“For myself, I want no advantage over my fellow man and if he is weaker than I, all the more is it my duty to help him.” -Eugene V. Dobs-
_____
Status Quo didn’t come after them right away. Which was both a relief, and a mounting sense of tension. Like the Star Trek reactor noise, each passing hour felt like an escalation toward an ultimate confrontation, but in reality, brought them no closer to a showdown. At least, as far as anyone knew.
There were a few things the Order needed to do. Secure the bugs, secure the area they’d teleported to, prepare for a counterattack, and…
James felt like the list should be longer. Especially since the last two things were basically the same thing in two different ways.
If he’d thought the Order had been busy in the area to start with, with dozens of people moving around the old farm, then now it was teeming, though with somehow fewer overall people there. All the kids and non-essentials were being teleported out.
Nate had quickly given up on the idea of setting up a standard defensive perimeter when it became clear that they had no idea if Status Quo could teleport themselves. The current defenses involved every one of the security force that the Order had been training, as well as any fresh knight who hadn’t been involved in the fight earlier in the day. All of them were spread out in a ring around the area, hidden through the lines of trees and around a few of the buildings, with lines of sight both out and in to the area. If Status Quo teleported in, the Order had people in position to start trying to pick them off at long range. If they approached from a distance with mundane means, then they would have some time to reorient everyone to meet the intruders, while the spotters fell back.
The biggest problem was they’d have to do all of that with the bugs still around. Because talking to them was turning out to be challenging.
It came as no surprise that there wasn’t a yellow orb for the native language of the Eastern American Imprisoned Six Legged Shelled Thing. But after James had made the joke, he started to realize that they didn’t actually have a lot of options when it came to language. He could speak more languages than he ever imagined being able to, but all of that was on the back of yellow orbs. Their other magics just weren’t geared for it.
None of the red totems Momo had on file were useful for it, though the one that showed you how many enemies were in the building might be good for trust exercises. If Momo had any others up her bathrobe sleeve, it would have to wait until she wasn’t sedated in the Order’s hospital. None of the spells they had were translation effects. In theory they could maybe make an infomorph who was shared among some of them and some of the creatures, but infomorphs took a while to grow up and starting with that felt… wrong.
A few of the people from Research had already started the process of using the emerald circuits to grow a program specifically to model the language, or at least methods of communication, of the bugs. But those also took time, and also…
James hadn’t heard any of them speak.
He was pretty sure they could. Their faces weren’t actually insectile, and they had mouths and tongues. But they didn’t speak, even to each other.
They didn’t make any sounds. They even seemed to be moving slower than they could, just so they could creep along silently.
Maybe he was projecting, but James had too many personal experiences and also personal stories from friends about staying quiet so as not to annoy authority figures who happened to be angry and lashing out. And when he realized that might be what was happening here, his anger came back all over again.
In the end, there was only one tool they had for communication, and it wasn’t a very safe one. But a mixed group from the Order moved out into the space all the bugs were nervously exploring to try to figure out how to ask consent to give one of them a skulljack.
When challenged on who, exactly, would be stupid enough to plug their brain into an unknown and possibly panicking member of a new species that might not even have a normal language, James had just laughed. To him, the answer was obvious.
_____
There was an alarming amount of waiting to be done.
James had waited for a lot of things in his life. Waited out high school, waited out an annoying roommate, waited out the delivery for countless orders off Amazon.
It was only when he started delving that he had to start waiting for things to come kill him. It was novel, and almost exciting, except it was also deeply boring at the same time. Which really meant it was just stressful and he felt like he’d take literally anything as a distraction.
The distraction came in the form of a question from one of the newly arrived people taking over from everyone who had fewer defensive magics in their bodies. Well, one or two of them, James hadn’t actually had a lot of time to talk to Marlea, the Order’s resident actual hive mind. James liked the skulljacks, he liked sometimes sharing a single mind with his partners, he liked the tactical edge that the Order had when they used them for silent communications, he liked how cool they were. He wasn’t sure he could ever do what Marlea did. But he still thought it was cool.
“I’ve got a question, if you’re not busy.” The question from one of her bodies came while James was sitting on a stump by the farmhouse, waiting for his own skulljack adventures in first contact, assuming they could manage to find a bug to agree to it.
James looked up at the blonde half of Marlea’s hive mind. “Sure. If I can ask one first.”
“…Yeah, alright.” She hesitated, in a way that felt a little uncanny, before agreeing.
“Okay, I actually have about eight hundred questions for you, but the one that’s on my mind right now is, how do you pick which body to use when talking to people? You don’t do what Anesh does and use both, so you must have a process. Is it just back and forth?” He leaned forward curiously. “Do you pick based on how you’re feeling? Do you have a favorite?”
“That’s way more than one question.” The brunette side of Marlea said, background commentary as the one closer to James jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Sometimes I have reasons, most of the time I don’t care, but I like being able to do that.”
James bit back a grin. “What, be sarcastic while still getting through a conversation normally?”
“Yup! It’s the best.” One of her bodies nodded at him. “So, my question?”
“Go for it.” James idly invited her to continue as he watched El pop into existence in the remains of the gravel parking lot along with an irate looking pair of paper drakes and their handlers. “Is it about hive mind things?”
She shook her head, one of her bodies rolling her eyes at him. “People are way too worried about this shit, man. You’ll get it eventually, it’s fine. Read my essays. Nah, I wanted to ask if it’s ethical to date an infomorph.”
James rubbed his fingertips over his mouth, trying to conceal the reflexive grimace he had. “I am the wrong person to ask about this.” He said simply, glad that Zhu seemed to be actually asleep at the moment. “I’m not the most wrong person to ask about this, but I’m not unbiased.”
“No one’s unbiased, who cares.” Marlea scoffed. “I’m not asking if you’d do it, I’m asking for your opinion on if it’s okay.”
He took a breath, biting at his lip as he thought. “Okay.” James said, shifting on the old stump to be slightly more comfortable. “So. Infomorphs are all kinda different. And we don’t really know much about them, or their development.” He waved off the look that told him to cut to the answer, and kept monologuing. “Authorities? No. Don’t date them. Assuming you can even manage to get a conversation out of one, which would be a first. Assignments and navigators are iffier, because at a certain point, they start displaying personhood, beyond just problem solving intelligence, and so they can in theory offer consent. Buuuuut…” James shrugged. “There’s a fundamental irreconcilable power dynamic at play when one party literally relies on the other to survive, and in the other direction, can sometimes change the mind of the host without asking. Informed consent in a situation like that is next to impossible, unless there’s some kind of larger social dynamic at play. Like the infomorph having multiple places to live, or better yet, not actually living in the biomorph they’re dating. And an infomorph community that enforces trust through keeping an eye on things helps too, which we sort of have.”
“You’ve put a lot more thought into this than I expected.” Marlea admitted.
“Oh, yeah, absolutely.” James nodded. “I mean, I’m halfway to breaking every rule I just said, because life is messy and shit. So I’ve decided to be acutely aware of all the problems I’m causing.”
One of Marlea’s bodies laughed while the other spoke. “And I thought there were problems inviting people to join me. You’re way worse at this, huh?”
“It gets worse when you consider that a lot of infomorphs are, chronologically, kids.” James gleefully made the situation into an ethical morass. “I don’t think any of them are older than a few years, except maybe Pathfinder. She’s actually a deeply unique case though, because she seemed to be mostly alive before being incepted into someone on our end. It’s weird. But like, they copy and iterate on their hosts so fast, that it’s almost impossible to track personality development in clean stages like humans tend to have. Or maybe it is, but we don’t have the numbers to do it yet.”
“It would be cool to have more infomorphs around.” Marlea said. “They’ve got a lot of crazy magic going on.”
“Eh. Sorta.” James shrugged. “They can do some specific stuff, it’s not as broad as a lot of people think. It’s like saying that humans can do a lot of visual art because we have hands. Technically correct, but deeply misleading.”
Marlea nodded, “So, how old should one be?”
“No idea. That’s the thing.” James sighed. “The only thing that honestly matters is if they can give informed consent. But what is that? We say humans have to be eighteen, in most places, for… well, a variety of reasons, but the number works statistically. But we don’t have infomorph statistics on rates of regret or cases of abuse. We have maybe twenty of them. We have better statistical sampling for ratroaches.” He shrugged again. “Sorry, I don’t have a great answer for you.”
“Well shit.” Marlea grumbled as both her bodies scowled.
James was struck with a sudden new question. “Uh… who were you going to date? Or are, depending.”
“We’re not even close to friends enough for me to tell you that.” Marlea informed him bluntly. James noted she used her rear rank body to tell him, and wondered if she had one face for good news and one face for hot takes.
He wasn’t bothered though. James was comfortable not being friends with every single person in the Order. He didn’t need that; he just needed everyone to know they could trust him, rely on him, and, like Marlea, come to him with weird questions when they had them. It was one of the things he was good at, it was literally part of his job now.
Still, he wanted to get at least one good bit of snark in. “Is it Planner?” He asked. “It shouldn’t be Planner.”
“No, it’s not…” one of her voices overlapped the other one, “No, wait, not sharing!” Marlea turned to leave with one last eye roll. “Thanks for the heads up at least.” She said.
“Yeah, no problem. Also, you know anything about when I’m up?” James turned his gaze toward the distant grassy field.
Marlea gave him a thin smile. “I’ll ask around.”
_____
Two Anesh sat down on either side of James. He’d migrated to some of the camp chairs the Order had brought when they weren’t sure how long they’d need to be here, and was finding the experience a lot more pleasant for his ass than a roughly chopped piece of wood. His boyfriend had found him, though, and while the area was supposed to be clear of nonessential noncombatants, that had done nothing to stop Anesh from showing up anyway.
“You,” Anesh started, both of him talking at once, “are bloody impossible.”
“Ooh, we’re back to Britishisms!” James perked up, the sass from his partner helping to chase away the sleepy fatigue that had rushed in after he’d made the mistake of eating a protein bar while he was waiting. “Say more sexy English accent things at me.”
Anesh faltered, blushing instantly, but keeping up his assault. “I got a single text message from you, you… you…”
“Wanker?” James was full on beaming at him now.
Anesh sputtered. “No!” He snapped back. “One text! One message that you were going to bl- to fucking war, James!”
James smile slipped, and then vanished, as he turned to stare at the stamped dirt in front of the canvas chair he’d swiped. “I know.” He said. “And I’m sorry. Of course I’m sorry, but I also know that…”
There was a stretch of silence. The kind of anxious silence James remembered of waiting to be called into the principle’s office, or when your boss said they needed to talk to you after your shift. Shitty, awful, silence. And then, “Okay.” Anesh said plainly.
“Okay?”
“Okay.” Anesh was looking in two directions, both of them away from James. “I accept the apology.”
“Just like…?”
Anesh set a hand on each of James’ shoulders, and got a wince from his boyfriend as one of them pressed on a bruise. “Don’t talk me out of it.” Anesh said. “I don’t know. I don’t like it, I hate the feeling and the waiting to hear that you’re dead or hurt again. But we’re doing something stupid and dangerous and that means this is going to happen. And I think I’d rather keep being with you than breaking up over it.” Anesh shrugged. “Maybe more than a text next time though.”
“I could record a bunch of messages to be sent in the event of my death?” James offered. “Then I could flirt with you from the beyond!”
“You’re way too cheerful about that.” Anesh winced.
James shrugged. “I’m trying to mask my internal horror with flippancy.” He said smoothly. “Anyway. Why are you here? Just to tell me I’m a bad boyfriend? Cause, like, actually, I am sorry. At least one of you was probably awake enough that I could have called.”
“Alanna called!” Anesh told him with a short laugh. “She… is she doing okay?”
That was a hell of a question for today of all days. “I honestly don’t know.” James answered. “She’s taking on a lot, and I think she’s starting to get annoyed at feeling powerless. Like, when we’re in a fight, she outclasses almost anything we come up against. But then we come back to reality, and she tries to look into reforming a single small facet of the bigger system, and it feels like headbutting a concrete wall.”
Anesh thought for a second. “That’d probably be easier for her.”
“Because she’s stubborn?”
“Because I think if she had to do it, she’d just knock back a pint of shaper substance and grow drill horns.”
“That’s…” James rolled the idea around his head. “That could be hot, sure.”
“Is that how you judge major body transformations?” One Anesh said after both of them wheezed out surprised laughter.
James was affronted. “Obviously.” He said. “Have you met me? Carnally, I mean.”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, so you should know!”
“We’d need a pillow budget.” Anesh thought about it. “Maybe some rubber caps or something so she doesn’t murder us when she has nightmares.” He rubbed at his chin.
“We should have a pillow budget anyway.” James replied, tapping his fingers idly. “We don’t have enough for our bed.”
“We need a bigger bed.” Anesh countered. “Which… I suppose would mean more pillows. Actually, okay, help me out here. Alanna is dating Sarah now.”
“Yes, it’s adorable.”
“Agreed.” The two boyfriends gave professional nods to each other as they came to a consensus. “But how does that… change our sleeping arrangements?”
James shrugged. “Not much. Sarahs’ not dating us, so sometimes Alanna will sleep with her, and sometimes with us, and I’m kinda fine with either. Oh, uh…do you feel okay with that?” James forgot sometimes that Anesh was even newer to all this than he was. “Honestly, we should probably just have this as a whole conversation with all of us…” He looked up at nothing in particular. “Wait, have we had this conversation before?”
“You get hit in the head too much.” Anesh sighed as he waved off the concern. “I don’t mind having more bed to occupy.” Both Anesh grinned ruthlessly as their plan for nighttime annexation progressed on schedule. “I was just curious. Technically, I never have to sleep alone. But I do like being around you and Alanna, and I know you’re maybe interested in some other people…”
“Maybe.” James sighed. “I have no idea, man. I wanna take a year to just take one massive nap and discuss relationship ethics and have a hundred small dates with everyone I like and sort it all out. But I keep getting shot at.”
“That’s your fault.”
“Mostly, yeah.” James conceded. “Point stands, I don’t know who or if I want to try things with.”
“I… uh…” Anesh looked sheepish, and then went silent as a group of knights hustled by toward the farmhouse with a column of asphalt suspended between them.
James raised his eyebrows as his boyfriend, waiting for him to start talking when there were no people around, but Anesh’s blush just got darker and he became even quieter. “You, uh?” He prompted. “I mean, I’m not gonna be upset about anything. Come on, I’m me.”
Anesh shared a look between himself, and gave a reassuring nod, acting as his own help getting psyched up. “I may be… slightly… just a little gay for Keeka.” Anesh said slowly.
“That’s the cutest fucking thing I’ve ever heard you say.” James stared at his partner with a grin, looking back and forth between the two of them. “Does he know?”
“No, I didn’t… I have no idea how to even start that conversation.” Anesh sighed. “We’ve been hanging out for a little while, though. I think I like him. I just thought you should know, before anything happens.”
“That’s exactly how this works, yes.” James nodded knowingly. “Wait, hang on.” His voice turned serious and he cut the conversation off as he saw a trio of researchers approaching. The knot of anxiety in his chest came back as he realized that this might be the time he was waiting for. The moment he had to get up, and go talk to an alien mind, and convince them that he was here to help. Hopefully before retaliation arrived.
Then the researchers veered off toward another group that James didn’t recognize, all of them heading across the old pumpkin patch carrying hard black cases of gear for some unknown purpose.
“You good mate?” Anesh asked slowly.
“I’m waiting.” James said bitterly. “And I don’t like it one bit. I’m waiting to try to talk to the bugs, and I’m waiting for Status Quo to warp in and start shooting, and I hate it.”
“Do we know they can teleport?” Anesh asked, suddenly alarmed. “Should I be more armed than I am?” At James’ worried look, he expanded on that statement. “I’ve got [Manipulate Asphalt] and a couple spikes of the stuff in a pocket. It’s not a gun, but I don’t… like guns.” He shrugged. “Also blue orbs. Always handy.”
“I need to refresh my stock of those.” James admitted, and both Anesh instantly dug in the pockets of their shorts to offer him a fresh handful of the things. “Thanks, but-“
“No.” Anesh said before his duplicate picked up the sentence. “You take those. I’m leaving soon, so unless you need to throw everything we’ve got at a problem I won’t be fighting. But you might. So take the things, and don’t die. And I love you.”
“I… I love you too.” James felt tiny tears forming and held against his eyes as he smiled around the words. “It’s such a fucking miracle you put up with Alanna and me. You’re so perfect.”
“Oh, piss off.” Anesh stood, rustling James’ hair and inadvertently getting it impossibly tangled in the skulljack briad James was wearing. “Don’t get yourself killed.”
James nodded eagerly. “Absolutely. I need to be around to see you keep getting gayer.” He was still laughing as Anesh made a rude gesture at him and stood to rapidly make his escape.
_____
There was a new uncertainty for James to contend with. He didn’t know what month it was.
He could have checked in an instant, he had his phone on him. His brain was technically directly plugged into it, if he wanted it to be, though there wasn’t a skulljack app for checking your calendar. Skulljacks were good for a lot of things, but it took a lot of practice to do them without help, which was why the Order tended to either make or grow programs for the things instead of relying on raw talent. Though to be fair, half the programs that they made were made by people who had learned how to mentally write code, which was impressive.
Tools to make tools. It distracted James briefly from how damn hot it was, and how he felt like it should be July or something, but knew it wasn’t. He’d been down in Texas not even a couple weeks ago for a Ceaseless Stacks delve and it had been freezing, raining, and freezing raining.
He didn’t want to pull out his phone and find out it was still March or something. He wanted to live in suspense. For that at least, because the suspense of everything else the day had to offer was still awful.
He and Zhu waved slowly at one of the new creatures that had come to the boundary of their cluster to drink. The Order had tried at first to figure out if they needed water bottles or something; the bugs had pretty dexterous claws on the ends of their legs, they would have been able to drink without much issue. But they wouldn’t. Or maybe didn’t know it was an option, and without language yet, it was hard to explain.
The way Recover was providing them water right now was with troughs. Cleaned out, with fresh water that got refilled and purified constantly with the brooches from the other Status Quo, but still. The imagery was painful to James, who knew exactly how much like livestock these guys had been treated.
The creature drinking stared at the motion from James, even though he was sitting pretty distant from the field. At the recognition that it was being watched, it slowly retracted its leathery neck, those glistening oval eyes receding back under the edge of its arced shell as it slowly backed away from the water trough.
“Dammit.” James muttered. “I’m the worst at diplomacy.”
“That isn’t true, you’ve met El.” Zhu reminded him.
A small and indignant squeak came from underneath the chair they were sitting at. About half an hour ago, El had dropped by briefly. Not so much to talk, just to leave Speaky here with James and Zhu. The two infomorphs had been darting around the Order’s attempts at organizing help, playing in the equipment storage and medic tents that were emptied of people until they were sure no one was coming to kill them, before coming back the ethereal version of tired and resting with James.
Which, of course, meant that Zhu wasn’t just reminding James of something, he was also poking fun at his friend. And the one thing that made the little fish shaped manifestation of fins and mouths get over her shy nature was someone poking fun at her mom. “You take that back!” Speaky’s voice squeaked out, the assignment still lurking under James’ chair.
Stolen story; please report.
Before James could process how weird it was for an infomorph based on open communication to demand something be taken back, Zhu was already answering. “What? Why?! You’ve met El too!”
“She’s great at diplomacy! She talks to people all the time!” Speaky retaliated. “You’re bad at diplomacy!”
“It’s true.” Zhu agreed instantly, the feathered bits he was manifesting around James testing out erratic motions as he tried to find a way to nod. “I’m partly James.”
James cleared his throat. “Okay, now hang on…”
“Right! So you shouldn’t say mean things about people!” Speaky continued. “Especially El, who is… uh… she is very… passionate about communications.”
Zhu paused, flicking an eye up to meet James’ before answering slowly. “That sounds as if you are trying very hard to say that she is bad at something, without being mean.” He said.
Leaning over the side of his chair, trying not to topple the light set of hollow pipes and stretched canvas, James looked at Speaky’s glowing form in a slightly askew view. “You know El tried to shoot me, right?” He asked. “This comes up a lot, and like, it didn’t work. But usually that only happens when diplomacy has broken down. She didn’t even ask questions, just bang.”
“I am sure she was under pressure!” Speaky’s teal glow was muffled slightly as she spun in rapid circles in the layer of old pine needles and hard dirt, carving out a small indentation in the ground to burrow into. “She is always under pressure.”
“So you’re saying I could get shot again?” James inquired, pulling his head back up as all the blood rushing to it made him dizzy. “Also, are you okay there? You sounded uncertain, which is a first for you, as far as I know.”
There was a moment of silence. Well, local silence. The world was still alive around them, and the distant sounds of crows in one direction and far off cars in another, mixed with press of voices and activity from the Order members preparing the old farm for a potential fight and the hundreds of new creatures scratching at grass and trees with growing curiosity, all of it added up to a scene that wasn’t ever going to be silent.
But Speaky didn’t talk for a while. And that was worrying. Enough so that Zhu broke off from James’, forming into the directional ray of light that was all a navigator could maintain when separated from a host, and dove down under the chair to make sure she was doing alright.
When Speaky did say something, it was in a way that sounded scared, and small, and very alone. But it was in the open and painfully honest way the infomorph tended to approach the world. “I ruined her life.” Said the tiny high pitched voice.
“Well that’s just not true.” James’ response was instant and reflexive. “Uh… I assume you mean El?”
“Uh huh.”
He let himself relax, because this was the kind of thing that was easy enough to handle in his favorite way; with actual true information. “Okay. No. You didn’t. But, why do you think you did?”
“I was talking to some Researchers,” Speaky started on a tangent, which was how James preferred conversations to go, “the ones working on people like me. Learning how we… are? Live, grow. All sorts of things!” There was an excitement creeping back in, and he smiled at how the little infomorph couldn’t help but be interested in stuff. “And they were talking about host imprinting, and iterative idealization, and how the early growth in assignments was often defining to their whole existence.”
A line of orange light, hitting an odd angle to bounce from under the chair to back on James’ arm, resolved into a feathered frame. “Speaky, are you smarter than us?” Zhu asked. “You sound smarter than us.”
“I wasn’t gonna say it like that, but sure.” James chuckled. “Also, I do know a lot of this. Navigators do it too; Zhu’s personality is, foundationally, ‘me if I turned off the part of my brain that keeps me from telling people they suck’. He’s still someone else, and, like, I think both of your species, once they hit a certain point of growth through copying, start to develop individuality and divergent personalities real fast. But yeah, it’s sorta cool.” He paused. “Sorry, this is something that was bothering you?”
A small teal glint on the arm of his chair called his attention to Speaky drifting up and over the canvas like some kind of deep sea slug, poking the front of her form that might or might not be a head over the edge as she crawled out of her hiding spot. “Zhu is you, but how you want to be sassy. Planner is how a dozen people in Research want to be organized. Harriet is how Kirk wants to be heroic. Amelia is how Dorothy and Roland want to have not made mistakes. Moon is how Ishah wishes he was brave. Hidden is how Ava wants to be a sneaky spy. Mercy is how Deb wants to be nice to people.”
“I… have not met half of these people.” James realized abruptly that he was falling out of touch with the kids these days. “But okay, for the ones I do know, I agree, sure. Deb wishes she was nice?” He thought about it, and about how Deb was constantly working to improve her ability to heal, but equally constantly snapping or being under enough pressure to make her irritable. “No, okay, I get that. So, how does this…”
“El wants to be a child.” Speaky’s voice, always something of a squeak, was laced with pain. “She wants to be a kid again. Or in the first place. She never got… she had a… no, this isn’t my story. She can tell you if you want to ask. But that’s who I am. I’m El. If she was a happy kid.”
James’ heart cracked a little. He didn’t know what to say to that. But Zhu did. “But you… are happy.” The infomorph asked. “Happy enough that bystanders can feel it, sometimes. So what’s…?”
And now James knew what to say. “Because if you’re a kid, that makes El your mom. Shit, you even call her Mom, don’t you?” Speaky wiggled a nod, before shrinking back. “And so you’re worried that you’re ruining her life because you know what she wants, cause you’re it, and you’re pushing her in the opposite direction.” He sighed as Speaky squeaked out an assent. “I’m gonna ask a question, and I don’t mean this in a judgemental way. How much of El’s mind can you read?”
“I don’t! I wouldn’t!” Speaky protested almost instantly, sounding almost terrified. “She would hate that. I would hate that!”
“Short tangent, Zhu, how much of my thoughts do you look in on, just out of curiosity?” James asked.
Zhu gave a small ripple. “Your active thoughts? Almost none that aren’t addressed to me. Too hard to follow. You do not medicate your ADHD. Deeper ideas or memories? I browse sometimes. Especially the travel parts.”
“Mmh.” James nodded. “I think navigators have a harder time actually picking apart thoughts than assignments. But whatever. Speaky? You should talk to El.”
“I know!” The girl screamed out the word, even if her version of a scream was a shy and repressed noise that didn’t get loud enough to travel more than a few feet from where they were all sitting. “But she won’t talk to me! She knows something is wrong, but won’t admit to it! Momo is the same! She is terrified, all the time, of repeating some mistake she won’t tell me about, and neither of them will talk to me!”
“Oh.” James should have expected that the communication problem in this particular situation was one directional, and that Speaky probably wouldn’t be the one to fail to do the talking. “Okay. Do you want help?”
“What?”
“Do you want help?” He asked again. “I can talk to them with you. Or we can set up a group therapy appointment for the three of you. Or I can just text both of them right now and tell them they need to listen to you the next time you’re all together and we aren’t in a crisis? There are options.”
Speaky shimmered, darting back down to her hiding spot. “I… I didn’t mean to…”
“You have also inherited both of their tendency to think they are inconveniencing people who care about them.” Zhu’s dry tone rattled like an old motor.
“They do do that, yeah.” James smirked. “Shit, especially Momo, who has decided to live in our basement.” He sighed. “Speaky, I’m gonna tell you something you might have missed, and I don’t know how. El has been deeply involved in our youth group program for the last… six months? Has it been that fucking long already? She spends huge chunks of her life, which I know you’re along for because I’ve seen you there, trying to help a bunch of kids be better, do better, learn better, grow better.” He took a deep breath, and paused for effect. “When you were first turning into a person, yeah, I can see El desperately wanting to retreat back to something she felt like she missed. But people change, even infomorphs. Do you think El right now would flinch away from being your mom? Because I sure fucking don’t.”
“It’s not about that.” Speaky countered. “It’s not if she’d do it. She always does things she thinks she has to. It’s about whether she’d want to.”
“Then all you can do is ask her. And if it’s really that bad, we’ll sort out a solution. But I think you might be surprised.” James said, one hand idly running through Zhu’s feathers. “You’re kinda special, Speaky, you know? You’re one of two infomorphs I know that get to actually have a childhood. And… I remember being a kid. It’s not all upside. But it’s something you’ll never forget, and it’s something unique. I think you should enjoy it.”
“I would have rather been El’s desire to graffiti the Eiffel Tower.” Speaky petulantly squeaked out. “I don’t want to be a kid.”
Zhu and James exchanged a quick look. They were both thinking the same thing, but it was Zhu who said it out loud. “Yeah, of course she would want that.”
“You’ll grow up.” James answered the other half of the statement confidently. “I don’t think anyone can avoid it forever, even ghost fish. Sorry kiddo.”
“I’m not a ghost!” Came the indignant reply. “Ghosts aren’t real.”
Speaky said it with the utter confidence of a kid who knew something about the world. James and Zhu shared another look. The look of people, maybe not adults, but just anyone in general, who heard a statement like that and thought to themselves that maybe, maybe, the world that had free floating ideas shaped like fish, might not be the best place to claim that ghosts weren’t real.
When El came back and picked up her kid, before leaving in a real hurry, Speaky was feeling a little better. Or as least, James assumed so. For an infomorph who was honest and open so much, she sure were reserved about her own feelings.
The last thing that El said, before blipping away with barely a wave goodbye, was that they were almost ready for James over at the edge of the field, and he should get his ass over there before someone had to waste time coming to fetch him.
He almost had a moment of panic. But having something to do was better than just waiting around all day having awkward conversations with anyone that ran into him.
_____
“James.” Reed greeted him as he approached the small cluster of people who were standing around a pair of folding tables and a pile of gear, with another little group of the bugs hovering nervously nearby. The other two were Chevoy and Texture-Of-Barkdust, with a ratroach James didn’t know the name of standing close at hand and looking just as nervous as the new creatures. “And… uh…”
“Zhu.” Zhu waved from James’ arm. “I am here for moral support! And tactical support. And whatever else. I’m flexible.”
“Sure.” Reed nodded. “Okay. Sit here, Chevoy has some stuff she wants to check real quick.”
James groaned at the prospect of more waiting, but sat where directed anyway. “So, they agreed to it?” He asked quietly, cutting to the chase.
“We believe so.” Texture-Of-Barkdust answered him. It was weird to see the camraconda that James had become used to knowing as a professional snake version of Karen instead dressed in body armor and wearing a rifle mount. “You were correct that our varied species may have helped put them at ease. Though I do not think I would say they understand yet.” She shook her heavy camera head from side to side. “I am going to attempt to keep them calm. Hasoh, with me please.” She slithered back, the ratroach following her with a skittish eagerness.
“They’re not gonna be okay.” James winced as he said it. “But we’ve gotta try.”
“Agreed.” Chevoy told him as she shifted a table behind his seat. “Now hold still. I need to check your pins.” James felt an abrupt touch as she moved his hair out of the way and unplugged his skulljack braid, poking at his neck around the organic port. It was weird and made him instantly uncomfortable at how casual she was with something that was normally an intimate feeling he shared with his partners and no one else. “Alright. One abnormality. Reed, double check this?” Her own wireless connection to one of the laptops on the table flicked open a highlighted file and a text document.
James rubbed at the back of his neck, Zhu’s extra limb blocking for him as Chevoy pulled back. “You have to tell me what you’re doing here, come on.” He used the serious tone that he hated, the one reserved for times when there were problems.
“Right.” Reed said. “Well, since we’re not using the body swapping table-“
“Under no fucking circumstances are we using the body swapping table here. Oh my god, I completely forgot about that safety nightmare waiting to happen.” James pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sorry. You were explaining.”
“The body swapping table is perfectly safe.” Chevoy spoke from behind him.
James was entirely unconvinced. She didn’t even sound convinced. “You’re not even allowed to test it on some things. How do you know it’s safe?” He’d near instantly banned Research from using the table to mix infomorph and biomorph bodies. There wasn’t any reason for a human put into an assignment’s manifestation to be able to hold together without self-destructing right away, and James had no fucking desire to learn that the hard way. He knew they were slowly trying it with different volunteers, but the table that switched up which body your mind was in had as high potential for things going wrong compared to most magic items. James almost regretted stealing it from the Office.
Reed tugged his fingers through his curly mess of hair. “You seem… on edge.” He shifted as James and Zhu glared at him. “Right, right. Okay. Uh. So, we’ve got this prototype braid module that’s supposed to be a step between a full merge and the limited sharing protocol that we’ve already got. Emotional impulses, possibly linguistic sharing? We haven’t started tests yet on the language barrier.”
“And Chevoy is poking at my insides because…?”
“Because skulljacks don’t all have standard pin setups, and we need to make sure this will work. Usually stuff works. But there’s some edge cases. You’re not one of them. Probably.” Reed looked up from the laptop. “You can receive technical mems, right?”
James started to nod, but felt his head held in place, so he tried to stay still and answer verbally as he was prodded. “Yeah. I got the welding one recently, actually.”
“Bah.” Chevoy sounded irate, her normally playful tone somewhat clipped.
A raised eyebrow at Reed bought James a sigh and an answer. “Chevoy didn’t know that we use a grown program to assist people in packaging up technical mems. She spent a little while-“
“Three weeks!”
“-spent three weeks just trying to make one that’s a small amount of electrical circuit knowledge.” Reed explained. “Can you process audio and visual from experience mems?”
“Yes.” James answered the sudden shift back to clinical interview questions. “I didn’t know we had that program. I made an epee fencing mem without it too, it’s really hard. Why didn’t anyone tell me we had that?”
“It doesn’t work perfectly.” Reed looked up from a clipboard he was reviewing. “Do you have diabetes?”
The question felt like it came out of left field. “What?”
“Diabetes. Either type. Do you have it?” Chevoy repeated the question. “The thing can cause problems.”
“You keep saying that, but I’d sort of like to hear about what these problems are first?”
Reed tipped the clipboard down to tap on the hard plastic of the folding table. “Really?” He asked. “Or would you rather get through this before someone shows up to shoot us?”
A valid point, but James still gave the Researcher a level stare before saying “No, I do not have diabetes.”
“Cancer?”
Zhu stopped keeping quiet. “Really?” The navigator asked dryly.
“Reed, come on.”
“Okay. Fine. Here.” Reed handed James the end of an ethernet cable that trailed to a cluster of different pieces of hardware before coming out as a single cable again. The electronics weren’t as neatly put together as the ones in the braids the Order actually used day to day now; there were exposed circuits and electrical tape and other signs that this was just a thing they’d been tinkering with and dragged out of the basement on short notice. “From what we‘ve seen, it should let you form a port on the other party even through the intermediate pieces.” He explained as James clipped it into his neck and tried to figure out how to carry the damn thing without knocking something loose.
“Thanks.” James said, and then repeated it to Zhu as the infomorph sprouted a feathered mimicry of James’ own arm and hand to gather up the parts of the assembly that probably shouldn’t be dragged across the ground. “Welp. No reason to dawdle.” He stood again and turned to the nearby bugs, starting to walk toward them and the waiting Texture-Of-Barkdust with what he hoped was a calming gait. “Zhu, you doing okay?” James asked as the ethereal orange feathers flicked against his skin.
“I’ve never considered this before,” Zhu said nervously from, “but I am a part of the mind you’re connecting to someone else. I know I won’t spread on impulse, like an assignment, but I… I don’t know. I’m worried. They’re different. This is different.”
James nodded. His instinct was to say something about how they were all different, but he realized before he opened his mouth that it might come across as dismissive. Zhu wasn’t nervous because the bugs were another species, he was nervous because they were diplomatic first contact when before James had pretty much only ever dipped his mind into the thoughts of Anesh or Alanna. “I understand.” He said. “You wanna jump off in the next twenty feet? Because you can, no joke.”
“Oh, fuck off.” Zhu stuck at James’ leg with the edge of his tail. “Let’s go.”
The bugs started to pull back as James got closer, so he slowed to a stop. The group of them, five of six of the creatures, skirted backward on their clawed legs, forming a semicircle around where James had approached the other two Order representatives. “It will be alright.” Texture-Of-Barkdust was saying in a slow voice that was unfamiliar on her. “This is James. He is here to try to speak to you. Please come closer, and let us sit.” She punctuated it by pulling herself into a low coil, her ratroach companion dropping down to a kneeling position next to her.
“Can they understand you, do you know?” James murmured.
“They cannot.” Texture-Of-Barkdusts replied to him in the same steady voice without looking away from the creatures that were slowly coming closer. “They understand tone, I think. And I hope inference. I do not think they are stupid. See, they approach, they know we are here at least without hostile intent.” She slowly turned to look at James and Zhu. “Sit please.”
James followed her instructions, dropping to his knees, and then sliding his feet around to try to find a comfortable position where the dry grass and unchecked weeds that covered most of the field weren’t going to be stabbing into his socks too much. “Now what?”
“Now show them the connection.” Texture-Of-Barkdust instructed.
Slowly, James did so. Raising a hand to pull the clip out of his neck with a soft click, before holding out the cord for them to see, then replacing it back in his skulljack with another louder click. At a small tap from Texture-Of-Barkdust, Zhu slowly passed over the other end, an orange glowing limb extending to clip the end into one of her spare ports. The two of them sat like that briefly, neither reaching out to initiate the connection, just showing that it was safe, before the camraconda started to pull away and Zhu took back the other end of the link.
They waited for what felt like hours, though in reality couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. The creatures were, James realized, kinda cute when you could see them up close. Their shells definitely evoked a kind of insectile vibe, especially with how they had grooves and thin lines where they could flex slightly. And the curves and spikes on them were properly menacing. But their faces were alive and expressive, even if those expressions maybe didn’t map to human normal. The splashed shades of gray and brown and green of their exposed hide distinguished them as individuals. And while the limbs that they projected from their thin bellies that were banded with something that looked halfway between hide and chitin were scary, with their unsettling symmetrical claws and their own armored spikes, those same legs were nervously toying with the grass and curiously poking at tiny flowers.
And after a while, a long while, one of them also nervously shifted forward. Their flat face showing off eyes that felt far too large as they crept toward James, and the cable he was offering them.
When they tried to take it from him, James let go too soon and it dropped to the dirt, getting a startled jerk backward. But he didn’t say anything, just slowly picked it up again and offered his hand again. And the second time, the creature got a better grip while balancing on their remaining five legs, and tugged the cord closer to themself.
It made a soft scratching as it bounced off their shell. And then a series of taps as the bug’s leg bent in oddly jointed ways to try to replicate what James and Texture-Of-Barkdust had shown off. In reply, James smiled softly, and pantomimed tapping the back of his neck, then the back of Texture-Of-Barkdust’s neck, and then… then he tentatively reached out.
The creature stared at him, and started to shrink back. But then, still shivering and scratching at the dirt, it seemed to make a choice, and handed James back the end of the cable. And then half-turned, presenting the side of its head, where it pushed downward and exposed more of itself from under the shell.
James leaned in agonizingly slowly, acutely aware of the others watching him, and of how the spined and shelled person he was about to connect with smelled like nutmeg and cinnamon. He didn’t want to fucking slip and fall in the dirt and scare them off and ruin the moment now. But he didn’t. The back of his hand brushed against the material of the shell, which felt like warm rubber on the inside, and the creature’s flesh painlessly reshaped itself into a skulljack as he lowered the clip to the base of its neck.
There was a click.
He barely had time to sit back in a barely comfortable spot in the soft dirt, before a consciousness slammed into him, and the grass trying to stab at his ankles wasn’t really James’ biggest problem anymore.
_____
It was a feeling of utter, all encompassing, painful terror. They were going to die. Everyone they knew was going to die. Their children were going to die. They could not bring themself - themselves - to self-terminate. But every day was a forced routine, a grey despair that there was no future, no chance, no hope. Not that they even knew what hope was.
There was a lacking in their minds. Concepts that were absent. Freedom, peace, family, novelty, they simply didn’t exist. Yet, perhaps. They were stunted, but not crippled. They may yet be able to learn what it was to wish for tomorrow. If only the fear could be fought back.
The worst part, though, was how that terror was woven into their every waking moment. It wasn’t overwhelming. It wasn’t debilitating. It didn’t stop them from forcing down food, from trying to find fleeting comfort in physical contact or mating, from obeying basic signal commands from the handlers when it was time for more of them to vanish.
No, the real nightmare was that it was just… background noise. That they’d been afraid for so long that they had grown numb to it. Accepted that they’d be afraid for their whole life, until they were the next one collared and dragged away, right until the end they’d be living in a silent haze of fear so harsh it hurt. The terror was always there, wrapped around them like a blanket, keeping them company. No thought could happen that wasn’t touched by it, no action could be taken that didn’t quake with it.
Omnipresent, eternal, terror.
If the skulljack hardware that James had been given wasn’t doing it’s job, he might have lost himself to it entirely. Maybe even then, if he hadn’t had a slightly different, thin connection to Zhu propping him up. Instead, he felt it, really felt it, but at arms length. He could know that he was feeling someone else’s world, without making it part of his own.
He tried to talk over the connection, to say something that would be understood. But there was no language to match to. There wasn’t anything that his words could even be translated to, the bugs didn’t know how to speak. They could vocalize, but they kept almost entirely silent because of generations of knowing that vocalizing meant you got picked first. If they had ever had a language, it was long lost now.
Zhu tried too, asking questions in atlas form. But he was separated by metaphysical distance from the link, and also, a species that lived for generations trapped in the same facility didn’t have much of a shared emotional language for travel.
So James tried something different. He pushed out emotions, instead. The feeling of safety, of calm, of warmth, of happiness. He grabbed his own memories and stripped the emotions from them so he could try to express himself to this new mind.
And what he got back was, flatly, disbelief. They didn’t believe him. Why would they? There was no change, no end, no future. There was only the fear and the misery. James was a single person, he wasn’t going to be able to change that. And the worst part was, it was such a powerful sensation, he almost believed it himself. Not just feeling it, but internalizing it in his very core.
So he did something stupid and dove deeper.
There was no sense, with skulljack merging, of effort. You either were someone or you weren’t. The only effort, really, was how much you pulled back against it. And James stopped pulling quite so hard. Let himself slip down toward the gravity well of being a single person, trusting the hardware to keep that from happening right at once.
Belief was a powerful thing. The bugs didn’t believe in anything; they simply knew the facts of their world and the limits of their lives. James believed in something. James believed in helping. James believed in caring. James believed in a perfect tomorrow, if only they could build it.
And James wasn’t entirely James at the moment. Their thoughts were becoming tangled despite the firmware and hardware that should have kept them entirely separate, and James could feel small parts of his individuality slipping. Memories that should have been only his were instead his, or his, from either side, the two of them blending into a single person. A deeply confused person. Was he human, or something else? Could he chant, or not? Was he a prisoner, or a liberator? At least neither of them were really alone inside their heads.
The part of him that was still himself found a common thread between them. The part of each of the two separate minds that had lived their whole lives knowing they were going to die. And James grabbed hold of that miserable, horrifying sensation, and he dragged up to the surface. And then, across the gulf of their minds, held together with a thin length of cable and some microcontrollers that were only barely doing their jobs, James showed what he felt.
That everything was going to be okay. The thinnest, stupidest, least plausible ray of hope that anyone could ever imagine. But he felt it. And he gave it freely.
He pulled back. The other mind pulled back. Their thoughts diverged, back to individuality and singular personhood. But the emotional connection remained. And from the other side, there was something new. It wasn’t pleasant, either. Disbelief, partly, but a cruel kind of it. The kind of disbelief that anyone would want to help, the rejection of the idea that they weren’t alone. The cold self-harm of deciding to not take the hand that reached out. But even that feeling wasn’t real. It was a clinging sticky vestige still tethered to the emotional pit of endless terror that ate all things good.
Slowly, slowly, the other mind reached out again. Emotions as a question. Echos of James’ happiness, his compassion, his safety and comfort. And a small, timid spark of inquisitiveness to go with them. “Could We feel this?” The thing asked, in a halting voice without language.
James shoved back assent, eagerness, anything to show a yes. He didn’t know how to explain the situation, but he needed them to move. To follow the Order out of here, to get clear of any potential Status Quo retaliation. They had to get to somewhere safe, where they could start working on the rest. So he shared memories of fighting, of running, of the comfort and safety of the Lair, anything he could think to convince the other mind.
It might have been too much, James wasn’t sure. He was worried he overloaded them. But bit by bit, he felt the terror start to fray. Not leave, not recede, and certainly not go away. Just… slightly less. Slight changed. From contact with something new.
He got back a single impression over the connection. Agreement. Or perhaps resignation. But either way, he was pretty sure, after all that, at least this one of them would follow the Order somewhere safe.
James confidently reached up to unclip the cord from his skulljack, ending the link as softly as he could. Opening his eyes to see the world painted in a sunset that hadn’t been there when he’d started.
Across from him, the bug creature - no, the lost and scared person - stumbled to his claws. And then, staring at James with those tall oval eyes, they inhaled deeply, and then let out an animalistic, pained scream.
The single warbling sound grew in volume, the other bugs skittering back from where they’d been waiting. They weren’t the only one; Hasoh, the ratroach that had come with Texture-Of-Barkdust, also kicked out dirt clods as he scrambled to run away with both his arms and legs carrying him. James just sat, though. Exhausted, emotionally and physically, he reached out his shaking hand with Zhu’s help to unplug the link from his conversation partner’s neck. And then, to settle his hand on the side of the creature’s wailing face.
His hide was tough, and warm to the touch, and twisting and contorting like they had never once made a sound before and never dared to feel anything but tired resignation and fear and was only just now learning how to scream and cry and snarl. “I’m so sorry.” James whispered, or tried to. “For what happened to you.”
He let his hand drop. Or rather, he realized he couldn’t move his arm, and his hand had fallen down on its own accord. Then there was a rushing in his head, a vertigo that was physically painful, and then James followed the unruly limb, tipping forward and collapsing into unconsciousness on the grass and dirt. He made a dusty thud, Zhu utterly failing to catch him as the infomorph also dropped into unconsciousness.
“Hm.” Texture-Of-Barkdust, who had simply stayed stoically calm through the whole thing, looked at James oddly positioned unconscious form with mild concern. A medical team was already on the way, but she could see he was still breathing. “This is why Reed was supposed to ask you if you were diabetic. I will need to have a talk with him about safety protocols.”