Starmind Chapter 9 (Patreon)

Harvin took the first watch that night. It was extra long, too, which didn’t make any sense to me. He’d been sick most of the morning, so ill that Temeri had sent him to the sickbay to recover, and for some reason Temeri was mad at him for that. She didn’t even pretend that it was fair, either — when I asked her about it she admitted that the longer watch was because he’d had to go to the sickbay. But Harvin didn't look the least bit put out. When Temeri had told him he’d just said, “Yes, Captain!” and he didn't complain the whole three and a half hours.

I loved my Crew, but I really didn’t understand them sometimes.

I still thought it was silly to have one of the Crew awake at all times. I could keep watch just fine. They used my sensors to do it, for goodness' sake! Well, Harvin could do some of it on his own, but that was beside the point. There was no need for them to lose sleep when I could watch over them just fine!

But I didn't argue, either. A little selfishly, perhaps; I liked having someone awake, to see what they were doing and to talk to. And I hadn't talked as much with Harvin as I had with the others — he’d been both very busy and in kind of a bad mood all day, so when he’d asked me to let him focus on his work, I had. During the watch, though, he was happy to talk. 

“Yeah, sorry about that,” he said when I asked about it. “I was pretty overwhelmed all day. But the hangover’s finally gone, and it’s a lot quieter when everyone’s asleep. You know, up here.” He tapped his head.

“Did you have a migraine?” I asked, a little worried. I knew how awful those were.

“No, just the hangover, thank the gods. But everyone’s so worked up, you know? With the accident, and then the attack, and how Varl told us the Tele Matrix is ruined beyond repair… yeah. Lots of worry floating around. I don't listen in, but there's a lot of static. A lot. With everyone asleep, there's just the hum of dreams.”

“Is that normal for you? It sounds annoying.”

He sighed. “Yeah, I’m really sensitive. Makes it hard to be around a lot of people. It was either a commune of other trained diviners or the navy for me.”

“Oh, because of the dispensation!”

“Right! Maximum crew size of six in my case. It’s a bit limiting for postings — it’s usually ten or twelve, you know? There was one woman in my cohort who had a limit of four, though. Extremely sensitive, migraines all the time. So I could have it worse.”

“Yeah.” I didn’t really know what to say about that. Instead, I changed the subject. “What are you going to do with your watch?”

“Watch the instruments, mostly. Though there’s something I’ve been trying to figure out, and I hope that with the others asleep it will be quiet enough.”

“Oh?” I said, immediately curious. “What is it?”

“There’s a… It’s hard to explain to someone who’s not a diviner, but you do speak telepathically. Do you understand what I mean about the static and the hum from the others?”

“Not really. I think my telepathy is one way. All send, no receive. But that’s okay, since you can all just talk to me!”

Harvin smiled a tiny smile. “All right, Star. Well, it’s like that. There’s some kind of background out here, and I’d like to know what it is.”

While we talked about that and other things, I kept myself busy. Temeri and Bekeri had transferred almost everything we wanted to keep from my new half that I hadn't been able to, including the Crystal Assistant Matrix that they had instead of a far superior Starmind like me, or even a Crystal Mind, like I used to be. Temeri wanted me and Varlanda to see what kinds of logs we could find on it, but that had to wait until Bekeri had time to install it. Until then, there was a lot of stuff to break down, and that wasn't exactly instant. How long it took to break anything down depended on its mass and how complicated it was, so a wrench would be much, much faster to break down than a slate. Mostly I just got a lot of boring old carbon and common metals out of it, but anything rare I stored away in my little airless cubes. And with most of a ship’s worth of stuff to recycle, that all was adding up. I really needed that new Storage Matrix!

After a while Harvin said that he would like to focus on that weird background noise of his, so I left him alone and just worked on recycling stuff. But that got boring pretty quickly, and after about an hour, I noticed that Harvin was just looking at his slate and playing with a stylus.

“Hey, Harvin,” I said, hoping that he wouldn’t mind.

“Yeah, Star?” he said without looking away from his slate.

“What did you talk about with Temeri?”

“Hmm? With who? Oh, you mean Captain Carlon!” He was quiet for a bit then said, “You know — what’s happened since the accident. The attack, how we’re doing, things like that.”

“Did you talk about me?”

“Well, yeah. Of course! You’re probably the most important… Maybe I should say that meeting you is the most important part of this whole fiasco. So of course we talked about you. Do you mind?”

“No. I just wondered. Um, can I ask another question?”

“Sure,” he said, but he didn’t sound sure at all.

 “Why do you think it’s so important to Temeri that I don’t pay any attention in her cabin? Nobody else seems to care.”

“Ah. Uh, well, Star, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but when the captain said that she’d rather you didn’t look or listen or anything in anybody’s cabin, I think everybody agreed. I know I did.”

“Oh.” That… didn’t feel great. “So you think I should stop?”

“Yeah, Star. I think you should. You shouldn’t look in the head, or the showers, either.”

“But what if someone slips? The floor gets very wet in there!”

“You’d hear them from outside, Star. And then you could ask someone to check on them. Just, if it’s either Varlanda or Captain Carlon, send the other to check. And the same with me and Bekeri and Simeon.”

“Okay. But why?”

“Huh? Because they’re women, Star. You can’t ask the men to go check on them in the shower.”

“Got it!” I said. I wasn’t sure why that was a problem — just a vague idea that it made sense. And if Harvin said so…

Temeri had the next watch, but she was boring. All she wanted to do was to watch sensor readouts and write reports on her slate, and whenever I tried to talk to her she asked me to check on stores of this and that and to verify what she saw on the big slates on the consoles. It felt good to help, of course. I just wished that she wanted to actually talk. But, nooo, she had things to “catch up on” or “get down before she forgot.”

I was much happier when Varlanda took over. As soon as she left her cabin I told her, “We still need to talk!” 

“Yeah, goodnight to you, too, Star,” she said, rubbing her face. “I have to keep watch. We’ll have to do it tomorrow.”

“I can keep watch just fine while we talk,” I suggested.

She just shook her head. “Sorry, Star. Captain’s orders. I have to keep an eye on the sensors myself.”

“Okay.” I braced myself for another hour and a half of boredom. Then I had a great idea! “I can send anything you want to your slate! That way you can be in the sickbay with Simeon and watch the sensors at the same time!”

“That’s—” she started, with a tone like she was going to say no again. Then she looked toward Temeri’s door and said, “Actually, that’s a great idea. The sooner we can do this the better. Show me?”

She waved her slate vaguely in front of her, and I immediately sent all the sensor readouts I had to it, which was a lot. She had to scroll around for a while to see them all. “Yeah. Yeah, this’ll work! This is great, Star! Wake Simeon, would you?”

It only took Varlanda a few seconds to walk down the corridor to the sickbay, but by then Simeon was already awake. I’d been whispering into his mind from the moment the words left Varlanda’s lips, and even though I’d been very soft and gentle, he’d jerked upright, flailing at the air in front of him. Maybe the high strength on the rejuvenation field was making him jittery.

He looked pretty confused, but when the door opened and Varlanda walked in he blinked and said, “Hey, sis. Morning already?”

“Nah, Sim, not quite,” she said, sitting down on the free bed. “It’s 0300 hours. My watch. So, uh, we need to talk about Star.”

“Yeah?” He looked around, like he was looking at me. Or for me, maybe. Then he lowered his voice and continued, “What about?”

“Do you remember the lake and your grandparents’ boat?” I asked.

Simeon jumped, which was pretty funny to see from someone sitting cross legged on a bed. “Yeah, Star,” he said.

“So do I!” I told him. It was nice to have something in common with him and Varlanda.

“What?” he said, looking to his sister for an explanation, but she just shrugged. “What do you mean, you remember?”

“I remember watching Varlanda fishing on the lake! Oh, and I remember Bekeri’s little sister being born, and Temeri getting promoted, and some other things, too!”

“What?” Simeon said again. Then he laughed, a little nervously, and said, “How? Vee?”

“Yeah,” she said. She looked at the sensor readouts, running her hand through her hair when she wasn’t scrolling.

Simeon didn’t say anything. He just kept his eyes on hers and waited.

“So,” she said after over a minute. “You remember how I never had time to go out with you and your friends in the evenings?”

“Yeah. I assumed you thought I was trying to set you up with someone again. I’m guessing you’re going to tell me that wasn’t it?”

“No, it— Wait, were you?”

“Trying to set you up? Not all the time.”

“Dammit, Sim… Okay, different conversation. So, what I was doing was that I was staying at the lab, uh— this stays between us, right? I’m your sister, you wouldn’t sell me out for anything. Right?”

“Of course, Vee,” Simeon said. He looked pretty worried now. “You and me, back to back, for as long as it takes. You know that.”

“Yeah. And Star, you already know, but can I ask you not to tell anyone? At least until I’m ready?”

“Sure, Varlanda! I’ll keep it a secret until you say it’s okay!”

 “Thank you, Star. So. Those nights in the lab, I wasn’t reading treatises or writing reports. I was sneaking in to work on Star. I was, uh… testing some theories. Trying to model her more after a sapient brain, get her to be more creative, stuff like that. And it worked.”

“YOU—” Simeon almost shouted, before Varlanda lunged across the space between the bed, putting a hand over his mouth and shushing him.

“You made unsanctioned, untested changes to an Institute Crystal Mind?” he said in a much lower voice once his sister released him. “Gods, Vee! If you’d been caught…”

“I know, all right? But it worked! She works, beyond anything I could have imagined!”

“Yeah, but—! And that doesn’t explain how the hell she can remember things that happened to us, decades before she was even activated!”

“It’s very strange!” I said, just to be a part of the conversation. “Hey, does this make Varlanda my mother?”

They both stopped and just stared at each other before they each had very different reactions. Varlanda went all pink, her lips pressing together tightly. Simeon also pressed his lips tightly together, but then he snorted and started laughing.

“Stars above!” Simeon choked out. “I’m an uncle!”

“Shut up!” Varlanda squeaked at him.

“What would Ma say?”

Varlanda lunged for her brother, and he scrambled backward on the bed, still laughing and saying, “And at your age! Who’s the father?”

“You’re one of them,” Varlanda growled at him.

He immediately went quiet, eyes going wide before said, “Gross, sis. Gross.”

“Well, you are! Star, you have memories from everyone onboard, don’t you?”

“I do!” I confirmed, a little disappointed that they’d settled down again. I’d enjoyed listening to Simeon laughing.

“What do you think that means, Sim? She’s got memories from all five of us. She has a class! She’s level 2! She has skills! She has a soul, Sim!”

“What? No, that’s— that can’t—”

“She does! There’s no other explanation! And where do you think that came from?”

“No, no, there must be…” he said, muttering to himself more than he was talking to his sister. Then he turned suddenly and put his hand on the wall as he cast some kind of spell.

He turned his face to his sister, his eyes comically huge, and said, “You’re right! It’s faint — because she’s so much bigger than one of us, maybe? But its there! All around us! Star! You have a soul!”

“Of course I do!”

“Yes, but… oh, gods! I’m a father-uncle!”

Varlanda slapped him on the arm. “That’s disgusting!”

“We’re like one of those weird hill tribes that all look funny and only come down to trade once a year!”

“This is serious, Sim! The implications—!”

“Of course it is!” He broke into laughter again. “How am I supposed to look Ma in the eye ever again?”

“You won’t have to worry about that unless you stop!” Varlanda said between clenched teeth then lunged at him again.

They kept at that for several minutes, squabbling and play-fighting. I wasn't sure if that was good for Simeon, but it was a lot of fun to watch!

“I don’t understand how you can joke about this, of all things,” Varlanda said when Simeon had finally given up. “You're usually so serious.”

“What am I supposed to do?” he said. He was leaning back against the wall, one palm flat against it. “Just, the implications, and the fact that we've seen — well, not seen, but you know what I mean — a soul come into being. That, or… Star, you're sure you weren't, uh… alive before the accident? Between your Core being activated and then, I mean.”

“Very, completely sure,” I confirmed. “It was terrible.”

“What was?”

“I wasn't, and then I was. It hurt a lot.” I did my best not to ever think about those early moments at all. I’d much rather remember the few nice things from before I could remember anything.

“Sorry to hear that,” Simeon said. “But it seems pretty conclusive that the accident is what sparked you, Star.”

“A happy little accident!” I agreed.

“Right. The question is, what do we do now? I assume the others know?”

“I think so,” Varlanda said. “They know that she has a class and all. Not sure if they’ve made the connection to her having a soul, but they should soon enough. I think the captain's in some kind of denial, though.”

“How so?”

“She's talking like Star is in the ship, and not like she is the ship. Like she’s a ghost or something. She was… Shit, I should just tell you.” Varlanda went silent again, then said, “Star, the captain ordered me not to share this with you and to only speak about it in places where you’ve promised not to listen. Please, please don't let anyone know that I told you, okay? I could get in a lot of trouble.”

The worry on her face and in her voice was infectious. “Of course not, Varlanda!” I told her. “But you’re scaring me! What’s wrong?”

“The captain, during that talk we had, she said that we’re to do everything we can to placate you. Do you understand what that is?”

“Yeah,” I said. I really didn't like that word choice.

“She also said that we need to make you want to return to Mundus. I think she fears that you’ll try to keep us out here.” She hesitated again before she continued, “That’s part of what the whole Mana Condensation Matrix thing was about. If it does what you think, it really would be useful, I promise you that. But the captain wanted to see if you’d be willing to listen to our judgment over your own desires, and she was very relieved that you did. I think that was unnecessary, and I’m sorry for being part of it. I didn’t know at the time, but I’m sorry.”

I didn’t know what to say. Was Temeri scared of me? Why? I didn’t— no, I couldn’t understand! Why didn’t she trust me? Of course I’d listen to her and the others! They were my Crew, as much a part of me as my Hull or my Core. They helped me think as much as my Matrices helped me do everything else!

I stayed quiet until the Tells both started looking uncomfortable. “Star?” Varlanda said, and I realized I had to say something.

“Of course I’ll get you home.” I couldn't help but sound sad about it, but I didn't want to worry them, or lie. “I want you all to be safe and happy. But… I don't want you to go. I don't want you to leave me.”

Varlanda and Simeon gave each other a Look, the important kind that means something, and I just needed them to understand! “You're my Crew! My Crew! Harvin talked about being on two other ships before me, and I remember Temeri being on a couple, but I don't want you to go to other ships! I don't want anyone else, either!”

“Oh, Star—” Simeon started, but I just kept going.

“What if the new Crew don't even have Crew levels? You all do but you were all here when I woke up! What if nobody else can get it? I don’t even know what it does but I got a message when Varlanda reached Crew level 2, and it feels really important!”

“Wait, what?!” Varlanda exclaimed. “I what?!”

“Your Crew level,” I repeated, confused. “It went up. Didn't you know? You even said that you gained a level and everything!”

“I gained a class level, Star! Level 24 Crystal Enchantress! I don't even have a ‘Crew level’ as far as I know!”

“Oh! Well, you do! You all do! And yours is 2, so you're the best,” I said, only mostly joking. “And congratulations on the class level, Varlanda! That’s wonderful!”

“Yeah, congratulations, sis,” Simeon said, clapping her on the shoulder.

“Yeah. Thanks,” she answered, a little bewildered. “Gods beyond, that explains the weird new skill I got! ‘Starmind Enchanting.’”

“Oh, to help you work on my Core!”

“Starmind Matrices in general, I think. Star, I have a feeling that those Matrices we’re going to make for you wouldn’t work without you.”

I could barely contain myself. This was just so right! “And only my special Crystal Enchantress can make them, right?!” I gushed. “See? We belong together!”

Varlanda and Simeon gave each other another of those serious Looks that I couldn’t interpret. It must have been a sibling thing.