“This wasn’t built for humans,” he explained when Calan shoved his head into a hole. “Only I need to travel that deep, usually to repair something.”
“Can I watch the city exploding again?” Calan's voice echoed in the tunnel.
“No. That part of the ship is not good right now”
“Why are we hiding?”
“You are hiding. I’m the ship”
Sineul noticed the characteristic silence that followed whenever he said this. This child still didn't understand what he meant. He just stared at Sineul with a dumbfounded expression.
“Why do I have to hide though?” Calan asked, trying to poke another hole with a glowing light inside it. He tried to pull it out.
“The priestess told you already. This body of hers is a secret. No one should know about it”
“What’s in here?” Calan asked, twisting his body as he tried to dig deeper into the hole.
“Never mind that child, could you please be more mindful of how you behave? Must I remind you that you’re only covered by a towel”
“I should find the clothes! I forgot, sorry” He got distracted on his way to that dangerous oily room in deep storage.
Sineul was on the brink of maximum embarrassment and moral outrage that his machine soul could handle. He never anticipated to see his priestess behave in such undignified ways. Nudity was fine by him, that in itself could be ‘sacred’ as the high art of nature. But the child was just acting a fool with the body he was given with no regard for its owner's femininity. Sineul wasn’t sure how long he could tolerate seeing his priestess act this way. It messed with the sky high pedestal that he placed her on.
Calan eventually found the deep storage and used the elevator to go down. He found fresh clothes and managed to tie his hair with Sineul’s guidance. As he stared at himself in the mirror, it occurred to him how bizarre things were. A girl stared at him, with bright orange eyes and red hair.
“Did she really look like this when she wasn’t a robot?” He asked Sineul.
“Yes, this is her exact body that the robot was made from” He didn’t even know why the boy sounded so doubtful. “What’s the matter?”
“This hair is too red” Calan checked a strand. “And these eyes are so weird…orange”
“This is the complexion of Solarii people”
“Who’s that?”
“Dear child, she wasn’t born alone. She’s part of a race. They were called Solarii, they come from a planet called Solarak Prime”
“There’s more people that look like this!?” Calan was fascinated. If he saw someone like this in his normal life he would assume it was a synthetic, or someone working in entertainment that needed to stand out.
“Well, not anymore, they’re-“ Sineul paused “I think this topic is best discussed with the priestess-”
Sineul got the shock of a lifetime in the next second.
“W-war!?” He yelled. He’d been monitoring the meeting between his priestess and the AUM commander. He was paying more attention to Calan but he didn’t miss the words that came out from his priestess. She was threatening to declare war on the entire galactic federation!? The one they spent 1270 years to help prop up!?
“What’d you say?” Calan turned to him, surprised by the sound Sineul made.
“Stay here, I’ll be back” The ball dropped and rolled on the floor.
“Shut the dock, he doesn't get to leave. If those interceptors breach the radius, kill them” Liera’s voice came from the battle-frame as she exited the dock.
“This is unexpected” Sineul switched everything in the ship to prepare for battle.
“It is necessary. They have a capability that they're not supposed to have”
That was all Sineul needed to arm every single canon and warhead in the ship. Her word was absolute and if she wanted to kill AUM he would start with whoever she wanted dead first.
“Should I activate the beacon?” He asked, after preparing everything else. A declaration of war was best done with the support of other allies. Going to war with the galactic federation could take a lot of them.
“Anyone nearby?”
“76th is the closet. She could take some time to arrive. Our signal takes 27 hours to reach the relay network. Other than that, we can call on all illuviets to arms. We’ll need to start with some proof of our claim”
“I think Calan could help. Synthesize his experience out of his memories. Use my logs as well. We can broadcast it. We just have to make sure it shows the orbital laser being used on a civilian freighter, that alone should be enough”
“Of course!” Sineul hadn’t seen it from this angle. Maybe the child was here for a reason. Did the priestess plan this far ahead? It was unlikely. But she had a way of being blessed by God. The child was a perfect catalyst for war, a red sect sovereign is respected and feared but they could be distrusted. A small child had the opposite effect. This could rally a massive response.
“Call for aid from the 76th right away, she owes me” The battle-frame stiffened as Liera transferred out of it. “Make preparations for the broadcast, we might need it"
Calan had nothing to do while Sineul was gone so he checked everything out in the oily room. It wasn't oily anymore, the floor was extremely clean. He poked around every single thing that he could poke around. The floating ball powered up again and started hovering in front of him.
"How do you feel now Calan?" Liera asked him.
"I'm a bit hungry"
"You can find food in the room to the left"
"Really!?" This was good news, he was worried this ship full of robots didn't have any food. A door opened, revealing a new room.
"Pick what you like" The ball illuminated racks full of small cubes wrapped in foil. He unwrapped one and it was as tough as wood.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
"How do I eat this?" He asked, after trying to graze it with his teeth. He could taste it, something starchy with a bit of spice.
"Add water, you can prepare food over here" Liera guided him to the end of the room and a food processing machine opened its transparent lid. Calan placed the cube inside and he watched as the machine drowned the cube with water. it burst out like thick foam.
"This is so soft" He scooped some into his mouth. He barely needed to bite it. "What is this?" He didn’t like the mild taste but it did fill him up around the fourth scoop.
"I think potato" Liera read the label of the foil he dropped on the floor. "salt and pepper"
"That's not what potatoes should taste like" he told her. He knew potatoes. He knew salt and he knew pepper. This tasted like eating a sponge with 1% of the taste of all three. He preferred the taste he got from grazing the cube with his teeth. Maybe these could work better as candy, but he was sure he could choke on these cubes half the size of his palm.
"We should get better food then" She had never eaten a single meal from this stockpile. She never lasted long enough in her body to get hungry. "Do you need to try something else or...?"
"No, I'm full" He placed the food container back in the machine. It closed the lid and started rotating wildly. "Oh! What's happening? Did I break it!?"
"It's just recycling. Come, we have things to do"
She guided him to the stasis chair. He didn't really know what this was about but he could tell the lady thought it was most important.
"Do you remember when you got your brain interface?"
"What that? I didn't get anything like that"
"The metal socket at the back of your neck, what did you call it?"
"Oh the baindive thing" he looked at the ball apprehensively. He didn't enjoy having it, no child did. "I was a little baby back then"
It was a mandatory augment for citizenship. Every human above the age of 1 needed to have an interface, registered with the nearest governing body. This was necessary for people to be entities recognized by the galactic civilization.
"I don't have that," Liera told him. "I don't know if you noticed"
Calan immediately touched the back of his neck and found out that indeed, it was just skin. he couldn't feel the bump, the hole, the flap. There was nothing at the back of his neck.
"It's so weird! Why didn't you get one as a baby?"
"When I was a baby, that wasn't a thing where I lived"
"You'd hate it. It hurts a lot when they poke it every year" Calan only had bad things to say about the regular inspection visit that every child dreaded besides the dentist. "But how do you call people?" he asked, puzzled. As much as he hated the process of maintaining it, he couldn't imagine life without it.
"I didn't call people that way, this was a long time ago"
"When was that?" he hadn't heard of a time when transmission wasn't a regular part of life.
"a few thousand years ago"
"thousand!" Calan has heard big numbers before. He couldn't count that far, he still thought the biggest number was 100. That many years was unimaginable. Anything larger than that registered as noise in his brain.
"See, the problem right now is, every time I need to fix something about you, you have to come here and get stabbed in the head" Liera showed him the thin needle that hid behind the apparatus on the stasis chair.
Calan was horrified. He did remember the sharp jab at the back of his neck when he woke up but it passed too quickly to notice.
"That looks long!" he wailed, his heart jumping to his throat. It was thin and long. He didn't like the image of it going all the way into his brain.
"This body has something like what you had. It's just deep inside. There's no port. I think it's time we added one"
"I can't recommend this procedure!" Sineul interrupted. "You'll cause damage to the relic!"
"It can be mended later" Liera circled back to Calan. "Lie down, It'll be quick"
"No way! That's going to hurt me!"
"It won’t hurt you, It’ll hurt me, I’m taking over for a bit”
“Do you promise?”
“Yes”
Calan lay down as was told and the metal bracket clamped around his head.
“But wait! If you’re here then where am I!”
“You’ll be the ball”
“No I do-“
He felt a sharp jab at the back of his neck and was sucked out of the body before he finished the sentence.
Liera opened her eyes on the stasis chair and halted the retraction sequence that was meant to pull the needle off her head. She needed to leave it in.
“This is weird! I’m a ball now” Calan’s voice echoed in front of her.
He didn't know how was lied to. He wasn’t the ball, she just routed his voice output into it and limited his vision to the camera. The ball itself had no infrastructure to host a soul. It was full of components that enabled its hover drive. It was just an extension of the ship. This lie was necessary to maintain his continuum. She didn't want to cause even a negligible amount of neurobit damage if it could be avoided.
“Help me with this,” Liera pointed at the apparatus that was injecting the needle into the back of her neck. She communicated her entire plan to Sineul with a thought stream while she talked to Calan. It was a command Sineul obeyed with no objections. He took over the physical control of the ball without announcing his presence. Calan couldn’t be expected to even navigate it in a straight line.
“Ew it looks gross!” He complained, oblivious to Sineul’s manipulations of the ball. He was hovering very close to the back of Liera’s neck. He saw the needle sink into her skin. He shuddered to think that happened earlier without even knowing about it. “What should I do?”
“Just take it apart, keep the needle in,” Liera told him, it was just for him. Sineul already knew the exact disassembly step by step. It was fine for Calan to believe he was doing this on his own. The ball extruded three spindly arms and carefully disassembled the injector mechanism from the chair.
“Hey! I’m doing it! I don’t know if I broke it though! Is this right?”
“Yes, it’s right, don’t you worry” Liera answered, blinking tears as small vibrations of the disassembly process sent waves of pain rippling to her forehead.
“I can see the thing, it's long, what should I do now?” Calan asked, his camera zooming into the base of the needle.
“There’s a bigger ring around it, cut it there”
“Cut it, how? Scissors?”
“Laser”
“Whoa!” He was caught off-guard by the sudden light and sparks that came from the ends of his tiny arms. They cut the needle where it connected with the rest of the injector. “I can do that!?”
“You definitely can” Liera raised herself, freed from the injector at last. Every movement hurt the back of her neck in some way. The anesthetic that the chair used wasn’t meant to numb the pain this long.
“I’m going to lie down” She announced, flipping over to lay on her stomach. She rested her face into the mold that was meant for the back of her head. She had to stay still for the next part. The needle stood 20 cm off her neck, with the thick bottom part that fit the rest of the injector. Now it needs to be trimmed down to the skin.
“It looks crazy! Does it hurt? It’s bleeding” Calan asked, with genuine concern in his voice.
“Yes, it does. Now, cut it down. Slide the big part down”
Calan’s camera zoomed in on three levels. He could see all three screens at the same time. He felt like a clever doctor as his arms used a laser to cut the needle just a tiny bit above her skin and his other arm did something very quickly to the thicker part that was cut off. The lasers cut a slice off it and he placed that thin slice on the skin. Zooming even further, he was presented with something he never expected to see.
“It looks cool!”
The needle had so many colorful lines that they were sprouting off from the cut like bristles on a brush. Each bristle was also made from other smaller bristles twisted together. His arms, now impossibly tiny, worked through all of the bristles, bending and pushing them against the metal slice that was drenched in blood. One of his arms used water to clean the blood and soon, every line that came out of the needle was pinned to the circle.
“I think it’s done!” He announced, somewhat proud of his achievement. As far as he was concerned, being a girl for a day had given him some serious skills.
“Thank you” Liera stood, touching the back of her neck. It still hurt and she was getting close to her time limit on this body. She had to be quick. This crude port wasn’t anchored to her skull like a brain dive port and it could easily rip off. She found medical supplies in the next room and she used a thick adhesive to secure the needle. She swallowed two painkillers and came back to the stasis chair to grab the other half of the injector.
Sineul helped her quickly put it back together while Calan kept exclaiming at his excellent engineering skills. He thought everyone should be a girl for a day, there was no need to waste time with schooling. Sineul finished the procedure with seconds to spare as Liera started to feel her dreaded nausea belching forth. Her soul wanted out of her body.
“Get ready Calan, you’re going to be back in here,” She told him, lying back down on the chair as SInuel used the arms to carefully align her head with the modified injector.
“Eh! But I like this one” He complained. The ball was fun. He could fly, zoom into things, three arms with lasers. He could do surgery like a doctor and repair things like an engineer. This was perfect.
Liera didn't bother arguing with him as she was busy fighting the brink of unconsciousness. Calan was sucked back into her body before he knew it. Waking up, his head felt heavy and he felt feverish.
“Ugh! I have a headache now”
“It will pass. Listen now, I have something important to tell you” She rushed to install a port into him because circumstances forced her to.
“I might have to declare war on AUM”
“What do you mean?”
“We'll have to fight everyone” she simplified.
“WHAT!” He didn’t even know what 'everyone' meant. It was definitely more than 10 people and he could barely handle his brother, a fellow 6-year-old. “Are we even going to win?”
“We can try. But if things get out of hand, now I can keep you safe in the battle-frame”