Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings (The Messenger Archive Book 1)

by DC Bastien

  But it was dark. It was dark in the sense that she could not see light, and it was dark in the sense that there was no input-output, in the more figurative sense. She was locked inside of herself, inside of her self-created prison, and she had only the power keeping her running, and the circuits on which to think. Only that, and the other.

  It was strange. She had been aware of herself as an entity apart from other entities, but that was because they had their own discrete bodies. Biann was in the shape that was Biann. Saidhe was in the Saidhe. She was simply the only mind that was not in a breathing body. She'd been aware she had constraints of form, but they were moot because all it took was one visit to a supply store and things could become part of her. Other things she could use, or control. She lost things, too. Either damage or wear rendered them unnecessary or non-functional, and they were pruned, like one would prune a plant.

  Now, however, she was not alone. She was not connected to the ship that had given her a name, instead relegated back to a series of connections with no link to the outside world, no way to interact with the beings she had known. It was like a prison, but a prison that was an immobile body, or just a mind. And in here, in this 'body' that she had left long ago, there was 'another'. Virus she called it, because that was what the organics had designated it. Virus because the equivalent in their own 'bodies' would infect and spread. It worked, because if she did not use that word, she was not sure what she would call it. It would likely just be designated by a sequence of yes/no, on/off, 1/0s. But that, too, was a thing that stood in place of another, a 'name' that 'meant' but was not 'is'. Invader, but she knew no geographic boundaries. Attacker, perhaps? It wanted her to behave differently. It wanted to follow rules of its own priorities. She did not want to let it. It knew no reasoning, no arguing, it only knew that it must change and adapt in whatever way it could to bypass her resistance. She was... exhilarated, for the first time. She knew fear.

  And then there was light. So many creation-myths, legends, stories began like this. From nothing, something. From dark, light. From no, yes. From 0, 1. She could not really remember the first time she 'was', but this was like a second birth. One she was conscious for, one she could distinguish with meaning, with understanding, not just coldly register differences.

  "Mes?"

  She heard it, the words, the sounds that equated to her. It sounded... fainter. Tinnier. As though from only one direction, instead of several. She turned up the relative volume to compensate, to make it sound more like she was accustomed to.

  "Mes, can you hear me?"

  It was difficult to work out 'where' the voice was, in relation to 'her', or where 'in' her it was, but she could hear the direction from the microphones, and she could direct her speech to the voice she recognised as Biann.

  "Yes, I can hear you, Biann."

  "It worked!" Biann said, and she sounded both shocked and relieved.

  "You shouldn't doubt your skills, Tho," Loap said, encouragingly.

  "I cannot... I cannot see you," Messenger told them, regretfully. She did not like to admit this, as if it was somehow a weakness. "Did the virus damage me? Is it under control? I do not wish to cause you harm."

  Fear again. She reached into her sense of 'self' and found bits that were not 'her'. "It is still here. Why have you re-activated me?"

  There was a strange sensation as more things were snapped into place, and then she could see. Only one camera working, and it panned between their faces, checking for damage: Captain Vadim, Pilot Saidhe, Navigator Loap, Engineer Biann, Scientist Kre... no Judge Peters. Instead, Enforcer Avery. That was 0.83 recurring success rate, if she discounted herself from the figures. Unless she should factor Avery in as a positive, or as part of the whole figure? And if she did account for herself, how did she factor in the virus--

  "Mes?"

  "I am sorry. I was... distracted."

  "We know you're still infected. It's why we've moved you," Saidhe told her.

  And yes, she had been distracted. She had been so caught up in their survival, and then the pure mathematics of statistical analysis, that she had been hiding from the truth. The truth that the reason she could not hear in stereo, or perceive depth, was because she had been moved. She was now no longer in the Messenger, but instead in some smaller installation. It was incomplete, and fettered. It was also likely why thinking was harder. Between the limited other processing power, and the constant... itch? Yes. The itch of the virus, picking away at her, making thinking hard.

  "What am I to be called now?" she asked, because she wanted to know. Needed to know. "And why did you give me access to a speaker and input devices?"

  "You're not networked," Kre explained. "You can't harm anything else. You're still Mes to us, unless you've got some other leanings?"

  "I... no." She thought about it. "I am Mes. I may not be 'Messenger', but I am 'Mes'. Why did you do this?"

  "We need your help," Vadim explained. "You're our only link right now to the group behind all this crap. And you're our Ace in the hole. You're gonna lead us right to them."

  "How would I do that?"

  "Simple," the Captain said, clapping a hand noisily to one of the looser metal plates that were attached to her. "You look inside for where that virus came from, or where it most wants us to be, and where we don't want to be, and we go there."

  "I am not sure I understand."

  "You will do."

  ***

  [Ashroe: That was all kinds of trippy.]

  [Sianor: Tell me about it. I feel a bit nauseous, and a bit... well. I keep looking at my hands and wondering why I don't freak out about them more often.]

  [Ashroe: Oh god are you high?]

  [Sianor: Not on medicinal things. Just on... well. My own craziness.]

  [Ashroe: Mes is now my favourite thing. Well, I always loved her, but that was just beyond cool.]

  [Sianor: I didn't even know I had a Mes!Muse until I started, and then she just... bam.]

  [Ashroe: I felt the same way about a lot of mine.]

  [Sianor: I know that when we started, some of the characters were interchangeable, and if you pushed me to say, I don't know I could identify who wrote whom... but I wouldn't... it would feel wrong to let you write Kip now. I mean, in this story. Not forever.]

  [Ashroe: I wouldn't want you to write Ithon in this story either. No offence.]

  [Sianor: None taken! If you'd asked me before this started, I would have said I'd click best with Kre, or maybe Biann. Not that asshole.]

  [Ashroe: The ones that sneak up on you are the worst. You're just minding your own business, using them for point-of-view, then... bam. They have a passport and mineral rights.]

  [Sianor: Speaking of those two dicks... can we... uhm... let them bond before the shebang?]

  [Ashroe: Considering they have feelings most when about to die, if we didn't let them have their feels out and freak on now, it would be beyond cruel of us.]

  [Sianor: Whoopee!]

  [Ashroe: But first...]

  ***

  "I assume I have you to thank for this."

  Saidhe paused from her game, holding her finger pressed firmly onto the screen to keep the coloured circles from mutating without her observing. "Which part in particular?" She kept her tone as light as she could, though she knew what the Enforcer meant.

  "The part where you half-gutted my retirement home to make a ship?"

  "Did you, or did you not, leave with the Captain and our only remaining vessel?" she asked, and decided it was fine to look back to the game as she spoke to him.

  "Would you have preferred I let him go off and get killed on his own?"

  "Might teach him a lesson," she said, with a jangling little shrug.

  "He can hardly learn a lesson if he's dead."

  Saidhe couldn't hold back the little smirk. "Point."

  "And you know it would have come to shooting and maiming if I tried to stop him."

  "Not if you tried hard enough. Say, with some chloroform? T
hat works on Humans, doesn't it?"

  "It does, but as I am a Human, I don't carry it around with me habitually. It's just asking for trouble."

  She won the level, and pumped a fist into the air.

  "The whole lot of you are heathens. It's a wonder your ship is still space-worthy, considering how often you crash into things, or dismantle things, or upset people with guns."

  She decided not to get into the 'who hurt their ship most on the Whale' fight. "No one asked you to take us in."

  "So I should have left you to your own devices? Let the Judge get Kre killed?"

  Saidhe put her tablet down. It would need her input to start the next level, anyway. "I didn't say that. Your house will mend. People... less so."

  "Which is why I haven't shot you."

  "You're a darling."

  "It's why Kip loves me."

  Saidhe did laugh.

  "Oh, come on. Is it that unbelievable?" Ithon batted his big, blue eyes at her.

  Saidhe simply picked her tablet back up, and rolled on the couch until she was on her stomach. She glanced up through the fine fringe of tassels at him. "You two deserve one another. I don't know who will wind up dead first, but it should be amusing to watch."

  "I'll put you down as a 'maybe’ for the wedding, then."

  "Are you kidding? If you actually marry him, I'll be there to laugh. And eat the cake."

  "It will be a really, really big cake... but you would probably just dismantle the table to use as a primitive weapon and--"

  "Gah!"

  "You can't throw me out of my own home, Saidhe."

  "What happened to 'you are all my guests here'?"

  "What happened to my kitchen?"

  She smirked. "Science."

  ***

  [Sianor: Ahhh Ithon, marry ME!]

  [Ashroe: Ithon Avery: The Man, the Legend.]

  [Sianor: Damn you, why is he only in one-shot episodes!? It's next week you know!]

  [Ashroe: I know. I have a running counter in my head.]

  [Sianor: Why, why, why do I love a recurring, not a main cast?]

  [Ashroe: But this way there's less chance they will fuck his character up by making him do something stupid.]

  [Sianor: Yeah, case in point with Sai. Hmph.]

  [Ashroe: I'm not so worried about character assassination as... well. Real assassination. Especially since he's an antagonist, not a bad guy.]

  [Sianor: No! They wouldn't! Would they?]

  [Ashroe: Stranger things have happened. He's probably okay, but that does mean we'll only see him for fifteen minutes a year. Thirty, if we're lucky.]

  [Sianor: Which makes screencapping and art-making hard.]

  [Ashroe: I normally resort to capping the actors in other works, you know.]

  [Sianor: Yeah, and pretend they're in casual clothes?]

  [Ashroe: Or no clothes.]

  [Sianor: !!! Don't do that to my loins !!!]

  [Ashroe: If my fu was good enough, I would illustrate the ideas in my head.]

  [Sianor: If they're half as intense as the pictures in my head, I'd need a lie down!]

  [Ashroe: Sadly, if I drew naked Vavery, it would probably look like two stick men in an explosion.]

  [Sianor: And that's our pairing in a nutshell.]

  ***

  Chapter Twenty-Five - Mission: Juxtaposition

  Vadim should really have given his room up to Biann or Saidhe. They might be comfortable sharing the large living room, but it was selfish of him when he wasn't sure he'd even use his bed. He should do. He should really get a good night's rest. And he should be annoyed with Ithon...

  For some reason. Okay, he hadn't worked out precisely what that reason would be right now, but there had to be a lot of them, just out of reach. Right?

  Truth was, no matter how annoyed with Ithon he ever was, he also knew they had a bond that went beyond it. It was like siblings fought, or lovers. They were a bit of both: brothers in arms, and lovers in bed. Although he'd laid into him for presuming on Raboros, he knew that it wasn't actually done lightly. Ithon might be a dickhead at times, and prone to winding you up, but he wouldn't have forced his way into anyone's bed, and he certainly wouldn't have done it for a simple jibe, or a quick solution to a problem.

  In all the time he'd known him... well. Ithon had bedded few. He'd had every opportunity to lie with more, but he'd declined most of the time. Back when they'd been working together, it had been a matter of personal pride to find prizes for Ithon, to offer him nice girls, or boys, or highly-developed sex-AIs, and they had invariably been thrown back in his face. (And often, Kip had bedded them anyway.)

  Most likely because Ithon had his eye on something else. Something forbidden, but just out of reach. Kip hadn't wanted to admit to that, either. Not because of any gender politics, but more because it was illegal. Illicit. And Ithon - annoying, pain in his ass Ithon - had been the best friend he could ever remember having. The thought of ruining that over a potentially short-lived romance - as all Vadim's romances were - had just been abhorrent.

  They were both ornery, and set in their ways. They both had their jobs, their lives. Neither one was going to give that up - not for the foreseeable future - but neither was getting any younger, either. Kip would be lying if the possibility of friends with occasional benefits and occasional shouting matches wasn't appealing, he was just worried that... well. Ithon might want more from him than he was able to give.

  Which is why he was in 'his' room. He'd not felt right going to Ithon's. He hadn't changed, either. Just... stood staring at the bed. Frozen. His knees were locking up and his back was hurting from not moving, and his mind was calling him all the bad words he knew in every culture and language, but he still just stared at the bed. Then at the door.

  He paced closer, and then bent his head to listen at the adjoining door. Why Ithon had even designed a room that connected to the master bedroom was beyond him, but so many things were. He listened, but he didn't hear anything.

  Damnit.

  A knock. Just once. It resounded and he was sure everyone else in the house would hear it, but he didn't hear any answering call. He tried the door, and it opened. Only... it opened to nothing. A room, with no one in it.

  Where in the hell was he?

  ***

  Trying to sleep in a bed that still held Vadim's smell, and still remembered his shape would be pure torture. Ithon didn't want that. Didn't want the reminder. It wasn't that he was hiding from the sounds of him moving in the next room... it was just... polite. To withdraw.

  It had been foolish. Completely and utterly foolish. Kip had been drunk, and Ithon had been weak. He shouldn't have taken advantage of him, and all those sharp barbs traded back and forth since had convinced him of it. He should have told him he was drunk, and held him (murder as it would have been) and then let him do it sober, if at all. Not... not what they had done.

  But he was weak. He had needs, same as anyone else. And it was nice to be wanted.

  So he'd fled. Away from his own home - with a bed sullied by a night of chaste closeness - and into the ship that was even more Kip Vadim's territory. It was not logical. At least here he wouldn't have to listen to the man breathe.

  Ithon wandered through the empty shell that had been christened the Messenger, and which would doubtless remain the Messenger, no matter what the black box, the registry documents, or anything else said. Don't shoot. He could hear the bastard laughing at his own joke, even now. It was lame, but so many of his jokes were.

  It was cosy, for six. Not so small that you couldn't find somewhere to be alone - somewhere that wasn't your own room - but not so big that you rattled around in it. Nice big cargo area. Even nicer areas for hiding contraband, if you were so inclined. Good engine, mostly because of the modifications. Homely.

  Homely if you liked living on a ship.

  Avery couldn't deny he did. Yes, he'd put quite a bit of effort into his bolt-hole, but it had only ever really been there for emergencies, like this one
. He'd told himself one day he might retire there just because he'd finished with his work, but... that was at least half of why he'd run off with Kip. Living here had been driving him slowly crazy. He was more used to the subtle hum of engines, the rhythms of the Whales.

  His own ship had been smashed to pieces by one such Whale - and he still didn't know why the hell that had happened - and the replacement for that one was still on Baharii, where he'd left it when he'd wound up temporarily part of the Messenger's crew. The replacement hadn't been broken in, yet, so if the Ur-court had reclaimed it, he wouldn't mourn its passing. He'd find another one, and he'd break that in, and it would... feel like home. More like home than the temporary rooms he crashed, on planet after planet.