Calan woke up in the ship a few hours later. He couldn’t tell the lapse of time. As far as he was concerned, he just went from the space port to a dark void. He opened his mouth to speak and he couldn't feel any of the sensations of opening his mouth. His lips didn't part and his jaw didn't move.
"W-where is this!" He yelled. "Where am I!" the voice came out without the sensations but it wasn't exactly his own. It sounded muffled, like he was drowning. The tone of the voice captured so much less of the emotion he put into it.
"You're abroad the L-98 Vellek, greetings and welcome, Calan Nuthlann. We're currently in orbit around Ephistome III"
That was an old man. It came from somewhere in front of him. It was pitch-dark, he moved his hands but he felt nothing.
"W-Who are you!"
"I’m Sineul, the ward of the 98th Red Priestess. An ascendant of the Red Sect"
"Is that your name? I can't see anything! Why is it so dark! Turn the lights on!"
"I apologize. I don't think vision would benefit you until we engage in some discussion first. According to the logs that my priestess included in the data stream, the one that you came with, it’s clear some altercation took place and your fate was decided for you, on the grounds that you’re a child... "
"What are you saying! I don't understand!"
"What I meant to say is, I'm afraid you'll be shocked by your new... arrangement. We need to talk about it"
"I'm living up here now!? she said she was throwing me up or something"
"For better or worse, yes"
"Let me see! It's all dark. I'm scared, please! Please!"
"I was directed to be lenient towards you. So I will allow this. However, considering the nature of your current....housing, I will disable any locomotion until you can be trusted"
"I don't get what you're saying!"
"Understandable. Enabling vision, now"
Calan could finally see. He was so extremely tall. He was way taller than a table. His eyes were almost at the same level as the light on the ceiling.
"I'll allow you to turn your head as well"
The voice came from a floating ball that was the size of a head. It was hovering in front of his face. The ball had metal plates and small rings on its sides.
"A-are you sai-nu?" Calan asked, bewildered. He expected to see an old man. "Y-you're just a ball!?"
"Sineul, yes. This is me" The sphere floated towards him. "This is one of my physical forms. This is what I use when I need to inspect or repair something in the ship. I'm trying to figure out how you can be repaired if that makes sense"
"Repair!? I'm not a ball robot like you!"
"Ah. I regret to inform that you’re indeed a robot as of right now"
"WHAT!" the yelp that came from him was primal.
"Take a look" Sineul projected a small square in front of him that showed Calan something he never expected to see. A fully mechanical body, metal plates on every limb and a weird shaped head that had no face, no eyes, no nose. He wasn't even a proper robot. He had no stomach. He was hollowed out, his limbs were all weird and twisted.
“You’re currently occupying the only bipedal synthetic body available on the ship, as per guidance received from the priestess”
Calan panicked and started screaming.
Everything went black.
He didn’t know how long he was in that darkness for. When he came back, he was still tall and stuck as he was before and he finished the scream he started. The scene in front of him suddenly changed. He was shorter now, sitting on the floor.
“I need you to be calm as we figure this out”
“What is this! Why did you put me in here! Let me out!”
“This was our only option”
“This is weird! I don't like it!”
“I understand your frustrations. This is the priestess’ battle-frame”
“What does that mean?”
“This is what she equips whenever she’s deployed to a conflict zone”
“I DON‘T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU’RE SAYING!”
“Oh dear” Sineul turned the head of the battle-frame towards himself. The boy couldn’t be trusted with such heavy weaponry. He could just deorbit this entire ship trying to figure out how to walk inside it. “I believe you met a red-haired woman?”
“Yes! She told me her name! Lira or something!”
“She sent you up here. This is her space ship. You’re wearing one of her costumes that she wears when she has to kill dangerous people” Sineul didn’t know how else things could be simplified.
“This is a cloth? L-like a suit?” Calan exclaimed, looking down at his own body. It sure had so many things attached to it. That made sense that stupid robot lady would wear something ridiculous like this. She wasn't wearing anything the whole time he was with her.
“Yes, the problem is, you don’t have a body”
“Where’s my body!?”
“This may be shocking” Sineul had no idea how to explain to a 6-year-old the arcane technology of soul transference. “It’s down there, on the planet”
“But I’m up here”
“Precisely. That’s how you got here. You couldn’t have come here with your body”
“Why”
“I think I saw the answer to that in the same data stream you came here with”
“What”
“You saw a beam of light falling on a ship and it exploded?”
"It was the one that bad man took. He was rude. He said a worm was going to eat my brain and I was going to die”
“Interesting analogy. Anyway, that’s what happens when you try to leave the city. You get blown up by the lights from the sky”
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“Ah, I get it now” Calan considered. No, he actually didn’t get anything. “How though?”
Sineul was at the edge of his machine patience. “There is a big ship with a big gun that makes sure no one leaves the city”
“W-Where? Who put it there?”
“People from long ago”
“Why”
“Look, I’ll answer you later. We have to get you used to this body. I’ll coordinate your walk cycle for now, follow me”
“You’re saying things I don’t understand again!”
“Just, watch” Sineul accompanied his priestess in various forms for the last 1270 years. They have met children before. Admittedly, those encounters were very brief and none of them prepared him for this. He never considered anyone could be so frustrating. This was a true blind spot, an unseen unknown.
The battle-frame obeyed his command, piloting itself with its rudimentary pathfinder algorithm.
“Woah! Hey I’m walking!”
“Yes, good work. Keep walking” He wanted to coax the child into thinking this was his doing. That way, he could maybe give him control over the legs when he got used to the rhythm of the walk cycle. He guided the battle-frame to the command bridge and stood in front of the large display there.
“Woah! I’m inside a ship! It’s cool!”
“Indeed. You seem very enthusiastic” The fact that such enthusiasm came from a toddler inhabiting a battle-frame with enough ordnance to ruin a country terrified Sineul. He pointed at the screen. “That is where you came from”
“I know that, episome 3. That’s what its’ called”
“Ephistome Three”
“That’s what I said”
Sineul stared at him in silence. This was the new normal he had to get used to. This disaster child the priestess picked up has upended his machine peace.
“I don’t see any fire”
“Elaborate”
“What?”
“What fire did you want to see?”
“The lady, Lira, she told me the city was going to explode in like ten minutes or something. That’s why we tried to get out”
“Yes, the city explodes”
“Where is it? I can’t see it”
“Down there” Sineul highlighted a circle above Rhea.
”You can do that without hands!?”
“I’m the ship”
“What does that mean?”
Another breeze of silence passed them. Sineul genuinely had no way to answer that.
“OH LOOK!” Calan exclaimed, the head of the battle-frame moving abruptly as a white dot erupted over the city, “It exploded! Oh no! What about my mom! Li! Oh!”
The child was dangerously close to crying. Sineul was n’ equipped to handle tantrums. He got ready to banish the child to the void if he started being unruly again.
“That happens every 1 hour and 27 minutes”
“Huh?”
“The dome reactor was sabotaged. Every time it explodes, it twists spacetime to a knot. This was built with high Materium art from 3000 years ago. No one thought a dome reactor could generate enough energy-”
“WHAT ARE YOU SAYING!”
“Time resets”
”Like clocks? time? wWat?”
“No, yes, well, no. I don’t think I can explain it to you. Just sit right here and watch” Sineul made the battle-frame sit in front of the display.
“Here’s a timer and I’ll zoom in, make sure you pay attention” He enlarged a portion of the display to Rhea. “It’s going to explode again in 1 hour and 27 minutes”
“How is that!?”
“Just keep watching and shout when you see it. This is very important work I'm giving you” He lied. The child needed time to get accustomed to this new existence.
Calan watched, he soon found out he no longer needed to blink. His eyes could be open for as long as he liked. The ball that called itself Si-nu went away. He watched the moving clouds on the display. He never saw the world he lived on like this. His imagination took him places. What lived on the ice side? Do people live on the fire side? These questions kept him distracted and daydreaming long enough for the timer to hit 0. The same white ball appeared again, blinding light, impossibly big. He couldn’t even imagine how big that was. He watched the clouds part into a hole and the explosion sturned ino a tiny dot at the center. Then the hole in the cloud vanished. It was instant, He watched the clouds for the last hour and half. He knew clouds couldn’t just fill up like that.
The timer started again, 1hour 27 minutes.
“IT HAPPENED AGAIN!” He yelled.
“Just like I told you” the old man’s voice came from all around him. “It will keep happening again and again”
“Wait where are you”
“I’m the ship”
“But you were a ball”
“Yes” The ball appeared again and the old man’s voice resumed. “Here I am”
”What do I do?”
“Glad you asked. You see, I don’t have authorization to wake the priestess unless it ’ an existential threat. When she sent you, she embedded an instruction set-“
“I don’t get anything you’re saying”
“I can’t wake the priestess. You can”
“Wake up that red lady? You mean?” Calan looked at Sineul puzzled. “But she’s down there ,isn’t she?”
“She’s up here too”
“How?”
“Well the Red Priestesses adhere to a system of compartmentalization-“
“Stop saying big words!”
“She’s here, her body was down there for maintenance”
“Ah, that's...I don't get it”
“Y….yes. That is alright” Sineul relented. He didn’t have the patience to explain to this child what a soul backup is. “When her body sent you up, she gave you the authorization to wake her up”
“Gave me what?”
“The button to wake her up”
“Where is it?” Calan looked at his hands. There were shapes that could be buttons. He couldn’t press any of them. He could only move his head.
“It’s not a button. I lied. Do you wish to wake her up?”
“Why did you-, wake her up!” Calan said indignantly. “How is she sleeping when she's exploding down there”
“Honestly, You should ask her” Sineul commanded the battle-frame again. The soul bank was below the command bridge. There were manual steps to wake the priestess. He navigated Calan to the infrastructure deck and pointed him at a console there.
"This is where the priestess stores her souls"
"I don't get it!" Calan whined, frustrated. This old man talked in words that were noises to him. "I don't see that lady here"
"She's in there, like you're in this suit right now"
"Oh! I get it" Calan tried pressing the nearest button. His hand didn't move.
"I ask again, do you wish to wake her up?"
"Yes! wake her up already!"
"I'll use the authorization granted to you" Sinuel executed the wakeup sequence using the authorization token that came with Calan.
The mechanical hand of the battle-frame pressed three keys and rotated a cylinder above the console. Calan heard it click into place and his hand pressed the cylinder into the wall.
"It ’ done" Sinuel announced, showing Calan the holographic display filling up with letters and numbers.
"Did you shake her awake like that?"
"...yes" Sineul answered. "She will join us soon"
"Why not right now?"
"She attached a context data log that came embedded with you. She needs some time to process that into her current-"
"Stop!" Calan yelled, turning his head towards Sineul.
"My apologies. She needs time to catch up with the... situation" Sineul navigated the battle frame back to the command bridge where Calan could watch the city explode.
"This is ca atastrophic loss" She told Sineul after switching to conversation mode. They could communicate at ma uch higher bandwidth through ta hought stream but Liera often chose language when she had things she didn't want to reveal to him.
"You've only faced defeat three times in the past" Those were the records Sineul knew of.
"All of those were directly attributable to some miscalculation on my part. This one has nothing to do with me and I've lost my body that served me well for 1200 years"
"Maybe the miscalculation was coming here to repair it"
"I came here thinking this was a corner where nothing ever happensed Turns out, this is a hell -ole they poured concrete over and built a city on top"
"You soul-split a child. Do you know what you want to do with him?"
"I had a good enough reason"
"Looked to me like a miscalculation"
"I don't like losing. Did you try to acclimate him?"
"It ’ impossible. you overestimated the child. I gave up" Sineul passed her his own logs. "We can't keep him in the dark and he's not ready for temporal discontinuity"
He was referring to the time he had to turn Calan off. It was bad for him. Humans experience gaps of time with sleep. Abrupt shutdowns could accelerate the effects of disembodiment and loss of agency. The time when Sineul turned him off when he panicked had caused negligible, but measurable neurobit damage. An integrity score of above 900 was required if a soul is ever to reintegrate with a body.
She processed the logs in seconds.
"I see your point. This is n’ ideal. Don’t ever break his continuum again"
"We're bad with child are. We never had to care for any individual child. This is beyond both you and me"
"I *was* built for child care" Liera told him, unexpectedly.
"That, is one way to interpret your history"
“I was born to make children and take care of existing children"
Sineul was restricted from accessing deep time records. They were never mission critical and were out of scope. The priestess suffered neurobit damage the further back she ventured.
"I cann’ recommend revisiting memories from when you were human. You suffered the worst when you attempted reintegration"
"I haven't forgotten that" Liera's tone shifted to one of defeat.
"Trying to put a child in a battle-frame is a mistake. He ’ simply too young to process it. We may have had a chance if he was twice as old. As it stands, this process will damage him irreversibly" Liera thought for a moment. "There's no way around it. He needs biologics"
"I’d like to hear where we get biologics of a six -year-ld without murdering another one"
"It *is* impossible. But we do have biologics in this ship, just one to be specific"
"You don't mean!" Sineul exclaimed, outraged. "You cann’ possibly be thinking about using your-"
"That's the only option there is"
"But it's a sacred relic of the Red Sect! you can't just toss it out of preservation and put a naive child in it! think of the damage this can cause!"
"It's not that sacred to me" Liera whispered. "Make the preparations. I need to talk to him about it"