Cloneborne 079 – Reasoning (Patreon)

In hindsight, the fact that each Kaedekin—each Kaedekin-girl, in their terms—was accompanied by a Kaedekin-buddy explained why every introduction always occurred with two sets of names. It had been initially theorized that the double names were the result of some sort of mispronunciation, and that they were introducing themselves by personal name and some sort of family or clan name, which had lasted until they had spoken to Paladon Princess and confirmed that the introductions had referred to two separate individuals. The theory had shifted to each Kaedekin-girl had a dedicated support operator they were in constant communication with, and they were mentioned during introductions as a way of confirming their presence.

That last turned out to be partially correct, they had simply been mistaken as to the location of the support operator.

Rain had led the way out of the landing bay while Rirris continued making over-stimulated-scholar sounds, through a passage that he had to crouch and lower his head slightly to pass through. Behind him, he could hear the other Kaedekin introducing themselves to the members of the exploration party, the same phrase being repeated again and again: “Would you like to be friends?” That seemed to be their preferred opening to socialize, though a part of him morbidly wondered what would happen if someone answered with a resounding ‘no’.

At least it seemed to have brought Rirris’ higher faculties back to working order again, but now she was excitedly asking questions of the Kaedekin next to her, and was receiving equally excited answers. He was able to make out something about heat control and absorption, and he heard the words Life and Change spoken the same way a watershaper would say them. Ulada was actually being pulled into the discussion, and the watershaper seemed excited about something as all the nearby Kaedekin—Kaedekin-girls—held out their buddies towards him. He wondered what that was about?

Beyond the passage was a wide, curving concourse full of Kaedekin, and he slowed as he took in the sight of all of them. They were a sea of colors from ultraviolet to infrared, their harnesses all different in styles and—

Tiikasia paused, and looked, really looked, focusing his gaze intently. Next to him, Ahgido was still in a way that that said he was conserving his movement so he could be ready to move with abrupt speed and do… whatever he needed to do.

“Lamppost Fortress was originally the ship that carried the team that studied Nightmare’s ecosystem to see how we could start integrating into it for colonization,” Rain explained as they stepped into the concourse and began to lead them towards some unknown destination. “It’s why the park under the dome is based on Surcease’s ecosystem. The park and the various farming areas in the ship were calculated to be able to sustainably provide food and air for everyone studying Nightmare until we learned enough to safely colonize it without accidentally causing anything living on it to go extinct. Once the town of Wardrobe was established and became self-sufficient enough to no longer need regular resupply, Lamppost was converted into a fortress to act as an anti-invasion countermeasure, as well as a transfer station for ships going to Nightmare.”

“So Lamppost Fortress isn’t a dedicated military base?” Tiikasia said carefully.

“No,” Rain said, turning to face him as she began to walk backwards and wasn’t that dangerous? He remembered a briefing about how human vision was optimized for directly in front of them, and that they were heavily reliant on their sight for navigation. “While Lamppost Fortress has a sizable Ranger contingent, it’s not a dedicated Ranger base. A lot of the people on it are only passing through to either go to or from Surcease, are in the space service who are coming from or going to asteroid mining, or are just visiting for the day.”

“Then why are so many Kaedekin armed?” Tiikasia asked.

Her face changed shape as her head tilted to one side. “Why wouldn’t they be? Having the weapons you use on you at all times means they’re there when you need it.”

“So this is normal for your civilization?”

“Of course! After all, you never know if today is the day a wild animal breaks through the town’s walls, or a kaiju decides to migrate through your city, or aliens finally try to invade us without warning, or… well, any number of things.”

“I… would think that much of that wouldn’t apply to a space station that presumably does not contain any wild animals?” He paused, looking at Rain consideringly. “There… aren’t any wild animals aboard, are there?” Normally, he wouldn’t feel the need to ask, but the Kaedekin were so… unusual he suddenly felt there was a reasonable, non-zero chance they had a zoo aboard their space station, possibly to make its inhabitants feel more comfortable.

“No,” Rain sighed. “We tried that, but the smell of chicken poop gets everywhere, so all chicken eggs need to come up from the surface. Really extends the supply line.” He presumed ‘chicken’ was some kind of prey animal the Kaedekin hunted that laid a lot of eggs, presumably as a survival strategy because the Kaedekin hunted them.

“You said there are people who just visit for the day?” Tiikasia supposed that without a system of currency, there’s no concept of passage to space being expensive. Still, one would think that even with that, the logistical constraints alone of launching something from the surface of the world up to orbit would place a limit on the number of people doing so, even if just because supplies would be prioritized.

“Oh, yes! A lot of them come to visit the park under the dome. It has plants from Surcease, and a lot of girls who are originally from there visit to feel at home,” Rain said cheerfully. “They need heavy metal content in their soil, so if they were planted on Nightmare they’d need a lot of maintenance and would end up tainting the ground. When Wardrobe Town was first founded, all of its buildings were prebuilt modular buildings that were built up here in Lamppost and dropped down to the planet, and none of the greenhouses could be spared to grow purely decorative plants. So all the plants stayed up here, and everyone would just come up to visit when they were feeling homesick. We thought you’d like a glimpse of what our home is like, and there’s even a little patch of woods that has trees and shrubs from Nightmare on it.”

Tiikasia honestly wasn’t a park person—if he was going into woods, he preferred wild places where he could hunt one of the local game—but it sounded better than being stuffed into a room and having to watch a sanitized presentation about the greatness of the Kaedekin civilization. He didn’t think they would actually do that, but it wasn’t unlikely. Still, the sophontologists would probably make use of this information somehow, and it would give them information on Kaedekin decision-making. “Is it likely to be crowded?” he asked mildly on Ahgido’s behalf.

“Well, there’s likely a lot of girls up there, but most of them probably aren’t there for the park itself,” Rain said. “Ever since the Dhekhajhyde entered orbit around Nightmare, it’s become really popular. There are a lot of girls up there painting it, sketching it, or just looking at it with their telescopes.”

Tiikasia wasn’t sure if he should be flattered or embarrassed.

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The Kaedekin children were all very cute. As the leading expert among the Free Peoples on the cuteness of human—and now human-adjacent—children, Rirris could asses that with absolute certainty, and was an expert on the socially-acceptable response of cheek-pinching! At the moment, she could see many of them currently hiding—badly—behind various structures, furniture, and various adult Kaedekin who noticed them but seemed to otherwise simply be going about their actions, which she knew made them viable candidates for the cheek-pinching maneuver!

Fortunately for the little ones, other things had priority. “So do all of your computers have spirits in them?” she asked eagerly.

“No, just the buddies,” Seraphine said, “though the computers do use similar chip architecture, I think. But they’re all designed specifically to prevent any magic building up in them from actualizing into a spirit.”

“May I ask what is the reasoning behind such logic?” Khasugha, one of her sophontologists, asked. His articular area of expertise was technological culture, with an emphasis on the practices that arise around technologies themselves.

Seraphine glanced towards Sabrina, the Kaedekin-girl who was escorting Khasugha, and the two exchanged nods. “Well, it’s kind of complicated,” Sabrina said. “There’s the original reason why we do it, and the reasons we’ve come up with to keep doing it. Originally, the first Mass Production Lyrica clones were made to help control the magic of the Mass Production Models so they could fight better… except it didn’t turn out that way. Biggest sister hadn’t realized how long it would take for the Lyrica clones produced to develop their own souls, so for a lot of the time in the old universe, the Mass Production Models didn’t actually have buddy support, just really advanced pocket computers with an AI assistant, hi-tech scanners, and communicators built-in.”

“According to survivors of Operation Sengoku, some of them finally developed souls during the battle,” another of Kaedekin who were part of their little scholastic huddle as they followed behind the Tiikasia and Rain—Kasumi—said, “but they weren’t really able to do much to affect what happened, since all of them were too new at the time to learn how to synchronize. The Mass Production Lyrica clones mostly finished developing their souls on Surcease.”

All four sophontologists were frantically taking notes on their scanner’s computers, as did Ulada. While the watershapers were the most knowledgeable about spirits among the Free Peoples’ magicshapers, their understanding did not extend to knowing how systematically cause spirits to form. Not without some form of violent murder, anyway. Binding a semblance of someone’s soul into ghost just didn’t compare to how the Kaedekin could actively induce one to come into being out of raw magic. And while they hadn’t directly referred to it, their words carried the implication they were somehow using a derivative of the same process they used to create spirits to somehow increase the processing power of their computers beyond the physical limits of the hardware. Even if they couldn’t replicate it with their own magic, such knowledge deserved to be recorded and studied!

“So the reason behind your logic is…?” Khasugha prompted.

“We don’t want to just create buddies irresponsibly,” Seraphine said. “A buddy deserves to come into the world to someone who will love them.”

“Also,” Seraphine’s buddy Ataraxia said, “the old universe had a lot of stories about spontaneous artificial intelligences becoming hyper-aggressive due to a lack of normal socialization, and we all wish to prevent such a thing from happening. This meant preventing spirit development from occurring in the most likely locations, such as stationary and automated computer systems. Should a spirit develop in such a place, they would need to be removed so that the hardware that the spirit is a part of can be moved to a suitable chassis, which would require shutting down the computer system they were originally part of. Once that is accomplished, the necessary hardware would need to be replaced and tuned back to working standards. These are all time-consuming operations, and could be extremely dangerous to the girls if these operations needed to be performed on an essential system.”

“Why not simply leave them in place and go to them to socialize?” the sophontologist continued.

The Kaedekin all frowned, something that everyone was able to recognize. Rirris had spent two whole arau dragonshaped into her human form and making faces so that her scholars could at least distinguish the majority of basic human—and human-adjacent—expressions, and did her best to teach them the subtleties involved as well. At the very least, they knew the ones that hinted they should leave a sensitive subject alone. This one was close enough that depending on the answer Rirris was pretty sure they might need to drop this line of inquiry for a bit and revisit it later. Much later.

“Then they’d be imprisoned,” the Kaedekin escorting Ulada—Natsumi—said. “And since they’d have to continue working because otherwise the computer they’re part of will stop, that also makes them a slave. That’s not just wrong, that’s evil.” There was no vehemence to the word, none of the venom that Rirris had heard humans load onto it when they’d used it in her hearing, usually when speaking about her people. It was a calm, firm statement of fact, not a moral position or a declaration of virtue. “Only people who deserve it go to prison, and a baby buddy definitely doesn’t deserve that.”

“I apologize if my question was upsetting to you,” Khasuga said hastily. “I didn’t know.”

“Oh, don’t worry, we’re not upset,” Natsumi said. “You didn’t know, so you asked, and now you know. That’s what a good scientist is supposed to do in that situation. You asked, instead of just doing it and seeing what happens.”

Well, that was a relief. Still, Rirris decided to try and change the subject anyway, just in case. “You mentioned ‘Mass Production Lyrica clones’,” she said carefully, making sure to say the words in the strange dialect of English the Kaedekin used, instead of literally pronouncing it ‘madetools’. “What exactly do you mean by that?”

“Ah,” Seraphine said, and everyone turned their attention towards her, “you see, Lyrica was biggest sister’s buddy, and when the Mass Production Models were being made…”