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rustydragonflyFandom(s): Original ("trainverse" by pointytilly)
Character(s)/Pairing(s): original characters, no pairing
Wordcount | Rating: 15588, R for some swearing, though aside from that and the aforementioned warnings, should be reasonably safe
Content Notes/Warnings: mild medical issues re: overheating/heatstroke, partial temporary possession
Summary: Arleen Kendrick is grounded. More accurately, her ship's grounded, and the repairs aren't enough to keep a bored programmer from wandering. Wander she does—straight into a project with a paranoid computer.
Acknowledgments: My thanks go to:
pointytilly, for letting me use their world and characters, being so patient with my constant "ahh these aren't mine I'm going to screw them up moments" and helping me edit my scrawlings into a coherent story.
bliumchik, for the fantastic mix, great art, and kind words.
pointytilly owns the setting the characters of Arleen, Sam, and Gregg, and Blue and the swarm's species. Blue and the swarm themselves are mine.
Listen to the mix here!
- Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 -
The air smelled of metal again.
Not real metal, Arleen knew. Not the clean, dry metal of an engine room, not the air she was used to. This was the hot, damp, metallic tang of a forest grown wild and thick.
Something buzzed past her face, something far larger than a buzzing thing had any right to be, and she smacked it aside with the paper printout she carried. It made a disturbingly loud thawck on impact and, when she examined the paper afterwards, it was covered in dark reddish-brown hairs that clung to the surface when she tried to shake them off. With that she folded it up, taking care to keep the hairs on the inside and away from her hands. You couldn't be sure, but it paid to take care.
All in all, she thought, as she stuffed it away and rubbed the sweat from her forehead, this was not the sort of place she'd have chosen to build an advanced research station.
And this, if she was on the right track, was one of the safe routes, a portion of forest where trails of lava had cooled and solidified, forming thin, black, gnarled paths winding through the trees. Like roads, Arleen thought, if roads had been designed by someone who'd never heard of things such as "comfort", or possibly "the wheel". At least it was easy enough to cross the pitted surface on foot, and the plants by the wayside became curiosities rather than spine-fringed monsters or semitransparent bags of fluid, in which floated ghostly remains that Arleen didn't want to get too close to.
But they did nothing for the heat and the bugs. There, Arleen was on her own, and, if she were honest with herself, badly underequipped. That was the problem with the rainforest, she thought as she pulled out her sole bottle of water (nothing as she did that someone had gotten to it first with a black marker, as evidenced by the way the label had been crossed out and replaced with a hastily scribbled "SPACE WATER!", and noting that she'd have to find another storage area when she finally got back to the ship before said someone tried any more advanced label-art). People thought it was beautiful. And it was, if you were far away enough from it, and Arleen was quite happy to leave it alone if it left her alone. Up close was an entirely different matter.
She splashed a little of the water on her hands and over her face, the refreshing coolness dulled by the already humid air. Hardly worth it, she thought. Oh, it had been easy to say "It's not far" in the confines of the ship...
-
Blue was calling herself that at the moment because most people could pronounce it, even if they couldn't move their ears or, for that matter, even if they didn't have ears. She'd been given the name a few years ago, but hadn't had much reason to use it before now. It hung awkwardly on her still, as if she'd shaved her coat and, on passing herself in the mirror, has asked "Who's that supposed to be?"
With one claw extended, she tapped at the screen, narrowed her eyes, and then tapped again (some idiot having set the thing back to human-standard, as usual). The screen flickered, the colours resolving into proper, visible shapes. She read through a few of them, and then stopped. "You.." she said.
Her colleague had been monitoring the other screen in silence, but broke away and landed by her side in one smooth, fluid motion. What is it?
"Someone's filled the last position," said Blue. She leant in closer to the screen, sniffing, her whiskers thrust forward, though as usual it smelt of nothing at all. "Was it you?"
I thought it was open. Her colleague shifted their body closer to the screen, for a proper look, some of them breaking away slightly into individual forms, swarming across the luminescent surface. I don't know her.
"Someone's not telling us things," Blue said. She drew away from the screen and dropped down onto all fours, padding across the chamber and coming to rest at a vent. Chilly air blasted over her body, ruffling her thick coat. "People don't tell us anything..." she went on, tucking her legs under her body and flattening her ears. "As usual... someone is too important to bother!" Her ears flicked back to their original position. "Who is it?" She'd only given the screen a quick glance, and at any rate it hurt her eyes with that ridiculous, tiny text.
Her colleague continued to swarm over the screen, the pieces of them running around over the letters like excited flies. Arleen Kendrick.
"I thought we'd get a bird, not a human?"
Arleen Kendrick has several years experience with bird systems.
"Are you arguing with me?"
I am stating what is on the screen.
"Then I had better get to her. Before the forest does." Blue untucked her legs and stretched out, first her whole body and then each leg in turn, and wandered back to the workstation.
You would not-be.
"I am more like her than you are!" Blue reared up to look at the screen again and get a look at the newcomer - at least, what she looked like. That alone told her very little, but at least humans weren't that different to her. Just tall... and partially bald, and unable to talk properly, and more or less blind in several important ways. But those were just the facts, and not one of them meant she disliked humans.
You are like them... but if you went outside you might not-be.
Blue flexed her claws in frustration, but they were right. Her own arrival had been nothing short of eventful. Everything about this planet disagreed with her - the hot, thick air, the rain, the endless wet forests. She'd barely be free of them even if she stood on the poles. The equatorial zones were impossible - they would kill her and she knew it. She'd come here for this centre, not the scenery and especially not the weather, but she could only avoid them for so long. Yet it drew her all the same, drew her because it was different... until someone with more sense reminded her of the boundaries. Her colleague knew this world better. They had formed here and cared nothing about heat or damp. "Yes... you go." She sheathed her claws and laid her paws down on the desk surface.
That would be my pleasure.
Blue felt a light tickling sensation on her paws, and noticed a few of her colleague's forms resting on them, tiny black specks clinging to her fur. "Thankyou," she said, her ears held forward.
-
The clouds were darkening now, promising rain. At any other time Arleen would have considered it a welcome break from the heat and the bugs, but on this muggy swamp of a planet, it promised nothing more than slow progress, a good drenching, and mud. Lots of mud. She stuck to the lava trails, the only bit of solid ground likely to remain solid, and pressed on. What sense was there in turning back?
She felt the approaching storm as the stillness of the air, heard it as a silence in the forest. Silence, that was the key. She'd been here once before when she was younger, and she remembered, just as now, how it was the only time the sound just... went away. A rainforest is a deafening place to be on any world, with the cries and clicks and shrieks and whoops of a million creatures, but not when a storm approaches. Everything falls silent and everything hides. The world becomes a different place.
She looked back up at the sky - a whiteish expanse of clouds, shading to deeper, darker greys on the horizon. She still had time, then. "Always thought I should have brought more water.." she said to herself, before scrambling over a steep ridge. Were the trees thinning out now? Was she close?
And that was when the silence was broken.
She heard it first as a humming noise at the edge of consciousness, growing stronger and stronger as she listened. More bugs, she supposed, trying to find a proper hiding place before the storm broke. More bugs that were going to cross her path. "Oh, great..." she said, wondering if she should whip out the hair-stained bit of paper again. Forget the water, what she really, really needed right now was a fly swatter. A big one.
Then she looked up again and saw not insects but a swarm, a cloud of black specks weaving its way through the skies. "Wait!" she called. The swarm circled around, scanning and watching. "Are you lost?"
But there was no reply, and the swarm drifted further. Arleen paused and pulled off her jacket - a dark grey jacket, against the black of the lava flows, and presumably difficult for the swarm to make out. "Is that better?" Underneath it she was wearing a bright blue shirt. "Oh don't make me come up there..." she muttered, before calling out again. "I'm going to the research station, are you?"
But for a moment she thought the swarm had not only not heard her, but not seen her. They drifted around in a loop, while Arleen stood her ground, waiting to be noticed... and then the swarm turned and plunged to the ground, and hovered before her.
"Hello," she said. The swarm, still an amorphous black cloud, reached closer.
Arleen Kendrick.
"Oh, so you are from the volcano?" Arleen stood still as the swarm moved closer, a few of its individuals getting so close to her face that she could almost see them. She held out her hand, letting some of them settle. They tickled her skin as more and more landed, piling over each other, until an entire swarm-tendril wrapped around her forearm before dispersing. "What-" she began, but she stopped herself. Swarms didn't do names, unless someone else gave them one, and as, she recalled, it would be ridiculously rude to ask if anyone had. "I mean, how far is it?"
Not far. But there is a storm coming.
"I know." she said. "Typical, isn't it? Here I am, scrambling towards an unknown building, and a storm comes. How much do you want to bet something goes horribly wrong?" She felt a buzzing sensation in her head - not a noise, not even a mental non-noise like the swarm's speech, but more what a buzz might feel like if it was a sensation rather than a sound. The swarm was, in the best term she could come up with, laughing.
Do things normally go wrong with you? The swarm retrieved the last of the individuals still clinging to Arleen's hand, and drifted away across the lava flow.
"Actually, yes," Arleen said, turning to follow. "Things don't go right. Things never go right. Of course..." she added, with a smile, "it's usually something Sam did."
-
They made it in just as the storm broke, the first few drops of rain scattering over the ground. Arleen had little time to take in the centre before rushing in - she saw a low building, gleaming blue and silver in the fading light, crouched over the dark, solid lava on thick stilts.
The first thing she wanted after that was a shower.
There are few things in any world more satisfying than a good long shower after a long walk. Arleen let the cool water flow over her, washing away the dirt and sweat. The sound of falling droplets made a steady, hypnotic hiss, much like the rain outside.
So this was it, then, she thought, this was where her curiosity had driven her. And why not? It was this, or stay on the ship until the repairs were done. A call for a bird systems expert at a local volcanic centre was just the sort of distraction she wanted - interesting, worthwhile, and most importantly, indoors.
It was not long after that that she met Blue.
She heard a frustrated hiss from behind the door, her hand hesitating mid-push at the sound. "They didn't tell me anything about this."
From the sound of it, I would assume that something has broken. Again.
"Ahhh. Broken. Now you're talking my language."
The scene that greeted her when she opened the door was one she knew well - clusters of screens and keys, scattered around the room at any old whim and certainly no logic - at least, not one decipherable by the ones who had put everything where it was. In the midst of it a small, grey, thick furred form sat crouched over a desk, tapping a few keys with a paw before jumping down and checking another terminal, all the while ignoring the newcomers in favour of whatever was on the screen. Ears flattened in frustration, the creature looked up at Arleen and twitched a little, fur quivering at the motion, large yellow eyes focused right upon her.
There was a pause.
"Oh, yes," the creature said, eventually. "I forget. I asked you a question, what else broke?"
Arleen leaned on the doorframe, regarding the creature, while the swarm drifted past her and settled on another terminal. "You tell me. I'm supposed to be here to fix it." Nobody had told her that she'd be dealing with one of the most temperamental intelligent species out there when she'd signed up for this. Don't take it personally, she reminded herself. They're just... blunt...
"Kendrick!" the creature said, ears now perked. "I still wanted a bird. Well sit down, why else did you come here? Just don't be another person shouting 'Blue, it broke again, Blue, how do I do this, Blue, Blue, Blue!"
Really blunt. Well, this was going to take some getting used to. Fortunately, there are many things that cross species boundaries - namely, being the only one around when disaster (or what everyone else perceived as a disaster, i.e. anything from "everything is on fire" to "we are out of coffee") strikes who actually knows anything. No time to waste, then, aside from hoping this was only a coffee-related incident. She sat down at the one spare desk, while the self-proclaimed Blue leaped towards her, landing on four paws beside the screen with a whump.
"What is this, standard support systems?"
"Storage and emergencies! The storm's got it!" Blue said, arching her back and fluffing out her fur. "I'm having to bypass about three layers at a time just to get it to realise there's no threat... fsssss! Who wrote this?"
We heard no alarms. The swarm, having descended on the other terminal, covered the screen and keys like thousands of very curious ants.
"I had to stop them from going off!"
"Ah..." Arleen said, as she looked closer. "I see. Your standard sensitive lockdown."
"Written by those who can't tell rain from lava!" Blue said, as she padded over to her own terminal.
Or perhaps like the time when the base was on fire, but in a very specific place.
Arleen shrugged. On the occasions that something did end up on fire on the ship, she at least wasn't the one stuck having to put it out, unless things were really bad. Nor did she really know anything about the systems that flashed before her eyes, anything about volcanoes or containment or storage or minerals or building in risky areas or any of all the things that happened here.
But she did know how to do this. And so did her new colleagues, for all that Blue hissed and swore and for all the swarm provided balanced, reassuring comments on everything - mostly, anyway.
They worked in silence apart from the odd glance or question, and Arleen slipped back into the familiar. This was her world, all the layers and checks built into the systems that spanned the base. Though she had only just arrived and only just seen what she had to work with, she felt she saw it all laid out before her, every last little piece falling into place. Even if she was, on some level, holding back an emergency - now she saw what this was all for - she let herself slip into a calculated, timeless state, where there was nothing, no concern other than bypassing each layer and calming the system as though it were a stubborn animal in need of coercing - a comparison that might be justified, given the tenancies of bird systems.
One of them had told her that in as many words once, a long time ago. "You're used to your own computers, bits of metal that only say yes or no. That's not how this works." In a way, removed from her original concept of the idea, this base and all the systems that governed it were alive. They were the same as the ship that she had just left - bits of metal, for sure, but bits of metal with lives. Not alive in the sense that she or Blue or the swarm were alive, but nevertheless with a certain rhythm and personality that she could feel as she worked away. A stubborn creature, startled by a sudden storm, gradually returning to its quiet, placid self as each keystroke told it there was nothing to be so uptight about. But her glimpses of its personality were just that - the linkup in her mind was tentative and weak, and she was forced to work manually - something which the other two appeared all too aware of.
"That looks like the last of it," she remarked, sitting back in her chair and pushing away a little from the desk.
"Feels like normal," Blue added. Her thick coat, still fluffed up from the tension of the moment, flattened.
I believe I can confirm that. The swarm began to retreat from the keys like a thick, black wave. I am sorry about the linkup not working. It has been a problem for some time.
"Takes me back," Arleen said, thinking of how it slid past her mind, elusive and untrusting. "You want to get that looked at. I don't suppose I get a proper introduction to you or what we just fixed?"
"What we just fixed was someone's idea of a safety system that protects against someone breathing." Blue's ears flattened again, and she reared back up onto two legs, claws flexing in and out. "Fsss. And it worked perfectly on the last test! At least I don't think that was a full scale reaction. Now..." She paused a second, her claws retracting and her ears perking back up. "I'm Blue. Female. You're Kendrick. They don't have a name. What brought you here? I kept thinking we'd have a bird."
"Arleen. Just call me Arleen. Also female." Arleen leaned back in her chair, taking a moment to take in the surroundings and reflect on what had just happened. If she leaned back just enough, she found, she could feel the chill of fresh air blasting into the room - a necessity, since there were no windows and no way in or out besides the one door. Evidently Blue was fond of it too, as she padded away from her desk and curled up by the exposed vent at the base of the wall, rolling over and letting the cold breeze ruffle and part her fur. Beyond that and the tangles of cables and cords, there was little else to distinguish the room, a simple interior chamber, the walls plain metal. Yet they were not cold - they gleamed with a warm, golden tone overlaid on plain steel, shimmering in the lights as though they were under a real sun. "I'm here for a few weeks. Ship's in for repairs, I didn't feel like sitting around for so long, and you wanted a bird systems expert." She paused. "Who you evidently thought was going to be a bird."
"Arleeeeeen..." Blue's voice was little more than a purr. "Good name. The other one has-"
"Your friend gave me the full explanation before we got here." The last part of Arleen's trip to the base had been one long run of it. Of course, she knew the basics before even sending in her name, when she'd been doing her initial search for anyone or anything interesting in the area. The base, a loose collection of independents interested in anything from minerals and mining to the building of structures designed to safely coexist with dangerous conditions, was a relatively new setup - less than a year, she recalled, and still steadying itself out. No wonder the internal systems had panicked at the storm, they were still learning everything there was to know about the world. "I'm not from here at all. What about you?"
I have lived here for some time, put in the swarm. Blue is more like you, from far away. I believe she was bored too. As you can see, she bores easily.
"Why didn't she-" Arleen began, before she was cut off as the swarm brushed up against her shoulder. Blue lay motionless, stretched out by the vent, and very much asleep.
Before you ask, the swarm went on, this is perfectly normal around here.
-
Arleen was used to small spaces. It was the reality of life on the ship, a narrow, twisting world full of corners and alcoves and little secret spaces you could squeeze into and hide. Provided someone else hadn't gotten there first. There were some people, she thought, who might have wanted to get out of there and run around the wild forest - but those were the people who forgot about things like heat and bugs. She'd be happy in her element, little rooms full of wires and cables and things that someone had cobbled together six months ago and promptly forgotten about until someone else tripped up on them and half the gravity packed in as a result.
So while the swarm had been apologetic on the size of her room, pretty much a cubicle with a bed-niche along one wall, she'd shrugged it off. There was, at least, a holowindow for anyone who might need some connection with the outside world.
Arleen could take or leave it, but even she had to admit (even through the UV filters and pixelization from the low-bandwidth connection running through insulated layers of base wall) the view was stunning.
The storm had long since passed, leaving clear skies - a rarity in this forever hazy and humid air. The sun blazed down in full force, illuminating a freshly washed world. In the distance lay the thick blanket of green that was the forest, punctuated by lava flows.
If she reprojected the window in another direction, she saw the land rise upwards in a gentle slope, the trees thinning out in the face of black rock that now glistened and shone, cracks and crevasses filled with tiny rainwater pools. Somewhere up there was the volcano itself, quietly trickling thin lava over the land, creating more black roads that ran like static rivers through the forest. It was no dormant threat, unassuming yet threatening to blow any moment. It was a constant presence, like the feel of a good computer link at the back of your mind with additional paranoia.
She frowned at the virtual-yet-real slope, trying to make out the lava source. Maybe she couldn't entirely blame the computer, new or not. Arleen's own experience with the part-bird systems onboard ship had taught her they eventually developed a mind of their own. The one on her ship...that was hungry, seeking pilot minds for energy as much as companionship or guidance. This one was easily spooked, and she could only hope this wouldn't drive it to grow into something like the overbearingly paranoid technicians in her early programming jobs - the sort who would tell you even mundane tasks like swapping inactive cables were to be left to the professionals. Don't touch that, you only know the software!
Now, she was the professional.
And now, her bag was beeping.
"Oh, you call me now..." she said, reaching for her bag, which she'd cast aside on the floor. Rummaging through books, she pulled out the offending device and flipped it open. "Yes? Oh, it's you." The face on the screen resolved itself into Gregg's - never an amused one in any circumstances, but especially not now.
"I'm here about the cake."
"Cake, sir?" Arleen smiled and sat down in the bed-alcove, ducking to avoid the low ceiling. "I don't remember any cake."
"The one with 'I'm bored' and an address iced over the top in edible ink? It was pink. I distinctly remember the pink."
"Oh, that cake, sir..." Arleen said, in mock-enlightenment.
"Is there any reason why you like to wander off, tell nobody but that girl of yours, and leave the rest of us a message in confection?"
"Because you like cake, sir?" Arleen offered, lying back and holding the screen above her face. Gregg's list of favoured foods probably covered anything edible and non-toxic toward humans, but he had a predilection for sugar and had been reminiscing about particularly rich candied-insect based local improvements on the Earth idea of dessert.
"I love cake. It just so happens that Sam ate it all." Somewhere from the background, there was a right on cue groan. Gregg looked over at the source of the off-screen noise, and then back at Arleen. "You'll have to get me another."
"So he hasn't learnt yet?"
"Apparently not." Gregg's face became slightly less annoyed, which was what usually passed for amused in his case. "Shut up, I told you not to eat anything that crunched without checking what it was, cake or not. Throw up on my bed and I'll kill you."
"So your life's perfectly normal. How's the repairs?"
"We're looking at two weeks on the ground, at most." Gregg's expression slid back along the scale of distaste. Gregg might have been from this planet, but that didn't mean he had to like it. His general attitude towards bugs and heat was much the same as Arleen's. "You?"
"Not too bad. Nothing I can't calm down." Arleen propped her feet up on the alcove wall and thought back on her new colleagues. "Let's see. Got a swarm and a cat who's calling herself Blue right now. Blue reminds me of you."
"Do I want to know if that's a compliment?"
"She says what she thinks. I think that's a compliment. No doubt to her we'd all look funny." Actually, Blue and Gregg shared a lot in common, although Blue had much of Sam's hyperactivity and general attention span - at least, when he wasn't overdosed on confectionery. In any case, once you got past the initial bluntness and surprise, Arleen preferred people (of any kind) who just said what was on their minds right away without skirting the point. It was exactly why she got along with Gregg. A blunt captain was a whole world better than one who danced around. "Actually, sir, she's what you might get if you crossed yourself with Sam."
"That's... I think you're a-" began Gregg, but the screen fizzed white at the crucial point. "Agh! Stop that, you pile of-" ffzzz "! That's it, I'm getting this thing fixed for once."
"I just don't think it likes you much when you do the Captain Grouchypants act, sir."
"Oh, don't start calling me Captain-" fzzz "-pants."
"Ship's bored enough it's dabbling in humour," Arleen said, "You might want to get that looked at." She waved the screen in the air a little, checking the signal. It fizzed white again, Gregg's face becoming blurred. "Or maybe it's my end. Looks like the reception out here's as crap as the windows"
"So maybe your systems have a sense of humour."
"Possibly. I certainly can't imagine where our ship got one, sir."
-
Tiny black specks crawled over the page surface, tasting each and every line and letter. The swarm's individuals took it all in, the flavours of ink and paper, each bit of information joining with the rest and assembling itself, in the eventual collective consciousness, into a whole page. Only when they had scanned it all did they withdraw from the paper, rising into the air in a black cloud while miniature claws gripped the page, turning it and descending onto the fresh batch of words with a buzz of anticipation.
It was the swarm's favourite way to spend an evening.
Or it had, once, but if truth be told the swarm did not recall the last time they'd ever been to a library, and once there had been an age where they spent all the time they could there. There'd been one built by humans in their home settlement, and they remembered now the sheer joy of discovery, of swirling and dancing through the shadows and looking into every hidden shelf for their next paper-bound adventure. But this book was different, this was a book they had read before... and they felt as if they'd read every book in the world before, now.
And that, they knew, was far from the truth. Perhaps they had read every book in the library. Even the dull ones. But it hadn't been a very big library, and the swarm knew that full well, knew that there would be other books out there, if they could only leave home to find them. And yet... the draw now was not going to the next settlement, to the next library, to find something different. The draw was simply going.
And the swarm knew what that meant.
The signs had been there for a long time, when they recalled it - or what they could in any case, for memory, like personality, never lasted. The black specks that made up their body in their thousands had been swarming, feeding, mating, communicating mindlessly, unaware of what their sum was. They had lived and died and, slowly, the swarm had become someone new in their wake as all that they were replaced themselves. I-that-was might have been happy to pore over a book, but I-that-is was not so sure... and who knew what I-that-will-be would find joy in? It was not something to fear, not as though they might suddenly not-be. They would still be, would not stop flying, but not as now.
They had not been sure for a while, but I-that-will-be was finally coming into view, close enough to touch, to swarm over, to taste and feel. The swarm had seen it coming when they'd decided they wanted to be here, in this base, and not home or in the library. They had seen it when they'd met Blue, so far from home and so vivid. And they had seen it when they'd met Arleen, the one who'd said she'd come here simply because staying with her grounded ship would be boring.
I-that-will-be would travel, and that, at least, I-that-is was sure of.
-
Blue floated in the bath, the cool water soaking into her undercoat and gently brushing against her skin. She closed her eyes and let the dirt and the heat wash away, a low purr escaping from her throat - which was a tiny bit sore after all that talking out loud. She'd have to get used to that again, then... not that things would have been any different if she'd ended up with a bird.
Arleen wasn't a bad sort. Most other species had this annoying habit of taking it badly when you said things as they were, but Arleen knew what she was doing. That was enough for Blue, bird or no bird. She could get used to all this...
But not too used to it! The last thing Blue wanted was to settle down on this hothouse of a planet. Whenever she stepped outside, she could barely breathe - the swarm hadn't been lying when they'd said she should stay indoors. Inside here there was cold air and cool baths, no trace of the heavy heat of the rainforest. Blue's had grown up in forests, for sure, but they had been silent pine woods, blanketed in deep snow and barely catching a glimpse of the sun. Even the poles of this planet barely knew what snow was! A proper, decent planet, Blue felt, should have icecaps.
Yet she had come here. Why? She knew, and there was no sense in lying to herself, no more than there was any sense in lying to any other creature. Because it was somewhere she'd never been before. Perhaps that meant she held more in common with Arleen than she'd thought - both of them had crossed the thick, hot jungle only to be here, because they were bored.
Blue hauled herself out of the tub, her coat hanging from her frame, making her look half her usual size. She looked ridiculous! Even though nobody was there to see, she nevertheless glanced around before licking a paw, a shy gesture of embarrassment to the world at large. It might have saved her a lot of trouble here to simply shave off her coat, but who would do that?
You did meet some interesting people here, Blue felt, and expanded your perception of people while you were at it. Back home, the only people she knew were like herself - thickset, fluffy people. Even when you grew up knowing there was more to the worlds than that, it left a trace. But now, in Blue's mind, people could be tall and nearly bald and brown, or they could be dispersing, scattered clouds of things that might be insects. And out there, waiting, were people of so many types she'd never been able to count.
The universe may be big, but the scale never becomes apparent until you try to cross it.
-
Arleen leaned back in her chair and watched her latest progress on the monitor. "That should be the last of the mods," she said. "Hope this one works."
"It does seem to like you," Blue said.
"That's bird systems for you," Arleen said. "They'll fight with one person, lie down nicely for the next. Hardly lumps of metal. Then again, I've known lumps of metal do the same."
I could attest to that. The swarm, so Arleen had found out, had worked extensively with human computers beforehand. I should only hope it likes you enough. I've checked some of the reports going upstairs, and the volcano is restless.
"That's nothing we can't handle," put in Blue. She sat on top of her desk, legs tucked in again so that she resembled a ball of grey, faintly striped fluff.
"I like your definition of things you can't handle," Arleen said - though in her mind, she admitted she had said much the same for things just as bad, and possibly worse. Compared to some of the things Gregg put his ship through, a restless volcano might not to so unusual. But it was different, and different enough to spark curiosity and concern. She thought back to the shining black lava flows, winding their way through the forest. "And what's that mean for us?"
"Means we sit in here and let everyone else fix things. Lava's easy to divert, gas you seal up against. Wait that out, and when it's over try to work out what the next patch this thing needs is."
And there will be one.
"So I'd guessed. Ah." Arleen sat forward again as the progress bar filled in. "Looks like it's taken."
Then it really does like you.
"Or it just feels like co-operating."
In which case I am not as new to this system as I at first thought. Much of that was my code.
"You," said Blue, "are new to a lot of things." But she said it with her ears perked forward and her eyes wide, and even her little stub of a tail held high. Inside her head, Arleen felt the low buzz that was the swarm's way of laughing, and watched as the swarm settled on Blue's fur.
"So," Arleen said. "What were you two going to do when this is finished?"
"What were you going to do?" Blue said, flicking an ear as a few little pieces of the swarm came too close.
"Get back on the ship," Arleen said. "Not so fun when it's grounded, but get it flying again and... you know the rest."
"You do what? Passenger transport?"
"It is a train," Arleen said. A train with tracks that were glorified faster-than-light paths, a train that crossed distances unimaginable - but a train nevertheless "Why? You're bored, both of you?"
"More than a little."
"Sure I could clear it with Gregg to get you seats." Or... whatever it was they used. "Don't ask me where we'd drop you off, mind. I can promise you it's somewhere breatheable."
With libraries?
"I could clear that. I'll just have to order him another cake."
pointytilly)Character(s)/Pairing(s): original characters, no pairing
Wordcount | Rating: 15588, R for some swearing, though aside from that and the aforementioned warnings, should be reasonably safe
Content Notes/Warnings: mild medical issues re: overheating/heatstroke, partial temporary possession
Summary: Arleen Kendrick is grounded. More accurately, her ship's grounded, and the repairs aren't enough to keep a bored programmer from wandering. Wander she does—straight into a project with a paranoid computer.
Acknowledgments: My thanks go to:
pointytilly, for letting me use their world and characters, being so patient with my constant "ahh these aren't mine I'm going to screw them up moments" and helping me edit my scrawlings into a coherent story.bliumchik, for the fantastic mix, great art, and kind words.pointytilly owns the setting the characters of Arleen, Sam, and Gregg, and Blue and the swarm's species. Blue and the swarm themselves are mine.Listen to the mix here!
- Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 -
The air smelled of metal again.
Not real metal, Arleen knew. Not the clean, dry metal of an engine room, not the air she was used to. This was the hot, damp, metallic tang of a forest grown wild and thick.
Something buzzed past her face, something far larger than a buzzing thing had any right to be, and she smacked it aside with the paper printout she carried. It made a disturbingly loud thawck on impact and, when she examined the paper afterwards, it was covered in dark reddish-brown hairs that clung to the surface when she tried to shake them off. With that she folded it up, taking care to keep the hairs on the inside and away from her hands. You couldn't be sure, but it paid to take care.
All in all, she thought, as she stuffed it away and rubbed the sweat from her forehead, this was not the sort of place she'd have chosen to build an advanced research station.
And this, if she was on the right track, was one of the safe routes, a portion of forest where trails of lava had cooled and solidified, forming thin, black, gnarled paths winding through the trees. Like roads, Arleen thought, if roads had been designed by someone who'd never heard of things such as "comfort", or possibly "the wheel". At least it was easy enough to cross the pitted surface on foot, and the plants by the wayside became curiosities rather than spine-fringed monsters or semitransparent bags of fluid, in which floated ghostly remains that Arleen didn't want to get too close to.
But they did nothing for the heat and the bugs. There, Arleen was on her own, and, if she were honest with herself, badly underequipped. That was the problem with the rainforest, she thought as she pulled out her sole bottle of water (nothing as she did that someone had gotten to it first with a black marker, as evidenced by the way the label had been crossed out and replaced with a hastily scribbled "SPACE WATER!", and noting that she'd have to find another storage area when she finally got back to the ship before said someone tried any more advanced label-art). People thought it was beautiful. And it was, if you were far away enough from it, and Arleen was quite happy to leave it alone if it left her alone. Up close was an entirely different matter.
She splashed a little of the water on her hands and over her face, the refreshing coolness dulled by the already humid air. Hardly worth it, she thought. Oh, it had been easy to say "It's not far" in the confines of the ship...
-
Blue was calling herself that at the moment because most people could pronounce it, even if they couldn't move their ears or, for that matter, even if they didn't have ears. She'd been given the name a few years ago, but hadn't had much reason to use it before now. It hung awkwardly on her still, as if she'd shaved her coat and, on passing herself in the mirror, has asked "Who's that supposed to be?"
With one claw extended, she tapped at the screen, narrowed her eyes, and then tapped again (some idiot having set the thing back to human-standard, as usual). The screen flickered, the colours resolving into proper, visible shapes. She read through a few of them, and then stopped. "You.." she said.
Her colleague had been monitoring the other screen in silence, but broke away and landed by her side in one smooth, fluid motion. What is it?
"Someone's filled the last position," said Blue. She leant in closer to the screen, sniffing, her whiskers thrust forward, though as usual it smelt of nothing at all. "Was it you?"
I thought it was open. Her colleague shifted their body closer to the screen, for a proper look, some of them breaking away slightly into individual forms, swarming across the luminescent surface. I don't know her.
"Someone's not telling us things," Blue said. She drew away from the screen and dropped down onto all fours, padding across the chamber and coming to rest at a vent. Chilly air blasted over her body, ruffling her thick coat. "People don't tell us anything..." she went on, tucking her legs under her body and flattening her ears. "As usual... someone is too important to bother!" Her ears flicked back to their original position. "Who is it?" She'd only given the screen a quick glance, and at any rate it hurt her eyes with that ridiculous, tiny text.
Her colleague continued to swarm over the screen, the pieces of them running around over the letters like excited flies. Arleen Kendrick.
"I thought we'd get a bird, not a human?"
Arleen Kendrick has several years experience with bird systems.
"Are you arguing with me?"
I am stating what is on the screen.
"Then I had better get to her. Before the forest does." Blue untucked her legs and stretched out, first her whole body and then each leg in turn, and wandered back to the workstation.
You would not-be.
"I am more like her than you are!" Blue reared up to look at the screen again and get a look at the newcomer - at least, what she looked like. That alone told her very little, but at least humans weren't that different to her. Just tall... and partially bald, and unable to talk properly, and more or less blind in several important ways. But those were just the facts, and not one of them meant she disliked humans.
You are like them... but if you went outside you might not-be.
Blue flexed her claws in frustration, but they were right. Her own arrival had been nothing short of eventful. Everything about this planet disagreed with her - the hot, thick air, the rain, the endless wet forests. She'd barely be free of them even if she stood on the poles. The equatorial zones were impossible - they would kill her and she knew it. She'd come here for this centre, not the scenery and especially not the weather, but she could only avoid them for so long. Yet it drew her all the same, drew her because it was different... until someone with more sense reminded her of the boundaries. Her colleague knew this world better. They had formed here and cared nothing about heat or damp. "Yes... you go." She sheathed her claws and laid her paws down on the desk surface.
That would be my pleasure.
Blue felt a light tickling sensation on her paws, and noticed a few of her colleague's forms resting on them, tiny black specks clinging to her fur. "Thankyou," she said, her ears held forward.
-
The clouds were darkening now, promising rain. At any other time Arleen would have considered it a welcome break from the heat and the bugs, but on this muggy swamp of a planet, it promised nothing more than slow progress, a good drenching, and mud. Lots of mud. She stuck to the lava trails, the only bit of solid ground likely to remain solid, and pressed on. What sense was there in turning back?
She felt the approaching storm as the stillness of the air, heard it as a silence in the forest. Silence, that was the key. She'd been here once before when she was younger, and she remembered, just as now, how it was the only time the sound just... went away. A rainforest is a deafening place to be on any world, with the cries and clicks and shrieks and whoops of a million creatures, but not when a storm approaches. Everything falls silent and everything hides. The world becomes a different place.
She looked back up at the sky - a whiteish expanse of clouds, shading to deeper, darker greys on the horizon. She still had time, then. "Always thought I should have brought more water.." she said to herself, before scrambling over a steep ridge. Were the trees thinning out now? Was she close?
And that was when the silence was broken.
She heard it first as a humming noise at the edge of consciousness, growing stronger and stronger as she listened. More bugs, she supposed, trying to find a proper hiding place before the storm broke. More bugs that were going to cross her path. "Oh, great..." she said, wondering if she should whip out the hair-stained bit of paper again. Forget the water, what she really, really needed right now was a fly swatter. A big one.
Then she looked up again and saw not insects but a swarm, a cloud of black specks weaving its way through the skies. "Wait!" she called. The swarm circled around, scanning and watching. "Are you lost?"
But there was no reply, and the swarm drifted further. Arleen paused and pulled off her jacket - a dark grey jacket, against the black of the lava flows, and presumably difficult for the swarm to make out. "Is that better?" Underneath it she was wearing a bright blue shirt. "Oh don't make me come up there..." she muttered, before calling out again. "I'm going to the research station, are you?"
But for a moment she thought the swarm had not only not heard her, but not seen her. They drifted around in a loop, while Arleen stood her ground, waiting to be noticed... and then the swarm turned and plunged to the ground, and hovered before her.
"Hello," she said. The swarm, still an amorphous black cloud, reached closer.
Arleen Kendrick.
"Oh, so you are from the volcano?" Arleen stood still as the swarm moved closer, a few of its individuals getting so close to her face that she could almost see them. She held out her hand, letting some of them settle. They tickled her skin as more and more landed, piling over each other, until an entire swarm-tendril wrapped around her forearm before dispersing. "What-" she began, but she stopped herself. Swarms didn't do names, unless someone else gave them one, and as, she recalled, it would be ridiculously rude to ask if anyone had. "I mean, how far is it?"
Not far. But there is a storm coming.
"I know." she said. "Typical, isn't it? Here I am, scrambling towards an unknown building, and a storm comes. How much do you want to bet something goes horribly wrong?" She felt a buzzing sensation in her head - not a noise, not even a mental non-noise like the swarm's speech, but more what a buzz might feel like if it was a sensation rather than a sound. The swarm was, in the best term she could come up with, laughing.
Do things normally go wrong with you? The swarm retrieved the last of the individuals still clinging to Arleen's hand, and drifted away across the lava flow.
"Actually, yes," Arleen said, turning to follow. "Things don't go right. Things never go right. Of course..." she added, with a smile, "it's usually something Sam did."
-
They made it in just as the storm broke, the first few drops of rain scattering over the ground. Arleen had little time to take in the centre before rushing in - she saw a low building, gleaming blue and silver in the fading light, crouched over the dark, solid lava on thick stilts.
The first thing she wanted after that was a shower.
There are few things in any world more satisfying than a good long shower after a long walk. Arleen let the cool water flow over her, washing away the dirt and sweat. The sound of falling droplets made a steady, hypnotic hiss, much like the rain outside.
So this was it, then, she thought, this was where her curiosity had driven her. And why not? It was this, or stay on the ship until the repairs were done. A call for a bird systems expert at a local volcanic centre was just the sort of distraction she wanted - interesting, worthwhile, and most importantly, indoors.
It was not long after that that she met Blue.
She heard a frustrated hiss from behind the door, her hand hesitating mid-push at the sound. "They didn't tell me anything about this."
From the sound of it, I would assume that something has broken. Again.
"Ahhh. Broken. Now you're talking my language."
The scene that greeted her when she opened the door was one she knew well - clusters of screens and keys, scattered around the room at any old whim and certainly no logic - at least, not one decipherable by the ones who had put everything where it was. In the midst of it a small, grey, thick furred form sat crouched over a desk, tapping a few keys with a paw before jumping down and checking another terminal, all the while ignoring the newcomers in favour of whatever was on the screen. Ears flattened in frustration, the creature looked up at Arleen and twitched a little, fur quivering at the motion, large yellow eyes focused right upon her.
There was a pause.
"Oh, yes," the creature said, eventually. "I forget. I asked you a question, what else broke?"
Arleen leaned on the doorframe, regarding the creature, while the swarm drifted past her and settled on another terminal. "You tell me. I'm supposed to be here to fix it." Nobody had told her that she'd be dealing with one of the most temperamental intelligent species out there when she'd signed up for this. Don't take it personally, she reminded herself. They're just... blunt...
"Kendrick!" the creature said, ears now perked. "I still wanted a bird. Well sit down, why else did you come here? Just don't be another person shouting 'Blue, it broke again, Blue, how do I do this, Blue, Blue, Blue!"
Really blunt. Well, this was going to take some getting used to. Fortunately, there are many things that cross species boundaries - namely, being the only one around when disaster (or what everyone else perceived as a disaster, i.e. anything from "everything is on fire" to "we are out of coffee") strikes who actually knows anything. No time to waste, then, aside from hoping this was only a coffee-related incident. She sat down at the one spare desk, while the self-proclaimed Blue leaped towards her, landing on four paws beside the screen with a whump.
"What is this, standard support systems?"
"Storage and emergencies! The storm's got it!" Blue said, arching her back and fluffing out her fur. "I'm having to bypass about three layers at a time just to get it to realise there's no threat... fsssss! Who wrote this?"
We heard no alarms. The swarm, having descended on the other terminal, covered the screen and keys like thousands of very curious ants.
"I had to stop them from going off!"
"Ah..." Arleen said, as she looked closer. "I see. Your standard sensitive lockdown."
"Written by those who can't tell rain from lava!" Blue said, as she padded over to her own terminal.
Or perhaps like the time when the base was on fire, but in a very specific place.
Arleen shrugged. On the occasions that something did end up on fire on the ship, she at least wasn't the one stuck having to put it out, unless things were really bad. Nor did she really know anything about the systems that flashed before her eyes, anything about volcanoes or containment or storage or minerals or building in risky areas or any of all the things that happened here.
But she did know how to do this. And so did her new colleagues, for all that Blue hissed and swore and for all the swarm provided balanced, reassuring comments on everything - mostly, anyway.
They worked in silence apart from the odd glance or question, and Arleen slipped back into the familiar. This was her world, all the layers and checks built into the systems that spanned the base. Though she had only just arrived and only just seen what she had to work with, she felt she saw it all laid out before her, every last little piece falling into place. Even if she was, on some level, holding back an emergency - now she saw what this was all for - she let herself slip into a calculated, timeless state, where there was nothing, no concern other than bypassing each layer and calming the system as though it were a stubborn animal in need of coercing - a comparison that might be justified, given the tenancies of bird systems.
One of them had told her that in as many words once, a long time ago. "You're used to your own computers, bits of metal that only say yes or no. That's not how this works." In a way, removed from her original concept of the idea, this base and all the systems that governed it were alive. They were the same as the ship that she had just left - bits of metal, for sure, but bits of metal with lives. Not alive in the sense that she or Blue or the swarm were alive, but nevertheless with a certain rhythm and personality that she could feel as she worked away. A stubborn creature, startled by a sudden storm, gradually returning to its quiet, placid self as each keystroke told it there was nothing to be so uptight about. But her glimpses of its personality were just that - the linkup in her mind was tentative and weak, and she was forced to work manually - something which the other two appeared all too aware of.
"That looks like the last of it," she remarked, sitting back in her chair and pushing away a little from the desk.
"Feels like normal," Blue added. Her thick coat, still fluffed up from the tension of the moment, flattened.
I believe I can confirm that. The swarm began to retreat from the keys like a thick, black wave. I am sorry about the linkup not working. It has been a problem for some time.
"Takes me back," Arleen said, thinking of how it slid past her mind, elusive and untrusting. "You want to get that looked at. I don't suppose I get a proper introduction to you or what we just fixed?"
"What we just fixed was someone's idea of a safety system that protects against someone breathing." Blue's ears flattened again, and she reared back up onto two legs, claws flexing in and out. "Fsss. And it worked perfectly on the last test! At least I don't think that was a full scale reaction. Now..." She paused a second, her claws retracting and her ears perking back up. "I'm Blue. Female. You're Kendrick. They don't have a name. What brought you here? I kept thinking we'd have a bird."
"Arleen. Just call me Arleen. Also female." Arleen leaned back in her chair, taking a moment to take in the surroundings and reflect on what had just happened. If she leaned back just enough, she found, she could feel the chill of fresh air blasting into the room - a necessity, since there were no windows and no way in or out besides the one door. Evidently Blue was fond of it too, as she padded away from her desk and curled up by the exposed vent at the base of the wall, rolling over and letting the cold breeze ruffle and part her fur. Beyond that and the tangles of cables and cords, there was little else to distinguish the room, a simple interior chamber, the walls plain metal. Yet they were not cold - they gleamed with a warm, golden tone overlaid on plain steel, shimmering in the lights as though they were under a real sun. "I'm here for a few weeks. Ship's in for repairs, I didn't feel like sitting around for so long, and you wanted a bird systems expert." She paused. "Who you evidently thought was going to be a bird."
"Arleeeeeen..." Blue's voice was little more than a purr. "Good name. The other one has-"
"Your friend gave me the full explanation before we got here." The last part of Arleen's trip to the base had been one long run of it. Of course, she knew the basics before even sending in her name, when she'd been doing her initial search for anyone or anything interesting in the area. The base, a loose collection of independents interested in anything from minerals and mining to the building of structures designed to safely coexist with dangerous conditions, was a relatively new setup - less than a year, she recalled, and still steadying itself out. No wonder the internal systems had panicked at the storm, they were still learning everything there was to know about the world. "I'm not from here at all. What about you?"
I have lived here for some time, put in the swarm. Blue is more like you, from far away. I believe she was bored too. As you can see, she bores easily.
"Why didn't she-" Arleen began, before she was cut off as the swarm brushed up against her shoulder. Blue lay motionless, stretched out by the vent, and very much asleep.
Before you ask, the swarm went on, this is perfectly normal around here.
-
Arleen was used to small spaces. It was the reality of life on the ship, a narrow, twisting world full of corners and alcoves and little secret spaces you could squeeze into and hide. Provided someone else hadn't gotten there first. There were some people, she thought, who might have wanted to get out of there and run around the wild forest - but those were the people who forgot about things like heat and bugs. She'd be happy in her element, little rooms full of wires and cables and things that someone had cobbled together six months ago and promptly forgotten about until someone else tripped up on them and half the gravity packed in as a result.
So while the swarm had been apologetic on the size of her room, pretty much a cubicle with a bed-niche along one wall, she'd shrugged it off. There was, at least, a holowindow for anyone who might need some connection with the outside world.
Arleen could take or leave it, but even she had to admit (even through the UV filters and pixelization from the low-bandwidth connection running through insulated layers of base wall) the view was stunning.
The storm had long since passed, leaving clear skies - a rarity in this forever hazy and humid air. The sun blazed down in full force, illuminating a freshly washed world. In the distance lay the thick blanket of green that was the forest, punctuated by lava flows.
If she reprojected the window in another direction, she saw the land rise upwards in a gentle slope, the trees thinning out in the face of black rock that now glistened and shone, cracks and crevasses filled with tiny rainwater pools. Somewhere up there was the volcano itself, quietly trickling thin lava over the land, creating more black roads that ran like static rivers through the forest. It was no dormant threat, unassuming yet threatening to blow any moment. It was a constant presence, like the feel of a good computer link at the back of your mind with additional paranoia.
She frowned at the virtual-yet-real slope, trying to make out the lava source. Maybe she couldn't entirely blame the computer, new or not. Arleen's own experience with the part-bird systems onboard ship had taught her they eventually developed a mind of their own. The one on her ship...that was hungry, seeking pilot minds for energy as much as companionship or guidance. This one was easily spooked, and she could only hope this wouldn't drive it to grow into something like the overbearingly paranoid technicians in her early programming jobs - the sort who would tell you even mundane tasks like swapping inactive cables were to be left to the professionals. Don't touch that, you only know the software!
Now, she was the professional.
And now, her bag was beeping.
"Oh, you call me now..." she said, reaching for her bag, which she'd cast aside on the floor. Rummaging through books, she pulled out the offending device and flipped it open. "Yes? Oh, it's you." The face on the screen resolved itself into Gregg's - never an amused one in any circumstances, but especially not now.
"I'm here about the cake."
"Cake, sir?" Arleen smiled and sat down in the bed-alcove, ducking to avoid the low ceiling. "I don't remember any cake."
"The one with 'I'm bored' and an address iced over the top in edible ink? It was pink. I distinctly remember the pink."
"Oh, that cake, sir..." Arleen said, in mock-enlightenment.
"Is there any reason why you like to wander off, tell nobody but that girl of yours, and leave the rest of us a message in confection?"
"Because you like cake, sir?" Arleen offered, lying back and holding the screen above her face. Gregg's list of favoured foods probably covered anything edible and non-toxic toward humans, but he had a predilection for sugar and had been reminiscing about particularly rich candied-insect based local improvements on the Earth idea of dessert.
"I love cake. It just so happens that Sam ate it all." Somewhere from the background, there was a right on cue groan. Gregg looked over at the source of the off-screen noise, and then back at Arleen. "You'll have to get me another."
"So he hasn't learnt yet?"
"Apparently not." Gregg's face became slightly less annoyed, which was what usually passed for amused in his case. "Shut up, I told you not to eat anything that crunched without checking what it was, cake or not. Throw up on my bed and I'll kill you."
"So your life's perfectly normal. How's the repairs?"
"We're looking at two weeks on the ground, at most." Gregg's expression slid back along the scale of distaste. Gregg might have been from this planet, but that didn't mean he had to like it. His general attitude towards bugs and heat was much the same as Arleen's. "You?"
"Not too bad. Nothing I can't calm down." Arleen propped her feet up on the alcove wall and thought back on her new colleagues. "Let's see. Got a swarm and a cat who's calling herself Blue right now. Blue reminds me of you."
"Do I want to know if that's a compliment?"
"She says what she thinks. I think that's a compliment. No doubt to her we'd all look funny." Actually, Blue and Gregg shared a lot in common, although Blue had much of Sam's hyperactivity and general attention span - at least, when he wasn't overdosed on confectionery. In any case, once you got past the initial bluntness and surprise, Arleen preferred people (of any kind) who just said what was on their minds right away without skirting the point. It was exactly why she got along with Gregg. A blunt captain was a whole world better than one who danced around. "Actually, sir, she's what you might get if you crossed yourself with Sam."
"That's... I think you're a-" began Gregg, but the screen fizzed white at the crucial point. "Agh! Stop that, you pile of-" ffzzz "! That's it, I'm getting this thing fixed for once."
"I just don't think it likes you much when you do the Captain Grouchypants act, sir."
"Oh, don't start calling me Captain-" fzzz "-pants."
"Ship's bored enough it's dabbling in humour," Arleen said, "You might want to get that looked at." She waved the screen in the air a little, checking the signal. It fizzed white again, Gregg's face becoming blurred. "Or maybe it's my end. Looks like the reception out here's as crap as the windows"
"So maybe your systems have a sense of humour."
"Possibly. I certainly can't imagine where our ship got one, sir."
-
Tiny black specks crawled over the page surface, tasting each and every line and letter. The swarm's individuals took it all in, the flavours of ink and paper, each bit of information joining with the rest and assembling itself, in the eventual collective consciousness, into a whole page. Only when they had scanned it all did they withdraw from the paper, rising into the air in a black cloud while miniature claws gripped the page, turning it and descending onto the fresh batch of words with a buzz of anticipation.
It was the swarm's favourite way to spend an evening.
Or it had, once, but if truth be told the swarm did not recall the last time they'd ever been to a library, and once there had been an age where they spent all the time they could there. There'd been one built by humans in their home settlement, and they remembered now the sheer joy of discovery, of swirling and dancing through the shadows and looking into every hidden shelf for their next paper-bound adventure. But this book was different, this was a book they had read before... and they felt as if they'd read every book in the world before, now.
And that, they knew, was far from the truth. Perhaps they had read every book in the library. Even the dull ones. But it hadn't been a very big library, and the swarm knew that full well, knew that there would be other books out there, if they could only leave home to find them. And yet... the draw now was not going to the next settlement, to the next library, to find something different. The draw was simply going.
And the swarm knew what that meant.
The signs had been there for a long time, when they recalled it - or what they could in any case, for memory, like personality, never lasted. The black specks that made up their body in their thousands had been swarming, feeding, mating, communicating mindlessly, unaware of what their sum was. They had lived and died and, slowly, the swarm had become someone new in their wake as all that they were replaced themselves. I-that-was might have been happy to pore over a book, but I-that-is was not so sure... and who knew what I-that-will-be would find joy in? It was not something to fear, not as though they might suddenly not-be. They would still be, would not stop flying, but not as now.
They had not been sure for a while, but I-that-will-be was finally coming into view, close enough to touch, to swarm over, to taste and feel. The swarm had seen it coming when they'd decided they wanted to be here, in this base, and not home or in the library. They had seen it when they'd met Blue, so far from home and so vivid. And they had seen it when they'd met Arleen, the one who'd said she'd come here simply because staying with her grounded ship would be boring.
I-that-will-be would travel, and that, at least, I-that-is was sure of.
-
Blue floated in the bath, the cool water soaking into her undercoat and gently brushing against her skin. She closed her eyes and let the dirt and the heat wash away, a low purr escaping from her throat - which was a tiny bit sore after all that talking out loud. She'd have to get used to that again, then... not that things would have been any different if she'd ended up with a bird.
Arleen wasn't a bad sort. Most other species had this annoying habit of taking it badly when you said things as they were, but Arleen knew what she was doing. That was enough for Blue, bird or no bird. She could get used to all this...
But not too used to it! The last thing Blue wanted was to settle down on this hothouse of a planet. Whenever she stepped outside, she could barely breathe - the swarm hadn't been lying when they'd said she should stay indoors. Inside here there was cold air and cool baths, no trace of the heavy heat of the rainforest. Blue's had grown up in forests, for sure, but they had been silent pine woods, blanketed in deep snow and barely catching a glimpse of the sun. Even the poles of this planet barely knew what snow was! A proper, decent planet, Blue felt, should have icecaps.
Yet she had come here. Why? She knew, and there was no sense in lying to herself, no more than there was any sense in lying to any other creature. Because it was somewhere she'd never been before. Perhaps that meant she held more in common with Arleen than she'd thought - both of them had crossed the thick, hot jungle only to be here, because they were bored.
Blue hauled herself out of the tub, her coat hanging from her frame, making her look half her usual size. She looked ridiculous! Even though nobody was there to see, she nevertheless glanced around before licking a paw, a shy gesture of embarrassment to the world at large. It might have saved her a lot of trouble here to simply shave off her coat, but who would do that?
You did meet some interesting people here, Blue felt, and expanded your perception of people while you were at it. Back home, the only people she knew were like herself - thickset, fluffy people. Even when you grew up knowing there was more to the worlds than that, it left a trace. But now, in Blue's mind, people could be tall and nearly bald and brown, or they could be dispersing, scattered clouds of things that might be insects. And out there, waiting, were people of so many types she'd never been able to count.
The universe may be big, but the scale never becomes apparent until you try to cross it.
-
Arleen leaned back in her chair and watched her latest progress on the monitor. "That should be the last of the mods," she said. "Hope this one works."
"It does seem to like you," Blue said.
"That's bird systems for you," Arleen said. "They'll fight with one person, lie down nicely for the next. Hardly lumps of metal. Then again, I've known lumps of metal do the same."
I could attest to that. The swarm, so Arleen had found out, had worked extensively with human computers beforehand. I should only hope it likes you enough. I've checked some of the reports going upstairs, and the volcano is restless.
"That's nothing we can't handle," put in Blue. She sat on top of her desk, legs tucked in again so that she resembled a ball of grey, faintly striped fluff.
"I like your definition of things you can't handle," Arleen said - though in her mind, she admitted she had said much the same for things just as bad, and possibly worse. Compared to some of the things Gregg put his ship through, a restless volcano might not to so unusual. But it was different, and different enough to spark curiosity and concern. She thought back to the shining black lava flows, winding their way through the forest. "And what's that mean for us?"
"Means we sit in here and let everyone else fix things. Lava's easy to divert, gas you seal up against. Wait that out, and when it's over try to work out what the next patch this thing needs is."
And there will be one.
"So I'd guessed. Ah." Arleen sat forward again as the progress bar filled in. "Looks like it's taken."
Then it really does like you.
"Or it just feels like co-operating."
In which case I am not as new to this system as I at first thought. Much of that was my code.
"You," said Blue, "are new to a lot of things." But she said it with her ears perked forward and her eyes wide, and even her little stub of a tail held high. Inside her head, Arleen felt the low buzz that was the swarm's way of laughing, and watched as the swarm settled on Blue's fur.
"So," Arleen said. "What were you two going to do when this is finished?"
"What were you going to do?" Blue said, flicking an ear as a few little pieces of the swarm came too close.
"Get back on the ship," Arleen said. "Not so fun when it's grounded, but get it flying again and... you know the rest."
"You do what? Passenger transport?"
"It is a train," Arleen said. A train with tracks that were glorified faster-than-light paths, a train that crossed distances unimaginable - but a train nevertheless "Why? You're bored, both of you?"
"More than a little."
"Sure I could clear it with Gregg to get you seats." Or... whatever it was they used. "Don't ask me where we'd drop you off, mind. I can promise you it's somewhere breatheable."
With libraries?
"I could clear that. I'll just have to order him another cake."