Aleph had taken the walker out on her own. There was something thrilling and utterly relaxing about it. She was alone in the quiet. Wandering Tunie’s halls recognizing some things from Pylo’s earlier tours. But mostly just appreciating the stillness of her little bubble of air. Silence of near vacuum insulating her as she watched the writhing fleshy tubes of the motiles sway.

Carrying what looked like half glassed cylinders full of rotting meat and mushrooms. She had positioned the walker out of the way, even though experience had shown that Tunie’s fleshy sub-units would happily divert around her if she did not.

Was this how it had looked when their own berths had come board Tunie?

Cans with fragile living things inside them?

She absently turned away from the procession of lashed together cylinders and apparently living cargo and jolted a little at the collection of pale beige boxes with a great black screen and text running by across it.

Aleph squinted a bit at the ‘medical equipment’ the text was one she knew, which was absurd and probably meant that the display was for her benefit. After watching it scroll by she decided to break the silence.

“So what does ‘enact value transaction’ and ‘behavior weighting’ mean? Your flashing a lot of those messages”

The entity piped in with a chipper and somewhat flat tone. Not artificial sounding but also only vaguely emotionally intoned. Very concise and proper.

“It is how we balance our actions between all our own interests. Each interest and goal of ourselves must be well served. But only in so much as each of ourselves serves the rest. So we itemize, value and market action, behavior and thought to balance it.”

Aleph blinked a few times at the response and then peered closer at the flurry of text entries going by. It was like reading a melange of dry numbered data logs interspersed with poetry.

“Uh... what was that number next to my name that was like getting bigger and smaller over and over again there?”

The screen canted a bit and the text poured by, then paused, shuffled around and proceeded again.

“That was a speculation market bubble of the continued price amongst us on continuing this conversation. Some of us decided that continuing this conversation was sufficiently counter to their specific goals that they wanted to raise the price”

Aleph blinked a moment.

“So I’m wasting your time? Um, I’m not sure if that’s rude or not...”

“Oh our internal markets have evaluated this is FAR from wasting our time. And those of us less satisfied by these activities are earning plenty of value to weigh in on for later when something is more important”

She looked over the assemblage of parts, it was mostly boxes, but some of it was different then she remembered, the same style of construction, but strangely familiar in an entirely different way.

"Uh thanks I guess? Also, why does a piece of medical equipment or investigator or whatever you are have what looks like a outdated high caliber machine gun built in?"

"I am here to look after the refugees and by proxy to take care of the ship and ensure it is healthy, this includes dispatching parasites too large for the motiles to deal with. Also some of Tunie’s Tissues are very robust and require significant force to administer treatments. But this specific instrument is not for that."

One of the other boxes unfolded, twisted and then rearranged into a spear longer than aleph was tall.

“For that I have this.”

[https://i.imgur.com/vtmz5ks.png]

After giving her a time to admire the instrument that looked more like some kind of archaic weapon of war then a medical device the whole thing folded back up into a crate that despite her best efforts Aleph could not tell apart from the others.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

The calm flat voice drew her out of trying to unravel in her memory the shell game that the machine had done.

“How are you feeling? No lingering symptoms from your little excursion into directed brain chemistry?”

Aleph shrugged, she felt fine, really quite good all around considering apparently she and her friends had gone on a major pharmacological adventure, none of the aches or pains or horror stories she had heard about regarding young girls who went off into the wild cities experienced.

Maybe aliens just knew how to do stuff better than terrans in that regard?

“I’m fine, just needed to get a little time to myself away from the other two. Came out here to watch the loading I guess. And was just thinking”

The screen fluttered with options and trades and estimates and various symbolic representations along with children's rhymes and what she supposed might be quotes although she could not recognize who said any of them.

They might be from some wise old alien, or form terra and she just did not recall it.

After a while, one of the lines stopped changing, settling on "Aleph model Subsystem of Address: Curiosity about ▙◀."

“Yeah I am a bit curious about... How do you even say that?”

The speaker made two jarring scratchy barks the latter more subdued and then a sudden woop with a sharp cut off that left her ears feeling vaguely strange. Like there should have been a sound but it was gone.

“Uh, ERH hlll sieeE?”

“Eh’l-Si will work fine I can adjust the translator to operate correctly with it. But why are you here alone? It’s not generally a healthy sign”

“I guess I’m kind of just tired... but I don’t feel tired at all. But I just wanted to get some peace. Some quiet. It’s been only a year and a quarter and I’ve already seen so much. But this was barely even the start of our journey. I’ve got so much more strangeness to look forward too and I do. But I’m also just kind of overwhelmed at the thought.”

The screen shuffled but the “Aleph model Subsystem of Address” remained, flickering and flowing between various things, she watched how her bearing and facial expression could make it sweep through various moods before settling on “Amused”.

“Okay you got me on that one... Um question? Why do you show all of that stuff on the screen like that? And also are you a robot or something? I feel like maybe you are but I dunno.”

The screen fluttered through some more trading on commodities, prices going higher.

“Transparency of course, It is a personal point of pride and action for us to express honestly our inner actions and evaluations. From this honesty and disclosure can proper trust be made and greater transaction returns and services performed”

Aleph blinked as she watched the numbers for how much the time was spent with her starting to rise.

“Uh okay, but I’m guessing from how the price next to my name is shooting up you need to be going to do something now?”

There was a little bow to the screen and that gentle flat voice answered.

“Just so, just so, We need to be going. But you seem to be feeling better anyway and not in any danger. We will have a chance to talk later about most things. Enjoy your peace and quiet Aleph.”

“Have a good, uh whatever you are going to do?”

And with that the assemblage of boxes with a screen was off, flipping and swooping through the air like some strange cubic approximation of the worm like motiles.

She spent a while longer just contemplating the flow of refugees in their little habitats.

So they were very similar to her, Omega and Quarti. Well she was going to go be the welcoming alien presence that she had to wait months for right now.

It was just the polite thing to do.