Today's Reading
CHAPTER ONE
0.18 Percent Is Still a Lot of Murder
The worst thing about being part of an alien hivemind was you had to act like thousands of insect feet crawling over your body—including your face, neck, ears—and possibly trying to burrow into your collar was just fine.
The best part about being part of an alien hivemind? The jury was still out on that one.
Mallory sat motionless on her bed, eyes closed, reminding herself this was Just Fine. Even among the buzz of thousands of wings. Even with antennae probing and investigating every hormone she secreted. Even with a deadly allergy to Earth-dwelling insects of the Vespidae family.
She breathed slowly. Don't think about that allergy thing.
Meditating was challenging for most people, but trying to meditate in the midst of a swarm of blue wasplike aliens was a new level. Most of the members of the Sundry were as long as her thumb, their stingers and venom sacs visible. She tried to go deeper into the meditation and ignore the dainty feet crawling over her eyelids and the delicate antennae probing her nostrils and ear canals.
Feel the station, the hivemind said.
She extended her awareness past her own discomfort and fear. It was hard to fight against decades of fear responses, but she was part of the hivemind, and the Sundry took care of their own.
All at once she was in her room; she was in the large hive in the park; she was crawling along a display case in the new deli; she was inspecting a ventilation shaft; she was on the wall of the shuttle bay (and spied a familiar shuttle, which almost made her remember something but not quite); she was part of a mindless swarm that gave processing power to the living space station that was Eternity. She could almost touch the sentient mind of the station, she was so close. She could feel it on the outskirts of the Sundry processing power. She felt she could reach out—
A crash threw her out of her meditation with a gasp. This caused all the Sundry crawling on her to take wing and move as one to hover above the chair next to her bed.
"What have you gotten into now?" she groaned, rubbing her face, ears, and neck to get rid of the lingering crawling sensation. She shuddered and slid off the edge of her bed.
"Mobius!" she shouted. "What happened?"
There was no answer, not that she expected one. She stepped into the living room/kitchen area of her small apartment and looked for whatever broke.
A stoneware bowl—stoneware! how did he do that?—lay in two pieces on the floor, with green goo splattered around it.
The perpetrator was flying in circles close to the ceiling, chirping quietly to himself. He sounded pleased. Had he meant to break the bowl? Or was he just happy he had summoned her? Or was he a masochist who wanted to break her concentration?
She'd heard complaints about toddlers and pets, how they get destructive if they don't get enough attention. "But that's your food bowl, man," she said sadly, and bent to clean it up.
Mobius was a baby still, a sentient spaceship who would one day be large enough to be a full-sized shuttle capable of life support, but for now, he was a baseball-sized flying destructoid.
"Get down here," she said, holding her hand out.
The tiny ship chirped defiantly and flew into the bedroom.
"No you don't!" Mallory said, running after him. He had flown into her closet and was thrashing around.
She flipped the light on and peeked inside. She had a minimal wardrobe still, not having brought a lot of clothes to space with her, but she had a few shirts and jackets hung up. One suit. Shoes and boots lay on the floor haphazardly; she had lined her shoes up neatly the last time she had been in here.
A sneaker lay upside down, muffled chirping coming from underneath it. It leaped into the air, then fell again.
"Are you stuck?" she asked, amusement and fondness for the little ship finally replacing frustration. She remembered her old boss at the animal shelter, who told her kittens and puppies were so cute because it was their only defense.
...
