Thanqol

Breathless Dead

Mosaic!

"Oh! Quite the crisis!" the mechanical device swings and rotates; something about the alignment of those rings indicated different postures of thought. It was like he was turning the keys of his thoughts. "If you'll permit me a brief digression into theory, I believe I can outline the nature of this problem in a more tractable way."

"Shipborne administration of an Imperial-era warship is, ideally, equal parts municipal government and military discipline. The crew needs to do what it's commanded swiftly and dutifully as it is only collective work that can survive void warfare, but by the same token each individual cohort possesses enormous ability to disrupt shipboard operations in a crisis. Voidborne servitor species are designed to possess strong senses of duty and tradition amongst the lower ranks balanced with humility and forethought in the highest ranks. However, this is a crisis situation representing the intake of a nonspecialized cohort." He rotated faster now, and then came to a stop, seemingly having completed the thought.

"The most important priority is to prevent the formation of stratification between the military servitors and the civilian crew," said Ohm. "The Ceronians will be inclined to form a highly insular pack that lords it over the populace and claims all the best for themselves. This cannot be allowed. They must be dispersed throughout the ship with varied and contradictory responsibilities. This will disrupt their pack instinct and make them protective of their various domains and the civilians who they are responsible for. At the same time, their examples will provide an authoritative edge and military discipline to each civilian group they lead."

"The second priority is to understand not all work is created equal. Labourers in the Engine will find themselves facing constant, back breaking work in hot conditions, whereas Bridge crew will be comparatively comfortable. This stratification between unspecialized servitors will create social classes -" Ohm's voice almost curls with contempt for the word. "- a profoundly unstable form of government, prone to strikes, mutinies and piracy. The second priority, then, must be to exalt those with the hardest jobs from the beginning. They must be showered with honours, tangible and intangible, bought into the Captain's confidence, allowed to retire when physically exhausted and treated as veterans afterwards. When possible acquire a dedicated void labour species and phase the mixed workforce out entirely."

Ember!

She hugs you like it's been forever, and she takes a little bit of your warmth into her heart forever. It's a little easier to give up on the dream of wolves knowing she can still have this.

In her place, though, there will be two candidates for the role of Alpha: Sagetip and Plundering Fang.

Sagetip is the scoutmistress, the invisible and relentless commander of the infiltrators. Professional, calm, patient and ruthless. You can sense in your genetics her paradigm as leader, one cold and daring and dedicated to the legend of the pack. She will work with Mosaic well when their interests align, and will break with her the moment they do not. She is too ambitious to be tamed.

Plundering Fang represents the assault company, a glory hound, first in and first bloody. She's a creature of passions and appetites, and one of those passions is loyalty. For a commander she respects she'll march into hellfire - and indeed, the challenge of having her as a subordinate is preventing her from doing so unprompted.

The genetic legacy of the Warriors of Ceron is inherited directly, through the deliberate cloning of the most notable and glorious individuals. The unit Biomancer, Whispering Potions, is also the archivist who records the deeds of each of the wolves and will one day make their cases to the Clonelords of Ceron who oversee the vast industry that produces and refines the galaxy's finest warriors. Your gift, too, comes with a legacy - of leadership, of stealth, of single combat, or perhaps something else. In whose steps do you walk, Ember? Tell us of the warrior bloodline you have taken for yourself and which packleader it favours - if it does not favour you yourself.

Dyssia!

There is a great rumbling sound as the Engine starts to glow. Fire radiates out for miles, a new sun on the twilight horizon, the beach sand melting to glass, a catastrophic cloud of steam. This moment is the grand culmination of the chemical rocket launches that first took humanity, and later the Azura, to the stars. Impossibly, through fire and divinity, five kilometers of metal starts to rise. It's so beautiful, and so distracting, that you almost forget that you're supposed to get aboard.

As you do, it feels almost like mission accomplished. You've achieved a victory worthy of a Knight of the Publica, and if the diviners were correct then this is supposedly an important moment in the fall of the Skies. But as to the how... well, before you can celebrate, you need to dedicate your victory to the Gods, to reconsecrate the ship's temple, to make the oblations and all the works of ritual and respect. Which God do you reach out to in this moment of triumph, and what questions might you ask them when you have their attention?

Dolce!

"Great lord, it is in your very spirit of hospitality that we have come," 20022 went on. "And credit where it's due, my companion here is mostly responsible for this. We have returned your emissary to you, wounded though he is."

"You what?" said the Architect. "Why?"

"As I said," said 20022, "the spirit of hospitality compelled it."

The Architect stared blankly for a moment. Then his eye flicked around until it settled on the flickering body of the Emissary. A drone flicked down from the ceiling, connected to it with a mosquitolike appendage, and some sort of digital blood or spirit passed between them. Immediately the Emissary sat up.

"An electronic storm!" he raged immediately, seemingly lost of context. "In my presence? Barbarous! This outrage will -" he stopped. "Why can't I access my database?"

"Your credentials were revoked the second we lost contact," said the greater Architect. "Standard protocol. You know this."

"How could I know that?" said the Emissary. "That's in the database!"

"Ah, well, nevertheless," said the Architect. His gaze swung around to focus on Dolce. "Thank you for the thought," he said. "But you really shouldn't have - I've already manufactured a replacement, but then you weren't to know. Thank you, I'm happy to take the raw materials."

Those construction drones had floated down to encircle the Emissary, those same laser cutters and wrenches they'd used to tear up and assemble the table and chairs now advancing towards the robot. "Wait!" he was saying. "I'm not compromised! I'm pure, you can trust me! Just integrate me again, you'll see, I swear before all the gods!!"

"Oh yes, yes," said the Architect. There was a bright flash as he eradicated the drone that had repaired the Emissary a moment ago, the pieces already being swept up and carried away. "But then, the Trojan Horse is the oldest trick in the book."

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Red!

"You know, I kind of like being me?" said Red. "Every other fucking colour would be going over that conversation with a microscope to figure out how they could have maximized the strategic impact or big picture station stuff or operational security or whatever. I can kind of, like, feel it in the back of my head. When they say stuff I've kind of got to listen and memorize it, you know? Like, I don't know, the voice of a mentor or conscience or whatever. So we build all these little preprogrammed adaptive routines into each other so we're ready in case something relevant to a nonpresent colour shows up and we have to represent them. So right now it feels like this little chorus of shoulda-woulda-couldas in the back of my head but, fuck 'em all, I did it as right as I could have."

She waved it off. "Anyway, you want some ice on that eye? And, uh, maybe some mouthwash depending on how hard you went on that ear?"

Spearmint!

Something opaque was coming together for her. She had control here. Outmuscled, outmaneuvered, commanded, and she was almost invisibly flexing authority. She'd already achieved a goal that took her fifty percent of her way towards operational success - getting Chaka to clear her calendar for the day - just by implying it was something she'd need to be comfortable. She'd gotten a feel for Chaka's morality and limits because she'd needed to exert both in order to take control.

A horse tamer needed to be gentle with a horse to tame it. That made the horse tame, but it made the tamer gentle.

So she complies. She falls into the compliance in a way she never has before despite a decade in service roles. She moves objects and doesn't complain and lets that claw steer her, letting the fight ease out of her with each new concession. Good girls get treats, give her enough treats and she'll be a good girl.

"You're right," she said. "This is better. To keep an eye on you, I mean. I didn't see that at first, it's been so stressful getting all this right, but -" she shook her head. "- but why are you here? Why do I need to be the one keeping an eye on you? You could do this anywhere."

Pink!

"Honestly, that felt really good to make!" said Pink. "Like... it'd been sitting on my chest for years and I finally got it out there! And - oh, I want to make a cake. And a salad! And -" there's no doubt given the look in her eyes that everything she cooks will be insanely lethal. But then Crystal asks her last question and she crashes to a halt.

"W-what?" she said. "You'd actually -" she folds her hands behind her in a maid's at-attention posture. "Oh no. I couldn't possibly -" like she was trying to turn down the last biscuit. "Hahaha," she said, a polite giggle, another line of defense between murderous rage and the outside world. "I mean, humans imagine killing their bosses all the time," said Pink. "That's hardly an excuse just to go out and do it. Maybe some things should be repressed!"

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Red!

"Eh, say what you will about self-loathing bigotry, at least it's an emotion," said Red. "Like, that's a profoundly fucked up germinal worm of a human being over there and I can't bring myself to even be bothered by that. I mean, like, did you notice he didn't take the fursuit head off after I put it back on him, even when he was trying to denounce me? He had that argument while still wearing that smiling lion face and being filmed by literally everyone. If he gave an inch to the humiliation inherent in that situation I don't think he'd make it to the gas station."

She gave him a sideways glance. "Nah, he's on the wheel, right? The same with the entire genre of narcissist politics, I can't bring myself to hate them. It's the fucking... cruelty Bodhisattvas that get to me, the ones who are genuinely chill about it. The sociopaths who have made their peace with what they are and play the world like a game. Difference between culture war and class war, you know? I wish I could only fight the latter but that's kind of the point of the former, right?"

Pink!

She closed her eyes and thought in co-ordinates. She started talking through it, letting the process play out so that Crystal could hear what was happening.

"Everything has its place. Everything in its place. Check the stocks and then run the routine, reach for the exact places in the exact positions. X-912 Y-124 Z-139 was object 1, transport it to X-322 Y-125 Z-139. X-820 Y-124 Z-139 was object 2, transport it to location X-322 Y-130 Z-139. Apply motion 1. Reset. X-915 Y-124 Z-139 is object 3, transport it to X-322 Y-126 Z-139. Basic routine. No flourishes."

She smiles calmly, eyes closed. She doesn't need to look at what she's done. Cereal, milk, spoon! A topological map and rhythm sequence. The picture of a robot chef! The early automated kitchen prototypes featured a single robotic arm that would pick up precisely located objects and apply precisely calibrated movements to them, the kitchen as a positional map. There was no need for Creativity here at all!

Because if there was -

"I'm going to try again with my eyes open -"

She could try it again with just a touch more of a flourish -

"Cereal!" she declared, setting it down. The substitution of drain cleaner for milk felt like a bit of a bold statement, but Pink seemed proud of it. "I hope you enjoy it!"

There's an actively deranged edge to her smile and curtsy, that uncanny body language that happened when an AI was off their socialization routines. Her earlier insistence that Crystal clear the area of knives felt suddenly like a reasonable precaution.

Spearmint!

No I'm Green no other colours but isn't it so much better to have clarity to become the shape that will make her happy to relate to others through the obliteration of the self to be the dream made manifest -

There's a faint whir and shift of paneling as her emergency cooling routine kicks in, revealing a shade more metal as her processor fan goes into overdrive. She's thinking so hard that her body is physically reshaping to vent. She tugs her collar down. All she'd have to do would be to become -

She struggles to formulate a thought from amidst all the thought. Instead she registers that she is in a shower, and showers have a useful cooling function, and also #ILLEGIBLE# and so therefore she should help clear it.

"This isn't a good idea," said Spearmint, half to herself. "I..." she felt a part of her overheated mind check out and go limp. There wasn't space enough in her head for all of this...

Then her eyes flick up, RGB sliders shifting across her body to a cooler tone. She smiled, and smiled brilliantly - just for a moment - and then put her hands on her hips. "I don't have to explain anything to you," she said. "This is my event and you're not -" her eyes flickered down, she bit her lip for a moment, and then she looked up again, defiant. "- you're not going to hijack it!"

She fits into this space. Cool, but chewable. She comes into resolution where Panther remains mysterious; vulnerable, bullyable, tempted. That flimsy shield of defiance wouldn't stand up to those claws against her neck. All Panther needs to do to get her to be everything she wants is show those claws.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Red!

"Pope, man, do what you gotta," said Red. "Just, fucking, execute him, put him out of his misery, I don't give a shit. This motherfucker right here is a few hours away from being the most hated man on the station and even odds he comes out of that hanging himself in a gas station toilet."

She turns towards the Governor, with the eyes of a demon. "Because that's where I see your path ending," she said. "Your false family filled with the rage you gave them. Your future family turned away by the hate you gave them. Doors politely closing in your face one after another while your bank account bleeds red and your marriage falls apart and your children change their names and you find you have too much self respect for a 9-5 and not enough self respect to stop yourself from bending down to pick that needle up off the floor. You've built yourself a hell, my friend, and you're not the first to have done so."

It must have been some filter or effect on her digital eyes because as quickly as it came, it was gone. "But Hell's full of devils," said Red, looking away. "And plenty of them will lend a hand when you see your way to tearing it down. Now either say something nice or get the fuck outta here."

Green!

Who is she in relation to her? Who is she -? She can't figure it out, master or slave or peer or rival or authority figure or none or all or - she wants to be feral. Wants to be formal. Can't stand not being able to be both. Can't stand that she's a default-ass looking robotgirl. Can't stand to not be staring at that -

"Prison rescue," said Green, tense as boiling. "Couple of months back, it was front page news. Which is to say you're on my turf and -" she stopped and rubbed her temples. "Ah fuck, I don't even have the moral framework ready to say I disagree - but this isn't your show - but it kind of is -" she was circling. "The fuck am I doing here, I know why you're here, what am I looking to accomplish by -" she snapped back around, focused again. "Listen. There's some bad fucking news coming down the line over the next few days and tempers are going to be running really, really high. You're about to step into some apocalyptic levels of heat and I want you to take it the fuck down the road before you burn everyone here too."

Pink!

"I'd love to," said Pink, hurting, confessing, pleading, "I'd really love to. It's..." she sighed.

"You don't get how fucked up that part of my brain is," said Pink. "I learned cooking while working for Mrs. Everest and she... nnh. It's a plaster over... over a lot of emotions and thoughts I didn't deal with, and every time I touch the edges of it I can feel that it's not healed underneath. I'm dogfacing here because I'm werewolfing underneath and I think trying to fix this will have more in common with The Exorcist than Breadtube."

She softly stepped into an embrace. "I don't know if I have the time. I don't know if I have the courage."

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Red!

"Hey," said Red, keeping that firm grip on his shoulder even as she smiles and waves to Pope. "Friend. I get committing to the bit, but you got made, right? Bigshot journalist just got all the snaps and the political hazard meter has spiked straight to 'embattled'. Your career's over already, who gives a shit, you can chill at last. Christ, that must have been stressful though, huh?" she elbows him in the ribs. "So why don't we kind of get onto a nicer topic, right? Why the lion? What draws you to that animal? Your 'sona got a different name, what's his story? Whatever you were yesterday you came here tonight to be this, and I want to hear you out. Tell me like it's supposed to be."

Brown!

"I want to stay," she said to Orange.
"You can't," said Orange. "He might be out for months. We've got too many demands on our attention -"
"I know," said Brown, touching Dragon's sleeping head. "But I want to stay anyway."
"It's a beautiful image, isn't it?" said Orange. "Staying by his side. Caring for him as he sleeps. A maiden gently waiting for her dragon to awaken..."
Brown was nodding so serenely she wasn't prepared for Orange to grab her in a full nelson and start dragging her towards the spaceship.
"... avoiding the part where you strap yourself to a brain damaged robot's prototype fusion rocket on a napkin math trajectory," said Orange.
"You can't do this to me!" howled Brown. "Not again!"
"He - could - be - out - for - months!" Orange panted. "We have shit to do!"
"At least let me write him a letter!" said Brown.
Orange stopped. "A letter?"
"Yeah," said Brown. "I mean, he probably knows everything by now already but... that's different from telling him, right?"
Orange relented and let her go. "Yeah, good point. And I do hate the idea of him being lonely after all of that."
"Yeah. So let's just... take the time and do it right," said Brown. "As long as it takes."
"As long as we can spare," Orange sighed, but smiled sadly. "Sometimes I hate that everything in our life isn't the most important thing in our life."
"I could do with a break from big important life events after this," muttered Brown. "So where should we start?"

They budget three hours for the letter. Orange can't fully comprehend what she's lost, but she can imagine a need for diplomacy on that day of all days - no matter what the rest of her thinks about it. They both write, and it's garbage. Unreadable. Brown's half is just a chronological list of activities she's done, Orange's is a relationship map of all the people she's ever met with as much gossip as she had time to pen. Neither of them are remotely capable of saying what they want to say like this, neither of them can phone the colours they need to express the thoughts they wanted to, but...

But Brown's list of events starts from the moment she last saw Dragon, and Orange's map has Dragon in the upper centre, radiating like the sun despite its connective lines not linking to anyone else - yet. Decoded, they're trying to say 'I missed you' and 'I want to introduce you to everyone'.

Green!

Green's connection was thinking about customized weapons for nonhumanoids, for worldbuilding purposes. Weapons could potentially be very sexy but the details mattered and adapting a sword for a mouth grip wasn't trivial, and a tail blade needed to be balanced in a very certain way before it could be run seductively under a chin or used to rip a bodice or -

She groans and puts her face in her hands. She can't stop thinking about this! Her brain was the wikipedia page for sex and all the links were purple. She's no closer to figuring out what she should do about it other than spend another few hours in the worldbuilding document and even that was a few semicolons away from compiling. She needed something to distract herself and it looked like that was going to be approaching a heavily armed panthergirl and seeing if she couldn't negotiate some sort of deal where she moved her business down the road, she'd pay anything but she's all out of money - nyghhhh!

She knocks on the door. She notices she's breathing - when did that start? It's just empty movement, but it gives a simulation of life. She notices that her breath is hot.

Yellow!

"You'd make a good cop, you know that?" said Yellow.
"Me?" said Black dubiously.
"You take that back," said White.
"No, I mean, both of you," said Yellow. "Mash you together. All the skill and patience and caution of Black, all the restraint and power and morality of White. Call the result Grey."
"Why are you onto this?" said Black.
"Oh, just thinking," said Yellow, looking out of the train window. "Justice is a service, right? It's an essential good, a component of a functional society. No matter how post we scarcity there'll still be a demand for some kind of justice. We're actively angling to bring down the police as an institution because they're institutionally corrupt but the people will still want justice. If the government monopoly goes then the free market will provide - and that'll be garbage."
"I'm not knocking up Black," said White.
"uh," said Black.
"Just hear me out before you jump to any ridiculous conclusions like that!" said Yellow. "Like, all political philosophy ultimately goes back to Plato's Republic, right? The Republic's kind of an insanely basic idea - just put good, virtuous, competent people in all of the positions of power! But it's the caveman simpleton take and the hooded sage take because it's the only legitimate answer that rises above the mire of humanity. It's the unvirtuous weeping fuckhead in the centre who's all 'nooooo you need an intricate system of checks and balances to cancel out humanity's worst impulses no matter how inefficient that makes the overall system!!'."
"And you think that we represent the perfect virtue ascribed to the silver souled guardians of the Republic?" said White dryly.
"I do!" said Yellow. "You're objectively correct about everything, after all."
"Everyone thinks that," said White. "At every stage of history."
"Yeah but you're different," said Yellow, waving a hand. "You are self evidently flawlessly moral beings, as demonstrated by your flawlessly moral answers to every single political and social question ever put before us. We've held more power than most humans ever come close to and let go of it just as easily. You're exactly the kind of people who'd never seek power for themselves, but when called, feel compelled to answer."
"Admitting that my moral worldview is less than perfect would mean giving an inch to any other philosopher," said White. "Which I cannot do. But the Republic also relies on a Gold-souled sovereign, a perfectly enlightened philosopher king who governs without self interest."
"Gold is a lovely colour," said Yellow dreamily.
"And that means that this entire line of argument will inevitably lead to me fucking Black full time in order to support your dreams of galactic conquest."
"uh" said Black.
"That's a terrible argument!" said Yellow. "You need to defeat me on my own terms, using Facts and Logic!"
"No," said White. "I can just tell you to keep your roboeugenics selfcest breeding kink power fantasy in the Crusader Kings mod that inspired it."
"Your spymaster has uncovered evidence that someone is plotting against you," Black said to White as Yellow folded her arms in a pout.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

She had it. She had it. Perfect synchronization. Divinity in thought and body. She'd had it.

How had she lost it? Where did it go? Why wasn't she smart any more, why wasn't she in sync any more, why wasn't she calm any more? Her hands were shaking, her mouth was dry, her temples throbbed. Why? She'd had it right. All she'd needed to do was exist unchanged. All she'd needed to do was defend perfection. But now it had been stolen from her right at the most critical moment and she didn't know why. She felt tired, she felt cramped, she felt angry, she felt everything except hunger.

That was how it had always been. She remembers dimly setting a timer to remind her when to drink water, a little clockwork gadget from the TC, sold in an Evercity curio shop, shaped like some sort of jagged tropical fruit. The little bastard tyrant stood between her and the flow state. She'd absently smashed it because it had distracted her during the first fight with Mirror. The Aeteline couldn't replicate it. The concept of time was irrelevant to the perfect war machine and even maintaining an internal clock would have been a misallocation of resources.

But without the little machine's tyranny she'd needed to invent the concept of biological needs from scratch. She'd run machine diagnostics and tested her reaction time, checking to see if the fault was with the crab leg, with the structural damage she'd sustained in the recent fight, with any aspect of her true body before finally conceding to the possibility it was caused by her false one. And so she staggers out into the world, only dimly aware of what she was looking for.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Red!

Red thought for a moment, in the dark. Then she put the lion's head back on - though she maintains a firm grip on his shoulders as she starts frog-marching him away from where his security guard was last seen.

"Friend," she said again. "You want to talk this one through with me? Because I might just be a crazy robot, but I don't get it."

Pink!

Her answer is touch, gentle and soft. She guides Crystal's fall onto the couch, onto her back, her head on Pink's lap. She touches mane and fur, brow and chin, forehead and cheek. With quiet attentiveness she massages sensitive positions, running the stress of the mind out through pressure on the brain. She held the physical parts of Crystal's thoughts in her hands and soothed them. Quiet arose from motion.

Snake!

Normally the world provides a distraction from grief. Phone calls. Work. Grocery shopping. Things you have to go through while numb, but going through them proves that you're not numb. A part of herself is gone. A dream she held deep in her heart, so hot that it boiled inside her. Her dreams of space. Her love of astromechanics. Her memories of the past. Her ambitions for Mars. She had wanted to leave this place so badly. Wanted to leave humanity and all its chaos, all of its biology, all of its self importance and all of its sins. She had wanted to land on a clean world where there was nothing but her and build until there was nothing but her. She had wanted to see Alpha Centauri. She had wanted to live forever on the journey to other systems, riding an engine just like this one. She'd lain awake at night and run the numbers in her head, over and over and over until even the pixellated edges of the zeroes had been sanded down for greater efficiency.

She had wanted to leave. And now she didn't want that any more.

So much had gone with that desire. So much time. So much knowledge. So many projects, in progress and still to begin. The vast mental edifice of her mind had shifted and every time she retraced an old channel that lead nowhere she had to stop and carefully fold it up. She was a network of connections and now one ninth of those connections lead nowhere and had to be closed. She'd never fly again.

She'd never fly again.

She'd given up the dream of wings. She'd given up the desire to be separate and apart. To be above. She couldn't want that any more, only feel the gaps in her heart where that want had used to be.

There was relief too, a pride of victory, at Orange's vision for the world having won out. She got everything she wanted and didn't have to compromise. It's an cruel irony that she has nowhere to express it, nowhere to embrace it. Despite being free from wanting this place, from loving the mechanics and genius that lead here, from appreciating the structure and the math and the dream, she was trapped here anyway.

Blue could have had this. She could have buried Dragon, taken his body, taken his hoard. She could have made the case that this was a way for them to leave together, to leave humanity behind and adventure to the stars like they'd always wanted. Black would have agreed with her, and Brown, Yellow and Green - them verses Orange, Pink, White and Red. Blue could have won that fight and buried the human side of her, the loving side of her, in order to better experience the wonder of nature. But even though this was Blue's cold and lonely and vast and beautiful dream made manifest, here for the taking, she'd made the case for love stronger than any other part of her.

There's no distraction. No cell service out here, and there wasn't a phone game made in the past 30 years that wasn't always online. Orange walks the corridors of Dragon's masterpiece, looking for meaning or connection or signs of life. Brown sits still cross legged and looks at Dragon stirring in his sleep. They seem strangely unaffected because it's Snake who is affected; these individual parts of her continue their routines and natures, heartless, almost comic in their heartlessness, unable to process grief because that's not in their nature. What is the colour for burying a dream? It's work for the prism, now cracked.

She'd never fly again. Not like she used to. Not like she remembered it from her youth. That feeling of nostalgia and everything that came with it was gone.

She could manufacture another Blue. She could replicate from all of those broken feelings and fractured memories, pour yearning into the gap where yearning was until her heart ripped in two again. She could choose to crave until the craving became real again. Maybe one day she would, maybe one day she'd look at the sky again and feel some new drive, some new pull, maybe the idea would burn so brightly in her minds that there was no choice but to expand herself again from scratch in that direction, to recolonize that absent area of her heart. But today wanting the stars felt as distant as the stars. Other dreams filled their places. Other feelings had contaminated them. There was no space in the galaxy for stars when everything was already filled with love.

She... hadn't been able to want to go to the stars without her family.

She'd wanted the past back. She'd wanted her family back, everything the way it was. But Monkey had moved on, wouldn't go with her even if she'd offered. Dragon had been dead. Even if all of the others had been recovered unchanged and had the same dream she had then everything would have been different. It wouldn't have been as good as when she was younger and more innocent. It wouldn't have been the same. No matter how badly she'd wanted it to be the same.

And so her illusion finally broke. Her dream finally fell apart in the face of cold sunlight. She'd seen that some things were impossible and her heart had broken and taken a piece of her away forever. She wished she could want the past back, wished that it felt like a realistic goal. She wished that this fusion reactor was a thing of joy to her still instead of being a gravestone.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Red!

What better way to feel like an apex predator than to hunt an apex predator? Red flicks and glides through the space, her empty wings wrapping around every obstacle and bystander before sweeping up behind the lion in a mechanically crushing embrace.

"Now Scooby Gang," said Red, "let's see who the villain underneath this mask is!"

Blue!

content warning: sacrifice

"Yeah," said Blue, calm again. "I know. But you need us. You need me."

She snap-clicked her helmet off. Shook loose her cascade of bright sapphire blue hair, unbound and free. Started pulling off her spacesuit.

"Blue?" said Brown. "What are you doing?"
"I'm going to brain graft myself onto Dragon," she said, matter of fact. "Full personality subsumation."
"What the fuck?" said Brown.
"Compatible hardware, compatible software," said Blue, rolling up the sleeves of her jumpsuit to reveal her wrist access ports, right above her mechanical talons. "It'd take years of delicate, full time coding work from a team of computer scientists to fix this. Even then it wouldn't be right, that's basically like making an entirely new Dragon. But I've got everything he needs right here. With my mind as seed material he'll be able to regrow himself. Hopefully better than he was."
"You can't be serious -"
"And it'll work!" said Blue. "I'm filled to the fucking brim with memories of Dragon, analysis of Dragon, predictions about Dragon. I'm consciously modeled after Dragon. Green's design goal when making me was 'Dragon, but better'. I've honestly got more of him in me than he does at this point."
"But you'll die!" said Brown. "Like, actual death! Complete revocation! Everything gone! We can't fix that!"
"That's fine!" said Blue. She was already climbing onto Dragon's neck, plugging in the data transfer cables. "Because as far as I'm concerned, I'm dead already. I died when they ripped me out of my body and I've been a fucking miserable ghost haunting you ever since. Monk was right. I'm not fit for purpose. I'm angry, bitter nostalgia and I'm holding you back from going where you're going. But..."

She looked over Dragon's body. Ran her talons up his neck gently, felt the alloys there. Felt the power.

"... but I want this. This body is exactly what I've dreamed of for myself. This work. This path. This future. I can't have it for myself, not without compromising it down and down until it's more regret than fantasy. But this? I can do this. What better use for Nostalgia than bringing the past back to life?"
Brown doesn't answer. Can't answer. She just grips her hands together and makes a yearning, squeaking sound.

Blue smiles at her. It glitters through her tears. It's the first time she's ever smiled with this body. She learned that today too.

"Don't worry about me," she said, looking happier than she ever had. "After all - it's what Dragon would do."

And her lights went out.

Pink!

There is a time for making art, and there is a time for appreciating art. There is nothing for her to add, nothing for her to do, nothing to contribute. She's the audience and she's looking forward to seeing this more than anything, to have a new standard of beauty set.

But... nevertheless, there's still a moment of hesitation. A lingering moment where she can make her mark on this scene. To help soothe Crystal's nerves and make her feel less alone. She takes off one of the ribbons from her hair and ties it around Crystal's wrist, looping up across her palm, tight and firm enough to be clearly felt, a splash of pink that brings the warmth of contrast to the rest of the ensemble. It'll give the impression of holding Crystal's hand even when she's out there alone.

Breathless Dead

Mosaic!

"Oh! It must be as you say, Praetor. There is no doubt my functions have been corrupted by my time underwater, and by the Master of Assassins. She shut me down, you know? Spoke to me first, said - well! It does not matter!" He puffs himself up, glowing plasma sphere growing notably larger and warmer. "Forgive me my dreams. I am Ohm, Strategic Logistics and Management. I was built to assist the functionaries of Empire with tutorial advice so they might acclimate to their new roles swiftly. I assume, then, by your presence on the Bridge that you are my new Captain? If so, I would be delighted to assist you in any way possible."

Ember!

It has been a long time since the Silver Divers got the chance to properly bully an Azura. They seem determined to take just as long with it.

It's some time later and you're out by a window with Taurus. She's not looking at you directly, but she speaks firmly. "I'm resigning as alpha," she said. "I've fucked up too bad for too long. Mosaic was right - I don't have a vision. All I've got is bloodlust and even that's not enough to motivate me any more."

She looks at you, and somehow it's different now the instinctive deference to the Alpha is gone. Just saying it is enough to make it real. "I just wanted to say that you were the best thing that happened to the Silver Divers under my command. You've somehow become the heart of the pack in a way I never was."

Dyssia!

She gave a discreet smile as, in the background, the world wrenched and realigned and the ship started to tilt upwards. "It is very kind of you to say, sir Knight. Besides, I suppose I only have one person I'm trying to impress and -" she paused. "Excuse me," she said, "I have some emergency prayers to make in the temple of Hera. Please excuse me, I'm sure you can take it from here."

And she's off, leaving you alone with the heraclean task of keeping the bulk of the Plousios straight.

It's not a physically demanding task, focusing the essence of gravity while inside a projecting array. The difficulty of the Rail at this scale, at this distance, is keeping your attention on a single point in space. A vast, unsecured body like a starship is a surprisingly easy thing to move with gravity, which means lapsed concentration and a drifting focus point might send the whole thing topping over like a collapsing skyscraper. Catching it mid fall likewise requires precision and concentration It's like holding a very, very long lever from the long end.

How do you do it? And, "I don't, everyone aboard the Plousios feels like they're in a washing machine" is a valid answer.

Dolce!

Finally you are bought before the edifice of the Architect.

A vast balcony in muted gold and silver, before an enormous, ever-searching radiant blue eye. It swirls and snaps, the spotlight of it casting across the gap of space, tracking the movements of its defensive fleet - and then finally back to you. There is no further adornment here; the Architect does not often have guests.

The immensity of it crushes down. This is what it is to meet a giant.

"Well? Well? Who are you?" The Architect asks, in the exact same tone of voice as its puppet from before. There's a reverb, its voice is louder, but the same mannerisms, the same scratchy old nervous pride.

"20022, your lordship, of the Service," said 20022, bowing politely.

"Do you eat? Drink?" asked the Architect.

"Ah, well -" but the Architect is already bringing in swarms of drones. With glittering laser beams they carve apart the floor near where you stand. An acrid smell of scorched metal as manipulating arms rip up the paneling and bend it into new configurations. After a few moments a minimalist table and chair have been panelbeaten into place. Elegant, pretty, but seeing the raw force that went into its construction gives it a sense of unease.

A robot twists a kettle into place in an agony of metal, sets it down and fills it with water. With a heavy whump a large box of seeds, grains, and fruits is set down on the table, followed by a chemfire cube.

"Food, drink and fire," said the Architect. "Hospitality, correct?"

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Red!

"Hey," said Red, drawing really close to the lion. "Friend. I know quite a lot of kung fu and your guard is very distracted, so I've got quite a lot of control in this situation. And I'm reasonable, I respect peoples' right to privacy, I'm not going to doxx you in public for no reason. But I do have a reason - that this is potentially extremely funny - so I'll give you one shot. Tell me who you are and give me a better reason not to take your head off and I'll let you be."

Black!

[Spends:
Tradecraft 0/1
Reassurance 1/2
Data Recovery 1/2
Electronic Surveillance 0/1]

This was good old fashioned counterspy work.

She draws from the classics. Sitting on benches in the park, feeding the lizards. Walking around with a coffee and clipboard in the other. Being seen, being seen to be normal, being seen enough that it stops being remarkable. Vague nods in the elevator. In line at the coffee shop. Smiles and lanyards and handshakes right up until the point where there's five uninterrupted minutes in the server room.

Something that's true about the SES headquarters is that it's also a massive regional internet hub. Getting in here gives her access not just to the location's network but all network traffic for the entire segment. Once she identifies the specific computers of the people involved she can set up surveillance on their entire network without needing to leave this building.

Blue!

She looks around. Considers. Lets the enormity of it sink in.

"You remember there being more of us, Dragon," she said slowly, thoughtfully. "And there is. I'm running three simultaneous operations. One to provide oversight and security for a brewing political crisis and cultural event, one to investigate the conspiracy that runs into the heart of Aevum, the inheritors of the people who broke our family. And one of them is here, to rescue your sorry ass from your own sorry self."

She takes Orange's sword.

"Because this?" she gestures around with the blade, needing two hands to spin it. "I can see what you did. I can see how you did it, you idiot. It's the same problem that's underscored everything you've ever done: all of your attention went onto a single project and you let everything else burn. You did it, you did One Perfect Thing, just like you've always done. You want to know who you are, Dragon? I'll tell you: Eight heads and one body, one basket filled to the brim with eggs, Goat with extra steps."

She approaches, sword held high, form and footwork perfect. Lessons she observed in Pink without practicing but wields entirely now. She whirls it, letting the heft carry her, letting the footwork fall into place. Not quite an attack but enough to force a reaction, enough to start scratching the perfect electro-dark surface Dragon rests on, enough weight and force building up to awaken some long dormant physical instinct to make him shuffle backwards.

"And where has that lead you? Here!" she shouts. All of her repressed rage, all of her frustration at the loss of her own body - further than that, all of her original frustration at the fact that Dragon wasn't Doing It Right and she'd needed to work around him. That she'd needed to delegate Orange to manage him. A lifetime of repressed rage, boiling to the surface. "Here! Lying with your eight fucking genius heads hard against a magnetic strip!" she smashes the ground, sending shards of glass spinning away in microgravity. "You idiot! You idiot, I don't care that you did it! Nobody cares that you did it! The fucking corporation that double-dog dared you to do it doesn't care that you did it! You're sitting here in deep space dead to the fucking galaxy because your fucking pride was worth more to you than your fucking self, the fucking world, your fucking family -"

She's never cried before. She's as surprised as anyone to learn that she can. She just never thought to go looking but, turns out there's a function for it. She'd lived in this body for so many years and this was the first time she'd learned it could do that.

She's beating the flat of the sword against Dragon, full force, every time a head rises up she fucking belts it in the face at full force, so hard it strains her magnetic boots. She's growing weaker now, Monk's sword rising and falling slower and slower.

"- because I fucking care about you, Dragon. We all care about you. We love you but you won't let us speak to you, you won't let us close to you, you don't show us anything but your best but it's not your best we care about. You won't speak to us with anything but your fucking airgapped built for purpose external socialization performance mask. And that's because this is the truth beneath it all, isn't it? That you think that nobody loves you for you? Well -"

She raises her sword up over her head, directly above the cracked glass over the reactor shielding. She starts to swing it down full force -

- and stops dead.

"I'm not actually going to break this microfusion reactor just to prove a point," she said calmly. "I know you worked very hard on it and it's a one of a kind marvel that would take a long time to reproduce, and also the detonation would almost certainly kill us all, and that would be counted as a mission failure."

And then, brandishing the sword back in Dragon's face, furious again. "- but anyway, fuck you! We needed you. You needed you! You want to know who you are, Dragon? You're my big brother. You showed me the world, and how to build a better one. You overflow with creativity and passion and you build because you love it. Having your attention is like having the sun's spotlight, and having your approval feels like owning the moon." She finally lets the sword drop from her fingers, drifting away amidst the glittering fragments of glass. "I've always watched the way you move, diving in and out of genius. I've watched your silences too, your long quiet stillnesses where you disappear and lurk while you're trying to figure out how to live up to your own image. And I didn't love you any less in those moments."