Reading came easily to Lilijoy. She found she had an intuitive sense for the meaning and pronunciation of words that were completely unfamiliar. She was even able to read on the tablet when Anda pulled up some passages from various sources.

It wasn’t perfect, and it definitely wasn’t quick, but with a little help from Anda she could feel her ability improving as she read more. Soon, she felt ready to explore her interface without tricking the voice into speaking. When she got stuck on something, she could sound it out for Anda, and he could usually figure out what she was seeing.

She learned that if she looked intently at particular words on the mental screen, the interface could provide more options, or sometimes a definition. The first screen she pulled up was the status menu.

STATUS: UNRATED, FAILING

Nanobody count 13,218 [Urgent Action Needed] Power Ratio 3% Stage One Integration 9% Stage Two Integration Pending Authorization Secondary/Support 2 detected, 0 identified Communications Stealth Mode Sensors Passive Active Interventions 2 Personal Quantification None Options | Logs | Data | Reference | Menu

There were several alarming discoveries. First of all, her bugs were in bad shape. The word ‘FAILING’ kind of gave that away. Also the ‘Urgent Action Needed’ probably wasn’t a good sign. She thought that that might be the best place to start, so she concentrated on the words and a new screen opened.

NANOBODY COUNT 13,217 [Urgent Action Needed] 13,217 : 50,000 minimum recommended Current Average Attrition 22.6/hour (accelerating) Estimated Time to Failure 74 hours (3.08 days) Cultivation Rate 0/hour

ATTENTION! A cultivation rate of 45/hour is necessary to sustain current levels. Begin cultivation process to avoid system failure.

Cultivate | Differentiate | Assign

“It says I have 13,217 nanobodies and they’re failing! What do I do?” she asked Anda.

“That doesn’t sound right,” he replied. “I would assume that ‘nanobodies’ is your system’s word for bugs. But I’ve never heard of a system working with anything like those numbers. It's several orders of magnitude too low. Perhaps each one represents a cluster of some kind."

He tapped his chin.

"As to the bugs failing, that likely means their numbers are falling below some kind of threshold necessary to function. A certain number of bugs in any system fail every day, much as many of your brain cells die every day. Those numbers are tiny compared to the cells that live, so tiny you will not notice any change for decades, whether we are talking about bugs or cells. In your case, starting with such a small number makes every loss meaningful.”

He sighed. “This is not good news. I am so sorry, Lilijoy. My suggestion is that we look for a buyer who might be able to get a sample from you for study. With luck, you can get enough credit for a more common bug. If we wait too long, even that won’t be an option.”

Lilijoy’s eyes welled up. She wanted to cry, and she wanted to hit something. And she felt bad for feeling bad; the choice she had to make was still better than she could have ever expected from her existence. If she lost her special legacy, she could still end up with a great life, a life her tribe couldn’t even imagine. But she was so mad! Just when she had started to understand, it was all being taken away. She decided that crying was in order.

When she ran out of tears, and after a nice hug from Anda, she decided it would be better to poke around and learn what she could, rather than being sad and bored. The screen had indicated she should begin ‘cultivating’, whatever that was. Her new reading intuition told her it had to do with growing things like live food. Just the smallest corner of her mind held out the hope that she could somehow grow her bugs like plants. She giggled inwardly with the image of herself looking through a pile of dirt for tiny bugs to eat.

She noticed that ‘cultivate’ was at the bottom of the window as a possible action, but it was grayed out, which she had already learned meant that she could not select it. Nevertheless, she tried to select it, and was surprised when a smaller screen popped up.

Unable to cultivate Stage Two Authorization required!

Huh, she thought. Might as well follow this trail wherever it was leads.

Which was back to the ‘Status’ screen and then selecting ‘Stage Two Integration’. The next screen made her scratch her head for its simplicity.

Authorize Stage Two Integration? Yes | No

Then Lilijoy thought something very dangerous.

She didn’t know it was a dangerous thought, due to her limited life experience, though if had she mentioned it to Anda first, he might have at least given her some caution in the matter.

She thought, how bad can it possibly be? and selected ‘Yes.’

***

What turned out to be two days later, Lilijoy woke with a headache, a sour, dry mouth, eyes crusted over and a throbbing ache that couldn’t seem to decide where it wanted to be in her body.

She was in a bed, half covered by a thin cloth that was twisted around her. The surface under her was damp from sweat. There was a blinking exclamation point in the upper right of her vision asking for attention, but her bladder was still more insistent, so she hopped down from the bed to take care of business. Her legs gave out under her and she crumpled into a miserable heap next to the bed, with her face pressed against the floor.

At least the rug was soft, she thought, as she eyed the fuzzy fibers marching off into the distance. She dragged herself to the bathroom, then got some water and settled on a cushy chair to recuperate from all the exertion. Once she was ensconced, she focused on the exclamation point, which delivered a message.

Stage Two Integration initiated:

Possibility of side effects including:

High Fever

Body Aches

Rash

Nausea

Dizziness/Disorientation

Seizure

Loss of Consciousness

Coma/Death

Please check in to a Licensed Medical Facility immediately if not currently under medical care.

Good Luck!

“Oh,” she said aloud. “That’s pretty bad after all.”

She took a moment to wonder why such a message would appear after initiation of stage two, rather than before. Maybe because no one would do it if they knew, she postulated.

Mentally shrugging, she dismissed the message, which was replaced by another exclamation point.

Stage Two Integration Status:.02%

>Warning! No nanobodies available.

Cultivation will initiate after reading this message.

How will it know... she began to think, and then all the light went out of the room.

There was a moment of dizziness, followed by confusion, followed by an odd sense that she was no longer curled in a chair, but instead standing upright. She couldn’t see or move her body; her consciousness hovered in a void, with the sense of being vaguely embodied slowly melting away.

As her physical presence faded from consciousness, her emotions stilled and purified. It was as if the feedback from bodily sensation was necessary to feel emotions clearly as well. She observed this with interest; feeling emotions and feeling physical sensation were not separate at all, just two sides of the same process. The weightlessness, the lightness of being unattached, flowed through her. Except there was no space in which to flow. There was only her and the lightness, one and the same.

Yet she was not totality, for in front of her arose a glow like the sun just covering the horizon, rising without movement. The glow attracted her, and then she was next to and within, and the light was a representation of her embodied mind in front of her like a great palace filled with circulating energy. The loops of incandescing thought condensed and gathered matter and the energies were moving within structures, and the structures had shape, and a brain, her brain, was before her.

She entered.

As she floated within the physical embodiment of her mind, she could understand and recognize its geography, the labels for surrounding structures coming into her thoughts without effort. She moved through the cerebrum, weaving between columns and hierarchies of flowing energy, among a great conversation, the democratic society of information from which thought emerged.

She passed the cingulate cortex, caressed with gentle waves of soft radiance, and she realized that not only was this her brain, but it was her brain in this moment. The calming swells were reflecting her state of peaceful serenity, and the setting was increasing her feeling.

She paused to bask in the incomparable merging of mind and environment, and a quick burst of energy disrupted the waves and slapped around her as she realized she might never leave, might never have a reason to leave and a trapped feeling that was the disruption impelled her to move on, past a flowing river of light like magma connecting the hemispheres, and into a great open space.

Something was calling to her from the narrow back regions of the massive cavern, and she flowed on, gazing in amazement at the glowing star shaped creatures floating around her gently waving their supple rays and she realized the cavern, the ventricle, was filled with transparent fluid, bathing and soothing the rest of the brain, gently moving with a pulse like the tides, stirred and eddied by the arms of the stars.

She moved on, toward the call.

As she reached the source of the call, she could tell that all was not well. The stars, ( another part of her mind supplied), were suffering. Signs of battle were all around. Damaged stars, limbs contracted and stumpy, lined the sides of the cavern. The walls, floor and ceiling were swollen and bulging and oddly undefined, as if the tissue was torn and dissolved into the surroundings. Large areas of murk and grit created ghostly dark blobs in the waters.

This must be the source of the sickness when I woke up, she thought to herself.

But even as she passed by the destruction, through the steadily narrowing passage (though she seemed to be adjusting her sense of scale to match), she came upon the source of the call. And it was wonderful. Beautiful.

Magic.

A jewel floated before her, covered in shining facets, lights generated and reflecting from the interior, sparkling and glimmering and cascading through a spectrum of color beyond her experience, somehow all the colors separate and yet blending in golden radiance. In the center of the jewel, she could make out the forms of neurons, interwoven with crystals, linking together in the thousands, for the jewel was enormous to her now, taking up her vision as she drew in.

All around the jewel curved planes of light and crystal projected, overlapping petals of illumination. Surrounding the golden flower were attendants, creatures of light, swimming, floating and tending to the structure. They were like smaller versions of the flower, with the same core of crystal and neurons, and their petals gently moved and waved, pushing them through the water.

As Lilijoy looked on in awed reverence, she saw that the petals on the attendants could change shape, elongating into tendrils of light that were reaching into the tissue of the surrounding walls. She saw still smaller versions of the same beings move through and between the cellular structures of the wall, traveling to distant regions of the brain for tasks unknown. Still others were attending to the damage she had seen before, gently incorporating damaged cells, petal-tendrils caressing and soothing the inflamed walls, dispelling and filtering the murky areas of the fluid.

And then she heard a voice.

“Welcome Lilijoy. My name is Jiannu and we are become one.”