I shucked off my dress whites, tossed them into the laundry chute, and looked through my sleepwear selections. I considered the faux leather thing briefly, more out of lingering resentment than any real desire to wear it. Thankfully I came to my senses; I expected the 'Sects in six hours, but they could show up at any time. In a worst-case scenario, I might wind up running to the bridge without changing. The challenges of being captain of a crew of school children daunted me fine all on its own, I didn't need a reputation regarding my bedroom habits on top of that.

I pulled the thing out of my wardrobe, but paused with it halfway to the laundry chute, my mouth already open to give Echidna the order to drop it from my wardrobe rotation. I puzzled over my hesitation just long enough to make me think I'd regret losing the thing, so I turned around and hung it back up.

"That's for, uh, special occasions only, Echidna. Let's keep it to the back of the rotation."

I waited for her response for nearly ten seconds before I remembered; she couldn't see this area of the ship. I reached out via my implants and hit a wall of raw, chaotic noise, the condensed memories of the last days of Tiamat. I yanked my mental probe back before the memories sucked me under. Showing up at the bridge naked would be worse than showing up dressed in leather with little silver buckles on.

I reached into the wardrobe and manually rotated the clothes, sticking the naughty lingerie at the very back of the sleepwear section, then scrolling back through. Near the front of the section, I found the items the ship expected me to use most. A simple silk shift, configurable glow patches woven into the shoulders; easy to get on and off for injured crewmen. A dark memory fabric body stocking: perfect for Marines intending to go straight from bunk to battle. My breath caught when the third outfit rotated in front of me. Workout sweats. They weren't my old pair; those had been Support gray. This pair gleamed white, artificially distressed for softness until I could barely make out Tiamat's 'Mother of Dragons' and dragon flight on the chest.

As much to pull myself away from memories of Tiamat as anything else, I made a mental note to speak with the ship and crew about creating a new logo. When I had returned to something resembling calm, I pulled the sweats out, tossed them on the bed, and turned to pull out my underwear drawer. Still thinking about potential imagery for Echidna's logo, I reached in expecting to find it half full of bras and the other half full of panties. Instead of soft polycotton, my fingers brushed against slick silk.

I looked down into the drawer, startled out of my contemplation of lamia iconography. Some time since I last left, my underwear drawer got the same treatment as my wardrobe. I still had a few soft polycotton underthings in the middle of the drawer, but both sides were full of shiny silk. It only took a few seconds for me to realize why. For the first time since puberty hit, I didn't need to wear a bra to bed. An augmented body didn't sag, didn't need external support. Augmented adults wore clothing as identification and for communication, not because they needed it to survive. That same applied doubly to undergarments.

I reveled in the luxury of that tiny freedom as I slipped into my new sweats. Covered well enough to respond to emergencies, I lay down and shut down the lights with a thought. With another, I visualized the data flowing through the walls surrounding me. Chaos swirled and flowed, patterns forming and dissolving faster than I could consciously track. I'd had a vague notion to examine the data before I plunged in, but the chaos surrounding me was too fluid to analyze indirectly. Without thinking I muttered the core of my confusion to the empty room.

"Shouldn't memory data be static?"

Living things are not static.

As I stared up at the sparkling whorls of data around me, I realized the truth; Tiamat hadn't died. Some essential part of her still lived in the maelstrom above me. If I could only figure it out, extract her from the mess without killing her, she could be reincarnated just like a human. Like my father should have been. The idea shouldn't have surprised me; humans were reincarnated from tiny bits of memory and personality every day. It only took me a few moments to figure out why I'd never heard of it happening with an AI before.

Molecular circuitry suffused Echidna. Her mind arose as an emergent property of every process aboard the ship. A human brain, even augmented, could be measured in kilos and milliliters. Some Imperial warships rivaled large asteroids and small moons for size. Even a tiny fraction of that took up more storage space than even Imperial technology could afford to leave dormant for long.

Collocated intelligences merge over time.

I pondered that tidbit from my essie for a bit, letting my inner eye soak in the ever-changing patterns in the data surrounding me. After a bit the first discrepancy hit me.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"Why hasn't this data merged?"

It's corrupted, and that's delaying assimilation. In addition, you have partitioned this segment of the network.

Another errant thought struck me as I observed the writhing mass of data, looking for anything resembling a starting point.

"What about essies?"

We're not collocated. / We're merged.

The sirens' voice washed through my brain, two statements overlapping yet clear. Despite the obvious incongruity, I got no sense of disagreement. The alien nature of my own personal crew of intelligences left my head spinning. After a few moments of silence, they relented.

Scale. To us, you're a world. Through communicating with you, we sense we seem a single mind.

"And... What about that mind and mine? We aren't merged. You know things I don't know."

We speak with your voice. We tell you anything we know, if you ask.

"You don't speak with my voice."

Of course we do.

"You do not. You... you purr. You make everything sound vaguely suggestive. Honestly, you sound like a teenage boy's fantasy girl."

I waited, but my essie didn't reply. I contemplated the swirling colors again, savoring my victory as I tried to decide how to go about rescuing my ship.

It hit me then. Tiamat wasn't my ship anymore, yet I still wanted to rescue her. I needed to, on some deep visceral level that defied my every attempt to analyze it. As I reached out with my augmentation and brushed against the data surrounding me, I swore I felt her presence surrounding me. With that, awareness of the next oddity percolated to the surface of my mind.

"What about humans and our ships? We inhabit them like you inhabit us. Why aren't we one with them?"

Another disjointed yet coherent reply rubbed through my brain, black velvet against the inside of my skull. You're too slow. / You're too few. / Aren't you?

I frowned in annoyance at the implied insults. "Humans are not slow, and we're not just parts of our ships. We're unique individuals. Each of us matters to our ships, and they matter to us, as individuals, not as some kind of... of..." I ran out of words, and my essie didn't reply. I stared at the patterns in the ceiling again, waiting for enlightenment. Nothing came, and I squirmed restlessly. I couldn't even savor my tiny victories properly when my essie wouldn't acknowledge them. A final bit odd thought struck me.

"If the humans on a ship are too few, what about all the humans in the galaxy? There are billions of us out there on ships and stations... trillions if you count the ones planetside. Quadrillions if you count Civilians." My essie still didn't reply. After a few moments I pieced together the answer without the help of my stubborn sirens. "Right. Collocation. It has something to do with communication speed. We're too spread out."

Satisfied, I bent my full attention to the data surrounding me. It defied comprehension, infinitely complex and changing even as I watched. I would have to dive into it to sort it out. I sought a place to make my initial connection to the memories in the walls, wondering how I'd know when I found it.

The patterns are decaying.

I jumped, startled by the cottony voice brushing feather light behind my ears. "What? How can you tell? How much time do I have left?"

We've spent generations studying this. Precise prediction is difficult; the decay is based on the conjunctions of twenty-one distinct fractals. We've just confirmed the patterns are, in fact, decaying. Time is limited, but not small / we don't know how small. Scale.

"How can you have spent generations studying this? I've never heard of something like this happening before. What happened to telling me anything you know? I know you can't know exactly what I need to know, but why didn't you think to volunteer information on this kind of thing?" I ran out of steam before I ran out of breath, another advantage to my augmentation. My essie took a few seconds before replying.

We thought you needed to know. We intensified. We studied. We gave you our results. How didn't we do what you asked? Earnest confusion suffused my bond with my essie, and I paused to savor it and think before I spoke again. When I realized my error, I didn't believe it at first, discarded the information. After a few minutes, I'd reached the same conclusion half a dozen times, and gave it voice.

"Generations have passed since I turned the lights off?"

Ours, yes. We've got an estimate, and we figured out why we had trouble getting it. Your interaction changed the decay.

I lay there, mouth open in shock. After a few moments I whispered, "I didn't know."

You're slow.

I thought about how fast Tiamat and Echidna reacted for a moment. "Why do you and the AIs put up with us? We're like... morons or something."

No. You are human. You are fire and passion and dreams.

I thought about my speech to Echidna's crew, and my cheeks heated so much I thought I could see them glowing in the darkness. "Gah. Humans are just the Unity's hormones. I still can't understand how you put up with us."

We know, and by knowing we make the improbable commonplace. We are powerful. You do not know, and in not knowing, you do the impossible. You are mighty.

Before I could really digest that, the rest of their statement caught up with me. "Wait, you have an estimate? I changed things just by touching the surface of the data?"

Yes. Four point eight oh seven eight times ten to the forty ninth Planck time units, assuming no additional interference.

I juggled that number around, leaning heavily on my augmentation's mathematical ability and built in reference material. "Around a month, then, if I don't touch it. Of course, I have to touch it. Keep an eye on it, let me know if it drops to half that number, okay?"

As you wish.

I looked back at the swirling mass of data surrounding me. The 'Sects might not give me another free moment. This might be my only chance to save Tiamat. I'd run out of reasons to delay.

I closed my eyes, reached out with my mind, and melted into the storm around me.