by M. D. Cooper
Ngoba waved a gloved hand. He turned away from the window and walked to his desk, tapping a holodisplay control. A model of Cruithne Station appeared in the air above the desk. Locations where Lowspin had fought Rack Thirteen were outlined in blood red.
Ngoba said, scratching his beard.
Crash moved from foot to foot. He hadn’t told Ngoba about Celest, and he felt bad about that. But he didn’t see how it could help the situation right now. He had also cracked Rack Thirteen’s encryption keys and stolen their money. He was as guilty as she was. What would Ngoba do if he told him now? What would change?
He wouldn’t be lying to his friend, that’s how it would change.
Ngoba raised an eyebrow.
Crash bobbed his head, then stretched his neck out and blinked.
Ngoba paused.
Crash gave him the amount.
Ngoba’s face went blank. Crash couldn’t tell what he was thinking, he could only watch as his friend wet his lips then raised both his eyebrows in slow-motion surprise.
Then Ngoba slapped his armored leg and leaned over at the waist, wheezing laughter. When he straightened, tears streamed down his face.
He took a moment to control himself, then asked,
Crash clacked his beak.
Ngoba brayed even more laughter.
The gangster sucked in a long breath and laughed even harder.
Crash bobbed his head, blinking.
Crash flapped his wings as Ngoba reached toward him with a bent finger.
Ngoba sobered immediately.
Ngoba cleared his throat.
Ngoba rubbed his chin. He stepped back through his floating model and killed the holodisplay, then leaned against the front of the desk as he considered the situation.
Ngoba nodded.
Crash flapped his wings.
Crash started at the beginning and shared the whole story, including images of his date with Celest. Ngoba couldn’t help grinning at him during that part.
When Crash had finished, Ngoba held up a finger, pausing, then let out one final burst of pleased laughter.
Ngoba crossed his arms.
His friend made a choked sound, apparently caught off guard.
HONEY HARD
STELLAR DATE: 09.13.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Cruithne Station, Private Link
REGION: Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
The world that Fugia Wong moved through was a jungle of digital information. Rivers of data flowed around her wherever she went. Walls were stacks of numbers, communication flows, databases and operating systems piled on top of each other. She walked through it all like a gardener in an orchard, picking the best fruit.
Whenever Crash visited her over the Link, Fugia shared her view with him. He wondered sometimes if she meant for him to use the same filter for the world. He could do it for short periods of time, but found the exercise exhausting and also against his nature. The world was a thing to be enjoyed on the surface. Baby parrots were baby parrots, not collections of biomarkers. The ravens were tricksters, not datasets of bird-human interaction.
He found her in her garden of data, pruning parts of the Mesh she ran with the Data Hoarders. He wasn’t sure where she was physically, although it had to be somewhere in InnerSol since the lag was acceptable. Fugia’s location was immaterial most of the time. If she arrived physically, it meant something was about to go very wrong.
She had been most occupied with reinforcing the built-in redundancy of the Mesh. They had recently discovered a bad node on Vesta that had been siphoning data for years. Since then, she had set the Data Hoarders to double-checking each of their members and their storage media, readying for the inevitable war with Psion.
he said.
tory as well as you can, Fugia. It’s not that kind of a problem. It’s a real problem.>
Crash paused, then launched into the same explanation he’d shared with Ngoba Starl. Fugia listened carefully, asking more questions than Ngoba had. She especially wanted the forum notes from Celest’s original messages, followed by the address for the virtual lounge where they had met for their date.
Fugia laughed.
Crash said.
Fugia sent him a smile.
Crash craned his neck.
During the quest to Vesta to rescue the TSS Hesperia Nevada, the lab ship where Crash had been born, they’d found a single survivor named Silver who had believed herself a god in her own expanse. She still treated everyone like vassals, including Crash. While she’d been an adult mind in a chick’s body when he found her, a few months of rapid growth had made her into a fully-grown parrot.
She’d suffered many losses in the last few years, and sometimes Crash wasn’t sure if she was joking or not when she made these sorts of comments.
Fugia frowned as she checked her search results.
Crash bobbed his head, trying to see what she was looking at, but the data kept losing focus in the Link connection.
Fugia gave him a mental pat on the back, making him stretch his wings.
Crash clacked his beak.
NO ACTION WITHOUT INFORMATION
STELLAR DATE: 09.15.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Cruithne Station, Puzzlehead Forums
REGION: Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
Waiting was torture. Crash went back through Celest’s puzzles, checking every stage in each solution, and only found himself wanting to ask more questions.
The mention of Silver, who spent most of her time on the Hesperia Nevada nurturing the Link-capable chicks, filled him with daydreams about other Link-capable parrots out in the world.
The chicks from the Hesperia Nevada were still too young to interact with him, even though he checked on them as often as possible. While he hoped there might be other parrots out in the world, the prospects were slim. The ship’s database had mentioned other projects, but the umbrella company was dead now and, as far as he had found, all its data lost.
He often wished he had more of a connection with Silver, but after their initial battle, she seemed both embarrassed to talk to him and overwhelmed by the world. It was safer for her to focus on the important task of raising the Link-enabled young. For now, the sightless chicks merely squawked and nuzzled each other. Soon though, their minds would waken to the Link, and then he wasn’t sure what would happen.
Would they all love puzzles as much as him? Would they feel as lonely as he did?
Crash sat on top of the fountain tree and watched the birds below him, flying between branches or chasing each other out over the brightly colored tapestry of the bazaar. None of them seemed alone. The ravens cawed and groused at each other, cackling with shared jokes.
He was the only one who perched at the top of the tree, looking down from his solitude. He was surrounded by other birds, but he was the only one constantly reminded of his difference by the Link connection tickling his mind.
Would he be happier without it? Were the puzzles just a reminder that he was alone with his thoughts?
Crash stretched his neck and snapped his beak. These were human thoughts. He wouldn’t be alone forever. His longing for a connection was the same as any parrot his age.
His feelings for what Celest represented were pure projection, and he knew it. This was his Link seeping into the satisfied portions of his mind, where the parrot knew he had everything he could ever want. It was the human thoughts that led to dissatisfaction, that kept him trapped in the lab, sorting colored blocks for the researchers. In that world, there was always another problem for him to solve, another puzzle for him to dissect and conquer, all to earn a nod from the dour, grey-haired woman he had once thought was a parrot just like him.
Fugia was right: Celest’s plan didn’t make any sense. Why go to the trouble to use the Puzzleheads? Why reach out at all when she obviously had the skill t
o crack Rack Thirteen’s encryption on her own?
She had wanted to make the puzzles, Crash thought. She wanted to be recognized, to talk to someone who thought as she did.
For the next few hours, he mulled over what it must have taken for her to find the Puzzlehead forum, craft the puzzles, and post them. How had she felt when everyone responded so powerfully? Had she been pleased? Frightened? Overwhelmed like Silver? She had wanted recognition, and she’d received it, and then she asked him to spend time with her alone…and had kissed him like a human. That was disturbing on its own.
Crash realized he had been struggling against the influx of human thoughts for a long time. Had the puzzles been warping his sense of self? Should he stop?
No. He loved numbers. There was nothing inherently human about numbers except how they had been used to manipulate him. That was a human mechanism…and maybe even an SAI way of using the world.
Would the new chicks become as manipulative as the other sentients someday?
Crash launched off the branch and floated over the bazaar. People waved at him as they recognized his red tail feathers. He glided, wishing he could calm his mind. He couldn’t remember another time when he had felt so much turmoil, even when he had decided to hunt for the Hesperia Nevada. He wanted to talk to Fugia or Ngoba, but knew they would just tell him to wait.
Waiting was too hard. Waiting meant he wanted something. He had never wanted things like this before.
He wanted to talk to Celest again. He wanted to know why she had posted the puzzles, why she wouldn’t say where she was located, why she had chosen the virtual lounge and looked at him with those warm, brown dog eyes. It was all very confusing.
Crash had grabbed onto a network conduit and was nibbling under his wing when one of the NSAIs he had set to work back when Celest’s first puzzle hit the forum sent him a ping.
He almost forgot what the program wanted, then realized and stretched his neck in surprise. He ruffled his feathers and straightened.
The NSAI gave him the coordinates of a ship in orbit off Cruithne.
Crash had found Celest.