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A former Custodian from the Spydome Network is processing Elise’s upload to
a new substrate. His equipment is unlike anything she has ever seen before.
Before she died, she was in her tenth body. She usually chose to look about
the same as she did before, only sometimes making a tweak or two. Telman
says that she can look like anything. When she asks which design software
they’re using, he claims that they’re not using any at all. She apparently
decides what she wants in her head, and the bioprinter converts it into DNA.
She has a hard time believing this, because while brain-computer interfaces
are old hat, what he’s describing is a whole different animal. Her brain is
not capable of consolidating every single detail. She can only ever conceive
of a general idea.
Telman assures her that it will work. The machine doesn’t need her to know
exactly what she wants. She just has to have the finished product in mind.
The way she sees it, she’s living on borrowed time anyway. They were told
that if they died during the hunt, their backup bodies would be reactivated
on their behalf, having never received any recent updates. So despite her
disbelief, she follows through with the plan. She doesn’t have any hands,
she kind of has to let people do whatever they want anyway. She watches as
Telman locks her head into the mechanism, and shuts her down.
It’s the reawakening redux, though the process is faster this time. Instead
of a pinprick, her consciousness returns just about all at once. She
remembers everything leading up to the upload, including the gaps in her
memory from before the decapitation. The first thing she does is wiggle her
toes. It’s not easy, but that’s because her movement is limited, not because
there’s something wrong, or because she doesn’t have any toes. Her memory
focuses on one thing, which happened at the beginning of this. She’s in
another chrysalis. She wriggles her whole body now, trying to look for
down, like she did last time. It feels different, though. It
feels...softer, more stringy.
She doesn’t vomit like she did before. She doesn’t feel like she has to.
She’s stronger now. Without hardly doing anything, she feels stronger than
she ever has her whole life. That’s one thing she shied away from before.
Superstrength is a pretty easy characteristic to give a new body, but she
never went overboard. It didn’t seem necessary. It could have been really
useful centuries ago, but life just isn’t that hard anymore. That’s why they
built Castlebourne in the first place, to simulate struggle.
This isn’t much of a struggle. She pulls the fibers apart, but she doesn’t
slip out onto her head. She rotates her whole body so she can gently lower
herself feet first. She deftly lands on the floor. It’s less gooey than the
chrysalis, which may or may not make sense. Looking at it here from the
outside, she decides it’s more like a cocoon.
“Oh my God, what is that?” It’s Rage’s voice behind Elise.
Elise turns. As she does, her back and shoulders move in a way that she’s
not used to. They’re stiff, a little sore, but not something she won’t get
past eventually. Wait, no that’s not it. It’s so much more than that. There
is something hanging off of her back. What is that? What the hell is that?
“What the hell is that?” She spins, trying to see it.
“Here, there’s a mirror,” Colley explains. He cautiously takes her by both
hands.
Elise looks at herself straight on. Her breasts are larger now, but that’s
about all that’s changed. Oh, and also her skin is a totally different
color, and she has wings!
“That is quite the change,” Zelda points out. “How does it feel?”
Elise turns to see herself in profile. She shrugs her shoulders one after
the other and back again until she understands which new muscles she needs
to work. The wings extend farther than she thought they would. She has to
step away from the wall to open them both. Like her skin, they’re a
beautiful cool green and fuzzy. She admires herself, which is not like her,
then looks over at the cocoon. “I’m a moth.”
“You’re the Ladymoth,” Minotaur says. “That’s what you said before.”
Hrockas, Azad, and Telman are standing off away from the group. Telman
clears his throat. “I hope you’re pleased. If you’re not, that’s why this
technology has not yet been made public. People are complex. They may not
know what they want.”
“Oh, I want,” Elise says. She giggles as she flaps her wings lightly. She
looks around and finds a door near the opposite corner. “Will that take me
outside?”
“You want to fly?” Telman guesses. “Already?”
“Maybe you should take a moment to get used to basic movements,” Hrockas
suggests. “You wouldn’t want to overdo it. The way the tech works, you are
still not streaming anywhere, and we did not save a recent backup of you. If
you fall out of the sky and perish, you won’t remember any of this.”
“Thank you for your concern,” Elise says to him. “Door, please.”
Hrockas sighs. “I understand. But before you go launching yourself off the
ground, let’s travel to the nearest body of water, so you have a softer
place below you.”
Elise accepts his suggestion. It’s not a bad idea for her to learn to walk
around with all this mass first. Her body is definitely strong enough to
manage it, but it’s teetering a little bit as she gets used to weight
distribution. Some of them walk on ahead while others take up the rear.
She’s walking beside Miracle for obvious reasons. “Did you use the cocoon to
make your wings, or standard accelerated cloning?”
“I used bioprinting,” Miracle explains, “but I don’t have access to this.
It’s next level. I hope you know how lucky you are. They use it on the
Tangent, but it’s incredibly rare, and most of those people have no
imagination. You did quite well.”
Elise flutters her wings a bit, but it’s awkward. She needs practice. “You
like it?”
“I’m so jealous,” Miracle replies. “You have an amazing body.”
“Maybe I’ll give you a ride, if I’m capable. Moths are strong in some ways,
but not in others. I may be quite fragile. We’ll just have to see.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Miracle insists. “I’ll get my wings back soon
enough. I did want to ask, though, why a Luna moth?”
“Okay, we’re here,” Hrockas announces. “Get ready to save her, Azad.”
As everyone is spreading out to watch, Azad checks for threats.
Elise gets into position and prepares herself mentally. She takes a deep
breath before looking over at her friend. “Miracle. You asked me why a Luna
moth. Because when they fly, they look like this.” She leaps into the air
and flaps her wings. She’s not awkward anymore. Her wings are completely in
sync, and her navigation is on point. Wherever she wants to go, her body
goes. She glides gracefully up, down, and all around. Now Elise understands
why Miracle chose it, and she wonders why there aren’t more. There
are flying humanoids on Altair, but it should be widespread. This
feels like the natural progression of the human experience. She wishes she
could share it. She wishes all of her friends could be moths, or have any
wings of their own.
Elise flies higher and higher, several kilometers in the air. And then she
falls.
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