Today's Reading
She lifted the shoe and scooped Mobius into her hand. He was a golden orb with a green sheen, and was starting to develop lines indicating a hatch and small bumps-where wings might grow? engines? She had no idea.
"What am I going to do with you? Do you want more food?"
He chirped happily, then flew straight at her forehead. She had a moment to say, "No, wait—" before everything went dark.
Did Mobius knock me unconscious?
Mallory couldn't open her eyes, but she was far from knocked out. The buzzing of the Sundry on the station echoed loudly, and her connection with them felt stronger. Easy.
Am I dead?
The buzzing became words she could understand. Not at all. We took the moment of your dazed situation to try to connect again. This is much preferable. We recommend this in the future.
Beaning myself with a steel ball? That won't be sustainable.
Regrettable. Was that amusement from the swarm coloring that word? This newer hivemind was much different than the one that got wiped out a few months ago. They felt less stodgy, more flexible, and easier to talk to. They were still alien as hell, though.
The swarm picked up on her thought. Sundry colonies that become processing power for ships and stations don't have a lot of agency themselves. The entity forms its own personality. But when we built the current hivemind, it was done in a new way, so we and the station may act in new ways.
You're not going to override the station, are you? Mallory asked. Cause we already dealt with that, and it's not fun.
No. That's not in our nature. The voice sounded a tad offended that Mallory would think that Sundry would stoop to the antics of their subspecies, the Cuckoos, which had overtaken the station after murdering the hivemind.
"I know, I get it, sort of, I just don't get it, you know?" Mallory said, then realized she had spoken aloud. She opened her eyes and sat up rubbing her head.
"You little jerk," she said, wincing as she touched the bump. She sighed and pushed her hair out of her eyes. She really needed a haircut.
Mobius had wormed his way into her hoodie's pocket, making her feel like a kangaroo. He liked to sleep there. "I'll deal with you later," she muttered.
The swarm crawled over her chair still, as if waiting. Their conversation wasn't over. "If Sundry swarms have personalities, like you do, then why doesn't the station's personality come from their swarms?"
"Where do human personalities come from?" the swarm buzzed audibly.
"I don't know that either," Mallory said. "The brain, I guess, which is the closest we have to a hivemind. But no hive."
A chime sounded from her front door. She got off the floor and yelled for the living room door to open.
A tall bald Black man, wearing glasses and a gray army shirt, walked in, his eyebrow cocked.
"You okay, Mal?" he asked. He pointed to her forehead.
"The bangs don't cover it?" Mallory asked, pushing more hair into her eyes, and then reflexively pushing it back. She sighed. "So what's up?"
He crossed his arms. "You forgot again, didn't you?"
Forgot? Oh, no. She thought hard. Two days ago Xan had said their Gneiss friends Stephanie and Ferdinand were coming aboard the station to visit and they should meet at Ferdinand's bar to catch up. That, she realized, was going to happen tonight. She whipped her head around to her bedside table, but Mobius had knocked her alarm clock off it. "Oh, God, what time is it?"
...
