Limit was seven years old before he first learned that his family . . . wasn't.

  Before then, life in Cousin Thalia’s crèche provided everything a young Jorian could need. He had a safe environment to learn and grow, all the food he could eat, and a dozen cousins his age to play with.

  If he'd been older, or born nearly anywhere in Polyhumanic space other than Joria, he might have wondered why he had so many cousins. Everyone he knew was his cousin, from the children to the older polyhumans taking care of them.

  It didn't seem strange to young Limit, though. Until the day everything changed, it was all he’d ever known.

  Limit and the younger cousins were in the big activity room for playtime. Many of the children were in groups but he was off by himself, playing with his favourite toy. A child-sized space vessel shaped like a long, narrow cone with sleek lines and smooth contours, it was just big enough that he’d need two hands to pick it up.

  The ves was controlled by a pair of shiny, decorated gloves. To little Limit's endless fascination, the gloves could change size and shape to fit the hands of whoever wore them. It didn't even matter whether they were small hands like Limit’s or bigger ones like the older cousins.

  Sometimes Limit wouldn't even play with the ves itself. He'd just take the amazing gloves on and off, over and over again. “Metafluidic,” he’d say proudly while he did so. He’d learned the word from Cousin Thalia and practiced until he could say it properly, just like she did.

  Today he was going to use the gloves for their true purpose: to remotely control the little toy ves. But after he took them on and off only a few times he was interrupted by an annoying voice behind him.

  “You've been playing with the ves forever, Limit. It's my turn!”

  Limit scowled as he turned around. He knew exactly who he'd see.

  “Have not!” he denied to the young girl who'd accused him. “Didn't even start yet, Joa!”

  “Playing with the control gloves is the same as playing with the ves,” Joachilla shot right back at him.

  They were the same, often-repeated words their older Cousin Thalia used. Joachilla even narrowed her unique, orange-and-black eyes and placed her hands on her hips in her best attempt to glare at him the way Thalia did.

  Limit hunched his shoulders defensively and looked down at his feet. He knew he was wrong but stubbornly refused to give in.

  “Is not,” he argued and hid the gloves behind his back.

  Joachilla squinted her eyes so tightly that the distinctive orange irises surrounded by the unusual black orbs of her eyes all but disappeared. But Limit glared right back at her.

  “Cousin Bravery!” the young girl suddenly yelled so loudly that Limit flinched. “Cousin Limit isn't sharing!”

  One of the older cousins was leaning up against the wall not too far away. A teenage boy, Bravery had been one of the ‘young’ cousins in the crèche only a year ago. Then, when he'd grown old enough, he'd left the crèche like all young cousins eventually did. Unlike most, however, he'd returned shortly afterward, but now as an older cousin.

  Older and also . . . bluer?

  “Ten minutes, Mit,” the recently blue-skinned Cousin Bravery responded. He sounded bored and didn't even look their way. As usual, Bravery’s eyes were staring off into space at nothing Limit could see. Most older cousins did that from time to time but Bravery did it constantly. “Then it's Joachilla’s turn or I'll turn that thing off.”

  “Not fair!” Limit’s scowl turned to a pout. He didn't truly understand exactly how long ten minutes was but he did know it was far too short. He tried to stomp his foot, but the resilient floor of the activity room absorbed the impact without a sound.

  Cousin Bravery paid him no mind. But Limit knew that when the time was up he would make good on his threat.

  “Not fair” Limit mumbled again. Joachilla just smiled triumphantly.

  Limit turned back to the ves and put the control gloves back on. He didn't know exactly how older cousins did it but they could override anything in the crèche. Even without control gloves, no matter what the younger children did to stop it.

  He'd certainly tried enough times.

  All he knew was that whatever they used was called a cynth. It had something to do with the way they’d stare off at nothing at all, but Limit didn't understand how or why.

  “That boy spends too much time on his cynth.”

  Limit glanced to his right where Joachilla had come to stand beside him. She was taller than him, even though they were the same age, which annoyed him for some reason.

  Joachilla tried to click her tongue against her teeth but didn't quite make the same sound Cousin Thalia could. The girl looked disappointed at her lack of success.

  Not to be outdone, Limit nodded and tried to frown just the same way some of their older cousins did when Thalia said that.

  “It's not good for him,” he agreed in his best version of an older, disapproving voice.

  Then he remembered that none of that mattered right now. He was already wasting what little time he'd been given to play.

  “Let’s go!” he commanded and raised both gloved hands in front of him.

  The little toy space vessel obediently lifted up out of the cluster of other toys it had been piled with. Lights flashed on its shiny hull and dramatic music started to play from somewhere within.

  Limit grinned in delight.

  “Play JDF versus Purifiers!” Joachilla demanded.

  “No, I wanna play JDF versus Pirates,” Limit countered. He didn't really mind playing against the Purifiers, but Joachilla always picked it and this was supposed to be his turn!

  “Purifiers, you smelly monkey!” the young girl taunted him.

  “Pirates, you stinky horse!” Limit tried to hide his smile.

  “Rotten fish!”

  “Scruffy fornlet!”

  Limit eventually won when Joachilla was the first to lose control of her giggles. But he joined her soon afterwards.

  And just like that, any hard feelings the young friends had were forgotten faster than they’d arrived.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  *** *** ***

  Rona, [Space Vessel Marine] Class 1 of the Jorian Defense Force, was alone inside a long, straight, rectangle of a room. She stood before a cylindrical container large enough to fit a standard polyhuman’s body inside. The cylinder was upright but tilted with its top angled slightly away from her. Made of dull grey metal, it was featureless except for the JDF logo and the letters SVM-1 RONA emblazoned on the front.

  There were four identical cylinders in the same row as Rona’s, each labeled with a different name and designation. Five others were behind her for a total of ten in the otherwise empty room. In the stark white illumination of the overhead lights, the metal cylinders possessed a strange, ghostly nimbus, as if they somehow reflected more light than they should.

  It was because of these coffin-like objects that marines across Polyhumanic space referred to this part of an armoury as The Morgue.

  Rona was dressed in a single-piece, form-fitting black jumpsuit which covered her from neck to toe. She faced the metal cylinder but her eyes were unfocused, as if she were staring at something only she could see.

  Which was exactly the case.

  Rona was currently running a startup diagnostic vized directly to her visual cortex via her cynth. Visible only to Rona, streams of prompts and data flashed across her vision as quickly as she could process them. Back in training, she’d been proud to complete the task in under fifteen minutes. But ever since she'd joined the embassy’s security detail with real veterans, she’d discovered how inadequate that timing was.

  For today’s shift she'd arrived at The Morgue early, just to give herself extra time to avoid the embarrassment of being shown up by the vets. Sadly, it turned out she hadn't arrived early enough.

  An older marine taller than Rona sauntered into the morgue. Broad of shoulder with a muscular physique, he was dressed in the same black jumpsuit as his younger squadmate. As soon as he spotted Rona a satisfied smile spread across his lips.

  “'Morning, fornlet!” Kyler said in an overly cheerful tone of voice.

  The Morgue was a small room, just big enough for the rows of cylinders and the path between them. It took Kyler only a few steps to bring himself to stand beside the young SVM-1. “How long have you been here?”

  Rona gritted her teeth but didn't turn around. She didn't need to face the cylinder to run the diagnostics. She just refused to be subjected to what she knew would be the sight of Kyler’s cocky grin.

  “Eleven minutes,” Rona admitted dejectedly.

  “Ooh, so close! Almost made it!” Kyler exclaimed with false sympathy.

  This only caused Rona to grit her teeth harder and redouble her efforts. Data flashed across her inner vision almost in a blur. If she could just go a little faster . . .

  With a carefree whistle, Kyler sauntered over to a different cylinder with the label SVM-2 KYLER on the front. The older marine paused for a ridiculously short time before the cylinder split open down the middle. Rather than folding open like two halves of seemingly rigid metal should, the cylinder instead flowed apart. The unexpectedly fluid movement stopped when there was a big enough gap to reveal a flat surface within, angled up in line with the cylinder itself.

  Still whistling, the other marine lowered himself inside. He turned around to lay his back on the interior surface, very much like a body laid to rest in the coffin the cylinder resembled.

  “See ya, fornlet!”

  With a mocking wave (which Rona pretended to ignore) the cylinder flowed closed and obscured Kyler from her view.

  Barely twenty seconds had passed.

  Effectively alone once again, Rona let out a long sigh.

  “No one’s that fast,” she muttered. “It’s impossible!”

  Then with another sigh she got back to work.

  Not long afterward she finished her diagnosis. Like Kyler’s, the cylinder in front of Rona finally flowed open and she laid down inside. A mental command via her cynth sealed it back up again.

  Alone in a pitch-dark, tightly enclosed place, Rona wasn’t bothered in the least. Any hint of claustrophobia was identified in all [Space Vessel Marine] recruits before they even entered training.

  Then total immunity was permanently granted by their first batch of Origin Skills.

  All Rona could see for the first few seconds was a simple, text-only display that appeared to hover in the darkness before her.

  NAME: RONA DE JORIA

  ORIGIN: SPACE VESSEL MARINE

  RANK: CLASS 1

  ARMOUR CONFIG: TIER 1, GUARD DUTY

  ARMOUR STATUS: READY

  ACTIVATE ARMOUR: YES/NO?

  Rona could feel the slight, mental nagging of the question at the end, directing her to answer the final prompt. With a thought, she selected YES.

  As she laid back and her armour started to equip itself onto her body, all she thought was that next time she’d be sure to start even earlier.

  *** *** ***

  A spherical metal object hurtled between the stars at a noticeable fraction of the speed of light.

  Scale was difficult to determine without any nearby frame of reference. Compared to the stars themselves and the distance between them, the object was less than a speck of dust.

  But in polyhuman terms it was huge. Thousands of kilometers in diameter, as large as a good-sized moon.

  The tiny, near-infinitesimal portion of The Ouroboros designated to assist the Polyhumanic Transport Corporation noted that probe 2537 5592 8420 was approaching its destination.

  A check revealed that all systems were nominal and no irreparable damage had been sustained. The probe’s metafluidic armour and point defense systems had been adequate to protect its internals from most of the interstellar debris encountered during its multi-trillion-kilometer journey.

  This was good. A statistically significant number of probes never completed their interstellar mission.

  A notable impact had occurred approximately seventeen years ago and was flagged in the probe’s log. An object had penetrated the hull and breached internal systems.

  The sliver of The Ouroboros reviewed the entry more closely. The damage had been repaired, and no trace of the object was found. The entry and exit holes were in direct line with each other and had been sealed and repaired without complication.

  While rare, collisions of this magnitude were not unheard of and fell within expected parameters. Satisfied, the sliver archived the entry and moved on to more important tasks.

  Everything was relative, though. The damage that was minor compared to the probe itself and insignificant to the sliver of The Ouroboros was large enough to have entirely swallowed a major polyhuman city.

  After finalizing a multitude of other details, the sliver of The Ouroboros began the applicant selection process.

  This probe had slightly higher than the usual number of applications. Still, the amount of extra time needed to review the few extra billion applications was so small that only an entity such as The Ouroboros would have the ability to notice its passage.

  The sliver of The Ouroboros dutifully noted the increase in applicants and passed it elsewhere to predict any future trends. With the application accepted, permission was granted for the applicant to subsume itself through Origin into the probe’s waiting memic matrix.

  *** *** ***

  Deep within the centre of the probe lay a suite of human-sized rooms filled with equipment that, even after more than fifty years of isolation, was still more advanced than almost anything else in Polyhumanic space. In the most central room stood a single humanoid formed from too-bright, polychromatic metal.

  B@llyd opened its - no, his, he decided right then and there - eyes and looked around the command centre for interstellar probe number 2537 5592 8420. Long-dormant systems were activating for the first time in half a standard century as the probe readied itself to obey his commands.

  But B@llyd didn’t care about any of that, at least not quite yet.

  He raised both metallic arms above the featureless, metallic ovoid which vaguely resembled a human head. The front of the ovoid morphed and formed the rough semblance of lips, which then opened wide to reveal a toothless, void of a mouth.

  Then, with surprisingly human passion, he shouted a single word:

  “Yes!”