drags me under.
We are coming, little kin. Onah's voice and the sharp stab of his grief follow me into sleep. You will be free.
There is darkness, and when I come back to myself, it's different. The awareness is gone, the sense of my lungs being huge, the discomfort of needing to move.
I'm empty.
There's no fear, no confusion. Nothing.
It all went into the emote.
I'm hollow and tired. So tired.
A rustle. The musty scent of feathers. The hot wash and meaty stench of breath on my face.
I'm still blind, but in the eter – the mental space those of us with the ability read minds call home – there is a dance of light and movement; the sharp, restless growl of a rucnart and the chill crystal of a qwan. Emotions spill around them, blue-black waves of grief and fear mixed with the red of anger and the sharp white of determination. I want to reach out, touch them, to yell that I'm here, but I'm wrapped in fatigue, cocooned and… and…
Guilt; duty; sad-pain, the kind that comes not from sliced skin or broken bones, but from the heart. The emotions bombard my brain. Not human or Jørgen, but kin. For a moment, I see myself on the eter, little more than a lump in the darkness, barely recognisable as human, and there is h'Rawd. The tree-kin leader stands over me, his four giant forepaws planted either side of my torso, the wicked talons made for climbing trees kneading the floor, and his long angular muzzle hovering over my throat.
The emotions I feel are his and they're directed at me.
Why? And where is Onah?
I smell blood – bright, crisp, coppery – washing my face. There's no time to wonder at it, because with the scent comes the sensation of whiskers on my chin, the wet press of a nose, and the cold, sharp points of teeth closing over my jugular.
It short circuits my brain.
Stop! It's me, Kuma! Crew! Get away! But the words are locked within me, my mind sluggish, psionics trapped behind a wall of not-sleep.
There's pain, the warm wash of blood. My blood. I feel it rise out of the pinpricks in my skin, splash around h'Rawd's fangs. Guilt and duty, h'Rawd's emotions are washing around me, rising with my blood and—
Rage. Red. Screaming. It rips across the eter, reminds me of the thing behind Grea's eyes, of the darkness.
Yowls, snarls, the high-pitched wail of an air-kin. H'Rawd's teeth are gone, leaving only the scent of blood behind.
There's movement, the heavy thud of metal hitting flesh, the howl of an injured rucnart, and still that rage, flowing over me like fire, bringing with it the scent of cherries and Grea's presence. It goes on forever, until my ears are numb to the sound and rage settles over me, a blanket – comforting.
It ebbs slowly, disappearing into distance and time, until it's gone, taking h'Rawd and Grea with it.
I sleep.
'Kuma?' Grea, whispering in my ear. 'Are you okay?'
I turn, shifting in the dark place like rolling over under a blanket. 'Yes. H'Rawd didn't hurt me.'
'He would have.' Rage blooms around Grea. 'Onah would have let him.'
'Why?'
'They're scared, but don't worry, I'm here.'
'But why? I haven't done anything.'
'You've changed.'
'I have? How?'
There's silence, it stretches on forever and I'm beginning to wonder if Grea's still there, when she speaks. 'I need to see you,' she says.
'I'm here.' And I guess it's true, if I discount the fact that I don't know where here is. It feels like the eter but bigger, emptier. It feels like that place between the threads of reality, where I spoke to Aeotu.
'It's the ora,' Grea says.
'The ora?'
'That place, between the threads.' Grea's forehead on mine, her arms wrapping around my shoulders. 'Somewhere just for us.'
Us rings with potential, with depth and volume, with more than just my sister and I. Us feels like hundreds of twins, thousands, millions, feels like an entire species and the idea of it is too big, too much as it tries to force its way into my head.
I thrust it away. 'I don't understand.'
Grea smiles. I don't see it, can't see it, not in this alien, lightless place, but it settles in my chest. Warm. Comforting. Secure. 'It's okay,' Grea says. 'You will soon.' Her arms tighten. 'I'll help you.'
I find my arms, hug her back. 'Okay.'
'Just you wait.' Grea turns her head, and while she's with me in the ora, her thoughts are with someone— something else. 'We're going to live forever.'
This time when I wake, I know I've been dreaming, know that the thing that had me was sleep.
I open my eyes.
Darkness still assails me, but my lids move. And when I lift my hand to check for the sticky stuff that held them down, it obeys my command, the fingers flexing and curling, dragging over my face. There's something hard covering my head, a rough second skin. It crumbles under my touch, and I come away with some kind of powdery substance. I wipe it away from eyes, use my other hand and peel sections of it from my hair. The stuff cracks, and then as soon as I pull it away it crumbles, slipping through my fingers, smooth and silky.
I still can't see and I rub at my face, digging fingers into my eyes, feeling smooth warm skin, the soft, spiky brush of eyelashes, the bump of my nose. There's nothing there but dermis, nothing holding my eyelids, and yet sight eludes me.
I rub harder, searching in the corners for the crust of sleep. Try again.
Success.
The darkness is no longer the total nothingness of the void. There's enough light to see the smudge of my fingers. I don't know where it's coming from, it seems to be everywhere.
I can't even see my feet. But I can move them.
Standing is strange. The ingrained movement of muscle is there – pulling my feet under me, shifting my weight – but the details... It's like I'm wearing flippers and there are weights on my knees, like maybe there's a sack of machine parts on my back throwing me out of whack. Making me top-heavy and knock-kneed.
Have I grown?
But that's not right either, doesn't feel right. Not in the sense that my body feels different, 'cause it does, but in the sense that it doesn't gel with the awareness that came before.
I've been out for a long time, long enough, awareness tells me, to grow enough that I no longer look like the Kuma I once did. But that's not it. I think, if I could find a mirror, or a holo or even just a light, that I would still look like me. A kid with black hair and a lanky frame, kinda skinny and maybe a little rounder in the hips than other boys, but still... a kid.
It's something else, and that awareness is holding onto the answer, hoarding it deep in my gut. And I want to know why and I want to know what. I want to get rid of this awful, horrible sense building in the pit of my anima, that when I find out... When I find out, the psionic explosion of before is going to look like a fart in the ocean.
But first...
The ground's uneven, and trying to walk with my too-long feet and too-heavy torso is hard. I stumble, stagger, fall to my knees. Not being able to see makes it harder, not knowing where I am makes it worse, and the memory of Aeotu whispering against my cheek, the feel of her breath...
How does an AI breathe? How does its voice ripple up my legs and vibrate in my ear?
My heart's pounding, and like when I first became aware, it feels weird. My heart is too big, cavernous, flooding my veins not with blood but power.
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.
'Sister.'
I jerk back into myself, into my weird, top-heavy body still feeling my cavernous lungs and massive heart, and somehow knowing they're not mine. Not my flesh. Not my blood.
The voice comes again, rippling through the gloom, rushing over the uneven ground and up my legs. 'Sister.'
I spin, pinwheeling my arms to keep my feet. 'Go away,' I yell. And just about jerk out of my skin at the alien sound that erupts from my chest.
The words are mine, but the voice isn't.
Too deep, too loud. Too... metallic.
For a second, I wonder if my voice has dropped or if someone slipped testosterone into my system during the time I wasn't aware.
But no, that doesn't make sense, doesn't feel right. Doesn't even sound right. There's something wrong with me.
The awareness in my gut doesn't agree.
Okay. Okay.
Don't panic.
Yeah, Kuma. Don't panic. You're just in a big dark place, with a weird body, ship-sized lungs and an alien entity creeping up behind you. No need to panic. You're fine.
Now.
Run.
There's strength in these weird legs of mine, a new bound in my too-long feet, and the lungs that are drawing in so much air, I don't think I'll ever have to breathe again.
It's riding on the speedway, palette going so fast it presses your ribs into your heart and flattens your face. Except on the speedway, I can see.
Three strides and I'm flat on my face, the same soft powdery shit I wiped off it gumming up my tastebuds, gluing my tongue to the roof of my mouth, clogging up my nose.
It tastes like mould, dry and dusty, and it tingles.
There's no time to scrape it off, no moisture to spit it out, there's just the thing coming up behind me, rustling over the uneven ground, reaching for my ankle.
I'm on my feet, running.
There's light ahead, a bright spot in the gloom. Safety. Every pound of my feet raises a puff of powder, every unexpected dip in the ground catches my feet, tips my body, makes me fight to stay upright. Panic and fear and adrenalin, they're rushing through my veins.
Making my muscles push harder, my vision sharper. The bright spot ahead is a hatch. Rounded and smooth with Citlali's six-pointed star in the middle.
Relief. Hope. They pound through my chest, and from somewhere I find another spurt of strength to push myself forward.
Behind, the rush of the voice is getting closer, nipping at my heels. It doesn't speak, it doesn't have to.
I just need to get to the hatch, to reach Citlali.
I'll be home then. Safe.
The light is all around me and the hatch is there, under my hands, and I'm pushing against it, and it's sliding open and then I'm beyond and the door is closing. I get a glimpse of the space behind it, of the grey darkness, the powder, and Aeotu, rushing along in my wake. Except there's nothing there. No shape, no shadow, just the endless grey-black.
The hatch snaps shut.
I stare at it. Take in the smooth, flat steelcrete, a little pock-marked, scratches marring the surface, ragged marks like claws cutting deep into the steelcrete.
And the symbol, Citlali's star, glowing over it, bright as the sun.
Around me are the familiar off-white corridors, the hush of air-cyclers and the sharp lines of the deck plating, all looking like the fug never touched it.
I sag, bones turning to mush, adrenalin turning to exhaustion, panic and fear to relief. Home. I'm home.
And then I look down.