Starmind Chapter 24 (Patreon)

With my apologies for the delay, and my thanks to the reader who alerted me in the Discord.

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Right around the end of Simeon’s watch, I almost scared him to death — the Development Matrix had notified me that my first Development was done!

“I’m sorry, Simeon! I’m so sorry!” I said, trying to contain my excitement while I apologized. “I didn’t mean to be so loud!”

“I’m fine,” he groaned as he rubbed his temples. “Or I’ll be fine in a moment, at any rate. Healer, remember? Can I assume that we’re not about to die?”

“So sorry,” I said again. “But yes! Nothing bad! Something good! I’m lighter now!”

“You’re… oh, the structure thing you were working on?”

“Yes! And I… okay, I can’t feel it. But you know how I’m making tiny adjustments with the thrusters all the time so we don’t shoot around the planet or lose our orbit?”

“Not my area of expertise, but I know the general idea, yes.”

“Well, it’s definitely working! With the same draw on the reactor, I can maintain our position relative to Erebus with less reaction mass! I’m lighter!”

“Hey, that’s great!” He smiled through his headache — or maybe he’d already healed it and was just being dramatic — and patted the wall. “You’re doing the mana one now, right?”

“Yep! Though I have to unlock it first,” I grumbled as I started the process of doing just that. It would take over forty-two hours! That was until… about 2000 hours, on the next day! “I wish I could just get one right away. It’s going to take almost two whole days just to see what improvements I can even get.”

“Just two days? That’s not so bad.”

“Just two days?!” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “That’s forever! So many things can happen in just one day!”

To my outrage, he just chuckled. “Ten days,” he said. “Whether you have our memories or not, I forget just how young you are, Star. You’re right. A lot can happen in a day, never mind two. I imagine that when you can see as much as you can, that’s even more pronounced. But you know what? I’ll bet that the wait will be over before you know it.”

I decided that Simeon just didn’t get it. Luckily, it was just about time to wake up Bekeri!

“Bekeri, it’s time for your watch,” I told him, mindful to keep my voice down so I wouldn’t scare him.

“Mrrrmm,” he groaned, pulling his head out from between his knees and twisting almost in place into a big, yawning stretch. “Already?”

“It’s 0120 hours! You’re supposed to relieve Simeon in ten minutes.”

“Oh, right.” He rolled out of his little round bed and onto his feet, giving himself a good shake so all his hair settled. As he pulled on his shirt and trousers, he asked, “Anything I need to know, or should I just wait for Simeon to hand-off?”

I couldn’t hold back anymore. “The Light-Weight Structure Development is finished! And it does just what we’d hoped it would! I’m using almost five percent less reaction mass to maintain our position!”

“Oh! Oh, that’s great! What happened to the material?”

“Um… give me a moment!” I hadn’t actually considered that yet. I quickly turned all kinds of senses on some of my structural components, looking at penetration by mana and radiation and such, and quickly came to a conclusion. “I don’t think anything happened at all. It’s just lighter.”

“Huh. That makes sense,” he said. By then he’d made it to sickbay, and he opened the door and stuck his head in. “Good night, Simeon! Anything to report?”

“So that’s why Star went so quiet,” Simeon said with a little smile. I instantly felt guilty; I had sort of just disappeared on him for a few minutes. And after our heartfelt conversation, too! “No, nothing to report that Star won’t want to tell you about herself. And call me ‘Sim’, please. We’re going to be spending the next few months together, at the very least.”

Bekeri’s ears perked up, twitching happily Simeon’s way. “Oh! ‘Sim’, then.”

“Besides—” Simeon’s smile turned into a grin, “we have a kid together. That’s got to count for something, right?”

“I… don’t know how to respond to that. Good night, Sim.”

“Good night, Bekeri.”

“So why?” I asked Bekeri, after telling Simeon good night myself.

“Hmm?”

“Why does that make sense?”

“Your structure not losing any material despite losing mass? Well, it’s supposed to be just as strong, isn’t it? Just makes more sense to me.”

I turned the lights on for him as he entered the artifice bay.

“Thank you,” Bekeri continued. “There were really only two reasonable ways of achieving that: either remove material and make the remaining material stronger, or make everything lighter. And it’s easier to make things lighter with magic than to make them stronger.”

“Oh! And if whatever the Development Matrix does removes material, that material would have to go somewhere, right?”

“Yes, absolutely! I suppose it could have been sent into the void or the astral or something, but that takes energy… although I supposed you’ve just fed the Matrix over two thousand units of mana. You can do a lot with that.” He shrugged. “Still. Makes sense to me! Now, you’re going for those mana Developments next, aren't you?”

“Yeah. But it’ll take forever,” I grumbled.

“And we’ve already maximized your mana regeneration. Hmm.”

Bekeri had one of the new Matrix blanks ready in a cradle on his workbench. He was half done preparing it, creating the holes and slots needed for Varlanda to enchant it so that it would actually become a Mana Condensation Matrix. I watched him work for a while; I knew that he liked to keep his hands busy while thinking, and that he enjoyed this kind of work. Several minutes later, I was almost out of patience when he said, “Well, there's one way that we may be able to increase your maximum mana regeneration.”

Excitement surged through me, from the depths of my structure to the surface of my hull. “Really?” I asked eagerly. “How?!”

“It's not for certain — oh, void take this… one second.” Bekeri did something with the very tip of his etching wand, a spark of highly concentrated mana passing to it from his fingers. He held it up to his eyes and muttered, “That'll teach you,” as though he was mad at it. Then he went back to work and continued, “As I was saying: when you reached level 2, your limit increased, didn't it?”

“Yes?” I wasn't sure what his point was.

“And you levelled after assimilating that first ship?”

“I did… but, Bekeri, I finished assimilating the gunship ages ago. I didn't level this time.”

“Unfortunate, yes. But there's another ship out there, isn't there?”

For several seconds I failed to see the connection. Then, a horrible realization dawned on me! “Bekeri!” I exclaimed. “I am not going to— to— to chase some other ship down just to assimilate it! That's awful! What about the crew?!”

“What about them?” he asked. “You already provide everything we need. Couldn't you do the same for two or three more people if necessary? They are spying on us, I remind you, probably for the express purpose of helping their fellows attack us more successfully.”

“Two people,” I said. “Harvin says it’s definitely two people.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, he’s sure now. Completely sure. But he wants to tell everyone himself at breakfast, so is it okay if I don’t say why?”

Bekeri flicked his ears unhappily but said, “If that’s what he wants, I suppose I won’t badger you. But, back to the subject! Star, I hope you’ll reconsider. Our best guess is that assimilating ships is how you gain levels, same as how I must create, and Varlanda must enchant. And you needn’t harm anyone! Consider that.”

“I’d have to do something to their ship, though.”

He nodded his head solemnly. “True. But I’ve been thinking, Star. You are making these ships part of yourself. Even now, matter originally from the first ship that tried to board us is part of your hull and as extra protection between the levels. I say embrace it! You’re no mere ship anymore; you are a living thing. A creature not quite like anything I’ve ever heard of, true — you are inorganic, yet you are clearly no golem. You are inarguably alive! And all living things grow. Why should you not?”

“I’ll get slow?” I said, but I wasn’t really trying to argue. What he said made sense, and there was a certain draw to the idea of making myself bigger. I could have so much room for the Crew! Bigger cabins, to start with. And a bigger rec room, with a separate kitchen, and maybe a gymnasium for Temeri, or a corridor running around my circumference — I knew how much she enjoyed running, which she couldn’t really do now. She’d be so happy!

I was getting more and more excited about the idea, and Bekeri hadn’t even answered when I blurted, “Oh, I could put in a pool! Simeon and Varlanda love to swim! And a climbing wall for you! If I made the cargo hold larger, it could be open all the way from the bottom to the top hull, and I could put a wall there for you!”

Bekeri squinted happily. “That would be great! And just a bigger cargo hold in general would be useful. And… I think I must have said, but the Autolathe simply will not fit anywhere onboard as you are. If we wish to build it — and I do very much wish to build it, because I can only imagine what it will allow us to make — then we must make room for it. It needs to be installed in the hull, too; the design has it depositing products into the ship or out into the void, as appropriate.”

“And you think we need to assimilate the Small Ship to do that?”

“Hmm? Oh, no! I think we should be able to do that now, if you wish! The problem will be the mass… oh, but you said something about becoming slow, didn’t you? We’ll need more thrusters, or more powerful ones…”

As Bekeri drifted off into his own little world, I thought about growing. It definitely seemed like the kind of thing I should talk to Temeri about first, but I really liked the idea of having more space. It would be easy, too. I’d just… stretch. I’d add a deck between the crew deck and the bottom deck with all the engineering stuff and fill it with all kinds of things! And I’d make myself just a little wider, just four feet or so to the radius, for a running track. With viewports! I could put viewports there! The transparent Hull material wasn’t quite as strong as the regular kind, but if I made the track a tube that could easily be sealed off, with a thick inner wall…

“By the way,” Bekeri said suddenly, “I figured out the Teletic Fabricator!”

“Hmm? What?” I asked. I’d been so caught up in figuring out the details around how to make myself bigger that I hadn’t been paying attention at all — though, in my defense, he had just trailed off and gone quiet on me.

“The new fabricator,” he said, patting the machine in question. “I was confused for a while by how there didn’t seem to be anywhere to input materials. There’s a hatch on the front, yes, but that is only to retrieve the final product. If I put anything in, the machine gets very cross. The answer to the materials question is that we simply don’t insert any! It’s “teletic,” see? It teleports in materials straight from storage! It levitates the item being produced using telekinesis then uses pinpoint teleportation — and that is a massive understatement, considering the precision involved — to add materials where appropriate!”

“Wait! This machine does teleportation and telekinesis?!”

“Yes! Or rather, I think, in a way, it’s you doing everything, just not consciously. That’s why it needs mana! Speaking of, insert a crystal into the receptacle there, would you?”

“Oh! Neat!” I didn’t know what else to say. It was neat! “Me teleporting or moving things doesn’t use nearly as much mana as the machine seems to, though.”

At the same time I did as he’d asked — Temeri knew that the machine would need a crystal, and had already approved it. The machine hummed once, but otherwise there was no change.

“Thank you.” Bekeri fiddled with the little slate on the front as he spoke. “I’m sure there are efficiency issues, and such. And there’s a small transmutation component, as well, so that would use some fair amount of mana. But still, that explains why I’ve never heard of anything like this. It literally couldn’t work without you!”

“Oh. Neat,” I said again. One thing bothered me, though. “So, you think this is entirely new? My Matrices, too? You and Varlanda had never seen blanks like that before, right?”

“That’s right. Amazingly clever!”

“So… if these things are completely new, where did they come from? I sure didn’t come up with them! I don’t understand any of that stuff!”

“Well, it’s…” Bekeri said, trailing off. His left ear slowly drooped until it was standing straight out from his head. “Huh,” he said after a long while. “That’s a very good question. You, yourself, are something completely new, too, but you have a class and everything. Which, sure, new classes pop up all the time, so that could just have been in response to your sudden and surprising existence, but the schematics…”

He trailed off again, and I worried he might go silent on me as he pondered. Instead he perked right up and said, “Star, you are fascinating! More so than I already knew! And imagine the implications! We should talk to Harvin about this, he’s sure to have some interesting thoughts on the subject.”

“Oh, yes! Harvin will love this,” I agreed. He already had some very funny ideas about me, and I wondered what he'd come up with next. “So what are you making?”

“Hrmm? Right, the fabricator!” Bekeri pressed a button on the integrated slate, and the machine hummed to life properly. “There we are! And to answer your question: an infuriatingly fiddly little power shunt. A number of them, really: here are quite a few to a thruster. Our two spares were only intended to replace ones that failed normally, and these are immensely reliable components. We never expected the long-range teleportation matrix to fail so catastrophically, much less to get shot at! But I figured out that… you see this here, on the plate? That's the exact model of shunt I need. If things work as I expect them to, the fabricator should be able to produce a copy, and much, much faster than I could do it — if I could even make one of these myself. Like I said: infuriatingly fiddly! I have high hopes for this machine!”

“I really hope it works the way you think it does,” I said supportively. “Do you think you could make anything that way?”

“If it’s small enough, I think so! But for anything larger, or if we want to make entire assemblies, we’ll need the Holistic Autolathe… again, assuming I understand things properly. Oh, I have high hopes for the fabricator, but the autolathe… I think it just straight up makes finished parts and equipment. Just imagine! We may be able to make whole thrusters!”

“Oh, or another nutrient paste dispenser!”

“Or… that,” Bekeri agreed. “Or beds and the like, I suppose. It is, however, a thirty foot cube, which just so happens to be the size of our entire cargo hold.”

His point couldn’t have been clearer if he said it out loud. “I’ll talk to Temeri about making myself bigger,” I promised.

“Please do. I personally do not think that you need to ask the captain about what to do with your own body, but I’m sure she would appreciate you consulting her before you make any major changes.”

“Yeah… she worries a lot. I’d rather not surprise her.”

*

It was a good thing I didn’t just start growing myself. When I brought the subject up at breakfast the next morning, Temeri took the whole idea… oddly. While she’d been as excited as the others about Harvin’s announcement — that he could use me to amplify his telepathic abilities – when I started talking about adding decks and such, Temeri froze in her seat the way she did sometimes when she was thinking really hard, her spoon halfway to her mouth. While all the other Crew watched her, she lowered it back into her bowl and said, very calmly, “You want to make yourself bigger?”

“Yes!” I said excitedly. “I’m a lot lighter now, and Bekeri can make the components he needs to fix the thrusters, so I really don’t think that a little extra Hull with just enough structure to keep everything together properly would be a problem!”

“And what would you do with this extra space?”

“A lot of things!” I said excitedly. She hadn’t said no, after all! “I thought I could make a whole Crew level, with only living and recreation spaces! I could put in a running track, and a pool, and you could have a separate rec room and kitchen, and then I could maybe reshuffle some things on this current Crew level so we can put in the Holistic Autolathe! It’s going to be great!”

“Reshuffle?” Temeri said. And while she didn’t start drumming her fingers or playing with her nails or anything else that she usually did when we were talking, her foot started bouncing really fast under the table. “Like… move things around inside, while we’re here?”

“Yep! I’m pretty sure that I can do that! Remember how I bent myself a bit when I needed to close the rent in the crystal chamber? Like that! But, you know… more.”

The table started shaking a little from how much Temeri’s foot was bouncing. She looked around the table at the other Crew; of them, only Bekeri and Varlanda knew what I wanted to do, but none of the others looked like they minded the idea.

“What do the rest of you think?” she asked, in a strangely flat voice.

“I love the idea of a pool,” Varlanda said. “And to be honest, if we could expand the crystal chamber, that would be great. It’s getting cramped as it is.”

“I am already hard at work making components to repair the thrusters,” Bekeri added. “The first trials with making power shunts were a roaring success! I had time to test one before breakfast, and it worked just like the original! And once the thrusters are repaired I would love to get started on the autolathe. It’s a huge undertaking, and I expect it will take Varlanda and me several days, if not weeks, to construct. The sooner we can get started, the better!”

“Simeon?” Temeri asked. “Harvin?”

Simeon shrugged. “It’s her body. As long as she thinks she can do it safely, I don’t think that we have the right to tell her no.”

Harvin nodded. “I’m with Sim. And some more space does sound nice.”

Temeri nodded thoughtfully for several seconds. Then her foot stopped bouncing. She picked up her spoon again and stared at the nutrient paste before slowly taking a spoonful and bringing it to her mouth. After swallowing she went back to staring at the paste. Then she said, “Sure. Go ahead.”

For a few seconds, as she went back to slowly eating her paste, everyone looked at her in silence.