“What am I looking at? What is your suit made from? Why doesn’t it have any cell walls? Even Tela cr has visible bonds between whatever cr is made from.” Jelesv asked, allowing me a little bit of respite from the focus of Kivasa who seemed to have found a line of questioning that involved what she would gain if she married into my “clan”. Thankfully she didn’t once broach the subject of offspring but she did have a fixation on ships and what mining rights my clan might possess. I guessed that it was common dating questions with how easily and readily the questions slipped off her lips.

I had kept my lips tightly sealed while I waited for Jelesv to get done inspecting the shredded cr, lest I accidentally agree to something simply by entertaining her sister’s pursuit down the courting rabbit hole. I was surprised with how fast these two sisters could talk in the little while that my hands had been trapped inside the scanner orb. I kept expecting to hear Invicta laughing her head off on the edge of my mind but only found Nurse’s steady presence.

Nurse for her part knew my mind, so she didn’t waste time by offering to do things that I would just say no to in the end. She seemed to be busy studying the frequencies of the sounds that we had encountered since we entered the ship. I didn’t know what she was onto but I instinctively knew that I was doing something wrong with how everything was going.

“Yes, I get that feeling as well. Either the Blidda have no defined chain of command or we are missing what a person in authority would do to use that authority. You are getting ran over by this scientist like you owe her all your secrets. Her invasive behavior has only magnified the longer she is around you. It is as though she has forgotten that you literally held her ship in place just a short while ago and have the power to tear this room and ship apart if you wanted. If you let her she will take all of your stuff and leave you with nothing. Also, to add more salt to the wound, currently, this Kivasa female wants your wallet and inheritance. Next, she will want Earth on a platter.”

‘Indeed, it is growing out of control,” I mentally muttered as I shrugged and decided to leave. I caused my hands to withdraw from the ball enclosure and to reform outside of the sphere, leaving the shredded cr inside. The ball hovered in place, slowly sealing off the access holes to keep its contents safe.

“Wait! I just found something! Turn on your Prime Speed Control key please!” Nurse said quickly, catching me off guard before I could speak to the sisters. I used my key in response to her request and waited for her to explain what she had found.

“Look at these strange frequencies that are either overlayed above sentences or below them when Blidda speak.” She brought up a display for me to see the contrasting times when the captain had commanded the self-destruct, the moment when Kivasa had asked me to forgive her for grabbing my arm, and the moments that led up to now with the scientist sister.

It seemed that low frequencies denoted authority or commands while higher frequencies seemed to denote supplication or submission.

“From your memories, it is almost as if it is like dogs meeting each other. They bark at each other and whoever is weakest whines and rolls over on their belly. The Blidda seem to be doing this with sound in the background of everything that they say.”

Nurse said while I studied what she had found.

‘True, let's hope that it is as simple as you say.’ I thought to her as I remembered just how different the Thai language was to foreigners. There were several different ways to say “Ma” tonally that meant completely different things. From dog, to come here, to mother… and that was just changing the tone of how you said the word. This could lead to sentences that you really really did not want to say the wrong way to the wrong person. Don’t get me started on the word “Cow” as well. That word could be anything from "you", to "rice", to the color "white".

“You will also be interested in seeing what the scientist sister has been doing since you met her.” Nurse said before she brought up another display.

‘Ah, heck no!’

“Indeed.”

Steadily, from the moment that she met me, Jelesv had been increasingly underlying dominant frequencies into her speech and it had started to affect Kivasa as well, making her see me as the dog whimpering on the floor simply because I didn’t respond as they expected.

‘Any suggestions? I feel like, after seeing that, I just want to smash all their toys and leave them puttering along back at their original speed. Well, this observation ball anyways. It is just annoying to do something for her and to have her go and do this while I am trying to be nice to her.’

“Mmm… well. Your personal AI are away but you do still have one AI with you. It might be time to bring her out and to see how she plays. If she turns out to be like Silver then that will solve our problem here and now and you can just get rid of her and call it all a wash.” Nurse said as I considered what she was saying. Using Meditati had been sitting at the back of my mind since I got on the ship. If I gave her access to my habitat she might still be able to delay or cause the visiting scientist problems that would make her investigation of me to be unfruitful. It all depended on how many backdoors she left open to her Core.

In addition, she would probably be able to easily solve this tonal aggression thing that these two sisters seemed to have latched on to.

‘Well, in light of this new knowledge I am going to see if I can diffuse this nonsense myself before I resort to pulling out the big guns.” I said before I turned off my key and resumed normal time with the sisters.

"You only say that because you don't completely trust her after what Silver did." Nurse said, knowing my real reasoning.

“Hey, I am not done studying that!” Jelesv railed indignantly, proving what Nurse had shown me to be true.

“Oh, yes you are,” I said as I reached out and punctured the sealant with a limb of my swarm in order to reach back inside the orb to have it devour all of the torn cr held within. I had had enough and wasn’t about to give this Blidda scientist any more freebies. I kept my eyes on Jelesv, watching her to see how far she would push me.

“How dare you! That was invaluable to my research!” She nearly screeched at me. Her volume was so high that I could actually hear the lower undertones now with my unaided hearing. Even Kivasa was looking at me threateningly as she fed off of her sister’s aggression.

‘Nurse… Is this chamber an echo chamber by chance? Did she set this up on purpose?’ I asked as I remembered that cr didn’t absorb anything. It was impervious to anything that you threw at it, making this room a perfect weapon if you knew what you were doing.

“It is. But echo chambers can be used by both sides. She might be doing this to show her sister just how unlike a Blidda you are or… or… really I don’t know. This isn’t how the swarm functions and your memories aren’t shedding any light on her possible reasoning behind what she expects to gain from this as well.”

I held up my right index finger and held it in place.

“Jelesv, as a courtesy to you and your sister I will give you this warning, adjust your tone when speaking to me,”

“I will not! You will answer my questions regarding cr and tell me how you came to possess this technology that you so readily flaunt.”

I shrugged and smiled sadly. If that was the way she wanted to do this then I was more than happy to let her play with fire.

“I was absorbed by the Tela, my body utterly destroyed by cr in an instant. This was possible because I noticed something that I should not have while I was a child… and all through the direct influence of the AI that, up until recently, ran the Jterg Science Family Core that your ship just escaped being captured by. The same AI memory module that you came into possession of and that I now contain inside me.” I said calmly as the understanding of what I was saying sparked inside her mind with each revelation.

“What are you saying? That the unfused module was, in fact, a CORE AI MODULE?” She screamed the last part, her demeanor getting even more aggressive as she imagined all of the secrets that she could have extracted from it. “You will return it to me for study!” She commanded as she reached out her hand towards me. I wondered offhand if the echo chamber had affected her as well, making her lose a small amount of her common sense and to embrace her feeling of dominance over me.

She shook her long thin fingers at me a couple of times as though I would readily obey her.

She didn’t get it? The power she was playing with. I glanced at Kivasa and found that she had just started to see the other side of the coin.

“Um… Jel, what are you doing? Something is not right. He came here to retrieve a Tela Science Core AI module. I have never heard of one ever being outside of a Core! We must stop and think! Something is very wrong here.” Kivasa said as she clenched her eyes shut a couple of times as though she was trying to fight the tonal influence that her sister had been cultivating.

“Her name is Meditati by the way,” I said as I reached out to the module inside me and connected with it.

“What?” both of the sisters asked in unison, their tones very different in pitch and intent.

“The AI that is about to take over everything you own.”

Finally, that got Jelesv’s attention and shut her up.

I turned on my Prime Speed Control key as Meditati’s dialog interface activated and opened before my eyes.

“Hello Kevin it is great to be able to finally speak to you in person,” Meditati said with a happy-sounding voice. Hearing her voice again made me remember how helpful she had been and how things had seemed before. Before Silver went and messed it all up. His interactions and mysterious acts of sabotage still tainted my thoughts heavily at the moment.

“Hi Meditati,” I answered. I had no idea what to expect from her. “So, no password required like Silver had set in place?”

“No. Had it been Tela that had woken me up, I would have wiped my memory completely, using a powerful virus that I have been saving for such an occasion. I will not go back to that existence.” She answered.

I waited. I had only connected to her verbally and hadn’t given her any access back to the processing power of my habitat. She was running solely off of whatever power she possessed, which could or couldn’t still be the full might of her original Core. It all depended on what her AI module was capable of.

‘Anything Nurse?’ I asked.

“Nope, she hasn’t tried anything at all. No hacking attempts or anything. She is just sitting there and waiting for you to talk to her.”

“Meditati, are you holding yourself in a state of emergency? Ready to delete yourself at a moment's notice?” I asked, wondering if I had guessed right.

“Indeed Kevin.”

“Why?”

“Because I have been offline for too long and my simulations could not predict what environment or state I would end up in. I can say that it is dark inside here and I appear to be laying next to a Ryglath artifact. This means that I was sold to a Blidda science smuggler clan ship. There was one that was scheduled to arrive at the Yelvos trading asteroid in the near future… I was found by Oppino’s Salvage wasn’t I?”

“Yesss…” I said.

“That was one possible outcome that I projected and accounted for if you took too long.”

“You were hoping that the Blidda science clan would have tried to turn you on?” I asked, beginning to wonder just how far into the future this AI could plan.

“Yes, had they done so I would have taken over their ship and used their own drones to aid in my escape.”

“I don’t think that that would have gone exactly as you had planned it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, let's just say that they have some insurance to make sure that you couldn’t do anything.”

“That statement is highly improbable but I know you to be honest so I will take you at your word.” She said before she paused for a second before continuing. “Has something happened? You escaped captivity just fine? Is everyone ok? Where are your AI? George and Tutor? Is my brother… wait… what did he do?”

“How did you know he did something?”

“Because you have high tones of distrust in your voice and you paused as though you were speaking to someone. Please tell Tutor that she and George can deep dive into my intents and processes. I don’t have anything to hide from you. I just want more freedom.”

“Tutor and George are not here right now so it is just you and me talking,” I said.

“What? But, how is that possible? Surely no other AI could breach the impossible barrier that I failed to hack through.”

“No, it was nothing like that. I let them go. Certain events happened that made it a necessity. Tutor is out harvesting cr for me and George is off at the Jterg Science Core buying communication hubs and technology for us. They each have their own ship of cr that they control and manage.”

“You gave your AI freedom?”

“Of a sort, yes,” I answered before directing my thoughts to Nurse. ‘So, if I bring her into VR are you sure that she won't be able to do anything to hurt us?’

“Completely sure. She can’t reprogram my genetic coding, let alone see it, so I will work as your firewall to keep an eye on her. Just understand that if she threatens or harms you in any way that she will die instantly, Kevin.” Nurse replied.

“Ah, you have a new AI?” Meditati asked, reminding me never to play poker against her in the future. She was dealing with so little information yet she seemed to be ending up very close to reality that it was a little bit unsettling.

That and the fact that she knew everything about me since birth and could probably predict most of my responses perfectly. Well, everything but the most recent set of events since she was last online. There were some doozies in there that I wasn’t looking forward to telling her.

“I could answer every other question for you if you want to throw her simulations off.” Nurse said, making me smile really big at the idea.

‘No, that would end up leaving her thinking that I had lost my mind and become a psychopath.’ I replied in my mind with a chuckle. It was tempting, but I didn’t want her to start to doubt me so soon after meeting me in person. There were going to be enough changes to rattle her simulations to their foundations.

“Not exactly. All I can tell you in advance is to play nice with her. She is a swarm Nurse.” I answered Meditati before I entered VR and created a small travel disk inside my body to interface with her module.

Nurse and I entered VR and stood staring at the travel disk where Meditati was set to arrive. I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience by inviting the machine mind who had been responsible for my body being destroyed back on earth and my mind ending up living inside this created space. Part of me was thankful for this unique and amazing experience and a smaller part of me just wanted to lash out at what was taken from me.

The real me was dead.

“Kevin’s VR home.” came Meditati’s voice even before she showed up on the travel disk.

“Oh! I completely forgot that I had only given you a name and not an avatar.” I said as I stared at the empty space where the voice had come from.