“It’s going to be okay.  But it’s going to be different.”  -Unknown-

_____

“This week on the show!”  Sarah’s cheerful voice repeated the words like a soothing litany.  “Conversations with our nonhuman friends about how it feels to be nonhuman!”  She settled down and dropped to a tone that was empathic, but firm.  “It is really, really easy for some of us to forget, sometimes.  That eight billion people built a world for people with two arms and two legs and basic corporeality.  And that here, in the Lair and the handful of other places we live, we’re not the normal.  And even when we’re doing our best, we can miss stuff.  Heck, we miss stuff with other humans.  That’s just life!”  She paused, taking a breath and smiling at her interviewee for the episode.  “But we can always try to learn more.  And use what we learn to build our not-normal world into something great .  So, now that I’ve said a million words, everyone say hello to Planner!  Planner, introduce yourself!”

“I am pleased to be here.”  Planner commented, in a voice like a pen scratching against paper.  “My full name is Planner, it would be gratifying if everyone would cease concerning themselves with a surname or nickname.”

“Now, I have a few questions.”  Sarah said, stepping her fingers as she leaned toward her microphone and across the desk slightly.  Her assistant took a picture to use as the cover image; a young woman in a sparkling blue shirt with owl designs all over it giving a careful look to several coiled tentacles, one of which was toying with a pencil on the desk, all of them ghostly green and emerging seeming from nowhere.  “My first question is kinda weird though.  Are you actually here? ”

“Ah.”  Planner’s small noise was a complex signal of understanding what was being asked, and making it clear it wasn’t a problem.  “Yes, currently I am in several places.  And one of them is the Winter’s Climb expedition.  That is what you are curious about, yes?”

“Pretty much!”  Sarah said, leaning back as her assistant gave them both a thumbs up.  “So, that seems like a good place to start, do you think?”

“I think I have brought more organizational notes to this interview than you did.”  Planner sounded put out.  “Are you referring to my activity as a delver?”

Sarah waved her hands back and forth across themselves.  “No no!  Though that’s also cool.  I mean, you’re… split up?  Is that the right way to say it?  Tell us what that’s like !”

Planner’s tentacles rotated, interlocking loops of false sea creature turning in opposition as they thought about it.  “That is a difficult question.”  Planner admitted.  “Though drawing on the memories of others makes the comparison simpler to explain.  I am not divided, because ideas do not exist anywhere physical.  So long as I am being thought, I am me.  It does not matter where.  What matters is more the strength of my connection.”

“So, how’s the delve going?”  Sarah asked with a little bit of excited apprehension.  “I didn’t get to ask anyone this last time there was a big expedition.”

“I am not manifested there.”  Planner stated.  “And so my awareness is limited.  I believe it is on schedule, however.”

Sarah nodded, scribbling down a quick note of a question before she forgot.  “Well good!  I hope they have fun!  And… you also have fun…?”  Planner made an accepting motion somehow, and Sarah moved on.  “So you’re manifested here, but you’re on your own.  How’s that work?”

Planner unfurled a few tentacles and let them settle on the desk in continually extending coils that somehow seemed neatly arranged.  “I have two responses.”  They stated.  “Firstly, that question is alike to asking a human how their heart and lungs interact.  Many people could give you a cursory answer, but it would be rather uncommon to find anyone who could go into detail.  Even more so, that rarity of knowledge would be amplified if you were asking during a historical era that lacked education.”  Several of Planner’s tentacles crossed and Sarah got the distinct impression that she was being lectured, which drew a tiny smile to her face as she focused.  “However, this is the very thing Research, myself included, is studying.  And so I can answer more completely.  Assignments such as myself are optionally physical; manifestation allows us to spread ourselves, as well as to interact with the world, but it also tethers a large part of our focus.  Manifesting requires reservation of the mental effort that sustains us, and that effort is eased by having our hosts able to process information about our manifestations.  If one of my close bonds could see me, for example, it eases the mental load of thinking that part of me into existence.  Distance also exponentially increases the requirements.  Physical proximity is useful, to say it plainly.”  Sarah bit her lip to stop a laugh at Planner saying anything was ‘plain’ about the explanation.  “Right now, though, there are twenty six close bonded and two hundred and four that I have lightly touched in this building.  Here, I can be anywhere.”

“That’s really cool!”  Sarah exclaimed.  “So, when you’re doing this, do you feel things differently?”

Planner twitched slightly, as if they weren’t expecting quite such an enthusiastic acceptance of what they’d said.  “I… yes.”  The words slipped just a tiny bit as they were caught off guard.  “This body emulates sensations such as hearing and touch.  Which is useful, as otherwise my senses must be intentionally pushed through the thoughts of a bond.”

“What’s your favorite snack?”  Sarah asked abruptly.

“My…”

She nodded as Planner stared at her through a myriad of false eyes.  Sarah didn’t actually know where Planner’s ‘actual’ eyes were, though that felt a little impolite to ask.  “Yeah!  You hang out with Research all day, and I know for a fact they’ve got a minifridge with a bunch of weird stuff.  Every time I help out at Lair logistics, there’s at least one package of Japanese snacks for someone in that basement.  So what’s your favorite?”

Planner stopped moving, their questing tentacles supporting their form over the desk held completely in place.  “I had not thought to try that.”  They said.

“Oh!  Well, now you have an option?”  Sarah blushed, realizing that this might have been a more personal moment than most people wanted on a podcast.

Planner raised the pencil they were arranging on the desk up to their central mass, and one of their tentacles split open along a seam to reveal a triple row of needle point teeth.  Gently, they bit down on the soft wood, leaving a row of imprints on the pencil before replacing it.  “It would seem so.”  Planner said simply.

Sarah cleared her throat.  “So, past the body stuff, I’m interested in how life in a human world is like for you.  What’s your day to day like?”

Latching onto the new question, Planner straightened up and went back to mechanically precise spins of their central limbs.  “Although my manifestation can grow tired, I do not tend to keep it active long enough to sleep.  As such, my days are perpetual.  But that aside, I spend much of my time in an adjunct role.  I assist with schedules, communications, and info space defense.  On average, I spend twelve to thirteen hours every day shadowing someone in Research, adding my perspective and somewhat unique protection to their activities, though who I follow changes.”  Planner shifted in an opposition direction as they refocused on the original question.  “The majority human nature of the world is less of a burden for me than it might be for some under the Order’s aegis.  My hierarchy of needs is compressed into social fulfillment, which I achieve here without issue.”

“You… you spend over half of every day working?”  Sarah couldn’t keep shock out of her voice.  “Planner, that’s not okay!  I know you said you don’t need rest as much, but when do you have personal time?”

Planner’s scribble toned reply was not reassuring.  “No, I spend half of every day working with Research.  I spend another six hours scattered through the day assisting Recovery with planning and locating.  And another hour focusing on reinforcing and checking our defenses.  My personal time is dedicated to streamlining small processes around the Lair, which I find satisfying.  I have personally made the kitchen marginally more efficient by rearranging the utensil drawers.”

The thought of Nate looking for an ice cream scoop and swearing at everything within a ten mile radius crossed Sarah’s mind.  “I… really want to believe you.”  She said slowly.  And then she changed tracks, letting the words come out in a rush.  “Actually, I choose to believe you.  Nate, if you’re listening to this, call me.”  Sarah crossed her arms.  “But seriously, you work so much! ”

“I am capable of being myself in multiple places.”  Planner said simply with their version of a shrug.  “You are making a mistake, and I would like to correct it before it becomes a problem.”

“Of course!”  Sarah invited.

Planner’s ghostly green form rearranged itself in right angles.  “I am not the same as you.”  They said.  “Humans, camracondas, ratroaches, navigators, even inhabitors to an extent, you all see work as an expenditure of effort.  And that effort must be replenished through relaxation, socialization, and distraction.  There is nothing wrong with how you are.  But I am not like you.  What you think of as work is, to me, an extension of myself.  It would be false to state that arranging a callander is similar to breathing, but not false enough .  And I do not want you to change me to suit your own emotional needs.”

Sarah nodded as she tried her best to internalize accepting Planner at their word.  “I know assignments sort of feed off of… structured information?”

“Yes.”

“So is that why it’s easy for you?”  She asked.  “Or is easy the wrong word?  Natural, maybe?”

Planner made a noise like a checkmark in sharpie.  “Perhaps.  Though natural may also be wrong.  I am different from other assignments within the Order.  More than anyone else in my species, I am an outsider.  I was made to hurt you, and you changed me.  And I do not resent that, perhaps because I have been changed, but it does mean I am different.”

Sarah realized something suddenly.  “Is that why you don’t want people thinking that you don’t like your work?”

“It is one reason, yes.  Enough of my hosts changing their minds about me, even in small ways, can change who I am.  I am very  stable, but that does not make me immune.”

“Is it okay to feel like that’s scary?”  Sarah asked in a quiet voice.

Planner turned as they thought about it.  “May I touch your mind?”  They asked suddenly.

Sarah sat up straight, not having expected the question.  Two instincts went to war in her thoughts; one part of her wanting to try everything and say yes to everyone, dueling with the part of her that had been a slave to an alien network that annihilated her sense of self for months of captivity.  She saw Planner pull back, and realized she was breathing heavily.  Sarah swallowed, and sucked in air, forcing herself to calm down by willpower alone.  She hated feeling this way, hated herself, hated what was done to her.  Sarah didn’t hate things very often, but she refused to let herself be made afraid like this.  “Sure!  Go for it!”  Her voice was artificially cheerful, and she was certain someone would notice, but she didn’t care.  “Just don’t share anything weird.”

“Mmh.”  Planner hesitated, but Sarah nodded at them and so Planner pushed one tentacle forward, coiling as gently as the infomorph knew how to be around the side of Sarah’s neck and phasing into her head.

“It’s weird that this doesn’t feel weird!  I’d expect this to feel weird.”  Sarah stated.

Planner ignored her, but did pull back, and then said something that sounded inconsequential.  “While James and Alanna were exploring the Ceaseless Stacks, you and an iteration of Anesh rearranged your living room.”  Planner’s matter of fact tone drew Sarah in, and she found herself leaning with a hand under her chin as she stared at the infomorph, wondering where this was going.  “Part of your perfectly reasonable changes included clearing some detritus and moving the central table eight inches toward your patio door into the freed space.  Because of this repositioning, the path from your room to the front door is slightly more open now.”

“I am utterly fascinated by this, but I don’t…” Sarah trailed off as Planner held up a tentacle.

“When you leave your home, you walk closer to the kitchen counter.  You know that the counter is only a problem if you lean over it and knock something off, but the table and the chair at the end are something you have hit your hand on dozens of times.  So you avoid it.  You don’t need to anymore.  It’s no longer in the way.  But where do you walk when you leave?”

Sarah blinked, tilting her head up to stare at the overhead lights.  “I do that?”  She asked.

“You do.”

“Huh!  I guess I do!”  She thought about it, thought about the unconscious processes that went into her daily routine, and if she’d changed over the last week.  “I mean, I’m gonna stop now .”  She said.

“But you hadn’t yet.”  Planner told her.  “That is me.  When others change their mind about me, I have the choice to resist.  I could continue walking where I always have, or I could move the table back.  Your thoughts to me are like your apartment to you.  The foundation is sturdy and safe, but the contents are malleable, even if you cannot simply pick up a couch one handed and toss it into the sink.”

“Well, Alanna maybe could.”  Sarah laughed.

“Yes, you think of her as-“

“Hey!  So!  Let’s talk about your personal life!”  Sarah pushed down a fit of embarrassed giggles to redirect to Planner.  “Okay, okay, you work a lot, but that’s fine as long as you’re not hurting yourself.  But you aren’t working all the time.  Does your life have room for friends, or hobbies?  Got anyone special to you?”

Planner’s coloration shifted slightly, lines of dark blue accenting the ghostly green of their form.  “All of my hosts are special to me.”  They said.  “Though I admit, telling humans apart from the inside is difficult  due to the fact that self-image is somewhat tautological.  But you mean in a romantic context, and no.  While manifested assignments hold the potential for it, I personally have no particular desire for romance or sex in my life, which disappoints many potential suitors.”

“ Many ?”  Sarah felt the word escape before she could stop it.  Then she realized that she was talking to a constantly shifting series of dexterous tentacles that was also polite and intelligent.  “No, nevermind, I live with James, I figured it out.”  She said.  “Okay, so you’re ace, that’s neat!  But friends?  Hobbies?”  Planner muttered something.   Muttered .  Which was the first time Sarah had ever seen the infomorph say anything without deliberate precision.  “Oh!  I’m sorry!  If you don’t wanna say, we can…”

“I create tye dye patterns in cloth.”  Planner said abruptly.  “It is silly.”

“…is it?”  Sarah asked.

“It feels silly.”  Planner restated for clarity.  “To me.  My species lives off of the organization of information.  And more than that, I am meant to be responsible for protecting this place.  To enjoy small chaos feels wrong, somehow.”  Sarah stood up suddenly, and moved over to the other side of the desk, taking a moment to assess her plan of attack before wrapping her arms around Planner’s rotating form and squeezing.  “What are you doing?”  Planner asked.

Sarah laughed.  “Giving you a hug you dummy.”  She said, leaning to press herself against Planner.  “You’re not meant to be anything.  You’re just meant to be Planner.  So if you like making something, then that’s what you’re meant to do.”  She felt Planner’s nervous motions still and then stop, and she gave a last squeeze before letting go and sitting down again.  “Do you wanna tell us about it?”

To their surprise, Planner found that they did.  “It is the mix of predictability and chaos that I find fascinating.”  They said.  “I choose the colors, I stir them in known patterns with the right amount of control, I wrap the cloth.  So many variables I can account for.  And yet, there is no way yet for me to truly know what the end result will be.  I am capable of guiding, but not perfectly controlling.  And so every piece surprises me in some way.  Even if it does not mean anything.”

“I think all the best hobbies don’t really ‘mean anything’.”  Sarah admitted.  “But they’re a lot of fun anyway.”

“A contradiction.”  Planner said idly.

“Yeah, well, that’s being human!”  Sarah grinned at their podcast partner for the day.  “And it seems like being hosted on humans makes you part human yourself, in a lot of ways.”

Planner twisted in acceptance.  “It does.  Though it may interest you to know that despite being part camraconda as well, I find that does not appreciably change my view of the world.  Your people have many aspects in common.”

“Camraconda guests are later in the week!”  Sarah exclaimed.  “Don’t spoil the surprise!”  She took a deep breath, and then leaned back.  “That’s also gonna be all for this episode!  Tune in next time for talking to Prince, a mimic who we know nothing about and who doesn’t know why he’s being interviewed!  Planner, thank you so much for making time for us today.  I hope you had a good time.”

“I believe I did, thank you.”  Planner made a motion like a bow.  “Now, I must leave.  There is a meeting scheduled.”  The tentacles folded in on themselves in a roil of ghostly flesh, before compressing to nothing and vanishing like an optical illusion.

“We should have a video component.”  Sarah muttered slightly.  “Anyway!  Thanks for listening!  Until next time!”

_____

The elevator to one of the basements dinged open, and James waited for the six other people to disembark before following out into the atrium.  He suppressed a cough as he passed by the sturdy trunk of the tree that was the centerpiece of a small garden down here, illuminated by a shaft of natural sunlight that came from the skylight that shouldn’t have led to anything but dirt and buried pipes.  It was a beautiful spring day outside, the winter cold slowly creeping back to be replaced by something more tolerable.

Though after the Climb, he’d take basically anything that wouldn’t kill him if he wasn’t wearing eight coats and chugging the potion that heated you up but also risked your internal organs to detonate like cluster munitions.

The hallways were more populated than normal today, James noticed as he walked.  He wasn’t really focusing on anything in particular, just making his way to his destination. But he kept having to shift and mutter an apology to someone when he wandered into the way of people wheeling handcarts full of IKEA boxes or cleaning on top of the ventilation pipes or something.

It felt alive, and busy, but not in an overwhelming way.  Though James was aware that they were starting to run up against a practical limit before the Lair might become overwhelmed, and it mostly had to do with there being over a hundred people living in one basement that only had a single elevator.

Which was less of a problem than James’ faulty human instincts told him it was.  Apartment structures in metropolitan areas often had to deal with more people using worse elevators.  But he still had this gnawing thought that the apartments being underground and compressed in space might mess with throughput somehow.

This wasn’t the apartment sector though.  This floor was now almost fully dedicated to Research, as well as their now more solidly established medical wing.  And James was here to bother the local administrator about progress on a few things.

The central area that Reed’s tiny office was attached to was as chaotic as ever.  A fenced pen in the middle of the floor space held a number of shellaxies, the semi-organic computer cases filled creatures that scuttled around on short cable limbs and had been domesticated far easier than anyone really expected.  All the shellaxies had labels stuck ot their cases informing people of their names; James was partial to Peanut Butter Cup.  They also, today, had what looked like cut up foam pool noodles taped to their edges, which was explained by the pair of younger stuff animals running around with the boxy creatures.

The rest of the floor wasn’t quite so cute. Two people were in a shouting match that it looked like everyone else was pointedly ignoring.  Something about a lamp, but James had headphones in and wasn’t really interested in getting involved at the moment.  A camraconda and a pair of humans were mopping up something that looked like it had polished the floor to a literal mirror shine, which was impressive for bare concrete.  It also looked like it was starting to work on the mop.  And there was a skittish ratroach hiding up on top of the ventilation ducts that James was pretty sure everyone was trying to tempt down with bacon.

Why they had delicious hot bacon here in a place at least a five minute walk from the nearest kitchen was concerning, but also, he would be tempted down by bacon, so the plan at least seemed solid.

Taking out his headphones, James paused Sarah’s podcast, walked confidently around the outer edge, and knocked on Reed’s door, letting himself into the tiny office without waiting for a reply and without being sidetracked by any shenanigans.

“Hey.  I’m here for your interrogation.”  James said.

Reed was already focused on him as he walked in and shifted around the door to close it.  “Okay.   Wait , why are you wearing a mask?  Did you unleash another wizard plague?!  No, worse, is there a normal plague again?  I can’t do lockdown again, I’ll cry, please.”  Reed braced his hands on his desk, curly haired head leaning backward with a terrified expression on his face.

James tried to give his best exhausted look.  “I have a sore throat.”  He said.  “Calm the fuck down.”

“Oh.”  Reed relaxed quickly, before clearing his own throat.  “With you though, that could mean…”

“Reed.  Please.”  James begged with tired eyes.  “I’ve spent a long time on Mt. Doom, I’m sore, I’m getting sick with something stupid, and I just want to get some project updates.”

Reed winced.  “Ah, sorry.  Uh… there’s a lot of projects, but off the top of my head, you probably wanna know that the Library tablet progressed?”

“Progressed how.”  James asked flatly.

“I mean, the little glowy marks around the outside are lit up farther along now.  It’s probably a progress bar or something.  It’s probably not a fuse.  I hope.”  Reed didn’t actually sound that worried, so James chose to take that as a joke.  “Anyway, we’re about thirty percent along, so it’ll be something like, what, a little over a month before it’s done?  There’s a webcam watching it, if you ever wanna check.”

James tilted his head.  “Huh.  That’s a clever way to do it.”  He said.

“Well, not clever enough.   We’re growing a program to actually ‘watch’ and keep people updated.  There’s a million distractions down here.”  Reed glanced at a thick folder on his desk, and tapped it with a less thick finger in an anxious motion before turning back to James.  “On that note.”  He said slowly.  “There’s… an open question going around down here.  One that I think we should probably talk about.”

“Oh?”

“We’d like to make another AI.”  Reed looked like he didn’t like how that had come out.  “Which is to say, some parts of Research want to try to more effectively recreate what Momo managed to do by growing programs that could take in red totem information.  And then make a program that can think, and has a personality, and can be expanded on.  And I think this is… uh… kind of worrying?   But I don’t know why I should be saying no.”

James’ mouth twisted into a sad grimace under his facemask.  “Okay.”  He said calmly.  “I don’t think you should.”

“Yeah, I mean, I know that we-“

“No, sorry.  My brain is kinda soggy today, I wasn’t clear.”  James interrupted.  “I don’t think you should say no.”

Reed stared at him from over the chipped wood of the cheap desk he’d claimed as the seat of his domain.  Settling an elbow on his laptop with just enough force to not shatter the device, he raised his eyebrows.  “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”  James nodded, leaning against the door and wishing there was a second chair in here.  “The problem before wasn’t that we made life; we do that all the time .  The problem was that we put a lot of responsibility on one person who didn’t know what she was doing and no one had a clue how to help.  Now we know a little better, and we do better.”  He shrugged.  “We should have a forum about it though.  Make sure that we’ve got a good goal in mind, and not just that you’re making an AI for no reason.”  James blinked as he thought about that.  “Actually making life for no reason seems like what we do now, usually.  ‘We’ being humans, I guess.  Sorry, I’m kinda rambling here.  AI seems fine but talk to everyone you can first.  That’s my stance.”

Reed gave James a worried look, the younger man standing up and offering James his chair.  “Do you need to sit down or something?”  He asked cautiously.

“Oh god yes.”  The two of them rotated around the desk on opposite sides, and James collapsed into the seat with a feeling of relief that was far stronger than he was expecting.  It was like half his problems just faded away, and he felt like if he closed his eyes, he could fall asleep right there.  “Okay.  Thank you.”  James took a few long breaths.  “So.  Climb magic.”

“It’s been less than a day.”  Reed told him.  “Chill.  Pun intended.”

“That’s a terrible pun.”

“Then pun unintended.”  Reed was cheerfully undaunted as he started pacing on the other side of his own desk.  “Other Climb stuff:  I’ve got people, myself included, trying to figure out why some of the items from the Climb ‘feel’ magical.  The iLipedes with the scanning apps give us weird information on them, so we know something is going on, but there’s no clear answer yet.  And now we have more samples, so that’s good.  Not sure what to do with the samples of the wood venom.  Uh… the gold is gold.  Chemically, I mean.  I don’t know if you knew that.”

“How would I know that.”

He just got a shrug in reply.  “So, Ceaseless Stacks.  No magic books yet, sorry.  Working on testing duplicates for the statuettes, though they’re chonky, so we can’t burn through them too fast.  One of them seems to create a kind of snowball effect for how good someone is at something, so that’s cool.  Also we’ve got duplicates tested for most of the orbs, and the really cool ones are getting more.  There’s a species orb for foxes, and a tool orb for shovels, but I’m not gonna lie, these things seem sorta… uh…”

“Underwhelming compared to throwing fireballs around?”  James asked.

“I don’t think anyone can do that.  So I guess they’re not underwhelming.”  Reed admitted with a squeaky laugh.  “The computers from there are what we’re really interested in.  The casual way they don’t need to be connected has a ton of value, even before you get into some of the programs on them.  Some of them have dozens of apps that are all password locked, but I don’t think anyone figured them out in the Library, right?”  He got a shake of James’ head in reply.  “So we’re looking into that.  But until then, the map app is nuts, and so is the book recommender.”  Reed took a deep breath.  “Also we’re trying to absorb other colors of Stacks orb.  No progress yet.”

“I cannot wait to see if we can make totems out of these things.”  James said.  “Even if it’s just the same as the Office, having a second source is… whoof.”

Reed ignored him and kept going, momentum built up as he rattled off information on everything that the Order was working on that Research was involved with; which was a lot, actually. Research was a key part of the Order of Endless Rooms, as it was basically just an umbrella term for every member that liked experimenting with and building things.  “We have a few different ideas for programs growing that can help people make .skill files.  Also our computer team - thanks for the new hires by the way - are working on firmware that works on the human brain, so we can finally have skulljack security.”

“What new hires?”  James latched onto the worrying part of that sentence.

“Well, you didn’t hire them.  But you said yes.  Or Karen did?  Sometimes I get you two mixed up.  Anyway.”

James felt like he was far too tired for this.  But at least the sensation like his head was swimming in mud made it easy to not be insulted by Reed getting him mixed up with the Order’s designated mature adult.   “Sure.  Glad they’re working out so far.”

“Yeah.  Okay, what else… you’re up to date on potion stuff?”

Potion stuff was the one thing James felt like he didn’t have to ask about directly.  There was extensive documentation about it, and multiple threads on the Order’s discussion server dedicated to it.  He was up to date on the mice experiments with the potions made them super chill artists and also made them run fast.  He knew the current theory that it wasn’t individual materials but material combinations that generated the effect, and then that was modulated by measurements and methods.  He practically had the growth and use rates of the magical sap cactus memorized. James was up to date on potion stuff.

He didn’t feel like saying that out loud though, so he just gave Reed a thumbs up.

“Uh… okay, what about the bullets?”  Reed asked.  James knew nothing about the bullets, so he let Reed carry on.  “So, it turns out you can sorta use them if you’re hosting an infomorph, but it still sucks, and… you know what?   You don’t need to know this part.  The important bit is that you can restore memories fed into them with .mems.  But only your own .  Or, like… only your own memories.  You can only feed them your own memories.  There.”

“It was two thirds of the way through that when I realized you meant Harlan’s memory bullets.”  James admitted.  “So, you can feed it something you have a backup of, then restore from backup?”

“Yup!”  Reed seemed pleased with that.  “Problem though.”

“Naturally.”

“You can only feed the bullets your own memories, and backups of your memories don’t count.  We haven’t tried storing them in other people, just on USB sticks, so maybe there’s a workaround there somewhere.  Anyway, we can use those for delves or something.  They self-replicate blank bullets if they kill something, but ‘kill something’ is a really abstract term.  I think it’s if they hit something that dies within a minute or so.”  Reed tried to say the words without sounding uncomfortable, but it didn’t really work.  He had stuck around in the first place because he wanted to help the people who’d saved his life, and he didn’t really have anywhere else to go.  But he had absolutely ended up in Research for a reason, and it was because he was squeamish as heck and wouldn’t be caught in a dungeon ever again.  “Enough bullets.  How do you feel about furniture?”

“This question feels like a trap.”  James muttered, and was mercifully interrupted by a knock on the door.

Reed turned and wedged his chubby frame around the door as he opened it, revealing a shorter blonde woman who looked surprised to see him on this side of the desk.  “Ah, Amy.  What can I do for you?”

The veterinarian the Order was hiring often enough now that she was closing in on being a full member got over her confusion quickly.  “Uh… I just wanted to say that Rom wandered off while I was with Banana for her lessons today.  So if you could ask people to keep an eye out…?

Reed seemed to deflate as he sighed, closing his eyes and dipping his head.  “Yeah, sure thing.”  His voice struggled to keep an upbeat note in it.  “Thanks for letting me know.”

“Sorry!”  Amy said as she slid out of view and Reed shut the door again.

It was, James figured, a sign of how much things had changed.  That a woman telling them there was an invisible panther the size of a small car wandering around was just exasperating and not terrifying .

“I like this place.”  He murmured to himself.  And then louder, to Reed, “Do you need to handle that, or do you wanna tell me about furniture?”

“Oh, yeah.  We’ve been running the safest tests with the body swapping table that we could think of.  Uh… infomorphs are hosted on the actual physical brains, so that’s interesting.  But because your thoughts are swapping over, they sort of ‘slide’ to the new body.  Except they can choose to stick around in the first one?”  Reed scratched at one of his cheeks.  “We need better terminology.  Planner’s been working on a glossary but we need to actually adopt it.”  He sighed.  “Anyway.  Humans and camracondas can swap without issue once we learn to use each other’s bodies.  Inhabitors have trouble with emotional processing, but can do it; though it’s not clear if you’re swapping into the potion blob of an inhabitor, or the body they wear.  Ratroach bodies are more painful than you think.”  Reed pressed his eyes closed and took a deep breath through his nose.  “Like, a lot worse.”

James tipped back in Reed’s chair.  “Are you testing this?”

“Uh, yeah?”  Reed asked.  “It’s perfectly safe.  We still don’t know how to actually use the thing, I’m just telling you what it can do.”

“Sure.  Any other furniture facts?”

“No, we have no idea what the Underburbs stuff does.  Any luck finding the dungeon, by the way?”

James sighed.  “No, and our scout teams weren’t finding anything, so I pulled them back.  Alice and Charlie are heading back tomorrow to keep poking around, but we’ve got a whole city to search and it’s not like dungeons are that obvious.”

Reed sighed and shifted around to try to lean on the door like James had been, before frowning and standing back up like he was offended by the position.  “Okay.  Well, can you ask some of the delvers to spend some more time down here?  A lot of the stuff benefits from a kind of intuition that you guys develop faster than us.”

“Wait, you get it too?”  James asked curiously.

“Oh yeah.”  Reed nodded.  “I’m best with Attic stuff, actually.  But I can spot it out of a pile now, and that’s kinda cool.  I can also sort of tell if people are bonded.”   He eagerly shared his own progress.

“No shit!”  James was impressed.  “But yeah, do delvers not tend to overlap down here?  I know Momo’s one.  And Mars and Chevoy-“

Reed made a rude noise and spoke a little too loudly for James’ growing headache.  “Mars and Chevoy do their own weird thing.  I’m talking about getting people to just drop by and double check ideas, and maybe save us time on a few things.  We’re doing a lot these days looking for inter-dungeon synergies, and holy shit is it easy for stuff to get lost down here in the mess.”  Reed swore like the kind of guy who had spent his whole life not swearing and was only just picking it up.

Before he could feel bad about introducing bad habits to his innocent Research director, James nodded in agreement.  “Yeah, like the crown.”

“Oh, the crown!”  Reed perked up.  “It leveled up!”  That news got a spike of excitement from James that was enough to override the building headache and dizziness with a smile.  “No new ability, and it’ll be something like two years before it levels again thanks to the way Squo made their stupid blood sacrifice items.  But it’s faster at doing whatever it does now.  Which somehow includes extending potion effects, helping absorb blue and yellow orbs, and drawing circles freehand.”

“I love the crown so much.”  James laughed.

Reed glowered at him.  “The crown is the stupidest magic item we have.  It’s the only thing that has meta effects like that.  You know we can’t make blue items that interact with breath or velocity?”

James folded his arms.  “I did not know that.  That’s why I’m here .”  He reminded Reed.

“Right!”  Reed thought for a minute.  “I dunno what else we’ve got going on that you need to be kept up to date on.  Oh, we have a collective skill file available now that’s a test of that kind of thing.  It’s three people’s understanding of the principles of the internet.  Kinda simple, but it’s a cool proof of concept that we can make merged files, and it sort of smooths out the emotional influence.   Sort of .”

“That’s good to know.”  James said, realizing they were about done and standing up with a wobble.  “I might grab a copy of that, I have the Sewer lesson in computer science, and I could really go for a level in energy right now.”

He excused himself from Reed’s office, almost getting bowled over by a scampering duo as a young human and ratroach pair charged past.  He wondered briefly if they were on their way to cause a problem, or running from a problem already caused.

Either way, James felt like he’d gotten something done today, which was good, because he planned to do very little else for the rest of it.

Except catch up on Sarah’s podcast.  Week long dungeon delves were missing him important gossip about the people under his banner.

_____

“…back continuing our series on the lives and times of our inhuman friends!”  Sarah paused in her introduction.  “Also let’s edit that a little bit, because I feel like I’ve made a big honkin’ error with ‘inhuman’ and now I feel bad!”

Across from her little recording desk, Watcher-Under-Stone tilted her grey cabled head in a gesture that the camraconda meant as empathic, but still confused.  “My people… oh.  Hello.  I am Watcher-Under-Stone, I am a female presenting camraconda.  Thank you for inviting me to speak, Sarah.”

Sarah nodded vigorously, the knit hat shaped like a penguin she was wearing today flapping equally wildly with the motion.  “Right!  Today’s interview subject!”  Her voice was like warm sunshine, in contrast to the cold that the basement’s air conditioning was aggressively producing today.  “Good introduction!  Now what were you saying about your people?”

“Yes.  Language is interesting for us.  We knew how to understand it, but many parts needed to be learned.  Deeper vocabulary, aspects of tone and timbre.”  The camraconda stretched upward, adjusting in her basket seat as she inched closer to the microphone.  “Even with language yellows, experience, and the ability to ask all of you with our new voices, many camracondas still keep a dictionary file on drive for reference.”

The words made Sarah realize something.  “Do you ever-“

“Apologies, let me close this thought.”  Watcher-Under-Stone interjected.  “You say that ‘inhuman’ feels strange to you.  It feels strange to me as well.  My implanted thoughts tell me it is you flagging me as an enemy.  Simple.  My reference material tells me it is a simple indicator; whether something is, or is not, human.  But living here tells me that you feel guilty, because your instinctive word is one that feels as though it places a higher value on human life than anything else.  And isn’t that something beautiful?  That words can feel at all?”

The camraconda’s even-lensed stare at Sarah was quite earnest, and so, not feeling like she was being baited into a conversational trap, Sarah smiled and nodded.  “It is.  Language is cool.  But it also does feel that way, you’re right, and I kinda don’t want to imply that you’re lesser in any way?”

“That you even bothered to question it is a sign that you are a good human.”  The camraconda said, hissing lightly with irritation under her digital words.  “We aren’t stupid, my people.  We’ve seen the world, and the people in it, and the decision to cluster with your Order is not a mistake.”

“There’s a lot of good people too.”  Sarah defended her world, though perhaps a little less vehemently as she would someone she personally knew.

Watcher-Under-Stone nodded in acceptance.  “Of course there are.  And if everyone was a Sarah or a James or a Cathy then things would be different, wouldn’t they?  But you do not need to pretend, and I do not blame you for others.”  She paused slightly.  “You had a question earlier, as we were interrupting each other.”

Eager to drop the darker talk of the failings of the human race, Sarah latched onto the conversation.  “Oh!  I was going to say that I’m curious what it’s like to go from living in a nonverbal community, to most camracondas having voices now.  If you had any thoughts on that?”

“The change happened so fast.”  Watcher-Under-Stone sounded almost wistful about it, like she was remembering events from a distant childhood and not just within the last few years.  “Really getting used to things took time, of course.  But the stolen Officium modifications make it so… so easy.”  She twisted her body, thinner and more nimble than most camracondas, and stared at the floor, even though her voice didn’t waver.  Camraconda voices never really wavered.  “Of course we have our own communications.  We made art, we played when we found the energy, the sounds we can make on our own…” Watcher-Under-Stone demonstrated a series of different textures of hiss, and then a noise like a sudden bursting shriek that caught Sarah off guard and made her jump.  “…we could always talk, but now we can speak .  And it has greatly deepened every part of our lives.”

Sarah’s soft eyed smile as she balanced her chin on a braced arm exuded happiness as she replied.  “I’m glad we could give you that gift.”  She said simply.  “And that’s a great little look into what I hope a lot of camracondas feel about it, but I want to get into the specifics of your life, if that’s okay?”

“That is what   the premise I was lured here under was.”  Watcher-Under-Stone put a wry twist in their words that made them sound contentedly amused.  “Where shall we begin?”

“Well!”  Sarah rubbed her hands together.  “How about with something easy, where I ask you about your religion?”  Her raised eyebrows threatened to escape the confines of her face as she grinned at Watcher-Under-Stone.

Watcher-Under-Stone just hissed out a sigh as she replied.  “This is another one of those language snarls where I know what you mean, I know what the word means, and I know how the word feels, but it feels different to different people.”  She said.

“We can edit it out and I can pick a less problematic word?”  Sarah offered honestly.

“The problem is anthropocentric, I assure you.”  Watcher-Under-Stone told her smugly.  “But also ‘religion’ is the wrong word.  At least, as things are now.”  She paused to see if Sarah had a specific question, but the human woman just let her talk.  “For our years of physical captivity, my people had one singular person to thank for our mental freedom.  What started out as a simple act of respect morphed over time into…” she made a rattling hum in her throat.  “…not ritual, precisely.  Not faith.  But what is clearly a spiritual emotion.  We did not simply know that she had changed things, we saw her as a figure of salvation.”

Sarah’s soft voice, almost a whisper, brought up a point that Watcher-Under-Stone was slowly coiling around.  “But she was.”  Sarah said.

“Yes.  And for that, we killed her.”  Watcher-Under-Stone bluntly replied.  “A difficult thing to contend with.  Our spiritual core was centered on trying to be worthy of the person we had murdered, even if we were puppets when it happened.  And then, suddenly , something changed.”

“Ah.”  Sarah didn’t really know what to say.

“Yes, you are quite the ‘ah’ moment.”  The camraconda woman showed off long brass fangs in a serpent grin.  “And yes, there are some sweeping cultural changes to who we are, but that is not what you’re asking.  You’re asking about me , and that I can answer much clearer.  My role in the spiritual lives of my people, and my own belief, has largely ended.”

Sarah blinked.  “I hope it wasn’t because you felt pressured?”  She prompted.  “I know that we’ve got a weird relationship with religion around here, and James makes jokes about killing god all the time, but I don’t think anyone would want you to abandon anything about yourself just on our account.”

Watcher-Under-Stone laughed, a set of hissing half-barks as she put words together over top of the sound.  “No no!  You have it almost backward.  Everyone has gone out of their way to make things easier for us.  A place to worship, a place for our rituals, even finding and introducing the child of our savior to us.  You have been faultlessly accommodating.  But now, things change.  There are many more of my species that aren’t my nest .  The woman we saw as shaping us has been buried according to her own customs.  My task of preserving her in the moment after her death is unneeded, and the job of keeping the knowledge of our history alive has been made irrelevant by the existence of archival and simple conversation.  No one will ever forget her, and no one will forget where we came from or how this partnership began.  But it is really actually okay if people forget me .”

With a long breath, pressing her fingertips together in front of her mouth, Sarah lowered her hands in an arrow toward her interview subject.  “You know that people listen to this podcast, right?”  She asked.

“Yes, I quite enjoy it myself.  Though I do not find the .mem files that are sometimes passed around capture quite the nuance of some parts.”

“Wow, that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me!”  Sarah held a hand to her heart.  “So, your spirituality was… I mean, what was it to you?  What made you put it aside?”

“It was defensive.”  Watcher-Under-Stone replied, rocking her head from side to side.  “And I do not think I will ever fully abandon it.  There was something special about the events that brought us together.  Maybe fate, maybe destiny, maybe karma.  Maybe something you don’t have a word with preassigned feelings for.  Maybe it just feels special because it was special, and it happened to us, and I am in love with the unique beauty of the shape of things.  But that love does not need to be focused through a woman who was a victim of a dungeon’s puppets.  I would let her rest.  I think she has earned it.”

Sarah nodded in understanding, running a finger across the stand of her microphone in a thoughtful motion.  “I hadn’t really heard a lot of this before.”  She admitted.  “And I talk to camracondas all the time.”

There was a slight hissing click as Watcher-Under-Stone answered.  “We are not an entry in a gamebook.”  She said.  “It’s personal.  And for me, personally, things have changed.”

“Because the situation changed?”

“Exactly.”  The camraconda slid her fangs out in a small grin.  “Our species have many physical differences that make adapting to your world a challenge, but one of the mental differences that I find fascinating to learn about is that camracondas do no experience… oh, what is it called?   The resistance to new information.  You have a term for it.”

Sarah’s assistant, already having googled it in her head, held up a whiteboard with the answer written on it.  “Belief perseverance?”  Sarah read.  “That sounds right… wait, she’s writing more.  No, no!  That’s… we’re good!  Thank you!”  Her assistant didn’t stop showing them the notes about the phenomena.

“Yes.  Well.”  Watcher-Under-Stone hissed happily.  “It doesn’t happen to camracondas.  Or at least, it hasn’t yet.  And so when things change, we can change quickly, compared to some humans.”

Knowing that there were differences in the physical minds of their species was different for Sarah than having a specific example of something that one side simply didn’t experience.  “That’s really cool.”  She said.  “But also, there are a bunch of physical differences.  What’s your day to day life like, living in a world that isn’t really built for you?”

“Sarah.”  The camraconda made her digital voice sound plantitive.  “You are a beautiful human.  But your question implies culpability on your part for the change.  I know there are things that could be better; it is very frustrating to need help to equip my voice every day.  Equally frustrating to feel like I must be gentle with the hardware.  And as someone who is not comfortable with the artificial limbs, things like doorknobs are… an issue.”

“I know you mean because you don’t have hands but I did run into a door that I missed opening yesterday and then made up several rude words for it when I dropped my lunch.”  Sarah offered in commiseration.

Watcher-Under-Stone stared at her before slowly opening her maw in a puzzled look.  “I… yes… okay.  Doors are a universal issue then.”  She shook herself and continued.  “My point is that I  do not see this world as not built for us.  Do you think Officium Mundi prioritized our comfort?   Camracondas can eat biological food , and in the Office, every piece of food is contained in challenging wrappers, heavy refrigerators, or locked drawers!  You needed to do very  little to make us feel more welcome than our home ever did.”

“Counterpoint!”  Sarah challenged, forgetting this wasn’t a debate of any kind.  “We remodel the Lair all the time and can probably just replace all the doors with better doors?”

“Somewhere, Bill looks upward.  He does not know why, but he has an urge to scream.  Soon, he will know.”  Watcher-Under-Stone intoned the words like she was speaking prophecy.

Sarah’s cheeks flushed even as she laughed her way through the friendly banter.  “But it matters!  You matter!”

“Thank you.”

“My question’s still open though!  What is your daily life like?”  Sarah prodded.

Watcher-Under-Stone hissed in thought, taking advantage of the time they had to ponder before speaking.  “Unexciting, maybe?  Sometimes I help with the newly freed camraconda… children?  Is it odd to think of them as children when we are barely five years older than them?  I do not know.  Mostly I spend my time reading.  There is a partially restored library in Townton, and now that there are regular teleports there, I spend time looking at the books that shaped your species.  I often think about going to the library near here, which would be easier, but also so much harder.”  She stared sadly at the surface of the desk.  “I try to go to the movie night, to learn the thousands of years of context I am missing.  Sometimes I have dinner with a friend.  But my daily life is not especially unique.”

Sarah thought that sounded kind of lonely, but she didn’t want to say that on the recording.  She did want to talk to Watcher-Under-Stone afterward, just to make sure the camraconda was doing okay.  From the way she talked, it sounded like the recent change in her assumed role had left a hole in her life, and Sarah knew perfectly well how much that could hurt if you didn’t work to patch it up.

She didn’t say that though.  Instead, she offered a casual suggestion.  “So far, everyone in the area has been pretty relaxed about nonhumans wandering in.  But you could maybe check out the library with someone else?  You don’t have to do everything alone.”

“I would feel bad about potentially damaging the books, though.  Not having limbs, I am… somewhat rough on the texts I read.”  Watcher-Under-Stone admitted.

“Maybe a personal question, but have you considered any large body changes with the shaper substance?”  Sarah asked, curious.

Watcher-Under-Stone made a bobbing motion that sort of equated to a shrug.  “The idea is interesting.  Not having hands is often very frustrating.  There is an ongoing conversation among the more philosophical of our Order about whether or not those like me should be expected to change ourselves to fit the world, instead of the other way around.  But myself, I think it would be nice to pick things up without tasting them.”

“But not with robotic arms.”  Sarah prompted.

“Exactly.  They don’t feel like anything, they have all the same problems the voice hardware does, and… not everyone is as adept at using the skulljacks as the best of us.  It took me much longer to find my voice.  It would take me longer to learn to use a single set of arms than to learn how to change myself.”

Sarah nodded, tapping her chin.  “So, what’s stopping you?”

“Nothing, especially.”  The camraconda admitted with a shyness that she hadn’t shown until now.  “Guilt, maybe?  I can’t identify the feeling, only that it gnaws at my stomach worse than any of the spicy food Nate makes.”

“Oh!”  Sarah sat upright with a beaming grin.  “See, this is true interspecies connection; being murdered by whatever hot sauce Nate puts on his chicken wings!”

“Is that the line for a mutual world?”  Watcher-Under-Stone asked.  “Could we quell Earth’s conflicts by airdropping his chili into contested regions?”

Sarah’s smile faltered, and she sighed.  “Probably not.”  She admitted sadly.

“Probably not.”  The camraconda echoed.  “The world is so large, everything outside is so complex and interlinked and old .  There is a joke about the country we are inside, that they think a hundred years is a long time.   Isn’t it ?  A hundred years is fifty generations of my people, at least as the dungeon uses us.  And the joke is that a hundred years is a blink in Earth’s records.  I am supposed to be answering questions here, but I want to ask; how does it not overwhelm you?”

Sarah laughed, putting a performative nervousness into the sound.  “Welllllll.”  She drew out the word.  “Mostly I don’t think about it!  I focus on the people around me, and what I want to do today, and tomorrow.  I’m a live-in-the-moment girl.”

“Somehow I already knew this was true of you.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty transparent.”  Sarah admitted openly.  “So!  Before we wrap this up, is there anything you want to share?  Any specific stuff that’s been on your mind?”

Watcher-Under-Stone thought for a second, then hissed a short laugh.  “We have been talking about the challenges of existing with no hands.”  She said.  “But Townton now holds so many damaged people who need our help.  And they have hands, but that didn’t make them safer.  Didn’t help them at all.  More than hands, what they need is to know who they are .  And whenever I am there, and I see them, all I can feel is the chain of connections to the people who have let me know myself.”  She paused to raise her body up, pulling in a deep breath for a camraconda.  “Not only human.  But something uniquely us .  Maybe the belief in us is naive, or overly spiritual in a way I do not understand the nature of yet.  But I find it beautiful, and I want to be part of it.  Even if only in a small way.”

Sarah smiled, feeling pressure behind her eyes as hot tears threatened to form.  “I think that belief is perfect.”  She said softly.  And then, steadying her own breathing and composing herself, she moved on to practical matters.  “That’s going to be the end of this episode.”  She said for the recording.  “Thank you so much to Watcher-Under-Stone for your time today,”

“Of course.  A pleasure.”

“And tune in next time where we talk to Bea about what it’s like to grow up somewhat literally in the shadow of someone you’ll never meet.  Thanks for listening, and listen to Watcher when she says the .mem files aren’t-“

_____

James settled his head on the dining hall table, and let out an indeterminate groan.  The sudden silence of what he was listening to ending was relieving in a way that meant he was really not feeling good.  And while he loved listening to Sarah bounce off people, he was pretty sure he didn’t process most of that episode.

There was a half eaten sandwich near him, and a cup of tea he’d had more luck with, but he really didn’t feel great.  Now that he was laying his head down and covering his eyes, the dark and quiet made him feel like he was floating in a vast ocean.  Voices around him just a distant roar.

Except for one, which was close, and painful, and addressing him directly.  “Hey boss, you alive?”  Alex’s worried words hit him like a depth charge.

“No.”  James groaned into his folded arms.  “Shit, am I late? I have to go to the thing.”  He peeled his face off the table to look up at the knight that had probably been sent to fetch him, and saw that Frequency-Of-Sunlight was hanging around with the short human.

“Wow, you look… uh…” Alex looked like she was striving for diplomacy.

Frequency-Of-Sunlight wasn’t.  “You look miserable!”  She cheerfully said, the digital voice too sharp for James.  When she saw him finch at her words, and noticed his eyes watering, the camraconda leaned back and modulated her tone.  “Sorry!”  She added at muted volume.

“She’s right though.  You look kinda tired?”  Alex ventured.

James didn’t nod, because he felt like nodding would cause his head to detonate.  But he did have an excellent idea, and he tried to lose his focus in a very specific way, letting his thoughts drift down to the inner part of his mind, where he could poke someone else to talk for him.

With a ruffle of orange light, Zhu’s feathers sprouted along James’ back like a blooming carpet before settling into place.  His singular potent eye opened facing up from James’ back, and while he didn’t have an eyebrow, he gave the impression of raising it as he looked at the two girls.  “James wants you to know he is dying, and you should leave him to his fate.”  He said.  To which James groaned an opposition.  “Alright, fine.  He says he needs to get up and go to the thing, but I say you shouldn’t let him.”  Zhu sounded irate.

Alex and Sunny exchanged a look.  “Yeah, sure, we can take care of it.  It’s just going to a meeting along with Bill, right?  It’s not like I can’t call Karen if I need help.”  Alex gave a small shrug.  “Tell James we’re on it.”

Shooting them a thumbs up with an extended talon, Zhu settled in around James like a protective blanket, the navigator taking some mental liberties by muffling the anxiety James was currently trying to feel about how Alex had said we’re .  “They’re on it.”  Zhu said softly.

“Ugggh.”  James replied.  But even through the pain and brain fog, he remembered to make a personnel note.

“This’ll be fun!”  Frequency-Of-Sunlight said as they left the dining hall.

“I mean, sure, there’s no reason you can’t come too.”  Alex stretched, hands against the back of her head as they made their way to the front of the building and found Bill there waiting.  “Hey.  James is sick, so we’re gonna take his place, if you’re cool with it.”

Bill looked up from where he was fidgeting with the buttons on his suit coat, clearly uncomfortable to be wearing something that wasn’t denim or flannel.  “You can make decisions, right?”  He asked.

 “I’m an adult , I keep telling -“

Alex cut off her friend.  “Sunny he means for the Order.  And sorta.  Zhu implied it, but also I’ll just call in anything we need a final word on.”  She tapped her skulljack.  “Already got a channel set up for comments from an ad hoc council.”  Since she’d sort of stepped back from getting into life or death situations, Alex hadn’t really found her place in the Order, but she also hadn’t stopped picking up an endless litany of new tricks from everyone around her.  “Are we driving?”

“Hah!  Into Portland?  Hell no.  There’s a crash on 26 right now and I’m spoiled.”  Bill presented a telepad with two pages remaining like it was an object of true power.  “Shall we?”  He offered as he hoisted a three foot long box under his arm.

They popped into existence again on a college campus.  A few people looked their way, and Alex noted the two young men who were outright staring from different spots who had definitely been watching when they appeared.  But she’d learned from James that you could effectively Air Bud your way through any encounter by reminding people that there was nothing that made teleporting illegal.

“That one.”  Bill pointed at a building across the open cobblestone courtyard.

Sunny hissed angrily, which got a few more looks.  “I shoulda worn a plate.”  She grumbled as she slithered on the rough ground.  It didn’t hurt exactly, but someone had spat their gum out on the stones and that was gross and she hated having to dodge stuff like that.  Still, she followed in Alex’s wake and the trio made their way to the multi story old brick building.  Bill got weird when the girls held the doors open for him, but he was the dumbass carrying the box.  Frequency figured that if he wanted to open his own doors he should have let her carry the thing, but she didn’t actually know how heavy it was.  Odds were good Bill was stronger than her limited mech limbs.

“So, where are we going anyway?”  Alex asked as they passed by a cluster of early twenties students waiting outside a lecture hall.

“Elevator, down two floors, room 0213.”  Bill answered like he was just verbalizing an internal attempt to remember it.

“…okay but what for?”  Alex prompted.  “No one actually told us.”

Bill turned his head to side eye her as they reached an elevator and discovered it was out of order.  “Meeting with the electric company engineers?  Proof of concept for the most important invention in human history?  Perpetual motion machine?”

“It’s not perpetual, the magic probably stops when the caster dies.”  Alex wasn’t looking at Bill as they walked, instead her eyes flicked to walls and doors, posters, bulletin boards, anyone passing them by. When she noticed a girl with a heavy backpack crumbling under her stare, she realized she had slipped into treating this place like a dungeon.  “Dammit.”  Alex whispered.  “I shouldn’t have watched all the footage from the Climb.”

“So, we’re here to tell people magic is real?”  Frequency-Of-Sunlight asked.  “Neat.  Is that why you’re dressed up?”

“Yeah, I figured I’d present all professional like.”  Bill didn’t exactly say that the two girls weren’t quite up to standard.

Alex heard the implied note anyway.  “No worries!”  She said, and made her shirt turn into a sharply cut business jacket that matched her long skirt in a way that wouldn’t draw attention.

“…how’d you do that?”

“It’s a shirt I found in the Office, it’s pretty much all I wear anymore.”  Alex admitted.  “Check this out.”  She formed it back into a tee shirt and played around with the different designs on it, going from a cartoon camraconda to a stylized dragon to a well armed goose, before warping it back to her business form.  “It doesn’t work as armor though, and I’m kinda always at risk that one small slip will vaporize it cause it’s an Office item, and then I’ll sorrrrta be topless in the middle of whatever I was doing.  But hey.  Risk reward?”

“Is that really what that means?”  Frequency-Of-Sunlight asked.  “Also I’m always topless!  That’s my snake privilege.”

Before that conversation could continue, they found a flight of stairs, skipped the elevator, and passed down through a recently painted white stairwell.  Frequency-Of-Sunlight had a mild issue with the oddly shaped stairs, but she worked it out by just making loud bursts of hissing every time she hit a step and pretending it was fine.  At the bottom, they took a moment to figure out what room was what direction, followed some signs, and ended up at a glass walled room that looked set up for working with either electronics or chemicals.

“What is this place?”  Frequency-Of-Sunlight asked.  “It’s like if Research had more money.”

“It’s… uh… it’s one of the college’s lab spaces.  It’s like if Research had more money.”  Bill answered.  The man was clearly nervous about this, standing outside the door tapping his foot, a sheen of sweat on his face that didn’t come from the walk down here.  “Welp.”  He said as the people who were inside spotted them and a clean escape became unlikely.  “Get the door for me?”

Alex did so, holding in a chuckle, and followed Bill into the room, announcing their presence with what she hoped was a normal sounding “Hello!”

Two men greeted them, and each of the trio found it funny for different reasons that one of them was wearing an unbuttoned dress shirt over a tee shirt that would have been right at home in Alex’s lineup of shapeshifting garment options.  “Afternoon!”  Said the other one, who was wearing a polo shirt and slacks and looked like he had an adult job with a salary and health insurance and everything.  “Bill, right?”

“Right.”  Bill extended a hand, setting his long box on a table.  “And this is Alex, and Frequency-Of-Sunlight.”

The man turned to shake Alex’s hand, then faltered at the camraconda.  “Uh…”

Frequency-Of-Sunlight hissed like a sigh.  “Go ahead, say the thing.”

“I mean, I was gonna ask how to shake your hand?”

“…I wasn’t expecting that.”  The camraconda girl unfolded a metal limb from her backpack and offered it up.  “Lightly please, the motors in this aren’t super durable.”

The man did so, doing his best to not stare at Sunny.  “Sure, sure.  So, I’m Jim Maine, this is Jim Benson.  You can call me Jim and him Benson.”

“We were supposed to fight for the name, but it seems easier to just wait for one of us to quit or die.”  Benson offered in a nasally voice a little too fast, like he was nervous about talking to new people.

Alex and Sunny nodded in unison.  “Been there.”  They said together.

The duel Jims didn’t know how to take that, so instead they turned back to Bill.  “So, our boss sent us here to evaluate a battery prototype?”  Jim said, moving things along.  “Is it in here?  I’d like to do a quick check then maybe go get lunch.”

“Uh… not a battery, exactly.”  Bill said.  “This is just a heat exchange engine in a sealed container with an outlet plug.  But it is what we wanted to show you.”  Bill tugged at his collar, then decided it was informal enough to pull his coat off, revealing arms that were practically describable as furred as he started setting things up.

Benson watched as Bill plugged a power strip into the box, then a portable battery with no charge.  “Hey man, I’m sure this is cool, and I don’t mind costing the company a few thousand dollars to waste our day here, but…”

“Did no one tell you what this was for?”  Alex asked.  “I mean, I only learned a few minutes ago, but I’m a replacement for a guy who’s sick.”

“We were told to be unbiased.”  Jim sounded like he was reserving judgment.  “So what is this?”

Bill cleared his throat, then saw Alex watching him and tilted his eyes up to look at the ceiling.  “Alright, I’m not supposed to call it perpetual motion.”  He started with.

“Oh my god.”  Benson’s tone was loudly derisive.

“Our organization has recently come into possession of the ability to… uh… break physics a little bit.”  Bill said.  “Exchanging heat between two points without affecting the intervening space.  This is just to prove that it works, because we want to convince your bosses to help us build a massive amount of infrastructure.”  He tapped the box.

“No.”  Benson said.

Frequency-Of-Sunlight slowly looped her camera head around to look at him.  “Was the giant biomechanics snake not enough?”  She asked.  “I can do party tricks if you want!  Alex, throw something!”  Alex pulled a wooden dowel she’d been carrying around for some reason out of her pocket and tossed it at Benson, and Sunny froze it in midair.  “See!  Look!  Physics can suck it!”

While his coworker’s face went through the five stages of grief and he tried to figure out what was happening to the immovable object, Jim turned his attention back to Bill.  “So it’s magic.”  He said.

“I’ve been trying really hard not to say that.”

“But it is magic?”

“It’s… an alternate form of…”

“Magic.”

Alex cut in.  “It’s magic.  It has a mana pool and everything.”  She sounded too pleased to be delivering the news.

Bill folded his arms and looked away.  “It’s magic.”  He admitted.  “But it also works , and that should be enough.”  The other man looked between Bill, and then Sunny and the stick she was holding in midair as his colleague tried to pull it out of position.  Then he nodded.  “Right.”  Bill said.  “The magic  lets us connect two points for heat transfer.  So this is our quick and functional prototype; we put the points on either end of a heat exchange motor, let it build up, and it starts generating power.  And never stops.”

“Except for maintenance.  Or if there’s an imperfect seal, which there will be if you have an outlet.”  Jim pointed out, circling the box.  “Can I open this?”

“I’d like to let you after I show it off.”  Bill said.

The man nodded. “Sure.  Makes sense.  Want to fire it up?”

Bill took a deep breath, and then triggered the spell he’d put a lot of effort into getting from the Mountain.  He wasn’t a hiker.  He loved camping, but he wanted to get there on an RV and then spend his day fishing.  But he’d done it, so he could do this.

The temperature in the room dropped slightly, and Bill almost shivered as he connected two points at a specific distance that he’d gotten very used to.  Then he sucked in more air, refilling his Breath a little bit before he did it again, the cold starting to make his fingers numb as he overlapped one of the points with the second cast.

After that it was simple to move the engine into position.  And while he took a few tries to fumble his lighter out, flick a flame to life, and hold it to the ‘cold’ end of the second cast, he did get it.  The heat from the fire sucked away and into the box.

“How long are we supposed to…” Benson looked up from his ongoing attempts to start to ask, just as the motor began to turn.

Bill kept the lighter in place as he started to warm up again.  “Each set of points lasts… well, until the creator dismisses them.”

“Or dies.”  Alex added.

“Or maybe dies.”  Bill corrected.  “You have to be able to see the points, which is why I moved the box into place.”  The lights on the portable battery blinked on as it started charging, and Bill let his lighter die out.  “You can touch them safely, they won’t kill you or anything.  Just cool you down.”  He let Jim wave his hand through the empty spot over the table, the man’s eyebrows spiking up as he felt the cold point.  “The problem is scale.  One of these can power a few buildings, but making them isn’t as simple as shipping them to people.  We need a big version, part of a central power grid.”

Jim and Benson were watching the sealed box like hawks now, and Sunny let the tossed stick go as Alex moved into position to catch her own throw.  “The points must move relative to the planet.”  Benson said.  “But tectonic activity could screw with that.”

“You’d need to account for maintenance.”  Jim said.  “A way to replace parts, which would vent heat even with proper airlocking.  But if you can make insertion points like this…” he waved his hand.  “Range between points?”

“Line of sight.”  Bill said, and the engineers both frowned.

“One big tunnel?”  Benson said.  “Maximize stored heat, build exchangers into the walls and retract individual units to repair?”

“Inefficient.”  Jim replied like they’d had this conversation before.  He frowned as he looked at the power strip, then indicated that Benson should hold the box in place as he unplugged it, went to a briefcase sitting on a chair, and pulled out his own phone charger.  It didn’t take him long to verify that the engine was actually working to produce power.  “We’re going to need to open this up.”  He said.

Bill nodded.  “Release latches are at the top.”  He got one side while Jim got the other, and they pulled the top off the box.  A wave of heat poured out as they did so, like standing in front of an oven, but it quickly faded along with the sound of the turning motor.  “Check whatever you need to.”  He said.  “You can take the box too, but I can’t send the heat tunnel with you.”

The two Jims poked and prodded at the engine, one of them pulling on gloves to turn parts of the mechanism, one of them using a pen to examine it like he was somehow divining the true meaning of each part.  Alex and Sunny started a conversation on the side of the room about how their weeks had been going while Bill watched and sweated.

Eventually they looked up almost in unison.  “Magic is real.’  Benson declared.

“Wow really?”  Frequency-Of-Sunlight asked.

Jim turned to look at the girls, the camraconda specifically.  “…huh.”  He said, like he was just realizing something.  “Alright.  Can anyone learn how to do this?”

“Technically.”  Alex cut in.  “We’re not interested in sharing it too much, until we can start to build a society that could handle it.  But we can give you access to a certain number of casts a day in terms of sharing time.”

There was a keen glint in the man’s eye, like he wasn’t just here to review the technology.  “Financially, what would you want from this endeavor?  How much control do you want?  You can’t set yourself up as a private power company, not in this state.  And distribution wouldn’t be feasible on your own either.”

Bill started to say something, but Alex was already answering.  “Your company can have the hardware, and a contract guarantee that we’ll update any abnormal physics it relies on.”  She said.  “In exchange, you eliminate coal and natural gas from your operation, you work with us every time you need to increase power output, and you back us when we spread this technology to other states and nations.”

Jim leaned over the table.  “Not a chance.  You’d have too much control.  You make the method available with a patent, we’ll pay for the use, you’ll make a killing and we’ll have an assurance that we can keep it working.”

Alex slammed her own elbow on the table as she leaned on it herself.  “Fine, no promise on keeping coal plants open, because you’ll shut them all down as soon as our way is cheaper for you anyway.  We don’t need your money, we’re fucking rich.  But we’ll compromise and assign two knights as on call contractors per plant after setup.  You’ll always have someone on hand.”

“Someone under your supervision, I suppose?  No way.  We want that for our own technicians and staff.”  Jim countered.

“You literally cannot offer them anything except money for their loyalty, but once someone learns the technique they can’t lose it, and it makes them a target.  No compromises on personal safety for casters.”  Alex stated.  “As your company backs our expansion we’ll establish a civilian oversight group to keep the lights on.”

Jim gave a wolfish grin.  “Acceptable.  Barely.  You fund them though.”

“We’ll fund them through the profits of power sold in open markets.”  Alex said.  “You only have to worry about keeping things running where you already do.  And you’ll do it with lower prices.”

“Oh we will?”

“Yeah, you will.  You’ll be able to serve every customer you have with almost no material cost once construction is finished.  You pin your prices to your overhead, or we walk.”

Jim laughed darkly.  “I don’t suppose you can do free wireless transmission of electricity while you’re at it?”

“Not at scale.”  Bill said without thinking about it, and both engineers turned to stare at him.  “I mean, uh… no.”

“Hey Alex…?”  Frequency-Of-Sunlight said with a tentative hum.

Benson leaned close to the camraconda.  “Did she say ‘knights’?”  He asked.

“We have weird names.”  Was the reply.  “Alex, you super can’t make that deal.”  Sunny told her friend.

“Huh?”  Alex looked up.  “Oh.  Sorry, you’re right, I figured you weren’t just an engineer.”  She told Jim, missing the point of Frequency’s comment.

Jim smiled and crossed his arms.  “Well, I’m not exactly.”  He said.  “But what does your friend mean?”

“Oh!”  Alex made the realization, and tilted her head back as she closed her eyes.  “Sorry, wi-fi’s kinda bad down here.  One sec.”  Everyone waited while she stood there, and then she abruptly cracked her eyes open and turned back to Jim.  “Okay, terms are approved, with one other caveat.   No stalling .  We want this done as fast as you can make it safe.”

He reached out a hand to shake.  “I’ll have our lawyers start drafting a contract.  In the meantime, we’d like to start extensive testing on the effect.”

“Works for me.”  Alex took his hand.  “Bill, you doing anything tonight?”

“…this?”  The man looked confused.  “What just happened?”

“Preliminary negotiations.”  Jim told him, clapping the taller man on the shoulder.  “Congratulations.  You’re going to upend the world.”

Frequency-Of-Sunlight laughed, looping her head around as she barked out rough hisses.  “With this ?”  She asked.

“Hey, let’s not dwell on that statement!”  Alex tried to shush her friend.  “Bill, you go with them to wherever they do stuff.  I need to go tell Karen how things went in detail.  Sunny, escort Bill, if anyone tries to kidnap him or something, burn the building down.”

“Yes boss!”  The camrcdona saluted.

“…don’t call me that.”  Alex said, a sudden and grim terror gripping her heart as she realized that her friend had just addressed her with the same half-joking tone she used on James .  “No.  No no.  Don’t… I have to go.”  Alex reached into her pocket and fumbled tearing a telepad page, vanishing from the basement.

That got the Jim’s attention.  “What in the hell…”

“She’s allergic to authority.”  Frequency-Of-Sunlight said with a sad shake of her head.  “It’s a tragic condition.  She can’t have one, or it would get sick.”

“Have one what?”  Jim asked her, confused.

“An authority.”  The camraconda replied.

Bill cleared his throat.  “Uh… if you want, we can go get to work?  I didn’t actually think this would be this , but I don’t have anything going on tonight and my wife’s gonna be at a book club, so I’m open to keep going as long as I can take a minute to call her.”

“Sounds… sounds good.”  Jim said, staring at where Alex had vanished from.  “She actually can make that deal, right?”

“Oh, yeah, if she says it was approved, she means it.”  Bill nodded.  “We move faster than paperwork.  But you guys ain’t us, so get your lawyers on that contract, and we’ll have ours check it out before we make any big commitments.  And then we can upend the world or whatever it was you said.”

_____

“Welcome back to this week’s series of interviews!”  Sarah felt like she was starting to hit her stride in making mini-arcs of her podcast.  “Explorations of little bits of what it’s like to live as someone nonhuman but still in our little bubble of magic and wonder!  Today, I have with me everyone’s favorite cuddlebug, Arrush!”

“That is… a lie.  At best.”  Arrush stole a phrase he heard James and Anesh say all the time.

This was going to be a fun one, Sarah could feel it.  Even though Arrush was having to take pauses for breaths, his lungs not back in the strongest part of their magically influenced growth cycle yet.  “Well you’re my favorite!”  Sarah said.

“I am covered in… spikes.”  Arrush countered.

Sarah laughed at the comment.  “Now there’s  a big fib.  You’re less spiky than some of our human friends, since El broke into our strategic reserve of hair gel.”  She set a hand on the desk between them, her eyes suddenly calm and reassuring as she looked at Arrush directly.  “But really, it’s nice to have you on.  Just checking, not for the recording or anything, are you okay with this today?  We can come back.”

“I’m fine.”  Arrush said, one of his smaller clawed paws resting a half inch onto the desk on his side.  “It doesn’t hurt.  Just… tiring.  But I am ready.”

Reaching over, Sarah placed her hand on the back of his, and Arrush’s angular muzzle pulled back in a closed smile as he tried to not drip on anything.  To her, it was a victory more visceral and real than any combat triumph to see Arrush not flinch away from being touched.  “Okay!”  She said as she gave him a caring tap and then settled back in her seat.  Though the way Sarah settled in a chair was to almost perch on the edge of it.  “So!  Wanna introduce yourself?”

“Hello.”  Arrush said, talking more to her than to the microphone.  “I am Arrush.  I am… a ratroach.  I began as the… the beautiful one’s soldier.  And then was rescued.  I am five years old… like garlic bread… and am a knight of the Order of Endless Rooms.”

Sarah nodded slowly a few times, then stopped moving, before giving a single last nod that had a different meaning to it.  “There’s a lot there.  You give better introductions than anyone else I’ve had on this week!”  She smiled as she scribbled down specific words as mental notes for later.  “There’s one thing I wanna start with before we get in deep on your life.  Ratroach?”

“Mmmh.”  Arrush made a noise that might have meant to be a hum, but came out as more of a rapid clicking.  “Part rat.  Part beetle.  Not… not actually a cockroach, not really.  Not even a real rat.  Just the impression of both.”  He took a deep breath to refill himself, two of his smaller hands pressed against his side against the dull pains of his lungs stretching.

“What I’m more asking,” Sarah said cautiously, “is if the name is okay?”

Arrus tilted his head, the sticky spines on his antenna bobbing sideways as he blinked unevenly.  “I think… I think…” he inhaled deeply to steady himself, “that it is what I am.  It’s only… shameful? Shameful if I let it be.  I am this .”  He held up two of his paws, looking at the alternating patterns of chitin and coarse tan fur.  “When someone calls you human, it isn’t mean, I think?  Even though it comes from dirt?”

“I… it what?”  Sarah was caught off guard.  “Does it?”

“I looked it up.”  Arrush nodded carefully, but with a clear pride at his knowledge.  “The hu is because of the word humus.  Which is earth.  But not the place, the dirt.”  He coughed lightly, leaving a tiny glowing mark on the sleeve of his hoodie before continuing.  “So I am a ratroach.  It doesn’t have to be good or bad, it’s just… what I am.”

That seemed like a pretty solid reason to stop trying to come up with new names for the species, to Sarah.  “Okay!”  She said with a happy bounce.  “Would you accept a change?  I know some people think that chimera or kobold is a better, less… less ‘enemy’ term.”

“Would you?”  Arrush asked.  “We could call humans… hobbits.”

Sarah had to think about that.  “I do like cottagecore.”  She said aloud, which got her a perplexed and open mouthed stare from Arrush.  “But I get what you mean.  So!  A question!”  At certain points, Sarah had to actually remember this was supposed to be an interview.  “Five years old?”

Arrush nodded.  “I’m the oldest.  Even older than Keeka.”

“Is it weird to have half the people around you be multiple times your age?”  Sarah asked.  “We don’t usually talk about age with… um…” she faltered.

Coming to her rescue, Arrush plowed into the concept of conversational niceties like a truck.  “Dungeon life.  Artificial is wrong, I don’t like that.  But an outsider, maybe?”  He scraped at some of the chitin on his face with a claw, nervously and hard enough to scratch it.  “Have you… do you know the Hobbit?”  He asked awkwardly.

“Yes!”  Sarah loved that book.  “It’s very silly and also fantastic.  Why?”

“The elves.”  Arrush said slowly.  “They should be… better, shouldn’t they?”

Sarah raised her eyebrows.  “Oh, because they’re older?”  She made the connection.  “Hey, wait a second!”  She laughed.  “So everybody feels like some ancient creature that’s practically immortal, but we keep goofing up all the time?”

“Not… all the time.”  Arrush slumped a little, and Sarah had to motion to remind him that the microphones were actually the target here.  “You will… do things that confuse me.  But that work out.  Because you know, because you did them before.  Sometimes it seems like magic.”  He wiped away some dully glowing saliva that had started dripping down his cheek while he spoke.  “Sometimes it is magic.  But I don’t feel left out, just not there yet.”

“That’s a weirdly mature way to describe maturity.”  Sarah mused.  “Actually, I kinda want to know, if you’re okay answering; does being created by a dungeon change how you see life?”

“I… can’t… answer that?”  Arrush half asked.

“Oh, my bad!”  Sarah was quick to start abandoning it and moving on.  “We can-“

“No, no…” The ratroach straightened up in his seat, reminding Sarah that he was, like, seven feet tall and only looked small because he slouched all the time.  “I know where I am from is… is very bad.”  His claws bit into his hoodie, sliding through holes made by the same motion repeated over time.  “The difference in peh… perception… is that I know  it is better here.  It isn’t a guess, or a maybe.  I will always know that you won’t hurt me.  But I am not cr…created.”

Sarah tried to make her wide eyed look come across as not horrified, not alienating to her guest.  She hoped it worked.  “I didn’t know that.”  She said quietly.

Arrush ran a claw through his antenna, disentangling two of them.  “Some ratroaches just appear.”  He said.  “Others are… are grown.”  His voice was tight, pained, and not just from having to breathe heavier or from a throat not made for talking.  “I was… I… I…” he trailed off as he found he couldn’t form words.

With a quick motion to her production assistant, Sarah had the recording switched off.  Wordlessly, she rose and slid around to behind Arrush’s seat, first setting a hand on his shoulder, then leaning in to wrap the big guy in a hug as he took heaving breaths and tried not to cry.  She stayed that way until one of his antenna caught her on the cheek and the barbs stuck it to her skin.  “Uh oh.”  She said with good humor.  “Uh… hey… so…”

“Ssssorry.”  Arrush half hissed as he lifted one of the arms growing out of his back and gently extracted the part of him that was stuck in her flesh.  “Told you.  I was spiky.”

“Well I don’t care.”  Sarah told him.  “Hey.  We’ll cut that part out, alright?  You don’t have to talk about it.  Wanna take a minute?”

Arrush did, and so he sat there while Sarah comforted him until he felt composed enough to continue.  “Ready.”  He said, after wiping away the drops of corrosive fluids from various sources and adding a smoldering paper towel to the room’s trash can.

“Okay.”  Sarah smiled, and turned her expressive persona back on.  “So we’ve established the Akashic Sewer is… let’s say honkin ’ bad  and leave the details for the manual James keeps writing.  But what’s your favorite small part of being here?”

“Garlic bread.”  Arrush said instantly.  “Have you tried it?”  He looked at Sarah like he had a deep universal secret to share.  “It is bread.  With garlic.  And other things.”

She laughed with a sparkling joy.  “I have!  I can see how it would be a highlight.  Do you have it often?”

“Not too often.  That would… spoil it.”  Arrush stared at the desk with a worry in his multitude of eyes that was far older than he was.  The concern that overindulging might ruin something.  And that would be unthinkable  for this particular situation.  “No.”

“So, what’s your daily life like?”  Sarah prompted.  “Things are always chaotic around this place, but how do you live?”

Arrush tried to think of what was important for the answer.  The hardest part of being young, which he didn’t really know how to explain yet, was that he was lacking context for a lot of small things.  But he felt like he could cover this at least.  “I live here, in the Lair.  Live with with my… my… ah…”

Sarah noticed him flushing green around his eyes as he trailed off, the patches of exposed thick skin changing color with embarrassment.  “This one I can reassure you on!”  She declared.  “ No one listening will judge you.  And if they do, I’ll sneak into their dreams and torment them.  I have that power.”

“Really?”  Arrush looked shocked.

“They’ll find out.”  Sarah said with an ominous grin.

He blinked at her, then chittered out a laugh that turned into a soft wheeze before he caught himself and steadied his breathing again.  “My boyfriend.”  He said.  “We spend time together.  Listen to music.  Talk.  Usually at night.  In the mornings…I help in the… kitchen.  Wash things.”  Arrush was happy with the lonely tasks he took care of before anyone came into the Lair’s kitchen every day.  “And then I… practice.  Train.  Learn to fight.  Or learn other things.  Exercise.”  The ratroach flexed his claws in a practiced pattern, focusing on a small practice routine for keeping conscious control of his body.  “Sometimes I join delves.”

“Yeah, you were in the Stacks recently!  How was it?”  Sarah asked.

“Beautiful.  It smells… like nothing else.”  Arrush answered with a distant look.  “Dangerous but honest, and it… has… crows.”  He really liked the crows.  They didn’t like him , but there was something about their aloof and irate nature that made Arrush want to hug one of them, even if they were made mostly out of wet ink.

Sarah followed up with a broader question.  “How do you feel about going back into dungeons?”  She asked him.  “Being a delver, you don’t feel pushed into it or anything?  I feel like you’ve probably been asked this a lot.”

He had been, mostly by James.  But Arrush just shrugged.  “Maybe at first.  When I was… trying to prove I… I should…” He caught himself about to explain that he should be allowed to live, and breathed slowly as he focused on pulling to mind exactly what the Order did want of him.  “Maybe at first.”  He repeated.  “Now I like it.  It is sometimes fun.  And none of them are like where I came from.  The Library is… I could live there.  Forever.  And be… okay.”

“Okay?”  Sarah pushed on the word.  “Not happy?”

“I would miss garlic bread.”  Arrush laughed, chittering lightly.  “And my boyfriend.  And pillows. And other things.”

She nodded.  “The dungeons are cool but they don’t really do creature comforts well, even the nice ones.  Oh!  You should visit Clutter Ascent!  She has pillows!”  Sarah snapped her fingers as the thought occurred to her and she took the opportunity to talk up her favorite young dungeon.  “You mentioned your boyfriend again - which is utterly cute by the way - and I wanna ask this; is romance complicated by you not being human?”

“We are the same.”  Arrush told her, confused, because Sarah knew that.  It was only as he answered that he realized she was asking him a question for an interview, and he’d forgotten again that they weren’t just having a conversation.  “But also James told me… species does not matter.  So no.”

“The way you said that.”  Sarah shook with repressed laughter.  “Like James just swept in and declared romance egalitarian and then vanished with a swoosh of his cape.  That was great .”

“He does not have a…” Arrush paused.  “We should get… James… a cape.”  He decided.  “Also is he wrong?”

Sarah shrugged.  “I think - also hey this is my interview - but I think that some people will be weird about interspecies romance.  And I think those people are dumb!  But James’s idea of ignoring species entirely is bad too!  It does matter, it just shouldn’t be negative .”

“Agree.”  Arrush fumbled the word as he accidentally switched to a different language for a moment.  “It would be… hard to pretend dating an… an assignment… would be the same as Keeka.”

“Right?”  Sarah said.  “And dating humans?   Impossible.”

Arrush held up a paw, cracking his muzzle in a small gasp.  “Wait, no…” he offered.

Sarah laughed and moved to something else.  “So there’s clearly some downsides to… well, not to be rude, but being a ratroach.”  Arrush nodded at her.  “But do you think there’s anything special about it?  We’ve talked to camracondas and assignments and inhabitors  on here and there’s kind of an unspoken thing about their advantages, but yours might be less obvious.”

“I can do this.”  Arrush said, turning to show off his back and slightly lifting his hoodie with the secondary limbs he had, demonstrating his ability to scratch every part of his back without having to stretch.  “Everyone… is jealous of my power.”  He enunciated the words carefully, like he was worried it might not be clear he was making a joke.  “Also, when it is dark… I can go ahhhhh …”  He tilted his head back, stretching his muzzle open.

Even in the light of the studio, Sarah could see how his saliva let off a visible glow.  “You’re your own nightlight!”  She clapped excitedly.  “Oh that’s actually really fun!”

“It has… intimate uses… too…” Arrush flushed luminant green as he snapped his mouth shut and turned to stare studiously at the floor.

Sarah gave a comforting giggle.  “Nothing wrong with that!  We’re sex positive here!  Actually, do you have any dating advice for the other ratroaches who’ve been settling in here?”  Sarah asked.  “I know a lot of people look to you as a role model.”

At that, Arrush’s previous embarrassed flush came back in force.  An almost neon tinge to his skin, even showing around the edges of his exposed chitin, as he withered in his seat.  “They shouldn’t.”  He muttered.  “I am… not a good example.”

“You aren’t allowed to lie during an interview!  It’s against the rules!”  Sarah told him.

“Oh.” Arrush thought about it, but didn’t say anything.

Sarah shifted topics slightly.  “You do know more about being a ratroach in this world than a lot of the people like you.  And every couple weeks we see a few more rescues from the Sewer come in.  Is there anything you wish you’d known when you got here?”  She picked the most passive form of that question possible, and almost felt bad for it.

That Arrush had an answer for.  “The biggest change… was making mistakes.”  He said.  “You let me  make mistakes.  It’s hard to learn.  But if anyone is listening, who needs to know, that is… it.  Talk when you fail.  Share weakness.  It will be okay.”  He smiled at Sarah, who gave him a soft-eyed grin back.  “Ask Sarah for help.  She likes helping.”

“Wait, hang on!”  Sarah laughed.  “I mean, I do , but I’m… uh… buuuuusy?”

“Yes.  Busy helping.”  Arrush clicked a chuckle as he nodded.

She put on a comical pout.  “You’re not supposed to throw me under the bus like that!”

“Oh.”  Arrush paused.  “What is a… bus?  Like the computer part?”

“It’s a big passenger vehicle.”  Sarah answered.  “Does it ever bother you when stuff like this comes up?”  She asked in return.

Arrush shook his head.  “Not anymore.  I… keep learning.  I’ve had a year of conversations with James, and I can… can… talk like a person.  It is important… to be aware of my… own changes.”  His chest started rising and falling rapidly as he ran out of breath and had to pant for air.  “I… ah… hahhh…”

“Hey, that seems like a great note to end on.”  Sarah said, lightly slapping her palm on the desk between them.  “I don’t wanna drain you completely!  Thanks for coming on, this has been really nice when I wasn’t traumatizing you and I’m so sorry!”

“I will… tell my therapist… what you did…” Arrush wheezed out.

Sarah was pretty sure that was meant as a joke, so she took it as such.  “Well anyway!  Before my reputation is demolished, that’s all for this episode.  Tune in next time when we’ll be talking to Rufus and Ganesh about how it feels to be tiny in a world with people the size of Arrush and Alanna!  And, just a reminder, there’s a new Order podcast coming out next week specifically for news on what Research is up to!  So check up on that, and join me in listening to John and Davis realize they’ve committed to way more work than they expect as they try to explain what the boop is going on in that basement!”

_____

James woke up from the nap he was taking in his bed with Sarah’s podcast just finishing playing from his phone’s tiny speaker next to his head.  When it started looping, he realized he might have set it to something weird, and then realized that it was about six hours later than he expected, he was covered in a layer of uncomfortable sweat, and he felt awful.

“Mrrrgh.”  Was how he expressed this as he pressed back into the pillow.  He didn’t spot the spear of orange light as Zhu flickered off his back and out down his apartment’s hallway, and he only barely processed Alanna coming back in.  He was in the middle of a dream where someone was repeating Sarah’s words with a distant muffled drawl.  “Mpht.”  James added as Alanna rolled him over slightly and checked his temperature.

“ Oh  yeah, that is one fevery boy.”  She said as she pressed her wrist to his forehead.  “Thanks Zhu.”

“Well, if he dies, I have to move.”  Zhu said, shuffling his feathers awkwardly.

“Uh huh.  I’m sure you don’t care at all about our boyfriend.”  Alanna’s sly tone cut sharply through James’ thoughts, disrupting whatever sentence he was trying to form as she made him turn slightly and drink cool water from a straw.

James felt Zhu rustle irately like a thousand pinpricks on his skin.  “We really aren’t actually dating.”  Zhu said.  “Probably.  It would be awkward for everyone.   Including you .”

“Oh yeah, no one does anything awkward around here, good point.”  Alanna was keeping quiet, but there was no way she could avoid sniping back at the navigator.  Then she saw James looking up at her with half lidded eyes.  “Hey buddy.”  She said.  “You feeling alright?”

It took him a few tries to speak.  “I am sick.”  James eventually said.  “Fuck this.  I’m suppos’ to be immoral.”

“…I don’t…”

Alanna tapped Zhu on his curled feathered arm.  “He means immortal.”  She whispered.  “And yeah, you are buddy.  We’ll work on that, okay? Just get some sleep and let your purples do their thing.”

“Izzit a wizard thing?”  James felt the words like rocks in his mouth.

“Uh… no, you have the flu.”  Alanna told him with a wince.

“Fuck the flu.”  James grumbled as he closed his eyes, the room spinning too much for him to keep looking at it.  “No one likes you flu.”

“Oh good, he’s delirious.”  Zhu said cheerfully.

Alanna shrugged as she adjusted the blankets around James.  “To be fair, he’s not wrong.  Fuck the flu.  You know camracondas can get it, and it’s way worse for them than humans.  Everyone hates the flu.”  She sighed as she stood up.  “Try to sleep a little more.  Anesh is making some onion soup for you, and I’ll go pick up some crackers.   Do you need anything?”  Alanna frowned as she reached down and moved one of James’ hands. “Don’t pick at your arm.  You don’t want Deb having to restitch that.”

“I can’t be sick.”  James was burning energy to stay awake, inadvertently drawing on his Endurance and stacking up a debt that he was going to have to repay in the very near future.  “There’za delve thing.  Gotta do that.”  Also the hole in his arm felt like it was on fire, and he really had to do something about that.

“You fucking absolutely do not!”  Alanna barked out a laugh, pushing James back into the mattress with only two fingers as he struggled to rise.  “It’ll be fine without you, and you won’t be fine if you die to a dune bug because you were busy passing out in the middle of a Route fight.  You’re gonna lay here, eat our actual boyfriend’s soup, and let me worry about the delve!”

James looked up at her, a wellspring of emotion he didn’t have the mental capacity to process threatening to overwhelm him.  “But the thing…” he whimpered.

“I’ll deal with the thing.”  Alanna promised, though she was lying and had no idea what the thing was.

“Okay.”  James took that as reassurance, and let his head drop back.  “But… be looking… for paladins.”  He muttered as his eyes drooped shut.  “And take Zhu.”

Alanna looked down and met Zhu’s eye as he turned it up to meet her.  “Uh… can I even do that?”  She asked of her already-asleep boyfriend.  “Wait, you’re a person, I can just ask you.”  She addressed Zhu.

“I… did want to go on the Route delve.”  Zhu admitted.  “It would be fun to explore origin again.  But I don’t want to be an inconvenience.”

“But you can jump to me?”  Alanna asked.  “Shouldn’t be too hard, you’ve probably seen my brain when James and I do the hive mind kink thing.”

Zhu fluttered, dusty orange light taking on a redder hue.  “I know for a fact that it isn’t a kink , and so do you.  But yes, I could ride with you.  I didn’t want to ask though.”

“Cause you’re from James, right, I get it.”  Alanna nodded with a knowing smirk.  “Whatever, get in here, dumbass.  We’ve got about two days of prep work to do and you don’t get to dip out of it if you’re coming.”  She tapped her forehead.  Zhu paused only to look back at James, feeling along his friend’s body to make sure nothing was too broken.  Then he made a noise like a distant engine igniting, and flowed upward, becoming nothing for a brief moment before his light reformed around Alanna’s shoulders, feathers sprouting off her back and chest like an avian mantle.  “Dang, you look way cooler on me than on him.”

“Give me time, I’ll sort this form out.”  Zhu promised, experimentally opening an eye on her shoulder.

Alanna headed out to their living room, drawing attention from Anesh and Auberdeen as she walked in with Zhu draped around her.  “He’s asleep.”  She said, sniffing the air and enjoying the texture of the vegetables her boyfriend was cooking up.  “I’ve gotta get back to a thing.  You gonna be okay?”  She asked.

“Of course.”  Anesh said, leaning over the counter awkwardly while Alanna leveraged her height to close the gap and give him a solid kiss.  A kiss she made weird by licking his nose as she pulled back.  “I love you.”  He said rather abruptly after he finished sputtering.  “I don’t know if I say that enough.”

“Kinda outta nowhere.”  Alanna nodded.  “Thinking about it cause James is sick?”

Anesh shrugged.  “And because you two are doing more delves than me.  I’m maybe a little left out.”  He said it as a joke, but as soon as the words came out, he realized they were true.  “But I know-“

“Wanna go grab dinner tonight?”  Alanna asked.

“Huh?”

“Like, there’s the Midnight Pizza Zone place that just opened up, that’s literally open till midnight.  Wanna go grab a bite and hang out for a while after I get back?”  She bulldozed forward.  “All of you, I mean.  Or at least, as many of you as are available.  How many of you are there?”

“Four.  Two of me will be around though.  I’ll ask myself, but… yeah.”  Anesh smiled at her as he swept a spoon in a large circle through the pot he was working on.  “I’d really like that.”

“Cute!”  Alanna grinned, toothy and satisfied.  “And it’ll be fun to catch up before I’m back to reenacting Mad Max but without a doof warrior.”  She added as she headed out their door.

“…you can tell me what the bloody hell you’re talking about tonight.”  Anesh yelled after her as he went back to making their sick boyfriend soup.  He looked across at Auberdeen, the fluffy dog enjoying Ganesh crawling on her back and giving her scratches while she watched Animal Planet.  “Do you know what she’s talking about?”

Auberdeen just woofed at Anesh to be quiet.  She was busy learning about dinosaurs, and her human roommates’ shenanigans could wait until later.