Forerunner's Child (25) (Patreon)

Kit went through the motions of removing her suit. She got as far as the gloves and the helmet, then gave up and just collapsed into her seat, too overwhelmed to keep struggling. "I want to know why," she whispered, never taking her eyes from the Director. "You knew. This whole time, you knew."

Wren had her suit off already, unzipped to the waist. She was still taller and more imposing than Kit, looming over her with the implied authority that size granted her.

She still looked as defeated as Kit felt. Her ears remained flat; her shoulders slumped. She never once looked up. "Yes. I knew."

"Because... you're the only one certified to be out here," Kit supplied. Her mind spun over the strange facts she'd assembled. "And when you got here, Forerunner threatened you. He wouldn't let you be director anymore if you told. Or... or maybe he threatened to lock you down in Remedial forever. You broke like a coward."

That got Wren to sit up again. "Squirrel. Call me evil, call me cruel. Call me a monster. But you can't call me a coward. I stood alone between my kids and annihilation. I kept their bellies full, their beds warm, and their air breathable. I kept them working towards a solution... century after century... so long they started breaking one by one."

She glared at Kit. "I... held them together, alone. How long has it been, Forerunner? How many years?"

"Eleven thousand, nine hundred eleven," Forerunner said. "Since your transmission activated me. Approximately two decades fewer since the first generation."

Activated me. Kit stood up, ignoring her aching bruises and the slow rocking of the transport. She stormed over to Wren, standing as big and confident as she could. Even sitting down, she only had a few centimeters on the Director. 

What would she do, attack? That thought only made the sick feeling worse. "Forerunner didn't lie to them," she said, voice low and dangerous. "It was you, wasn't it? From the beginning."

The ermine nodded weakly. "It didn't start that way. But the stress was too much, Kit. The Pioneering Society's imprints—Emma and Sadie and Jay and Maddie... all of them... they're not like us." 

She jerked forward suddenly, holding Kit's shoulders with both hands. It didn't hurt, but she was so big, so strong... she held Kit down without even trying. "There was no point fabricating soldiers. You can't invade Mara. You can't force the rocks to have metal they don't. You can't force the air to warm up without a star. We needed scientists, engineers, theorists, inventors. We needed the smartest imprints Forerunner had."

Kit stopped squirming. "The Institute's story. Recruiting volunteers from Mara. The founders designing us to be creative and focused on our work... that's where the lie started. Forerunner made it all up. Made the people up!"

"No," Forerunner said. "I lack the ability to generate fictional minds. Instead, I carry numerous imprints to be fabricated. Thousands are components, machines, various levels of technology and purposes. Everything a nascent colony might need to establish itself and become self-sustaining."

Wren released her arms. "Not just machines. He carries genetic information too. And minds."

"Hundreds of thousands," Forerunner agreed. "Imprints created by volunteers across planets colonized by the Pioneering Society. A number even date all the way back to the homeworld, and the very first probe. Before the consensus nodes, before empires and despots and annihilation and the Red Tide. If you had returned from your mission, you might even have been one of them."

Kit stumbled back, slumping into her chair. She had a picture forming now, a picture of lies as horrifying as she had imagined. It wasn't their nature Kit had misjudged, though—it was their origin.

Wren filled the silence. Once she started, the director seemed almost eager to continue. If anything she said could be trusted, she had led the Institute alone for over ten thousand years. After all that time, she finally had someone to tell.

"I found this system by accident—warped here, running from... doesn't matter. Had a few seconds to pick where to crash. A hundred flavors of lifeless hell, but this one—there was a signal. Forerunner.

“Crash went rough. But Forerunner woke me up and told me how screwed I was. Mara doesn't have the metals we need. It's all trace amounts, fused with the rock. Forerunner is great at recycling things, great at making things last as long as possible. But we could only do that for so long. The colony needed to invent new ways to build—new technologies, new materials, new manufacturing. I needed the best scientific minds in the Pioneering Society."

That started to explain the Institute, and its religious adherence to a single purpose over all others. It explained why none of them could leave, and why Forerunner was always guiding them to focus on specific areas of research. 

"But why are we kids?" Kit demanded. "Why do I have a tail? Why would you want your scientists to..."

"Because they gave up," Wren said. She slumped forward, head in her hands. "The first generation. After a decade or two of taking samples and driving around the surface... they decided the colony was doomed. Most killed themselves."

She looked up again. Through those huge glasses, Kit saw Wren's pain. No matter what else she lied about, Wren was telling the truth. She had seen her friends die.

"Forerunner and I... didn't want to give up. There was one scientist who didn't surrender, an engineer. She had this... eccentric habit. By keeping her template young, she... saw the world differently."

"I think I know who you're talking about."

Wren nodded. "Her template wasn't just smaller—her cognitive systems weren’t like ours. Artificial neuroplasticity. You know exactly how it feels. The world isn't rigid, the future isn't certain. No defeat is permanent."

She reached down, opening a heavy plastic lid. She emerged with a pair of paper boxes a few seconds later and tossed one to Kit. 

She caught it, and her eyes went wide. "One taste of your favorite flavor, and a devastating loss is already just a memory. Things were bad, but now they're good. You can keep going."

Kit tore open the box and sipped. Wren was right about one thing—just tasting her favorite flavor was enough to ease her heartbreak. She was still angry at Wren, even furious—but as the seconds passed, it lost some of its sting.

"The strategy had some other advantages," Forerunner said. "The director cannot articulate them to you, and you will not comprehend their significance. But a portion of the first generation's despair came from the hopeless outlook for their children. Humans do not build for its own sake—you build for those who come after. Securing your direct, biological legacy is among the most universal of human values. Those scientists knew that Mara had no future for them, or their offspring."

"Off... spring," Kit repeated. Back to those cloudy parts of her memory, things she knew but no longer understood. Like forgetting a complex subject she had memorized to qualify for the Slipstream Project. "Getting married, right?"

"Yes," the computer answered. "This made the outlook for a resource-starved colony increasingly bleak. The scientists began to reproduce almost immediately, dividing scarce resources among a growing number. But to have any chance of survival, the colony did not need a population of ignorant, new humans, with no practical skills or time to teach them. We needed only experts, each brilliant and irreplaceable.

"These new templates resolve both challenges and more. Your reduced size requires far fewer resources. Your maturity guarantees you will not expand the population or feel discontented and unsatisfied that you cannot. A contraction of independence means you are less likely to cause serious damage to yourself or the colony."

Kit tossed away her empty drink, opening and closing her tiny, weak hands. "It's... population control," she said. "That's the secret."

"The second generation worked out better," Wren whispered. "I ran things with the survivors from the first generation. Things were... still pretty bad. That was before we built the ice mines. They didn't even last as long as the first. No one hurt themselves, just... gave up."

The transport was still driving. Much faster there than Kit's wrecked rover. They must be getting close to the Institute.

"The third generation perfected our system," Forerunner said. "We could not strip away without giving something to fill that void. You woke to that success, and the innovation it produced."

Kit reached up to her head, running her fingers past the huge, inhuman ears there. "Making them animals stopped them from going crazy?"

"No." Wren gestured at the screen, and it switched back on, showing an external view from the transport headlights. A view of bleak gray ice, broken by the occasional industrial building, rolling tractor, or hump of ground suggesting a burrow. As Kit suspected, they were almost home.

The only home on all of Mara.

"It's more than minor physical changes. The Institute needed a story. Reasons for the confusing memory, reasons no one would try to leave and find family. A constant source of..." She looked up. "Forerunner?"

"Dissociation," the computer supplied. "Your animal traits are exactly enough to introduce uncertainty into your core personality, but not enough to produce decoherence. Combined with your modified cognition, you are quick to adapt, quick to incorporate change. You are significantly more prosocial and communal, further reducing resource consumption and space requirements."

"We make new connections," Wren explained. "They keep us... sane. Keep us moving together. They give us purpose." 

The transport slowed, then turned off the road, towards one of many ramps leading down. 

"Most importantly, it worked," Wren finished. "Look what we've accomplished! Our population is growing, we're making progress finding new technologies we need. We're succeeding."

"As a point of clarification," Forerunner said, almost casually. "We are not 'succeeding.' Survival outlook for the Mara colony still fails to cross into sustainability. The salvaged mass of the Aether doubles our present projection. But core threats remain. We will be overcome and eventually destroyed on this course."

Wren whimpered, her ears pressing flat to her head. "Yes, well. You see what I deal with on a daily basis. Forerunner, the bottomless well of sunshine."

"Wren is Colonial Governor. Modified cognition or not, I am required to present an accurate assessment of the colony's current state, and future outlook. She has elected to preserve the integrity of the Mara colony by concealing this information."

The transport slowed, then stopped. Air hissed outside, as they rolled into a familiar airlock.

Kit remained in her seat, folding her arms across her chest. Her implant was on, yet somehow, she knew Maddie would not be listening to this conversation. Wren had one too—and command authority to make Forerunner do whatever she ordered.

"What about... Remedial?" Kit pressed. "Is that where you kill the colonists who aren't performing? The ones who aren't smart enough?"

Wren recoiled, head tilting sideways. "Kill? Kit... no! Absolutely not."

"Remedial care further reduces the resource demands and space requirements," Forerunner said. "I care for these colonists' needs, and their education. This process naturally dilutes negative memories and replaces detrimental habits and interests with those more conducive to longevity, stability, and community. More simply put, the colonists you know see each other not as colleagues, but intimate family members. They spent their developmental years together and are thus deeply invested in mutual welfare."

Kit nodded along with the AI. "They treated me like their... little sister. Wanted to protect me, even though I was a stranger. Tried to make me feel... included. Helpful."

She sniffed, wiping away more tears. The Institute might be a lie, but not the way she felt about its colonists. They loved her, they protected her, and how had she reacted? She ran away, acted like she didn't care.

Kit wasn't strong enough for this. She couldn't face them now! She pulled her legs in, pulled her tail as far around as it would go. She was crying, intense enough that all she saw were splotches of color. That white one was Wren standing over her—and her hand rubbing gently on her shoulder.

"Shhh. It's okay, Kit. I know how hard it is. But all that pain can go away. It even worked on the first generation, after I revived them. One day they'll be brave enough to come upstairs and help us all over again. One day you'll be big enough to help too."

Kit jerked upright, pulling suddenly away from her. "Y-you... you can't..."

Wren stood high over her, folding both arms. "I will protect the Mara colony," she said. "When I go up to that sleepover, I'll tell them what happened. How you... lost control. How we saved you. Your friends will be disappointed to have you gone, but you won't be lonely for too long. I'm sure the mouse will come down with you. Maybe a few more."

"No!" Kit sat up straight, the pain of loss and regret swallowed with something else. Terror.