by P H Campbell
"Interesting," she replied. "So you used to be a translation device?"
"Right," Looie nodded. "I was a piece of a human brain working the mouth, and Ash was mostly a Methonian brain working everything else, including, sort of, me."
"That's… kinky," Seren noted.
"No, not so much," Ash contradicted. "We had no sexual differentiation. I was, sort of, mostly, a she. Looie was more a reflection of my gender than male, even though her DNA was originally male. But the body we were in wasn't fully biological, so sex was mostly an academic subject for us both since we didn't have sex parts."
"I think I follow that," Seren allowed. "So how'd the one become two?"
"Long story short, things fell apart in that first contact and as the rioting began, our genetic mother stuffed us into a stasis tube," Ash told her, taking over the narrative from her sister. "We almost suffocated. That means we were in that tube for a really, really long time, and my air ran out. Normally that can't happen, but we weren't in atmosphere. So we're crying and begging to be let out, because we didn't know we'd been frozen in stasis, and just when we think we're going to die, the lid opens and we see this woman, who, come to mention it, kind of resembles you…"
"I thought she looked like Mom," Looie agreed. "Darker hair and eyes, but almost the same otherwise."
"Does she have small tits?" Seren asked, knowing that among her people, that was definitely a defining feature for folks.
The two gals nodded in unison.
"That sounds like someone I can relate to," Seren admitted with a smirk. Then she asked, "So what happened then?"
"Cinder, the woman, and our mom, wasn't exactly part of the UGW," Looie continued. "But we clicked. And bonded. We did a lot of legally questionable things, got filthy rich, but along the way, our expiration date – Ash's and mine – came around. Longevity was not part of our design parameters. So Cinder moved heaven and Earth and asked us what we wanted to be and we woke up and had these bodies, only going through puberty, which sucked because we…"
"Too much information, Looie," Ash cautioned, placing a paw-like hand over her face and shaking her head.
"Spoil-sport," Looie stuck her tongue out at her sister. "So we were little girls, and Cinder adopted us as her daughters, and we were part of the Shade. We grew up, had some fun, ended up here, and that's our story."
"Some of those details would be fun to know," Seren noted. "But your story is pretty intriguing."
"I kept my end, it's your turn," Ash told her.
"Fair deal," Seren agreed.
"I was born to a Magentian couple. But my conception directed by a disembodied Human who had died ninety-five hundred years earlier shortly after she used the power of an inter-dimensional being to rip the continent in two to save her family from a mob of people who wanted to kill her family members to so that the mob could gain the secret to immortality, which is what they thought killing them would do."
"Whoa, back up there," Looie chided her. "Who was that person way back when?"
Seren considered how to answer that question.
"How honest do you want me to be with you?" she asked. "Or, maybe I should ask, how freaked out do you really want to be?"
Looie opened her mouth, but Ash interjected, "Be as honest as you think you need to be."
Seren asked a question and received an affirmative answer.
A moment later, Miralenda, also known as Miralenda, appeared, sitting, as she usually was when conjured, this time on the edge of the conference table to the left of the Twins. Unlike the previous conjurings, she was wearing the same attire in which she appeared in a painting completed a few decades before the Sundering.
"I'm Miralenda," she introduced herself to the two shocked and stunned women. "If you want to know about me, it's best if I tell my story."
"This is the person it based my genes on," Seren told them.
"How… are… you… doing that?" Ash asked, almost shocked beyond words at the apparition showing up in this, of all places. The World didn't have the technology to produce a hologram, let alone one from which the sound emanated.
"She conjured me," Miralenda told them, pointing at Seren, which created far more questions in the minds of her audience than answers, but she didn't elaborate. "I was the last Human born after the entity Seren told you about which entered our dimension wiped out most of the Colonists. Except for me, the radiation sickened everyone else, my parents included. The entity created me specially to communicate with it. Then everyone born after it arrived was a Magentian, or an Electrian – mutant humans.
"When I had kids, they were all Magentians, and could talk to the entity themselves. I taught them not to use the entity, because it exacted a high price. And not using it caused us to stop aging."
"I had that happen to me when I was about eleven until I was about fourteen, so I look at least three years younger than I really am," Seren interjected. When the two Shade Alliance miners looked closer, they could see that Seren looked to be slightly older than the apparition sitting on the table appeared to be.
"Hazards of the job," Miralenda shrugged, then continued on with her story. "After four hundred-some years, the split between the races was pretty bad. The Electrians thought by killing Magentians who could talk to the entity, they'd get the entity's power and stop aging. Of course, it doesn't work that way, so things only escalated, and you can't tell just by looking who can or can't talk to the entity.
"Then they killed my son, who was the last survivor of the love of my life, and, well, I admit I lost it. If what you told Seren about getting the data from the Wethersfield is true, you saw the Sundering. That was me having a world-class grief and rage induced temper tantrum, plus storing up four centuries of magical power."
"I threw up when I saw that," Ash admitted.
"It wasn't my best day," Miralenda confessed. "I was in shock at what I had done. Then, I went into the library, I'm still not sure why, and got crushed by the wall when it collapsed. When I died, the essence of me went into the entity, and I stayed there, which was weird, for what seemed like forever, or no time, and then I helped it create me again, only that me was Seren."
"Thanks sis," Seren smiled at her mentor, and took over the narrative. "I was born to a Magentian couple, as I said, but I wasn't a Magentian in appearance. My mother tried to abort me, but couldn't."
"I didn't let her do that," Miralenda mentioned.
"When I was born, my mother took me to an orphanage in the Borderlands, where I grew up," Seren told them. "The less said about that, the better. When I was about nine, a rape gang tried to steal my food ration chip. I objected. Most of them got hauled away to the mines, but the rest jumped me and almost killed me."
"She had a head injury that would have been fatal if I hadn't cured it," Miralenda explained.
"But because I was born crippled, and the rape gang had taken my staff and leg braces, I needed to stand and fight," Seren went on. "So, I cured myself, asking the entity to do it for me, more or less. Which it did. Then things got weird for me after that."
"Seren was still a child but just starting puberty," Miralenda explained. "In a limited sense, I could finally talk to her, give her my experiences and knowledge."
"Imagine, suddenly, knowing things you never remembered learning," Seren told the two. "That was also weird."
No one commented, and she continued.
"Fast forward a few years, and I learned enough to know that the entity wanted to go home, I had a sense Miralenda was there, and I knew what the plan was. The entity caused all the humans here to mutate, and it knew it had done something bad to other beings. Thanks to Miralenda being among them, it knew how to correct that. But in the meantime, we needed to stop our wars.
"So we planned it all out, and once we were ready to stop the wars, and were sure they'd never happen again, the Entity fixed the genetic damage it had caused, and left to go to its own dimension. That was around six years ago. Ever since then, all the people here have b
een having Human children – not Magentian, not Electrian and not Breeds.
"A few years ago, a friend and I went on a trip to find our roots, and succeeded a lot more than we expected to, finding the Wethersfield and discovering where the colonists originally landed on this planet. We were bringing the remaining colonists out of stasis, when a flu from pigs started making the children sick. Many, too many, have died. We were so desperate for help, we used the Wethersfield's transmitters to call for help, and tried to deal with the epidemic as best we could because we didn't expect anyone to answer that call. We've made some progress, though not enough, when these two gorgeous, and quirky ladies showed up in their spaceship and offered to help.
"I think that brings us up to date."
The other two sat quietly considering what they had learned, and what Seren had said. The strange thing for them was that nothing Seren had said was at all inconsistent with what they had discovered before they had landed. And a lot of it filled in gaps in their understanding because of the records not being complete.
"I think that story more than repays me for our story," Ash replied.
"I try to be fair in my deals," Seren smiled.
"It's nice meeting you two," Miralenda told them, adding to Seren, "And sis, thanks for the non-see-through clothes."
"I did promise to fix that," she acknowledged.
Miralenda faded out.
"That was really neat," Looie remarked. "How did you do that?"
"It's kind of complicated to explain," Seren told them. "But it's an inherent trait – at least as far as I know – for Humans. If a person knows how to do it, they can do it. It's the knowing how part that seems to be the trick. Miralenda learned a lot about how to manipulate reality when she merged with the entity. That entity allowed some of us to do what you'd call 'magic'.
"But Humans do it differently than the entity did, and Miralenda only learned that after it left behind her when I sent the entity back to its dimension."
"So, what is Miralenda now?" Ash wondered.
"I'm not sure," Seren told them. "She's not sure, either. But she is her own person, even if disembodied."
"Does she show up like that a lot?" Looie inquired.
"Only if she's conjured," Seren assured them. "She usually finds other ways to communicate when she needs to, and usually only to me. Most people don't respond well to unexplained voices in their heads. I've mostly had that kind of thing all my life, but in my case, they're not caused by mental instability."
"You're sure about that?" Ash chuckled.
"If so, I'm very high functioning, and you two just shared in my delusion," Seren observed. "I don't hear other voices, besides hers, and only hear her when there's a need to talk."
"Any other tricks you can do?" Ash asked.
"A few," Seren replied without elaboration. "Nothing on the scale that I used to do when the entity was still here, though. Mostly, it's just a curiosity now. Sometimes it's practical. It depends on the situation."
"Did you try to use it to help deal with this epidemic of yours?" Looie asked.
"Yes, by replicating the flowers we need for the antiviral agents," Seren nodded. "Conjuring takes a lot of focus and holding all the parts to something in one's mind. Most of what I conjure isn't what the real thing is. It might look, sound, taste, feel and smell like the real thing, because those are easy to keep focused on when doing the conjuring. So it's a facsimile, not the thing itself."
Seren decided it wouldn't be wise if she mentioned that undoing something was a lot easier than conjuring something.
"Can you teach this stuff to someone else?" Ash asked.
"In theory, yes," Seren nodded truthfully. "How well they do with it is up to them. They have to have the talent, which is probably genetic either as a single gene or a group. Plus, my responsibilities rarely give me a lot of free time to teach.
"And speaking of responsibilities," she added, "I need to know if you two are up for entering into an agreement with me."
"What are the terms?" Ash wondered.
"Looie explained some current political make-up out there in space," Seren replied. "Being out of touch for so long as we have, I'm not sure we have the luxury of learning about that as we go. I expect we'll also need a spaceship and other things – especially if we have to pay our way out there and protect our interests here.
"I'm used to making decisions about the good of the World, since that's what I'm usually called on to mediate, but I rely on advisers I trust to keep me informed. I understand, with you two, that trustworthiness may be iffy if a better offer comes along."
The twins glanced at each other, but didn't deny the allegation.
"My world needs help, and will expect me to know the best ways to deal with that," Seren continued. "Right now, my priority is to save as many lives as we can. Once that crisis is dealt with and the World can spin for a few days without me, then we'll be ready to discuss other things.
"In the meantime, we need protection from anyone who might try to take what isn't theirs while we tend to our sick. So, in essence, from you two, I need a liaison for dealing with galactic affairs, and a bodyguard for the World.
"But I have to trust them.
"So far neither of you has lied to me, which tells me you're mostly honest…"
"Wait, how do you know when someone has lied?" Ash inquired, curious about the hows of that mechanic. Looie had told her that, but not how she did it. Unfortunately, her curiosity went unsatisfied.
"I've always been able to tell that," Seren shrugged, being honest with them. "I'm not sure if it's part of Human magic, or a hold-over from the entity. But it's absolutely reliable. And it's immensely helpful in negotiations."
"I told you about that," Looie reminded her sister.
"Oh, right," Ash nodded in agreement as the memory resurfaced. The extraordinary things she'd been told by Seren had been shocking enough to make her lose track of what they had said before.
"So, can I trust you two to keep an agreement?" Seren asked.
"No," Looie told her.
"Yes," Ash replied.
The two looked at each other with the same annoyed expression.
"Not exactly the answers I was hoping to get, but at least you're truthful," Seren sighed, glancing at the clock. She still needed to sleep, but she needed to get this situation nailed down and handled before she did that. Then a thought struck her and she asked, "How would I enforce an agreement? I assume there's some kind of punishment for breaking one where you come from."
"Breaking an agreement is very, very, very rare," Ash explained. "If it's proven you did, the Council of Black can do some nasty things to you, which include prison, hard labor, loss of fortune, and worst of all, loss of reputation."
"I did say that agreements are usually kept, but only to the letter of them," Looie reminded her. "You mentioned the spirit, so I was answering about that. I'd never break an agreement, but I'd be exploring the fuzzy edges a lot."
"Can I assume this council of yours will want our system in your alliance?" Seren asked.
"Like a drowning victim wants air," Looie deadpanned.
"So, if I made an agreement with you two, and either of you fucked it up, and pissed me off, even if it wasn't explicitly part of the agreement, and I joined up with the other guys, and explained to your council why I was rejecting them, would I be safe in assuming that would be bad for you two?" Seren asked.
"You can trust us," Ash stated flatly.
"As long as the price is at least fair," Looie amended.
"Do you trust me to be fair?" Seren asked.
"It's definitely in your self interests to be fair," Ash realized. "After all, it's not just you who could lose out."
"Alright, so what's the largest single agreement anyone's ever had in your alliance?" Seren asked.
"A hundred billion credits, plus expenses," Ash immediately told her.
"And how many credits is our system worth?" Seren asked.
"A very, ve
ry conservative estimate," Looie hazarded a guess, "about a billion, billion, billion billion times more than that. And that's probably off by dozens of billions more. No one's ever seen that much metal in such a wide variety in one system ever in galactic history. We checked that three times to be sure."
"How many credits was your spaceship?" Seren wondered, trying to get a feel for what a credit was relatively worth in terms she understood.
"We bought it for a hundred and twelve million credits, but that was to make up for a short-fall in an agreement the other party had," Ash explained. "It's worth about four times that."
"After we redecorated it," Looie amended.
Seren had to smile inside at the cartwheels the two were doing to be truthful.
"Okay, here're the agreement terms," Seren decided. "I'll see to it you get hundred billion credits. That buys your utter loyalty to me."
"Okay," Looie replied instantly. She looked like she was about to have an orgasm. Ash was right, the sheer space suit definitely communicated more about her state of mind than she probably wanted to advertise. Apparently, Seren hit upon a price point that she couldn't refuse, and would force her to live up to.
But Ash shook her head, "No, if we throw in with you, it'll be because it's the right thing to do and best for our side, too. I won't take anything if our side gets kicked in the balls."
Looie glared at her sister. Then she thought about it, her nipples went flat and she sighed. "Ash is right. "We don't sell our loyalty. Everything but, maybe, but not that. Loyalty really has to be earned."
Instead of looking angry or sad, Seren smiled.
"Good, we can do business," she nodded her approval.
"Wait, what?" a surprised Looie exclaimed, her nipples getting very hard again.
"It's kind of early to be making deals here, but I need to know what kind of people you two are if I'm going to be dealing with or through you," Seren explained. "You give your loyalty to those you see fit, but they can't buy it from you. That's all I need to know for character references."
"That's very Shade of you," Looie observed.
A slow-growing grin of approval, Ash remarked, "I think we're all going to be really, really good friends, Seren."
