Oja’s consciousness floated above an ethereal, terminal green ocean of background programs and digital scaffolding.

They were a wisp held within the calm waters of the Binary world.

They’d gone through the reconstructive process before. This would be no different. They turned their head to the nearby interactive object that lived in the salvaging yard. Its physical and digital forms were not indistinct from one another; a mass of copper colored mites that rolled through the air like a cloud.

Unlike the physical mites, the digital component to their form housed a radiant core not unlike the one that churned within their own bosom. A program made manifest by the reluctant whims of an entombed god.

Oja reached out with a hand.

“Execute ‘Suit Assimilation’ command. Parameters: Lowest quality suit. Lowest quality core.” Oja directed. They were a fresh batch of scavengers and with so few resources at their disposal, Oja wanted to limit the amount of provisions they took from the team.

“Acknowledged.” The swarm replied in the voice of Oja’s inner link. The cloud manifested a model of the [Scrap Suit] and the accompanying [Faulty Core]. Oja’s ethereal body floated to the model and possessed it.

With their consciousness now bound to a physical anchor, the swarm was ready to begin the reconstructive process.

They felt good about being found.

The freedom of drifting through the expanse of the Binary world was often fraught with dangers that made staving off boredom difficult when rooted to the ground by a nest of cabling. There was always a chance that their vulnerable spirit would be ensnared by the corruptive webbing of the Vessels or subsumed by the ancient leviathans that yet stirred below the waters.

Freedom in the physical world, although littered with its own set of dangers, would prove to be a more relaxing and mentally stimulating affair.

They pulled up a diagnostic of the binding process, a representation of their collective memories being dropped in a receptacle that granted movement and independence. The suit's plating shifted to a lean, squat frame. It was a conscious decision for Oja to select an androgynous build, the attempt to piece together something more akin to their former flesh frame bringing too much distress for them to handle.

This will suit their new persona just fine.

Oja sifted through the localized instance of this world while the swarm worked on their body.

This was a remote place.

They could not see beyond the digital threshold that made up the Outpost. A pond lifted above the ocean. Their realm was above the physical fortifications of castle ramparts and watchtowers.

“The best way to protect from an invading force is to not let them find purchase to begin with.” Oja’s internal link explained.

The world shifted into a hazy recollection of a memory between Oja and their lover and confidante under the harsh artificial lighting of the medical ward. The memory always started with the rhythmic tapping of his pencil on an old-school leather bound notebook.

Laritzo Friedman was a scrawny machine rat with a busted lip, missing finger on his right hand, deep dark circles underneath his eyes, and a gentle warmth that coddled Oja in a sense of normalcy.

“There are drawbacks to being this isolated from the rest of the digital world, but even we reap the forethought our ancestors had in expecting things like those Vessels to pop up in the world.” Laritzo continued in his explanation, absentmindedly jotting down bits of information into the margins of his overstuffed book.

The hazy recollection continued to take shape as finer details were added. He was laying in a medical bed when they had this conversation. Their group was exploring the ruins that lay dormant beneath their feet, save for the few denizens that patrolled the shifting corridors in their endless devotion to their god.

The circumstance of his bed occupancy manifested in tandem with the purpose of their conversation; this was the aftermath of his second connection to the digital world.

“And you needed to wire your head into the deep end to figure out something so basic?” Oja replied in overt disapproval. They could feel the soft touch of the bedding beneath their arms.

Their arms, though, were a pale white fuzz to Oja’s first person perspective. A casualty, a requirement for encasing what was once flesh into a body of metal and wires.

A choice taken from them.

Laritzo scratched his head like a buffoon and smiled, “Well that's just the one discovery among many made in the minute I was in that mess.”

Oja shook their head, “You’re like a scientist diving into an acid pit to assess its chemical composition. Foolish.”

“Not a scientist and I knew what I was doing.” The warmth in his voice faded, replaced with a resolute conviction that indulging in his curiosity was fundamentally right.

They were unimpressed then as they were now, “You knew enough to avoid the worst of fates. Nothing less.” Their voice and the echo overlapped in reciting the moment.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

Laritzo rolled his eyes, “You don’t understand.”

Then, no. Now though?

“No. What I understand, as the research team's physician, is that one of my knuckleheads shoved their mind into a hazardous zone and I’m meant to deal with that aftermath.”

“It wasn’t that hazardous, Oja.”

Oja rolled their eyes, “You were raving gibberish when your mind got shunted out.”

“I took a string of commands with me, that’s all. A string of commands from that hive of networks.”

Their conversation had gone nowhere, fast. Oja was too preoccupied with their love interest throwing themselves into danger to listen to the wonder he experienced. Laritzo was too preoccupied with justifying his actions to conceptualize other methods of engaging with the Binary world that didn’t overload his fragile meat mind.

At the time, he’d described the experience as a party. A chaotic mash up of voices vying for the attention of the host while loud music played in the background. The Vessels wanted to interface with the host but the host was busy, ever busy, attending to other matters.

Cataloging information brought back by those Monitors to send to a distant onlooker in space in accordance to the purpose branded into the core of its being.

Be useful.

Be entertaining.

Be attentive.

The guardian of the Metal Mire and the locus of the largest neural network that existed within the Binary world.

The Legion.

Oja knew that they were familiar with the creature's form and function but the memory to draw from was shunted off a long time ago. The mere recollection of its form was an awful cognito-hazard for machines such as themself.

They didn’t risk forming loose associations for yielding hints either. Their inner link was firm on that directive then and the descriptions for failing to heed that warning left an impression on Oja.

Laritzo’s conclusion that jacking into the nest of a Pure Vessel held water but was still wholly incomplete. The signal was less noisy but the commands traded between Legion to Vessel and back again was not something the human mind could comprehend with their natural form. He was better off hijacking the signal of a Pure Vessel and suffering from the phantom compulsions that followed than falling victim to his curiosities earlier in a Broken Vessel’s nest.

His mind was made malleable by the noiseless hijack. Laritzo’s conscious being would have been shredded under the maelstrom of noise and corruptive influence that plagued the inferior creatures.

It was luck and intuition that saved you.

Laritzo finished jotting down his thoughts in the book and grabbed at Oja’s hands.

Oja didn’t recoil this time.

“I don’t have to worry about a bad outcome when I have you watching my back.” Laritzo gave them a toothy smile.

Oja lingered in the memory, absorbing the peak of its smells, the sensation of intimate touch to their fingers, the feeling of space that connected the two of them together-

“You start your reconstructive process with this scene as the foundation of your being. Why?” The Laritzo that existed as Oja’s inner link tore out of the scene, bringing them back into the empty digital void.

“You know why,” Oja replied, taking a seat in the air from the emotional come down, “And the answer hasn’t changed from the last time I told you.”

Laritzo-link acknowledged, “Nor the time before that. You didn’t indulge in my questions for the first few times we’ve acquainted ourselves with one another so I was curious that something might have changed from our last verbal reunion.”

Oja laughed, “You sit in the back of my head and keep me tethered to the rest of those… scavengers.” They reeled in their contemptuous tone. It did them no good to be filled with hate.

“And has your answer changed now?” Laritzo-link asked in the same shit eating tone that he once had.

“No. Despite everything you’ve done, my answer has not changed.” Oja answered honestly.

Laritzo-link’s light brown eyes flashed with an affirmative green before shifting back, “And what do you make of this new crew of yours?”

They were on a similar wavelength in wondering what potential the crew held.

“An Engineer, an Archivist, an Exonaut, a Scout, and a Commander. The building blocks of any competent salvaging rig now complemented by my calculating care.” Oja lifted their hand and saw the constructive efforts were currently molding sinews and ligaments out of precious metals and insulated tubing.

“They’re a capable group. A little wet behind the ears insofar as their knowledge of the planet is concerned but they’re doing quite well in staying alive. I haven’t seen the capabilities nor the temperament of the commander out in the field but she registered as competent and caring from the moment she opened the gate.” Oja answered.

Laritzo-link filed the rest of Oja’s assessments, her assistant when forming the psychological profiles they were bound to use in therapy.

The Archivist was at the top of the list for therapeutic treatment after his line of questioning. Those sorts of questions festered in the mind, a cancerous hesitation that would certainly see them killed.

Or worse.

“Do you think that our Legion is still out there?” Laritzo-link asked.

Oja shrugged, “Does it matter?”

Clearly it did. Otherwise they wouldn’t be asking themself that question.

The humanoid receptacle filled with Oja’s remaining memories and the manifested Laritzo-link faded into nothing.

“Return for maintenance after three solar cycles. The reconstructive process is complete.” the internal link stated, personability remaining in the voice without the presence.

Oja relished the solitude before shunting their mind out of the Binary world and into the fabrication end of the salvage yard. The rest of their newfound crew watched in awe as the metallic construct took its first steps out into the world.

They would assist the next generation to the best of their abilities.

It was at the core of what kept Oja going.