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

---

“Wait!” Urle said.  But Short Circuit walked away quickly.

“Fisc,” Urle snapped.  “I didn’t think someone like him would know enough to be frightened by the alias alone . . .”

Kell was watching the man hurry away to a door that led outside.  He glanced back at them.

Urle rubbed his forehead.  “We need to move fast to find another broker before this guy tells on us.  We could get trouble then, Kell, of all sorts.  Or hell, maybe I’m just nuts.  Maybe this is a good sign that we should just let it go.”

He looked up.  “What do you think?”

But Kell was gone.

Urle jumped up.  Kell had been sitting on the inside, and without even disturbing the seat enough to be noticed, he had disappeared.

Whirling, Urle looking towards the door that Short Circuit had gone out, and then sprinted towards it.

Slamming the door open, he found himself in an alleyway between this bar and the next, on an elevated floor that was mostly empty.  Deeper down the alley, though, he saw movement, and he followed it.

Then he saw Kell.

“Don’t kill him!” Urle cried.

The Ambassador looked over to him, still holding Short Circuit’s body.

Urle’s scans suggested the man was still alive; electric activity in his body was still going, only at levels that suggested he was unconscious.

The man’s brain had gone out from oxygen deprivation, though why his electronics had likewise gone into standby was not as easy to explain.

“I have not killed him yet,” Kell said simply.

He let go of the man, letting him slump to the ground.

“Killing people for information is not how we do things, Kell!  This man has rights, he was a human being who-“

“Who was garbage, by your own words,” Kell said sharply.  “Who had a long list of crimes against others of his kind.  Even murder.  Is that not true?”

“You are not judge, jury, and executioner,” Urle said, standing his ground.  “That’s not how we work.”

“I thought you wished for justice and to save others.  Is this man’s life truly more important than those goals?” Kell asked.  “His mind is still mostly organic.  If I kill him then I can access it, as you could with the other man.  It is the easiest way to learn.”

“We’re not even sure that he’s involved in-“

“He is,” Kell said.  He pointed to the back of the man’s skull, where a metal implant stood out – just barely – as a slightly different shade of blue steel against the rest.  “This part matches the one you found at the store.  They are from the murdered man you wished to avenge.  He is involved.”

Urle moved closer, crouching, and touched the part.  His scans could not truly confirm that it had belonged to JaxIn, but it had been built to the same specifications, down to the batch of pigments used on the surface metal.  This was part of the same set – and it had recently had its edges cut to fit Short Circuit’s skull.

“This doesn’t prove that he knew it was stolen from a dead man,” Urle said softly.

“It bears marks that cannot be washed away.  Threads connect things, even after death, Zachariah Urle.  I can see it – whether you can or not does not change that.”

Kell pointed back out of the alley.

“Now leave.  I will make sure there is no body to find.”

Urle didn’t move.  “Like how you got rid of the Hev bodies?”

Kell was silent a moment, watching him.  Unblinking.  Urle felt his eyes water as the aura of Kell’s displeasure made itself known.

“Yes,” Kell finally said.

“What did you do with them?” Urle asked.  On some level he did not want to know, he was terrified to know, sickened to ask because he felt he knew, but the words were not easily said.

“I consumed them,” Kell told him.  “I had never consumed an alien species before.”

“Cannibalism-“

“Is normal among my kind,” Kell replied sharply.  “And these were our enemies.  You wish I should have left their corpses, containing poisons meant specifically to cause your kind a painful death?  I broke down their bodies, their poisons, and I learned from them.  On some level you can say I now understand their people.  And I can do that again here.  We will know exactly what we need to know, and we can prevent innocent beings from dying in the future.  If you believe this is still immoral, then I can only say that the moralities of our two people do not intersect.”

It was Urle’s turn to be silent, and Kell simply waited, showing no sign of impatience, still unblinking, still seeming a monster in human clothes.

“I won’t let you kill him.  And if he doesn’t store his data digitally then I can’t access it.”

Kell said nothing and walked out of the alley.

They were at a dead end.

Urle looked down at Short Circuit, wondering if the man’s life was really worth it.

He would go and report this to someone . . . but Kell had at least bought them a couple hours before that happened.

After a few moments of lingering, he went to the mouth of the alley, seeing Kell standing a dozen meters away, staring upward at the neon billboards.

Probably wondering why he even put up with humans, Urle thought.

A message popped up in his inbox.

It was, as far as he could tell, blank.  There was no sender, no original IP, only routing IPs – a lot of them, so many they became jumbled, useless data.

His heart beat faster.

The quality of this obfuscation was beyond him.  It was beyond anyone he had ever known.

It had to be the same person who had hacked into the server and made the openings in the defenses that they had used earlier.

Trying to be cautious about it, but knowing that any virus or attack someone this skilled might make would probably slice through him like he was made of tissue, he opened it.

STATION 247  |  DECK 19  |  COMPLEX 7

That was it.  Just text again.

But it might be the break they needed.

“Kell!” he called out.  “I know where to go.”

---

< Ep 7 Part 40 | Ep 7 Part 42 >

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

---

Urle made his way to a bar known as the Spacerport.

It was outside of aug territory, but close enough that a lot of the clientele were enhanced, and Urle felt a dozen active scans ping him as he came in.  A few focused on Kell, but finding nothing interesting, they gave up.

“Follow me,” Urle whispered.

Kell was on him closely as Urle moved to a set of steps and went to the next floor.

This floor was special, he knew.  Only important, wealthy patrons typically came up here – not a rule, but a custom.  Them, and people who wanted a favor from someone important.

He felt more scans, looking for weapons and traps on his person.  Kell was mostly overlooked, his lack of augments and weapons probably making him read as harmless, which Urle found grimly amusing.

A large man surrounded by cronies and beautiful women, along with a dozen enforcers and bouncers, were watching them as they went to a booth, Kell sitting on the inside and Urle next to him.  The guards did not even bother to hide their weapons.

It was not them that Urle wanted the attention of, though, and as they waited, their interest slowly waned.  He wanted another type of contact, and lone figures in shadowy recesses seemed to be picking up on that.

“Someone’s going to come sit down,” he told Kell.  “When they do, they will be a broker.  Let me do all the talking unless I ask you something, all right?”

Kell nodded.  And soon enough, a man joined them.

He was a short, ratty man with a thin face whose hair had been taken by radiation.  An aug, wires wrapped around his ears to ports on the back of his head, but aside from that his mods were hidden from sight.

He said nothing at first, merely sliding a card across the table to Urle.  It introduced him as Short Circuit.

Urle ran a search on the man, finding that he had been arrested before for information trafficking, extortion, assault, even a murder and a dozen other lesser charges.  Most had never stuck, despite a lot of evidence, and he’d only faced a few short stints in prison.

So he was connected, Urle mused.

“I need to find someone,” Urle told him.

Cautiously, he messaged Kell, hoping the being would actually pay attention.

‘Be careful.  This man is a real piece of garbage – list of crimes a mile long, including murder.  But he might have the info we need.’

If Kell saw it, he gave no indication.

Short Circuit was watching Kell, though.

“I know who you are,” Short Circuit told Urle.  “First officer on the Craton.  Not bad, you know?  But who’s your friend?”

“No one important,” Urle said.

Short Circuit clearly did not buy that.  But he did not seem to want to stress the point, and Urle felt something creep up the back of his neck.

A feeling of dread was spreading through the room, he realized.  The conversations were slowly growing quieter, until the entire floor seemed silent.

Was Kell doing this intentionally?

Urle glanced around, wondering if the people up here would know the source.

But no one was watching them.  Their nervous glances were at each other, at dark corners.  The heavy-set man with his many companions apparently had had enough, and rose to leave, his entourage hurrying along after him.

“I only have the alias of the man I’m looking for,” Urle said, hoping that Short Circuit wouldn’t run out next.

The man considered, then nodded.  “Price depends on who it is.  Minimum 100,000 credits.”

Urle nodded.  It was high, almost all of his external trade credits . . .  But he could do it.

“The alias is Ji,” Urle told him.  “He’s connected-“

The blood drained from Short Circuit’s face.

He stood, without a word.

“You’re a moron,” he said.  “Get back to your ship before you get hurt.”

---

< Ep 7 Part 39 | Ep 7 Part 41 >

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

---

The door closed behind Iago, creaking loudly and booming shut hard enough to shake the floor.

“Is anyone there?” he called.  Perhaps he’d just walked in to his death willingly, perhaps this was an airlock and he’d-

A dim blueish-white glow appeared from above.  He looked up, but his eyes had adjusted to the dimness, as it was too bright to keep his gaze on.

Someone stepped forward into the dim circle of light.

It was hard to see, but he appeared to be wearing a cowled robe.  It was made of something beautiful, likely true silk, but it was ancient – faded, fraying ends lending it a solemn sadness.

“I am so sorry for your losses, Iago Caraval,” the cowled man said.

“Who are you with?” Iago demanded, taking a step back.  The voice was familiar, he knew it – but he could not put a name to it.

The man reached up, pulling back his hood.  “Do you not recognize your shipmate, Iago?”

“Dr. Zyzus . . . ?”

Iago did know the man.  He was one of the chief doctors under Y, focusing largely on civilian medicine.  Iago had met him, but only a few times, and he knew nothing of the man.

“It was you,” Iago realized.  “You wrote me the letter.”

Zyzus nodded.  “Yes.  You have suffered greatly, my son, and I knew you needed comfort before you were lost.  But you need not suffer any longer.”

Others stepped into the edges of the light, their cowls still down.  They were varying heights, but he could make out nothing about them except that.  Their robes were the same faded, frayed silk that looked ancient enough to pre-date humanity’s ascent to the stars.

“Who are you people?” he demanded.

“We are the Esoteric Order,” Zyzus said.  “A faith dedicated to helping all who seek the wisdom and comfort of the Infinite.”

The name didn’t ring any bells, but Iago was hardly an expert on religions.

“I didn’t know you were a man of faith,” Iago said, trying to buy time.

Zyzus ignored that.  “All of us present have been touched by the Infinite, Iago.  It is something that brings great fear and confusion.  At times, it can be a gift.  At others – a curse.  But for good or ill, we have been changed by it.”

Iago found that his heart was pounding in his chest, so hard that he almost couldn’t talk.  All thought of suspicion was driven from his mind.

“The Infinite . . . you’re talking about Leviathans and tenkionic matter.”

“I am speaking of the Eldritch Truth, Iago.  We do not call it by the words of people who only theorize and calculate, but have yet to know it.  We have better words, better . . . understanding.”

He raised a hand.  “Iago, I know that you have been feeling that the knowledge you have learned will destroy you.  But I am here to tell you that it need not be so.”

“How?” Iago asked, his tone only a hair’s breadth from begging.  “How can I beat this?”

Zyzus’s face turned into a sad smile.  “You do not beat it, Iago.  You embrace it.  You must accept the truth of the cosmos, your place in it, and only then will you be able to bear its weight.”

Iago’s stomach fell.

No . . . No, he could not do that.  He could not . . .  He did not even understand what he had experienced, he only knew that it was true and that it was terrible beyond anything else . . .

“I understand your terror,” Zyzus continued.  “But the Infinite does not only take from us, or give us burdens.  So, too, can it give us gifts greater than we could ever hope.”

Zyzus’s words faded, and he stepped back, to the edge of the light.

Another stepped forward, and Iago’s eyes jumped between Zyzus and the new person before settling on the latter.

They reached up, their hands delicate, and before she even pulled back her hood, he knew who she was.

“Hello, Iago,” the woman said.

Her face was trepidatious, her words nervous, but Iago would always recognize the woman he had married.

“Cassandra?” he breathed.

She nodded, her chin moving just a fraction.  “I know it must be shocking seeing me here . . .”

“I thought you were dead,” Iago breathed.  He could not move, he was frozen, his mind nearly as paralyzed as his body, as hope and joy and horror and terror fought inside him.

But she was here.  She was real, he could tell.  This was not a trick, no illusion . . .

His eyes roamed what little of her was visible.  He saw the same creases under her eyes that he remembered, saw the small scar on the back of her hand from an accident with a knife, saw that her nails were still painted the particular shade of violet she had loved so much, whose edges always chipped off under her daily tasks.

“I did not die,” she said.  “I survived.  Thanks to the Infinite.”

“But where have you been?” he asked, feeling the tears now streaking from his eyes, his voice breaking.

“After the accident back home, I . . . I was not myself for a long time.  I became lost.  It was only when the Esoteric Order found me that I remembered who I was.  Who you were . . . and our son.”  Her voice took on an urgency.  “How is Elliot, Iago?”

“Elliot is okay,” he told her.  “He’s . . . he’s so smart, Cass . . .  Such a trouble-maker.”  He found himself letting out a laugh.  “Like me at his age.”

He saw the relief on her face and in her eyes, and he rushed forward to embrace her.

She was crying now as well, and for what seemed hours they could only hold each other in their arms and let the tears flow.

When she broke the hug, he saw that her face was serious again.

“Iago, it is only thanks to Dr. Zyzus that I was able to return to you.  You need to listen to him – to trust him.”

Iago was still reeling.  But if the man had truly helped bring Cassandra back to him, then he could not argue with her . . .

He looked to the man.

“Iago, come with me back to the Craton.  Do not worry,” he added quickly.  “Cassandra will come with us.  You can return, and your normal life will resume.”

“What will we tell them?” he asked.

“We will tell them the truth,” Cassandra said.  “There need be no lies.  We don’t have anything to hide, except . . .”

Zyzus smiled, but it was sad.  “We must not tell them of my involvement, Iago.  You know that the Sapient Union is suspicious of faith – should they know of mine, they will not allow me to continue my work as a doctor.”

That did not sound right to Iago, he’d known the religious, even clergy, to hold positions in the Sapient Union, they were only rare because such faith itself was rare anymore . . .

But he nodded.  He owed this man everything.

“I won’t tell them anything about you,” he swore.

Zyzus’s sadness turned to a quiet relief.  “Thank you, my son.  Now . . . there is more we must discuss.”

---

< Ep 7 Part 38 | Ep 7 Part 40 >

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 >