Chapters
-
Felicity took the skimmer as close as they could go—until patches of ice coalesced on the surface of the ocean made forward progress impossible. If I'd just taken one of the good skimmers instead of a broken piece of junk, we’d glide right up to the tunnel without needing to put ourselves in danger. Would Effervescent Meridian even care that she jumped through all these hoops to do as little harm as possible?"Do we have to stop here?" Delta asked, watching one of the rear windows with most of her body.…-
84.8 K •
-
-
There could be no confidence or peace on the strange ship, not when any moment might bring the collapse of all safety and the destruction of their skimmer. If simple technical failure wasn't enough to fear, there was also the presence of the predatory fish just behind them waiting for a chance to devour the contents of their little sub. Then there was the unknown alien threat overhead, which might figure out what she was and who she represented at any moment. Maybe she would die in an orbital strike long…
-
84.8 K •
-
-
The first leg of Felicity’s voyage happened in almost total silence. That wasn’t terribly unusual for the plant-aliens when they were working, and it was a habit even she herself had often fallen into. A task brought focus, and anything that took her focus away from her task was something her mind seemed to resist.They drove for hours through a dark, sunless sea. Predators passed by outside, many glowing with eerie yellow flickers of not-sun. That light was meant to attract the attention of plants,…
-
84.8 K •
-
-
Delta didn’t react at first, as Effervescent Meridian faded further and further into the distance. Though part of that might just have been Felicity’s inability to judge their implications. The plant-beings were so alien to everything she knew that she still couldn’t tell for sure if their visual communication was even intentional or not.As she left Effervescent Meridian behind, she felt something pulling her onward, though not quite in the direction she was moving. “That’s the signal we’re…
-
84.8 K •
-
-
Felicity had to act—every day she remained in Effervescent Meridian was another day that the survivors of her original ship went unfound. Or worse, maybe the mysterious vessel lingering in orbit had somehow defeated the Varch’nai, and was preparing for an attack on Harmony itself. There might be critical tactical information to extract, with the fate of her entire civilization depending on it.But it was hard to remember all while living with the strange aliens of Effervescent Meridian. The realities of…
-
84.8 K •
-
-
It was hard to tell time when you were a plant. Felicity never would've guessed before, had no context and comprehension for the level of complexity needed to exist as a non-animal creature. At least during her journey across the ocean, she had the steady rising and falling of the sun to keep her grounded in at least the day. With a little mental math, she could keep track of the months of her travel. But even during her trip, nothing she'd done had felt much like she was traveling for an extended period.…
-
84.8 K •
-
-
Felicity understood on an emotional level that Harmony shouldn’t be able to act with a grudge. The program was a shallow copy of something far greater, but still it should be governed by the real Harmony’s rules. After defying Harmony’s instructions, it felt like the machine was ignoring her. In an instant she went from the constant questions and pressures of the machine to dead silence, broken only by mechanical-sounding translations. But Felicity didn’t complain, or make any visible sign that she…
-
84.8 K •
-
-
I’m going to screw this up. I’m completely over my complexity level. As soon as I say anything they’ll know I’m an imposter and try to kill me.Felicity had come first as the captain of their exploration ship, then later as an advisor with some personal connection to the dead. She wasn’t qualified to be on an alien planet of creatures that she barely even recognized as alive.But she didn’t have a choice. Harmony was out of reach, apparently by many years.She focused on the structure and its many…
-
84.8 K •
-
-
Travel was a strange thing when you barely perceived the passage of time. Like many animals, her world was soon ruled by the dominance of the flow from day to night, though that passage was far more real for her. While her animal self could take near-total control of her metabolism and waking/sleeping rhythm with the right alterations to diet and possible addition of a few simple drugs, being a plant did not grant her that luxury.For one, she couldn’t sink too low while she swam, or else pass into an…
-
84.8 K •
-
-
Felicity drifted through the water of an alien ocean. She didn’t feel the passage of time, and very little else besides. There was the light above her, warm and inviting. Over the course of many local days she drifted upward towards the surface, spreading thin along it to soak up as much of the feeble sunlight as she could. Some deeply buried part of her realized how strange this was, but those impressions were ignored. Her body might make no rational sense anymore, but that was a preferable state of…
-
84.8 K •
-
- Previous 1 … 59 60 61 … 222 Next
