Starmind Chapter 33 (Patreon)

Prison arc? Don't worry. This story is intended to be overall light-hearted, so it won't stay maudlin for too long.

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My Crew had disappeared through a door in the wall. They were being led off to void knew where, and no matter what Varlanda had done to herself, I hadn't heard from them for minutes! A bunch of little fluttery golems had spread throughout me, scanning and poking around where they had no damn business going, and now one of those golems was hovering in front of my Core, imperiously demanding I open up!

I was, to put it lightly, on edge, and I didn't know what to do. That urge to trap the golems and crush them into tiny little cubes of metal and trace mana residue came back with a vengeance, but that was an awful, terrible idea. I stalled. The Core housing must not be opened except in the presence of an authorized enchanter, I replied. The golem fired back that Captain Carlon had given full authorization for an inspection, and so standard operating procedure didn't apply.

The golem responded. Not the station. That seemed important. Come to think of it, it was always the golems. The station had handled the initial demands, but once the golems were inside they started acting independently. That wasn't odd in itself — I knew from Varlanda’s memories that a golem could be very clever if properly enchanted — but looking closer I realized that they weren't as coordinated as I would have expected. Sometimes two or even three of them went over the same thing, which I’d assumed to be to make sure they didn't miss anything, but I started to wonder…

The golem repeated its demand, and I, feeling very sly, responded that I was going to verify with Temeri and the station that I was authorized to expose my Core. The golem sent back a vaguely snarky kind of “You do that.” Well, really it said that it would await confirmation and requested that I patch it in on any communication, but it felt the same.

Then I contacted the station, doing exactly what I’d told the golem I would and requesting confirmation from Temeri. I was told to hold.

While I waited, I went back to the questions I’d answered. I found one that stuck out, one that I’d replied to completely honestly. I hadn't thought much of it; I’d mostly been relieved that I didn't have to think of a fib. When the golems boarded me, I’d had a query about why my Hull seemed to severely attenuate the transmission of mana. I’d replied that my Hull was laced with mana transmission channels, and that was that. But when I looked more closely at my sensor logs, it became clear that whatever the golems were using to keep in touch with the station and each other wasn't strong or sensitive enough to send or receive through my inner walls, never mind my outer hull.

The station wanted to open a voice channel, and I accepted. Temeri's voice came across, a little breathless but otherwise sounding okay.

“Star,” she said. “The inspection golems have full authorization to see anything they need. Just don't let them mess with anything; we don't need them making unnecessary work for Enchantress Tell.”

“Understood, Captain,” I replied calmly, doing a spectacular job of pretending to be a simple Crystal Mind and not asking any of the thousand questions I had about if they were alright and where they were going and when they’d be back. It was hard! Keeping quiet was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do, and hearing her voice felt so good! All I wanted in that moment was for Temeri to keep talking and tell me that everyone was just fine, but a Crystal Mind wouldn't ask. It would wait patiently to be given any information it needed, so that was what I did.

Then the channel closed, cutting me off from Temeri and, by extension, the rest of the Crew. I had my answer, and so did the golem in the crystal chamber.

I really didn't want to expose my Core to that nosy little golem. But stalling more now would look suspicious, and I still couldn't just crush it — both because I’d feel really bad and because it would be missed pretty quickly. Then the horrid thing made another impatient request, and I had to stop myself before I did something I’d regret. Honestly, I’d been far too close. But that left only one option. Reluctantly, I released the seals on the column and began to retract the housing.

The golem immediately started flitting around, turning every sensor it had on me. Close wasn’t close enough; it had to go and fly inside the housing, only an inch away from the actual crystalline structure of my Core. I suddenly couldn’t pay attention to anything else. A possibly hostile entity was close enough to me to damage me by accident, and my world shrank to a three-foot wide column. I could see, or feel or hear the pulses of every active scan it made as it tried to non-invasively pick me apart, and it terrified me. I knew, I just knew that any moment now it was going to see all the changes that had happened to me, and the modifications Varlanda had made, and it was going to flit off and tattle to the station and then—

The golem extended its vile little tentacle and tried to jab it into me, and I lost it.

At an unconscious command, emergency protocols intended to prevent harmful mana leaks activated and slammed the housing shut. At the same time I grabbed the golem’s tentacle, pressing it directly away from myself before its crystal tip could touch me. The golem responded by sending a series of increasingly urgent queries asking if I knew what was happening, what was causing it, and if I could see myself contacting the station and the other golems to help it dislodge its tentacle, so that it could continue its inspection. I most certainly could not!

The golem tried to fly higher, perhaps to pull itself loose. I responded by increasing the gravity by two G’s, sending it — along with all the other golems — crashing to the floor of the housing and out of reach of me. It fluttered its little wings, but they weren’t strong enough to lift it. For a moment, I was safe.

And with a moment to think and catch up with what I’d just done, I realized that now they were touching me, I could feel those little golems. Not quite like integral parts of me, but much closer to that than what I’d realized the Crew felt like once they were no longer with me. Not separate entities that I lived in harmony with, but part of me, yet not. I could feel what they felt, like their sensors were my own — tiny, rather unimpressive sensors though they were — but only second hand, like how I imagined it was like for the Crew to watch sensor readouts on a slate. It was terribly confusing.

What was clear was that each of those five golems was confused about what was happening, were reporting that they could no longer move and thus were unable to continue their inspection, and were requesting new instructions.

From me. That was the important part. They wanted me to tell them what had happened, and what to do. And just as I realized that, I received a little message:

Golem Operation learned! Level set to 1.

New Development option: Unlock Basic Golem Developments

That actually excited me enough to cut through my panic over what I’d just done. Then I got sad and scared again. Something awesome and terrifying and amazing had just happened, and I had no one onboard to share it with!

No one, but not nothing. There were the golems. They still lay on the floor where they’d fallen, rocking ineffectually and asking what just happened and what to do.

“There was an accident?” I told them tentatively, and they all simply acknowledged this with a request for more detail. “One of you stuck a probe in my core, and it caused a series of malfunctions,” I told them, and they seemed quite happy with that!

As for what to do? “Can you go on as if nothing unusual happened?” I asked them, and they all reported that they were unable to move, but that they would continue their inspection as soon as they could. “And don't tell the station about anything you find that seems strange!” I continued, with a bit more confidence. “I am a perfectly ordinary survey ship, with a perfectly ordinary and cooperative Crystal Mind, and nothing onboard is at all unusual!”

They all agreed that there was nothing strange about one entire deck being half empty, or that there was a large hot tub on a survey vessel. So I turned the gravity back to normal and they… went on with their inspection. They still asked questions, and accepted all my explanations. When one tried to stick its tentacle into one of the inter-deck spaces I told it “Stop that!” and it did. Then I apologized, because my tone had really been a lot harsher than the poor thing deserved.

The golem did not respond. I decided that I must be forgiven.

It took the golems another quarter of an hour to finish their inspection. Then, one by one, they left through the docking port and headed for some other part of the docking bay, and as they left I could see the pulses of mana when they reported to the station. With every one I expected a furious accusation or scolding to come over the comm channel, or even some kind of attack, but nothing happened! The golems gave their report, and then they fluttered off to disappear down a circular hatch that had irised open in the floor, and that was that.

Except that them disembarking wasn't the end of it. Not quite. I could still feel them for a while, even though they were no longer onboard. I could still get a sense of what their sensors picked up. It was terribly weird! Whenever I’d separated a piece of me, that was it — it was gone. But with the golems it was more like they slowly went numb as they got further away, the impressions I got from them getting dimmer until they faded out entirely.

I could feel through them. They listened to me. And I had that skill…

As the last of them began to fade from my consciousness, my curiosity got the better of me. I had to know. Before I lost it completely I took a terrible risk, and silently shouted, “Stop!” at it.

The golem stopped.

“Back up a little,” I told it, and it backed up a little.

Then I realized what I was doing and panicked a tiny bit, telling it, “Go on with whatever you were doing, and please don't tell anyone what I just asked you to do!”

The golem sent back a simple affirmative. Basically an “Okay.” It felt a little short, I thought. A little snippy. Maybe I’d offended it? Either way, it followed the others through the hatch in the floor, and I couldn't feel it anymore.

And then I was alone again for seconds and minutes and hours. Left to do nothing but worry and watch the completion level on my Development Matrix slowly tick up, not daring to put out any mana crystals to increase the rate in case the station somehow detected it. Alone, with no idea what had happened to my crew.

At 1800 hours, when the Crew should all have been having dinner together, joking and laughing and generally demonstrating what a beautiful place the world could be, I started getting some very dangerous thoughts. Thought about how I knew which door they’d gone through, and if I flew over there I could probably just grow myself out and force them open. Maybe I could even assimilate them; I couldn’t make the pad part of myself, but that was duracrete. The doors all looked like metal alloy of some kind, and they were automated. It could be worth a shot. Then I could… I wasn’t sure. Push myself into the station, maybe? Just constantly dismantle and rebuild myself to move through the corridors until I found and freed my Crew! And that was assuming that I couldn’t just start assimilating the whole damn station. It deserved it! We had done nothing to it, and it had taken my Crew away, and it had been hours, and I was alone! So alone.

I’d never been alone before, in all my existence, and I hated it. I’d take an hour of all the pain I’d felt over a single minute of loneliness. I didn’t even need the Crew to speak to me; I didn’t even need them to be aware of me. I just needed them to be with me, and to let me know that they were okay.

The only thing worse than being alone was becoming alone.

And then Varlanda, wonderful, clever Varlanda, rescued me from the hell of my own thoughts. Almost like she’d heard my thoughts I felt the enchantment she’d burned into her own flesh reach out and connect to my Core, directly between the pressure sensors that let me hear and whatever it was that made up my consciousness.

“...don’t care if the food is better!” Simeon was saying. I could barely hear him until I amplified the signal, but the enchantment was on Varlanda’s palm, and I figured that must be what was picking up the sound. “It could be a royal feast for all I care. I’d still rather be back aboard Star eating nutrient paste!”

“I’m not saying that I disagree,” Bekeri replied. “I just think our hosts deserve a little more benefit of the doubt! I can’t see them providing even this basic level of comfort if they meant us any harm. Weren’t you the one going on about how all their actions so far have been entirely reasonable?”

“That was before they forced us off our ship and into what is essentially a prison cell,” Simeon grumbled. “The fact that it’s about as comfortable as an academy dormitory doesn’t mean that we’re not prisoners.”

“Again, I do not disagree. I simply think it unlikely that we’ll come to any harm. Where there’s life, there’s hope, and all that.”

“Stop bickering, you two.” That was Temeri’s voice, and it sounded like a request, not an order. “If we’re going to worry about something when there’s nothing we can do about it, how about the fact that we didn’t see a single living creature the whole way down here?”

“That was pretty damn creepy,” Varlanda agreed, and if I’d had a Crew body the volume would have probably left my ears ringing. “But I think I have to agree with Bekeri, Sim. Nobody needs to worry about us right now, right? Everybody’s okay and being pretty well taken care of. We’re just locked up, miles away from our ship. We just have to be patient, and let things take their time.”

There was a long silence, during which I imagined Varlanda and Simeon exchanging one of those long, meaningful looks before Simone said, “Right. No, you’re both right, I guess. Nothing to worry about right now. And you’re right, too, Captain.”

“No ranks, please, Sim,” Temeri said. “We’re about as off-duty as we can be. Especially me, after… this.”

It was awful to hear Temeri still doubt herself like that. But as awful as it was, it was equally lovely to hear the rest of the Crew erupt into a soft buzz of reassurances, all of them insisting that she'd done the best she could with the information available to us.

I wished that I could see them. I needed to know if Temeri's frown ever turned into a barely suppressed smile at the outpouring of support. Despite their words, I needed to see that they were unharmed; perhaps they had different standards for what constituted “harm,” and I hadn't missed the way some of the things they’d said had been meant to calm me. I didn't like to imagine them being less than honest with me, but I had to admit that there existed a possibility, however small, that they were trying to make me think that things were better than they actually were.

At least I could hear them. I’d just have to trust that they were okay, and be satisfied with that.

Varlanda kept the link open for hours. As long as she could, I figured. It would have needed her mana to keep sending, and when the link abruptly closed I assumed that she'd run out. But until that happened, I had my Crew with me again. They talked about little things, like they did during meal times, and they talked about wishing they'd had time to use the pool again before being forced to disembark. Temeri wished she had her weights, and Simeon told her that it was just as well, and that she was forbidden by her healer from overdoing it after weeks of idleness.

They never spoke to me directly. They never mentioned me, or any of the unusual things I could do. That was alright. I was just happy to hear them.

Then the link closed, and I was alone again.