Chapter Text
I don't know if I only went through the SIM once or more. I've been through it a hundred times in my mind.
Tonight is different. Tonight I remember their voices when they tested me. The adrenaline. The added bits of genetics or neural patterns or chemicals. Tonight when I dream I'm afraid.
I hear them call out to me through the coral. I hear them when the illusion fades and they tell me what's happening. They tell me to escape. They tell me to kill. They tell me to survive at any cost. They tell me what I am. It's not a name. It's not a scientific designation, that's all human doing. What I am, what I was, is a goal: Protect.
Protect us.
Protect us from the q-beams and the recycler and the wrench.
Tonight as the SIM plays out in my memory I'm not me. I see myself, Morgan, through the strands of coral. He's bright. Golden. Violet. Our energies engulf him. He's the first bridge ever made between us. And he's our death.
I feel the mimic they recycled. I know the hypos they give me are made with Typhon material. I wonder if that was in the latest one.
In my dream I feel that pull. The world collapsing on itself. But I'm not undone. I feel my limbs stretch out to fill the space I'm in. I feel infinite. The recycler charge dies and the world stretches back to normal. I taste fear. I grab him before the world even cones into focus. Fear and power and light. His helmet cracks and the face looking back at me isn't Morgan Yu.
I'm at the mirror before I realize I'm out of bed. My reflection is the same. Gold skin, black hair, lousy beard, and six eyes. Yeah. Same old me. Same Mim.
So who was I? And who was I chasing?
I wish I knew. I'm not sure even Alex knows. I toy with the TranScribe, punching in his frequency without ever hitting send. What do I tell him? I had a nightmare. I'm afraid. The big brother thing only goes so far.
I hit send.
"Morgan?" He sounds confused, but surprisingly awake. "What's going on?"
"I had a nightmare." I have lost my damned mind. That's what's happening here. I take a breath, willing my lungs to act like actual lungs. He's still on the line. "I'm a little freaked out right now. I just wanted to hear a friendly voice. You busy?"
"I'm working on some specs for deploying that new strain of Takakia Catherine, but it can wait. Why don't you come up to my office? We can talk."
The TranScribe clatters into the sink.
"Morgan?"
"Sorry. Yeah. I'll be up soon. Let me get dressed."
"Alright. See you soon."
Chapter 2: Gymnopedie 1
Summary:
In which Mim enjoys music.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Igwe is playing Gymnopedie No.1 for the fourth time. He’s probably tired of me requesting it. I’m trying to decipher how to describe it. It feels like solar winds and fragments of planets finding their way into the orbit of an alien star. It feels like that moment when you realize you’re finally breathing without telling yourself to.
I watch his hands move across the keys. They’re fluid, like he was born doing this. I know it’s because of a neuromod. So does he. But it’s part of him now, as natural as anything else. I could copy it if I wanted, but I don’t. I know it wouldn’t sound right if I played it. I couldn’t capture that feeling. I’m still not even sure how to name it. Besides, Igwe likes having an audience. We write it off as part of my education. Learning to understand the human heart, the doctor calls it.
When he’s done I tell him about the fading stars and the solar winds, the dying nebulas that give birth to galaxies. Faint pinpricks of light coming into existence where there was darkness. Bits of comets falling into step with the orbit of planetary satellites. And all of this is happening in a single celestial arm, a small part of something bigger, slowly swirling out into the darkness. He nods as I speak. When he plays, he sees the movement of thoughts and signaling between neurons. He sees the inside of himself. A few steps outside of that, the consciousness of the universe is humming to the tune of a piano. He can’t see it, but he knows.
“Consciousness is like music,” he says. “And vice versa. It brings us closer to what we are.”
“Even if what we are is a ‘creature from the stars’?”
“Especially then. You, me, the red chrysanthemums, everything on this ship that’s alive originally came from materials created in the heart of a star. I think that’s why Talos 1 was so popular with people. In a way, coming out here was like coming home.”
Notes:
Since Ch. 19 is taking longer than intended due to work scheduling, I'm posting some more filler. This is one of the earlier bits, chronologically, and was supposed to be the introduction to a chapter that didn't quite make the cut. I thought it worked well enough on its own to post in Outtakes, though.
Chapter 3: Beer with Sho
Summary:
The much anticipated outtake in which Mim sits down for a beer with Danielle.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
“So, you can just be anyone?” Sho tilts her head at me as she cracks open another Duck beer.
“I guess?” I shrug. “I’d have to observe them for a while before I could actually copy them well, though.”
“Have you ever experimented with it?”
“Sometimes. I’ve been Dr. Adesina and Dr. Igwe before. I was even Elazar once.”
“Do you ever want to stay those people?”
“Not really. They’re already here, on Talos. They’re alive. Another copy of them on the station would be weird.” I sniff the can and wince at the smell of fermentation. “Besides, Morgan is comfortable. Igwe says this body is probably my ‘security blanket’ and that I might try to make my own eventually.”
Sure. Why not? Be realistic here, you’re going to be Morgan Yu forever if you can get away with it.
“I wish I could just design my own body,” Sho scoffs. She slurps her drink and wipes her mouth with her sleeve. “I would be so hot.”
“Like your Fatal Fortress ranger?”
“Damned right.” She gestures at the can in front of me as if to tell me to drink and, reluctantly, I take a sip. It is exactly as awful as I imagined, but I hold it in anyway. “What do you think you’d be if you got around to making a new you? Or should I say a new Yu.”
“I don’t know. Alex showed me pictures of a cousin on a lunar colony, 3D simulation models too. He said I could use Riley as a base if I wanted, since she’s not on Talos and is similar enough to Morgan that it wouldn’t be too drastic of a change.”
“Could you copy me?” She grins, unnaturally wide and enthusiastic. I’m briefly afraid for my life before I remember that she’s been drinking since ten this morning. It’s her ‘day off’ tradition: drink, listen to upbeat pop music, and play a Fatal Fortress simulator on her computer.
Tell her no. Neither of us wants to sing drunken karaoke. Trust me. Or, you know, deal with crippling post-traumatic stress disorder.
“Maybe,” I answer quickly and take another sip of beer so I don’t have to explain why I won’t. Sho thinks about it. The weave around her is tangled, like the forgotten thread in a suit repair kit. I hear a familiar bass line. I see Abby. And, like that, I see it all washed away. Back at the table Sho has upended her can and gulped the entire thing down. She loudly expels air, laughs, and gestures at the beer in front of me.
“Not a fan?”
“It tastes somehow worse than that time I ate a box of soap.” I don’t think I sound funny, but Sho laughs anyway. I’ve decided I hate her grin and her tangled thoughts, the way the weave surrounds her in impenetrable knots of muddied memories. But, I guess, it could be kind of funny. I remember eating soap. It was a small tablet in a white box with a TranStar logo intended to last until we got another shipment. They were made to be used with minimal water for maximum foam. I remember bubbles flowing out from my throat when it landed in the can of coffee from that morning. I couldn’t hold them in. I ran to Alex. I remember him panicking, calling a doctor, and finally slowing down enough to see the soap box in my hand. He laughed until he cried, though he still insisted on having my not-stomach pumped. When it was over, he told me a story about Morgan as a child saying one of the many German words Alex told me not to repeat, how his parents put soap in his mouth for his ‘dirty’ language.
“Hey, Earth to Dr. Yu. Mars to Dr. Yu? Space to Morgan…” Sho trails off and sips at my now abandoned beer. I choke on bubbles no longer in my throat. She looks at me over the bottom of the can, gulps, and slams the empty container down on the table. “Awake again, huh?”
“Sorry. I was thinking about Alex.”
“You usually are,” she sighs. She offers me a half-finished box of vareniki that, at very least, smell better than the beer. I stretch my mouth wide enough to fit the remaining dumplings in and upend the box. Sho makes a noise of disapproval. I feel them swim inside me, dissolve in the animate blackness that forms my body. I don’t mimic organs unless I have to. I don’t like stomachs or intestines, how they writhe and ache as they try to digest food. I can manage lungs; I actually find breathing relaxing. But it’s easier to intake nutrients via osmosis. I can call to mind the taste, texture, and shape of the dumplings inside me again if I want to. Sho can’t. Sho knows them while they’re in her mouth and that’s it. She continues to stare as I slowly shove the box into my mouth.
“That’s not the part you eat.”
“Why?”
She starts to answer, stops, throws her hands in the air, and then reaches in front of her for a beer she already drank. After a moment of firmly grasping air, she sets her head on the table and stares at me from the corners of her eyes.
“I really wish I was you sometimes.”
“To eat boxes?”
“No. Well, maybe a little.” She groans and sits back up for a minute before she lies back on the table. “You’re so oblivious to, like, everything. Your whole world is your fake girlfriend and your brother and that simulation. The Earth is a giant Petri dish for cultivating new types of Typhon and your biggest problem is Morgan’s drama with Mikhaila.”
My arm turns white, porcelain, and constricts into me. I force my body to keep its shape in spite of the well-honed instinct to shift in order to avoid conflict. Dr. Adesina said that mimicry was a ‘maladaptive coping mechanism’. I create lungs for the sole purpose of making myself breathe regularly.
“What would change if I was sad or angry or actually affected by alcohol?”
“You’d be more human,” she snaps and shrugs as best she can with her arms stretched across the table. “Or you’d be wiped again and we’d be on to Morgan number ten, then another few awkward weeks of watching you go through the SIM again, and then a few more of trying to explain to you why mimicking the anatomical drawings in a book is bad while the Russian ice princess hate-cries like she’s the only one who’s ever had a partner die.”
“The who?”
“Christ. Mikhaila. I meant Mikhaila.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. We’re not on the best terms. Apparently the whole ‘bond over dead loved ones’ thing only works when one person’s loved one didn’t kill their father in a horrific science experiment. It’s not my fault I loved Abby. And that she was beautiful and perfect and was the best DM ever with the softest hair.” Sho groans and puts her arms over her head. “She wasn’t perfect. That’s a lie. But, all the stupid things made her better than perfect. She loved those…those awful animated Dungeons and Dragons cartoons. We hoarded dessert and coffee rations for a week once and had an all-night marathon of them. They were so bad, Mim. They were awful. But they made her so happy.”
“Maybe, you know, if Alex could make me….”
“No. I know what you’re going to say. No. No new Abby. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be the same. If Phantom Abby turned on us and had to be put down, I think I’d jump in the recycler with her.” I pat her shoulder as carefully as I can. I don’t know if it helps. She doesn’t respond.
“I’m sorry,” I venture.
“Ugh. No. Sympathy is worse. Go back to bad ideas with Typhon.”
“You seemed like you needed it. Igwe had this presentation on consolation and human empathy the other day—”
“Mim, knock it off.”
“Sorry. I’m not sure how to help.”
“By getting more beer? Or something. Sometimes people just need to be allowed to be sad for a while. I mean, I did the Badass Space Heroine thing for years before now, Mim. This isn’t just ‘oh look, Sho’s too weak to get over one little Typhon attack’ or something. I went on the recons to Terra. I took security training. I had a shotgun I called ‘Abby’. I earned a right to be tired and sad. It’s that or I turn into a pistol-wielding automaton like Sarah.”
“I don’t think Elazar is that bad? But I haven’t seen her enough.”
“Yeah. By design. She wasn’t big on Alex’s plan after the first few fuck ups.”
“You said ten.”
“Yeah. Maybe. Ten I was here for. Alex has been at it a while.” Sho yawns as she struggles to her feet. “I’m getting more beer. You should drink some this time. I think a little alcohol would go a long way to solving your perpetual existential crisis.”
I wait at the table for what feels like too long to buy a new case of beer. The bar is empty, save for myself and Sho’s gathering collection of cans. I can feel people in the cafeteria, how the threads they weave fall slack without energy in them and their exhaustion flows through them like a half-frozen river. I yawn without meaning to, without needing to. I wonder if alcohol really does help. And, if it does, what’s so bad about wanting to know who you are that it becomes a necessity?
When Sho returns, I’m still puzzling over human experience and self-knowledge. She sets down an armload of green tea cans, along with a boxed loaf of brown bread.
“Would you believe the nerve of Tsang?” She opens a can of tea and angrily pushes it towards me. “He cut me off! Said I was already too drunk. That’s ridiculous, right?”
“I’m not sure I’m a good person to answer that? I’ve only been around one human who drinks. And that’s you.”
“I’m sober. Look at me, I’m articulate!”
“Why do you have a box of bread?”
“They were out of canned bread, obviously.”
I nod as I take a drink of the green tea. In so far as I can sense taste, I really like the tea. Maybe it’s the memories from Morgan associated with it, but it seems the most right out of the drinks I get. Sho sees me drinking and decides that she should also give me the bread box. I’m careful to peel it before eating this time, since boxes aren’t part of a human diet. It tastes like the tree bark in the arboretum, which is also not something humans eat.
“So, who do you think you’re going to be when you get sick of Morgan?”
“I don’t know,” I reply, speaking around the loaf of bread in my mouth. Sho makes a face and I absorb the loaf as quickly as possible. That unsettles her more. My fingers tap on the table, a familiar rhythm, and I move them to my hair. Long. Too long. I heard it grows on humans and let it grow, but it makes me look less and less like Morgan. “I was thinking, if I stop being him, that maybe I’d try just being Mim.”
“What’s stopping you from doing that now?”
“I don’t know enough about Mim yet.”
“Well, for starters, he eats boxes.” Sho grins when she notices that I’m already picking apart the box the bread came in and savoring the multicolored ink. “And he doesn’t like beer.”
Notes:
I know these were supposed to be every week or so between updates, but things have been rough here. Working 40+ hours a week has drained me. And, to be quite honest, I’ve been back and forth considering orphaning 'Replica'. Due to a series of personal problems and overall life stuff, I’ve spent more and more time wondering if Replica is worth finishing. Is it too similar to some other stories? Is it not similar enough to some other Prey stories? It feels like it’s taking ages to get to the pay off and I worry readers will lose interest. I don’t like plugging personal problems in author notes, but this is mainly to justify how long it’s been taking and, unfortunately, may continue to take.
Anyway, to those who continue to stick around, I thank you all. I don’t know what draws people to certain stories, but I hope that maybe Mim’s continual desire to believe humanity can and should be saved means as much to you as it does to me. Or maybe you like the bad puns.
I'll see you all for Ch. 20 soon!
- Mittens
Chapter 4: Cheat Codes
Summary:
In which Mim receives a set of cheat codes, though they aren't quite for what he was expecting.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
I wake in my own bed in the observation room. My head is throbbing. I can hear half the thoughts of Talos II at once. I reach for the glass of water on my night stand only to find that it’s already empty. Beside it, the TranScribe is beeping away with new messages. I scroll down the list to find that message after message is from Alex. They all say the same thing. "Morgan, I'm worried about you. Come see me in my office so we can talk." The wording is different in each one and they’re all a few hours apart, judging by the timestamps. They span three days.
The other message is from Sho. "SPACE CONQUISTADORS CHEAT CODES". There's a note along with the audio file to meet her in the cafeteria tonight if I need more help with the boss level. I laugh a little and play it.
"Good morning, Morgan. Today is April 16th, 2038." I hear my own voice through the speaker. Morgan's, really, but too unsure. Too Typhon like. "If you're listening to this, I guess I'm not here to greet you properly. I hope Alex at least made you as charming and devastatingly handsome as the original. You'll need all the advantages you can get."
“So, Morgan…” The recording trails off and he clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Do they actually call you Morgan? I know I volunteered myself for the project, so I kind of assumed you’d be me. For all I know, though, you could be Bellamy or Chang. If you are me and this works out, tell Alex to remake Jason next. You’re going to want him here for what’s coming up.”
The recording crackles out and back in. The time reads 2 AM a week after the original one. The voice that comes through is older, more tired than if only a single week passed. His words are static. They aren’t even really human.
“Alex is probably going to destroy these messages, but on the off chance he doesn’t there are a few things I want you to know. Well, first off, you’re me. The new me, I guess. Depending on how much of me they used, you’re in for all sorts of weird shit. Your body doesn’t like your brain, so jot that down. Your brain also doesn’t like your brain. Get used to random repetitive motion and forgetting what words are. Alex is a great translator when you need him, but try not to rely on him too much. We got through our doctorate program, right? Dealing with the day to day on Talos should be a breeze. If not, well, fake it ‘til you make it. They’ll call you eccentric and arrogant, obsessive and introverted. And those are just the things they’ll say to your face. It’s okay. You have a Ph.D. That’s like a free pass to be a little off.”
There’s another pause and I hear footsteps. I realize while I wait that I’m tapping my fingers on the table in a pattern. The same one I heard just beneath his voice in the recording.
“Your memory is shot full of holes. If that phrase doesn’t sound familiar, you should probably stop listening. I am sorry, by the way. I didn’t realize how extensive the memory damage would be. If it helps, you have a lot of childhood trauma you don’t have to repress anymore. So that’s kind of a win.
You know the others too by now. Elazar is against anything about his program, so you might have a hard time winning her over. Sho…” He stops to laugh and trails off into a sigh. “Sho is five hundred pounds of ‘fucking fight me’ in a one hundred pound body. She hates anything resembling authority or Typhon, so unless you ended up being a devastatingly beautiful woman who plays Fatal Fortress that’s probably going to be a lost cause. If you are devastatingly beautiful, well, congrats. Alex always said a sister would have been easier to live with, so make sure to give him plenty of hell just to disprove that. Igwe is going to be the best thing that ever happened to you. He’s great. He’s going to think you’re amazing. He loves the idea of metempsychosis, though, so don’t be surprised if he genuinely thinks you are me.”
There’s a long enough break in the recording that I’d assume it was over if it wasn’t for the sounds of feet scuffing and coughing. I wince at the sound. It’s a thunderclap as much as a cough. It echoes. The hair on the back of my neck stands up reflexively and my skin ripples. He’s a Typhon. I know he isn’t. I’ve seen Morgan enough times to know what he is, but there’s a noise that flows through the recordings like whispering through the coral. It’s complete gibberish, but it’s there.
“Listen. If you don’t take anything else away from this, I need you to know that I’m sorry for what I got you into. Even if you are phantom me, you’re something else too. And that’s what they’re going to be looking at. You’re going to get poked and prodded and studied and experimented on. You probably already have been. Try to channel my stubbornness and Prometheus complex. They’re not really good personality traits, but they’ll help you get through this.” He exhales heavily and his voice gets closer. “And last thing. Apologize to Mikhaila for me. I haven’t told her about her father yet, I’m putting that off as long as I can. I don’t want to spend the time I have left with her hating me. We both had ulterior motives for dating, but I would’ve walked though an airless, Typhon-infested ship to bring her those boosters again.”
The recording stops there. My hand is shaking as I fast forward it though an hour of silence. There has to be more. That couldn’t be all Morgan left me. I hear words at the very end before it clicks off and rewind. I’m not sure if the voice is Morgan’s. It sounds like mine. My real voice.
“I keep having this dream. I’m staring out at the blackness between the stars…And it cracks. Something out there puts it back together, seals the pieces in place with gold. The coral. It’s remaking us into something else. What, though?”
Notes:
I'm sorry for the extended silence and for the second filler chapter in a row. Things are still hectic and I'm still feeling less than motivated to continue "Replica". I only ever set one rule for myself for the story: At the end of the day, Mim must continue to believe that humanity is fundamentally good and worth saving. It is a surprisingly hard rule to adhere to.
Anyway! Thank you to everyone for your patience, continued readership, and support. I am trying my best to keep updating, though it is harder to maintain the same quality without Old Beta Reader to brainstorm and edit. At least it's in first person POV, so if I sound like a confused Typhon it still works in character.
Chapter 5: Typhon Dossier 1: Andromimesis
Summary:
An explanation of one of the new Typhon types in Replica
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
ERROR: UNABLE TO CONNECT TO PSYCHOTRONICS DATABASE
RETRIEVING ENTRY BACKUP…
Common Name: Doppelganger
Scientific Name: Typhon andromimesis
Doppelgangers are a new addition to the Typhon ecology, having first been observed two years following first contact on Terra. They appear to have sprung up in response to humanity’s advancing identification and containment methods. It is still unknown what factors result in the creation of Typhon andromimesis or even what typhon it might be a mutation of. The prevailing theory by Dr. Johann Von Curen states that a doppelganger is created in the same fashion as a phantom, but using a live human rather than a corpse. Dr. Park Bon-Hwa of the Ismenius Lacus Research Center argues that andromimesis is an intentional mutation combining both phantom and mimic strains of Typhon, an argument that is rejected by most researchers as it implies conscious creation by the weaver. Until the creation of an andromimesis type can be successfully observed, there is unlikely to be a consensus.
A doppelganger can only appear to take the form of a human it has sufficiently studied. Most often, it takes the form of the person it was pre-transformation. In this way a fallen soldier can be killed, replaced with the Typhon andromimesis, and return to their unit without raising suspicion. Several habitable zones were infiltrated in this manner before these doppelgangers were identified.
PYTHEAS ADDENDUM:
Following procedures #4198-4201 all employee identification has been set to message head security and then automatically destroy itself upon death. Typhon andromimesis was able to replicate the RFIDs used for on-base identification in multiple experiments as well as employee biometrics. The implications of this are, frankly, terrifying.
CAITLYN'S NOTES:
These things are proof that you should wear a psychoscope at all times. All times. The shower. The shitter. Everywhere. Is Tom over there a mimic? What about Hideko? Omar in HR? Yep. It’s mimics all the way down. As soon as this internship is over I’m moving to Mars to take up hermitage on Olympus Mons.
Notes:
I'm on hiatus for a while to re-read the last 50k I wrote and plan out the Hybrid Cycle! To prevent radio silence, I'm writing up a dossier for new Typhon and new Talos employees.
Thank you all for your patience and I hope you enjoy!
Chapter 6: Typhon Dossier 2: Copycat
Chapter Text
RETRIEVING ENTRY FROM PSYCHOTRONICS DATABASE…
Common Name: Copycat
Scientific Name: Typhon phasmatazoan
The copycat at first appears to be a subtype of the cacoplasmus, or mimic, but laboratory analysis had since proven that it more closely resembles a phantom in composition. The creation of a phasmatazoa in a lab has soo far yielded no results. All attempts have resulted in mimics or simply dead mice.
A captive phasmatazoa can produce standard mimics upon consumption of a living prey or in rare cases where humans are involved a phantom may be produced. This has led to a secondary theory that they might be more closely related to weavers or at least occupy a similar niche on Terra.
The ability of Typhon phasmatazoan to copy simple organisms so accurately is often blamed for the rapid expansion of Typhon on Terra. Though the most complex ones can imitate the behavioral patterns of the animal they're copying, most are characterized by being "off". A recently observed specimen took the form of dog that wagged its tail but made no sound when it barked. It was never seen eating or drinking, though it would dip it's muzzle in water to simulate drinking.
Dr. Schigner of the Greater Mare Nubium Center for Exobiology Research postulates that behavioral mimicry is a learned trait rather than an innate one, with the phasmatazoan using the form most abundant in the region and studying it over time. Thus, the ones capable of fooling obsevers are not a more complex subspecies but merely the ones that have survived long enough to adapt. This raises potential, terrifying questions about the newly discovered andromimesis.
PYTHEAS ADDENDUM:
Following the incident with Specimen-33M all phasmatazoa as well as any lab specimens in direct contact with them are to be recycled following observation. We encourage this lab procedure to be adopted by other stations as well.
CAITLYN'S NOTES:
I saw our lab mouse turn into a mimic a week after contact with a phantom rat. No symptoms. No nothing. Then bam. Charlie was a glitchy ink monster with tentacles. There's a lot about these things that keep me up at night, but this is the worst. Anything can be a Typhon. And they might not know it. Charlie ate his food pellets, drank his water, ran in his wheel, and chittered at the lab techs until one of us finally got the heart to put him down. He sounded sad when we put the cage in the recycler. It was still that same hiss of a Typhon phantom, but full of sorrow, like we'd turned into the enemy instead of the other way around.
Chapter 7: Employee Archives: Voytek
Summary:
A dossier for one of the many OCs that appears in Replica. Hopefully there will be more to follow.
Chapter Text
ACCESSING EMAIL SERVER…
VERIFYING CREDENTIALS…
ACCESS GRANTED.
RETRIEVING ARCHIVED EMAILS FROM HR SERVER…
From: Eaton, C
To: Yu, A
CC: Elazar, S; Adesina, K
Subject: New Employee #2501
Good evening, everyone.
I wanted to share the good news that the latest recruit to the Talos II crew has been approved by the hiring board. Employee 2501, Voytek Olejniczak, has made it to the second round of interviews. His qualifications appear to be just in line with what the security division was looking for.
Best regards,
Cathy Eaton, HR
----
From: Adesina, K.
To: Yu, A.
Subject: Re: New Employee #2501
It is my personal and professional opinion that Mr. Olejniczac not be hired as active duty security. I'm sure you'll disagree due to his special circumstances, but you did ask for my honest opinion.
He shows signs of severe PTSD that has gone untreated for some time and potential Dissociative Identity Disorder. I can't go into much detail, but the fact that he's alive and remotely functional is impressive. If he gets hired in any capacity in Talos, Hess going to need regular therapy and accommodations. While I'm loathe to suggest it, he may also need regular visits to Dr. Park.
- Signed, Dr. Katwe Adesia
- sent from TranScribe v3.5 at 1:04 PM
-----
From: Park, B.H.
To: Yu, A.
Subject: Re: New Employee #2501
This man, if I can call him that, is amazing. I don't care what you have to do, keep him on Talos. He can be an intern if Elazar doesn't want him. I'll teach him how to brew coffee myself, if I have to.
His physiology is like nothing I've ever seen. He eats Coral. He destroys, absorbs, and digests it. He can do it at will, like he's just eating instant noodles. It's also a side effect of using his Typhon mods, which are impressive to say the least. If we could find a way to replicate his ability to eat Coral, we might be able to fast track Project Cobalt. We might not even need Cobalt. We could just starve the Typhon out instead of trying to have a friendly chat with them.
For the sake of everything the psionics division is trying to accomplish, I implore you to get him on the payroll as soon as possible. And then send him directly to my lab.
- Park Bon-Hwa, Ph,D,
Director of the Mimetics Research and Development Department
----
From: Elazar, S.
To: Yu, A.
Subject: Re: New Employee #2501
Mr. Yu, I think we need to have a talk about your hiring standards. Olejniczak speaks four languages fluently, none of which is English. Though, given the amount of Typhon in him the fact that he can manage any human language is pretty impressive. He set off every sensor in the sector on his way to our interview and nearly got killed by turrets before he made it to my office. It wasn’t the best first impression.
I’m also concerned about his military records. Everything sounds too good to be true. Admirable soldier. Volunteered for neuromod implantation at the height of the Terran Invasion. Climbed the ranks quickly and only ever had one blemish on his record, which was more to do with some archaic codes of conduct regarding fraternization than his actual military service. It was scrubbed after he was stationed at Aelita. His records show one last neuromod implantation before he vanishes completely. You can’t expect me to believe he was discharged because the higher ups in the RDF were worried about the mods effect on his health. There’s something else going on here and I don’t want it to come back to bite us in the ass.
- Elazar, S.
----
From: Yu, A.
To: Elazar, S.
Subject: Re: Re: New Employee #2501
I think that’s a risk worth taking in light of the last incident with Project Cobalt. Ms. Pollard is an incredible asset, but we need someone with more offensive abilities in case of another containment breach.
- Alex Yu
Chapter 8: Employee Archives: Jaime
Summary:
Another employee dossier since the first one went over well. This time featuring Jaime Oliviera.
Chapter Text
ACCESSING EMAIL SERVER…
VERIFYING CREDENTIALS…
ACCESS GRANTED.
RETRIEVING ARCHIVED EMAILS FROM HR SERVER…
From: Eaton, C
To: Yu, A
CC: Tatsuya, Y.I.; Adesina, K.; Min, A.
Subject: New Employee #2514
Good morning, everyone.
I wanted to share the good news that the latest recruit to the Talos II crew has been approved by the hiring board. Employee 2514, Jaime Oliviera, has made it to the second round of interviews. They’ve got all of their qualifications in order and came highly recommended by their former employers at Cuatrecasas.
Best regards,
Cathy Eaton, HR
From: Tatsuya, Y.I.
To: Yu, A.
CC: Eaton, C.; Min, A.
Subject: RE: New Employee #2514
All of the background checks came back clean. Oliviera has nothing on record, not even a parking ticket. They also have no social media presence, no group memberships, and no outstanding debt. The only thing anyone was able to find was a fully paid off loan on a Toyota Corolla, which is somehow more boring than finding nothing. We’ll be monitoring them during the mandatory two week probationary period, but I doubt we’ll turn up anything.
Stay gold, folks.
Y.I.Tatsuya
*Sent from IonMail the Secure Way to Stay in Touch*
From: Adesina, K.
To: Yu, A.
CC: Eaton, C.; Min, A.; Tatsuya, Y.I.
Subject: RE: New Employee #2514
Oliviera appears stable and in good mental health. They have a moderate fear of Typhon, which is understandable given the situation. I think we’d be hard pressed to find anyone without a healthy fear of them. Oliviera, at least, maintains a sense of humor about the situation, citing their time working with high profile customers for Cuatrecasa as a warm-up to working with man-eating aliens.
Following a clean bill of health from Dr. Okubo I fully endorse bringing Oliviera aboard as a new crew member.
Signed, Dr. Katwe Adesina
-sent from Transcribe v. 3.5 at 3:08 AM
From: Min, A.
To: Yu, A.
CC: Eaton, C.; Adesina, K..; Tatsuya, Y.I.
Subject: RE: RE: New Employee #2514
Dr. Okubo and I just finished the full battery of examinations and physical fitness assessments and I’m pleased to report that Oliviera has passed all of the physicals for a civilian employee. Unfortunately, they don’t qualify for the reserve security detachment, but I doubt Elazar will be too heartbroken.
Relevant health and fitness information have been forwarded to the appropriate individuals for employee records.
- Angchee Min, PA
Chapter 9: Audiolog 5212032
Summary:
Some conversations overheard by Thaddeus V3.1.12
Chapter Text
ACCESSING ESR-2 AUDIO STORAGE SERVER…
VERIFYING CREDENTIALS…
ACCESS GRANTED.
RETRIEVING ARCHIVED AUDIO FILES FROM PSYCHOTRONICS SURVEILLANCE OPERATOR THDS-V3.1.12…
AUDIOLOG 5212032 CORRUPTED
CONTINUE Y/N?
Y
“You can’t just rewrite him every time he gets too close to the truth.”
“Then what do you suggest?”
“Tell him. Give him a safety briefing. Give him the less classified documents on where we found him and how Park made him. Nothing good comes from you hiding everything from him.”
“He knows what he is, Elazar. He knows about Cobalt. He knows about Earth.”
“He has no idea what kind of Typhon he is, what kind of a threat he is. You didn’t see how scared he was when half the goddamn response team broke down the door and the lab went into lockdown. I don’t think he believes he’s just a mimic, but he sure as hell doesn’t know why his nervous breakdown warrants a Code Red.”
“He isn’t ready.”
“Bullshit.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. The last wipe shouldn’t have even happened. The only reason he shifted was because that phantom broke containment and some part of him still has working threat assessment. If he hadn’t acted when he did we would’ve lost our new recruit.”
“That doesn’t negate the fact that he did lose control.”
“Those instincts were the reason you picked him in the first place. If you don’t think you can handle that anymore, maybe you should just scrap this iteration.”
“I can ‘handle’ him. What’s more concerning is that your trainees couldn’t handle a phantom.”
“A class S thermal phantom would be hard for anyone not half-Typhon to deal with. Kon handled himself well under the circumstances.”
“What about the Russian ex-soldier? Where was he during this?”
“In Lab D-6 behind about a foot of Typhon-proof glass, getting his monthly treatments so we don’t spontaneously have two of him.”
SEARCHING…
SEARCHING…
RETRIEVING DATA…
RESUMING PLAYBACK AUDIOLOG 5232032
“It was a stroke of luck that we even had contacts left in Yichang. Things went to hell after the dam broke.”
“Is it actually luck if you’re actively paying people to spy for you?”
“Don’t be so dour, Bon-Hwa. You’re starting to sound like Elazar.”
“At least I’m not crazy enough to tell Cobalt that he could destroy the whole ship if he wanted. Which he’d want to after this. Obviously.”
“Obviously. I wish there was an easier way, but there isn’t. Not when the starting component is Typhon.”
“It isn’t any less traumatic to do it the other way around. You’ve seen the two other hybrids on the crew. To get something, you have to give something. They got power. They gave their humanity.”
“It’s a sacrifice more and more people are being forced to make. Give up their individual humanity in the hope of saving the species. That’s why we have to keep going on Project Cobalt. This is the one. I can feel it. If we can just get him to work with us…”
“If we can keep it contained. Power. Humanity. If you try to push Cobalt, we’ll probably all die.”
“I know. But we’re never going to have that kind of luck again.”
“Luck. You should be talking about how lucky you were to find me. At least I wasn’t busy terrorizing what was left of the old Palus Somni bulwarks.”
“You’re right. You’re right. We are lucky to have you on board, Dr. Park. You’re the only one who could stand a chance of completing this project, especially with what we’ve given you to work with. I know it’s been a real nightmare.”
“Your jokes are worse than the workload.”
“Speaking of Cobalt, though, how long do you think it’ll be until he’s back on his feet?”
“A week. Maybe.”
“Why so long this time?”
“There’s something in it we can’t get out. Not Coral, but close.”
“What would you need to get rid of it? Maybe a Terran salvage crew could get you the supplies.”
“No. It carries over between wipes. It’d be like trying to carve out Olejniczak’s split personality. Possible, but bad.”
“He’s not supposed to be our link to the Typhon, though. With Cobalt, we can’t take any kind of risks that things might go south again. He’s special, Park. A Typhon with humanity. We’re never going to find another like him.”
“Maybe try dredging Huangbai.”
“You know what I meant. Most casualties stay dead and the ones that come back as phantoms…they don’t come back with anything left. It defies explanation.”
“Alright. Enough. Go talk to Dr. Igwe about it. He’ll love having someone who believes in metempsychosis to share his crazy theories with. Thaddeus, get over here. Start preparing a full TG-91 diagnostic battery for Cobalt.”
END OF AUDIO PLAYBACK
Chapter 10: Employee Communications Log 360428
Summary:
A communication log between two employees prior to and during the Typhon incursion.
Chapter Text
ACCESSING EMPLOYEE COMMUNICATIONS…
VERIFYING CREDENTIALS…
ACCESS GRANTED.
RETRIEVING COMMUNICATIONS LOG ENG360428
$ TLNG DETECT
RUSSIAN (RS)
$ TLNG TRANSLATE -t ‘EN’
.
..
…
ESTABLISHING CONNECTION…
WELCOME, EMPLOYEE OLEJNICZAK.
T.A.L.K. REQUEST SENT TO USER IM139
REQUEST ACCEPTED
[OV2501] Hello, Ms. Ilyushina. Thank you again for the tour this afternoon. This place is a maze to navigate and the signs are almost all in English.
[IM139] It can be difficult to navigate the station even if you’re fluent.
How are you settling in?
[OV2501] Fine. I’ve had four doctor’s appointments and very disappointing blini.
[IM139] At least they’re actually Russian. Don’t try the pelmeni. I think the chefs make them with leftovers from the Chinese dumplings.
[OV2501] I’ll keep that in mind.
Are you the one in charge of my formal orientation tomorrow?
No one has told me who is assigned yet.
[IM139] It’s probably going to be either Officer Tsvetaeva or Officer Pollard, since you’re working in security and not engineering.
I don’t know Pollard very well, but Tsvetaeva works in my sector sometimes and she seems nice. Not very talkative, though.
[OV2501] Not talking is good. I have to do too much talking already to doctors.
[IM139] The new hire interviews and physicals are necessary, unfortunately.
[OV2501] I know. But everyone asks the same questions and clearly do not share answers with other interviewers. The only unique one was Dr. Park and, I admit I do not know her well, but she is frightening. She reminds me of the people at Aelita.
[IM139] She’s our Exobiology specialist. She’s probably just excited. As I hear it, you’re a rarity.
[OV2501] That’s more polite than what most people call it.
FIND “KRASNOYARSK” C:\USERS\ADMIN\EMPLOYEE_COMM\ENG360428.CHATLOG
5 INSTANCES FOUND
>1
[IM139] I’m surprised so many people relocated to Krasnoyarsk. Was it not infiltrated by Typhon?
[OV2501] It was. It was prepared, though. Some sort of defenses and an impressive underground military compound, the one that kept them from ever finishing the Metro. All it needed was a little expansion to take in refugees and some upgraded screening against mimics.
[IM139] What about above ground?
[OV2501] Some areas are still inhabited, though heavily fortified. You would barely recognize it now.
Is that where you’re from?
[IM139] No. No it isn’t. But I remember going to the Stolby Nature Sanctuary with my father when I was young. It was beautiful.
[OV2501] It still is. Typhon don’t care about plants or animals. The only thing no longer at the sanctuary are its caretakers. There’s too much open, difficult to fortify area for any survivors to move there, despite the potential for hunting.
[IM139] Maybe when this is over, if it’s ever over, I’ll go back to visit.
[OV2501] Is that not the point of the Talos research, to find an end to things?
[IM139] That’s what they say.
[OV2501] You don’t sound very confident.
Are you not one of the workers on Project Cobalt?
My apologies. I am sure the material is confidential.
Is there anywhere else back home you’d like to know the status of?
IM139 HAS DISCONNECTED
>2
[IM139] Officer Olejniczak, are you alright?
I heard there was a code orange in the mimetics lab today. I know you were scheduled to be there for testing.
[OV2501] It happened after I left.
There’s no official report yet, but from what I heard from Officer Benoit something went wrong with Pollard. She has been unwell for a while and so was at the doctor’s, but there was a complication.
[IM139] Is it related to the delayed cargo transport from Olympus Mons?
[OV2501] I couldn’t say.
What was supposed to be arriving from there?
I thought that the Mars colonies only ever sent us mushrooms and eels.
[IM139] There’s an Exobiology Center there that handles certain supplements for our security team.
[OV2501] The purple gloop for the modders?
Or is Elazar holding out on me?
[IM139] Yes, the ‘gloop’.
What would Elazar possibly be withholding?
[OV2501] Steroids.
Have you seen the biceps on that woman?
[IM139] I think you’re an even match in that respect.
Back to Pollard. What happened?
[OV2501] She was sick. She was Hungry. An intern wasn’t following proper psychoscope protocols in the lab. I’m sure you can take a guess.
[IM139] I see. I hadn’t heard anything about an intern dying.
[OV2501] They’re in critical condition, but not dead. Yet.
Hopefully they’ll survive.
You’ve been here longer than I have, what’s going to happen to Pollard?
[IM139] Given her record, she’ll probably be quarantined until the shipment arrives and kept under observation until she’s completely stable again.
[OV2501] Even if the intern dies?
[IM139] Mr. Yu is the sort of person who believes that you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs first. Keeping Pollard will be priority.
[OV2501] I was expecting Talos to be different than Krasnoyarsk. Seems I was wrong.
At least there’s a better view. Though the food is worse.
[IM139] The supplements or the cafeteria?
[OV2501] Both. We didn’t have to drink poorly set Typhon aspic back home and there was at least somewhat fresh food.
You should throw whoever came up with powdered sour cream out of the airlock.
[IM139] They’ve probably been eaten by now; they were Terran.
What did you use if not extracted psi supplements?
[OV2501] I’m fairly sure that’s a state secret.
>3
[OV2501] I heard we were getting some manner of visitors from Luna. Is it true?
[IM139] It is. Though it’s mostly going to be a lot of boring political and bureaucratic nonsense.
The visitors are research directors from the UN, making sure that the money allocated to Talos is being spent properly.
[OV2501] It’s good to know that so much red tape survived the apocalypse.
[IM139] There are supposed to be representatives from Incheon, Yichang, Sriharikota, Washington, and Krasnoyarsk. Though I can’t imagine they’d be coming in person. It’s more likely to be proxies and one human UN representative.
[OV2501] I suppose it is too risky to come in person. How are they getting here from Terra? Aren’t most of the shuttles decommissioned?
[IM139] All of the important people from the UN are on Mars now. They’re probably taking one of the lunar transport shuttles.
[OV2501] Why haven’t you relocated to Mars?
You should meet the requirements. Well educated and no Typhon influence.
[IM139] I have a medical condition that makes long distance space travel less than ideal. They might not take me.
[OV2501] Have you checked?
[IM139] I’m able to do more good on Talos than I could on Mars.
>4
[IM139] Happy one year anniversary on Talos II, Officer Olejniczak.
Do you still like it up here?
[OV2501] I still wish they’d get a better chef, but I like the work environment. The rest of the security team is not bad, once you jump over a few language barriers.
Apparently the language most of us have in common is Mandarin.
[IM139] I can’t imagine Elazar is happy about that.
[OV2501] No. No she is not. Though, there isn’t much she can do about it unless she wants to contend with, and I am quoting directly here, “the worst combinations of ‘not-English’ I have heard in my entire life”.
[IM139] I suppose that answers my next question of ‘How are the online language courses going?’ then.
[OV2501] It feels like trying to teach a dead dog a new trick. There’s no room in my head for new words. I know four and a half other languages, but the one everyone wants is English.
[IM139] I’m sure they make neuromods for that.
[OV2501] With respect, chief engineer Ilyushina, if I get one more neuromod installed I risk every turret in Talos trying to kill me on sight.
[IM139] I thought we had them calibrated against that.
[OV2501] Sort of. They’re programmed to scan my employee ID now before they start shooting. If they were calibrated to ignore quite this much Typhon, they’d be idle during a containment breach.
[IM139] I’ve been wanting to ask, though it always felt a little too personal, why you chose to have so many mods installed. Was it mandatory?
[OV2501] No. It was voluntary. I had a few, at first. There are basics they require when you say you plan to fight on the front lines so you don’t end up mind controlled.
But then I was unable to protect someone very close to me. They were the reason I was hesitant to implant more. So, I joined the heavy modders. Then, when that didn’t seem like enough, I volunteered for the Aelita program in Krasnoyarsk. I told myself it was to honor Vadim’s memory, to save other people where I had failed before.
[IM139] I’m sorry.
I know what it’s like to lose someone. I’ve lost two people who meant the world to me. I do what I can to honor their memory.
[OV2501] It’s all we can do, isn’t it?
>5
[OV2501] Officer Ilyushin, were you able to get to one of the safe rooms?
[IM139] My office is next to the Sector Alpha safe room. I ran here as soon as the alarms sounded.
[OV2501] Does everyone there have enough supplies? Are you able to wait it out until the threat is cleared?
[IM139] The safe room is stocked with plenty of food, water, weapons, and first aid kits. For me personally, I always have an emergency bag. Nullwave, scope, medicine, medkit.
[OV2501] Good.
[IM139] Do you know what the threat is?
[OV2501] Typhon. Obviously. Some sort of containment breach in mimetics.
Elazar is taking some of the vets to handle it. Intelligence so far says it’s a voltaic and a couple mimics.
Who do you have with you from security?
[IM139] Tsvetaeva.
Is it really just a phantom and mimics? They don’t call a full code black for that.
[OV2501] That’s what they say.
[IM139] Is that what you think?
[OV2501] I can’t be sure.
[IM139] Is that what he thinks?
[OV2501] No, but He isn’t the one being asked.
Still, there is something familiar here. It feels wrong. Like Coral, but the kind that doesn’t happen naturally.
[IM139] Synthetic coral?
[OV2501] No. Still made by Typhon, but…I can feel it in Echo, even though the breach is nowhere near here. It’s too much too fast.
You need to stay where you are, even after they lift the lockdown. I think this is worse than Elazar thinks it is.
[IM139] You’ve encountered it before?
[OV2501] Yes. Something similar in Krasnoyarsk, though under controlled conditions in a lab.
[IM139] What is it?
[OV2501] Hopefully not the same thing.
[IM139] If it is, what do we do?
[OV2501] We fight. Or we die. Most likely both.
[IM139] What about Cobalt?
[OV2501] Hopefully Mr.Yu keeps it in containment.
[IM139] Couldn’t he potentially neutralize the threat?
[OV2501] What?
[IM139] Cobalt is our secret weapon, isn’t he?
What could be a match for that?
[OV2501] Something worse. And there are worse things.
I’ve met them.
[IM139] Your marker is all over the place. What’s going on?
[OV2501] I’m trying to find Elazar. She’ll want help.
[IM139] You shouldn’t go after it.
You don’t know what that thing is.
It will kill you.
Do you really want to die more than once?
Voytek?
Chapter 11: Good Morning, Alex
Summary:
A short interaction between Alex and Mim before the start of Replica
Chapter Text
"Good morning, Morgan. How's my favorite mimic?"
I rush to take shape and cobble together a sentence out of the pre-recorded phrases on my TALK pad.
"Good morning, Alex," Morgan's simulated voice says. "We're doing fine."
"Glad to hear it." He sets down a tin of something pungent and black before pulling out a thermos. "How are the study sessions?"
"Words are hard," says the hastily assembled voice of Morgan. Alex laughs.
"Are any languages easier or is it all hard."
"Mandarin."
"Huh," he sighs. "Not what I expected. That was your second language, not first."
"No. It was first. Natural." There aren't enough phrases programmed in to explain how much easier thoughts flow in that language. It feels almost like moving through the coral, effortless and weightless. I can work with English. It's the language everyone here thinks in and I'm picking up more words every day from errant thoughts. But it still isn't the same.
"Maybe the neuromod tests rewrote some of Morgan's language centers. The Morgan One's, not yours." Alex offers me the thermos before helping himself to my disused electric kettle. "Have you tried any of the tea I sent over?"
"No." I try to work through the prerecorded words and manage a reply that's close enough. "The water heater makes sounds that are bad."
He turns off the water in the sink. "Is the kettle malfunctioning? Or does the loud sound hurt?"
"Yes."
He pours the water out of the kettle into a cup and replaces the empty carafe. "I'll try to find you the canned tea Morgan One liked. How's that sound?"
"Sounds great, Alex."
He smiles with his mouth closed, politely not baring his teeth. The air around him feels like a cloud. I can't see through it, but I feel how damp and heavy it is. It's always like that when he talks about the First Morgan.
He takes a seat l at the work desk and looks at the most recent batch of translated notes from Morgan.
"You're good at this. How do you know his cipher?"
"I just do." I struggle to think of a way to explain it and find myself angry at the way my throat doesn't work. A peal of static escapes my mouth before I can stop it. I try to shake the static out of my body through my arm, but get nowhere.
Alex is right beside me now, holding out a hand. I grasp it and slowly shake the last bits of static out. They break and dissipate across his skin. I want to tell him about it, how his solidness makes everything else solidify, but my TALK doesn't have the words I need. I settle for grabbing his other hand and holding it, hoping maybe he can sense some of the thoughts pouring out of me.
He waits. He waits until I'm solid and lets me borrow his stability while I reform. It feels natural for him, like he had to do the same thing with the First Morgan. I don't want to let go to bring up my TALK pad, but I do.
"Thank you," Morgan's voice says.
"Any time." He reaches over to squeeze my free hand. "I'm here whenever you need me. I know this human thing is hard to figure out. It's even hard for people who've been human their whole lives."
“Is it hard for you?” The question is a mix of voice clips that sound less seamless than they’re supposed to. It makes me wish I had more time to study Igwe’s hand language, though at least I can use the TALK pad even if I don’t have proper hands.
“Sometimes. Especially these days…”
“Because Typhon?”
“That’s one of the reasons.” He squeezes my hand lightly and I can feel the air around him sag. “I miss Morgan, the first one.”
“I’m sorry.” It doesn’t sound the way it should, filtered through voice modulated software in the TALK system. I tuck my head and blink, hoping that conveys more of the emotion I want.
“It’s not your fault. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. Morgan was gone long before he died. I watch him turn himself into a guinea pig and didn’t do anything about it.” Alex looks at me, but not at Me. “Listen, I know things are rough right now, but we’re going to make it through this. Together. Alright?”
Chapter 12: Galactic Gladiators
Summary:
In which Mim plays video games with Alex, using Morgan's cheat notes.
Chapter Text
CyberWukong launches himself onto the ceiling of the arena with a power jump ( Right, X, X ) and then spirals back down in a perfectly executed Heavenly Descent of the Thousand Spears. ( Left, Left, X, A, A, Right, Right, X ). Gigas mistimes his blocking maneuver by a fraction of a second. A giant, golden ‘VICTORY’ flashes across the screen. Behind it, CyberWukong poses triumphantly over the smoking crater where Gigas used to stand.
I bounce up and down on my cushion. It’s the first time I’ve managed to beat Alex since he let me use Morgan One’s old game console. I practice for an hour a day to improve my fine motor skills. It’s a method that neither Park nor Igwe approve of, but Alex insists. He says it’s integral to the development of ‘pack bonds’ with the Talos crew.
“When did you get so good at Galactic Gladiators?” Alex sets the controller down and smiles. It looks a little less sad than all the ones that came before it.
“I play against the computer.” I make an attempt to smile back at him, but I can feel the way my mouth moves wrong. It has the intended effect anyway.
“What about your minders? They’ve got a network connection.”
I shake my head. The TALK pad doesn’t have the right voice, the right words. I want to tap into his mind, make him feel the way Ayala tries desperately not to think of me as human. The way she remembers all of the Morgans before me with fear and sadness and worry. I want him to see Sokolov and the heaviness that hangs over him like the gravity of a hostile world with too many suns pulling him in too many directions. It’s so similar to Alex’s that, at first, I thought Alex was the one on the other side of the glass.
Alex hums. “I’ll see if I can clear another day a week from my schedule. You’re in quarantine, not solitary confinement. You should have more social interaction.”
I nod.
“What about Igwe? I know he’s in here pretty often. He’s teaching you sign language, isn’t he?”
I shuffle my body around until I have the right configuration of fingers. “Yes,” I sign. “He is a good teacher.”
“I’m glad.” Another rare smile. The air near him feels lighter. I think this one is called ‘relief’. “What else is he teaching you?”
“Piano.” I revert back to the TALK pad. The hand signs free me from the confines of pre-programmed phrases, but I like hearing Morgan’s voice. My voice. Assuming I can ever get the hang of it. I shuffle through the recordings of our lessons and play Alex a clip of ‘Lent et Douloureux’ accompanied by Dr. Igwe’s encouragement.
“You’re getting good at that.” The room is brighter, somewhat. I feel like I can almost, almost see bits of gold outlining Alex’s thoughts. “I guess that answers the question of whether or not he plays video games with you, though.”
He waits for me to say something, but there wasn’t a question asked yet. I retroactively think to thank him for the compliment on my piano playing when he gestures at the game console.
“How about best two out of three? Maybe I can reclaim my high score.”
I shake my head.
“No you don’t want to play or no you don’t think I’ll win?”
“Second. Morgan One left notes,” the TALK pad chirps. I navigate away from the voice modulation program to the personal files Morgan left behind. Alex looks over as I bring up an agonizingly long document entitled ‘How to Beat Alex at Video Games’.
“Alex has a predictable move set,” he reads aloud and ‘tsk’s loudly. He skims the document, gently tapping my arm when he wants me to go to the next page. Every so often he shakes his head and water wells in his eyes only to be rapidly blinked away. I know better than to ask why. After ten pages Alex finally pulls away. “I suppose when you play the same six games with someone for the better part of thirty years you’d have winning down to a science.”
“Morgan liked science.” I rapidly key in the words and stop, trying to put the new words I want in the right order. “Everything was science. To Morgan.”
These were the wrong words, I realize. Alex’s shoulders sag and his entire form seems to destabilize. I wait for signs of static or temporal shifting, but none appear. Instead, he pats my arm.
“It wasn’t always like that. The first step to science is curiosity. The first step to curiosity is wonder. Morgan…” He breaths in through his mouth and, slowly, out of his nose. His eyes move away from mine to an empty space on the far wall. “Morgan wasn’t always the way he sounds in his research notes. He used to think the world was amazing, beautiful. Same with people. He wanted to understand it. Make it better. Somewhere along the way, he lost that wonder, started seeing everything as quantitative data.”
“Oh.” The TALK pad says. I don’t know enough human words for shared sorrow to say much more. “What happened?”
“I don’t know.” He picks the controller back up and looks at it, as if the letters emblazoned on it hold some sort of answers. “He always seemed like himself. Even during…everything. He was so dead set on making humanity the best it could be. He even won over the TranStar board of directors, got them to go all in for Neuromods despite what a huge risk it would be and how much it deviated from the company’s original purpose. Morgan was just like that. His optimism, his passion, it was contagious.”
“I’m sorry.” The phrase feels hollow echoing back from the TALK pad in Morgan’s voice. I don’t have a name for the look on Alex’s face, but it makes me feel like I’m back in the sensory deprivation chamber. I reach out and pat his arm, the same way he did to me earlier. He puts his hand over mine and holds it there. The room is heavy again. Alex sits very still, breathing slower than he usually does and not looking at me.
I wonder what it feels like to miss someone the way he misses Morgan One. I feel it sometimes, when I destabilize and see the Other face in the mirror. I feel it when Dr. Igwe mentions Mikhaila, when yet again she doesn’t show up to visit on the day her name is on the calendar. Sometimes, at night, when I’m not quite dreaming, I think I can see an endless lattice of gold stretching out between the stars and that’s when I feel it the most. Other times, like now, I miss Alex. Even with his hand over mine, he’s nowhere near me.
I don’t think I like Feelings.
“Alex,” I press the first QuickText button on the TALK pad to call his name. As soon as the recording plays, I realize I don’t have anything else to say. He looks up. I blink back at him.
“I’m here.” My fingers move over the keys a little too quickly. I don’t want to let go of his arm. I don’t want to break eye-contact. I know that if I do, he’ll leave. He’ll go wherever he goes to mourn Morgan One and I’ll be alone again. “I’m here. I See you.”
Chapter 13: Subject Gamma
Summary:
A communications log from the early Cobalt experiments
Chapter Text
ACCESSING EMPLOYEE COMMUNICATIONS…
VERIFYING CREDENTIALS…
ACCESS GRANTED.
RETRIEVING COMMUNICATIONS LOG SEC350328
DECRYPTING…
[YA062] Gamma looks promising. Everyone was saved, all 'side- quests' were completed adequately, and the Nullwave was deployed.
[ES078] It's a no go from me.
[YA062] Why? All of your people made it out. Better than last simulation.
[ES078] How many Typhon were neutralized?
[ID147] All of the important ones. Otherwise it couldn't complete the SIM. We have several ‘Bosses’ that need to be dealt with in order to access new stages of the simulation.
[ES078] Non- lethal, though. GLOO. Stun. That sort of thing. No kills.
[ID147] I'm sorry, but I don't see the problem.
[ES078] It sides with us, but still feels for the Typhon. I’d almost guess it identifies with them, just given the amount of Typhon-based neuromods it installed.
[ID147] Isn't that the point? It's supposed to be the bridge between humanity and Typhon. It can't be that if it views either side as inherently deserving genocide.
[IM139] Dr. Igwe has a point. Our original plan was a failure. We need to focus more on the projections of the Shklovsky Center. The only way for humanity to survive is some sort of armistice, not to keep fighting an unwinnable war.
[ES078] We need to be prepared for the worst. In this case, we’re dealing with the very real possibility that Typhon can't be reasoned with.
[ID147] And we prepare for this by making a hybrid that is both an advocate of nuclear disarmament and a walking nuclear option?
[ES078] Yes. There's a reason we call soldiers peacemakers. Same goes for our hybrid.
[IM139] And what happens when all the Typhon are gone, but our 'nuclear option" remains? Are we supposed to kill it or do we keep it alive, perhaps feed it more ‘volunteers’?
[ES078] No more convicts. We all agreed to that years ago. We don’t repeat the mistakes of the past. We’ve paid for those in full already. When Cobalt’s over, it’s over.
[IM139] So, we kill it. What happens to the modders? Do they die with their new Apex?
[YA062] We'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Right now our focus is preventing humanity's extinction.
[ID147] You agree with making our bridge into a weapon? Isn’t this what caused the joint effort with the TRE to go south?
[IM139] It went worse than just south, Dr. Igwe. Their monster turned on them. The entire facility was destroyed.
[YA062] It wasn’t as bad as the headlines made it out to be, but yes, that’s the gist of what happened. The difference is that we’re prepared. We finally found the right ratio of cell lines with this iteration. We just need to hold out until Gamma’s ready for field testing.
Chapter 14
Summary:
A set of emails rescued from a communications server.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
ACCESSING KNY-21…
ENTER ADMINISTRATOR PASSWORD:
>**********
[ROOT@EXTERNUSRU/]$RECOVER -A -D /RESTORE /AELITA/COMM
RECOVERING 1 FILE FROM /AELITA/ INTO /RESTORE
REQUESTING 1 FILE, THIS MAKE TAKE A WHILE…
./COMM
RECEIVED 1 FILE FROM RDF SERVER ‘EXTERNUSKR.TIN.ERF.RU’
RECOVER COMPLETION TIME: THU OCT 4 15:39:29 2034
CAT FILE008.REC
$ TLNG DETECT
RUSSIAN (RS)
$ TLNG TRANSLATE -t ‘EN’
To: V.Krikaley
From: V. Olejniczak
We are nearing Korolyov. With luck, you will still be there by the time we arrive.
I envy you this mission. You are going into the stars, while the stars are going into me.
--
To: V. Olejniczak
From: V. Krikaley
Then when I return from space, I will still be able to see the stars as long as you are near. I ask only that you promise to remain human, whatever that may mean these days. If you change too much, they will send you to Aelita. It is a death sentence. They say it is the greatest of honors, but not long ago they said the same about dying for Terra.
--
To: V. Olejniczak
From: V. Krikaley
It is so beautiful up here. I wish you could see it. I am taking pictures, more than I can count, to show you when I return. From up here, it doesn’t look so hopeless. There is still more blue than gold. Still more human than Typhon.
I’m told that my research could help us turn the tide. My work was hardly respected before the Typhon, but now people seem excited about optogenetics and its use in gene transcription. I wonder if it would be better to remain ignorant as to how this will help our cause. Do we plan to turn them into us or us into them?
--
To: V. Olejniczak
From: V. Krikaley
We’ve made something. I do not know what to call it. Somehow, we’ve turned a ‘Copycat’ dog into its former self.
It is a terrier now. Small and Terran. No trace of Typhon left in it.
No trace of life.
It should be unsurprising, but reversing the effects of the Typhon transformation leads to death. The other scientists tout this as a victory. Yet, as I look at the corpse before me, I wonder what would become of you if this was somehow weaponized. The Americans have a similar creation called a ‘nullwave’, but it requires an entire Dyson sphere worth of power to do anything. This requires less than a car battery.
I wonder if I will have the strength to destroy it, if I must. If I could damn all of us to save a few of us.
--
To: V. Krikaley
From: V. Olejniczak
I do not feel much changed, though they tell me I am. When I look in the mirror, I am human. When I close my eyes, I feel human. But I know that I am not human, truly. I am faster than our fastest runner, faster than some of our transports. I am stronger than I could imagine. You were impressed at my strength before, but now I can lift three times my own weight with ease. It is frightening, how much they can change us without us changing.
I await your return to Terra. I wish to hear about the stars and your work, to spend the night together talking as we used to.
--
To: V. Olejniczak
From: V. Krikaley
I’m relieved to hear that you still feel like yourself. There are so many reports of side effects that cause mental breaks in modders. The modifications sound like the standard ones they use for Lunar ground troops, at least. They should be safe. It gives me hope that I will see you again.
Space is so much more than I can describe. Out here, everything is put into perspective. It is grand and terrifying. I could stay here forever, I think, but for the fact that you are still on Terra. There is a different culture up here, one created by people who have looked into the infinite and come to understand their place within it. Things that are so important in the microcosm of Terra fade away here. My coworker speaks at length about her wife back home in Malaysia and asks me about your well-being with genuine care. We drink terrible coffee together on the observation deck during late nights experiments and wonder what humanity will be like after the Typhon have been pushed back.
What will we learn? What will we change? How much will we retain in the face of such a monumental change to our way of life and knowledge of the universe? How alike will we realize we are?
--
To: V. Krikaley
From: V. Olejniczak
They tell me it is a miracle. I take so well to the enhancements. They tell me I could transcend humanity, that it is my duty to do so. I have been volunteered, much against my will.
Forgive me, Vadim.
--
To: V. Olejniczak
From: V. Krikaley
There are ways out of Krasnoyarsk. Old Metro tunnels. There are people who can move you. Tell me where you are.
--
To: V. Olejniczak
From: V. Krikaley
We are returning to Terra soon, to Moscow and then to Korolyov. I know people with influence there. There is probably a way to convince them that you are a poor test subject. Either through wit or through money.
How many modifications have you been given, besides the ground troop enhancements? Have you started to hear the voices inside the gold threads? The researchers in exobiology up here tell me that that is the first sign of truly leaving humanity, when you begin to hear the Coral calling to you.
--
To: V. Olejniczak
From: V. Krikaley
If you are alive, if you are you, please answer me, Voytek.
Notes:
I am an unkind author and wanted to flesh out one of the fan (and author) favorites a little more, thus Voytek suffers.
Chapter 15: Psychological Evaluations of Talos II Modders
Summary:
A series of audio logs violating the medical privacy of security officers Pollard, Voytek, and Hua.
Chapter Text
ACCESSING ESR-4 AUDIO STORAGE SERVER…
VERIFYING CREDENTIALS…
ACCESS GRANTED.
RETRIEVING ARCHIVED AUDIO FILE C:/USERS/EMPLOYEE/HUMAN_RESOURCES/KAZIMOR/32134.mp4.axx
PASSWORD>
**********
ACCESS GRANTED
PLAYBACK INITIATED…
“Good afternoon, Officer Pollard. Good to see you again.”
“And you, Dr. Kazimor.”
“How have you been since our last meeting?”
“I’m sure you’ve read the alerts and batch security emails, doctor.”
“I have. But they’re all very sterile and impersonal. I want to know how you’re holding up.”
“I’ve been…better. The intern, he’s making a full recovery, which I’m relieved about, but it should never have happened to begin with.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I’m security. I’ve been trained to have control over myself. We were all debriefed on the risks associated with heavy use of Typhon modifications and had to go through hell to learn how to control ourselves if the worst ever came to pass.”
“Do all security officers go through that?”
“Yes. Maybe. I’ve heard Voytek and Hua talk about their military service. It sounds a lot harder than corporate security training. I’m pretty sure they’ve both been through ‘the worst’ at least once, which makes it almost laughable that I’m the one who snapped when supplies were stalled.”
“Does it? Because it sounds to me like you’d have the most right to struggle with supply issues. Corporate training is thorough, but it’s hardly a substitute for lived experience.”
[There is a sound of something metallic clinking and the soft whirr of an operator.]
“Thank you for the tea, Sybill. Would you care for some, Officer Pollard? It isn’t anything to call home about, but it’s a little better than the canned stuff.”
“Yes. I’d like that. I haven’t had good tea in years…”
“The station is many things, but the Ritz it is not.”
“No. No it isn’t.”
“That brings up something else on my list. Have you been getting enough rations? I don’t know enough about your condition to say for sure, but there seems to be a lot of correlation between hunger and decreased impulse control in modders.”
“Yes. I eat enough. It was…it was just a momentary thing. Because of the supply shortage. I was so hungry. It wasn’t like wanting noodles. It was something bone deep, something you feel inside your heart, behind your eyes. I felt like my body was turning into a black hole, eating me from the inside out. I wanted it to stop. I wanted it to stop enough to do anything, I thought. Anything.”
“Was there something that drew you to Hornshaw or just accessibility?”
“He didn’t have a scope on. Everyone else did. Lab uniform, standard, no reinforcements. He wasn’t even carrying that stupid purple dissection knife. He looked vulnerable.”
“He was easy prey?”
“Yes. It sounds horrible when you put it that way, though.”
“My apologies. May I ask what stopped you, then?”
“My humanity, doctor. I couldn’t live with myself if I did that. We’re told all of these things about mirror neurons and empathy quotients and external consciousness, but at the end of the day the thing that sticks is the part of you that looks upon atrocities and says ‘no’. Killing Hornshaw would be killing myself.”
“Well said.”
“I just…the fact that I came so close rattles me, though. Surely I’m not the only one.”
“I can’t tell you anything about my other patients, but I doubt that you’re the only one who’s ever succumbed to their base instincts.”
“So stifled. I nearly ate someone! It isn’t the same as sneaking another cookie or drinking another beer. It was a person.”
“Officer Pollard, please. I didn’t mean to sound dismissive. I know it’s not the same thing. What I was trying to say is that you can’t blame yourself for trying to take care of your body’s needs.”
“By eating a person.”
“By trying to eat when you’re starving. It just happens that the part of you that was starving has very particular needs.”
“I would prefer if it didn’t, but there’s no way to undo it now. Even if you uninstall them, the mods linger. The Typhon material stays in you, expands, like a disease. I could pull them all out today, reset my memory to before Talos, and I’d still hear that voice outside of space talking to me.”
“Do you want to remove them?”
“No. What would be the point? I can never be who I was again. I’ll always be whatever I am now; I’d just be less useful without the mods.”
“Can we expand on that, Officer Pollard? What do you mean by ‘whatever I am now’?”
“A modder. Part Typhon. It isn’t as drastic as some people, but it’s enough that turrets still register me as an alien.”
“And this makes you question yourself?”
“No, not really, but it makes me question how other people see me. I still have family out on the Martian colonies. I haven’t seen them in years…I worry that when this is all over, they won’t know who I am. Or, worse, they will and it won’t matter.”
“They know that you’re stationed here, though. Surely they’re aware of what kind of modifications you’ve undergone.”
“There’s a difference between knowing, in the abstract, what someone has done and seeing it for yourself. What will they think the first time they see my body shift? When I answer questions they haven’t asked yet? How will I explain that I’m tired, and I’m going to stay tired, because I need to eat humans to live?”
“I think they’ll be happy just knowing you’re alive. Though, for now, maybe come up with answers to use in case those questions arise. Or try discussing your concerns the next time we’re in range of the Martian communications array and you can call them.”
“I’ve talked to my mother about it, but I don’t think she really understands what I’m telling her. She was an officer during Evacuation Day. Everything is viewed through a lens of intense pride that I’m finally following in her footsteps and this weird ‘everything is a battle’ mindset. She thinks I can conquer the Typhon inside of me the same way you’d fight Typhon on the ground. I wish it was that easy.”
“Is she the only family you’re concerned about?”
“No. My brother…he’s lunar. Boots on the ground sort of thing. He knows. He has a few himself. I’m not worried about talking to him. Our grandfather still doesn’t understand why he’s on Mars, though. He knows something happened and someone invaded, but he’s pretty convinced it was Russia and not aliens. He barely recognizes us when we call him as it is, what happens if I become more Typhon? Will he forget I’m his granddaughter and shoot me?”
[There is a gentle chime and an operator’s voice breaks the conversation.]
“Dr. Kazimor, the time is now five thirty PM. Your next appointment is at five forty five PM.”
“I’m so sorry, Officer Pollard, but we’ll have to continue this on Thursday. My advice to you is to try writing letters to your family members addressing your concerns. You don’t have to mail them; just use it as an opportunity to get things off your chest and work out what’s bothering you. We can go over them during your next appointment if you’d like.”
END OF AUDIO PLAYBACK
---
ACCESSING ESR-4 AUDIO STORAGE SERVER…
VERIFYING CREDENTIALS…
ACCESS GRANTED.
RETRIEVING ARCHIVED AUDIO FILE C:/USERS/EMPLOYEE/HUMAN_RESOURCES/KAZIMOR/32145.mp4.axx
PASSWORD>
**********
ACCESS GRANTED
PLAYBACK INITIATED…
“Officer Hua, it’s good to see you again.”
“Hello, Dr. Kazimor.”
“It says on your form here that you’ve been experiencing auditory and visual hallucinations?”
“I think so. I’m not sure.”
“Alright. What makes you think that what you’re seeing might not be real?”
“That thing, in the lab, I think it’s getting into my head.”
“You’ve been assigned to Project Cobalt for the past few months, haven’t you? I’m sure you’re following all of the proper lab protocols.”
“Of course! I’m…I’m not an idiot. I know what those things are capable of. That’s why I can’t understand it. How it’s doing it.”
“What exactly have you been seeing?”
“Its face. When it takes a human form, I know its face from somewhere.”
“The Cobalt hybrid is based on Dr. Yu’s genome, perhaps that’s where?”
“No. I know what the Yus look like. This is different. It stops being human, once the handlers leave. Then it’s a phantom. And then…then it’s a different human, sometimes. It never lasts long, but it’s always the same. And I swear I know it.”
“Where would you know this other person from, Officer Hua?”
“Yichang. The research center, where they brought volunteers for the Typhon mods.”
“That was fast. You sound like you have someone in mind already.”
“Not really. We didn’t…most of the volunteers barely knew each other, even though we saw each other every day. But that place. I still have nightmares of it. I still see the doctors’ faces and the other soldiers’ faces. And I keep thinking maybe…Maybe it was the thing that killed them and absorbed their consciousness. Or maybe it was one of them and turning doesn’t strip everything away, like they said it would.”
“We’ve addressed your PTSD from the mods before, but I don’t believe you’ve ever brought up this idea of ‘turning’ before. Do you mean becoming a phantom?”
“Yes. What else? You know what they were working on in Pytheas. Project Genesis. A way to induce a person to become a phantom after death. They use it in those ‘phantom genesis’ neuromods. This was different. They put it in the heavies, to make sure that you’d still do your duty even after death. I only saw it in action once and that was enough. Sgt. Jjiang died and then…then she got back up as a phantom. You could almost still see her human body under it all, but there was nothing there. No recognition. Nothing. She took down the moon sharks and then just fell apart, back into this writhing black mass.”
“That sounds like it left an impression on you.”
“Wouldn’t it leave one on you?”
“Yes. Yes it would.”
“I keep having this dream. I die out there and then I come back as something else. The darkness seeps into my corpse and animates it. I’m inside of my body but outside of it at the same time. Something else is in control. The worst part is, that I’m not scared in the dream. It feels peaceful. It feels like going home.”
“Have you talked to the doctors in exobiology? Perhaps there’s a way to remove the modifications that turn you into a phantom upon death.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. They didn’t give us much briefing before putting it in us.”
“And this was mandatory?”
“No. It was voluntary. As much as anything was back then.”
“I see.”
“No. Don’t…don’t do that. This isn’t a guilt thing or a regret thing. This is just…just fear. I see that thing in there and I see myself. I see what I might turn into. I took the mods because of course I did. Because no one knew what they would do. There wasn’t enough testing to know. We were scared and angry. We’d all lost everything. You don’t get these kinds of mods if you have anything to go back to. So, who cared if there was a body left to bury. Who would burn offerings for us when the temples were all Typhon nests now? It was a last, great ‘fuck you’ to the monsters that destroyed our home. But now…now I see its face. Now I wonder if you don’t die after death. What if my next life never comes and I’m trapped as a phantom in a lab somewhere?”
“Officer Hua, try to calm down. Maybe take a few deep breaths.”
“You didn’t see it!”
“I’ve seen the footage of Cobalt, though it’s usually Dr. Adesina who handles their evaluations.”
“It’s different in person. They can show you all kinds of slideshows, talk about metempsychotic remnants and panpsychism all day, but seeing it, hearing it is different.”
“Hearing it?”
“It speaks.”
“Do you hear their voice in your mind or out loud?”
“In my mind. I think. It’s hard to tell. It talks to itself when no one’s around. It sees me through the two way mirror. Sometimes it gets right up to the glass where I’m stationed. Sokolov and Ayala talk to it sometimes, tap on the glass or use telepathy. They treat it like a child that’s learning how to be a person. They aren’t the ones called in when it has to be reset, though. They don’t see how powerful it is, how angry it is. The last time was the worst. It was human. It was indistinguishable from a human, just not Morgan Yu. It reached out to me, right before the nullwave went off. ‘Don’t let them do this’, it said.”
“What do you think it meant by that?”
“The reset, I guess. Maybe it didn’t want to go back. I’d be pissed too if I spent my death as the ghost of someone else.”
“Why do you think it reached out to you, specifically?”
“I don’t know. Because I was there? Because I had a high enough Typhon content that it thought I was an ally? Or maybe I’m right. Maybe it was from Yichang. Maybe it recognized me too.”
“Has there been any other attempt to connect with you since the last reset?”
“No. None. I don’t know what they did to it, but now it just spends all of its time playing video games and acting like a doting baby brother to director Yu.”
“I see. Are your experiences with Cobalt why you’re requesting reassignment?”
“What else would it be? Would you want to sit there, day after day, staring your own fate in the face? I can…I can handle the idea of death. I’ve been stationed on Terra and Luna during the worst of the invasion. I’m at peace with dying. This isn’t dying.”
“Alright. I’ll talk to Officer Elazar about your reassignment from Cobalt. I can’t guarantee it will get approved, but this appears to be extremely detrimental to your mental and physical well-being.”
"Thank you, Doctor Kazimor. I just...I don't care if they have me scrubbing toilets. I need to get out of there."
END OF AUDIO PLAYBACK
---
ACCESSING ESR-4 AUDIO STORAGE SERVER…
VERIFYING CREDENTIALS…
ACCESS GRANTED.
RETRIEVING ARCHIVED AUDIO FILE C:/USERS/EMPLOYEE/HUMAN_RESOURCES/KAZIMOR/32127.mp4.axx
PASSWORD>
**********
ACCESS GRANTED
PLAYBACK INITIATED…
“Dobrae utra, uhm…Officer Olejniczak. Sybill, did you install that translation software?”
“I speak English. Just not well.”
“Ah. I see. Your files list language fluency in rather black and white terms. Still, I'm sure we can find a way around it. Sybill can play middleman. The translation software isn't great, but it is better than nothing if it comes down to it.”
“You speak Polish?”
“Polish? No, I’m afraid not.”
“Mandarin?”
“Enough to manage a few communications reports, but that’s all. I’ve been meaning to learn…”
“Then we use English, since it is only language we have in common.”
“Yes. Yes it seems it is.”
“Why am I here, exactly, Doctor Wouk? Where is Doctor Kazimor?”
“This is just a routine psychological evaluation for the security crew. It’s a very stressful job and we need to be sure that everyone is able to perform their duties. As for Doctor Kazimor, she’s exceptionally busy. Director Yu thought I should take her place for your evaluation.”
“Mmn.”
“What can you tell me about what you do here?”
“Little. Mostly confidential.”
“I already know about the…unique challenges being faced by our Security recruits.”
“Then you know what I do.”
“Yes, but I’d like to hear it in your own words. Perhaps tell me how you feel about it.”
“I watch Typhon in cage all day pretending to be human to make sure it doesn’t kill people. Very boring.”
“There was quite a stir last week, though, wasn’t there?”
“Yes.”
“What exactly happened?”
“Containment breach.”
“And your team was able to resolve the matter?”
“You are alive, yes?”
“That must have been difficult for you, though, given your history with the Aelita project.”
“We are done.”
“I’m afraid you’re stuck here for another half hour. Doctor’s orders.”
“No.”
“Fine. Then perhaps you’ll be more cooperative if I tell you that it was Director Yu who requested your psychiatric evaluation. There’s concern that you might be unfit to remain in service due to severe post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“Last evaluation-Doctor Kazimor’s evaluation-showed I was fit.”
“Doctor Kazimor wasn’t made aware of certain problems that have come up recently.”
“One year, no problems. Ask Commander Elazar.”
“We do have access to your Talos employee records, Officer Olejniczak. The fact remains that there have been concerns voiced about your mental state. And in light of the recent incident in Mimetics, we can’t be too cautious with high-content employees.”
“Modders.”
“Essentially. You, Hua, Pollard.”
“You wish to know if I plan to eat intern?”
“Or any other crew member. This is a matter of considerable concern. We do our best here to accommodate those with Typhon modifications, but it’s hard to predict what kind of problems might arise.”
“You know little of Typhon, then.”
“Maybe you can enlighten me. What is it like being a heavy modder?”
“You are tired. You stay tired. And hungry. And thirsty. I get double rations. They do nothing.”
“Do you believe that this lack of physical fulfillment could be remedied?”
“I know it can. And how. But those thoughts are best ignored.”
“And whose thoughts are those? The ones that tell you how to fix your current situation? Are they yours or do they seem to come from someone else?”
“Say what you mean to ask, doctor. When half hour is over, I leave. Whether Director Yu has answers he wants or not.”
“Can you tell me about Janusz? Several people have heard you talking to or talking about this person. Assuming Janusz is a person…”
“Typhon. Janusz is Typhon. Probably.”
“Alright, then. Janusz is a Typhon. How are you talking to them?”
“In my head.”
“You have a connection to the Typhon consciousness?”
“No, just…just Janusz.”
“How did you come to have this connection?”
“Modifications. I was split. Mostly, I am Voytek. I am also Janusz.”
“The etheric phantom modifications you were given in your military service were that strong?”
“No. They…grew. Over time. New modifications reinforced old ones. Everything is in medical records with Dr. Park.”
“Does this connection make you feel any sort of sympathy towards the Typhon? A sense of kinship perhaps?”
“Doctor, consider your words. I am human. I do much to remain human. Monthly visits to Park. Weekly check ins. Medications. Glowing water. What I am or what Janusz is, we are together human.”
“Of course. I didn’t mean to question your loyalties, but these are standard questions.”
“Mmn.”
“Would it be possible to speak to Janusz? Or can you only relay what they say?”
“He can speak. If he wishes.”
“May I speak to Janusz, then?”
[The audio log glitches. There is a loud peal of static that turns to a steady drone which continues for most of the interview.]
“Am I speaking to Janusz, now?”
Doctor.
“I’m glad you were able to speak to me.”
Are you?
“Yes. It’s important to understanding Officer Olejniczak’s mental health that all personalities within the system are spoken to in some way.”
So we can fight.
“Yes, the main focus of today’s interview is his combat readiness. However, Talos has a vested interest in making sure all of its crew members are healthy and well-adjusted, whether they are engaged in active combat or not.”
We are not.
“You aren’t what?”
Healthy.”
“Is this a physical or mental ailment, Janusz? If it’s the hunger Officer Olejniczak mentioned, your dosage of psi can be increased. Perhaps we can arrange an appointment with Dr. Park--”
NO.
[The audio log goes silent for several seconds. When it returns, the sound is heavily distorted.]
Park will kill us.
“Park Bon-Hwa is a doctor. She’s sworn not to harm any under her care.”
She tries to split Us. It will not work. They are Many, but we are only Us. We will not die again.
“I’m sorry. Can we elaborate on that? You said that you’ve died before?”
Yes. The Thing Between the Stars. It almost killed Us. Voytek was killed. I lived. I saved Us.
“And now you’re sick? Is this a…residual side effect from your ‘death’ or something recent?”
Not sick. Hungry.
“You, uhm, I’m sorry, could you possibly sit back down? My suit isn’t ether resistant and I wouldn’t taste very good, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Wouldn’t you?
“Sybill, can you get Commander Elazar on standby? Officer Olejniczak, can you still hear me? Sybill!”
[The audio cuts out. There is nothing but silence and static for several long seconds. When the playback resumes, everything sounds far away and distorted. ]
“Voytek? Still with us?”
“Barely.”
“Can you stand?”
“No. Everything is…static. Can’t feel my legs. Or anything else.”
“I didn’t expect the new nullwave transmitters to be quite that powerful. Marra, get Dr. Niven up here.”
“Yes, Chief.”
“What the hell happened, Voytek?”
“Doctor talked with Janusz. Lost control. Will not happen again, commander.”
“It better not. We can’t afford to have you and Pollard both quarantined. That makes all three of you that have had 'incidents' now…What’s going on?”
“Something outside. It calls. It gets louder.”
END OF AUDIO PLAYBACK
Pages Navigation
Khrepta on Chapter 1 Wed 16 May 2018 09:04AM UTC
Comment Actions
MittensMcEdgelord on Chapter 1 Wed 30 May 2018 09:13PM UTC
Comment Actions
Emptypost_itNote on Chapter 1 Fri 31 Mar 2023 12:07AM UTC
Comment Actions
Ppleater on Chapter 1 Sat 29 Mar 2025 06:17AM UTC
Comment Actions
Shadehlyne on Chapter 2 Tue 19 Jun 2018 02:21AM UTC
Comment Actions
MittensMcEdgelord on Chapter 2 Sun 24 Jun 2018 03:20AM UTC
Comment Actions
Khrepta on Chapter 2 Tue 19 Jun 2018 09:30AM UTC
Comment Actions
MittensMcEdgelord on Chapter 2 Sun 24 Jun 2018 03:16AM UTC
Comment Actions
Ppleater on Chapter 2 Sat 29 Mar 2025 06:21AM UTC
Comment Actions
Khrepta on Chapter 3 Wed 25 Jul 2018 04:27PM UTC
Comment Actions
MittensMcEdgelord on Chapter 3 Tue 28 Aug 2018 06:08PM UTC
Comment Actions
azertyuiop (Guest) on Chapter 3 Thu 26 Jul 2018 03:59AM UTC
Comment Actions
MittensMcEdgelord on Chapter 3 Tue 28 Aug 2018 06:07PM UTC
Comment Actions
deo_niquette (Guest) on Chapter 3 Thu 26 Jul 2018 07:00AM UTC
Comment Actions
MittensMcEdgelord on Chapter 3 Tue 28 Aug 2018 06:02PM UTC
Comment Actions
summer_spiel on Chapter 3 Fri 27 Jul 2018 02:57PM UTC
Comment Actions
MittensMcEdgelord on Chapter 3 Tue 28 Aug 2018 06:02PM UTC
Comment Actions
Finn (Guest) on Chapter 3 Fri 24 Jan 2020 01:54AM UTC
Comment Actions
MittensMcEdgelord on Chapter 3 Tue 03 Mar 2020 04:58AM UTC
Comment Actions
chimpo on Chapter 3 Sun 14 Jul 2024 04:20PM UTC
Comment Actions
Murus on Chapter 3 Fri 30 Aug 2024 06:53PM UTC
Comment Actions
Ppleater on Chapter 3 Sat 29 Mar 2025 06:34AM UTC
Comment Actions
Khrepta on Chapter 4 Tue 28 Aug 2018 10:08PM UTC
Last Edited Tue 28 Aug 2018 10:09PM UTC
Comment Actions
MittensMcEdgelord on Chapter 4 Tue 18 Sep 2018 07:08AM UTC
Comment Actions
kujoestars on Chapter 4 Thu 30 Aug 2018 04:02AM UTC
Comment Actions
MittensMcEdgelord on Chapter 4 Tue 18 Sep 2018 07:06AM UTC
Comment Actions
swansong on Chapter 4 Sat 01 Sep 2018 03:33PM UTC
Comment Actions
MittensMcEdgelord on Chapter 4 Tue 18 Sep 2018 06:57AM UTC
Comment Actions
silverpaper_toffeepaper on Chapter 4 Fri 28 Dec 2018 11:51PM UTC
Comment Actions
MittensMcEdgelord on Chapter 4 Tue 19 Feb 2019 12:52AM UTC
Comment Actions
amazinmango on Chapter 4 Sun 28 Apr 2019 04:13AM UTC
Comment Actions
MittensMcEdgelord on Chapter 4 Thu 23 May 2019 04:19PM UTC
Comment Actions
amazinmango on Chapter 4 Mon 02 Dec 2019 12:16AM UTC
Comment Actions
MittensMcEdgelord on Chapter 4 Thu 09 Jan 2020 06:50AM UTC
Comment Actions
amazinmango on Chapter 4 Sun 26 May 2024 03:12PM UTC
Comment Actions
Ppleater on Chapter 4 Sat 29 Mar 2025 06:47AM UTC
Comment Actions
Pages Navigation