“Lettie? What am I looking at?” Mazelton asked in wonder. The rows of people in their little pods reminded him of a field of grain, ripe for harvest. Then he had the uncomfortable image of mold, its thousands of little tendrils and polyps extending upwards, ready to spread and start again.

“I don’t know. I don’t even begin to understand what I am seeing. Those are humans? Or at least, really human shaped? But they look like they are in some sort of organic pod, and I don’t care how good the Bo are at this, they can’t keep something alive for millennia, let alone ten plus millennia.”

Mazelton frowned at that. “Are you completely sure? I seem to remember some cells are functionally immortal in the right conditions.”

“Individual cells, yes. Whole damn humans, no. And there are things that could, theoretically, in perfect conditions, live for a reasonable approximation of forever. But again, we are talking about microorganisms and some oddball plants.”

“Fungus?”

“Maybe? I don’t know.”

They didn’t feel an immediate need to get closer to the strange pods. They swept their lights up and around, trying to make sense of the bizarre space.

“It looks like the pods are completely seamless. At least from here. So they either grew them in the pods, or the base is removable or something.” Mazelton noticed.

“They look like they are suspended in the pod, like they are held in place or floating? But I don’t see any kind of umbilical cord. How are, or were, they being fed?” Lettie asked.

They muttered quietly to each other, working up the nerve to get close to the odd crop growing in the dark. Then Mazelton ruined the atmosphere by laughing.

“Where are their passengers?” He snorted, trying to get himself under control.

“Their what?”

“The gut flora, piloting spaceship Mazelton and spaceship Lettie. Their cousins are stranded- how will they reach their ships?” Mazelton pointed at the pods. “Full grown adult bodies, but did they ever eat? Is there anything living in their intestines at all?”

Lettie snorted too.

“And on that note, let's go take a look.”

They closed in on the nearest pod. Nobody really wanted to let the pods get between them and the door. Irrational, maybe, but very sincere.

“Damn. Guess you are out of luck, Lettie. They went for a more balanced physique.”

“Nobody appreciates the true aesthetics of masculinity. This is just… utilitarian. I’ve seen sexier pavement.”

The person in the pod was apparently male, with a comically wide nose and a distinctly odd sheen to his skin. Mazelton wasn’t sure how much of that was the transparent pod the person was sealed in, or if there was some sort of preservative gasses in there, or if it genuinely was the texture of their skin. Mazelton kept looking. No belly button. Jaw suggested that there were teeth in it, so it was intended to eat at some point. Presumably why they left genitalia- excretion. Big hands. Squarish fingernails, long but very even.

Lettie started swearing, or at least Mazelton assumed it was swearing from the tone. He didn’t know most of those words. At one point it devolved into a high pitched series of squeaks, clicks and whistles.

“It’s a PLANT. The whole damn pod is a plant.”

“The fuck it is now?”

Lettie ran her fingers roughly through her hair.

“It’s some kind of weird ass plant, or at least the pod is. Look down at the base- you can see the little veins running through it. I bet you anything, it was bred to vitrify-” Mazelton looked blank, “basically turned into glass when it died. Somehow they bred this weird damn plant to be a sealed tube for the weird damn person inside the tube.”

“So how do they get the body in there? Is it grown inside the tube, or do they grow the tube around it?”

“No idea. I’m just mad they went through UNREAL amounts of work, created a genuine marvel of green smithing and then just fucked off and left it buried under a mountain for who knows how long. Of all the stupid, wasteful, petty idiocy-” And she was off again. Mazelton felt like he should be taking notes, this was an incredible standard of swearing. Mazelton waited a respectful period before interjecting.

“So they bred something downright incredible, with the intent of preserving whatever was inside the tubes. And whatever was inside the tubes could apparently tolerate being trapped in an airless tube indefinitely. Or get their air through the plant? I know plants produce oxygen.”

“Not after they are dead, they don’t. I am starting to wonder if those things were ever really alive. Just… manufactured and put into storage. For whatever reason.”

“So the next question, before we even get to the who, what, when, where, why and how, is, is this the production facility, or the storage facility?” Mazelton wondered.

“Oh please let it be storage.”

“Any particular reason for that?”

“Yeah. If it’s production, it means that there are more of these creepy bastards around somewhere else.”

At this point they were striding through the ranks of the pods swiftly. Each was identical- the body within them had at most subtle variations. They all could have been twins.

“Cloning, you reckon?”

“Of some sort, yes. Even grass isn’t this identical, stalk to stalk.”

They reached the end of the pods, seeing yards of empty plant beds. They started to sigh in relief until they saw the hatch in the floor. Just slightly larger than the pods if they were laid on their sides.

“Found the storage.”

“God damn it. I don’t care which. Pick one.”

“Vi’ Goddess of Curses?”

“Never heard of her. But sure. I mean, given how incredibly cursed you are, you would know who to pick, right?”

“That place quite literally saved my life. It’s where I converted.”

They were staring at the hatch in a sort of morbid fascination. The two of them were no strangers to the strange and uncanny, but this place had just too many unanswered questions.

“How did that happen?”

“I got really drunk with a staggeringly pretty, immensely charming young lady, who, while also completely smashed, argued persuasively that we could have sex on the condition that we were both Dusties. I don’t remember the logic. So we professed our devotion to the faith, rubbed dirt on our foreheads, and professed one more time. We then had some spectacular, just outstanding, sex, improved by the drugs in the booze.”

“And you actually meant it?”

“At the time? No. But I heard about the Dusties convening a meeting a few weeks later and I dropped in just for the laugh. And it was genuinely nice. An incredibly warm and inviting community. I thought they were all idiots. So I came back the next week to watch the idiots. And the next. And mid week for the potluck dinner. And so on and so on and less than a year later I realized that I was already finding ways to rationalize my faith as a Dusty and my faith in the Ælfflæd.”

Mazelton wanted to poke the hatch, but was still mindful of Letties’ instruction to touch nothing.

“Of course, “faith” is not exactly the right word to use in regards to the Ælfflæd.” He muttered.

“You literally worship them. Your clan makes huge sacrificial offerings.”

“A city’s worth of them.”

That brought Lettie up with a jerk.

“You don’t think-”

“I have no idea. I don’t really think so, but in her last moments? Watching everything she knew and loved dying around her? Her children and grandchildren being slaughtered in their homes? I really don’t think there is any limit to what Grandmother might do. Sacrificing everyone and everything in the city in a grand offering to the Ælfflæd, that their deaths might fuel a curse on her enemies seems very… Ma. We may die, but not in vain.”

They kept staring at the hatch. At some point they would either have to try and open it or move on.

“Word around Cold Garden was that the Confeds are bleeding everywhere. Constant low level war all up and down the Eastern Edge, burning money and lives by the hour.” Lettie said quietly.

“I heard the same. All the Clans are rising up and making life miserable for them, in all sorts of ways.”

“The Black Parade marches on. So that humanity will endure.”

Mazelton looked around the bunker, half seeing the pods of people, and the hatch below.

“I have a theory. Well, no, I have an idea. And it will be really easy to test that idea, if we just open this hatch.”

Lettie sighed. They reached down, and after the count of three, lifted up the door. Their lights shined down on a series of rails, sized exactly to carry a pod to its resting place in a metal frame. They could see hundreds of pods down there as it was. But their lights didn’t reach far enough to touch the walls, or the floor.

“There must be more than ten thousand of them.” Lettie breathed. “What in the hell is it for? What could possibly be worth the effort?”

“An army? A new race of humanity when the old order falls?”

“No, even the Bo think an army needs weapons, and their enhanced soldiers look enhanced. This lot just have rubbery skin and a smashed up nose. And you can’t restart the species with a load of clones.”

“Only so many reasons to mass produce humans. Labor, fighting, repopulation.”

“Could they be just… humanoid? Some kind of biological machine?”

“Oh? Let's ask our little passengers that. Ask them what makes a human.”

“Fucks sake I was making a funny point, not being literal.”

“I have thought about it a bit, and decided it made literal sense. It appeals to my sense of symmetry- as above so below. And speaking of below, you know what we haven’t seen anywhere, at least not yet?”

“A way to get them out of the pods and moving.”

“Got it in one.”

“So what was your idea?”

“Oh, you already more or less shot it down- army. We haven’t nailed down the exact age of this bunker, right? But the technology level is way past what the Bo could have recovered since the last apocalypse, I mean, plants that turn into glass tubes? No chance. But give them access to the top notch dry minds of the Nacon era, and all kinds of green smithing suddenly becomes possible. I mean, everyone gives the Pi clan shit for not being useful without a major tech base, but that’s kind of true for all the Clans. Better tech level means better tools.”

“A tautology, but sure. You think this dates from the Nacon era.”

“Yep. An army that would be immune to the electronic warfare that the Nacon loved so much.”

“But not immune to gauss rifles and firebombs. I don’t care if these things are made entirely of kelp, enough slugs will turn them into salad. And the Bo couldn’t make these faster than the Nacon could make drones.” Lettie frowned. “The Bo didn’t have a particular problem with the Nacon, did they? Divergent technical focuses, sure, and the Nacon were a controlling bunch, but I can’t remember any serious conflicts.”

“Oh, there are all kinds of problems with my idea. But unless you have a better one…”

“Insufficient data. Let's keep hunting.”

“Still no signage whatsoever. Not even a warning label.”

“I know. I see it too.”

They walked through the bunker for a few more hours, finding depressingly normal things. A cafeteria. Warehouse space. A closet that was filled with nothing but stackable chairs, next to an exercise area that could be used, apparently, for big gatherings. A running track. Everything was covered in a layer of worryingly organic grime, but otherwise extremely well preserved.

Eventually they made their way to what they agreed was the medical or laboratory space. Lots of benches that had probably once been padded. The polished stone floors all ran down into drains in the middle of the rooms. There was some medical equipment, surgical tools, crude things that were no better than stone axes, given the level of technology implied by the grown bodies. The true art of the Bo was found in syringes and bioreactors. Forcibly cracking a body open and stitching things in there? Maybe in the very early days of an epoch. Maybe not even then, depending on what they could preserve. These tools were for… something else. Torture, perhaps? Or dissection?

Lettie searched the place with painful thoroughness, as she concluded that it was likely to hold important records or samples. What it held was an extra thick layer of gunk. She carefully scraped it off cabinets and tables, pulled out drawers and checked for false bottoms, ran test after test to find hidden doors or safes. Nothing.

“Still no idea what the gunk is?”

“Nope. A whole lot of formerly volatile aromatics in there. I suspect that the whole base would smell like yeast. Or something equally funky.”

“That does lead to another question- why? Was this the result of the fungal outbreak that killed the people in the apartment? Or was it like this before the base was sealed?”

Lettie just shrugged. Which Mazleton felt was fair enough.

“On the subject of dry minds, didn’t the Bo use… basically living brains to do the same thing? They weren’t sentient, I don’t think, but they were alive. Big vats.” Mazelton’s eyes went unfocused, as he tried to remember old lessons. “Yeah, big brains in big vats. Not actually that good compared to dry minds, but they always seem to make them anyway.” He nodded firmly.

“Yes, neuroputing, they called it. Still call it. You are right, they do keep coming back to that technology. Maybe because they don’t need to rely on others for parts?”

“Can’t fault them there. So where is the neuroputer?”

“What do you think I’ve been looking for?”

They finally found it behind an offensively ordinary looking door. The only thing that hinted at its importance was the marks on the floor. That door had been opened and closed a lot. The device was sealed in a larger version of the glass pods- some twelve feet around. Mazelton could see where several smaller pods had been fused together to create a large dome around the cart-sized tank. The tank itself was filled with a clear, slightly shiny liquid, revealing the coral-like brain matter within.

It wasn’t one big brain, but dozens of them. Some clearly parts of a bigger whole, sectioned away and installed with axons grown grotesquely large and running like cables between the lobes. Not all the brains looked human, but then, they were so fragmented that Mazelton had no confidence in telling what was what. They should have rotted away into nothing, into slime coating the tank. But there they were, fresh as the day they were grown. Shimmering in the dark.

They just stared. What else could they do? The sheer unnaturalness of the thing rooted them in place, forcing their minds to come to terms with its reality. Somebody made that, a frantic part of Mazelton’s mind whispered. A lot of someone’s. They probably worked really hard. He wanted to throw up.

“Is it still… alive?” Mazelton whispered.

“It… should be.”

“It absolutely should not be.”

“I. Uh. Actually agree. This is an abomination.”

They couldn’t look away. Lettie audibly gulped.

“That being said, I can actually use it.”

Mazelton gave her a hard look. She pointed to the side of the glass dome, where a faint arch was etched, a bronze hammer resting next to it. The clues were subtle, but he could just about piece it together.

“That's how you get to it, not how you use it. I don’t see anything like a keyboard or punch cards or gears, or… anything, really.”

“Those are profoundly crude methods of interfacing with a computer.” Lettie absently replied.

“If I want a computer to do a math problem for me, I hand them an abacus and ask?” Mazelton replied.

“Old word, old word, dry mind is what I was talking about. The non-sentient variety.” Lettie waived her hand. “Most systems move away from something so crude quickly, a hundred years or less. Neuroputers never have them. Too damn hard to interface meat and machine in a reliable way. Hard to translate a quadratic equation into “brain” and get a sensible answer back, let alone the correct one.”

“So?”

“So the Bo sidestepped all that. They had special operators whose brains had been modified to speak the same language, as it were, that the Neuroputers did. Direct mind to mind interface. Or maybe brain to brain is more accurate. Apparently it was like suddenly remembering things you had forgotten, and getting much, much better at solving certain types of problems.” Lettie took a deep breath.

“And when it comes to machines talking to each other, you really can’t do better than asking the Pi for help. Which we did. Because we figured that we could always find a way to talk to their machines later if we wanted to. And we did find a way. And we spread the information amongst ourselves, for millennia. Which means that I can talk to the machine.”

Mazelton just waited.

“There is a decent chance the machine is insane. And since our brains will be connected, it could do… bad things to me. Intentionally or otherwise. But.”

“It’s worth it, if you are Pi.”

“The base would have only had one neuroputer. This is it, the data motherload. I have to try.”

“Still no sign of how to use the crystal we found?”

“No. It was pretty clearly contraband. It might not even connect to anything in here.”

“Well fuck.”

“Yep. Now if you will excuse me, I need to ransack that thing before I piss myself and run away screaming.”

Lettie cracked her wrists, popped her knuckles and strode up to the glass. The bronze mallet must have weighed an absolute ton. No problem for the Bo, naturally. Nor, interestingly, for Lettie. She hoisted it to her shoulder, then swung with a sharp downward blow. The glass shattered into sand, leaving a neat archway into the dome.

The smell poured out. To Mazelton’s faint horror, it wasn’t particularly unpleasant. Sort of briny, with a metallic coarseness that grated on his tongue. Lettie strode in, inhaled, and quickly backed out again.

“No oxygen in there. Mostly nitrogen. Got to let it flush for a couple of minutes.”

They stood there in silence. Mazelton’s already high opinion of Lettie crept higher, as she unreasonably failed to piss herself and run away screaming. Instead, she waited exactly one hundred and twenty seconds and strode back in.

Lettie walked up to the little stone lectern in front of the tank. She put down a notebook and pen. She reached into the tank and fished out a long tendril with a sucker at the end, and without a moment’s hesitation, stuck it to the base of her skull. There was a crunch. And a scream.