***Tirnanog, Mount Aerie***

***Astra***

“I was just channelling my inner Dr. Frankenstein!” Magnus explained while the family was sitting around the mansion's dining table.

Normally, I had always been sitting next to my parents, but with Magnus’s arrival, the sitting order had been changed up to avoid mistakes with the food.

In the middle of the huge table, we had a pot with stew from which everyone could eat. In addition, Magnus and I had our separate selection of meats while Mom and Dad had their own across from us.

Magnus’s prize, the ratkin core, was also on display – a macabre trophy which ruled tonight’s topic.

“You could have told me what you were trying to do!” Etan complained. “Instead, you just went and mutilated a corpse like some madman! While everyone was watching you!”

I lifted the fork and took a bite from my medium raw hornhop steak. It was a welcome addition to my dull meat diet thanks to partnering up with Magnus. While the others bickered, I chewed slowly and enjoyed the show.

“Technically, it wasn't a corpse, or I wouldn't have been able to monitor the necessary nerve signals to keep the core running. The creature's nervous system is giving off a constant 'I am alive' notice. Without it, the cores just shut down. Assuredly to prevent outsiders from using them,” Magnus explained. “And I have to say it was quite the overreaction when you slapped the core out of my hand and swore everyone to secrecy.”

“The pioneers from the seventh were about to arrive!” Etan exclaimed. “I don't expect the information ban to hold for more than a week before rumours begin making the rounds. Do you have any idea how big this is?”

He shook his head. “If we can utilize a dead creature's core... it could jump-start our way back to high technology! And you went and demonstrated it in front of a hundred people!”

“Hold your horses.” Magnus raised a hand. “First, it was an experiment. I didn't even know whether it would work. And if I understood correctly, then you guys don't even know what half the cores inside a monster do. These heart-pumps are obvious, but I don't get what the smaller ones are for. Not at all.”

“Did it ever occur to you to think about what it would have looked like if the experiment hadn’t worked?” Etan narrowed his eyes. “I remember you asking questions about cores! Hasn’t anyone told you about the worms? If you could take one over-”

“Of course, I have,” Magnus rebuked him. “I also remember Gilbert mentioning lots of your people dying due to the radiation afterwards. I am not going anywhere near those things unless you find one dying of old age.”

Mother rubbed her temple and winced. “You said that you would take him out to gather some reputation among the hunters. Not start a rumour mill about him being either the greatest prodigy our strata has or a total nut-job. Have you at least closed the breach?”

Etan waved the matter off. “The pioneers closed the ratkin’s tunnel without further problems.” Then he turned on me. “Astra, say something! He is your partner.”

I slowly swallowed my meat before I spoke. “Actually, I recognized the reference for what it was. I vaguely remember watching Frankenstein with my biological parents back on Earth.”

“See?” Magnus patted my head. “I honestly thought about calling out 'Heureka!', but figured it wouldn't fit the situation. My other line was 'Kali Ma!' from Indiana Jones. Or ‘Kano wins!’, but I thought it even less likely for anyone to get the reference.”

“Either of those would have made you sound like some creepy cultist,” I pointed out. “Nine out of ten people wouldn't have understood it. Maybe none at all. I am glad you chose to quote Frankenstein.”

Mother groaned. “Don't encourage him, Astra!”

I lightly chopped his forehead. “Bad Magnus! You should have understood that Etan was trying to build up your reputation and acted all proper.”

Magnus shrugged. “I can live with going down in the annals of history as the one who gave cores a better purpose than mere feed for a smelter.”

I thought so too. Magnus and I had to do some extraordinary things if we ever wanted to step out of my parents' shadow.

But Etan's and Teresa's point of view was also understandable. “Mom, Dad, I understand where you two are coming from, but maybe you are seeing the situation a little too much from an elder's point of view. You two are essentially immortal. Even if you are trying to raise us as potential successors, it will be quite some time before we have to take over. At least I hope so. In the meantime, we have to forge our own path to gain recognition.”

I turned to my partner. “Magnus, I think it wasn't quite the publicity disaster my parents are making it out to be. One bad rumour about you won’t change much in the long run.”

He smiled lovingly at me.

“But don't do something like that at a public announcement like the annual festival where thousands of people would be watching you. Or I will strangle you myself,” I added, deadly serious.

He stopped smiling.

Teresa let out an exasperated sigh. “I suppose you are right, Astra. We don’t even know yet what types of rumours will come out of this. Maybe the tale of his prowess will outweigh his odd behaviour.”

“I also would like to point out that we can use this.” I reached for the cleaned ratkin core on the table and inserted my filaments just as Magnus had shown me.

It started pumping flawlessly once I began supplying it with power and added the code sequence which gave the ‘alive’ notification.

I returned my attention to my partner. “Magnus, I think with this and my pregnancy we have enough political capital to share ‘it’.”

My partner frowned and looked at my parents before he returned his attention to me. “Are you sure?”

“I am certain, Magnus.” I turned the core in my hands. “This is huge and it's something nobody can take away from us. Maybe we can even incorporate this into the weave and make ourselves even more powerful once Gilbert finishes the armour sets. The potential alone will make the elders hesitate to steal anything from you or me. They would have to be afraid of what we might become in the future. At the same time, we are also not yet in a position to threaten anyone. This would be the perfect time for negotiations with the elders on equal terms – to not cause any unnecessary animosities between us. We will still have to live here, even after forcing their hands.”

Mother dropped her fork and groaned. “What did you do, Astra?”

I didn’t tell her anything but instead waited for my partner’s approval.

Magnus took my hand and smiled while he communicated with our new secret technique. It was something only the two of us knew about. ‘If you say so. I trust your judgement in this, Astra.’

I turned to face my mother. “I want you to know that, at first, we held this information back not only to protect you two and keep our cards close to the chest but also because we didn’t know its value. To a large degree, we still do not. It was so you two would have the protection of plausible deniability if something slipped out. And-”

They had to understand why I had chosen to withhold this.

“It’s also Magnus’s ace to force the clan to help him rescue his remaining sister. And before you complain, it was my idea not to share the information with anyone before we could confirm its worth.”

Etan raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

Once I had their full attention, I dove in. “We told you about Magnus’s history with the organisation. What we didn’t tell you is that he managed to smuggle a nanolight storage chip with him when he left Earth. It contains all the step by step information to lift Tirnanog to Earth’s technology standards.”

My parents only blinked and stared on in incomprehension, so I decided to drop the final bomb before they could understand what this meant.

“Additionally, it has the master password to reactivate the colony’s central supercomputer and some days ago I verified it’s still working and connected to our power grid. With it, we should be able to read all the information on the chip at the very least. Maybe, we can even use it to reactivate some of the old tech we have in storage.”

“Supercomputer?” Teresa asked, confused. “Where do we have a Supercomputer?”

“It’s an industrial high-end device,” Magnus explained. “Practically impossible to destroy, since its original purpose was deep-sea mining. All the original colonies received one. The government sent it with the first colony some three hundred years ago, probably because repurposing the device was cheaper than designing something new. It’s the big obsidian podium on which the gathering’s chairmen are sitting.”

My mother looked into the distance and scratched her cheek. “So that’s why Astra was suddenly so eager to be my scribe. I didn’t know. How is it possible that we were sitting on such a thing all this time? I was born and grew up in Aerie. What I don’t understand is why the Ortegas didn’t transport it into their vaults. They are supposed to archive all the old tech for the good of all.”

Etan snorted. “Have you seen how big that podium is? You would have to break open the entire entrance to the Hall of Law. The original settlers must’ve let it down through one of the large airshafts when they built the place. And if Magnus is right, then the families and stratas didn’t exist at the time. I bet the original colonists simply abandoned the device when Earth shut down all the computer systems. And then they got gradually replaced with newcomers and we forgot.”

He looked at me. “You said it still works? How’s that possible after all this time?”

Magnus shrugged. “It’s not surprising. The mining platforms which these devices were built for were intended to be submerged in the ocean and forgotten. They would independently mine the ocean floor for decades or centuries and the investors would reap the benefits. The computer was built with a Type III specification. This means it’s completely hermetically sealed and its components have a military rating with backup systems. Having it in the air in a dry space puts practically no stress on it, extending its lifetime. What I don’t understand is why it would still have power. My people expected it to stand forgotten in some corner if it hadn’t been destroyed by force. The greatest worry was that we would have to find a way to power it.”

“That surprised me too,” I added. “I expected someone to cut the power line if it isn’t in use. The wires and metals should be too valuable to be left alone.”

Dad tilted his head. “That’s only true in part. Nobody would have destroyed the Hall of Law to loot some old cables. When the systems went down people surely had other worries than switching off and disconnecting all the old power lines to devices they thought to be inactive anyway. I must admit I am not well versed in this topic, but I also figure nobody had the ability to check where most of the energy went once they managed to rig up the new power generators. I know, the Torres like to make it sound like they have everything in order, but the truth is that they still don’t know where all the power lines are installed. The architectural plans for the colony were lost together with everything else when the systems shut down…”

We discussed the topic further but concluded that the only possibility to find out for sure was to log in to the computer system. Etan thought it likely enough that the computer still had some old, long-forgotten power connection.

According to him, the Hall of Law had been the colony’s central control hub once. Beneath the marble floor lay a Gordian’s Knot worth of cables and other stuff.

The maintenance crews from the third pulled out old stuff now and then, but since it was the Hall of Law most of the surrounding infrastructure had been lying untouched.

Once we concluded dinner, I took Magnus with me to my next check-up at the hospital where we met up with Thalia.

“You want me to cut a microchip out of you?” Thalia regarded Magnus with a mocking expression. “I know you are some kind of spy, but this is movie material. I suppose I am not allowed to tell my parents about it?”

“Just tell them that I will explain during tomorrow’s gathering at the Hall of Law,” I told Thalia.

“So it’s something big,” my friend concluded.

I had no illusions about her and her parents sharing everything sooner or later due to their unique mental abilities. But it was unlikely for the Tates to cause any trouble if they were promised their questions would be answered at the next meeting.

“Fine, but I will need some special equipment for this.” Thalia gestured for us to follow her.

“Special equipment?” Magnus asked worriedly. “Just cut it out and be done with it. We are just here because Astra refused to do it herself.”

I cleared my throat. “Magnus, I am good at dressing game, but I’ve never operated on someone – and have you seen yourself in a mirror recently? When you told me where the chip is located, I knew we would need to ask the Tates for help.”

“Where exactly did they put it?” Thalia asked.

“Right at the back of my left thigh where all the fat tissue is. It shouldn’t be a problem to cut it out. If I was flexible enough, I would do it myself.” Magnus reached down to his thigh where the chip had been implanted. “Oh!”

Having seen – and felt – him naked often enough, I already knew what he hadn’t thought about. “Muscles,” I affirmed.

The zipper mutation was a little peculiar, in that it changed all of a person’s fat tissue into muscles. “Still remember when you got punched to kingdom come and your skin and flesh were gone but the muscles remained unaffected?”

“That might be a problem,” my partner admitted sheepishly.

Thalia eyed us contemplatively over her shoulder while she was walking. “I suppose I better find some pliers.”

Half an hour later we had Magnus complaining while lying on his belly on an operating table. “It twinges.”

“Don’t be a baby,” Thalia replied while she pried apart dark, fibrous muscle tissue. “I gave you the most powerful local anaesthetic I had on hand. More and I would be afraid of killing you. Your poison resistance is monstrous.”

I watched the operation in silent fascination while I held two pliers for my much weaker friend.

“Wirecutter!”

I handed Thalia the dubious medical instrument. “Why would you people have a wire cutter in your surgery toolbox?”

“You two aren’t the only ones with resilience enhancements,” Thalia hissed while she snapped one of the muscle strands to free the chip.

“Ow!” Magnus called out and hit the metal operating table with his fist, denting it.

“Hey! Control yourself,” Thalia reprimanded him and cut out another strand before she finally managed to retrieve the chip with a tweezer.

She placed the chip in a surgeon’s bowl and added the removed muscle to the others on a Petri dish before she began sewing Magnus up with practised movements.

The chip was a flat piece of what looked like murky glass with rounded edges. It was two centimetres in length and about eight millimetres wide. If it weren’t for the golden lining on one side, I would have taken it to be any old piece of glass. But according to Magnus, it was the world’s best method for permanent information storage.

Once Magnus was cleaned up and turned back around, his eyes fell immediately on the Petri dish. “Did you vivisect me!?”

“Just a little,” Thalia admitted. “It will grow back. I have to take a look at these muscles. I have a theory that they are some form of hybrid between a battery and a capacitor for them to be able to deliver such a high power output in relatively short time intervals. In any case, this operation at least confirmed my suspicion that your musculature is no longer purely organic.”

She brought them over to a microscope. “These look like countless little capacitor cells if you ask me. When you look at the cross-section where I cut, they look like a winding element which can be statically charged.”

Magnus sighed and rubbed his thigh.

I smiled and gave him a peck on the cheek to make the pain go away.

“Anyway… shouldn’t Iv be around here somewhere? I haven’t seen her today.”