“What’s wrong with it?” asks Ace after a moment. “Is it…broken?”
Sarya watches these parings of Librarian drift, gleaming in the emergency lighting, and remembers her mother’s musings on its lightyears-spanning mind. “It’s not broken,” she says, watching ripples move across the face of the nearest piece. “I think it’s…broken off.” Broken off from the Network, like her…except it’s not designed to be. It doesn’t know how to function on its own. These are no more than neurons, violently excised from a mind.
Which gives her the germ of an idea.
“Well, whatever it is,” says Ace, “it’s getting a little close and I really don’t want to be eaten again.”
Sarya cannot stop her slow zero-g tumble, but she can track the nearest silver shape with her head. She watches her reflection in its surface, surprised at how calm her mind seems to be. But then, as Network recently told her: she is a Human, shaped by a Widow, amplified by a gigantic galaxy-spanning intelligence. She is not just Sarya the Daughter staring down her own killer. She is, in a weird way, Shenya the Widow gazing at the small being she nurtured all those decades near lightspeed. She is, in an even weirder way, Network looking at Itself. Somewhere in all that mess, some instinct belonging to some part of her surely knows what to do. In fact—yes. Slowly, not quite understanding why she’s doing it, she raises a hand toward this nearest piece of Librarian—
“Uh,” says Ace. “Are you hissing at it?”
She finds that she is. Not an aggressive hiss, but the croon of a mother Widow toward a Daughter. One of the many parts of Sarya the Daughter knows that this thing is frightened and alone. Another knows that it is potentially useful. Yet another knows what to do. Just as Network said: she is responding with all the parts that make up her nature. Now she reaches out again, tentatively, not with hands this time but with mind. Your mind is where your power lies, Network told her. She traces the delicate threads streaming from this small piece of Librarian. Her instincts tell her that all she has to do is touch its mind like this—
Nothing.
“Is something supposed to be happening?” asks Ace anxiously. “Because it’s kinda…getting closer.”
Sarya watches the humming globe drift toward her, her own concern rising as her distorted half-lit reflection grows. The closer it gets, the louder it calls, as if it’s…hungry. And now Sarya is paddling backward in midair, kilometers above the floor, all thoughts of minds and threads forgotten as she attempts to save her brand-new body. She puts her hands up—both biological and mechanical—then draws them back when she realizes the Librarian will simply absorb them. Frantically, she reaches for its mind again. She can feel it, it’s right there, but it’s closed to her. But she’s done this before, she would swear she has, she’s touched a mind, all she has to do is follow this thread, this thread she’s yanking on right here, goddess damn you, listen, you shiny—
And then the thread she is holding, the dark line that links this being to Network, breaks in half. It takes a moment for Sarya’s conscious mind to realize what has happened, but some part of her unconscious is way ahead of her. You are a new Network, she was told. Which means, says some instinct, that she can do…this.
Quickly, smoothly, instinctively, she pulls the thread into her own mind. She can see the tension on her own face as Librarian drifts to within centimeters of her trembling body, waits to feel her own skin dissolving—and then the thread, stretched between her mind and Librarian’s, glows with golden life. Librarian’s tone shifts up a few degrees and stabilizes. It brushes against her leg as it passes, but she does not feel it take a bite.
“Goddess,” she breathes. If this is a lesson from Network, it’s a bit higher pressure than she would prefer.
“It didn’t eat us!” cries Ace. “Um…why didn’t it eat us?”
Sarya has no time to reply. One by one, she plucks the other Librarian pieces off the old Network and joins them to the new—to her. Their threads illuminate one at a time, and she can’t help but smile as she feels them join her. Now that they can feel one another, they attract one another. One by one, like drops of mercury, they run together. Their individual notes join and harmonize until Librarian has absorbed every scrap of itself in the area. Its call is thunderous now; it vibrates her gut, it tickles her skin. There must be fifty tons of liquid metal flowing around her in the darkness, a sinuous shape gleaming in the emergency light.
And then it seizes her.
She stiffens, but she manages to strangle her cry. She holds her breath as something impossibly heavy and warm wraps itself around her leg. It flows up her tense body, flowing over her utility suit, then spirals down one arm and fills Roche’s hand with burning metal.
“Are we being eaten?” asks Ace in a quavering voice.
For a moment Sarya is sure that’s exactly what is happening. She helped this thing, she brought it out of darkness, and now it is repaying her by consuming her. She reaches out, tentatively, to touch that mind again. It’s so much larger now, so much more complex, its emotions manifold and many-layered—and then she laughs.
“You wouldn’t be laughing if we were being eaten,” says Ace. “Would you?”
“We’re being nuzzled,” she says. She flexes her fingers, as well as she can with a handful of silver. How do you pet a giant chunk of sentient metal? Surely you can’t hurt it; you could pound it with an ice hammer and it would do no more than purr. Maybe it’s enough to just touch its mind, like this—
A warning emanates from the mind of Librarian, flashing down the glowing cable into Sarya. Danger, says the warning.
Danger? Who could be in danger when wrapped in this thing? What could possibly threaten her tiny Network now?
The metal quivers, its ring shifting through modulations she can’t understand. Its entire mass begins to spin slowly, rotating around her body in the darkness. She feels it spread itself out, its edges thinning to knife edges.
“Now are we being eaten?” asks Ace.
Sarya hears his voice, but she is already too far away to bother answering. She is doing what Networks do: she is protecting herself. She is reaching out, crawling down dark threads, following her instincts. There are tens of millions of Network minds here, from the drones that drift through the darkness to the small helper intelligences in each citizen’s Network implant, and each one radiates terror. They are used to continual communion with one another, but now they are walled into their own private hells and awaiting Network’s return with an anticipation that approaches hysteria. When she breaks a thread and draws a mind into herself, she can feel its joy and relief like an explosion within her. These minds will do anything to stay attached to their Network. They will fight, they will die, they will destroy any threat. Sarya, on her end, finds that she would do anything to keep them. They amplify her and add their senses to her own, spreading her mind over multiple cubic kilometers. And yet, amplified as she is, it still takes her a moment to see it. Or rather…It.