Cosmosis

Too Late

<Hey.> I said, trying not to cry.

<I don't have long, do I?> Daniel said.

<…No.>

Finding and assembling Daniel's pieces had not been a solution, not a long term one.

Daniel was more whole now than even the first moment he appeared to me in the Vorak cell. But he was still running out of time. Whatever I'd ripped from Daniel's head, even if it had stayed whole from the start, just wouldn't last, not as him at least.

It had never been about him being whole or not. Daniel's real problem had been damage . However much 'Daniel' I had in my head, in however many pieces, it just wasn't a state he could persevere in. Whether that was because of my head, or his death, I couldn't say.

<I found your notes. Do you remember making them?>

He smiled, <Yeah, actually. I remember it all right now. It's super weird, different pieces of me weren't connected and so they were all leaving different breadcrumbs just in case. But now I'm in once piece and it feels like I was making a dozen notes simultaneously.>

The difference between now and before was staggering. He wasn't pausing oddly; he wasn't trailing off absently. He really was whole.

For however much time he had left.

<You've got the reins on the psyche-cognitive stuff now,> he observed, <ballpark how long I've got?>

<…Maybe an hour.> I said.

<Rats,> he said, < I thought for sure I'd be able to eke out two. Oh well. No helping it now.>

Separately, it was easy to assume each of Daniel's pieces was inert. Alone, each one wasn't capable of anything. Their metaphorical battery had been run down, or maybe its ability to retain charge had been damaged… there wasn't a perfect comparison to be made.

Alone, they were inert. But reassembled, they pooled what they had left and gave Daniel enough time for a swansong.

<This sucks,> I thought bitterly. <I found your pieces, and I thought I could bring you back. Instead I get to watch your last moments for the third time.>

<Lo siento hermano,> Daniel said, <There was nothing we could do from the start.>

<I don't get it though, if you were always going to run out of time, why did this stupid 'phantom' bother to break you down?>

<Fuck, that name makes me cringe. Can't believe I called it that.> Daniel said, <It was never actually destroying me. It was just trying to preserve pieces that had critical information.>

<But the moment it snatched up those pieces…>

<The rest of me lost that same information. So any given piece of me couldn't know it wasn't eating me bit by bit until it had already been isolated.>

<Did it work?>

<Did what work?>

<The preservation.>

<Honestly, I'm not sure. You tell me. If I've got about an hour left, does it seem like I'd have even less if it hadn't wrapped up my pieces?>

<I…don't know. My focus was on putting you back together. I didn't realize how little time you had until after you were whole again.>

<I'm a little curious how you can tell how much time I've got. Because I'm not connected to any of the stuff from before. The stopwatch, the radar, it's all yours now.>

<That's… really hard to put into words. So, with the radar, I can see my own mind in a different way, right? If I combine that with thinking about analyzing you… I get… a decaying curve, kinda?>

<A decaying curve makes sense, I guess. Still, sucks that it only amounts to an hour.>

My jaw clenched. Was there any way I could—<Caleb, don't.> Daniel cut me off.

<There could be—> I started.

<I know you've just had a breakthrough with this, but there have been pieces of me inside the Phantom since before you even woke up in the Vorak cell. I might not be connected to it anymore, but I got a close up look at it from your subconscious. That's why I know you know there isn't anything else we can do.>

<The phantom—>

<needs a better name,> he interjected.

<—can make other mental machines like itself. Maybe we could make some kind of cryogenic tube in my head.>

<Mental machines huh? Interesting way of phrasing it, probably better than what I wrote down. But you already know that won't work, because cryogenics isn't just about magically stopping something from breaking down. It's about freezing something, lowering its temperature.>

<…and what does that matter for us?> I finished, <You're living thought. Thoughts don't have temperature.>

<We would need some way of understanding why and how I'm running out of energy. Then we'd need to understand just what kind of energy I'm running out of. Then, and only then, might we be able to take a swing. And that sounds like a shit ton of work. I'd rather spend my last hour chatting.>

<I…I don't know what to say.>

<Well for one, you could explain how you just managed to stutter with thought-speak. Or you could try to cheer up. Make a joke or something. You've already seen me go twice, surely the third time can't be any worse than the first two?>

<Shut up,> I said, <I'm in so much pain right now, you're just going to have to live with my mood.>

<Actually, I wanted to ask about that. I was watching you fight Chief and holy shit! How did you take that beating? What the fuck is up with your pain tolerance?>

<Pretty sure that was you, actually. As long as you were gumming up my head, I don't think pain quite 'registered' properly. I mean I still felt it, but once you were gone, it felt different, like it was sinking in more.>

<Ah. So now you're paying the piper. Not just for Chief, but the last few days, wholesale.>

<I'm in agony,> I agreed, <No need to remind me.>

<That's the spirit!> He grinned.

I managed a bit of a smile back. From the very beginning, he had a way of improving my attitude. I knew why of course. There was no way you could be exposed to someone's consciousness and every thought without developing a keen understanding of who they were. Without a doubt, Daniel knew me far better than even my parents—he'd had an all-access pass to the innermost thoughts of Caleb. Despite the tired line, he might actually know me better than I knew myself. That frightened me more than I ever thought it would.

But I could worry about that later.

<I like the broom and dustpan you made, that's hilarious!>

<Some spring cleaning was called for around here.> I replied.

<It's November.>

<Nominally,> I retorted.

<What else do you think you could make?>

<No clue,> I admitted, <I'm going to have to ask what kind of stuff aliens have in their heads.>

<Rats. When it was just you with the radar, I thought you might have had a monopoly on these things. You could have named it.>

<Still could,> I mused, <Not like they speak my language.>

<Psyhcho-forms,> Daniel suggested, <literally meaning,'mind shapes'.>

<Apt, but I think I'll go with 'psionics'.>

<Bah. That's a genre-buzzword and you know it.>

<Yeah, but in this case it actually fits. It's a portmanteau of 'psychic' and 'electronics'. And we're talking about mental-machines? Come on, how does that not fit?>

<You read too much Wikipedia.> He grumbled.

<Not anymore.> I pointed out.

He laughed.

<Then again…there's a ton to unpack here.> he turned my attention toward the mental journal. <I can't actually access it anymore. Can you connect me?>

I could, and did.

<Here, let me organize all the notes my pieces left while we talk.>

He'd evidently learned from his time as countless disconnected pieces, because if his updates to the journal took much concentration, it didn't show. If I could learn to multi-task like that…

Oh man there were some cool ideas I had for these psionic constructs.

<You mind if I pick your brain about one note in particular before… you know?>

<Sure.>

<The radar one, you mentioned I 'over-tuned' it?>

<Oh shit! Yeah, that was one of the first notes. I lost that piece the first time I flickered out—with the flashbang otter and when the halberd Vorak barged in.>

<The vocabulary though… you used the word ' Enumius ' in it.>

<Yeah, each piece should have updated itself as you and I learned new information. Actually, we really should look at the radar before I'm gone. You don't want to have to try and figure this out just from instructions.>

He didn't need to ask this time, I pulled a fresh connection from the psionic radar and handed it off to Daniel's assembled pieces.

<Okay, so check this out here. Think of it like light pollution. You're filtering out the lower intensity readings in favor of more precise readings on the super high energy registers. See…shit you're right, the words don't exist—this part, right here,>

Daniel showed me under the radar's 'hood'. My headache came back with a vengeance when I tried to take the whole of the mechanism in. But this was important. Tuning out every part except the bits Daniel guided my attention to…the radar had settings. Parameters. Variables to its sensitivity to… I had no idea what.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

But if I pretend my mental cleaning tool was a broom and dustpan, I could pretend these took the form of dials and sliders.

<Oh hey! That's cool,> Daniel said, turning one of the dials, <Why didn't I think of that?>

<Not sure you could have done it, even if you had the idea.>

<Probably not. But anyway, this slider is range. You can hike the range up a lot further than you have, but the accuracy drops really badly, really fast. But that's true at any setting, it's just not super noticeable with how you've got it now.>

<How do you know how each one changes the radar? It didn't change like what you're talking about before.>

<Hermano, I built it. Or at least the initial version. Your psionic phantom here thought it was worth taking over, so I don't actually know the whole of its changes. I just know what I put into it.>

<It's definitely the most complex of the things you made. It even seems a little different from the others, maybe since its reacting to something physical around us.>

<Well it was the first thing to really get put together, even if the journal was the first thing we used consciously. Like I said, a lot of my pieces were isolated before you even woke up, but they were still independently active for the first day or so.>

<Then they started running out of energy.>

<Yup, alright here's the adjustment I was talking about. Don't flinch—>

For a second every corner of my mind shrieked a blinding white. It was a sound I could see, or a sight I could hear. Hard to tell which.

But as quickly as the radar flared up, the disturbance died out almost immediately. <Sorry, sorry, that was my fault. But it worked, check it out!>

Nai was visible on the radar again. I could tell the mirror was still in their mind somehow, but it wasn't obscuring the signal Nai radiated. The way Daniel described it, the mirror had been tailored for 'higher energy registers', which probably meant Enumius brains. He'd adjusted the radar down to pick up plain old minds.

Which is why I could sense Tasser on the radar too.

And the Casti in the hall outside. And the ones in the room below us. And a cluster of them through the wall behind me. It was overwhelming! It reached so much further now, but the information wasn't so cleanly presented now.

They were all fuzzy alien shaped clouds that blurred into each other and themselves. Daniel hadn't been kidding, the accuracy was horrible the further out it got. It made me question if it was even worth the reach.

<Reign it back in and focus on Tasser and Nai. Look.>

Paring away all but the closest reaches of the radar, I could make out subtle shifts in the fuzzy mental registers that corresponded with Nai and Tasser's positions. There were patterns to it!

<Whoa, is this mind reading?> I asked.

<That was the first thing I thought of when I realized what the radar actually detected. But sadly, no. Our luck has been insane, but even we aren't that blessed.>

<But those shifts, they're definitely coming from Nai and Tasser.>

<I think it's the mental—or 'psionic' since that's what you landed on—version of reading body language or facial expressions. See how you can't actually detect anything inside their fuzzy mindforms? I think the patterns and expressions you're seeing is some natural slough off of thoughts or emotions.>

<That's still insanely useful. Should be helpful in figuring out how the aliens feel about stuff.>

<Oh, for sure. Still, you have no idea how crushed that piece of me was when I figured out it's no good for learning the language.>

<No babel fish?> I complained.

<Nope, you've gotta keep learning the hard way.>

<We'll figure something out.> I said.

Daniel went a little quiet.

<What?>

<Ah…you're just still saying 'we'.>

It had been fun talking with Daniel about the new possibilities. For a moment I'd forgotten just how I'd gotten here.

Daniel had less than an hour. This conversation needed to cover a lot of ground, and we'd covered the important parts of what he'd learned.

It was time for the rest.

<I'm really pissed.> I said.

<At?>

<You? Maybe? The Vorak for sure.>

<And…?>

<Me,> I said, <I thought that went without saying.>

<And isn't that just the perfect little summary?>

<Come on, take this seriously.>

<…nah. I'm counting my minutes here. I don't want to go out on a dour note. So if we're going to talk about the psychological ramifications of events, I'm going to maintain a healthy detachment and stay lighthearted about it. You should try it.>

<It feels dismissive,> I said honestly. <This stuff is important. I killed you, and killing the otter has me screwed up beyond words.>

<First, you're right. It's important. But I'm not convinced that's a reason to not be as calm and rational as possible about it all. Second, you're being pretty conceited. Tasser is the one who actually killed the alien. You're trying to take credit for the kill as a part of some masochistic need to be punished for killing me.>

<I practically blasted the otter right into the bullet, just like you got impaled on the ship. You really want to split that hair?>

<Splitting that hair is the difference between agency and impulse. But it's still irrelevant. Even if you were the one to pull the trigger, Chief was after your head. Ignoring every other scrap of context, your life was at risk. You're allowed to survive, Caleb.>

<I know that! I'm pissed at myself because I'm still freaking out over killing something that wanted me dead. I'm pissed because I killed you, maybe even twice! I'm just pissed at this whole situation.>

<Anyone would be in your shoes.>

<No one else is.> I said bitterly. <I'm pissed because I don't want to go through this alone. I'm pissed because it's my fault I'm going to be alone. I'm pissed that I killed you. But most of all, I'm pissed that I might be more focused on the first two than the third.>

<I get that. You're the kind of person who doesn't take personal failure well.>

<I'm fine with failure,> I corrected, <I accept that I will fail.>

<At tangible stuff, sure. Grades, sports, games. But with personal affairs, that you're accountable to no one but yourself in? You take it hard. >

<You don't—> I cut off the thought. He did know me.

<Darn right I do.> Daniel said, <I know why you quit drama club and joined the baseball team. I know who you are. I know who you want to be and why.>

<You weren't so perceptive before.> I grumbled.

<You're pissed because you feel like you failed your own principle. And maybe you even did. But you're assuming that you can control what led to the failure. You're behaving like the only way to make my death right is to suffer enough, or change somehow, so my death wasn't pointless. But you're ignoring the fact that you had the principle to fail in the first place.>

<The principle wasn't just 'don't kill your friends', it's—>

<Is there anything that's changed that?> Daniel demanded, <do you have any reason whatsoever to think you won't try your best in the future to avoid exactly what happened to me?>

<Of course not, but that's not the point. I feel like the bigger reason I wish you weren't gone is so that I wouldn't be alone, and not because I killed you!>

<And?>

<And I hate thinking that! I'm pissed that's how I'm reacting. It's selfish. It's callous. It's dismissive!>

<Caleb, you're such a diva,> Daniel said exasperated, <You're pissed at yourself for having a selfish feeling? When you've been abducted by aliens? Get some perspective! You were never perfect, and there's no conceivable reality in which you go through what we did, and find yourself more emotionally stable than before.>

<Lives were, are at stake! My mistakes mattered! You died ! Hard times don't absolve me of responsibility.>

<No. They don't.> Daniel agreed, <But this does: I forgive you. 'Again', in case it wasn't already clear.>

<You can't just magically expect me to feel better about this just because you said I shouldn't.>

<Actually, I can. If the source of your self-loathing is guilt over killing me, why can't I use that very guilt against you? I don't need you to feel better though, I just want you to try your best and keep yourself healthy, because I want you to get home someday.>

<I... I don't get how it can be that simple for you,> I said, <How can you die, and just say 'there is no lesson', 'I forgive you', 'forgive yourself', and 'move on'?>

<Honestly Caleb? It's because I know it's the kind of thing you'd say to me if our positions were reversed. I've said it from the beginning; I don't think we're that different. If I was in your place? I'd be doing a lot worse than you.>

<Give me some time, I'm sure I can find some more ways to screw up.>

<You'll have plenty of chances if you're investigating.> He said, <What's your step one?>

<Learn the language. Every other possibility is locked behind communication. That's priority one.>

<After that?>

That was a good question. The details would depend on what else I learned, when. But the general goal was; <Kick the otters in the teeth for abducting us. Get back home, and make the abductors suffer as much as possible along the way.>

<You'll need allies.> Daniel observed.

I gave a nod toward Tasser, <I've got some.>

<Even with allies, you'll need to be ruthless about learning. Every single time you run across something you don't understand is an extra chance for it all to fall apart on you again.>

<I never shied away from learning something new.> I said.

<That might not cut it.You can't just take lessons when they come to you. You need to be proactive, restless, aggressive about being informed. Starting out that way is easy, it's keeping it up over months, years, maybe even your whole life.>

<Mind like a sponge,> I agreed, <If I really go looking, I'm going to need every piece of information, just to find out what exactly happened. But… with the psionic journal, I should be able to store and remember an absurd amount. I won't fail in that regard; I'll soak up even the tiniest drops.>

<Learning through osmosis…> Daniel mused, <Or, present circumstances considered…>

<Make the pun, and die.> I threatened lightheartedly. It was my attempt to follow his advice

<You mean 'again'?>

I winced at that.

<It'll never cease to amaze me how cavalier you were with your own death.> I marveled.

<I already died, that's why. The hard part already happened, so why not have some fun talking about it?>

I couldn't respond right away. His time was running out sooner than expected. Daniel felt it too, I could tell. A ripple went through his collective pieces, a shudder as the last scraps of energy dwindled. What was there to say?

<…Thank you.> I told him.

<I hope you make it back.>

<Adios, Daniel.> I said.

<Annyeong, Caleb.> He said.

And the last spark of Daniel went out of my mind.

…

…

"…Okay," I said, "let's go back to school."