Chet ran in front of me, and he seemed to have a sixth sense for where to step—I was able to follow him fairly quickly, avoiding any pitfalls or hidden tree branches. I supposed jungle survival was part of an interdimensional space explorer’s standard repertoire.
M-Bot hovered along beside me. “Spensa!” he said. “I think I’m simulating fear! Or… No. It’s time to stop talking like that. I feel afraid. I am afraid!”
Well, that seemed like progress. The shouting faded behind us, and I was glad to put a large distance between me and that creature with the glowing eyes. Though I did feel another stab of worry for Doomslug. I assumed she’d hyperjumped home, but what if she’d only jumped somewhere nearby in here instead?
I felt terrible for not being able to do a longer search for her. But…well, hopefully if she was in here, she was safe. Honestly, if I had to lay bets on me, M-Bot, or the slug surviving in this jungle alone, she’d top the list.
We ran until we could no longer hear gunfire. Finally Chet nodded to me, and the two of us huddled down beside a moss-covered log. This place felt so alien. What did you do surrounded by all this life? Planet surfaces were supposed to be barren expanses of rock and craters. That was natural and normal. Not this greenery.
“Alas,” Chet said quietly, “the pirates finally seem to have noticed that the beast feeds on energy. You can’t hurt them with such weapons, but approach with a small power matrix as an offering and they become quite tame! Grigs are used as pack animals, for all their fearsome appearance. She should be full from all those blasts—I bet she’ll wander off and have a sleep now. Still, I think we should proceed as silently as possible, because of that thing with the shining eyes. I didn’t like the look of that at all.”
I nodded in agreement. “Thank you,” I whispered. “For your help. I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself. Spensa Nightshade.”
“Excellent name!” he whispered back. “As for my help, it was a pleasure! I was already prowling Cannonade territory looking for some action, you might say. And I found it, yes I did! Helping a fellow cytonic is a hearty reward on its own. That said…” He trailed off, glancing at M-Bot. “Now I don’t want to pry, but…did I hear you speaking to that drone?”
“Oh, right,” I said. “This is M-Bot.”
“Hello!” M-Bot whispered. “I’m not so scared any longer. That feels nice.”
“Ah,” Chet said. “You, um, brought an AI into the nowhere, did you?”
“That’s…bad, I take it?”
“Yes, well, I believe that word to be an understatement, Spensa Nightshade. Do your people not know about the delvers?”
“We met one!” M-Bot exclaimed. “Well, Spensa did. I was being murdered at the time. But I heard about it on the news! Sounded scary.”
“Ah yes, well then.” Chet looked at me. “Your AI has gone fully sentient, I see? I thought you were newly arrived, but full sentience usually takes a few weeks.”
“Technically,” M-Bot said, hovering a few centimeters closer to him, “the word ‘sentient’ just means an ability to perceive and/or feel. Many people misuse this word. Instead, ‘sapience’ is the word for self-awareness—or intelligence like a human being. Which if you think about it is a human-centric definition. Those rascally humans and their linguistic biases.
“At any rate, my programming is telling me to explain that I’m not sapient, merely programmed to simulate sapience for my pilots. However, my programming was written by people who smell of cheese and have noodles for brains. So I’m ignoring them right now.”
“…Noodles for brains?” I asked.
“When I copied my personality to this drone, I had to leave behind several nonessential databases for space reasons. I assume my collection of keen, brilliant insults was among them.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You never had one of those, M-Bot.”
“Really? Guess I’ll have to start one up. On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate ‘noodles for brains’?”
“Miss Nightshade,” Chet said, “I…must warn you. This is incredibly dangerous. Fully sapient AI are abominations, you see. Not that I’m one to shy away from danger! But I…well, I suggest you keep an eye on the thing.”
“Noted,” I said.
“Noted,” M-Bot said. “Noodle-brain.”
We both looked at him.
“I’ll keep using it until I have a rating,” M-Bot said. “One to ten. What do you think? I need some data.”
I sighed, glancing back at Chet. “You said you’re an explorer?”
“Interdimensional galactic explorer,” he said. “I’ve only been to two dimensions so far—the ordinary universe and this place. But I figured the title was fitting regardless.”
“I could use a guide,” I said. “And maybe some help understanding cytonics.”
“Well,” he admitted, “on the second I’m not going to be terribly helpful. I didn’t know I was cytonic before falling in here, and I’ve had to pick up what I can on my own. I can contact people through their minds, but that’s about all I can do. I hear we’re supposed to be able to teleport. Wouldn’t that be something?”
I didn’t say anything. To be honest, I wasn’t a hundred percent certain I should trust him. Something about his arrival seemed convenient. I mean, yes, awesome dinosaur antics—so awesome—but still…
“I would love to be employed as your guide, however,” Chet said. “I know these fragments like I know my own boots. But tell me, before we continue. Why was that pouch so important that you gave up capturing a ship to steal it?”
I hesitated. I had a hundred more questions. Where did he come from? Were there lots of humans there? What was a fragment? I put those off for the moment, settling on something else instead.
I retrieved the pouch, then pulled out my father’s pin. “What,” I said, “is this?”
Chet’s eyes went wide. And I felt a distinct longing from him. An envy. It was gone in a moment—he seemed to be able to cover his emotions—but it had been there, and it made me wary.
“That, young lady,” he said, “is a reality icon. An important relic from your old life, imbued with your attachments to places and people you love. Those are exceptionally powerful. They create reality ashes. That silver dust? Without those, or without groups of people nearby…”
“What?” I asked, resisting the urge to tuck away the pin. I didn’t like how he stared at it.
“We’re at the fringes of the nowhere,” he said, “in a region known as the belt. It’s rather difficult to explain, but the longer you stay in here, the more likely you are to forget yourself. Your past, your memories, even your identity.” He paused. “I remember almost nothing about my life before I came in here. It’s a blank…nothingness.
“But I’m lucky. I’ve been able to trade for ashes often enough to keep myself mostly…well, myself. Many people forget everything quickly—including their own names. That’s why the pirates grab newcomers, you see. Put them to work, keep them close. The more minds nearby, the more your memories and identity stay safe. Unless you have reality ashes. Then you can go anywhere without fear.”
“And this thing makes them,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, oddly solemn. “The only other way is to get them off people or objects when they first arrive in the nowhere. And the ashes fade over time. It takes…a while. Months, maybe? Hard to keep track sometimes. So if you want to go out on your own, you need a constant supply.”
Well, that explained why everyone had been so excited about my pin. I dropped the pin in the pouch and tucked it into my pocket.
Chet’s eyes followed it the entire time. Then he grinned, and some of his earlier perkiness returned. “Well,” he said, “a guide you want, and a guide you shall have! I fear that I’ve played my hand, explaining how valuable those are. But if you’d be willing to trade me some—just the ashes, not the icon—for my services, then I shall dutifully be in your employ. Shall we say, a single ash per day of service?”
Scud. I had hundreds. They might be valuable, but that deal felt like a bargain. “I’m in,” I said. “I need information about this place. And I need to find…something called the Path of Elders?”
He cocked his head. “Where did you hear of that?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Ah, espionage, is it! Well, I shall keep my tongue then, Spensa Nightshade. I know of the Path of Elders. Following it leads one to some of the first entrances into the nowhere, left by the most ancient cytonics. Traversing it won’t be easy, but—”
He was interrupted by the sound of branches snapping in the forest. The ground began thumping.
“I thought you said it would go to sleep,” I said.
“It…should have.” Chet turned his head toward the noises. “I say. It is coming this way, isn’t it? Never fear, I can tame the beast again. It is not…”
He trailed off. A coldness emanated from the same direction. A kind of…chill that penetrated my soul. And a sound reverberated in my head. No words. Just a low hiss, accompanied by an intense wave of hatred.
“I think,” he said, “perhaps we should be away. With haste.”
“Agreed,” I said, jumping to my feet.
Chet took the lead, faster this time, and I followed as best I could. He slid across a fallen log, then hit the ground and moved with a light, quick step, ducking through a group of fronds. M-Bot zipped after him. I slid over the log awkwardly, then stumbled through the same plants, barely staying upright.
We fortunately hit a patch of less dense jungle, letting us pick up our pace further.
“Spensa,” M-Bot said. “I’ll note a nine from you on the rating for that insult of mine. Great, with a little room to improve. How does that sound?”
I grunted. The noises behind us were getting closer.
“Chet said that thing eats electricity,” M-Bot said. “It…won’t eat me, will it, Spensa?”
I just focused on trying to keep up with Chet, who waved me forward, then hurried through the underbrush. I barely avoided tripping.
“You know,” M-Bot said, his volume turned down low, “it’s rather inconvenient that you humans need your aspiration apparatus in order to communicate. Often when you’re working hard, you also have important things to say. But you can’t say them, or risk interrupting your oxygen intake.”
“Point?” I asked, puffing as I ducked under some vines.
“Oh, no point,” M-Bot said, doing a loop-de-loop through the vines. “Merely making small talk. With a small voice. Ha! You know, I’ll bet that given some more time to evolve, your species would have fixed that problem with your lungs. I can appreciate making use of existing hardware and giving it a new function, but there are other areas of your body that make noise when air is pushed through them. Wouldn’t it be so much more efficient if you could communicate that way instead?”
It was best not to encourage him when he got like this, though I was happy to hear him acting more like his old self. When I’d first found him in the drone, slow of speech and feeling betrayed, I worried I’d never get him back. Then after his bout of angry emotions…well, hearing him making fun of human biology was a relief.
The sounds from behind us grew even louder. I charged forward and met up with Chet, who had paused to wait for me. He took off again as soon as I reached him.
“Something’s wrong,” he said quietly. “The grig shouldn’t be following. This is bad, Spensa Nightshade. Very bad…”
A loud snap sounded behind us. It was closer now. Too close. Terrifyingly close.
Don’t look, my warrior heritage whispered to me.
I looked anyway.
The thing was back there, moving with an incongruent grace. It slid its mouth-neck among the trees, whiskers along its length feeling the way for its larger body to follow. The eyes on its torso at the base of its trunk were now glowing white. Just like the eyes of the wounded alien. And the delvers.
I felt the cold sensation increase, a pressure on my mind, as if it was reaching toward me, searching for me. It knew me.
“Chet!” I shouted, turning toward him. Somehow I’d managed to avoid tripping. “It’s right there!”
He leaped through a line of shrubs. I followed and broke out of the jungle, then pulled up hastily as I realized I’d not only reached the end of the trees, but the end of the land itself.
An expanse of open air extended before me, broken by distant masses of earth and stone that were floating there, idly drifting. We hadn’t been in an ordinary jungle, but one that grew on a giant floating chunk of ground.
And there was no path forward that I could see.
