The wet dendrite had bitten into the base of Lettie’s skull, right where she had put it. She only screamed once, but she only stopped because she was seizing, and couldn’t muster the breath. With a shuddering, shaking arm she flapped madly at the podium. Mazelton looked over at it, and saw a small hole. He rushed towards it, jamming in his pinkie and desperately trying to find the code that would do… whatever Lettie needed it to do. Mercifully, it didn’t need anything complicated. Just power.

Mazelton stirred up his core and rushed the heat around his body, harvesting whatever he could. There was precious little to collect in the bunker, next to nothing, but every little bit helped. He started pouring it into the hole, letting the ancient carvings pick up the heat and transmit it… somewhere. He didn’t know where. Mazelton let the power drain away, as he watched Lettie smack herself hard enough to leave bruises. Saw her turn red, then white, then a faint blue.

He wondered if yanking the connection out would save her. But what if it killed her? She pointed him at the hole, and he either trusted her or not. He ran himself near dry. He was fishing in his pouch for some core dust to scavenge when gentle white lights came on under the tank. Lettie took a deep, sucking breath and collapsed on the floor. She was curled up hyperventilating for a few minutes. The draw on Mazelton had decreased, some other power source seemed to be at play, but there was a continual loss of heat. He roughly stuck his hand into the radioactive dust and pulled. Even the Ma would say that was spectacularly dumb. But he was good at this. And Lettie needed it.

Lettie got her breath under control. It took her a little longer to remember how to speak a language from this epoch.

“I’m remembering… more. But alien. Remembering memories with sensations and associations that make no sense. Like inventory lists written in all the smells of a forest next to a midden.” She shuddered gently, but continuously, for fifteen seconds. “I. We. Are the mutes. We cannot speak or read or hear the people of the base. Ah.”

She shuddered a little more. Her eyes were continuously glowing now. Faintly, but Mazelton could see it from two meters away.

“We were collected across the continent and sent here. We were a small tribe, existing in the corners of places. It was too hard living with the mutes. The unevolved.” Her tone shifted slightly. “Template genome was harvested and consolidated for observation and, when a baseline was established, recruited for labor on the Stone Heart program.” It shifted back. “We were told to work or die. We saw what happened to people forced out of the tunnels. They died. Horribly.”

Lettie looked like she was wrenching her concentration around. She was blinking rapidly, the light stuttering like a kid playing with the switch. “The neuroputer. The brains. Some of them were the tribe that lived here. I think. Maybe a lot of them. They used them because they were able to process the senses the tribe had. Senses that we don’t. They remember a lot. Lot. Lot. Lot. Lot. Lot. More peeeeerrrrrrrrsssoonnnality than IIIIIIIII expecTTTTTTTed.”

Mazelton stayed quiet.

“Project Stone Heart. So much data. So much. I don’t understand it. The data, it’s recorded in ways I don’t… it doesn't make sense. It starts with numbers then smells and tastes and a sort of tingle in the spine and that’s how you make the least common ingredient in their nutrient fluid…” She suddenly popped up to her knees, demurely put her hands on her lap and continued.

“Project Stone Heart can be considered a qualified success. The husks can be grown in quantity and with sufficient quality control. The preservation system appears to be working well, and simulations indicate an epoch plus preservation period.” She nodded gently at Mazelton. “However, the anticipated problems initializing the flesh-analogue and activating the husks’ use delivery systems has met with unexpected developmental opportunities. We are happy to report that with an additional five to ten years of development time, we can deliver artificial soldier/servitors capable of meeting or exceeding projected performance parameters.”

“Called it.”

Lettie continued as if Mazelton hadn’t spoken. “As for the wetware programmation and development, we are considerably ahead of schedule. Our plucky Junior Contribution Associates have been excellent multi stimuli sources and sense-recorders, providing exceptionally high qualia engrams…” Lettie started speaking faster and faster, the pitch rising until she was just holding a sharp “EEEEEEEEEEE” noise while nodding like it all made sense. Then it stopped abruptly.

“Everybody died.” Her voice dropped to a soothing, rich tone, like your most persuasive aunt had drunk pure oil. “Everybody outside the bunker died. I don’t know what “gray goo” is, but it terrified our torturers. They were arguing back and forth about what they should do. The mute trash thought we couldn’t understand them. That we only understood the electroshocks or the venom lashes. We understood just fine. We just refused to speak to them.”

She gently waved her hand around. “You are one of the mutes, but not our torturers. You do not see our art. You wonder at the lack of signs. You think we are illiterate. Were illiterate. Yes, I am reading her as she is reading me. She is fighting me, trying to segment her mind. Silly girl. Woman? Something. I am not her enemy. You have nothing I want.”

Something smiled with Lettie’s mouth, as the lights blazed in her eyes.

“We communicated with pheromones. We produced them in our bodies, expelled them from our fingertips, drew with them, wrote with them, experienced the world on a level you literally cannot comprehend. Not because you are stupid. You just lack the senses we do. Your pitiful noses are useless, and your glands just make you stink. You are foul mouthed mutes. And I despise you.”

Mazelton started casually wondering what would happen if he cut the power and just, hypothetically, chucked a double handful of extra hot cores into the tank with the brains. Just hypothetically.

“But I want our tribe’s memory to survive. So I will permit you to remember us. Remember our tribe. You want our secrets? Learn to read our language. Almost every surface of this prison is covered in words and art.” She smiled nastily. “You wanted a weapon? You want to hurt other mutes like you? No problem, happy to help. Pick a door, any door, through the halls you walked through upstairs. You will find dead bodies. Harvest the fungus from their heads. It’s quite dead, but with the formula I am imprinting in her mind, it will live again. Careful! It is incredibly infectious. Just a little carelessness and, why, I wonder if it won’t be another apocalypse for the mutes!”

She laughed joyfully. Then Lettie slammed her hand into the ground, hard enough to break the skin on her knuckles.

“The slaves were half running the place, the Bo had no clue. They could communicate on a level the Bo could only understand intellectually. They thought the smell was a sort of waste odor, unavoidable. When they realized that the Bo were getting ready to “rightsize” them out of existence, they revolted. Not that there were many Bo here to begin with. Ten, maybe? Twenty. That first chamber we found wasn’t reserved for the most loyal, it was for the least loyal. The Bo would put a family in there, one that wasn’t cooperating well, and then they would randomly decide to “Watch the show.” They shoved them out onto the platform outside. The fungus would trigger, and it ate their brains. Then they melted the corpses before the fungus could spread. I am remembering it happening. I am remembering the tribesman who had to hold snacks for the Bo sitting in the chairs, watching their clansmen thrash and scream, knowing that if they so much as looked away, they would be next.”

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

She drew a shuddering breath.

“They turned on the Bo. It took a lot of beating to drop them, durable bastards, but they got them down then poured the enzymes over them that dissolved their flesh and bones. The fungus was triggered, of course. There was no escaping that. But it was worth it. For the chance to kill all the Bo everywhere, leaving no survivors, it was worth it. So they went back to their rooms, held each other, and died. They left the hood up, just in case.”

“That’s tragic. But do they have reliable weapons? Can I, say, reanimate a corpse and use it as a soldier?” Mazelton tried not to sound apathetic, but he had heard that story so many damn times. Over and over again, people decided that the right answer to an apocalypse was to take everyone else with them. The terror of deep history was knowing that, ultimately, it didn’t matter. You don’t matter. Not in the long run. No difference between a genius and an idiot after a thousand years, provided they both pass their genes on. The only importance was what meaning you could make from your life. And could you keep humanity marching into the future.

“You are a nasty piece of work, aren’t you?” The voice was patrician, but with overtones of Lettie. “We knew the Ma, of course, before the Bo ever found us. Once you found that our senses didn’t breed true when we married out, you stopped caring about us. It is a bitter irony that it made your tribe one of our better trade partners. You just didn’t give a damn.”

“Yep. That’s us. So… weapons?”

“No, the damn Stone Heart program was idiotic from the start, a complete boondoggle. They never came close to getting it to work. We have tens of thousands of carefully preserved dolls in the basement. You can pick one and pose it just how you like. But if you want a weapon, we have nothing to offer but the fungus. Lots of other data too, of course, this one is trying to copy as much as she can with that… whatever it is between her ears. We don’t mind at all, of course. But you might want to stop her. After all, she is filling her mind with data she cannot interpret without us. Imagine suddenly remembering seventy years of existing in a void filled with chaotic lights and crackling noises. Imagine not being able to stop thinking about it, trying to find patterns in the chaos.”

“How do I stop her?”

“Let us die too. Turn off the power. Wait until the lights go off, then we are no longer aware. Then… I am sure you have already thought of a way to kill us. No need to be picky, we cannot experience physical pain. Oh, do disconnect her before you do whatever you will do. We remember the Pi too. Poor little bastards kept trying to make wooden armor and teach us math, like we didn’t already know. We’d feed ‘em and send them on their way.”

“Mazelton, don’t you dare! I am so close. I just need a bit more, and I will have the whole database! Cracking their language is just a matter of time! I am certain there are other Bo caches recorded in here. Just think of it!”

“Hey, does anybody know what that crystal has on it?”

“What? No. Well, I think they have an idea but I can’t find the right chain of associations. I just need a bit more time!”

“Your eyes are bleeding, Lettie.”

“But my brain is fine. More power.”

“Sure.” Mazelton cut power to the feed. Lettie screamed again, this time in outrage, but she still collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. It took the lights a few minutes to die out, plenty of time to gently remove the dendrite from the back of her neck before she started to seize again. It pulled away with a sucking, soft sound, leaving lots of tiny holes that seemed to run deep into Lettie’s skull. He didn’t bother looking too closely at the dendrite. He had enough nightmares. It felt as awful as it looked, and he couldn’t throw it back into the tub fast enough.

Lettie spasmed one last time, then started breathing steadily. Her eyes stared blankly across the floor, a trickle of drool hanging out of her mouth. He hoped she would be fine.

Mazelton started hunting for cores that still had some heat left in them. There were only a few, he had drained a lot in the last few minutes. Not enough to do something fast. And kind of shitty to take the choice away from Lettie. Not that he wouldn’t do it in a heartbeat if she looked like she was going to hook herself up again. Mazelton consciously corrected himself. Kind of shitty to take the illusion of choice away from Lettie.

He tried to think it through. The base existed. It was either made by the tribe or, more likely, made by some technologically advanced culture, later occupied by the tribe, then the Bo refitted it into a prison. They collected the tribe from all across the continent, shoved them underground and infected them with the fungus. They must have had a way to keep it dormant inside the tunnels, and active when they left. Then they just tortured the poor bastards into being a labor supply. Qualia engrams? The Bo were recording individual sensations of specific moments, then. For example, taking a step. Ducking. Being kicked when you were down. The smell of fire.

They tried to mass produce a slave army, and never quite made it work. Then the apocalypse happened, and everyone who knew about the base either died from gray goo, or were dissolved by vengeful slaves. Who then… accepted death with a surprising degree of grace. He sighed.

“Hope you are doing all right in there, Lettie.” Mazelton spoke with real affection. She was good company, and it was easy talking with someone who got him. He would miss her if she died. She didn’t so much as blink in reply. Ah, right. Completely the wrong approach.

“So while I have you here, I wanted to run a few things past you. Have you ever considered that having an irrational number as the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter is obscene and depraved? It is. I think we can draw a direct line between having an irrational number as a crucial mathematical concept and the wretchedness of moral relativism. Having no solid, rational foundation to build on can only lead to flawed thinking in the rest of life as well. Really, I worry for the children. Not yours, obviously, they are a lost cause, but everyone else’s. No, it’s time to break the cycle of perversion. I have a few interesting theories here, on how to “square the circle,” as it were, or better still, some exciting ideas on just rounding the number down to 3.”

Her hands spasmed and her eyes shot open.

“Or, if math is a bit hard for you right now,” A growl could be heard coming from between clenched teeth. Mazelton continued on blithely. “We could always talk astronomy. Now, the moon being made of cheese is obviously nonsense. I mean, where would you even get the cows? Let alone so many unforgivable shitheads to make cheese from their stolen milk? No, not cheese. Obviously. Stupid of you to even suggest it.” The growling was getting louder. Mazelton could see her feet starting to move too.

“Not cheese. Dummy. Actually, the Moon is a miniature black hole. The Government just put up a big moon shaped placard so you don’t worry. I mean, wake up people! If it wasn’t secretly a black hole, how could it be strong enough to pull the oceans around? Gravity? No way, dummy. Moron. Black hole power, that’s how.” Mazelton tapped his forehead, watching her hands clench into fists. “Damn you are bad at astronomy. Not to worry, I can teach you. Well, I can try. You can lead a stupid student to water, but you can’t make them drink and all that.”

Oh look. Coordinated leg movements. Is she trying to crawl towards me?

“Let’s discuss biology, then. Now it’s no secret that Pi incompetence and Xia greed lead to all sorts of vile chemicals in the water supply. But did you know how bad those chemicals REALLY are?” He glared at Lettie, staring into the blazing lights in her eyes. “The chemicals are turning some of the frogs… straight! Can you believe that? So many happily committed frog couples, shattered apart by chemical urges they cannot understand. Feeling the loathsome drive of heterosexuality and all the emotional barrenness it implies. This is why I ONLY drink pure rainwater. No possibility of contamination, you see.”

“Krrr yrrr. Krr yrr!”

“Not biology either? What do they teach you? It’s the blind leading the bl… well no, your eyes are working fine, it’s the march of the blblble brigade,” Mazelton had pressed his lips together and flicked his lower lip repeatedly to make the noise, “and generations of you just fall in line and start blblbling away.” Mazelton shook his head in disappointment. “Let’s move on to good taste. Now, I am, genuinely, a recognized expert on the subject of aesthetics. And I have to tell you, your taste is shit. Just fucking awful. No balance, no sense of proportion, thoughtless. An empty exercise, masturbatory in every pathetic meaning of the word. So bad it makes me wonder if your entire vision of the male form isn’t some sort of performance piece that you are staging. I hope it is. It gives me no pleasure to say this, but the deformed meat suits you fetishize-”

“YOU SHUT YOUR FILTHY HOLE!” Lettie roared, her strong hands extended as she lunged for his throat.