“Can you generate an avatar of yourself via my HUD?” I asked. “Hypothetically.”
Cathida cackled over the comms, “Hypothetically? Why yes, Journey could. And why would you ask for sothing like that deary? Do you know just how much more insulting I could get with hands and fingers to use?”
We’d been running for about an hour now in the proper direction for the Icon. As I’d asked before how long it would take, the tir said nine hours of leisurely jogging before we’re out of the infected territory, or five hours of a mad no-holds-barred full out sprint. Except that would eat up a lot of Journey’s power.
“I am aware of what I’m asking for and the sacrifices it’ll demand of .” I said, in my most stoic voice possible. “But if I am to glare at you properly, I need a target. And I really need to glare at you right now for what you last said.”
“As you command, m’lord.” Cathida said, the devil shaking my hand with a bargain complete.
Since I still needed Journey’s power after we left the infestation’s ho turf, given it has minions out there beyond the range of it’s airborne spores, I needed to be able to fend those off. And while running around for eight hours, one tends to get bored. Which ans chatting with Cathida and swapping insults to pass the ti.
One thing led to another, and I’m once more making questionable decisions.
“No take-back-sies deary.” She said, and appeared at my side.
I’d expected sothing mundane, like she popped into existence without fanfare. But no, this was Cathida, and so she descended down from the heavens with golden wings and landed far ahead of into one dramatic landing. On hand nearly behind her back while the other was holding her stabilized on the ground between her feet.
From that dramatic pose she rightened herself up, lording over imperiously, white hair drifting slightly in the non-existent breeze, along with her cape. “Fear not, deary. For I have arrived.” She called out.
It was an identical copy of Journey’s armor. Except the colors were back to their default gold, red and fancy decorations. A lot of cloth, a lot of paper dangling from wax purity seals, and so red hair of so kind of animal on the side of her shoulder pad.
She also wasn’t wearing a helt, which let see her face as she’d been before she died. A nearly dried up husk of an old lady, with eyes deeply sunken in.
I jogged up to her and she turned without a word, jumping down the small hill she’d landed and starting a brisk jog ahead.
It was a jarring see her run because her face made her look so utterly frail, and yet she was jumping and doing flips over the path, keeping up without breaking a sweat.
“Before you accuse of cheating, the real Cathida would absolutely do acrobatics on a whim, especially during spars or bouts with pleshsquires that needed a lesson in humility. Not much argunt cos from being beaten by an old lady who pulled the most utterly unnecessary moves, simply to show you she could and still win.”
“No wonder you and Teed get along like two bandits raiding a chicken coop.” I said.
“Oh I do quite like him, yes.” She said with a nod. “Now, we were discussing?”
“Right, right.” I said, tapping my head quickly to jog my mory. “I was just about to give you a writhing glare.”
I did so. And of course, she answered with a finger along with her typical cackle. The next half hour passed in amicable chatter and talking, up until sothing interesting happened.
“It is oddly comforting to have company next to again.” I said with a shrug while I continued my perfectly normal and adequate jogging, that did not have any flips, dives, rolls or jumping between trees. Because unlike her, I was actually draining my power slowly and conserving energy was important.
“Except I’m not here of course, not truly.” Cathida said, vanishing behind a tree and reappearing from a completely different one. “Just post-processing by Journey. Take your helt off and I’ll vanish with it.”
“If I take my helt off here, I’m pretty certain I’ll die.”
“Mostly certain. We can’t tell for sure what type of biological fungus is in the air, only that it’s there and doing creepy things.”
“Doing creepy things?” I asked.
“Oh you know, floating around and being a nace. That.” She huffed, looking imdiately away, her own jogging returning back to a standard cadence.
She didn’t say anything else. Which was incredibly suspicious from Cathida.
“What, exactly, is the spore cloud of death doing around us right now?” I asked, making it clear that wasn’t a request.
She sighed, and gave a tut. “Goddess’s golden tits, why am I cursed with pyrite in my tongue?”
“Cathida.”
She tutted again, spitting on the ground. “Fine. You’d have asked eventually, or Journey would have eventually alerted you. And to put gold down on the table, I’d wanted to ignore it knowing how you’d react…”
“I’m sensing a grudging ‘but.’ here.”
She rolled her eyes. “But… There is an oddity. Concentration buildup around you goes up and down. In a pattern.”
“A pattern? So kind of weakness to it? Post it up on the HUD, I’m a pretty good eye with patterns.”
Another sigh. “Before your curiosity gets the better of you, I’ll remind you the obvious: this is a bioweapon. Keep the curiosity to a reasonable level.”
“It’s more than just a pattern isn’t it.”
“It is.” She shrugged her shoulders, looking off to her side in a what-can-you-do gesture. “Journey has narrowed it down to morse code.”
I almost stumbled on my steps here. Three gods above, it’s trying to communicate using morse code. “Morse code? What kind of ratshit is that. And it’s doing that by spiking the concentration of spores around ? That’s insane. What’s it said so far?”
“Only three words so far, the sentence repeated twice over now. Takes it nine minutes to fully write them all out. ‘M-i-k space h-e-y-r-i-o space p-e-r’ Journey’s thinking it’s an attempt to make morse code’s alphabet fit the Odin’s old norse. Likely what the words actually should be are ‘Mik heyrið þér.’ Which ans… ‘Can you hear ?’”
“Three gods in an airspeeder, how certain are you about this?”
“It’s slower than a priest getting paperwork done, but it’s been highly consistent over the past half hour now. That it repeated the sa words multiple tis takes it from a coincidence to an intentional item. On the fourth attempt to repeat itself, Journey would have pinged you a comms request, as its confidence interval that this is a ssage would have hit one hundred percent, the damn snitch.”
Which ans the infestation here was both aware I was walking through the territory, and trying to find a way to speak to .
The scary part was that it wasn’t in my language, it was in the Odin’s language, converted through morse code.
Which also ans it’s been watching talk with the Odin. And knew enough about to know this would be a potential way to speak. Or it had no other way to speak and was just throwing snow into the snowstorm. Because why not?
I stopped in my tracks and debated how to answer back. Or if I even should. But ultimately, having a way to speak to your enemy is important. It opens up new options I wouldn’t have had before.
“Journey how do you say and write ‘yes’ in old norse? Not sure how to talk back to this, it doesn’t have a comms address, but it knows I’m here walking through it’s cloud. Might be a tactile feedback, like a blind person reading a ssage using their fingertips. I’ll scribble my answer on the ground.”
“Já.” Cathida said, and then rubbed her foot right on the ground in front of , leaving a glowing orange trail under her boot. All superimposed by the HUD, so I knelt down and scribbled the two symbols into the ground. “You’ll also want to write it in morse code too, just in case. I’ll show you the pattern.”
She did. I wrote it down. That said, I wasn’t going to stick around here for an answer. The bioweapon wasn’t going to con into wasting my power waiting for a fat cricket’s escape attempt.
“For all we know it might not be able to see stuff written down. Think we might have to communicate back with it using othe- nope. It’s noticed.”
“How do you know?”
“Pattern started up, and halfway through writing out the letter M, it completely stopped. Right when you wrote down your answer in morse.”
I felt a nervous laugh bubble up. Creepy was not sothing I expected coming down here. Danger? Sure. Fights? Absolutely. Creeping horror? Not on my expectation sheet. “All right, let’s get this ball rolling. How do you write “Can you cease hostilities?” in morse code Odin?”
She showed , and I hastily scribbled it out on the dirt in front of , before we continued off.
The infestation answered back. Slowly. One letter over ti, often taking a minute for each letter.
“No war wanted.” The ssage appeared over my HUD, each letter being added as Journey recognized it.
That was... welco to see. Finally sothing that didn’t want to pick violence as the number one way forward. I'm especially happy because this particular danger couldn't be stabbed to death, which was my number one thod of dealing with danger. “So why can’t you just… you know, stop trying to kill everything?”
“Unfair.” Was the answer back. “Need sustenance.”
Lot of ways to interpret that. But I think I could guess what it ant to say: I ate and killed a lot of things so that I could continue to live. Nature was like that. Why is it fair for to be eating insects but not fair for it to be eating ? However… “Other predators eat what they need and don’t break the entire environnt.” I said, “Might be a little bit of a difference there.”
“Dilema.” It said. Which I think ant agreent. “Am parasite. Short term gain. Long term loss. Dood. Seek balance.”
“You think it's incapable of stopping?” Cathida asked, and I gave her a shrug as answer.
“I think that’s the issue. At least it’s looking for a way out. How do you write ‘how long have you been aware for?’
It was agonizing watching the letters slowly file in. But the answer slowly ca. Cathida told it could easily auto-complete so of the words, but then I’d need to wait a full five or ten minutes for the infestation to get to the next word.
So I wrote the autocomplete words on the ground and it seed to understand imdiately, because words ca faster now.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“No thoughts years. Chance survived. t Odin. Beca aware. Know more. Seek symbiosis. Long term survival.”
It was still a long process and took a half hour to fully write out. “I get the gist of what it’s saying, very choppy though.” I humd as Cathida and I talked it out. “We have got to find a better way to talk than this ga of comms scramble.” It was nearing night now, which ant absolutely nothing to . I wasn’t going to stop walking until I was out of this miasma, and had the infestation burned away.
It might be chatty, but that doesn’t an it wanted for more than my personality. I was a tasty snack to it, and in all the wrong ways.
“Don’t look at deary.” Cathida said. “I’m not the one with the creative ideas, I just make fun of them.”
“There might be a way to speed this up.” I took a quick pause to vault over a tree, of which my hand outright sank into the trunk for a mont, a puff of dust coming from the rotting bark. I may have scread in horror and surprise. “That, I don’t want to know what’s actually going on inside the trees, co to think of it. They look fine from the outside, so let’s just pretend that didn’t happen and keep going. Right. So. Where was I? We have technology. Specifically a hyper intelligent armor that’s capable of generating speech. Wiggle room here I’d think.”
My gauntlet was still dripping with tree gunk, or whatever it was that had been under the surface of the bark and spore cloud. I didn’t want to wipe that on my cloth either, and tapping the trees here also felt like a bad idea. Eventually had to scrape it on the ground while I talked shop with Journey and Cathida.
“All ears for whatever mad sche you have planned.” Cathida said, her avatar just ahead of , guiding my path. “Should be funny at the very least.”
“Journey’s good with languages. And interpretation. So how about it listens, and then asks a few yes or no questions to clarify aning using its spirit to eat or not eat the spore cloud around us. And have our potential friend here answer back with one-letter yes or no answers. Sothing it can do quickly. Once Journey’s ninety percent certain it’s got the ssage correct, it’ll translate it all into a more detailed full sentence. Is that doable?”
“Assuming no-na cooperates with that, and that you keep running so that there’s always spores in the air for Journey to burn through. I don’t see why not try.” Cathida said, shrugging. “Eating spores requires very little energy consumption given how small they are, it’s the sa process that’s converting the air into oxygen for you.”
It took an hour to setup, mostly telling the idea to the infestation and having it answer back in affirmative or negative. But we managed it.
“This arrangent is acceptable.” The voice was disembodied, almost echoey. Wrapped in a way. Gender was completely impossible to tell of course, which fit a sentient bioweapon of fungal spores. It felt like static insanity itself was speaking to , in a way that didn’t grate on my ears or drive insane. Journey was certainly creative here with the voice acting. “The followup questions are not difficult, and I find it refreshing and easy to narrow down my aning. My attempt to speak to you has been extrely fruitful thus far. I am most appreciative.”
“There’s still going to be a bit of a delay,” Cathida warned, “Even if it sounds fluid when all put together. But your friend here can speak in more one-word answers and Journey will handle figuring out what they’re trying to say and expand it into a full thought.”
“I guess we should introduce ourselves then? All right here goes. Greetings unnad infestation, I am Keith Winterscar, a human. What’s your na?”
“I have no na.” The voice answered after about three minutes. “The idea of a na is interesting. I am aware you are human. I am known to the Odin as the infestation. Suggest a na to refer to as.”
“Infesty.” I imdiately said. “Or better yet, Infesty the Pesty. Rolls off the tongue”
“Doesn’t quite exist in ancient norse.” Cathida said. “Jokes don’t translate all too well with what we have to work with.”
“Stinky? There had to be so kind of foul slling thing in the past and ancient humans needed to have a word for that.”
“I weep for the future.” Cathida answered.
“Fine. Let’s call him Bob.”
“Deary, it’s an ancient bioweapon that’s gained sentience.” Cathida said, “There’s quite a lot of mythological tales and nas we could put into him. Letum, one of the old gods of death and decay before the golden goddess purged him from power. Or Viduus, the river of death one must cross to reach the golden fields, the last of twelve trials lost souls must complete.”
“I never took you for a romantic type.”
She scoffed. “I’ll remind you I was imperial, you know. Have so consideration.”
“Ah. Grand nas and gold. Right.”
“And what nas are you contemplating? Ohm? Mandelbrot? Icelicker? Calculus? Ration bar?”
“I’ll double down on Bob.”
“Bob.” She deadpanned, now giving a flat glare.
“Bob.” I confird. “It’s a good na for a giant fungal bioweapon built to destroy entire stratas, now with sentience.”
“I’ll let the giant fungal bioweapon know your suggestion.”
She did. As it turned out, Bob agreed to the na, because it ended up being three letters and easy to sound out. It also didn’t care about having a grand sounding na, or anything like that. Which Cathida didn’t approve by nature. And pointed that Bob didn’t have much of an ego or a sense of pride.
“All right Bob, now that we know each other a bit better, would it be too much to ask you not to absolutely murder the scrap out of the mont I take a single breath of air or try to drink water? Help a pal out.”
Journey helpfully relayed my sentence over by fluctuating its spirit to eat and let live a few sections of the air around as we ran by. Even with chanical precision, it still couldn’t transmit the ssage with great speed. Partly because there’s a limit to how fast Bob could recognize morse code.
But we did get an answer about ten minutes later, which ant it was saying a lot. “No. I am unable to halt my biological functions.” It started. “I am able to reason and strategize my ultimate path forward. Yet small details such as where my spore clouds drift or what they do when within a host’s body is not sothing I have control over. It is akin to your heart. Moving on its own without your direct command.”
I drumd my fingers together as I continued to follow Cathida’s avatar out of the territory. “How are you actually speaking right now if you don’t have control over your spore cloud?”
It was kind of a neat way to spend ti all in all. I’d run for a few minutes while Bob would be busy trying to sound out one or two word answers, which Journey would then dig into and elaborate into sothing more formal sounding.
“I find a similar taphor to be speech.” Bob said. “Breathing is part of your nature. Speaking is not. There are cases where breathing can be dangerous to the host. As such animals developed the ability to control that function. But by manipulating natural selection’s offer to its full potential, you create speech, an unintended addition. So too, do I. There are tis when continuing to produce spores does not benefit my function, and is a waste of resources. Such as tis when I feel no animal hosts in my domain, or sense already weak and sickly hosts that will not require overproduction. That requires consideration, and so is left under my control. In such monts, I will decrease production to conserve resources. I have taken this ability and forced its use, increasing or decreasing overall production nearby to speak to you.”
That was… very eloquent. Almost poetic, coming from such a distorted and eldrich voice. Journey was good at the job of translating. There’d been so back and forth between Journey and Bob about it before Bob was satisfied by the answer, clearly.
“All right, that’s rather unfortunate. What do we do about this Bob? Because I don’t want to die and neither do you.”
“I am a parasite to my environnt.” Bob said. “If the host a parasite feeds on dies, then the parasite equally withers away. I seek to change my relationship to my environnt. Change into sothing more symbiotic, or in balance. I can contain my craving to eat wildlife, but I cannot contain my spores from infecting flora. Airborne spores will naturally radiate outwards, and then slowly suffocate the area over ti. It is most distressing.”
“So you’re reaching out to right now for what? Help?”
I got the fastest answer back, within ten seconds. “Yes.”
Cathida sat on a log up ahead, tapping her leg as if waiting for to catch up. “Makes sense to . Bob sounds a little desperate.”
“Bob here has been terrorizing the locals for a few decades to be fair." I said, passing by her. "Let’s ask more about what it’s hoping to accomplish by communicating with . I’m just one lone human in the grand sche of things.”
Journey did exactly that, and soon enough I got the answer from Bob. “The Odin and other allied intelligent lifeforms are failing to contain . When they leave or succumb, I will expand outwards without stop until all suitable environnts nearby are taken, and then I will starve. As I am unable to self-regulate, I was not designed to. Their assistance could be vital for my survival. Communication with them has been not possible. Communication with you is. And I have seen you are able to communicate with them. I require your assistance.”
“There’s no way Bob said all of that. How much of it are you embellishing?” I asked.
Cathida cackled. “A slight bit. Perhaps. But Journey’s quite certain this is what Bob is saying, and it’s also trying to get a speech cadence down for it. The armor’s quite determined to follow through on what you ordered for to the spirit of the command.”
“So… if I ordered Journey to try to care about more things than just keeping safe, it’ll do that too?”
“Don’t press your luck. You already got for company.”
“And Bob now. Who may or may not be plotting to kill , we’re still figuring that out. Ahem, for my next question to Bob: Why can’t you talk with the Odin? You said you got sentience of so kind when you collided with them, so I’m assuming you already infected one of them. Can’t have your captive go out and talk for you?”
Again, I sped past the ground for so ti before the synthesized voice echoed in my speakers. “No. I do not function with this amount of control. I can cause vague compulsions over a long period of ti, or influence strong primal feelings. They hear voices and whispers of their own making in response to my existence. Warped by their own decaying mind and instability. None of those I infect can be directly controlled or behave as true thralls.”
“It’s highly aware of what happens when it infects sothing. Good data.” Cathida said, “Make sure you stand in a fire for a few minutes after we’re out of this clearing, don’t want to bring Bob anywhere else.”
“I’m getting that sa idea.” I muttered. “Bob’s not great for social gatherings. Let ask it this, what exactly can Bob control once it’s inside a host? And how does that clash with sothing more intelligent than an insect?”
Journey relayed the ssage and fifteen minutes later I got an answer. “I control desires, influence a sense of direction and feelings. Such as a feeling of what is and is not a threat. An intelligent mind cannot be overwritten. Only influenced, and to a far less predictable degree than a re animal. My influence corrupts. The more I press, the less focused they beco.”
That sounds… horrifying. Bob was describing its effects on intelligent minds like it was so kind of progressive ntal disease. I don’t know what would be worse, having my head taken over by a parasite and loosely controlled against my will, or having my will itself start to degrade without even knowing or understanding what was going on.
How would that even work when I can step outside of my body using the soul fractal even? Would I be immune to Bob’s machinations or instead find insanity following behind when I stepped out of my body?
In effect, looking for Bob through the soul fractal, I could see absolutely nothing. Just trees, rocks, and myself. No insects or animals were around here, not even under the soil.
“How did you learn morse code of all things?” I asked Bob.
“I influenced an Odin to write their alphabet, and the morse codes under each letter, along with other thods of communication that I might reuse at a later ti, such as wing symbols and other languages. He did so, a few hundred tis across the vale for three weeks before succumbing to starvation. His beak was too worn down to be used for anything else, including eating. Enough word examples remained etched permanently in stone to remain useful.”
Am I inside a gods damned nightmare? “... I have no words for how horrifying that sounds. And the longer I think about it, the worse it gets. Bob, you’re really not making a case for yourself here. You said vague compulsions before, that's not vague at all. Sounds more like you tortured him to death."
“He did not suffer, he was not lucid enough to understand such things near the end of his life. In the monts he was aware enough, he was too preoccupied with writing to care about his decaying condition.”
“Bob, I know you just discovered how to talk to… well anyone, but there are so things you should keep to yourself. This is really, really not helping you case out.”
“Elaborate.” Bob answered.
"How do I even begin with that?" I took a pause, hands by my head, thinking about how I would even start this. "Okay, first - Do you understand basic morality?"
"I understand it in the sa way you understand mathematics." Bob said. Which showed he was aware of morality and one step further: He also guessed I wouldn't understand how he viewed morality, and gave a very good taphor to help along.
An update to his title then: A highly intelligent psychopathic bioweapon.
"All right, so you understand morality, just several steps and one strata removed from it. Can you offer any defence on why driving an intelligent bird to starvation isn't a little on the evil side? Must have been in utter despair during the last weeks of his life."
"His death was far removed from what would be expected of a prey species." Bob said. "There was no panic, pain or fear. Those would have distracted him from his purpose, I subdued those emotions until they no longer existed. Peace, purpose and pride assisted him for my task, I influenced those until they were at their highest. To his senses, he was chiseling art unlike any he'd ever seen in his life. The final weeks of his life may have been the only ones he felt true purpose and joy in his work. Nature itself holds an objectively crueler hand than mine."
"Sohow I get the feeling that you didn't set those up to make his life better or be a little better than nature's eat or be eaten. Just a coincidence that the optimal path also had at least so hint of rcy to it?"
"You are correct, it is a byproduct of the best route available to . However, if following your morality and minimizing suffering increases cooperation with you and the Odin, I will engage more deliberately in this direction."
"That's a good, uh, start." I said. There was still the deliberate brainwashing and ntal tampering that left a seriously creepy note to the whole thing, but at least now literal death by Bob is a little less terrifying.
"Define your standards of suffering given exposure." The highly pragmatic intelligent psychopathic bioweapon asked as if it were a normal question.
...
Yesterday I had to deal with an ancient machine goddess who’d been busy wiping out the human race. Today I find myself having to work basic morality to an eldritch environntal disaster. And tomorrow I might be speaking to the last living true AI from an ancient golden era of humanity, who likely won’t be able to speak to normally either without trying to sell a service package from a long dead tourism company.
Life is getting really weird these days and I don’t even know who to complain about it to.
My talks with Bob ca to an end faster than I had anticipated. Because the end of his territory ca into view. In the form of a giant burned down scar that stretched farther than I could see. What looked to be miles of ash and burned down tree remnants.
The Odin did not fuck around when it ca to keeping Bob away.
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