Starille sits down opposite me with her own tray of food, interrupting my glare at Shipmind. I twitch a little; I had put my back to the wall so I could keep an eye on them and her, and was hoping she’d sit next to me so she could see something coming if she needed to. It’s fine - I can keep watch for both of us. She looks better, at least.
“You keep making that face, it’s gonna stick that way,” she says. “Come on. I get that you’re skeptical, but surely Shipmind doesn’t need to be constantly glared at.”
I glare at her, but she keeps her expression mild while loading up a forkful of pasta. “Shipmind,” I growl, “has already proven that they’re able and willing to take over people just because they can. They only reason they haven’t re-absorbed you yet is because they physically can’t.”
She reaches across the table to take my hand, which stops trembling. When had that started? “Sarah. You’ve been out here, on your own, for a couple of days now. Have they done anything to you? I chose to leave Shipmind, as part of Shipmind. They’ll respect that choice. Shipmind made mistakes, for sure. And I totally understand why you’d be worried. I was right there with you in the vents!” She squeezes my hand. “But they’re not going to bring you in without your say-so. They don’t want to hurt you, and they know that forcing you in would be harmful! So, can you please! Relax!” She takes a breath. “Just a little?”
The nearest Shipmind body gets up, and I flinch. They freeze, then slowly pick up their empty tray and take it to the recycler. I let out a held breath.
When I look up, Starille is frowning at me with concern. “Hey, why don’t we take our lunch and go somewhere else? I know a nice spot.”
Starille ends up leading me up, through the elevators, to a small observation deck off the beaten path. Shipmind must still be watching us, because there’s nobody there when we arrive.
“This is one of my favorite spots to go when I need to work out a problem over lunch.” Starille puts her tray on an end table and sits down on a stiff couch. She’s still sitting with her back to the corridor, just asking for trouble, so I sit down opposite her. “It’s nice, quiet, and pretty.”
“It’s probably better when the ship’s moving,” I say, but the false-window viewport actually does have a really nice view of the local star cluster. I take a bite, and find the pasta overwhelmingly garlicky. “Whoof. So much for making food just the way I like it. I guess the charm offensive is over.”
Starille chuckles, and wipes away a single tear when she thinks I’m not looking. “Nope. It’s my favorite this time.” She shakes her head and smiles as she grabs another bite.
We eat in silence for a little while; I end up having to use a lot of bread to cut the flavor. It’s strange, not having a shift to go on. I haven’t piloted anything in more than a month. My fingers itch for the controls.
Starille reaches across the table and stills the leg I hadn’t realized was bouncing. “I brought you all the way up here away from Shipmind and you’re still on edge. I want to tell you my story, but not if you’re going to be all keyed up and not actually listening to me.”
You mean the story about how you got kidnapped and mind controlled by an enemy bioweapon? Says the voice in the back of my head. I keep quiet, though it must show in my eyes, because Starille is frowning at me again. I settle for, “This is probably the most relaxed you’re going to see me.” Might as well let her tell her side of things. It might even give me some insight into what the hell happened with the Erinyes Device.
She sighs, wipes her mouth with a napkin, pushes her tray away, and folds her legs underneath her. “So. I told you that I looked into the computer core and saw it running the Shipmind protocol.”
“And you have no idea where it came from?”
“Not a clue. I tried searching for the command history, but it had been very thoroughly erased.”
My fingers drum on the table, until I realize what I’m doing and fold my arms instead. “And that didn’t strike you as suspicious? Like, maybe there was a bad actor involved in all of this?”
“Of course it was suspicious. But the whole thing was suspicious. That’s why I left with you in the first place.”
“So why go through with it? A pretty picture wouldn’t have convinced the Starille I knew so easily.”
She lets my barb slide right on past her. “For you, it’s a pretty picture. I have the expertise to know what’s going on. I could actually see the minds within Shipmind. They blur together at the edges, blending into one another, changing the overall makeup of each mind and of Shipmind as a whole, but never in a way that distorts the overall pattern. The process somehow enables both the blending of the minds across multiple bodies and prevents the total dissolution of any of them.” She leans forward, drawing invisible diagrams in the air just over the table. “It was so fascinating! And listening to Shipmind speak about themself indicated that they were aware of the process, and actively contributing to it!”
“Wait, hold it,” I say, hands banging on the table. “Shipmind is modifying the minds that go into it? Then it is destroying people! We need to-”
“Hey, Sarah? Look at me. You already agreed that I’m still me, right?”
I hesitate. “But, you were almost the most recent person in there! Maybe the process takes time…”
Starille shakes her head. “It’s been at least two weeks now for me, Sarah. Don’t get me wrong, I have changed, but that doesn’t mean I’m not the same person I was before.”
My hands tense. “What do you mean, you’ve changed?”
“I’ve gained all kinds of insight into how people perceived me, before all of this happened. I feel more connected to our crew than ever before, and I’ll feel that way even if Shipmind evaporates tomorrow. I don’t feel like I have to be so on guard all the time, anymore. It's easier to just be me.” She rubs her chin with her forefinger, staring off to the side. “Plus, I think I’m bisexual now.”
“They changed your sexuality!?”
Starille sighs. “No, you dingus, this is what I’m trying to tell you. Joining Shipmind was a life-altering experience, just like a lot of other crazy experiences you can have in this line of work. It changed how I think about things, how I think about myself, not because it’s some huge mind-altering force, but because it’s such a drastic shift in perspective. You try being in multiple bodies of different genders all at once and see if it doesn’t change the way you think about sexuality.”
“But couldn’t it be the case that Shipmind was just altering the way you thought about things for their own purpose? How would you ever know the difference?”
“Ordinarily, I’d say I couldn’t, but when you’re part of Shipmind, you have direct, unfiltered access to every part of Shipmind. I can tell they weren’t manipulating me for their own purpose because if they were, then I would have been manipulating myself for my own purpose. See?”
“But, what if they’re lying to you? Hiding things from you?”
“That’s... actually impossible.” Sarah goes to type in a sequence on her datapad, then seems to think better of it and puts it down. “You remember that visualization, right?”
Vividly. “Yeah.”
“Well, if there was anything that was being held back or cut off, it would have appeared there, as a big black sphere preventing access from the rest of Shipmind. I checked myself multiple times, before I joined - there’s nothing like that, and no indication that there ever was.” She pulls her datapad back across the table, and nearly knocks over her glass in the process.
“So…” I hesitate, as Starille taps something into the datapad. There’s gotta be something. Some way she could have been tricked. It can’t just be fine, nothing ever works like that. Everything has a cost. The alternative is…
The alternative is that I’m wrong. That I’ve been wrong the whole time.
“So, tell me about what it was like in Shipmind.” I just need more evidence, that’s all. I can’t have just been wrong. The similarities between Shipmind and Erinyes can’t just be a coincidence. Right?
Right.
