Starmind Chapter 7 (Patreon)

“Star, did I hear you right? Because it sounded like you said that you assimilated the ship that attacked us, and that you leveled up from doing it.”

“Varlanda, I’m communicating with you telepathically. I don’t think there’s any sound involved.”

“Right!” Varlanda had sounded very surprised before; now her voice had a definite edge to it. “The telepathy! How could I forget? And the telekinesis, and reshaping yourself like wet clay, and—”

“Yes, yes, I do a lot of interesting things.” I felt a little bad about interrupting her, but I was getting quite impatient. “How about we talk while you work on my Core? Please?”

With the way she looked at the schematics I started to worry that there was something wrong with them. I was pretty sure that they were perfect, but she was the expert, after all. Then she closed her eyes, sighed, and said, “Yeah, Star. Sure. Um, I don’t know if this is going to be uncomfortable for you at all. I’ll have to bypass some pretty large sections of these layers while I work on them, so let me know if anything feels off, okay?”

“Okay! Thank you, Varlanda!”

“Sure, Star,” she said. She fixed her tools to the mounts inside the housing. Then she started casting, locating and isolating and separating and magnifying the right crystal layers out of the millions that made up what was, more than anything else, Me.

I had a sudden, frightened impulse to open up that tear I’d fixed in the hull, to try to shove her away with my telekinesis and hope she went out and away with the air. I was horrified! Horrified with myself, for even thinking something like that. Horrified that I’d even consider hurting someone on purpose, especially one of my Crew. And this was Varlanda! No one alive could possibly do a better job on my Core than she, and no one had less reason to try to hurt me. My Core was her masterpiece, the result of years of research and design, and months of work in secret that would have seen her disgraced and court martialled if she’d been discovered.

I took that impulse, loaded it into my tight-beam transmitter, and sent it off into the black. It was not welcome!

“So,” she said as she used another set of spells to guide her tools, making infinitely precise changes to the countless runes and glyphs that made me Me. “You know?”

“About what, Varlanda?”

“About my… work.”

“About the undocumented changes you made to my Core while it was being manufactured? Oh, yes!”

“And you’re all right with it?”

“Yes? Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, it’s… the Core is a big part of what makes you you. I suppose you could say that it is you.”

I really didn’t see where she was going with that, so I just told her, “I like myself!” How much more explanation could she need?

And she seemed satisfied with that explanation. She actually smiled again! “That’s nice to hear, Star,” she said. “Now, this might feel strange. I honestly can’t predict if it will or not, but I’ll be routing some of your sensors directly to the autonomous regulation systems, all right?”

“All right!” I said, and then everything went numb.

Every sense was just gone. No electromagnetics, no pressure variation, no mana, no anything! All I had was a vague awareness of where my parts were in relation to each other, but I couldn’t feel anything that wasn’t part of me. I had no idea how my Crew were doing!

I barely had time to start panicking before it all rushed back again. It wasn’t nearly as bad as when I first woke up, since I knew which sensations to mute and which to dial way down, but it was still quite a jolt.

I quickly checked on everyone. Simeon was awake now but still in the sick bay, reading on a slate. Harvin was on the bridge and seemed to be looking at the mana source among Avara’s rings. And Bekeri and Temeri were still touring my new part. They didn’t look happy with what they found, and that was after I tidied up.

And Varlanda was still right where I’d last seen her. She was working quickly, mana pouring out of her, and her eyes were big and her face beaded with sweat. “Star? How about now?” she said. “Can you answer me now, Star? Please, Star, let me know if you can hear me, at least!”

“I’m here, Varlanda,” I told her urgently. It was terrible to see her like that, so worried and upset, I wanted so much to soothe her, but all I had were words. “What was that?”

“Oh, thank the stars! I wish I knew, and I’m going to find out. For now, I think that whatever happened to make you you has changed a few things. What was that like for you?”

“Everything was just gone. All I had was my thoughts, and then everything came back, all at once! It was awful!”

“Gods, I’m sorry. I promise, that wasn’t supposed to happen. Do you want me to stop?”

“No?” I said. I wasn’t entirely sure. Something had gone wrong. But she’d fixed it. She could have left me deaf and blind, but she hadn’t. Surely now she’d be more careful? And I really, really wanted this upgrade. I wanted it so much I felt it in my structure, so much my hull tingled with anticipation. “Please continue,” I decided. ”Just go slow.”

“I will. I don’t think I can do much without bypassing the affected areas, though. Is that all right? I’ll do the changes as fast as I can while still triple-checking everything, but it’ll take at least a few minutes. The scripts here connect to a few other layers in really odd ways.”

I really didn’t like the idea of losing all my senses like that again, but… “All right,” I said quickly, before I could talk myself out of it.

Varlanda’s voice was very gentle when she said, “Okay, Star. Here we go.”

Everything went dark, and silent, and still. And it was a little scary, but it wasn’t as bad as the first time. Knowing that it was coming really helped. And since I was sure — I had to tell myself that I was sure — that Varlanda would bring everything back, it was almost peaceful. I could even relax a little. I knew about breaks — the Crew took them all the time, especially when they knew that no one else could see them. And I could remember how nice it was to take one. I’d just never really done it before.

That didn’t make any sense, when I thought about it. And with nothing to distract me, thinking was all I could do. How could I remember doing something that I also knew that I’d never done? For that matter, how could I remember anything from before I woke up less than two days ago?

It was only a few things here and there. Mostly happy things. Watching Varlanda scream with excitement as she pulled a fish out of the water. Holding a blind, fuzzy creature in my tiny, fuzzy hands. Bouncing with excitement the first time I successfully counted the number of people in the next room by their minds alone. And my commanding officer, a man I thought of almost as a second father, struggling not to smile as he gave me a small, open box containing my captain’s insignia. I remembered these events, but they were all years in the past, and I knew that I couldn’t have been there for them because I remembered working on my own Core after they happened.

It was enough to give me a migraine. That was one of the less happy things I remembered, even though I couldn’t have them — not having a head or brain.

My mind went around and around for a while, but I just couldn’t figure out how this all was possible. Or, when I got to it, how I was in the first place. Like Temeri and Varlanda kept reminding me, I did a lot of things I hadn’t been intended to, things that never appeared in the logs I could access from before we tested the Teleportation Matrix. I tried not to let it bother me, but once I started thinking it was hard to stop.

Then I could hear again. “Star, I hope you can hear this,” Varlanda said. “I’m done with this part, and I think I figured out how to separate the sensory channels. I’m going to start reconnecting them one by one, okay? In three, two, one—”

And then I could see. A second later I got back my mana sense, and a second after that, smell and the chemical composition of the air, and so on until everything was back. I didn’t notice any changes, but after being trapped with my thoughts everything being the same was good enough!

“Are you with me, Star?” Varlanda asked with a hint of worry. I’d been so caught up in making sure that I was all right that I hadn’t even thought of her!

“I can hear you, and everything is just fine!” I told her. “Thank you!”

She let out a little sigh. “Great. I’ll move on, then. I’m not touching any of your sensory feeds from now on — at least that I know of,” she muttered. “But there are some changes in the Matrix that don’t match… well, anything I’ve seen or done before. So I’m just going to go slow, copy the schema exactly, and you’ll have to tell me if anything strange happens. Okay?”

“That’s fine!” As long as she didn’t accidentally put me back in the dark and quiet, I wasn’t too worried. She’d already shown that she was as good at this as I remembered.

  *

Over on New Me, Bekeri and Temeri hadn’t even noticed that I’d been gone. To be fair to them I hadn’t been saying much, since I was so focused on what Varlanda was doing. They mostly talked to each other, only sometimes asking me a question or to take a note, so when I became silent they must have thought nothing of it.

When I came back, though, they were in the middle of a conversation that caught my attention. “I’m not sure it’s worth the mass, Captain,” Bekeri was saying. “Back home we would have scrapped it years ago. I think it would be best to take what we can use, and cut the rest loose.”

“We couldn’t just power it down and tow it? It seems like a waste,” Temeri answered.

Bekeri made a non-committal, twitching motion with his ears. “We could. Well, not towing it, but bringing it along, at least. Would probably be simple with Star’s new abilities. But we only have so much reaction mass, and so many thrusters, and even if Star brings the two hulls together in a way that’s sound, the mass distribution is all wrong. We’d have to be extremely careful with velocity changes. We’d become… clunky.”

I wished that I could grimace when he said that word. Temeri did, nose wrinkling and upper lip curling and all. Clunky. Such an awful word. It was a word for haulers and manufacturing rigs and other industrial vessels. It was not something that should be attached to a top-of-the-line survey vessel like me!

“I will not be clunky!” I told them. “I’ll throw away most of it, I think. Did you know the hull isn’t even Hull? It’s just metal! But I can use it to make proper Hull, and there are a lot of finished parts onboard that I can’t make. I’ll take those, and then I can break anything we don’t want down into useful base elements.”

“Good idea, Star,” Temeri said. She still looked like she was getting over the taste of that word. Ugh. Clunky. “I don’t suppose your new abilities would include moving and repurposing the thrusters? You’re wonderful as you are, but some more speed and maneuverability would be nice.”

“It really would, but I’m afraid not. My telekinesis seems limited to… two pounds or so, at your preferred downness? Gravity! That’s the word! Your preferred gravity! Anyway, it doesn’t work outside me, either. I’d need to make the hallways really big and make everything weightless, and then we’d need to install them, and… it would take a long time. A really, really long time, I think.”

“Understood. We’ll have to make do.”

“Oh, but maybe I can make something once Varlanda finishes upgrading my Core, and we get the new Matrices built and installed!”

“I’m sure we’re all waiting with bated breath, Star,” Temeri said. “So what do you need to do before we can get underway?”

“Well, Varlanda needs to finish the upgrades, and we need to finish the Matrices, and then I’d really like to make another Storage Matrix or two, because even after I make a new cargo hold there are a lot of things in this part of me that I want to keep and not recycle for base elements. Oh, and I’d like to make a Mana Condensation Matrix, too… Bekeri, do we have enough material for another Matrix crystal?”

Bekeri looked at Temeri, who nodded, before he answered. “Sure, Star. We should have enough for that and a Storage Matrix. Then we’ll need to source some more material. Umm…” Again, he looked at Temeri. Again, she nodded. “This Mana Condensation Matrix, does it do what it sounds like?”

“If it sounds like it makes mana crystals out of ambient mana so I don’t have to spend all my mana making them, then I think so? I won’t be sure until I have one.”

“Captain,” Bekeri said, his ears perking right up with excitement. “I strongly recommend that we ask Star to prioritize the Mana Condensation Matrix! Having such ready access to mana crystals, even a few small ones—”

“Yes, Artificer, I understand,” Temeri said. She cut him off, which I thought was quite rude, but he didn’t seem to mind. “Star, what do you think? Could we prioritize the Condensation Matrix?”

“I’d really rather get the Development and Manufacturing ones done first,” I said. I was very excited about those. They could make new things! Not needing to make mana crystals myself would be nice, but they weren’t interesting.

Bekeri didn’t say anything, but his ears drooped a little, and he looked at the captain in a way that made her sigh softly.

“Please, Star?” she said. “I understand that you’re excited about improving yourself and making things, but my Artificer feels strongly about this. Is there any way I can convince you to reconsider?”

I thought about it. Bekeri had been excited about the Matrices, too. Not as much as me, but pretty excited. If he was even more excited about the Mana one, then…

“Okay,” I said reluctantly, and Bekeri’s ears perked up again. “We can do the Mana Condensation Matrix first. But you owe me an explanation, Bekeri! And we need to make another two crystals and housings.”

“No trouble at all, Star!” Bekeri said. “Thank you! I’ll reprogram the fabricator and the lathe as soon as I get back to the artifice bay. There shouldn’t even be any downtime! Oh, this is going to be so useful! Imagine all the things we’ll be able to build, and what we’ll be able to do with spare mana crystals!”

I tried to imagine, I really did, but I came up blank. I’d used them for the focuses I’d made, and we needed them for the Matrices, and they powered things like the weapon — ugh! — that Temeri carried around even now on a completely safe part of me, but I didn’t see why it was so important to have a bunch of them laying around. I could make one every one hundred minutes if I didn’t use my mana for anything else. In fact, I had been making them ever since Bekeri mentioned needing them. There were two in the dedicated storage right now, just waiting to be used, with another coming in an hour or so. Why wasn’t that enough?

“How about you tell me, Bekeri?” I suggested helpfully. He did sound like he wanted to talk about it.

“Hmm? Oh, well, I…” Bekeri said, then looked at Temeri. He did that a lot more than he had the previous day, but Temeri had been pretty mad at him in the morning.

Temeri gave him a smile that reminded me of a fun word: indulgent. It was an indulgent smile. “Don’t let me stop you, Artificer. Just do your job while you’re at it,” she said, then turned her attention back to the piping and wiring she’d been following with her eyes.

“Thank you, Captain! Well, Star, I suppose the main thing would be that with an emergency reserve of available mana crystals, I’d be able to do things like supercharge the main drive for a time if we needed a burst of speed, or the Transmutation Matrix if we suddenly needed to replace a lot of air. Oh, or the Rejuvenation Field if someone got badly injured, although then it would have to be beyond what Simeon could handle. And even then it might be better to just give him the crystal and let him use it for his healing spells. But what if Simeon himself got injured? Then a single spare crystal would be priceless! And it could help Harvin spot dangers or opportunities earlier if we needed it, or even Varlanda if she needed a boost while repairing or maintaining the Matrices! And—”

I kind of stopped paying attention there. I’d only been keeping an eye, so to speak, on Varlanda, just to let me know if she suddenly reacted badly to something. Now I said, “Hey! Varlanda! Could you use a small mana crystal for anything?”

Varlanda jerked, lifting her hands quickly all the way to the sides of her head from what she’d been doing, then breathed out slowly.

It occurred to me that startling someone who was working on my Core might not be a good idea. I’d have to remember that the next time I got really excited about something.

“Yes, Star,” she said slowly, wiping some sweat from her forehead with the short sleeve of her shirt. “Yes, I could use a mana crystal for a few things. Why?”

“Would it help you with upgrading my Core?”

“I could use it to improve the fidelity and transmittance of the rune scripts I’m laying down, and to erase the old ones with less damage, yes. Why?”

“That’s fantastic!” I said as I retrieved one of the Small Base Mana Crystals I’d made and put it on her work table. “Here! Use this one!” I wished I had a Crew body so I could just jump up and down, but if I did that with my ship body I’d just be wasting reaction mass. 

“Gods beyond,” she whispered, taking the crystal gently in one of her gloved hands. “Bekeri said… I must have forgotten, with the pirates and all. Or it was just too unbelievable to remember in the first place. You made this, didn’t you?”

“Yep!” I could barely contain myself with how happy I was, both at how appreciative Varlanda was, and at how I could help her help me! I just felt so good and amazing and useful! “I’m making more, too,” I told her, “and when we get the Mana Condensation Matrix running, I won’t even have to spend my own mana on them. It’ll make them on its own! We’ll have lots and lots of them!”

Varlanda’s face twitched then blossomed into a full, bright smile. She looked right at my Core, the part of me that was more me than any other, and said, “Well, then! Let’s get this upgrade done, so we can get right on that!” Then she reset her tool, checked her schematics, and got back to work.

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Hi!

If you read the lastest biweekly report, you may recall that I did quite a lot of writing on Starmind these last two weeks. That's all thanks to how much love and support this story has gotten, both here in the chapter comments and on the Discord. So, please, keep them coming! Questions, suggestions, comments on what you do or don't like, they all feed me.

Thanks for the love, and for reading!

//AB