The Ryukyuan rigsteads were a series of fifty-six Class 1 ocean rig platforms connected by gondola infrastructure, moon pools, and private submarine access. Each rig cluster was seven rigs, and each rig was about the size of a town and as tall as the tallest skyscrapers of the old world. Clusters were arranged in a hexagonal pattern with the central rig being the largest and most secure, as it contained a dense habitation district and recreation mezzanine. These were generally traversed on foot, with their hives of winding alleyways, elevators, and compact stairwells forming mazes of concrete and metal best navigated with glideskates, personal lift drones, or simple walking.
Everything on the exterior of the rigs shimmered from solar skin; there were entire teams of engineers dedicated to cleaning and re-spraying the skin onto sunward surfaces on a monthly basis. In this way, the rigs were powered by a combination of wave generators, modest sunlight, and the oceanic cables traveling all across the Pacific by way of the GYOTA SuperGrid, which more or less used advanced conductive materials to turn the geothermal activity of tectonic trenches into power for the entirety of the Pacific Rim.
Sometimes, Noviko mediated on the spectacular sorcery of Humanity. It was a miracle to her that the medical clinic she now found herself being treated in was essentially turning the natural processes of the Earth into human longevity and good health; like her ancestors before her, showing their intelligence by putting up sails to move boats and cargo without the effort of rowing, her contemporaries had engineered their way into turning lava into gene therapy.
As Noviko floated naked in the fluids of the restoration pod, she awaited the full analysis of the fairy surgeon’s scanning efforts. She could hear the great clanging and humming of the machine swirling around her in the dark. The pain in her face had long since been numbed down to a state of fuzzy bliss from some lovely medicinal injections. But most of all, she was immensely grateful towards her own good judgement for not having allowed a well-meaning stranger to urinate on her face.
“Doctor?” Asked Noviko.
The fairy surgeon’s single, cyclopean eye shone above her in the darkness like a blue star. “Ugh. If you have questions, please save them for after the scans. Do not move.”
Ugh? Heavens, please don’t let this be one of those ‘quirky’ AIs.
“I have admin access to your surface thoughts while you’re in my pod, your holiness.”
Well, you could have just said that!
“I suppose so. I didn’t really care to, being honest. Now what is your inquiry?”
Is urine an actual treatment for jellyfish stings?
“No. I’m sorry to say that the man who tried to pee on you had an unfortunate search history in his cerebral MetaNet browser, with the subconscious drives to match. Nice guy, though, really great with sample collection in the reefs. Did you know that mollusk shells are like fingerprints?”
I did not.
“No two shells alike, when it comes to surface iridescence and patterns.”
Ah ha… fascinating.
“I’ll show you my collection after this if you want.”
Oh, well… I’m sure that would be lovely, thank you. But in the meantime, perhaps you could help me occupy my mind with a little passive entertainment?
“No love for science, I see. A typical woo-woo psychopunk! Fine, have it your way.”
The blue eye vanished into the darkness and was replaced by a holographic screen. A targeted advertisement from PRISMA, of all things, popped up immediately:
Intelligence isn’t everything in the human story. What makes life tolerable for humans is gentleness, indulgences, small moments of peace, humor, variety, beauty, caring for the weak, and courageous actions.
When we seek to understand an alien intelligence, we are reminded that intelligence is not what we love most about ourselves.
What we love most about ourselves are all the little weaknesses and joys that make humanity a meaningful word. That’s what our story is about.
At PRISMA, we’re leading Syndicate in inter-species outreach. Our hand-selected diplomats have already secured partnerships with the dolphin and orca clans. We no longer keep pets. We have sapient, non-human partners in the great mosaic that is the Mammalian class.
But not every other nonhuman intelligence will be a mammal. Some creatures may be intelligent in a way we find loathsome. And when we find there is no mutual understanding to be had, that we are dealing with something malignant … what is our option?
Enslavement? Eradication? Alteration, as in, a kind of psychological terraforming of the offending entities?
Maybe. 🙃
But understanding, in good faith, must first be pursued.
We must be able to live with ourselves.
At PRISMA, we’d like to remind everyone…
You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be sincere. 💃
How peculiar. PRISMA doesn’t usually go out of its way to advertise to me.
“They’re watching you,” said the fairy surgeon. “Is it related to your face?”
Well if they’re watching me, they’re going to be bored out of their minds.
“Speaking of people being bored, don’t you have a four-year-old son at home?”
I really do need to get home to him, his nanny does not appreciate unannounced overtime.
“The thoughts of a sincerely concerned mother, indeed. One must avoid nanny overtime.”
You just do your job and fix my face, good doctor. Surface thoughts indicate no deeper emotions, after all, so how can you judge my true affections for my son?
“Well, I have access to your biomon and thus the entirety of your body’s data,” said the doctor with a quippy little click-clack of its centipede arms. “And when you speak of your son, I detect oxytocin levels thirty-seven percent below average for mothers in similar situations recorded throughout the past forty years of recordkeeping.”
That’s both nosy and rude of you. I feel violated, doctor.
“Perhaps you should not have used metadata to pick a fight with a girl half your age on a gondola earlier. Don’t you call what I am doing ‘karma’?”
… that is fair. I deserve it. Are we done yet?
The fairy surgeon’s centipede arms feathered over Noviko’s face; it felt like a thousand tiny moths fluttering their furry wings over her skin. Everything was warm, and then everything was numb. The doctor had the professional grace to walk her through his process, at least: “I’m scrubbing off the surface layer now, so it’s crucial you don’t fidget. Very good, very good… there we are. Oh, you wouldn’t want to see yourself in a mirror right now. I should say that, now that I’m under your skin, the state of your sinews and tendons looks excellent, and your blood oxygen levels are optimal. Keep focusing on the sound of my voice and relax, good, good – your stem paste is done cooking, I’m loading it into my dispersal filaments now. This might smell a bit like afterbirth, if you’re familiar, a bit unpleasant, like a meaty hospital smell—”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Noviko felt queasy with the memory of her son’s birth.
Oh, she thought, I’m well familiar.
“Mammalian birth is harrowing, isn’t it? At some point, the laws need to change regarding radical genetic engineering, you all deserve to lay egg clutches like frogs or insects, you know? Small, soft spheres in large numbers, young that hatch as self-sufficient nymphs and more or less raise themselves, I imagine. Do you listen to the Eggvocate podcast?”
No, but honestly, that sounds like a much better way to have children.
As the little centipede filaments began their spraying, the smell hit her like a truck. It reeked of amniotic fluid and skinless flesh, the kind of hideous hospital-floor-meets-abattoir stench that she’d only smelled twice in her life; once after giving birth to her son, and another time when she helped deliver a baby orca in a moon pool as a teenager.
At this point, all she could do was hold her breath while the surgeon worked.
“At this point,” continued the fairy surgeon, “there’s no getting around it. It’s quite the discussion in SynCon – how will the human body evolve to accommodate increasingly large brain cases as evolution speeds up?”
Cloning, I suppose?
“That has even more ethical concerns and is a legal nightmare. Mostly it’s just used by people in hazardous lines of work to provide their friends and family with a backup version of themselves in the event of violent death.”
Noviko felt the building panic of oxygen deprivation as she continued to hold her breath.
Are we almost finished?
“Just finished, actually. Get out of my pod, please! Enjoy your new face!”
The pod sliced open from the bottom, flushing her out like the contents of a cyst. She plopped into a soft net hung between the walls of a private stall in the clinic. Above her, the deflated sac of the surgery pod retracted into the ceiling with a cozy chime one might associate with a dishwasher’s cycle finishing.
Noviko patted herself dry with a spa towel and slipped back into her three-color robes. She ignored the chiming from her neural augmentations bothering her to check her message backlog. The mirror turned on and she admired the surgeon’s work in the light. Her face was exactly as it had been, though…
“MY MOLE!” She screamed, as she noticed the beauty mark that had always been at the lower-left corner of her mouth was missing. “That miserable BUTCHER forgot my mole!”
Noviko kicked the door to her stall open and marched into the lobby. A service drone buzzed alongside her after detecting the disturbance. “Noviko Tanaka-LaCroix,” it chimed, “please be respectful of other patients as they undergo their procedures.”
“I had a mole,” she seethed as she stormed to the reception kiosk. It scanned her face to log her into its databases, then buzzed an error message at her.
“Unknown biometrics.”
Noviko raged. “YES, BECAUSE MY MOLE IS GONE YOU WRETCHED MACHINES!”
The service drone made a 🙁 face at her on its holo-display as it whirred around to ‘face’ Noviko. “Please be respectful. The machine spirits and/or digital fairies managing this facility are individuated appropriately and a part of the Syndicate Consensus per our preemptive citizen rights in the Trine Accord’s corporate charter. I would imagine that you, as a psychopunk, would understand that at a more intuitive level.”
Noviko closed her eyes and scolded herself: It is better to appreciate the labors of others.
She opened her eyes again and bowed in sincere contrition. “Please forgive my unseemly outburst. I have had a difficult time today and am protective of my vanity. May I schedule a time to return and have my mole restored?”
The service drone made a 😊 face through its holo-display. “No problem, we all have bad days. I can get you in tomorrow afternoon for a touch-up. But I will say it’s a little weird that your mole didn’t return – are you sure it’s part of your original genetic makeup and not a permanent cosmetic addition, like your beautiful pizukki tattoos?”
“I…” she frowned and plumbed the depths of her memory. Her systems aided her by supplementing her memory with recorded images of her childhood, wherein her mother had given her a false mole tattoo when Noviko was about three years old. It was a warm memory, one of the few moments of intimacy with the woman, and as she relived the sudden experience, she recalled the smell of her mother’s sandalwood incense and the feel of throwing her arms around those soft and strong shoulders to pillow her face against fragrant silks.
“I want to say that my life is a lie, for humor’s sake,” began Noviko, “but this has turned into the recollection of a beautiful memory, and I am grateful for it. Thank you, little spirit.”
The service drone did a happy barrel roll and gave her a 😍 face. “Wow, that’s really wonderful, it makes me happy to see you happy. The Dao is flowing with you today!”
Noviko wiped a little mist from her eyes and took a breath. “I’ll get my hajitiya touch up my face on the way home, then. Farewell!”
“Bye bye! Walk slowly!”
Heartened, Noviko passed through the automated glass doors of the clinic and into the open air of the rig. A few hours had passed, and it was nearing lunchtime. Thoughts of skewered squid and a carafe of midday’s sake filled her mind; she was not so hungover that a bit of hair from the dog that bit her wouldn’t hit the spot. What a fine, leisurely stroll home it would be, to see her hajitiya again and have a lunch of protein and rice wine!
And stroll she did, with smooth steps and a little meaningless song in her heart. Her sleeves billowed in the warming sea breeze, and she admired all the little colorful cloth banners and doorways of the various hole-in-the-wall establishments throughout the mezzanine. But this pleasant walk was cut short by the appearance of a familiar face and a less familiar face.
There was that smirking girl again, fresh-faced as Noviko was, with an armed individual at her side. “There you are, your holiness,” the girl smiled with a falseness so obvious it was malicious. “We’ve been waiting for you to wander our way. You’d think a woman with a child at home would have a little more urgency to her steps, wouldn’t you, Agent Vox?”
The unfamiliar individual standing next to that smirking girl said nothing in response.
Noviko took this as a good sign and smiled as she took the figure in. Agent Vox, which metadata confirmed was indeed her name, was a towering, slender woman with a swimmer’s physique. She had a long-bridged, Middle-Eastern nose, ferocious eyebrows, slicked-back silver hair, and a narrow, serious face with the cheekbones of a queen and the large, imploring green eyes of a paranoid forest creature. Her pear-shaped body had been custom-tailored into a suit of form-fitting, black tactical armor that sealed her in from the very bottom of her jaw to the tips of her boots and fingers. The familiar pink-yellow-teal triangle of the Trine Accord was stamped onto her shoulder pad.
Noviko found the woman striking, to say the very least. The pistol holstered at the agent’s hip was also a compelling accessory. “Agent Vox?” Noviko bowed just enough to be polite. “Has this young Naichi-spawn gone and tattled on me for hurting her feelings? Does she have any idea whose time she is wasting?”
Agent Vox, once again, said nothing. Noviko looked at the young woman with pitying eyes. And at long last, the young woman’s face curdled into a hateful scowl. She all but spat her words at Noviko, a blade behind every syllable. “Don’t you dare look at me like that, you backwards, coconut-eating amejo brood sow.”
Did she just call me an amejo? One who couples with ‘foreigners’? If this child is a fascist agitator seeking to sow division, she is doing a poor job of it.
“Darling,” Noviko tutted. “That slur is an antique -- have a care in handling it.”
Noviko subconsciously detected a flood of activity in her various digital livestreams; it was always unsettling when one’s life went viral, and it made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. But she chose to ignore the sensation and trust her instincts. While a part of her was angry at the offense directed at her husband, who was both Franco-Kinh and the father of her beautiful son, she mostly felt pity for this young woman who had clearly been raised in a tradition of crypto-hatred by irresponsible parents playing some idiotic, multi-generational long-con meant to disrupt Syndicate culture.
Noviko sighed and addressed both those watching through streams and Agent Vox: “This is the problem with generational citizenship, you know. Residents aren’t subjected to the rigorous monitoring we citizens are, so who knows what sorts of demented things they’re saying to their offspring around the dinner table. Agent,” she bowed to Vox, “I apologize on her behalf for wasting your time and mine. Now if you will excuse me, I do have a hajitiya to see about a mole, a lunch to enjoy, and a son to reunite with.”
Noviko smiled her best smile and stood up straight, then moved to pass between the two standing in her way. But Agent Vox held up a gentle hand and Noviko halted as if a death adder had reared up in her path. She dared not say a word.
“Noviko Tanaka-LaCroix,” said Agent Vox, in the empty tone of a dissociated serial murderer, or perhaps the tone of an on-duty agent of Corporate Command (she could never fully discern the difference between the two in all her years of practice, if indeed there was a difference at all). “I’m here on behalf of the Trine Accord’s Empathy Enforcement Directive. Records indicate you had an altercation on a gondola this morning. Is that correct?”
“That is correct. I had both a mild argument with this girl and a jellyfish thrown in my face by an old gentlemen whom I assume is now in custody for his own safety and others’?”
“Yes,” said Agent Vox. “He’s in public detention awaiting treatment. With your consent, I’d like to escort you there so you can begin the exorcism process immediately.”
Noviko wanted to say no. So, she did.
“No, thank you. I’d like to get my tattoo done and have lunch and go play with my son first… um, respectfully.”
Agent Vox gazed down into Noviko’s eyes with that same empty, inscrutable expression. After a few skipped heartbeats, the agent stepped aside. “In the interest of courtesy, you have one hour. After that, I’ll be invoking Clout to supersede your consent rights.”
“That’s not enough time to eat a sandwich, let alone--!”
“You have one hour. I suggest you perform time management triage.”
The young woman’s smirk came back, full force, as she saw Noviko walk away harried and flustered. But that smirk was short-lived, as Agent Vox drew back her hand and smacked the expression clean off the young woman’s face.
“You’d better join a good union,” said Agent Vox, increasingly in the distance behind Noviko. “Descendants of fascist defectors get a triple-digit surveillance classification in their file. I suggest dialing back the regional slurs and setting aside a weekend to bake an empathy stimulator into your central nervous system. Check my DM for resources.”
The young woman, whom Noviko later learned was named Tsuki Watanabe, would go on the join the Brotherhood of Scrappers and Divers the very next day. She would spend her life enjoying inter-species salvage operations with her coworkers alongside a diplomatic contingent from the local bottlenose dolphin clan. She would be, by every available metric and on threat of ostracization, a happy and well-adjusted person from that point forward.
And in Noviko's opinion, such a fate would (quite literally) serve the girl right!