“Heyy, we are doing things.” Freyr pouted at Nirann, still thinking. She didn’t want this person to think they’d been sitting on their thumbs this whole time.

“I agree, Marae. We should monitor them from a distance. If they are part of a Cradle entity, they could be advanced beyond our capabilities to handle if we rush in.” She continued.

Wallace weighed them all up with her eyes individually, sucking her cheeks in around another piece of sweet pastry. Freyr began to feel a little uncomfortable again, and squirmed a little under the Plenipotentiary’s gaze.

Eventually, Wallace gulped the pastry flesh down and smiled widely. “Excellent. I think that’s all I needed to hear right now. I will speak to the Datius and my colleagues in the government. We are technically in a ‘transitional authority’, but there are a few immovable rocks who won’t be changing seats that I can connect with. As I said, you’ll likely be moved from this black site to some kind of mobile command centre. It’ll be harder for terrorists to corner you that way.

“What about the rest of my division? Not everyone was taken to the safe house.” Freyr asked. She had lost too many people already - keeping everyone together seemed like the best way to preserve life. Safety in numbers.

“I’m sure we can figure something out. I’m told that your headquarters has been evacuated, with the equipment decentralised and most personnel working from home. But if you want to bring them all, that's something we can discuss. Now…” Wallace sat up, perching elegantly on the edge of the chaise longue. “With our business concluded for now, do you want to see what's happening up on the surface?” Wallace's eyes flashed with an impish excitement.

“Oh, I’m sure Rareth will have plenty of words for your colleagues. If I were a betting man, which I absolutely am, I would say they will mostly be about moving us to that Rothian cruiser in orbit. Since it’s, you know, actually the best option available to us by a long shot.” Nirann shrugged.

After a moment, Nirann tilted his head towards Marae. “Well, in any case, that’s Rareth’s job to deal with, not ours. What do you think, love? You done with work now too?”

Marae had been holding an empty cup of tea for a few minutes as she had been examining the hologram of the nanomachine, but as curious as she was, there was little else she could learn without more direct observations. For now, there was nothing more they could do here. “I think I would really like to have a change of scenery away from that black site. What exactly do you have in mind?”

“Does it involve as many hallucinogens as your last outing? Because I’ve got to warn you, my wife is a bit of a lightweight.” Nirann remarked, leaning back just as Marae jabbed her elbow into his side.

“Nirann! Now…” Marae started. At first, she seemed exasperated, but that slowly turned to a grin. “…you know that isn’t true.”

Wallace looked at Freyr while Nirann & Marae conversed. “I was sadly a bit preoccupied when we last met, so I couldn't join your party. Sorry about that.” Freyr shrugged and blushed, trying to recall the night. “That’s quite alright. I think it went a bit awry quite quickly. Our Institute attaché seemed to react quite badly to that thing you gave us.”

Wallace chuckled, looking back at Nirann and Marae. “I have something a bit softer if you’d prefer. I come from a long line of imbibers, but can exercise restraint when the situation demands! I leave it up to you.” With that, the Plenipotentiary waggled one finger and the holo of that nanobot dissolved, reforming into a control interface.

With the array floating closer to her chaise longue, Wallace grasped at an orb in the centre and moved it carefully upwards. The water on the outside of the room immediately began swirling as they rose to the surface. “Such a fun toy. I can see why everyone wants the Cradle. I’d take this over a phallic space brick any day.” She murmured. Freyr giggled, she was beginning to feel a little light headed.

After a second, the vast inky bubble of the ship’s aft section broke water, narrowly missing a pleasure yacht heading to shore. Freyr looked up and saw a few stars peeking through the clouds. “Ah! Music…” Wallace purred. Freyr followed the Plenipotentiary’s finger and saw a large stage erected on the sand, facing out onto the lake. It was quite far away, but with one small motion the orb’s lens-like surface magnified the scene many times.

A Human band of musicians stood on the stage, energetically playing an assortment of guitars, drums and keyboards. Thousands of people were listening, dancing and playing around on an interlinked flotilla of platforms, water slides and buoyant inflatable chairs. “Let's listen in, shall we?” Wallace tapped another sequence on her control panel, and sound steadily filled the room, picked up from nearly a mile away.

“Sing it back to me; this is your life story
You didn't even know it you're trying not to blow it
Because you're kicking back a death wish and here I am just riding out the storm
Believe me when I say that I want to give up
I want to give up but its bad enough to keep me hooked
Just to watch you curse my name and toss and turn”

The volume increased, sensors perfectly tuned to pick up every nuance in the sound. Several thin wisps of sweet-smelling steam sprayed into the room. Freyr began shimmying in her seat in time with the music.

“Turn around and cross the line you so casually walk between function and fashion
Are you dressed to kill or dressed to impress?
Don't act like you can do better than this.”

As the rhythm guitarist repeated the last line the lank-haired lead singer, mouth practically touching the vintage microphone, raised an arm and shouted “Sing it!”

“Let me see you put your hands upon the stereo
Its spitting out a ridiculous frequency
But turn it up turn it up
Break a sweat
Cause were just burning up and hitting up the scene that was ours to hit up
Take take me out because I'm ready for your best shot
Make make me out to be a bullet from the pulpit
Or anything that would make you believe!”

The sound of the music was quite different from anything that was popular on Rothia, or even Outremer, for that matter. Even Nirann did not have the information available offhand, and had to perform a quick search to ascertain its origin. Knowing that was enough to give him a quick chuckle. “Well, this is not one I would have expected for a concert. It’s a real ancient one, isn’t it?”

Marae grinned over at Nirann. “We’re not the only ones who like to appreciate the classics.” She did not respond quite as obviously to the music as Freyr or Wallace, though one could at least see a claw tapping against her chair in time with the beat. “I would show you some of the classics from my childhood, but...uh, audio recording technology hadn’t been invented yet. Just imagine a lot of chanting, and something similar to a piano.”

After a few more moments, Marae leaned in a bit closer to Freyr. She was still grinning, but now with a look in her eyes not unlike Nirann tended to get from time to time whenever he was expressing himself as a holographic avatar. “Hmm, I’m curious. How would one dance to this? I don’t suppose you could show me?”

“We love to dig up the past!” Wallace called over the music that now filled the room, conducting a quick search. “This type of music really is old - so much so that they thought to name it ‘rock’. How dynamic!”

“I’ve got no prior experience of dancing to music like this.” Freyr admitted, still swaying from side to side in her seat. “How is everyone else doing it?” Wallace duly obliged, shifting the lens from the singer’s sweaty face to the dimly lit crowd. Freyr noticed that the Plenipotentiary’s ship enhanced the scene until it could’ve been under floodlights.

The rickety flotilla contained hundreds of people in swimming shorts or bikinis, jostling against each other. Most of their hands were in the air. Dozens of people were either jumping off or climbing back aboard at one time. “Oh gods, do they need rescuing?” Freyr asked.

“I think they’re doing it on purpose!” Wallace laughed, taking them silently a bit closer. Freyr hadn’t noticed, but the ship had actually rotated in the preceding few seconds so the aft orb was the only part protruding from the water. Their room acted as if it were gimballed, but for the rest of the ship (now pointing toward the lake bed), magnetic fastenings and anti-gravity were enabled to keep people safe.

“Shall we go and join them?” Wallace turned to look at her guests with a mischievous look etched across her face. “We can wear masks, so no one will recognise us - it could be fun! I do so enjoy mingling with the masses.”

The glances Nirann and Marae shared suggested they were both quite interested in Wallace’s suggestions. They did not need to speak so much as a word to come to agreement on that. Though, Wallace’s last suggestion did get a laugh out of Nirann. “Heh, hide your face as much as you want, but I don’t think there’s any mask that’s going to keep a two plus meter tall metal lizard from sticking out like the sorest thumb in a crowd of Humans. Don’t take that as a ‘no’, though. This sounds like the most fun I’ve had in weeks.”

Marae had already stood to her feet and walked closer to the edge of the orb. The music was certainly entirely new to her, but she had not yet given much of a sign on whether or not she actually even liked it. Still, she seemed perhaps surprisingly eager to sneak into the concert of a niche band she had never heard of before. The experience was more important than the music.

Marae held up a hand against the orb. From where they were, she could see all the people both above and below the water line. Even being Rothian, there was so much activity that it would be easy to get lost within it. The crowd was mostly human, but not completely. In all likelihood, she would stand out as nothing more than a tourist. She was only famous in certain academic circles, after all. “Well, what are we waiting for, then? We could swim out to them right now.”

“Bravo!” Wallace clapped her hands together and began manipulating the controls again. “I think we have some full-body masks somewhere…” After a few moments, a quartet of mannikin type shapes appeared behind the Plenipotentiary. Two were entirely obfuscated like the ship, two just had blurry faces.

“I am not swimming out there.” Freyr laughed, pouring herself another cup of tea. “I’m certainly not dressed for that.” Wallace looked at her, raised one eyebrow and rolled the control ball over with one finger without looking. The concert began coming closer, with the ship silently navigating the placid waters. “Don’t worry! If you want a full suit, it will repel the water. But I was thinking we could bring the concert to us in the beginning anyway. It's safer like that.”

Chirtsey and Alderney, Wallace’s servants, wafted back into the room via newly reformed blast doors. The faint sound of raised voices followed, but was abruptly cut off when the doors closed. They landed gracefully back on the floor and walked in tandem over to the suits.

“Help our guests with their gear, please.” Wallace instructed without looking, fiddling with the controls. The music from outside was of a lower volume for the moment, but Freyr noticed the band reaching the end of their song. The scruffy lead singer waved to the crowd, other hand resting on his guitar.

“Thank you! You’re awesome. Thanks to Kaftari for letting us play for you at such short notice too. There’s nothing like a humanitarian disaster in the capital to shake up the set list eh?” He turned and laughed with the rest of the band, who were either hydrating or tuning their equipment.

Alderney came over and offered Freyr a blurry mask. She nodded and the servant went round the back of her chair to attach it. After an initial moment of disorientation, the mask moulded her face and her vision returned. It was like the mask wasn’t even there anymore. Freyr gingerly felt her head and confirmed that it was, in fact, still there.

“We have a special guest at our little gathering, folks!” The singer suddenly announced, scanning the water beyond their little flotilla. “If you’re here, get outta my head and give us a wave!”

“The good thing about a camouflage ship is that it is…customisable.” Wallace grinned. Accessing the neural lace of most everyone in the vicinity, the Plenipotentiary first marked the outline of the ship. As everyone turned to look at them, now only a couple of hundred metres away, the outer surface of their craft rippled with a kaleidoscope of colours that mingled with the dark background of the mist upon the water. Wallace knew it would be different for everyone, finely balanced to stimulate the amygdala.

The crowd burst into rapturous cheering, and as if it were planned all along, the band burst into a new song. Detecting the rhythm, the ship automatically synchronised. “They love it!” Wallace announced. “Time to meet our adoring fans - everyone suited up?”

“This is attracting a lot of attention, maybe we shouldn’t-” Freyr began, but their host had already set the process in motion. The orb’s outer shell began peeling back as the ship floated the last few yards toward the flotilla. Wallace stood up and adopted a show woman's pose, her silent attendants standing at attention behind.

Nirann shrugged his shoulders. “Hmm, I suppose we could use holographic masking. It does kind of kill some of the fun, though. I do like it when I can just be part of the crowd, especially when I spend so much time watching them as it is. It’s nice to just…explore a crowd naturally. Never know what you might find. Like a mate, for instance. I met Marae in the crowd at a party.”

In any case, neither of the pair directly objected to Wallace’s suggestion. Even if they hid their identities, Marae had not expected her to want to make them the center of attention. Still, she was curious enough to want to see what she had in mind. When the ship opened up, both Marae and Nirann walked side-by-side along with Freyr, while mostly trying to keep out of Wallace’s way. There seemed to be little doubt that she quite enjoyed having all the eyes on her.

Marae grinned as they stepped out towards the flotilla, while Nirann would have if he could. “You sure you don’t want to go for a swim? Because it seems like the alternative is being center stage.” Nirann commented with a chuckle towards Freyr.

The new song was just as alien as the previous to the pair of Rothians. Regardless of their opinions on it, though, they were far more occupied by this grand entrance than they were the concert itself.

The ship nudged gently against the flotilla, and dropped down to allow Nirann and Marae to exit onto it if they wished to. Warm water sloshed onto the deck of their half-opened orb and quickly around the seating area until it was ankle high. Freyr squealed, partly from trepidation and partly from pure excitement after so long without stimulation. She leapt back onto the bean bag she’d been on before and laughed. “No! You go if you want, I’ll try in a minute!”

Wallace waved out to the wild mass of partygoers perched on the creaking flotilla, beaming as the music undulated around them. Several people jumped from the platforms onto their watery deck and rushed forward. Freyr didn’t notice, for she was too preoccupied with all the moving objects, but Chirtsey and Alderney flinched. Their hands started to move, but one tiny motion from Wallace stopped them dead in their tracks. Freyr did happen to spot a tiny thread of flickering light, like spider silk, connecting the back of the Plenipotentiary’s head to a shield generator hidden out of sight.

The audio quality from inside the half-exposed orb was excellent, rivalling that of anywhere near the band. So the revellers swept up their group for a drunken greeting and compliment of the grand entry. They then began swirling around the space, dancing and knocking jovially into each other to this energetic music. “Hello, nice to see you. Please, make yourselves at home. Hi!” Wallace called over the music, hugging and shaking hands with several people; servants never more than an arm’s length away. It was like the Plenipotentiary knew everyone at the event.

“This looks comfy!” A tall thin woman with dark red hair and a swimsuit shouted, falling into Freyr’s beanbag to hug her.

“Oh, hey!” Freyr laughed tolerantly, patting the woman’s back as the wetness seeped into her own clothes.

Both Marae and Nirann were moderately surprised about how their grand entrance was unfolding. Not only did they approach the party, but Wallace actually allowed the party to come to them. Freyr ducked back inside almost immediately, which got a chuckle out of Marae. It felt like Freyr was not quite accustomed to this sort of environment. They had not been quite sure how this evening was going to play out, but Marae and Nirann both shared a knowing look; at this point, they both knew what they were going to do next.

At first, the pair slipped over to the side of the platform as the crowd advanced. They knew well-enough not to be in their way, though Freyr was quite firmly in their path. From what they could observe, it seemed like the idea of “inhibitions” was a foreign one to much of the crowd at the moment. One of them required no invitation to fall on Freyr’s bean bag chair and embrace her like a long-lost friend.

Nirann nudged Marae beside him. “About what kind of dosage you think she has right now?’

“Now that’s just rude.”

“But not inaccurate.”

Both exchanged a nod before deciding to approach, and they were both surprisingly adept at navigating even such a chaotic crowd. They knew not to try to move against it, instead moving with the flow of people as if they were navigating a river. They just nudged themselves in their desired direction whenever the opportunity presented itself. They ended up taking an indirect path, so Freyr may not have even seen them walk up behind her and take a seat on either side of her, crowding her bean bag chair rather thoroughly. She suddenly found herself with a scaly hand resting on her left shoulder, a metal hand on her right, and both of them talking to her one after another.

“Well, seems like you’re not wasting any time.”

“I see you’ve already made a friend.”

“That’s nice.”

“Seems like our host is mostly focused on entertaining her swarm of guests right now.”

“If we play it right, we can probably just slip away into the party.”

Freyr had not been expecting any of this. After so long trapped in a high rise apartment block, the mosh pit party developing around them as more people scrambled over to their little orb was quite daunting. They were variously running in circles or jumping up and down as this niche band transitioned seamlessly to another angsty song. “Ok, ok. Help me out here! Let's go for a wander.” Freyr lifted her arms above her head, for the Rothians to pull her out from under the pile as another person joined in.

”Aching, she's feeling so confused, confused.
She can't breathe or believe she's useless
Right off the edge she'll walk
Just listen close you'll hear her screaming.”

The singer essentially couldn’t see through the mat of hair now covering his eyes as he swanned about the stage. Someone from the flotilla clambered up onto their stage and rushed over. The singer tried to juke around but got knocked over in a fan hug. He still managed to shout into the mic from on the floor:

“Take meee!”

The rest of the band, grinning at the chaos, chimed in with backing vocals. “Take me.”

“Take mee!”

Security rushed over and hoisted the screaming fan off of the scruffily dressed singer. He hopped up and carried on.

“Who's gonna miss me when I'm gone?”

He blew a kiss into the crowd, wiggling his head and stamping one foot in time with the music.

“Our hardest times, hold on.”

Nirann would have been grinning if he could, as he decided to take Freyr’s call for help perhaps more literally than she intended. He pulled her out of the crowd, then simply swept her up to carry her in his arms. “Hmm, so now do I get to be your knight made of shining armor?”

Marae chuckled, walking right alongside them. “I don’t think that’s the phrase.”

“Close enough.”

Once again, Nirann and Marae navigated the crowd, now carrying Freyr along with them. Especially now that they were moving against the general direction of the mob, they moved with caution and patience closer to the outside of the crowd. They wandered around the edge of their platform near the water, moving in the direction of the flotilla. Even still, there were plenty of obstacles to navigate between those dancing more and more enthusiastically to the music, and those occasionally running in front of them to dive into the water.

“So where shall we ‘wander’ to, Freyr? More towards the dancing, the swimming, the drugs, the drinking? Something else? All of the above?” Nirann asked.

Marae crossed her arms. “You know you could actually put her down so you don’t have to ask.”

“I mean, I could, but then the crowd might wash her away like a wave. Though, that would be funny…”

Freyr thanked the big robot, but quickly got annoyed when Nirann didn’t let her go. “Put me down!” Freyr wiggled her limbs until she touched the floor again. “I’ve noticed your kind love to manhandle.” She chuckled. “Lead on, I can walk behind. Let's go out onto those floating platforms.”

Faced with this freedom of choice on where to go, the scientist felt a pang of guilt. Her team were still stuck inside, and her family were still missing. A wave of emotion bubbled up from her core to her throat, and Freyr clamped her jaw in place to fight it back. We’re networking, with Wallace, to continue the mission. Just please relax She assured herself.

As they slowly navigated the flotilla, moving toward the stage, Freyr realised that each platform may have been primarily a collection of loosely affiliated friendship groups. Or cliques - some of the groups looked quite different from one another. While a lot of people were on the move, an equal amount of people were stood dancing together, yelling conversation into each other’s ears. The spine of a few platforms was raised, producing a few bits of seating which at the moment was swamped.

“What we just talked about back there - seems like an interesting lead, no?” Freyr yelled, looking back at the orb. Wallace was lost in the throng, but the ship was still putting on a light show.

---

A few miles away, a man in a suit leaned against the bonnet of his car in a quiet parking space. He pressed long range binoculars against his eyes and scanned the concert as it unfolded some way along the shoreline. Vapour rose and disappeared into the night from a stim-stick hanging from his lips. After a moment, his gaze returned to the mostly-submerged craft at the edge of the flotilla, then zoomed in further to watch the trio of obfuscated shapes moving through the crowd.

Marae laughed, turning around as she stopped herself in front of Freyr. She reached out and placed a hand on both of her cheeks, though for hands her size, it was more like she was grabbing her entire head. “Freyr, do you ever stop working? Seriously, we are at a party, Freyr. We can have a meeting with the others to talk about that later. Just stop a moment and enjoy yourself.” Marae smiled. As she released Freyr, she immediately turned and brought her hands up over her head to dive off the edge into the water.

Nirann did not follow. For a moment, his gaze seemed to go out over the water, but it only took Freyr a few seconds to hear his voice. He did not bother trying to shout over the music or the crowd, but rather simply messaged Freyr’s implants directly. “It isn’t healthy what you’re doing, you know?” He said. The tone Freyr heard was perhaps uncharacteristically serious from him. “You have an obsession. Now, you do have a very good reason to be obsessed, mind you, but that doesn’t make the effects any better. You don’t even know how many times I’ve seen this play out among my people. In my city. I experience every part of their lives; the good, the bad, all the successes and failures. I’ve seen millions upon millions of variations of their stories, so I can see what’s happening in you. You Humans aren’t all that different. You’re not failing them if you’re not spending every waking moment trying to bring them back. You’re not turning your back on them by spending a few hours relaxing. For your sake and theirs, you need to let your mind rest. This obsession, it’s not going to help them. It never does. What it can do is narrow your mind. Limit your perspective. It can hamper your judgement until you get to the point where you can only see what you want to see.”

Nirann held out one hand between them, offering it to her. “Close your eyes and listen. Not to your own thoughts, not to your fears, but to this place. This moment. The music, the people, the waves crashing up against the side of the boats. Let yourself seize this moment.”

Freyr nodded hesitantly in response to Nirann. She knew some of this already, but hearing it from the robot didn’t make things any easier. After a few shaky breaths, Freyr closed her eyes. A blurry image of her family entered her mind - they were running down a beach that didn’t exist, away from her. Tears rolled down both her cheeks as the concert boomed around her. Freyr couldn’t hear it anymore, only the sound of her breathing and a high pitched whine in each ear.

Slowly, she raised a hand and tried to wipe her tears. She felt instead an alien, rubbery texture against her face, where the mask had settled in. Reaching around her neck, Freyr pushed the mask up and away, using the back of her arm to dry her face. At the same time, she reached out another hand, searching blindly for Nirann’s.

---

Staring through the spyglass, the spotter up on the raised promenade zoomed in on the woman’s face as she wiped her tears away. The device matched this person to a high value target with a 85% probability. He put his secure phone to one ear, bulky transmitter pointing straight up. “I think I have something. On the beach.”

Nirann, for a few moments, observed in silence. He watched the smallest details of Freyr’s body language, not that one would really need an electronic eye to see what she was feeling in her expression. In any case, given the context, it was easy to infer what sorts of thoughts were likely running through her mind. Reaching out, he took her hand carefully in his own. His hand might have been cold metal, with the strength to crush a metal bar as if it were a tin can, but his touch was as measured and precise as a surgeon. They were already close to the water, so he gently guided her along with him as he took a seat on the edge of the vessel, his feet hanging off into the water below.

“I want to show you something real quick.” Nirann remarked. He brought up a holographic screen in front of himself. He loaded a short video clip, then pushed it over in front of Freyr. Front and center in the frame was Marae. The distinctive mosaic on her scales had a different pattern, but it was still unmistakably her. It was nighttime in the video, though it was still clear enough for Freyr to see that she was sitting in the sand on a beach, holding another Rothian close to her. They were both looking up to the sky, in which they could see the Milky Way galaxy…from outside of the galactic plane. The video seemed to have been recorded on a Rothian colony in one of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies. Aside from the location, there was nothing in the video that would stand out to the average person, but Freyr would easily notice the fact that the other Rothian looked exactly like the holographic avatar Nirann had used when they had first met him back on Rothia. Yet, the pair of them were clearly in contact with one another in the recording, even nuzzling one another quite affectionately. He clearly was no hologram.

“I don’t spend most of my time back home walking around as an armored death machine.” Nirann remarked, still messaging Freyr directly. “We can make synthetic bodies that are quite remarkable. I mean, that one is centuries old, and Marae still didn’t have any idea there was metal instead of muscle under my scales until our first date. Even then, that was only because I told her myself. Point is, you’ve been through a lot Freyr, and I know it isn’t easy. I know you have a lot to fear when it comes to bringing back your family, but if we do find their minds, you shouldn’t have to worry about whether or not we can even bring them back at all. I can’t say for sure if their minds will still be compatible with their original bodies, but since their minds have already been digitized, well…I wouldn’t need to pull too many strings to have a pair of Human bodies fabricated. Take it from me, the experience of being in one of those bodies is outright identical to being in an organic one. Or at least, it can be.”

Freyr followed Nirann’s lead, taking off her shoes and rolling up her leg garments before sitting with the warm water lapping at her knees. She smiled sadly while watching the video Nirann showed, drying her eyes as much as she could under her mask.

Eventually the happy scene became too much, and she looked up and past the screen at Réunion. It was late now, but the city was still lit up with a kaleidoscope of bright lights, snaking their way between platforms up to the mountains above.

“You make it sound so easy.” Freyr murmured, running her index finger through the water. “Like we can just bung my family into new bodies and life can go back to normal.” She sighed. “I’ve had…dreams. Or visions, I don't know. I can see them inside the Cradle - they’re being…chased, or tortured. I can’t tell if they’re asleep or awake, or where they are. But something is happening to them and being broadcast to me.”

Freyr pulled out her stim-stick and popped it in her mouth; the light lit up. “I sound crazy, I know. But it feels like a trap that I can't avoid. No matter how i approach it, none of us come out whole.”

Nirann turned his head, looking down at Freyr. “I don’t mean to be the skeptic, but those dreams are much more likely to just be…dreams. You are worried about your family, again, very understandably. Your minds create dreams, for the most part, just based on what you think about while you’re awake. And I’m sure you’re thinking about your family a lot. There is not likely to be any meaning behind them beyond that.”

Freyr’s hand was still gripped tightly onto Nirann’s, though given her state at the moment, she may not have even realized it. He lifted her hand up slightly, then rested his other hand over the top of hers. “And if we can find their consciousnesses, then it really will be that easy. Normally it wouldn’t be, since the prospect of digitizing a living mind is far from simple, but that won’t be an issue here. Digital beings like me, we don’t have to be too attached to particular hardware if we don’t want to be. I can move between any hardware with enough storage space at a snap of my fingers, and well…the point I was trying to make is that they can be happy like this. In my usual body, there is nothing you can experience that I can’t. Every touch, every taste, every scent, even digestion we can accomplish artificially. Now, granted, I don’t usually enable all the features of organics in my body. For instance, I don’t sleep and have never had the desire to, but they could have the choice to experience everything just like it used to be. Except…”

Nirann shifted slightly in place, his gaze moving back out over the water. There was one aspect of Humanity that Rothians would never have any desire to imitate. “Well…there is the immortality. They wouldn’t age. They would need to change bodies to move on to later stages of life, and the eventual death your species experiences would always be a choice.”

Freyr blew out some vapour. It was a different colour to before, slightly green. She chuckled and shook her head. “At least then they’ll get back the time they lost.” Lights reflected off the dark, warm water as she ran a hand through it. Nirann might have been talking, but she wasn’t taking anything in. After a little while, Freyr leaned slowly forward from her position, sat on the side and entered the lake fully.

The comforting blackness engulfed her, and the cacophony of sounds around them changed into a muffled clang and hum. Freyr kicked her legs once, then twice, arms at her sides. Her fist closed around the stim-stick to prevent it floating away. Someone jumped in nearby, and began swimming around, nearly kicking her in the face. Freyr breathed out, feeling bubbles of air crawling along the top of her mouth.

Ultimately, the waters surrounding the flotilla were nearly as much of a flurry of activity as on the vessels themselves. At least near the surface, there was little room to maneuver without inevitably running into another. It was very much by design that the party could continue as much below the surface as it could above.

Freyr was not left alone for long. As soon as dropped in below the waves, she would feel the wake of something large moving past just behind her. Marae wrapped around underneath her, then pushed upwards to stop just in front of her. She just managed to squeeze into the space between Freyr and another swimmer in front of her. Despite the fact that she had been under for as long as the conversation with Nirann, she did not seem to be struggling for breath. In fact, she was not holding her breath at all. A more careful look around them would reveal that the water was distinctly discolored, compared to the rest of the lake. Devices built into the barges were constantly dispersing a combination of highly oxygenated water and a selection of other chemicals into the surrounding water in order to render the water itself breathable. The specifics of the process and other safety features were mostly out-of-sight of the average concert goer, but from their perspective, it was easy enough to tell if it was safe to breathe by the color of the water around them. The concert itself was also being broadcast openly, so anyone with the right implants could simply tune in to hear the music as if they were still in open air.

“Glad to see you joining the party. Feeling better?” Marae asked, messaging Freyr’s implants directly.

Marae did seem to be a surprisingly strong swimmer. Large, wide feet coupled with a tail gave her decent options for propulsion. Nirann, however, was not nearly so elegant with his entrance. He dropped into the water right after Freyr, then continued on sinking like a rock, straight down to the bottom. A military droid, it seemed, was not buoyant in the slightest. Nevertheless, they could still hear him messaging them in their heads. “No, it’s fine, don’t worry about me. I’ll just be down here…walking with the crabs.”

Marae rolled her eyes, letting out what might have been a sigh. “He did that on purpose.”