New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

“Who’s there?”

Iago raised his handgun, pointing it at the door.

A beep, asking for entrance, had broken the near-total silence of their rented room.

Elliot, sitting on the floor to his left, raised his head.  His eyes were wide with alarm, following the weapon in Iago’s hand.

“Go into the bathroom,” Iago said softly.  “Don’t come out until I tell you.”

His son said nothing, but rose and moved quickly into the other room.

The walls in here were sound-proofed, the better to suit its normal clientele who wanted no questions asked.

They’d left the Gohhi Main and travelled through three other sub-stations before reaching this one.  It wasn’t that far from the main hub, one could only go so far in just a few hours.

He’d hoped it would be far enough to throw them off.  But he had been wrong.

Iago rose from the bed, checking his system for information on who was outside; but it only returned static.  Someone had disabled the sensors, and his heart hammered as he knew that meant they had come for him.

The Response Team was here to kill him.

And he knew they’d kill him. They’d gun him down and say that later that it had been an ‘accident’ and everyone would accept it because they couldn’t let him live, not knowing what he knew.

There was nothing else it could be, and he would not go down without a fight.  He’d just have to save the last bullet for himself, scramble his brain with it, to keep them from peeking inside once he was dead.

They did not deserve the truth.

They had to be protected from the truth.

Anyone who learned it, like him, would ultimately have to die.

They’d aim low to keep his head intact, and that’d leave him with enough time to-

The thought of Elliot came into his mind, and his heart nearly stopped.

If they came in guns blazing, a stray bullet might-

No, no ononono.

With a shaking hand, he lowered the gun.

“I’m opening the door,” he called.

Holstering the weapon and keeping both hands visible, he went over.

Pressing that button, going meekly, was the hardest thing he’d ever had to make himself do.

The door opened.

There was no armed team waiting there, only a lone man.

He was just above average height, his hair blonde, his eyes a piercing green.

His face and demeanor were calm and composed, and as he looked at Iago, he smiled very slightly.  It was not mocking, but warm and reassuring.

“Mr. Caraval, I have been sent to fetch you,” he said.  “If you would come with me . . . ?”

Iago found himself too stunned to move.  His eyes had glazed over, and try as he might, he could not make them focus again.

“My son,” he found himself saying.

“He will be safe,” the young man said.  “I swear it.  You can tell him that he can relax and that you will return shortly.”

“Will I?” Iago asked.  “Be returning.”

“Of course,” the man insisted gently.

Iago turned.  “Elliot,” he called.  “I’ll be back in . . . a little bit.  You . . . order a treat for yourself.  Anything you want, okay?”

After a moment, the bathroom door opened and Elliot peered out.

He saw the fear on his son’s face, his paled skin and hesitant hands.  It hurt him so much to know how much this was costing his boy, and he tried to smile as reassuringly as possible.

“Who is that?” Elliot asked.

Iago looked to the man, who smiled.  “I am a friend.  Now, shall we go, Mr. Caraval?”

---

< Ep 7 Part 36 | Ep 7 Part 38 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

“Nor, I am so pleased you have returned alive from imbibing poison,” Y said cheerfully.

“You make it sound more fun than it turned out to be,” Apollonia replied with a nervous laugh.  “I got a bottle thrown at my head.”

“Yes, I am pleased you either avoided it or it was poorly aimed.”  He turned to Jaya, who Apollonia thought looked nearly nervous.

“Ah, and Chief of Operations, you too appear to be alive, if slightly worse for the wear.  It is fortunate that you have a synthetic liver and muscles to aid you in staying that way.”

“Yes,” Jaya replied.  “Only a few bruises.”

“Attained in a successful combat, I understand.  How glorious.”

“It was not my intent to cause a fight-“

“No?  My apologies, I assumed it was, as this has happened several times you have gone drinking on Gohhi.”

Apollonia’s jaw dropped, caught half-way in hopping up onto a medical bed to sit.  She looked at Jaya, who had pursed her lips.

“I will never understand why your kind imbibe poison, but I will prepare the counter-agent.  You will suffer from the results of your own actions for only a little longer!”  Y turned to Apollonia.  “Would you like something to rid yourself of your hangover as well, Nor?”

“Er, yeah.  That’s a thing?  Hell yeah I’ll take it.”

“Drinking is cultural,” Jaya stated sternly.

“And fun,” Apollonia added.

Y ignored her and turned back to Jaya.

“Oh?  That is interesting, I understand that synthetic alcohol substitutes allowed all of the same range of activities without actually impairing judgment to a dangerous degree.  Or causing damage to vital organs.”

“Synthetic alcohol is nothing like the real thing,” Jaya insisted.  “All believed that we’d switch to it – yet we have not.  It is something simply produced in a laboratory, not hand-crafted in a way deeply connected to our cultural roots.  It is something that humans have done for over ten thousand years.  For good or ill, it is a part of who we are.”

Y paused, taking that in for a moment in silence.  “That is an interesting point, Commander.  It almost made me forget that it is also a potent toxin and carcinogen.”

“Which is why you are here,” Jaya replied, dryly.

“. . . and contains enough energy in its molecular bonds to power an internal combustion engine.  But thank you for this very enlightening lesson on the essence of human culture.”

Jaya took a deep breath, clearly holding back some sharp words.

She probably realized she could not win with Y, not on this, Apollonia mused.

Y came over to her, holding something up to her arm.  “This will help flush the toxins from your system and relieve the pain.  Afterwards, I recommend drinking unadulterated water.”

“Whatever you say, doc,” Apollonia replied.  He gave her the shot, and she felt almost nothing.

“Really?  Then I will add that you should not drink alcohol again,” he continued.

“. . . I might agree to that,” Apollonia said.  “I mean I did get pretty lost.”

The shot was already making her headache disappear.  She felt almost like herself – just a little thirsty.

Y approached Jaya.  “Would you like me to omit the painkiller so that you may experience the full fruit of your evening?” he asked helpfully.

“That will be unnecessary,” Jaya said, scowling, but then looked past him.  “How did you find your way back without your tablet, Apollonia?  We were not able to recover it, but we detected it was lost.”

Apollonia winced.  “Do I get in trouble for losing it?”

“Given the circumstances, no,” Jaya said.  “We can issue you a new one, and your old one already will have locked up and deleted any sensitive data.  But I am quite impressed with your pathfinding skills in a place as difficult as Gohhi.”

“Well . . . I had help,” Apollonia admitted, hopping back to her feet.  “I found this church guy – he was actually pretty nice.”

Jaya looked serious.  “Did he ask you for anything?”

“No, not a thing.  He seemed happy to help me just because he could.  He was from a group called, uh . . . the Esoteric Order.”

“I see,” Jaya replied, looking troubled.  Y had stepped away, and Jaya got up from her seat as well.

“The Esoteric Order,” Y commented.  “They are a religious order founded seven years ago.  The exact point of their origin is unknown, with some small presence in the Sapient Union, but a much larger range outside of it.  Their faith has become widespread in parts of Gohhi, especially among the fringe.  They even have some presence in Glorian space-“

Jaya interrupted him.  “The man who helped you, how did you meet him?”

“I went to his church and told him I was lost,” Apollonia admitted.  “He guided me to the spaceport.”

“You found him, not the other way around?”

“Yeah . . .”

“What was he like?”

Apollonia frowned.  “Why are you so curious about him?”

“No real reason,” Jaya told her.

Something seemed off with her, but Apollonia continued on.

“He was a young man, maybe around my age.  Blonde.  Kind of handsome.  He had this . . . calmness about him.”  She shrugged.  “I dunno, he was just really nice and helpful.  Can’t say more than that – I didn’t even get his name.”

“Ah, I see,” Jaya replied, with a forced casualness.

Apollonia could tell, though, that something was bothering her.

---

< Ep 7 Part 35 | Ep 7 Part 37 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

The real world came back into focus.

The server room was cold, and Urle took a deep breath of it, savoring that it was real and not merely simulated.

His body had been breathing, but when he’d been in the digital world he’d not felt any of it.

As he had promised to JaxIn, he went into the server logs, hiding all traces of himself and obfuscating the data even more to keep his hidden world a secret.

He was not sure what to make of the man and his selfish dreamworld, but he had given his word and he would keep it.

Kell was peering down at him, and Urle got to his feet.

“Let’s get out of here, and then I’ll tell you everything,” he said.

Ten minutes later, using the same gaps in the defenses as before, they were free.

“I need to sit,” Urle said.  Kell offered no objection as they went to an automated noodle kiosk and took a seat at the bar.  Only one other person was here, a man had two mechanical legs and a hand, his bare head pale and scarred.  He paid them no mind, and Urle scanned the noodle drones for spying equipment, but found them to be as simple as they appeared.

He told Kell what he’d found, the being listening in silence.

“. . . There’s a lot of data to pore through,” he concluded.  “But I’ve got the key stuff.  There’s a man we’re looking for, but we only have an alias, not his real name – Ji.  It’s pretty common as a name, but the right people will hopefully know who we mean.  We’ll have to hit up the information brokers.”

Kell was considering.  “So the man had no issue with the fact that he had been murdered?” he asked.

“No.  It wasn’t . . . ‘him’, so I don’t think he cared.”

“An interesting point of view,” Kell said.  “I am not sure how I would feel if I was murdered.  I believe that I would want revenge.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure this guy was just selfish as hell,” Urle grunted, taking his cup of noodles and eating a few.  They were surprisingly good, he thought.

Kell drank down his cup in a single swallow.

“Do you know how to find these information brokers?” he asked.

“I know some ways,” Urle replied.  “The only real issue is that they’re real picky about their customers.  Don’t want to get caught dealing in stolen data, you know?  So follow my lead.”

Kell gave him a curt nod.  “I broke my earlier promise to you, about hurting no one.  I will not again.”

Urle found himself very surprised by the seriousness with which the being had taken its earlier flippant remark.

“Well . . . thanks,” he said.

He hesitated.  It really wasn’t the only reason he should be thanking Kell.  Despite how traumatizing it had been, the Ambassador had saved him.

“And also – thanks for helping me.  You saved my life, and I haven’t exactly been grateful about that.”

Kell’s expression was mildly confused.  “You do not need to thank me.”

Urle looked back down to his noodles, stirring them around.  He felt oddly humbled.

---

< Ep 7 Part 34 | Ep 7 Part 36 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

Urle watched the man alter the world on a whim, but he did not feel the awe the man hoped to inspire.

“I saw you die,” he said plainly.  “A memory you left in a part that was then sold to me . . . you hid the data in there, in an executable to show whoever next used the part.  You wanted someone to know . . .”

“Then I guess I was weaker than I thought,” the man sneered.  “I’ll have to fix that next patch.  Don’t you get it?  This was always the plan!  I gave up everything for this!”

Realization dawned on Urle.  “You mean that . . . you traded your body for this server space?”

“My body, my data,” the man said.  “I wasn’t going to get to the top in my company, I didn’t give a shit if they got access to the whole corp’s system.  Worth a fortune to them, everything to me.”

The man gestured, and a data packet appeared.  Urle probed it cautiously, but then saw that it was merely text; biographical data about a man.

His birth name had been Bror Jackson.  After becoming an aug he’d gone by JaxIn.  He’d been a middle-level executive in one of largest and most profitable companies in Gohhi, who had their hand in everything from aquaponics to real estate to shipping to entertainment.

Three weeks ago, they’d suddenly changed direction, as new leadership had taken over in a merger that seemed a terrible move for the company, subserviating it to one of its largest competitors.  It had been a news event, and in the shuffle, JaxIn had disappeared.  No one had even bothered to report the disappearance.

And then the body had been taken care of.  The flesh incinerated, the parts chopped and resold through storefronts, and the data assimilated.

Over seven hundred trillion credits in value taken over.

“Any one of us would have done it,” JaxIn said, laughing.  “I was just the first to actually do it.  The little club at the top never would have let me in, so when I realized what I had access to, I jumped.”

“They scanned you in here,” Urle said.  “As payment.”

“Yeah.  Their only other price was the end of the physical half.  But that’s fine with me.”

“It wasn’t fine to you in real life.  You’re a copy, but the original died afraid, trying to save himself.  He wanted to have justice.”

“It was just business.  He was the me who made the original decision – I remember it all.  I was willing to die for this.”

Not when it had actually come time to pay up, Urle thought.  But he knew that JaxIn would no longer care.  It had not been him.

“So you’re here now – for how long?” Urle asked.

“Forever,” the man said.  “I rented it in perpetuity.  And I have the blackmail material ready in case they try to back out – the records of everything we did if my server ever goes dark.”

Urle severely doubted that.  But it hardly mattered because now the deed was done.  JaxIn was digital, and he would either have to occupy a huge server or else let himself be cut down into a shallower digital copy of himself.

Which, it was telling that he had not elected to do that, Urle realized.  If he’d truly wanted to leave himself behind, why have an exact copy of his neurons?  It was so, so much more wasteful this way . . .

Suddenly, Urle felt something around himself.  It was not around the manifestation of himself in the digital world, but it had locked his code in, trapped him.

He cursed as he realized the man had been working while he’d been talking.  Moving the city had allowed him to scale it back as well, and Urle had let him do it!  He hadn’t taken down the whole server, but enough that he’d effectively blockaded Urle’s own consciousness – or at least a dangerous portion of it – into his server.

“I can’t let you go.  And frankly you’re going to be hogging my space if I let you stay.”

“If you delete me,” Urle said, “my friend will break the server.”

JaxIn froze.  “No way you brought someone else in with you.  One person, all right, maybe some are that skilled.  But two?  No fucking way.”

“He’s a Shoggoth,” Urle told him.  “And he doesn’t like technology.”

He saw the man pale.  His digital presence shifted, apparently trying to access the outside, to very little effect.

“I’ll show you,” Urle said, showing some of his own memories.

He let the man see Kell ripping the head off Madspark.

“That man tried to kill me.  And he’s the one who killed you.  Kell knows I’m in here.”  That part was a lie, but JaxIn couldn’t know.  “And if I’m not out in a little while he will destroy this server.”

JaxIn seemed unsure now.  “If you tell people about me they’ll shut me down,” he said in a pale voice.

“I won’t tell anyone about this,” Urle said.  “I’ll even help bury you deeper.  I’m not out to get you.  Honestly . . . I wish you the best.  That’s why I’m trying to find out about the group that killed your physical self.”

JaxIn looked truly bothered now, stepping away.  “If I tell you anything, they might find out.  And they’ll come and delete me no matter what dirt I have.”

“They’re the last link to know you’re here at all,” Urle pointed out.  “And given the value they got from you – do you really think that they’re not going to do this with someone else?  They can force you to share the servers with another, or partition it against your will.  Or they could even just delete most of you to save processing power.  You couldn’t stop them – you might not even know if they did.”

JaxIn cursed aloud, a string of furious spacer slang.  Urle felt the digital noose around his neck switch off.

“I did my research before agreeing,” JaxIn told him.  “I don’t know everything, but I’ll give you what I know.”

“That’s all I ask,” Urle told him.  “I’m going to find justice for you.  And anyone else they’ve hurt.”

---

< Ep 7 Part 33 | Ep 7 Part 35 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

Urle disappeared into the code to find relief.

Kell had not elaborated after the last words.

“You have a task before you, and I see I have disturbed you,” he had said.  “I will leave you to it.”

Continuing to scan the server, trying to find anything that might be useful, Urle still could not take his mind off what he had been told.

The conversation from earlier about the soul came back to him, and Urle wondered now if Kell was simply sounding him out about his own beliefs in preparation for telling him this.  He’d said far more than necessary, more than he normally said in a day to anyone, and he’d had a reason.

Kell was standing completely still, as if a machine that had been shut down, his external sensors said.

A familiar, he thought.  He’d realized it was the closest thing he could call him.  Far better than a lure . . .

His search pinged for his attention.  Putting his thoughts back on it, he saw that he’d found a series of simulations that were not what they seemed.  They were dummy shells of programs with no actual activity.  Not even much content . . . though taking up huge chunks of memory, as much as the system allowed.

He checked the data, and found that this was just a dummy; a trick meant to allow a program to exceed its allowance by pooling several together.

More than several, he found.  Over a hundred allotments, all feeding into . . .

A human simulation.

Not just an approximation of a generic person, either, this was a simulation of a particular person.  All of their organic pathways had been painstakingly scanned and digitized . . .

It had started only three weeks ago, and it was running right now.

He could not tell a lot about it from the outside, just that data.  Not even who it was.

He considered telling Kell, but then decided against it and entered into the simulation.

In a flash of light, his consciousness was inserted into a new world.

He felt the damp, stagnant air.  Saw the neon lights and glittering buildings reaching miles into the dark sky that glittered with stars.

The air was filled with flying vehicles and throngs of people, the majority of them augs.

The gravity was that of Earth’s, and from the singing of crickets, he surmised that this was a simulation of Earth itself.  Of no time or space that had ever actually existed.

This was a fantasy land.

Watching people below walking, sometimes acting and reacting in very believable ways, he wondered how he’d find the subject of this simulation-

Then it all froze.  The flying cars stopped, the crowds paused, even the crickets stuck on their note.

“How did you get in here?” someone demanded.

He’d heard that voice before.

Urle turned around, and saw a dead man.

He did not look that way, of course, and even though Urle had not even seen himself while experiencing the murder – he still knew, without a fraction of a doubt that this was that man.  He’d been him.

The man was nicely dressed.  His parts were chromed and the edges smoothed, with blue running lights.  One eye was organic, the other a large dark sensor with a single glowing dot.

“I connected to the server,” Urle said, making sure that all of his defenses were up.

He was in a world that this man controlled.  The fact that he was here now, that it had all frozen, made it clear that this man was not trapped and fooled into this place.  He was its owner.

“You got into the server station?” the man asked, doubtfully.  “How did you even find me?  It wasn’t chance.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Urle replied, trying to sound calm.  He felt a thousand attempts to access his data.  All fended off – for now.

The man’s attempts were good, but not as good as Urle’s security.  If the man turned off the server, though, and focused all that processing power on him, he could break through, Urle knew.

He kept himself ready to eject, if any sign of the man doing that occurred.

But for now they only regarded each other warily.

“I’m tracking down a crime,” Urle said.  “I’m a private investigator.”

Which was true, but if the man could access much outside his server he’d see that Urle had only been that for all of a few hours.  It was public data.

“No crime here,” the man said tersely.

So, Urle thought.  He probably didn’t have full external access.

That might mean that, while he owned this world, it was also his prison.

“I’m not interested in your takeover of server space,” Urle said, hoping to keep him calm.

“Nothing illegal of the space I’m using!” the man replied sharply.  “I paid for it fairly.  It’s mine!”

“Okay . . .” Urle said.  There was no way that was true.  Even on Gohhi, taking up this much server space was exorbitant.  These were not simple machines one could just build from a box of scraps.  These were atomic-perfect devices.

No one but the most insanely rich could possibly afford that.  And no one was rich enough to maintain such servers for deep time . . .

“You can’t take this from me,” the man said.

“That’s not my goal,” Urle said.  “I really only want justice for a man who was murdered.”

The man looked even more skeptical.  “Who?” he demanded.

Urle swallowed.  “You,” he said.

The man watched him, suspicion still writ on his face, but he sneered.

“You’re a fucking baby if you give a shit about that,” he said.

Urle recoiled.  “What?”

“I did what no one else can,” the man bragged.  “I shed the skin.  I shed it all.”

He raised his arms, and behind him, land that had been just rugged hills suddenly was city.  Crowds walked, the flying cars flew again.  The crickets carried on their songs.

“Here I am a god.”

---

< Ep 7 Part 32 | Ep 7 Part 34 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

The servers were running sims.

He saw hundreds of simulations running at once, which was not possible for a single server.  Someone had slaved many other servers in the building to this one, simply using this as a primary node to support them all.

God, this had to be a significant fraction of the servers in the building, he realized.  There was no other way to be running so many simultaneous simulations.

They were nothing simple, either.  Picking one at random, he soon realized that it was running the simulated life of an extinct dinosaur, Priororaptor.

He ran through his data on the dinosaur, trying to find if there was anything significant about it . . . Discovered in the mid-21st century and named for its discoverer, Henrick Prior . . .  A very average dinosaur, but from its very complete fossils and trace evidence, it was rather well understood.

Made sense to simulate it if you had a good idea of how it might act.  He’d heard of it being done for extinct animals – running simulations of plausible environments to try and guess more about their potential behaviors.  They were very rare, though, for many reasons.

Why was someone doing it on Gohhi of all places?  And why hide it?  There was probably no legal issue doing it, but the price of running sims this detailed was exorbitant.

He did see that many users were watching a livestream of the Priororaptor – it was actively hunting at the moment.  Could that be all this was?  Entertainment?

“You have found something interesting,” Kell noted.

“Yeah.  Someone has basically hollowed out this server farm from its proper function and they’re running sims on it.  Like . . . simulating the lives of animals, if that makes sense.”

“Simulating?  Pretending to be the animals?” Kell asked.

“Yes, basically.  Extinct things like dinosaurs . . . I guess there’s some market for such things, people love to see them-“

“They were mildly interesting,” Kell noted.  “But they also bit quite often.”

“. . . well, maybe tell that to the sim writers.  But . . .”

He sat on the floor, trying to get more comfortable.  “These kinds of sims are a gray-area, ethically.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, any decent sim is doing one heck of a job pretending to be a real creature.  That creature, as far as it knows in the server, is alive.  It experiences birth, growth, pain, and eventually death.  We ban it in the SU without very good scientific reasons, it’s . . . not something to really play around with, you know?  I mean, I know I would hate to find out I’m just a simulation . . . can you imagine that?”

Kell smiled.

“Anyway, it’s not exactly illegal here,” Urle continued.  “but they’re illegally taking over a ton of processing power to run these.  And I have no idea what it has to do with us . . .”

“I can imagine what it is like,” Kell said.

Urle didn’t understand him for a moment.  “What do you mean?”

“Being simulated – I am familiar with this concept.  Perhaps you are overly-concerned, as I experience no discomfort.”

“Kell – what?  What are you saying?”

“I am not what you think I am,” Kell replied.

Urle felt the hairs prickle on the back of his neck.  “What do you mean?  You are Ambassador Kell, right?”

“You perceive me as a being in the shape of a human,” Kell continued, looking around the server room.  “Yet you are not perceiving the whole – or what this body truly is.”

Urle was trying to make sense of Kell’s words.  “The whole that . . . well, we’ve wondered why your stated weight is said to be around thirty tons, yet you don’t tip the scales at anything like that.  Is the rest of you . . . curled into a higher dimensional space or something?”

Kell looked at him, a rare expression of surprise and pleasure on his face.  “That is an apt description.  But there is more to it.  You believe you are talking to the Shoggoth, but you are speaking through . . .”  He paused.  “I find the word is lacking.”

“Interpreter?  Vessel?  Shell?” Urle ventured, feeling a sense of unease grow.  Kell was never this candid, so why say these things to him now?

“There is a fish that lives in the ocean on Earth,” Kell continued.  “It lives far deep down, where there is no light.  From its head grows a swollen bulb that emits light.”

“An anglerfish?”

“Perhaps that is the name.  This bulb is a part of the creature.  Other fish see it and interact with it.”

Realization dawned, and Urle took leaned back, away from Kell, without thinking.  “You’re a lure.”

“I am something that you understand and will wish to interact with,” Kell said.  “But do not take the comparison too deeply – I am not simply a mindless tool on the end of the fish.  Imagine if the lure felt, thought, learned – separate from the fish.  It both is and is not the fish.  Limited, lesser in many ways.  Yet because of this, it is better able to make the small fish understand it.  They are not frightened by it, do not simply flee at the sight.”

Urle stopped, feeling a terrible urge to move further away from Kell, who was looking at him dispassionately now.  The deep darkness of the room carved shadowy valleys into his face, and his eyes appeared sunken into his head until they were drowned in the darkness.

“A virtual program,” Urle said.  “You’re not the Shoggoth.  You’re . . . just Kell.  A creation of the being that is made to . . . interact with us.”

Kell smiled again, and while the gesture attempted to convey warmth, it failed utterly.  Instead, it looked inhuman, a grotesque caricature.

A puppet.  With a mind, but a puppet all the same.

“You begin to understand,” Kell said.  “When you look at me, you believe that I am cold, uncaring, about your kind.  And it is true – the Shoggoth does not care.  You are beneath it – beneath me.  How can it view your ephemeral existence otherwise?  Do you know how many times in its age it has seen a tall and ancient tree that had withstood millenia of storms tip for little reason and then wither away?  Seen generations of life be spawned, grow old, and then fall, never to rise again?”

Kell stepped closer to him, and Urle felt his heart pound.  Something in Kell’s voice changed, not simply the voice of a man, but with an echo of something else, like multiple voices speaking at once.  Nearly in harmony but not quite.  Each voice a little different, some more human and some less, but behind them all a puppeteer.

“I have seen life itself nearly extinguished on the Earth.  This universe does not exist for you – you are not the universe contemplating itself.  If anything is, it is Shoggoth kind that speak for the universe, as we were here before you and we shall be here after you.

“But in this ‘lure’, as you called it, the being you call Kell, I can begin to replicate your kind, to understand the universe through your eyes.  I am part of a whole, but as I learn more about your kind, I begin to incorporate the human into the Shoggoth.

“More than most others, you have been instructive, Zachariah Urle.  Others have taught me much, but you . . .”  Kell’s head tipped and a smile came to his face.  “You are more human than most.”

“But why are you telling me this?” Urle asked, his chest hurting, his head swimming.  Errors were cropping up in his HUD, his systems not understanding how to accept his current state of mind, his current inputs.

“Because I have no choice but to trust someone,” the thing that was the master of Kell told him in its many voices.  “And I am beginning to trust you.”

---

< Ep 7 Part 31 | Ep 7 Part 33 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

Of all places on Gohhi, the server hubs were perhaps the most valuable.  It was said that they were better guarded than even the air recirculator systems that kept the station alive.  The data in the servers contained financial and economic data that spanned every major station in the territory, which in the eyes of those who owned it, was worth far more than human life.

Which meant that it made no sense to see the gap in the defenses.

“I can’t understand it,” he muttered.  “It smells like a trap . . .”

“I can go in and simply destroy what needs destroying,” Kell said calmly.

“No, we don’t know what server it’s on.  There are millions of micro-servers in there . . .”

“Then I will destroy them all,” Kell retorted with a shrug.  He started forward.

“No!  That will be a disaster on an incredible scale for Gohhi!  We have to do this surgically.”

Kell scowled.  “You have many restrictions on your actions.”

“Yes.  It’s part of being in a civilization.”

Kell sighed.  “One reason my people did not live in one.”

As interesting as that comment was, Urle was more concerned with the server.  He could see no reason why they might be setting a trap, as there was no evidence that Madspark’s body had even been discovered yet.  When it was, it would certainly raise some flags.

While patrols of guards and drones went around the outside of the building, there was a definite gap, though.

When that gap came – only twenty seconds – he moved, gesturing Kell to move with him.  In five seconds they were at the door, and in three more he’d connected.  Another seven seconds had the door open, and with two seconds left to spare the door closed behind them.

“Easy,” he muttered.  But these were only the first steps.  The internal security was the real problem.

“I could have just forced the door,” Kell said.

Urle was busy looking down the hall.  There was not much to this building except for a main hallway, with branching corridors leading to server rooms or cooling rooms, and various other equipment.  There was no staff even inside the building at most times, and so no break or guard rooms.

The armed drones, those could be an issue.

But as he connected to the building’s internal systems, he found that they too were behaving oddly.  There was an instability in their algorithms that had left large gaps in their search patterns, enough that they could easily get into the server rooms without being seen.  What was more was that in four hours the glitch would cycle itself out and they’d be back to normal.

Someone else had been in here.  Both physically and digitally.

Which made sense, if someone wanted to hack the servers it was far easier if you could get in – doing it remotely would typically leave far too many traces in the networks, and all the defenses were built against that sort of attack precisely because the drones and guard patrols were typically enough for the outside.

“Follow me,” he said.  “We have to move quickly.”

The scuffed search pattern didn’t even cover the door, but the logs had already been falsified to make it seem as if they had been.  Whoever had done this was on another level entirely – he truly could not have done better.

The fact that this break-in had occurred so recently seemed impossible to be a coincidence.  He had to see the data to try and get an idea of what they had been up to – but if they were this good he might not find any clues at all.

Making their way down the halls, avoiding the drones, they entered a server room he thought most likely to have at least some of the camera data from around the shop.

Racks of servers lined the walls, cooling tubes going between them, with barely enough space between the racks for a person to walk.  Each server was about the size of two human hands and about as thick, stacked on the cooling racks only a centimeter apart, going up almost three meters into the air.  Tens of thousands of the machines in this room alone, able to carry and sort tremendous amounts of data.

Aside from indicator lights on the servers to show their status, there was almost no light.  But that was fine.  With a few sonar pulses he’d mapped the room, confirmed that there were no security drones present, and then connected.

Checking locality data, he found that he’d guessed right.  Looking to the data around the aug shop, though . . .

He found no evidence of himself and Kell at all.

“Someone’s already been here,” he said.  “They’ve . . . helped us.”

“Hm,” Kell commented, seeming unimpressed.

“Doesn’t that disturb you?”

“Not particularly,” the Shoggoth replied.  “It sounds convenient.”

Urle grumbled but said no more.  Instead, he began probing deeper into the servers in the room, trying to find an abnormality in the data, a track – something that might give him a clue about the person who had been in here before them . . .

They were not sloppy, he realized.

And then he triggered the flag.

He hadn’t even detected it in the files; it was keyed to his hardware ID, which was insane; it meant that they knew that he himself would come here.

He almost reflexively disconnected, but the program that executed was only a single line of text.

Cautiously, he took it in.

RACK 37  |  SHELF 5  |  SERVER 12  |  MANUAL CONNECT

Then it deleted itself.

“What has alarmed you?” Kell asked.

“. . . the person who was in here left a message for me, specifically.  They knew I’d come here.”

“They know much,” Kell replied, a note of curiosity in his voice.

“An insane amount,” Urle said.  “They know my personal identifier code, knew I’d come here, and their work deleting the data was better than what I could have done.”

He toggled his vision of the real-world back on and looked around.  Everything could be booby-trapped and he’d not even see it.  Hell, he could already have gotten a virus and not know it . . .

Would he take the risk of manually connecting to the server they’d told him . . . ?

Taking a deep breath, he disconnected and walked over, counting the racks until he’d found 37.

Kneeling down, he found the twelfth server on the fifth shelf.  It appeared entirely normal from the outside, aside from some very slight wear on the edges of its external port.  Someone had been manually jacking into this one lately . . .

He connected, putting up all the security he could manage, and found that the actual contents of the server was nothing like what the main directory indicated.  It should have been serving to route data from one of the bulk import sections, but instead . . .

---

< Ep 7 Part 30 | Ep 7 Part 32 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

“. . .and that was when the man realized he had taken off his spacesuit,” the young Priest said, a smile tugging at his lips.

Apollonia burst into laughter, stopping a moment to wipe away a tear.  “Dark, what some people do on drugs!”

“He said he did not drink or do drugs, he was simply . . . confused,” the Priest replied, more seriously.

Apollonia was not sure if he was saying it to be funny or if he genuinely believed that the man had been telling the truth.

After he had led her from the mission, they had begun to talk more – she had told him of life on New Vitriol, the funny stories of oddballs and weirdos of her wild colony home, and then he had regaled her with equally crazy tales of the red light district.  Quite a few of them ended up with someone being out of their spacesuit, though they were always rather . . . creative in getting there.

The shady crowds had not bothered her nearly as much when he was there.  If anything, everyone seemed to give quite a respectful distance to the young Priest of the Infinite, and it had made her feel better.

They’d been walking some time, taking a twisting route that did seem to be leading them to the spaceport.  Apollonia had seen a few signs pointing the way.

And she’d found that much of her apprehension had drained away.

“You don’t really believe that, do you?” she had to ask.  “He was definitely drunk and on drugs.”

He considered.  “I know men lie.  Some lies we cling to as if a life preserver on the turgid ocean – things we need to continue living.  Many men go mad in the Dark, and my faith exists to be a safe port for them.  Thus I will not call him a liar when I did not see him drink, or a junkie when I did not see him with a needle.  One day, when he is ready to face the lies in his heart, if he is ever strong enough, then it will be for the best if he recognizes them himself.”

“But,” Apollonia teased.  “You still tell the story for a laugh!”

The young priest smiled.  “Well, I’m still a flawed man myself.  And it’s not often I have such pleasant company.”

Apollonia looked away, feeling awkward suddenly.

“We are, for your good and my ill, however, at the Spaceport,” he continued.

Raising an arm, he pointed towards a sign, which was lit up with the words ‘SUS CRATON‘ in bold letters.

“Oh,” Apollonia said.  “I guess we are.”

He seemed to be waiting for something, and started to open his mouth to speak, but Apollonia quickly spoke first.

“Have you ever considered taking your . . . mission of the Infinite out of here?” she asked.  “I mean, there are other places where people aren’t always getting drunk or high or trying to stab each other.  I know these people need the help, but in other places they might be willing to listen, too.”

He looked thoughtful before he answered.  “I have considered it.  One day, perhaps I will – if the Infinite wills it, I will be given a sign, I am sure.”

Apollonia nodded.  “Oh, right.  I guess the Infinite has infinite wisdom, too,” she said, then immediately felt bad – she had not meant it mockingly, but it might have come off that way.

He did not seem like he took it badly, though.  “With that, I bid you farewell,” he said, offering her a formal bow.  “Go with the Infinite, Apollonia Nor.”

She couldn’t think of what to say or do except return his bow awkwardly.  “And um, may the wind always be in your sails.  And red sky in morning, sailors take warning.”

The young priest smiled warmly, if faintly, then turned, his hands folding in front of him, walking back the way he had come.

Apollonia watched him a moment, then called out.

“Will I ever see you again?” she yelled.

He turned, the same smile on his lips.  “I will always be at the safe port,” he told her.  A large group of people passed between them, and when they were past, the Priest was gone.

She hadn’t even asked his name, she realized.

A hand fell on her shoulder, and she jumped.

“Apollonia!”  It was Jaya.  “Oh thank the stars.  I thought you were lost!”

Turning, Apollonia saw that Jaya had a couple bruises, but looked otherwise no worse for the wear.

“Jaya!  I’m glad you’re okay . . .”

The woman smiled.  “On the contrary, I think it was probably good for me.”  Her face turned serious.  “Though you should not tell anyone I said that.”

Apollonia felt almost light, her mood was so good.  “I should have known you’d kick their asses.”

“We are lucky they decided to throw the first punch,” Jaya said, trying to hide her smile.  “Though I was mortified that you nearly got hurt.”

“Why did it matter who punched first?”

“On Gohhi, fault resides with whoever launches the first attack,” Jaya said.  “So no one wants to be the first to throw a punch.”

She gestured towards the dock to the Craton, where Apollonia now saw the Response officers from the bar, talking to a few other fresh Response officers from the ship.  A group of Gohhi’s private security guards were walking away, their uniforms ranging from frumpy to ostentatious depending on the company they worked for.  One annoyed-looking official was with them, though he did not look so upset it was worrying.

“No one is hurt?” Apollonia asked.

“Fortunately not seriously – on either side.  Though once that one drunk’s jaw sets I hope he will be more circumspect with how he addresses people who disagree with him.”

Jaya headed towards the security station, where Apollonia expected some grilling.  But the officers only gave her a scan check and asked if she had any injuries.

“I’ve got a hangover,” she admitted.  A dull ache had been forming at the back of her head for awhile, though it hadn’t yet broken her happy mood.

“That’s all?” the officer asked.

“Yeah.  I drank a lot, I guess.”

The officer opened his mouth, but then paused, his eyes going to the side as he got a message.  “Dr. Y suggests you come down to his office – he would be glad to help you.”

“That sounds good,” Apollonia murmured, heading inside where Jaya was waiting.

“I’m heading to Y’s as well,” Jaya said with a sigh.  “He is the doctor on duty and I don’t wish these bruises to fester.  I suppose he wishes to chew me out as well.”

“Wait, you?” Apolloni asked.

“Oh, yes.  I outrank him, but he . . . well, you know how Y is.  I have seen him dress-down admirals for mistakes while never breaking decorum.  It is simply his way with words.”

Apollonia laughed again.  “Yeah . . . I know just what you mean.”

Neither of them really wanted to hurry – Jaya to avoid Y, and Apollonia because she was suddenly remembering something.

“We didn’t even talk about my letter,” she said, her happiness disappearing in a heartbeat.  Replaced by misery.

“Have you been considering it this evening?” Jaya asked.

“I hadn’t really thought about it since you invited me . . .  I’ve been doing research on Squat’s on Sand’s people like you suggested . . .  Abmon are so different from us.  I don’t even know where to begin with what to say.  I mean, he doesn’t have a mother and father, just . . . some pod who laid him as an egg and never knew him.  He left before his siblings grew up, so even they didn’t know him.  Who do I even address the letter to?”

“His people,” Jaya said.  “Just because his blood relatives did not know him does not mean they do not wish to know.  And he had peers, friends, of his own age who would know him.  They are different, yes, but there are similarities between all beings.  The trick is just finding out what they are.”

“What do we have in common?” Apollonia asked, her mouth twisting.

“You knew him,” Jaya said.  “Perhaps you can tell me?”

Apollonia blinked, surprised.

“As for what I know,” Jaya continued.  “He was a very stubborn being, who wanted to help no matter the cost – though you know that.

“I also know that Golgutt is a much warmer world than Earth, so he was always cold.  But aside from warming his room, he accepted it and never complained.  In fact, he sought out a transfer to a human ship because he wanted to get to know other species.  He came knowing he’d be miserable, because it was worth it to him.”

“I never knew he was cold,” Apollonia said.  She found herself thinking back on the time she’d known him.  It had been brief, but something about the being had made her feel a level of comfort – like she had known him for far longer.  He had almost immediately become like a fixture to her, as much as Y or Jaya or, in his own way, Brooks.

Jaya stopped, and Apollonia snapped out of her thoughts as the woman looked at her.

“So my thought is – tell him as you know him.  His family who were robbed of their chance to know him will be pleased to learn a little more.  And his friends, they will know precisely what you mean, and their memories of him will be a little sweeter for knowing that he was himself, to the very end.”

---

< Ep 7 Part 29 | Ep 7 Part 31 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

Working in a computer time span, it felt like it took him hours to find the data, though in real time it was less than ten minutes.

Madspark’s data was far more secure than he would have expected, with layers of defenses that seemed far above what an individual might need.  Even if that individual was a murderer . . .

Much of the data had intentionally started being corrupted and overriden with nonsense as soon as his life-signs had ceased, and Urle could tell that this man was part of something bigger.

The fact that Madspark probably didn’t even know some of these safeguards existed – they were hidden from his own system – told Urle that he was far from the top layer in this chopping racket.  He was a peon, to be sacrificed.

This went much deeper.

With the losses of data, he couldn’t get any hard evidence, but he could tell that there had been other murders.  Madspark himself seemed to have been involved in several dozen, and he saw hints that others were involved in even more such crimes . . .  Possibly hundreds or even thousands.

The augmented community weren’t fools, they were dedicated enough to their lifestyle to risk life-threatening surgeries often, throwing away what evolution had crafted over billions of years for something better – but far less proven.  There was always immense risk, and data was shared on a staggering scale to mitigate that.

Scanning public records, though, he saw no evidence of strange disappearances, murders, or anything else similar.  People often disappeared – but through movement or accidental deaths or any one of a thousand other reasons that did not draw suspicion.  Over a billion augs lived in Gohhi, across thousands of stations, so fudging even a few thousand deaths would be doable – with enough resources.

That meant that it was being covered up by powerful people.  Someone with a lot of money was acting the hyper-predator against the hardest of victims.

Extracting what data he could for later digestion from Madspark, he blanked the rest and then went into the shop’s system and erased all evidence of his and Kell’s presence, along with activating the cleaning drones to scrub their physical traces.  After that, the drones would wander off and find creative ways to get themselves destroyed, taking with them the last evidence that he and Kell had ever been here.

It was a crime, what he was doing.  Kell defending him had not been, but . . .

He found himself in a moral quandary.  What he was doing was unethical, but this was Gohhi Station.  Despite the claims, all who had experienced the place knew that law and justice existed as commodities, not concepts upon which society was built.

It hurt him to behave this way.  But whoever was behind these attacks had enough power to also have made themselves invisible.  They’d bury this just as easily.  He’d never even get a chance for justice if they found him, nor would the murdered man.

He executed the cleaning program, then stepped out into the main shop area.  Kell was standing completely erect and still at the counter, which was actually kind of reasonable, given the locking mechanical legs many augs possessed.

“Let’s go.  Did anyone come in?”

“Yes,” Kell said, already heading towards the door.

Urle stopped.  “What did you say?”

Kell stopped as well, looking back at him.  “I informed him that the shop was closed.”

“And he believed a stranger?” Urle asked nervously.

“I appeared to him as the proprietor.”

Urle had to digest that.  “What?”

Kell smiled, mockingly.  “I can look how I wish.  I am quite capable of fooling your kind.  Even augmented ones.”

Urle hesitated, but remembered that it had been Kell who had made first contact with humanity, by simply mimicking an aide to the First Minister on Earth and walking up to him.

“All right, then . . . let’s get going.”

They left out the back, Urle scrambling the nearby sensors – all 437 of them that might capture some evidence of their presence – and then they were essentially free.  Except for the footage that already existed in a server hub that would show them walking into the shop . . .

“Look, Kell, you should head back to the ship.  I need to do a little more work and look into what just happened here.  You don’t need to be involved in any of it-“

“I will continue with you,” Kell said.  It was a statement, not a request, and Urle hesitated.

“It will be dangerous, Ambassador.”

“Yes.  You nearly died, and would have if I had not been there.”

It was hard to argue with that.  “All right, but you have to follow my lead – and we can’t do what you did back there, ripping a man’s head open!”

“He was already dead,” Kell noted.  “He could no longer care.”

“I care, damn it.  You have to promise.”

Kell took a deep breath, which Urle’s system noted did not actually use any of the available oxygen – he literally did it to show his exasperation alone.  “Very well,” he said.  “I will refrain from opening human skulls.”

Urle sighed as well, and logged into the station’s legal channels.  “I’m going to get myself a private detective license to facilitate this-“

Kell perked up.  “What is that?”

“Er, well some places allow private individuals to get special permission to perform investigations for legal purposes . . .”

“I have heard of these people,” Kell said.  “I would like this license.”

“Wait, seriously?”

Kell nodded, very seriously.

“They’re expensive, I can cover it, but . . .”

“I do not use the Ex I am told is at my disposal,” Kell said.  “I will compensate you later.”

Urle felt his head starting to hurt.  “Fine.  There.  Now you have a license.”

Kell seemed pleased, taking out a tablet that Urle did not even know he carried, and examined his new license.

Urle could not help but to ask; “How do you even know what a private detective is?”

Kell considered a moment before answering.

“Your kind are not always oblivious to the existence of Shoggoths.  Some have found evidence and attempted to learn more – and met what they sought.  Some of those people were detectives.  I have been told of them.”

“And what happened to those detectives?”

Kell looked up at Urle, his face, as always, neutral, with only a hint of tension that suggested the seriousness of his next words.

“Few who seek out forbidden knowledge meet pleasant ends,” he said.

A feeling of dread crawled up Urle’s spine, but he then thought of the store owner, who had died, ultimately, because he’d tried to pry into Urle’s own secrets.

“I think I understand,” Urle said.

---

< Ep 7 Part 28 | Ep 7 Part 30 >