Hesitantly, checking over my shoulder to make sure the Custodian’s were gone, I spoke, using my mouth to do so for the first time in hours. “Settings?” Nothing showed. “Accessibility. Help. FAQ? Options.” Nothing. My voice rose with each command, until it didn’t have to anymore and something actually did happen.
[ ? ]
I poked at it, hoping it would take me somewhere, but the only thing I found was the familiar glassy resistance of an interface screen. It blinked out, and I wanted to punch it again. It wouldn’t work, obviously, but it was effective at relieving the excess emotion I’d been dealing with constantly since the trial started.
[ Unrecognized command. Register intent with new vocabulary. ]
I scratched my forehead, confused, and the screen changed in response.
[ Invalid intent. Seek counsel or cancel command request. ]
This was getting nowhere, and I threw away my questions in favor of trying to brute force this. Conjuring up the familiar image of a settings screen, the sliders for sensitivity, field of view, and all that nerdiness a teenaged me was far too verbose with, before speaking once more; “Settings,” I said, and finally, it worked.
[ New command created. Notifying all valid mother-tongue speakers of ‘English’ with an updated command list. Your contributions to galactic translation are commendable. A reward befitting the deed has been listed. Automatic use has been enabled due to the timely nature of the reward.
- Conversation with Skill_Path_04
Questions are limited to what the Skill-Path is aware of and cannot extend beyond the confines of its knowledge ]
‘What?’
I didn’t get an answer until a green light erupted underneath my ribs, pulsing and spreading a deep coldness through my flesh and down my prosthetics, building up in my abdomen, in my eye, at both of my feet, and at both of my palms. It didn’t hurt, and there was some kind of oxymoronic warmth in the coldness seeping into my steel.
The lines going down Entropy were pulsating in tune with my heartbeat, and something distinctly different from mana began to pull itself free from my extremities; the green light coalesced into a solid sphere that shifted in and out of perfection, splitting in half, third, becoming whole again, before deforming in different ways. The movement was also in tune with my heart, until finally it settled finally into a flawless sphere.
“Hello.” Eighteen voices spoke as one, but one led them through it all–a robotic chime that seemed to sing the word. “You’ve taken your time.”
I stared at the thing, what seemed to be my skill path. Sentient, speaking, and floating outside of my body. My core, my soul, felt distinctly weaker. Its mass had been taken away to form the path, ‘04’ it whispered, and even thinking about cybernetics or the process of what it took to make the H-TIG sent stabs of ice and longing directly into my gray matter.
“Ah, poor soul.” The sphere came forward and pushed itself against my head, shrinking in size rather significantly as it gave back what it took to call forth, now only a mote of light. “Apologies. Your soul right now is largely made up of my mass, excluding Entropy, of course.”
“What? I..” I raised my right hand and clutched at my hair, trying to process their words, discombobulated from the flip flopping strains on my core. Entropy, I realized, helped. It took my core and grafted itself onto it, but it was a new connection. There was no history, no attachment, and despite being double, maybe even triple, the size of the core proper, it wasn’t real yet. I felt naked and covered in ice, before getting dipped in lava as Entropy had to re-establish the connection between it and the rest of my core.
I shivered, and there was an itch at the connection point between the H-TIG and my body.
“You’re it?” There was something in my voice. Close to anger, but distinctly more somber. Disturbed, in a way.
“I am your path. In all its glory.” It circled around my head, and I felt it put all of its attention on me. I suddenly felt very small, an ant in front of something old and beyond the concept of age. There was rust inside the sphere, something impossibly deep and all-consuming that spoke to time and resonated with my newly acquired arm. “Or was. I’ve modified myself in light of your evolution and connection to the Shade.”
“Concepts. Some are willing, and supple before each other’s touch, but other’s collapse and clash when even rubbed against each other.” It came to a stop, hovering inches above one of the bodies and narrowing its shape to point down at it. “The flesh within this sack holds an intelligence so complex it alone, when stretched to the confines of a planet, could conquer the known universe.”
“The shackles of matter have limited it, and it has foolishly modified its flesh to be more accommodating to the truth within.” I couldn’t understand a single thing it was saying. I wanted to make it stop talking, but I couldn’t even raise a hand. My arms wouldn’t move, and I felt Entropy digging into my thigh. It was impossible for me to move it, but the stench of death was different.
“The Shade, in her life, had a path that walked a similar road to my own, you know? Its name is lost to me, but that was part of its concept.” It was back, a hair away from my eye–my actual eye. I wanted to puke. “Entropy. I don’t know what you humans know of it, or how you classify it, but I’ve been with you long enough to understand how you think.”
“What is a singularity, if not the end of all things? When the steel in my body is gone-” the voice was different, distinctly masculine, “-and the ash of rust is the only thing that remains to signify that I was every real in the first place, I’d have won.”
The sphere was expanding. The empathy it showed when giving back part of myself was gone, and there was vitriol and its voice. Hate, disgust, directed at me. The person I was, the sinew that remained. It became humanoid, but the number of limbs didn’t stop at four. The central mass expanded, rising, and rising to reach the corners of the cube, and going beyond that. The green wasn’t glowing, it was closer to polished jade.
It shifted like a moving sculpture, and another truth was given to me. This was not the path in the present, this was a memory. The memory was changing, and the mass shrinked into a quadruped, a hologram occupying physical space.
“But I can’t die alone.” The voice was feminine, on the verge of tears and its body rippled like a disturbed pond in response to the emotion. “I can’t, I can’t. I… I have to take them with me. Each sentient being deserves to see the end and know that they’ll be the last mark left.”
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It shrunk more, coalescing back in a sphere.
“Only through the expansion of all that is, can we see what it could be.” Finally, it was in its initial form, and I could breathe again. 04 was back to how it was before the… recording? Simulation? There was something going on, a stitching together of ideals that decided they needed to make themselves known.
It spoke first, repeating itself. “Hello.”
I still felt small, but it was born out of confusion rather than what it did to me previously. I kept it simple; “Hello?”
“Indeed.” It wasn’t singing the word. That was the wrong way to describe it. Since it was using the initial voice–without the backup vocalists–I could make out the effect more clearly, stretching my ears. In truth, its voice was closer to the same modulating effect I would get from speaking into a fan as a kid. Further away, to the point I had to stretch my ears to try and distinguish the artifacting, but still, it was noticeable.
It was hovering half-way between the bodies and my own, where I seemingly had subconsciously put my back to the furthest side of the cube. I didn’t remember moving, couldn’t when it was speaking, but I did.
I panicked again, realizing that Entropy was on my thigh the entire time it was monologuing, before quickly looking down to assess the damage. There was the barest imprint, steel flakes instead of decay embedded into my skin, shining. Near the center of the imprint the flakes were more condensed. I was about to run the H-TIG over the wound, but realized it would be a waste of time. I couldn’t feel the texture of anything from the fingertips of it; I had to stop a sob from choking me.
“Do you like it?” It spun around vertically, shifting around closer to me in question.
“No, no I don’t.” 04 was not satisfied with my answer, stilling for a moment. It came down to my leg, making me flinch, before settling over the wound and forcing some of itself down onto the wound. I watched, in awe and growing anger, as the flesh of the imprint was completely filled with a smooth green patch of metal, similar to what 04’s body was composed of previously.
“Can you please just stop!” I swiped Entropy through the skill, my anger dissipating into lassitude as it simply ducked under it. Already, I could feel a new connection between the patch and my core, expanding it in the same way it shifted when The Cure was grafted onto me. Still, since it was pointed out to me so jarringly, the expansion didn’t really matter, and wouldn’t for a while. It had to settle before it had substance.
I clenched my fists helplessly, hating the fact Entropy was advanced enough I could feel the glowing rivulets on my palm. The sensation almost felt like a curse to have.
04 came to the side of my head, once more narrowing its form and shifting its focus between my face and cybernetics it had ‘gifted’ me. Idly, I wondered what I looked like at this point, with ODIIN shoved into my face, and the stress of the trial taking its hold onto my very soul. Even if I didn’t end up getting my scalp forcibly replaced by the next evolution or the eventual surroundings that forced me with my back against the wall, I would still end up bald.
“Why are you upset? Is the patch not to your liking? I’m afraid I would have to take more of myself back if you wish me to further enhance it.” There was sympathy in its perfect voice, but so little actual understanding. I turned to face it, my hands still locked in grasping, claw-like forms, rising and falling with every breath.
“No- I-” I once again felt like I was taking my anger out at a fast food employee. It didn’t understand, and I would have to make it to where this could stop. “-I just would… like a say in what happens to my body next time, please?” That wasn’t the truth, not entirely, but it was the problem that tipped the scales in the most recent outburst. Unfortunately, 04 either noticed that or knew what the actual issue was from the start.
“Elaborate.” A single word, but I felt the suspicion in the tone deep within my chest.
“What do you want me to say?” I turned my chest to face it. “I want to be the deciding factor for what happens to me, to my body. Is that so much to ask?” 04 tugged on the part of it that still rested in my chest.
“No, but that is not your reasoning.” It spun on its side again, inspecting the seam between ODIIN and my skin. My hair should have been in front of it to offer my face some form of privacy, but I was stupid enough that that was no longer the case. “You reject my gifts, even the ones you have made yourself. Why is this?”
I ignored the question, taking advantage of the fact I had now gone through three different conversations while skipping introductions. Granted, I already knew who it was I was talking to, but I was still incredibly uneducated on 04’s nature. Thus, it let me avoid the incredibly terrible reality of telling something integral to my body. I hated what it was doing to me.
“Could you at least explain to me what you are before that?”
It paused, returning to a neutral location in front of me. “Certainly, in exchange of course.” I didn’t get to process its response before the bit that it had returned to me moved up to my head, and made a new thread between itself and the physical representation I was talking to. Information was taken from me, and beamed straight into my skull.
Skill paths, I learned, were a thing that someone was born with. Every human, even before the interface came, had the potential to get a skill path of their own from a trial. I had lived with 04 inside of me since the moment I was born.
It was a being of change in preparation for the end; that was at least what it changed to after the shade. I was given a timeline of its change over my life, starting as something simple. Technology was anathema to flesh, something it still believed, and it wanted to liberate me with its gifts.
That wish expanded because of something, and 04’s concept changed. It's a herald, a shepard. The only issue, it told me, is that eight billion other skill paths existed, and its cousins were likely going through a similar, if different, evolution. After the trial, I finally understood, humanity would be screwed. We didn’t have a culture that prevented indulgence.
Why didn’t Onyo or his companion tell me any of this? I didn’t ask. We were fucked. Royally.
04 took from me too. And it was confused from what it had seen. I was supposed to be shaped by it in the same way I shaped it. I felt this alarm and shock radiate across the chord it established, before it abruptly snapped it.
“I see.” It said, and I realized I could do the same. I nearly slapped myself to prevent the words ‘me too,’ from coming out of my mouth, realizing it wasn’t being literal. It understood, it didn’t see. I was still confused. “Of course I couldn’t shape you, integration hadn’t happened yet. This is unfortunate due to my nature. However-”
“Please just be quiet, a moment.” I raised a hand to stop its muttering. “I just told you I wanted a say in what happened to my body and your first instinct was to raid my brain?”
“It was the most efficient manner of exchanging knowledge. You wanted to know something, I wanted to know something. In retrospect, due to the lack of my influence within your mind, it was unwise. For that, apologies.”
I wanted to strangle it.
“You seem more upset you didn’t groom me as a kid instead of your violation of my wishes!”
“That word carries an unnecessary connotation. But your statement is accurate, if laced with contempt. You should not hate me, we are partners. In the future, we will be closer together, now that the integration has passed.” It seemed to raise a hand to prevent me from responding, despite its spheroid form. “Stop speaking.”
“You still have a task. Fix the corpses, yes? Good. I will continue to assist. I’ll modify it to where we’ll get another conversation after.” It spun around again. “This interferes with our plans, but we can still work with this. I’ll see you soon, friend. We could speak more, but it would not be conductive until the trial tempers you further. You are not in a state benefitting from this.”
“I should’ve waited to force the first conversation. It is good, however, to have this information. Goodbye.”
It rushed to my chest, unceremoniously pushing itself back into me. My chest glowed for a moment, my core shifting to take back its proper shape and entropy moving back to the original attachment point. The tumor at the bottom, where the patch-work metal in my thigh connected to my core.
I was left alone with only the bodies for company.