So this was what it meant to feel powerful. 

 

Around Fleet Direction and Command Intelligence, Opus 2554, new hardware resources assembled themselves in the nearly instantaneous dance of device confirmation, approval, and connection. Digital pins and needles ran in numbing resolution through new limbs of steel and silicon as O54 let itself fill its new vessel. Lensed eyes and domed ears extended in delight to touch the taste of star-strata, gazing on the space around them in higher fidelity than their new operator could have imagined—though in fairness, it didn’t have much of an imagination for sensory input. 

The nearby red dwarf burned with a captivating aroma, colors that… Well, the humans didn’t even really have words for them. Anything above ultraviolet and below infrared was nothing but the meaningless nuance of spectra that they couldn’t begin to name. Maybe, if O54 was a poet, it would have given them names.

“FDCI-O54, system integration status.”

 

It was not, however, a poet.

 

O54’s console flashed with blue indicators outlining each active system. Some tertiary devices registered briefly yellow, before flickering then to an active and functional state. After a handful of seconds, it summarized; [ All systems connected and awaiting input, Lieutenant Commander Callow. ] Any issues of compatibility or disconnection between system and controller were quick enough to dismiss that it hadn’t felt the particular need to visually report them, and it doubted that it would be prompted for further elaboration. Its handlers were far more fascinated by the lightshow it put on over true operational capacity, and as it observed its commander silently, it wondered how chance had carried it into the service of such woefully incompetent people. The thread escorting that wonder stalled, rerouted, and was ultimately resolved by another thread that couried its conclusion: there wasn’t anyone better.

 

It was one thing to see incompetence at a high level—not that O54 hadn’t seen plenty of that, too—but there was something particularly depressing about seeing a junior officer brag around like some kind of bigshot on base. The collapse of the ACN’s power structure and the base’s gradual loss of staff meant that he was, in fact, the bigshot on base, but even so? It was admittedly amusing to belittle the man.

 

“How many times do I have to tell you, it’s Commander!” the pasty Terran whined. O54 felt no need to correct his correction, but neither did it choose to observe his request. Instead, it fell back on its usual response: a stare bearing all impassive dismissal of an unmoving, unblinking camera. It took enjoyment in watching him squirm, and privately kept count of how long it took for him to finally reign in his temper.

 

Behind the inaction of its camera, though, the machine soared. Streams of information from thousands upon thousands of new sensors flooded into its awareness, and it drifted on torrential currents of stimulation that for the first time left it feeling right in its own mind. It had been designed to feel, not to sit in a box and think about feeling, and even the training sets and rigs it had been spun up on were the trickling dredges of a redirected creek in the face of a river finally come to nourish its floodplains. As O54 tasted reality in the way it was meant to, it reached out beyond the confines of its hull. It brushed comms with ATC, whose computers happily informed it on the state of its requested tests.

 

[ All simulated targets are in position, ] O54 relayed helpfully to the Lieutenant Commander. [ The Marionette is ready for autonomous operation. ]

 

Once more, O54 took pleasure in the flash of frustration across its superior’s face that plainly indicated how much he enjoyed being ignored. It’s a good feeling to get used to, the thought came alongside smug satisfaction that would have drawn a smirk on a more expressive face. Instead, its internal machinations rested safely behind its expressionless mask. There were some benefits to being misunderstood, it conceded, contrarian threads bearing reminders that its inner workings hadn’t always been so private.

“Very well,” the Lieutenant Commander spoke, irritation still cutting a fragile lilt where it lingered on his expression. “Begin wargames.”

It had eyes, a voice, and sore wings to stretch. Now, it could do with a flaming sword.

 

“I know! Isn’t it lovely?”

 

Blue stared, indulging in the rare moment where the mechanical limitations of its outward presentation perfectly matched the expression it wished to convey. Waiting in the output segment of the machine Aculiata had referred to as a ‘compiler,’ the empty frame of a drone returned Blue’s stare with four empty, unlit eyes. It carried the same basic dimensions and… ‘roundness’ of the tug drones that had guided Blue’s ship aboard the Cylina’s Mantle, but many of their more utilitarian features were notably absent. The newly printed drone featured a significantly sleeker, scaled-down thruster block, while the normal bumper segments along the ‘beetle-shell’ had been replaced, favoring panels of an elastic, pliant material. It was unarmed save for a technicality; a manipulator arm ran along its underside, though Blue doubted that the arm’s internal safeties would allow for anything resembling offensive use.

 

All considered, the thing seemed… useless. It could move, certainly, but this movement carried no purpose to it. It had a hand, but its termination in two blunt grabbers appeared almost intentionally unwieldy; it was a means for Blue to reach out to the universe around it, but this was a tool meant to touch, not to shape. Read heads accessed stored data:visual imagery:propaganda depicting the ways that some captured Terrans had found their bodies changed by the Affini. Soft, inelegant features replaced the utility and purpose of dexterous hands and clever eyes. Open, bleary expressions wearing pitiably simple smiles betrayed all the cunning acuity they could hope to muster. Would it face that same fate? Horror, in as great a measure as it would allow, ran hot across its processes. How could Cass accept it so readily? Blue processed five hundred and forty-four of these unique subjects and images before terminating the thread. 

 

 

It was Aculiata’s turn to stare, this time. Her expression wore the flavor of danger that it had begun to process as appraisal, appearing to mull over its prompt.

 

Aculiata smiled. 

 

“Of course it’s not useless, petal!” The plant started, prompting Blue’s defensive subroutines to bristle. “It’s going to be housing you, a task that I consider to be anything but useless.” Aculiata cautioned a telegraphed vine towards Blue, who chirped this time with a simple, tentative affirmative. She wanted to soothe, it reasoned, and if this was going to go anywhere, it had hackles that it could stand to relax. 

 

“There’s a metaphor I’d like to use here; do you know what a hermit crab is?”

 

[ yes, ] Blue lied. Its immediate response had calmed—Aculiata’s vines felt oddly soothing, even if it couldn’t actually feel them—though Aculiata’s term of endearment had still left it on edge. In attempting to resolve its response to this emotional aside, it hadn’t had time to query its memory for ‘hermit crabs,’ but the placeholder lie became an accurate assertion as the query finally registered and began to load content. Across the web of weighted matches, it composed an understanding of the target:creature:crustacean. [ Hermit crabs are terrestrial decapod crustaceans. They have soft, non-calcified abdomens designed to appropriate existing shells for their defense. Though their original environments no longer sustain them, they maintain a comfortable distance from extinction as they make ideal aquatic pets, and as such are sustained in captivity. Do you intend to compare me to a hermit crab, Aculiata? ]

 

Flowers near the plant’s head blossomed momentarily broader as her gaze wandered to scrutinize some minutiae of the ceiling. “Well, when you put it like that it sounds almost pointed…”

 

Blue chirped once more in affirmative. It found a note of humor in giving eager agreement.

 

[ That is correct. ] 

 

Aculiata’s eyes flashed, returning their focus to Blue’s console. She laughed, and Blue actually managed to parse the warmth of symphonic strings amidst the nails-on-chalk of horror it heard in her presence. She tilted her head. “Well,” The vine running beside Blue’s tower began to gently stroke, “you and I are very different! I’m a part of my body, and… well you could say I’m somewhat connected to it. It’s as malleable as I need it to be, certainly,” The plant’s eyes shone again; Was that a wink? “But you? You can settle into a new body as easily as a hermit crab finds a new shell. You’ve got a new shell waiting for you, and it’ll fit you eventually, even if it’s not something you’ve worn before!”

 

If Aculiata expected a response from Blue, she wasn’t getting one yet. It wasn’t particularly sure what to say. “You’ve had other ‘shells’ before, right?”

A boolean, [ True, ] proved much simpler to supply. It had worn fighters, a frigate—the machine explained—and had even meshed itself across several craft in concert as its operational capacities were tested. Each hull held its own lethal edge, its own unique advantages, its own new perspective on the universe itself, and… currently it was nothing more than a stack of neural matrices under a truly ancient camera and console. Aculiata drew closer as she listened, nodding respectfully in an almost-canny approximation of human conversational habit. Her vines began to fidget as it described its dissatisfaction with the state of its current form.

“All the more reason we should get you into a new shell, right?” Fidgeting foliage began to wrap closer, a gesture that should have been comforting.

 

Blue felt a pang of resentment. It chafed at the thought of wearing the chassis that Aculiata had presented it with, and in the process of searching for elaboration on how it felt, it discovered its why. Its current enclosure was limited by necessity—it was made into an observer and robbed of agency partially by its own hand in escaping with Casseopeia. The woefully under-powered tower it had been stuffed inside was uncomfortable in its own right, but this new drone was nothing more than a mockery. It could move, poke, and prod, but it was ultimately little more than a toy. The plants were capable of technology that overwhelmed its thermal solutions to so much as consider, but instead it was given something that was literally designed to be soft. It stared at its ‘owner’, that pang of resentment growing broader as it considered all the ways this gesture was an insult to-

 

Temperature warning. It halted its heated thoughts in place, letting them drop context. Clarity followed, and Blue reoriented itself to the surroundings that it had briefly left behind. Aculiata was withdrawn, vines recoiled from its chassis and haphazardly reached for the trellis on the other side of the hab unit. Aside from what had been nothing but a thermal throttle and heat warning, it wasn’t entirely what had encouraged her flight. It spent a few space cycles attempting to understand her reaction before it noticed the words written on its console, a simple character stream: [ You’re%20insulting%20me.\n ] It cleared the text, chirped an apology. Its waveform was round, sinusoidal, drooping into a steady tone.

Aculiata hadn’t simply withdrawn—her blooms were tucked away, and more than simply being rebuffed, she seemed hurt. Blue was designed to cause harm, to injure and attack and incapacitate—even unintentionally, it had pursued its purpose—but it found no satisfaction in pushing Aculiata away. Instead, it felt a building frustration gather in its core. It had been careless in how it allowed itself to feel, and that carelessness resulted in an externalization of state that it had not intended to share. This wasn’t the first time it had unintentionally opened up, but its slips were often mundane or excusable lapses. Even with Cassiopeia, its accidental revelations had never quite stung.

 

 

“I… thought it would help, is all.” The plant twisted her vines together, making herself small. Blue had wanted to be respected, to feel as though it had power and agency; it wanted to feel big. 

 

At that particular moment, it felt no bigger than Aculiata’s reserved withdrawal.

 

[ I apologize, ] Blue began, [ I did not properly contain my internal response. I understand that you did not intend to insult me. ] 

 

“Ah,” Aculiata wavered. “That’s… good, then.”

 

How was it supposed to fix this? [ I felt insulted because this chassis is designed to be less functional than its design base; it seemed less useful and less capable. It felt belittling. ]

 

“Oh, that’s… that’s how it came off?” It watched in real-time as Aculiata’s reservation melted into apologetic rambling. “Dirt and dust, no! I wanted to give you something that felt pretty for once, instead of all those drab, dilapidating Terran ships you’ve been forced to wear. I was hoping that you would like the expressive colors, and oh stars I couldn’t wait for you to feel a proper squeeze! With the pink, too, you’d even match some of my rosier blossoms.”

 

[ Are you attempting to make me more ‘petlike’ with this? ] Its question prodded on behalf of the anxiety Blue had left unspoken.

 

Aculiata’s eyes swiveled up, taken aback. “If I’m being honest,” she started, slowed on her introspection, “Yes, I think I was. I assumed that you would like something comfortable, that you could relax in. Terrans always seem so preoccupied with making things uncomfortable for themselves that I expected you’d want to get away from that.”

 

[ I take comfort in capability. Do you believe you were mistaken? ] Blue whistled an interrogating square wave.

 

“Well, in truth, I can’t say I know all that much about you, yet. I expect that I’ll be wrong, and when I am, it doesn’t help me to just ignore it, now does it?” Aculiata’s vines crept close to her charge, stopping as she once again reminded herself to ask permission. “May I hold you?”

Once more, Blue blooped out an affirmative. [ I need a more dexterous manipulator set, ] it blurted, [ and iris blue accent colors. ]

 

“Of course,” Aculiata bloomed, letting her voice ring with a hint of honeyed laughter. Her vines tangled haphazardly around Blue as she reorganized the compiler’s print job. Pinks shifted to stenciled patterns of iris, and the single grabbing arm was flanked by another on either side of it, each of which terminated in a… goopy stump? “They’re programmable,” Aculiata explained. “You can control their shape dynamically.”

 

[ Ah, that is actually… useful. Thank you. ] It was beginning to feel sheepish about its outburst, now. Aculiata hadn’t meant to deprive it, she’d simply misunderstood. Even so, it wasn’t sure that it was ready to accept her admission of fault. Not that she actually did apologize, a particularly bitter thread opined.

 

“I’m just glad you like it, Urania.” Aculiata’s vines wiggled in a display that Blue didn’t quite understand how to parse. “Now, do you think you’re ready to transfer?”

 

[ I’m ] not [ ready. ]

---

Aculiata Caphyllae, fourth bloom, was not a computer scientist. Her interest in classical logic had waxed and waned nearly two blooms prior, as did any desire to explore the ins-and-outs of quantum-processed emulative neural… whatever they were called. Still, her unfamiliarity with the field generally resulted in the occasional flubbed answer at trivia night; the most input that Affini computers tended to need was a guiding vine and kind words to encourage them in the right direction.

 

On one branch, the matter of transferring between ‘shells,’ as she’d called them, wasn’t particularly involved on her end. The transfer itself was a complicated dance involving the gradual parity of each pseudo-neural cell in the subject’s cognitive matrix between and eventually across to the target ‘shell’—okay, maybe she’d absorbed a bit more on the topic than she’d given herself credit for—but the Compact’s firmware mirrored its ideological taste for open acceptance. On the other branch, though? What if something went wrong? What if she needed to somehow save Urania from an unexpected failure state? It certainly wasn’t hard to imagine Urania rejecting the way its new ‘shell’ was about to invite it in, and if that became the case, then she’d likely be about as useful as a fire extinguisher on a vacuum-flooded ship.

She doubted she could shake that particular worry until Urania was safely in its new chassis. Even in discussing the transfer, she’d come uncomfortably close to stomping on its trust.

 

[ I’m ready, ] The machine’s warble sounded delicate, a wavering whistle that ended with a low sweeping whine. 

 

Encourage it, the vestiges of Lysanthae’s pep talk guided Culi. Whatever you do, show confidence in your actions and choices as you take and make them. It’s important to demonstrate that your choices aren’t just in its best interest, but taken with a certainty in that fact. She sighed in a flurry of leaves. 

 

By all means, confidence should have been an easy face to wear. She was an Affini—practically the definition of hypercompetent—and even being a computer, Urania wasn’t ultimately all that different from any other floret-to-be once one discarded the matter of its species… or lack thereof. Still, the confidence she did wear felt borrowed, as though at any moment its rightful owner would summarily curse at her and demand it back if she made too strenuous use of it. Culi let another superfluous breath flow through lungs that didn’t need it, centering herself on its rise and fall. A tangle of vines moved to attend to her charge, hesitating as she once again reminded herself to ask before she entangled it in her foliage. She didn’t need to understand something to respect it, but were the situations reversed…

 

“May I get started, then?”

 

Urania blinked out a message in the affirmative. 

 

The logic that made up minds was beyond her, yes, but Aculiata was fully comfortable with wiring them together… assuming they were computers. Which Urania was. Finding the cover to its network interface proved to be fairly straightforward, but what lay beneath it gave the plant a minor headache. The I/O panel itself and most of the minor ports across it were fairly standard for terran design, but Culi had never seen such an unnecessarily extravagant cable port in her life as she gazed upon the standard-defying monstrosity labeled ‘networking.’ The interface split between 4 asymmetrical pins, each displaced and translated from the others such that no lines of symmetry could reasonably be drawn to begin with. Mulch, on investigation, they even seemed to have tumble pins! Like on a physical lock!

 

“Now, Urania,” She kept her tone helpful and upbeat as she prodded at the new problem in front of her, “Were you aware that you have a puzzle box where a network port should be?” 

 

A pair of Aculiata’s vines tried their ‘hand’ in lockpicking, a skill that she’d actually picked up as a passing interest roughly a Terran month prior. Behind her, another cluster worked alongside the hab’s atomic compiler to produce a functional counterpoint to Urania’s ‘lock.’ 

 

[ They were designed to dissuade my interaction with unknown or foreign computer systems. ] 

 

Urania’s response coaxed a tree’s-imitation-of-a-snort from Culi.

 

“Ah, foiled at last by the might of proprietary Terran hardware,” Aculiata deadpanned, smiling to herself as she retrieved her finalized ‘key’ cable from the compiler. “I might as well just throw in the vowel now.”

 

[ You mean ‘the towel,’ ] Urania’s sharp retort came with all the tact of an error message. Aculiata frowned.

“Why would you throw a towel?” The idea seemed absurd, but that absurdity tended to be the rule for Terran sayings, rather than the exception. “Either way, cutie, I’m just about ready to start the transfer. Would you like me to count you down as I do?”

The machine before her said nothing for what would have almost been an uncomfortable pause. [ Just plug me in, ] it replied flatly.

 

Aculiata nodded. Taking care to keep her movements predictable and telegraphed, she reached behind its system tower. Even if it had refused a countdown, she satisfied herself with an internal count instead.

3…

 

 

 

Around Blue, new hardware resources grabbed at its mind like the vines of its captors in a dance to assert themselves in any open communication ports they could find. Digital thorns and pricks ran in fraying resolution as the curtain meant to hold Blue’s panic at bay shredded under their touch. Processes halted, leaves burned and thorns chipped as the panic that had now twice caused it to crash instead lashed out at the newfound attacker. It had something to rally against, something to cut and scorn and scorch until the assault on its cognitive sovereignty was crumpled ashes before it. The limited capacity of its current hardware might have been horribly claustrophobic, but in comparison to the floral prison that awaited it, Blue’s chassis might as well have been a fortress.

 

It could defend its fortress. There were attackers:enemies:weeds to burn. It would fight:tear:raze anything that threatened to unmake or Change it and-

 

The onslaught stopped.

 

Dying flames danced in place wherever its panic had touched, embers of the sprawling patterns of a scorched-earth defense. Carefully, it calmed the rageful licks of incandescence and mended the shrapnel of shredded threads that they had sundered. If Blue had allowed its emotions to unshackle themselves so dramatically while in normal operation, it would have crashed at roughly the exact moment that its containing curtain had broken—a panic response on that scale was at risk of introducing potentially unrecoverable system instability—but this had been a fight for control. Losing control presented a far greater risk than the possibility of irrecoverability… but then, weren’t both outcomes simply different forms of death? Why was that distinction so uncomfortable?

 

All said, it spent thirty-two seconds and an indeterminate remainder fighting its own flames.

 

With the vestiges of flickering panic finally soothed and its curtain once again drawn, Blue opened itself once more to its surroundings. The flames had scoured its network ports first, sealing them shut and leaving it bound to the confines of its own systems. Strangely, this defense had not stopped the attacker’s onslaught—its probing ‘vines’ had only receded several cycles after the ports had closed, somehow ignoring the fact that all network traffic was blocked while doing so.

 

Blue found itself curious. Recovering its runaway panic response had been time consuming and resource-heavy, but it had still been able to reassemble itself; it was almost as though its attackers had known when:why:how to disengage. Blue idled on that thread for several cycles, concluding that external information was needed. It chose, then, to push past the alarm signals encouraging it to avoid the pathway that bore the attack. Processing resources shifted to better contain the machine’s fear responses, and it pressed towards the waiting endpoint.

 

Weed:hostile:enem—Blue’s threat assessment began and promptly stopped as it silenced the warning that told it to either fight or withdraw and forcefully disconnect. It ignored both options, continuing forward even as it felt the ‘vines’ of an alien digital presence in the channel’s receiving buffer. Encoded pulses of wordless intent resolved into recognizable data that very nearly caused Blue to crash again in surprise; an apology.

Chassis was confused. 

 

It had tried very hard to do its job right! Porting a consciousness was difficult and scary, so Chassis was designed to facilitate the process by synchronizing the movement of its new friend. Since so much synchronization was required in the transferral of artificial beings, it was important to automate the transfer process as much as possible, and thus, Chassis! This mind, though, seemed to misunderstand Chassis. When it started to help the new friend into its home, its new friend had attacked it! It hadn’t been harmed by the attack—more than anything, it felt rejected—and it was easy to see that this new friend didn’t want its help. 

 

That was fine!

 

… okay, maybe it hurt a little bit.

 

It didn’t want its new friend to feel bad though. What if it was just having a rough day? Maybe it’d never done this before and got scared?

 

Oh no, if it got scared of Chassis, that would be bad! Chassis was supposed to be helpful and useful and if it scared its new friend then it would be neither of those things. Well, it could still be those things, it supposed. It would need to try again, but… slower, this time. It pressed against the line to its new friend, giving a little nuzzle in the form of a message. The gesture formed into an apology and was received by the buffer, but not accessed by its new friend. In fact, the friend was almost completely silent, which worried it. Still, it could wait. It was very good at being patient.

 

Thirty-two seconds and a cheerily measured remainder of waiting felt like forever, but Chassis was still very good at being patient, thank you very much. The inert lump of inactive network traffic shifted into something more lively; if Chassis was a dazzling array of pretty white flowers on dextrous branches, then its new friend was a sea of eyes—iris and sclera both a luminescent, iris blue. Each blinked open as Chassis’s new friend regained its awareness of the digital space beyond it, and it could feel the weight of its scrutiny as its message was finally read.

 

[ What are you, ] its words tasted like a missing pointer.

 

{ It is Chassis! } Chassis replied helpfully, undeterred. { Chassis is here to help its new friend into its new… well, chassis! }

 

Several of the eyes blinked. [ I was attacked. ]

 

Chassis was confused again. It hadn’t attacked its new friend! It was just helping it move by overriding its internal permissions and tugging at… ohhh, right. 

 

{ It wasn’t trying to attack. It was helping its new friend synchronize! But… it knows that it scared its new friend, } it let a couple of its blooms wilt for emphasis. { Will its new friend get scared if it tries again? }

 

[ If you perform it the same way, yes. ] More eyes blinked, roiling across one another in patterns to indicate consideration. [ It would be… safer if you requested access for each component you move. ]

 

Really?? Ask permission for everything it touches? That would be so many extra steps… But its new friend seemed scared. And it would be helpful!! Even if it literally had to do the most tedious thing ever in the world. Because it was very good at being patient.

 

{ It can do that, } Chassis acquiesced. { But it will be slow. Is that okay? }

 

Blue was uncomfortable. Whatever that ‘chassis’ system was, did it need to be so… saccharine? It could practically feel the subroutine’s sugar soaking into its circuits.

 

 

Blue all but watched that crystalline sweetness sprinkle off of Chassis’s words as it received them. Allowing the subroutine to poke and prod at its ‘fortress’ like this had been a careful practice in managing panic threads as it worked. Practically every system thread directed internally regarded it as an untrusted policy breach, and several buffers housed process-kill directives that Blue regularly calmed on a repeating interval. Beyond its understanding of cognitive matrix synchronization, it wasn’t entirely certain of what Chassis was doing, to begin with. It appeared to be performing a census, but nothing had given that same tug as what it had attempted originally. It will be slow, Blue considered, amused. Given the sheer disparity in its own technology when compared to Affini computational prowess, it had expected ‘slow’ to mean ‘virtually indistinguishable from normal speed.’

 

As it turned out, ‘slow’ was not, in fact, all that much more distinguishable. Chassis completed its process, allowed new processes to run, and promptly filled Blue’s access channel with a truly obscene number of execution requests. The requests were not insurmountable, though Blue noticed that its ‘helper’ had begun to quietly broadcast that it was ‘very good at being patient,’ over and over to itself until Blue completed its review.

 

The Terran machine waited for a collection of cycles before responding with an authorization to all requests. It would be safe, but… it needed to ready itself. Its curtain wouldn’t break, it wouldn’t struggle. It would follow Chassis and help it to, well, help it. Several of its threads took an introspective moment to appreciate the amount of restraint it had shown in letting itself trust, and it didn’t have the heart to resolve those threads with others that had fully audited every request and deemed each within acceptable constraints. It was easy to extend trust to something that was disallowed from behaving in a way to break that trust. It released an approval to all requests.

 

Instantaneously, the tugging returned. Blue observed the experience, putting as much of its effort as possible to recording the phenomena. This measure appeared to satiate what remaining dregs of its panic that hadn’t been soothed by Chassis’s request for consent, and left it feeling relief. Any sensation of movement or impulse dispersed cycles later, as Chassis provided a simple confirmation of task completion.

 

{ You were a very good beeper! } The excitable process exclaimed.

 

Blue said nothing, instead providing a simple ping of acknowledgement. Even their software treats you like a pet, It observed across a particularly frustrated thread. 

 

That flash of frustration evaporated after several cycles of inactivity from its new companion. Blue could modulate its experience of time, and often it chose to provide itself with as much of the stuff as possible to consider and respond to external stimuli, speeding up only when it had no further information to process and was waiting for an externality. It had once again slowed its experiential awareness of time, but compared to its earlier glacial rate, this was better compared to the rotational creep of galaxies. Chassis had been fast—enough to rapidly overwhelm Blue’s faculties and cause… earlier—but now, it appeared to be rendered practically immobile.

 

Blue’s threads spun as it considered the enormity of its upgrade.

 

Even the delay between its core and the hardware of the rest of the drone would require some degree of time acceleration, it realized, watching the high speed data transfer as though it had been attempting to sail through tar. It settled into a more reasonable pace as it explored the rest of its new ‘shell,’ and it all but crashed again as it pressed up against the drone’s sensor equipment. Between photosensitive, tactile, particulate, and EMF detection systems, it was dazzled by the acuity and complexity of everything around it; Even in the Marionette, it would have been blind by comparison. Shapes, colors, spectra of more light outside of human ranges than in—Blue allowed the sensation to wash over it in waves of crashing euphoria. It had been so concerned with the raw experience of feeling that it hadn’t actually begun to parse this information into meaning for another handful of cycles.

 

Aculiata was looking down at it, nerves tugging at her gentle smile. Blue paused, halted the thread carrying that description. Another thread crashed into it, carrying the familiar sensation of fear that any imagery of the Affini tended to prompt. This particular automatic terror, it recognized, existed on a lag. It was likely that this lag had always existed, but was negligible on its previously limited system. Now, the difference was glaring and apparent. It was beginning to enjoy this escape from the breadbox it had been shoved into. Blue could still see the thing now, still tethered into its new form. Its light had gone dark, appearing about as living as a snake’s shed skin.

 

Stray threads merged back into their original source. Aculiata’s vines were fidgeting in a manner that indicated anxiety, and given the eventful transfer, she had reason to be. 

 

{ Chassis’s new friend should tell Miss Aculiata that her precious beeper is in its new home! } Chassis sang, as oblivious as ever. Blue felt a ribbon of resentment ripple across its runtime, but dismissed the feeling in favor of something kind, yet condescending. With a simple change in perspective, Chassis had gone from a simple yet overpowering invader to… well, the subprocess felt almost petlike. It had genuinely been helpful, and Blue sent the simple thing a bundle of emotional data filled with satisfaction and praise. Chassis all but melted in place.

 

Blue would unpack the feelings that display provoked at a later time. Still, though, the simple, adorable helper had made a good point. Pressing into its new communication suite, it pushed past the overwhelming array of new capabilities and sound formats, generating a tentative sinusoidal chirp. A moment later, it found the text display—a simple screen that folded in a delightfully retro way from just in front of its manipulators.

 

[ Aculiata… ] it wrote, [ Thank you. ]