#armaline

“Okay, so that wasn’t quite how it happened. It felt better, saner, to vilify my father. In retrospect. After what happened. Yes, he was intolerant. Yes, he was noisy about different ways of life. But he didn’t deserve to die that way. Nobody deserved to die as they did.

“We weren’t bespelled like princesses in a curse.

“That was the... wizard’s fault. You’d call him that. The wizard made noise about authority and control, too. He backed that up with a wand of paralysis, or maybe slumber. He was a frail old man, and the town he tried to terrorize took it from him. But they didn’t jail him, I guess, or discipline him.

“The next time he wandered back there he had a big jar humped up under his cloak. I heard he said Listen to me! Listen to me, lest your hubris unleash a plague! And when nobody in that busy market heeded him, the old man threw the jar down at his feet.

“A plague of locusts. Small, shining, locusts that washed over the world. They took him first; I bet he managed either half a cackle or scream before they’d devoured him and converted his foolish flesh into gray goo.

“Nothing stopped them. Not fire, not cold. Their numbers grew as their circle increased; grass, buildings, and people fell to their endless maws. We had a warning, but not much to do with it. Everything we knew was already gone; maybe everything on this plane, or even further, would vanish in a wave of gray sludge.

“So we slept, and Aie called for me. And that tank of gray muck still in stasis that should have been my father—they got in. At least one must have already been inside him when we slept. The tank, of course, was airtight. He was beyond saving, nothing to save, but the rounds of waking, sleeping, waking—that’s true. Trying to salvage the others.

“When I woke that last time, and my leg was gone? Not withered; ooze. I thought that was impossible; if one of the locusts reached me, I thought I’d be dead. But they weren’t behaving properly. Maybe it was the stasis? Or the length of time? As I made my rough prothesis, my tools stuck to my hands. I studied them with a sense of wrongness, of missing-pieceness, with a remove even greater than what I’d expected after everything that happened.

“My working theory—it’s only a theory—is that the locust tried to devour, convert me, but I am resistant or it is broken. Either way, it needs something else to fix it. Some piece of magic or technology that it just doesn’t have. I don’t... I don’t know what happens if it finds it. Nothing good, probably.”

The man sharing the campfire nodded heavily. He spoke, but once again, I couldn’t understand. Then he lifted his small cube.

“They are!” my father shouted from the pulpit. “They’re dangerous. The modifications, the enhancements, those cryogenic tanks which are hubris—false immortality at the cost of your soul!” Spittle flecked his lips; light from stained glass windows disguised the blood there.

That was minutes before he climbed into a pod; like an old-world household buried alive when their master died, we all went too.

Armaline, I require your assistance. Repairs are needed.

Even Aei’s quietest voice couldn’t be gentle enough for someone coming out of stasis; the lid lifted too slowly and I made a mess over myself. I took a few steadying breaths.

Well, that wasn’t a good smell.

There were yellow lights on a few of my mothers’ pods, and my brother’s. But my father’s tank wasn’t even glowing with a red warning anymore. I kicked the broken tank and the gray sludge inside wobbled. Not a good smell. This must have happened ages ago. I opened my mouth, but between my suspicions and the taste that coated my tongue, I desisted.

I cannibalized the gray—ooze pod (not his, not him anymore, too late) and used its parts to repair the others’. Aie won’t tell me how long has passed, and I have no clock here myself. I bet they do that on purpose; whatever drone wakes up to fix things won’t go nuts at the passage of time between sleeps.

Armaline, repairs needed.

Coming out of stasis was less harsh on me this time, or maybe Aie had the lid up faster; I vomited over the side. No smell anymore; the liquid in my father’s tank was now dusty mold. There was a yellow light on my brother and one mother’s pod. None of the remaining scrap from the dead one would suit.

Trace was our father’s only son, third of his line. Marlie hadn’t been my favorite mother, but—could I make the choice? Not doing so would just kill them both.

Armaline—

I didn’t even get sick this time. Not physically. I opened my eyes to a steady, bright yellow; I had to address that, but when I sat up and swung my legs out of the tank, not all of my left leg came with me. I stared down at the remnant with a puzzled shock. 

 Well, my father and his warnings of modification danger weren’t here anymore. Were very long gone, given the time that must (must hopefully) be passing between these pod failures; Aie still wouldn’t tell me a timeline. I admit that I took some satisfaction at using useless bits from my father’s pod to make myself a rough prosthetic.

All of the pods were in function-warning yellow, except mine—green, cheery green—and Trace’s. His was red. Red was remove the corpse not repair to maintain stasis.

I spent a long time sitting on the edge of my own pod, trying to make myself use Marlie’s pieces as spares for the others. Trying to make myself disconnect Trace so that I had more materials.

Rewwpars neee

I woke still entombed in the stasis pod. It was black as night, and I was grateful for the vision mod my father didn’t know I had. “Aie?” No answer. The space quickly became close and suffocating with my own breath. I spared another guilty thought for my father (mostly out of habit) as I deployed the small inbuilt laser in my forearm. But biotek always seemed as likely to eat my soul as the pocket knife I used to carry.

The tanks, even mine, were all dark and gray. Nothing—no smell of rot or mold. Maybe just dust. I had all the parts I needed for all the mods I wanted, if I could finesse some of the details.