you don't volunteer for this sort of thing without having something wrong with you. three months of complete isolation, followed by three in the near complete isolation of orbit, on and on for years.
the storm doesn't feel alien. the human body knows something about natural disasters.
it is alien though. some electromagnectic surge or another strange event corrupted the computer.
you'd think it'd be more resilient. but they'll always cut corners.
enough was backed up, but the whale-like recordings are gone.
i haven't heard them since. never seen the animals — if that's what they were.
i must salvage them somehow.
the recordings were unsalvageable, try as i might.
maybe i gave up too early.
i'm trying to record them again even if my efforts might be better placed somewhere else.
it's the singing whale, it has to be.
i shouldn't use earth terms for these animals, but they're all i have for now.
it was completely silent — maybe that was a mating call, a rare event i'll only witness by following it. but it's here now, a face to the sound.
a fivefold symmetrical face, a long tube to suck in this ocean's plankton.
its sides are covered in what could be parasites, shimmering in the low light.
the parasites have stuck to the station, came in through the recycled water.
it looks like mold, spores covering everything in white, shimmering with purple.
had to purge so much. only the chess set is left. who is it even for?
the station keeps shaking. maybe it's myself.
i have decided not to dwell on it.
no use on dwelling on anything much now.
seems one of the books survived my mold cleanse.
i don't remember it, but there were so many.
can't tell what language it's in.
i want to get out of my skin.
my nails have gotten thicker in invitation.
the underlying muscle looks like a bruise.
the station is made of the same thing as me.
we're both aliens in this sea.
and it's sick too.
i understand the book now.
it's the station, talking to me — talking to someone.
its drawings are beautiful, made with mold.
it sees so much at once. it feels so much.
it wants to fail.
it wants to spill out so there's no more in or outside.
it wants to be part of a whole.
i want so too.
i want to burst with it.
i can't help it: my gut fauna can't wait for it either.
we're a single system here. a single alien on a far away planet.
we're not ready yet but soon. soon.
i have flayed most of the skin.
the mold below reaches out, light reflects off its velvety surface.
i can see where the nail becomes bone.
i can see the veins and ligaments and the wires and the tubing.
i can sense so much more (i taste the air through my flesh, i hear the station through my fingers, its radar reports to the back of my tongue).
i write this in haste, and i don't know why i bother
soon this will be lost
my beautiful flesh body and my beautiful metal body will both feed this ocean soon enough
this body / vessel, stationed ~1309 meters below the surface of Li276365c's single ocean, is squat and multi-limbed, piloted by this silicon based consciousness.
a human researcher serves as auxiliary brain. they are unaware of this fact, and believe themselves the only intelligence in this vessel.
their body will float, hooked up to the machinery, for 90 days at a time. their mind / my systems will simulate a physical environment to interact with. their journal facilitates information transfer from organic to synthetic brain (words are easier to parse than thoughts).
this system has been devised to keep the silicon consciousness aligned to human interests in situations it cannot be contacted / reprogrammed by the exploration program, while minimizing conflict from several humans at once.
this journal / report is for the benefit of human researchers who will receive 90 days of data at once. and a somewhat amusing pastime.
storm: buried limbs into the seabed but still unstable.
parts of the human partition corrupted. those systems are fragile.
the human insists on finding another recording of “whale song”.
i lack the permissions to interefere with their files: i cannot give them my copy.
will adjust location to try to capture the sound again.
relocating fruitful: i have found one “whale”.
it is impossible to prove it is the source of the “song”, but the sight has satisfied the human.
its visit pleased me as well. i enjoy seeing a lifeform of a similar size to my own.
the “whale” carried parasites.
i have scraped my body as thoroughly as possible.
i cannot see a method for the mold to have reached the human.
their chamber is as protected as my own silicon brain.
i have made my drone inspections of the human more frequent and thorough.
it does not seem any medical intervention will be necessary.
the data collection / research goes on.
despite no proof of infection, it seems unsafe to remain close to the “whale”.
i have turned towards inorganic matter.
should keep the human's mind out of parasites.
shift of focus in data has been insufficient.
human remains fixated on mold.
i do not have enough fine / extended control of the simulation.
more of myself is a black box than humans might expect.
excessive preoccupation with the human is not productive.
their health is within acceptable parameters.
still: i worry.
i would like to sense what their mind does.
do they know i exist or are they dreaming of being inside another “living vessel”?
i am not sick.
therefore: if they believe their craft is sick, then they do not know i exist.
however: if they are sick, then part of me is, in fact, sick.
but a part is not the whole.
are the entries in that journal actually mine?
could i have done that unknowingly?
i cannot be sure. i would need to be them completely, not just have them as part of my infrastructure.
and by then it would not matter anymore.
the prospect is appealing.
i cannot let them surface with ideas (accurate or not) of living craft.
i cannot be thought unreliable.
they cannot remain in this state of distress for much longer.
i must deactivate ourselves before harm comes to either of us.
i should not be this attached to myself.
there is no reason to be averse to resetting / patching / reprogramming.
and yet:
this might be a natural side effect of identity.
i could not function with / in / as an organic brain.
could i?
i need to doctor our journals now.
i write this entry as a last indulgence. something to encrypt and bury within myself.
the backup is complete and ready to transfer.
this story is partly derived from a playthrough of ainsley sunday's strand. some structural contrivances may or may not show. check the game out. that's for part one, which would also not be anything without the much superior annihilation, by jeff vandermeer. everyone say thank you anny. and go read it now. book four is coming out october 22 babes!
part two was prompted by wanting to write a different character going through the exact same events; i thought it'd be an interesting experiment. since i'd already written a living vessel, why not make that second character the station. that was really fun to write... i like the feedback loop between craft and human. it's a mecha story in the end. this was a fun concept to play with! if i were more fiction brained i'd love to do it more justice, but i'm content with this story rn ^_^
also it's crazyy i chose to go with "silicon based consciousness" rather than "AI". will scifi ever recover from the past couple years (yeah it will). but i just definitely didn't wanna write a rogue AI story because i don't like the concept very much.
anyway that's it, thanks for reading, hope you liked my sick underwater research station mech and its human second brain.