Tov lost himself in a strange ocean.
He teetered on the edge of consciousness, trying to make sense of his surroundings.
Soon, his eyes opened to an endless expanse lit up by dazzling nebulae—ribbons of light shined throughout. Some were no thicker than silken threads behind thick layers of cloud. Others, those closest to Tov, roared like prismatic rivers.
“Where?” Tov muttered in a whisper, his voice ethereal.
Confusion filled him as he looked down at himself, an avatar of wispy smoke resembling his physical appearance. His mind sharpened bit by bit, and his ghostly form took shape, willing it stable and dense.
Tov tore his focus from his sense of self. His impetuous curiosity sent him on a direct path to the nearest of the shining streams. As he approached it, he observed its qualities and made an educated guess.
“Neurons?” Tov pondered in awe, perhaps a simplification of something familiar yet simultaneously uncanny. But his wonder quelled the latter feeling. He orbited around this lake of thought. He whispered, voice carrying off into the distance. “So this is my mind?”
Tov immersed himself in its beauty for a moment. He looked back at the glowing ribbons. One of his four hands hovered over one of them before gently touching it.
An explosion of senses pushed to the forefront of his attention, clear images of simple things he did before undertaking this operation, in all its vivid detail.
The flavor of human liquor tingled his tongue, as did the feel of cold glass in his hand and the smell of sterile air within the Luna Complex. He saw the sea of doctors, psychologists, and that ominous machine hanging above that connected to two pods.
He heard the chatter of his people, but his conversations with Overseer Jupiter cut through the noise, his concern palpable. “Last chance to back out. Your people have an army of therapists that can take your place...”
More voices rushed to his ears, which he deemed of utmost import, came one after another.
“There are sections we call Amygdalas, concentrations of trauma and nightmares within her digital mind…”
“You will be directly interfacing with an intelligence unfathomable to you. Suffice it to say any mistake is lethal…”
Chief Scholar Yulane and Overseer Luna had warned him; a chill ran down his spine at the severity of his situation. And yet he had to be the one to do this, much to everyone’s protests, but he got his way.
“No, it has to be me. She won’t respond to strangers, even if I am to be disguised while doing this.”
“Well, if you’re really going through this…”
“I am.”
Tov huffed. He had sounded confident then, presenting the stoic Patriarch of a prominent clan, the resilient leader of the Third Expeditionary Fleet everyone expected. But underneath that façade, and now within the depths of his inner self, anxiety clawed at him.
“Tov…”
There it was, her voice. By the Symphony, her voice—leaking with debilitating hurt that reopened scarred wounds Tov thought long buried.
“I remembered something… My name … the one my Rikard gave me. I never told it to you…”
“Andora,” Tov answered the voice in his memory. The name of a being whom he had known simply as the Eldest for the brief period he knew her.
He chuckled.
“Has it been only a few weeks?” Tov mused, shoulders sagging.
The stupor that affected him washed away as he remembered his mission, one that could determine the survival of everything he held dear. Tov shook his head as a grave air formed around him. He descended quicker, his goal clear.
“Onwards, Tov,” he whispered to himself. “You’re not here to play tourist.”
Before that, however, a vast bubble encapsulated the entirety of this expanse, like an ozone layer containing every bit of himself, a bulwark that shielded him from the machinations of the Starless Horrors and psionic assaults. He looked at its pristine, rigid defense work, ready to repel any insidious eldritch attack.
Extra measures never hurt, Tov thought.
Tov fell further as he phased through layers of mental constructs, past the shallows, the depths, and everything in between.
He went deeper, finding long-term memories from days, months, years, and decades past. His fight with Andora, the start of the Expedition, the worst days of the Cataclysm, his people’s rebellion against their former masters, his mother’s last words—much of it a blur the farther along.
“Now I’m nothing but a glorified hospice nurse!”
“You can’t! You can’t leave. What of our Uli, what of our clan, me? You can’t leave… Please, Tov…”
“I need your skills, old friend. Our rivals are eyeing us like ravenous beasts. Our people need you at the forefront, and the Third Fleet needs her shepherd.”
“That’s the last of the refugees! Captain Yan, get us out of here! Spring our surprise!”
“Freedom, my kin! Take it back from the masters! Break the chains! Liberty or death! ONWARDS!”
“Oh, my little star, my only child… Live… and be virtuous.”
A few moments remained crystal clear only through the efforts of the biomechanical implant grafted into his brain—his brightest moments, times of peace and happiness, interspersed with horror and terror.
He glanced at the technological marvel. It looked strange from the perspective of his thoughts. Artificial, like finding geometric circuitry floating among the clouds. Pulsing passively, a tiny supercomputer hiding enormous analytical and processing power, ready to be used at any moment.
He pulled his attention from it, as wondrous as it was in his mentalscape.
But as he dove deeper into his subconscious, he found alien and familiar aspects. A learned scholar and natural psionic like Yulane or a master of the arts like Harmonizer Volantesh could name every aspect of his mind, what they did, how it affected his entire being, and how to use them to fuel their esoteric abilities.
Mind reading, telepathy, levitation, telekinesis, and most importantly, defense against the eldritch whispers and manipulation.
For Tov, he could ‘taste’ his mystical connection with the universe, the Grand Symphony, as the Eternal Choir called it. He breathed it all in as he floated amidst the layers. An ethereal thread, the touch of a higher dimension. His ability to sense intent and emotion from others is tangible before his gaze, a lesser form of mind reading but not as intrusive.
He surmised those more potent in its arts would find their minds saturated with psionic might.
It mattered little to him. Tov went further into the deep, feeling the rifts of past traumas that scabbed over time, the currents of thought, the images of memories.
He felt it.
The flame that burned deep inside him and all living things. This all-encompassing thing looked so tiny, yet it felt beyond the matter that composed him. Tov’s senses barely saw its fleeting passage, so intimate to who he is, and then it disappeared, but he felt its presence still.
Few witnessed such a sight directly, a brief glimpse of his soul—this endeavor becoming more than worth the troubles and dire warnings.
Nevertheless, with great reluctance to go after and gaze upon his flame, he dragged himself outwards, rising higher, soaring past the layers he visited. As he left the layer that contained his most recent memories, he reached the bubble shield he erected to protect him and the boundary that separated his mind and the outside.
He gazed outward, seeing blackness that contrasted with the kaleidoscope of color behind him, a void that sent chilled him more than crippling loneliness.
“Where are you?” Tov concentrated on his senses, feeling for anything out of the ordinary. There, he felt a pull, like being taken by a river that flowed farther from his innermost sanctuary and essence—going to somewhere… other.
“Ah, there. This looks close enough to a bridge as any,” he muttered, antennae twitching in suspicion, “Unless it isn’t just me and the Eldest here.”
He shuddered, finding his situation increasingly uncomfortable. He ‘looked around’ before centering his thoughts and will.
“I’m always one for introspection, but this is too much,” Tov whispered with a faint click of his mandibles. He concentrated, cautiously approaching the tunnel that connected him and Eldest—Andora, he corrected himself.
“How do humans say it? Nothing ventured, nothing gained?” he took a deep breath, phasing through the barrier that protected his mindscape, and immediately, he felt vulnerable.
As Tov crossed the bridge, the thrum of power pulsed like a heartbeat, pulling him in like the gravity of a supergiant sun. His form shuddered step by step, echoing throughout the empty expanse betwixt two beings.
Tov groaned, the sensation uncomfortable at best, “So this is what she meant.”
He recalled Luna’s words, something spoken to him days before the operation, the memory as clear as the day.
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He and Eldest’s second-in-command and the first of her fragments, Luna, stood behind blast-proof plasteel glass windows, watching millions of nanomachines constructing the operation room, the two medical slabs, and the enigmatic spherical device that hung above.
She cleaned her circular glasses and multitasked with innumerable duties in front of Tov and unseen. Her short gray hair was as perfect as her monochrome dress, and her glowing white eyes unfocused as she worked overtime with her swarm of little machines.
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The silver Sub AI spoke politely and respectfully, “The Digital Neural Bond has been a staple piece of technology that enabled synergy between human and android brains. The former benefits from the sheer processing power of the latter, while the latter benefits from ingrained intuition and superior creativity. Humanity used this symbiotic relationship when creating war machines like mechs during the war against the Starless before the Malignant Starfall wiped them out.”
“So, this machine enables two different minds to connect, then? Bridging the organic with the synthetic?” Tov mused as he tapped his mandible, “Not unlike our cranial implants, though I don’t think we’d go so far as to put sentient AI in our heads even if we had them.”
Luna gave a small laugh, hidden beneath the embroidered handkerchief she covered her mouth with.
“That would be overkill. Humanity had similar devices, as small as what you aliens use, that are more than capable of such connections with their android companions. They also had thicker and more intimate bridging implants. This, however,” Luna raised her palm at the vast machine overhead, and it pulsed with energy and light, “Is primarily for your protection.”
“Pardon?” Tov asked.
With a wave of her hand, Luna brought up multiple monitors and schematics, highlighting bits of information and data and sending them to him for study.
“Simply put, if we were to directly connect you and the Eldest, several catastrophic possibilities could occur. Best case scenario, your organic mind would instantly overheat from the runoff power she produces,” she explained as Tov analyzed the readings.
“You mean my head will, what, explode?” Tov muttered, his antennae twitching ever so slightly.
“Crude, but yes,” Luna pressed her lips, a tinge of irritation in the twitch of her cheek. One of the rare bits of emotion she deigned to show him since they’d met. She sighed, glancing in his direction.
“Patriarch, the Eldest is beyond you, a gestalt consciousness meant to combine the entire android population. Her main CPU is as big as your destroyer ships and is constantly cooled by Earth’s oceans, all so she could direct the entirety of the Sol Defense Network,” Luna spoke, her eyes closed as if in reverence.
Tov remained silent, crossing his arms as he looked up from the myriad of specifications and capabilities the massive device presented. “And my mind can’t handle touching her consciousness, even with my cranial implant? The best designers and programmers of my nation designed it.”
Luna pressed her lips, shaking her head.
“As much as the device in your head grants you libraries of information and unparalleled storage and computing capabilities, it is barely a drop for pure digital beings like us,” she spoke flatly, stating a fact that Tov begrudgingly knew.
“And what of my psionic abilities, it’s not as diverse as those of the Jotex or potent as the Iexians, but I am capable of protective mental constructs,” he pressed.
Luna hummed, “Psionics is a new field for us, but it won’t keep you alive.”
“It seems this entire mission looks more dangerous than fighting the Starless,” Tov buzzed in frustration.
“Understand this, Patriarch. The gulf between you and a Sub AI, a fragment like me, is akin to swimming an ocean to cross to the next continent,” Luna turned toward him, her gray gaze drilling into his compound pair, “The gulf between you and the Eldest would be akin to doing a spacewalk from here to Saturn.”
“I see,” Tov used every ounce of willpower to not shudder in front of the grey woman, “Then this device compensates for that gulf? You’re assured of this.”
Luna nodded, “Scholar Yulane and your Chief Neurologist, Rophalan, can discuss its complete capabilities. But yes, the Synaptic Disparity-Compensator Matrix should connect you to the Eldest without any unforeseen cranial detonations.”
He sighed, “I will confer with them when they’re not ogling at all the new technologies you are showering us.”
Tov cast one more look at the immense machine that would hang over him and Andora. He, his top officials, and the Sub AIs of Sol have pooled their resources to possibly the strangest act of therapy in the history of the known galaxy, but none would be possible without that device.
“I should thank you for designing the device with my health in consideration, Overseer Luna,” Tov nodded to the AI.
“It was only rational.” Luna propped up her circular glasses, “Your presence is indispensable in these precarious times.”
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Tov pulled himself from the memory.
He slowed, recalling every bit of information on his mission and the SDCM device meant to keep him in the realm of the living—hopefully sane.
Time became irrelevant as he ‘floated through the tunnel’ or ‘walked over the bridge.’ The distinction was irrelevant; all that mattered was the increasingly heavy presence before him. He grunted, senses straining to in the cold void.
Then and there, a light at the end, expanding larger at a rapid pace.
As he approached it, his body twitched, hackles raised as he tried to stop. “What?”
He couldn’t stop, much like a spacer floating in the void without thrusters. The Patriarch tried to slow his approach, fear shooting through him like a lance, a primal terror as if caught in something’s immense dominion—a foreign body, an intruder in someone’s imperium.
“What is… Hells?” Tov struggled, his speed faster and faster, yet the light, at first a speck and now a burning orb, never seemed to stop growing. He realized quickly what was happening. “Eldest, stop this! It’s me!”
“Stop, slow down!” Tov gritted his mandibles, yet an invisible tendril dragged him across the expanse. Irrational images slammed into his head, a feeling that he approached the event horizon of a black hole, past the point of no return. “Luna! The device! Hells, hells!”
His entire being became strained, his fists clutching his head as it throbbed, stuck between crushing pressure and heat.
His two hearts beat rapidly, and his breaths ragged.
“I will not,” he muttered, his mandible threatening to crack as he gritted. “I will not go out like this! Release me!”
He forced his gaze to focus on what he saw now as the surface of a sun in all its raging infernal glory. Whips of mental power shot through like solar flares, beacons illuminating the empty void like spotlights. His attempts to combat such a giant thing were no better than throwing water into lava, yet it calmed him down to do anything within his agency.
It screamed at him, a furious, agonized shout, like a roaring hurricane—a racket like the shrieks of a million voices bore down on him, pressing him against an invisible floor. Each one bashed against him in waves of blows, subsuming, stretching, tenderizing him.
Tov dragged his arms over his face in an attempt to shield his eyes, his mental protections cracking like the chitin of an ant, shivering at the base of a gargantuan mountain during the concert of the mother of all storms, her lighting smiting anyone who approaches with searing blasts.
A growl and a hiss left his throat, leaving it raw. But then, as if with the press of a button, it was over. His resistance dissipated with the lack of force pressing down on him.
Tov’s chest heaved as he panted, his mind recoiling at the abrupt change. All that remained of the momentary agony was a dull throb over his entire being. His ethereal form slowly recoalesced into a more solid shape as he tried to gather his bearings.
“The device. Dowa,” Tov cursed, speaking to the ether, “Songs, better late than. Thank you…”
Relief flooded him like a bucket of cold water, the sweltering heat disappeared, and Tov allowed himself to look upon the majesty of Andora’s mind, the Omni Mind of Sol.
It was unlike anything he’d ever seen, even with over a century of living, through all its quaking shifts and events.
Unlike the clouds of colorful nebulae and thought that orbited the fire of his soul, Andora’s mind manifested as a ball of light and fire that stretched across his vision—like solid mass with a surface like red hot metal.
Circuitry etched across its vast landscape like chasms of lava, sending pulses of energy throughout its pathways a hundred times a second, creating a brilliant dance across the sun-like orb.
Faint tendrils stretched across the space like the cilia of a cell. Tov squinted; only now, when he pushed his gaze past the fireball’s light pollution, he saw the innumerable stars that now occupied the entirety of this endless mental ocean.
For a moment, Tov thought he witnessed the entire Network under Andora’s command, faint images of battle stations, warships, massive manufactories, asteroid miners, and power plants pumping power into relays throughout the solar system.
Everything that allowed the human AI to fight an eldritch horde to a stalemate for the past century, manifesting in simple lights and tendrils, doing little justice to the sheer firepower and industry at the Network’s web—Andora’s web.
“So this is you,” Tov whispered as he brushed imaginary dirt from his body.
Some nodes shined more prominently than others. Five shone like dazzling stars, the first three with blue, silver, and red hues.
“That must be Jupiter, Luna, Mars,” Tov sensed the distinctions between all three: the stubborn defiance echoing across space like a fist raised in the air, the next a clinical efficiency like a still grey sea ready to be willed into something deadly and alien, and of course the roars and booms of innumerable cannons, shouts of glorious speeches and the drums of war.
Tov shifted to the remaining two, one golden and the other bronze, “Venus and Mercury.”
They lacked any flavor of combat. The golden star flowed with warmth, compassion, and benevolence, a sheer contrast to the near bloodthirsty auras of her warlike siblings. On the other hand, the dimmer bronze star was an unending, untiring industry, like a beast of burden stepping over fields of metal and energy, plowing the fields, and harvesting material for the defense effort.
Beyond them, Tov felt a void, spaces where he swore there should be more nodes. He recalled something then, “Those must be the other fragments friend Jupiter mentioned, those who fell in battle.”
He bowed to them, saying a few words in native Kursk, a clicking and hissing language that sounded almost lyrical.
He returned to gaze at the nexus of it all and pinpointed the numerous contradictions and fluctuations that looked unnatural and corrupted.
Flares of light writhing like gnarled roots, chasms that looked crumbled, a general fugue that covered the atmosphere, only the sheer heat melting away the corruption.
A sickly sun. A low groan beneath its roaring flame. A skittering whisper that scratched his eardrums, unable to make the comparison, as eldritch as the enemy he dedicated his life to fighting.
It pained his eyes, looking away but remaining in place, fists clenched tight. He felt all the more for the Eldest, to help her now for her sake, not just for the common good.
“How…” Tov muttered. Anything else he wished to say was locked behind a door of disbelief at the sheer scale of it all.
“How am I still sane?” A wispy voice spoke beside him. “I ask that myself sometimes.”
Tov jumped, startled as he turned to the familiar voice. “Eldest!”
She glanced at him with tired eyes. “Took you long enough.”
“This place didn’t come with a map, unfortunately,” Tov grunted, the eeriness of the environment and the lingering pressure of her power adding more bite to his tone than otherwise. “And I’ve nearly passed the threshold of the living. Not a good start.”
Andora grunted, her eyes locked forward, half-lidden.
Tov sighed, calming himself as he took a moment to look over her appearance. Even as the two stood on an invisible floor, floating in a sea of black before a giant sun, her form was more solid than his, as if she stood in the real world instead of this mentalscape.
Her sleek black hair was tied into a bun. Her dark blue body suit contrasted with the lighter shade of synthetic skin.
Andora clasped her hands behind her, her chest up as if she was inspecting troops in formation, and yet, Tov spotted the hollow look of her gaze, the dark bags under her eyes, the twitch of her fingers.
Despite his compound eyes and lack of irises to denote where he was looking, Andora, nonetheless, caught his gaze. “If you’re done standing around, I’d like to get this over with.”
She moved forward, one heavy step clacking at a time.
Tov shook his head as he followed her, “Apologies, this is… all too new for me, Lady Andora.”
“Don’t,” She stopped, raising her hand, her mouth twisted in a frown, glowing blue eyes staring at the representation of her total existence. She sighed. “It’s just Andora.”
Tov stared at her silently before nodding. “Very well, my apologies… Andora.”
She stared for a longer, tilting her head before shrugging in response. “If it’s any comfort, Patriarch, I’ve never had a deep dive into my head for a long time.”
“How does this work, exactly?” Tov asked, wondering how he could even begin helping Andora. The two crossed the distance until they stood right before the orb.
“It’s better to show you rather than explain every meaningless minutia,” Andora spoke low, brushing her hand against the sun’s surface. “I’m opening a path into my mind. It will be unlike anything you’ve experienced, but you’ll quickly get your bearings.”
His antennae drooped, and he shook his head. “I can’t call myself anything close to a trained psychologist. And that’s for organic minds. I barely know anything about how a digital one like yours works.”
“You’re too humble, Patriarch. And it doesn’t matter. Out of everyone present, the universe, random chance, or divine destiny saw fit to bring the one person who understands,” Andora’s mouth tugged ever so slightly into a smile, “And, for one, you’re not afraid of me.”
Tov laughed, “Hardly. You terrify me.”
“There’s a difference between fearing what I am and fearing who I am,” she replied.
“True enough,” Tov nodded, stepping beside her in front of an ever-fluctuating surface. “Thank you… for trusting me.”
Andora nodded, continuing to press her palm on the red-hot surface of the burning ball. Tov noticed the absence of heat and was all the more thankful for it. He hoped the device would continue to keep him from being annihilated before he got a chance to do anything.
“When we enter,” Andora began, “What should we… do first?”
Tov turned toward Andora, antennae raised. She shrugged, “You’re the therapist, patriarch.”
He tapped a clawed finger on his mandible, humming, “From what my people, Luna, and I planned, our strategy is fluid since this has never been attempted. I want to look around, gather context, and understand how your mind works. Find the problem areas from there, these so-called Amygdalas. Then… help you excise it.”
“I know your misgivings, Tov,” Andora warned, her eyes hard, “But time isn’t on our side.”
“I know,” Tov sighed, “I am glad, however, that we can do this together. Treating mental trauma requires active participation from both of us. I know that much, at least, from all the recent days of being coached by actual psychologists.”
“I’ll be as… forthcoming with any questions,” she muttered, frowning.
Andora huffed as a hole appeared on the surface, leading to a misty expanse, “Very well, Doctor Tov Garesh’Ynt.”
Tov felt relief as a tinge of sarcasm flowed out of the fake title. He chuckled. “Lead the way… Lady Andora.”
She rolled her eyes as she stepped into the mist.