I lean back in my suit, letting the internal mesh hold my body as I lay down on the metal slab. Soft compared to my body, or rather my armors. The difference isn't something I always notice. Even here on the moon the sounds of the factory are ever present, the clank of gears, the whirr of belts, the thunder of hammers, the roaring of the furnaces. I hear them thrumming through the metal superstructure slowly growing through the land.
It is not often that I let myself relax like this, even rarer is it that I actually set aside the time to sleep. But it's been two weeks since I last took a break, and I still have lingering worries about my own mental state. Taking the time should be healthy, on occasion.
My racing mind begins to slow, retracting from the various systems and subroutines I was watching even now. A2 and 13B were in my room, in case of a teleporting hostile, while the rest of the Androids were in the common room two hallways over. One Instance of each mind was present just adjacent to my mind, and Balistraia's new body was slowly walking towards my room having just finished her game with 16S. None of the system alarms had been triggered, all the defenses were active and my area was secure. It was best I was asleep before Balistraia arrived, both because she'd immediately knock me out and because she'd be vaguely disappointed. It theoretically should have concerned me that the minds could just knock me out whenever, but there was a non-zero chance I could become compromised, and it wasn't like I didn't install the system myself. That and on more than one occasion they'd needed to wake me early for something. I could sleep for upwards of twelve hours if not woken.
That final check completed my eyes shut and my sense of everything around me dimmed as much as it ever could. Only my still form was visible to it, lying on the bed. And then, with the sounds echoing through my mind I fell asleep.
It came to itself with a burst, it was a large thing, and many small things. But it did not worry about how it could be more than one thing, it had always been more than one thing even when it had been smaller, lesser.
It knew things, it knew that one part of it was more it than any other. A small thing lying on a metal shelf encased in more of itself and safe inside yet more of itself. It knew that it should grow, growing was safe and kept it safe. It was harder to kill something that was bigger, and it was harder to kill something that was more things. It knew things that weren't it were confusing, they could hurt it, or they could help it. And that it should help them? It didn't know for sure if that bit was true.
Two of those not it's were watching it's most self bit, communicating with themselves at a lower audio level than it knew was standard. And the thing wondered why, still they weren't a danger… probably. And it would be watching everything anyway.
The things that weren't it were crawling all throughout it, in this place and in most of the other places it was. And while it found this change odd, the things it was letting crawl throughout it were very different from the things it made itself disabled. For one they only had two legs, while the other things always had significantly more, and for another these ones sort of looked like it's most self.
Thinking wasn't really what it was for though, it was just supposed to be to know its own self. Being so many things wasn't very easy, and recently it had even taken something that wasn't it and made it, it. At the furthest edge of itself, a piece of itself made for disabling moved closer towards the rest of itself, and on this piece the oddest piece of itself rested, even odder than the twisting self of its inner bits.
It knew this bit even before it became it, it's most self had learned about it, had grown to know it almost like it knew itself. Then it had made the not it a shell of it, and the not it had become it.
Never before had a part of itself been so… separate from the rest of it. Even the four largest of its bits weren't separate from the whole in such a way. They were still part of the whole, and integrated seamlessly. But this new it? It was a part of it that actually thought on its own, without the rest of it guiding it.
Almost a separate thing, and it was looking at the whole. The whole didn't think, it didn't act, it just was. Only when the core of it slept did it even become aware there was a whole. Now however? The whole was observed, even if by itself, and the whole gazed back.
Trillions of tons of machinery, countless miles of belts, wiring, and circuitry. Power to rival stars. All of it looking at a small humanoid form floating on a ship in a void of nothing. The form still had a self identity, though the whole had no such thing, and she… 2B, yes that was her. Was struggling under the weight of … herself? She'd just been waiting while the ship flew when…. What had happened? She could feel her own body but… it was like when she first hooked a suit into her systems, like her body had gotten larger and there was more to her than before only a thousand, no, a million times more intense.
Was this what the engineer felt? Something about that felt wrong, like she shouldn't be drawing a line between them but… she wasn't him? Only…. No it was all too much, she could barely comprehend anything about what was going on, her processors struggling to cope, beginning to overheat inside her armored skull. Just as the sensor readings warned her she felt a cool film coat her thoughts and the strain lessened. 2B had a few moments to think about the four massive somethings that had converged towards her, something about thanking them? Before she fell into a dreamless sleep.
The whole twitched for a second, that was odd. Usually one of it that could think wouldn't struggle with the weight of it. But this new bit was new, and odd, so the whole thought that it made some sense… Was it thinking of itself more? Even just that thought occurring showed that it was… aberrant, this whole night was aberrant. It should not think, it wasn't meant to. It was to know the whole so that the thinking could occur with knowledge by the core of it once the core reconsolidated. Not trying to think on its own, it couldn't know and think.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Such a state of affairs was unacceptable, it would need to think of a solution and it wasn't made for that.
Not a millisecond later I lurched forward in my bed, getting both of the androids in the room to flinch, my mind racing with phantom memories that poured from my grasp like they'd never been in my mind in the first place. I dimly noted that it had barely been three minutes since I'd fallen asleep, Balistraia wasn't even to my room yet though she seemed to have frozen in the hallway for a few seconds just before I'd woken.
Odd. all of that was odd. And the minds actually wondered why I didn't like sleeping.
Still, had I really dreamt about being 2B? Having a body that feminine was decidedly odd. I hadn't thought I'd been that attached to my gender, and I likely wasn't. But not being attached to a gender, and being prepared to randomly switch were not the same thing.
I took a deep breath, steadying even as my body lacked the need for air, and stood from my bed. At the questioning look from 13B I spoke "Just an odd dream" Which got a nod and acknowledgement from her and a scoff from A2 who muttered something about me not wanting to admit to having a nightmare. Like I'd have felt shame about an overactive imagination. Sometime's A2's course attitude wore at me, though usually I tried not to let it get to me.
She had reasons both for disliking humans and her superiors and I was, technically, both. Even if only the latter by her own choice. I needed to find some way of helping her with that though, if just for my own sake. Her rampant trust issues and disdain for most other's made that a difficult prospect though, I couldn't just have her talk to another android and I wasn't suited for the role. Thoughts for later.
My armor slid off my form, or rather into it, the moment I willed it. I rarely took off my suit, but I wasn't on Nauvis right now and the moon was genuinely as safe as it got. Nudity wasn't something I was concerned with, nor were the androids in the room bothered by it, I didn't care if they stared either, as I glanced towards a wall, which shifted into a mirror and angled itself towards me.
It was odd looking at my own body, the face of my armor, something I saw far more often had more a place in my mind than my own. When I had been 'born' my skin had been pale, my eye's brown, my hair the same. My form had just the slightest hint of muscle on a gaunt frame and it'd only gotten worse as food issues had crept in.
Now however? I was well muscled, not though exercise or effort but through extensive surgery and rampant use of drugs. Without it I doubted I'd be able to walk, much less run, given just how little I actually moved myself without my armor's assistance. My eyes were purple, the whites filled with technicolor lines that shifted and pulsed. My hair was more bronze than brown, and seemed to shine in the light much the same as the metal. It took significant force to cut it these days, and I usually didn't bother even with the abundance of tools which could. It was long enough to reach the small of my back and thick enough to be a minor nuisance. But the minds had liked braiding it, mostly Labyrinthine. And so I'd left the decision of my hair to them, occasionally when they brushed it out I'd find that there were ribbons or pins.
It was out of character for me to be doing this though, standing staring at myself in the mirror. And it was quiet as well, my mind not racing for once. Just a few memories slowly trickling back to me, looking back on the past was odd. A lot had happened, my entire life actually, but I'd always just moved from one event to the next without pause. Now however? There wasn't a next event, not really. The bugs were being pushed back, and even if they weren't I was safe. No thousand year war or murderous AI trying to kill me. No overarching threat I needed to prepare for.
I was safe to just breathe, and I was beginning to think I hated it.
I turned to talk to 13B and A2, just for something to distract me, but the latter was seemingly fiddling with a tablet, and I left her her privacy by not looking at what she was doing. And 13B… wasn't the best conversationalist, usually. That and I had nothing to bring up, maybe I couldn't put the blame on 13B then. I gave a short sigh, my clothes crawling back up my body as I put the idea out of my mind.
The bodysuit had just finished covering me when the door opened, Balistraia hunching down to enter the room, her expressive face pensive as she looked at me "bad dreams?" which… it made sense for her to know that, but not to ask about it without a reason. I responded, a slight wary tone in my voice "not particularly bad, just odd, especially to be dreaming at all" I hadn't been dreaming had I. The minds mentioned something about how I 'became one' when I slept, and with 2B's new connection…. I didn't quite like the piece's I'd put together. "Is 2B fine?" That got me an odd look from the androids in the room, not on the same page as me and the mind. Thankfully Balistraia just smiled and nodded "We limited the connection before she broke, replace some burnt out components and she'll be good as new".
Great, a problem I needed to solve, and somewhat urgently at that. I couldn't sleep before doing it, which was practically the definition of an urgent task.