I'm telling you once again that my stat counter is broken due to a site malfunction so the only way I have to guess at interest in this story is if you leave a review on it.

The slave standing outside the door of Ophrenet's tree cottage bowed in half at the waist.

"My Lady. You have been summoned by the Great Goddess."

Kianna's mind was instantly filled with fear. Oh no, Netty, wait.

"Remain outside," said Ophrenet. "We will accompany you momentarily."

Netty closed the door on the slave.

Yes, Kianna? What is it? I can't stall her for long. It's not like we can pretend we have to get dressed.

It had been three days since the gory scene at the Midsummer Festival, and little had happened in that time. Netty had begun to wonder if perhaps their promotion to Bacchus's place had been a jest, or some kind of passing idea that Ashtoreth had already forgotten that night in her rage.

I'm just… scared of her, that's all. We saw how she sees humans. I'M a human.

Not so long as you're with me, you're not, said Netty. At least, she doesn't see you that way. As a matter of fact, she doesn't even know you're here.

I… suppose. But she's so unpredictable. Look at the way she lashed out the other night.

That display was more deliberate than it seemed on the surface. I am almost certain she was holding that man to be executed on that particular night in that way.

It was disturbing. Don't you find it disturbing?

I've seen many disturbing things, remember? I guess you could call me jaded. Or just so traumatized that it doesn't really leave the kind of impression that it would if I were in your place. She softened. I'm sorry you had to see that.

When they came to the porch of Ashtoreth's palace, the Queen was already there, and stepping outside.

"Come with me," she said.

They walked along the branch, onto another flet, and then along a suspension bridge until they reached a staircase to the ground.

This was not the area of the terraces, but rather, they stood near where Netty had rode into the city, by the edge of the shallow pond.

Netty wasn't sure where they were going, but waited for what she was to be shown.

There was a small statue on a pedestal near one edge of the pond.

"Do not move," said Ashtoreth, and then hit three places on the pedestal. She then gave a short run to stand beside Netty, and a set of hidden rings activated beneath them.

When the rings whooshed away and dropped into the ground, and the glow of light subsided, they found themselves in a large room. We must be under the ground.

The room was lined wall to wall with upright liquid canisters, each about 18 inches long and 9 inches in diameter. Inside of each one was a white worm. They were symbiotes; the pale color of very young larvae.

"Welcome to my laboratory," said Ashtoreth. The queen had dropped the symbiote intonation, so Ophrenet figured it was safe for her to do so as well. With the deep pitch removed, the queen's voice was silky-smooth.

"Why have you brought me here?" asked Ophrenet.

"Your clear-headedness, and cleverness," said Ashtoreth, "commended you to me considerably. Along with your new position, I thought that you might be able to assist me in my research."

Ophrenet walked over to the wall in order to study one of the canisters. "I see that you have contained the larvae individually," she said, was honestly not displeased.

"Indeed. Each container simulates as closely as possible the environment of a human body."

Ophrenet noted that each glass tube was filled, besides the symbiote, with a non-transparent hazy liquid, and adjoined at the top to electrical wires and a thin clear piping, all of which were bent back and affixed to the wall in a neat organizational system that reminded her of the wire bundles in the crude computers of Kelowna.

"How does it work?" asked Netty, speaking for Kianna as well as herself. "I mean, I see that you are using an electrical current to simulate the host body's natural electrical charge. But that's not all there is…"

"No. The piping supplies nutrients and… information."

"Information?" Netty walked along the wall, examining it.

"The nutrients come from the pond above us."

This made sense. Netty explained to Kianna. We are well-adapted to surviving in natural environments, and absorbing plant nutrients such as phosphates while living in an unbonded form. In some sense, the pond might be considered our natural environment only slightly less than a human body. The pond water and microorganisms should provide plenty of nutrients for the symbiotes to survive.

"As you are well aware," Ashtoreth continued, "In the traditional system, an immature symbiote learns how to interface with the human body while it is sustained in the body of a Jaffa. Kelnoreem is necessary for this process. The purpose of Kelnoreem is to provide the symbiote with information about the human body's autonomic systems. Regularly updating this information allows the symbiote to repair the human body, but it also allows the symbiote a vital chance to acclimate to and learn to control the body later on in life."

Netty found she was picking up on this rather quickly, but Kianna was still catching up. "So," said Netty out loud, "Am I correct in guessing that you've found a way to simulate the human autonomic processes?"

Ashtoreth smiled. "That's correct."

"Fascinating. How did you do it?"

Ashtoreth made her way to a small free-standing table in the center of the floor-not a table so much as a block or lectern. There was a slate with many buttons and sliders sitting on its face. "Kelnoreem," said the goddess, "is actually rather counter-intuitive. Under ordinary circumstances, Jaffa's heart rate is irregular and his breathing is inconsistent, causing all manner of bodily noise and instabilities. This creates a distraction that the symbiote must tune out or be overwhelmed. It is only during Kelnoreem, where the bodily functions stabilize and slow, that the symbiote can awake enough to devote its mind to processing the finer nuances of the body. In that state it analyzes the contents of the blood, reading hormones, white blood cell count, and other irregularities, and detecting infections and other problems." Ashtoreth's smile grew bigger as her hand remained on the lectern and her chin tilted up to look over the wall of her children. "I have solved the age-old problem of artificial symbiote maturation," she said. "By carefully modulated pressure changes and oxygenation, I can evoke the perception of heart rate and breathing in the larvae's chambers. By deliberately controlling these and bringing them into alignment, I can induce the perception of Kelnoreem in the symbiote."

So Jaffa are obsolete?

But Ashtoreth was still talking. "And once I have induced Kelnoreem, I can feed the larvae their information, the vital information they need to learn the workings of the human body."

"You've synthesized human blood?" Ophrenet ventured.

"Not exactly." Ashtoreth's smile suddenly seemed much more sinister. A shiver prickled over Netty and Kianna's skin.

"I see."

Netty looked around the room. There were hundreds of larval Goa'uld here, if not thousands. That's a lot of blood.

Oh.

"Yes, I'm sure by now you've worked out the purpose of the ritual sacrifices. They are… practical, as well as symbolic."

Even Netty found this revolting, but she couldn't show it. "Congratulations, my Queen," she said. "Your brilliance cannot be matched. You've truly made Jaffa obsolete, and freed the Goa'uld from their dependence."

The queen's eyes glowed in pleasure.

So that is how she is doing it.

It doesn't make sense, said Kianna.

I know you're following, said Netty. What are you talking about?

I still don't know what her plan is. How will she make them into soldiers?

What do you mean?

I mean that we could steal and raise these larvae to maturity, but we'd never be able to "educate" them at all.

Can they not learn from their human host?

Netty, I know this concept is a little foreign to you, but in human psychology we have a concept called a development window. This means there's only a certain amount of time during childhood that children have to learn skills like, say, language. After that the opportunity is closed to them forever. Now obviously, spending your entire adolescence in a… (Kianna was a little uncomfortable) er, womb, wouldn't be a developmental problem if you were born with a genetic memory. But you yourself said these were like human infants. Even if they could take full control of a human's body, what would they do?

Ashtoreth plans to make soldiers out of them, said Netty, but she sounded a little uncertain. I will ask.

You're just going to ask?

"Your majesty, I do have one question."

Kianna's heart rate sped up within her chest.

We do have to ask her this, remember? It's a part of our mission. We have to find out before we can steal the symbiotes.

"If I am correct in assuming these symbiotes are blank slates—"

"Indeed," Ashtoreth murmured.

"Then if I may be so bold as to ask her majesty how these symbiotes will be trained as soldiers?" she took Kianna's wording suggestions. "There is more to a human mind than hormones and the nervous system. It is unlikely that these symbiotes will be able to even communicate, much less be battle-ready straight out of containment."

"You are asking the right question," said Ashtoreth to their relief, and then much less comfortingly added, "That is what I want you to figure out."

What?

"Yes, your majesty. If I may have a moment to study these capsules."

"Certainly." Ashtoreth busied herself at the control panel, inducing Kelnoreem.

So what's the plan? I mean obviously it's possible to transport a couple of these symbiotes out of here, but you were also going to take her technology.

Yeah. We just need that autonomic regulator panel that she's standing over. I can figure out how it works once we get back to Kelowna.

But that's not all you need, is it? You need human blood, too.

Maybe. Maybe not. We'll figure that out later.

Netty ran her fingers over the containment capsule, her face close to the glass. The larvae was inside, with its pale skin and beady black eyes, and its four mandibles snapping open and shut.

It repulsed her.

She took immediate stock, self-conscious, fearing this feeling had come from Kianna. It had not.

This creature, this thing that she was, that was her. Her own internal body. And it was not beautiful. She was not a human, she was not even, in her essence, among the higher orders of animals, like the four-footed beasts of the field or the high-flying eagles. She did not have the beauty even of a horse, a dolphin, or a great cat, sleek, with its fur and long tail and tooth and claw. She was a parasite. A creeping thing that swims along in the muck, with only another person's memories of grandeur to delude it into thinking it had ever been anything more.

No. Netty. Please. Stop.

Is this why we wish to become gods, Kianna? Because we hate so much what we really are? I want to forget.

You are not a parasite. You are a symbiote.

If this is my true nature then why do I hate it so much? I need to be something better than this.

She was shocked to feel Kianna's pity for the torment in her soul.

You CAN be better than this. Netty, you need to stop focusing so much on outward appearances. You of all people should know they can be deceiving. After all, if a body like yours can hide within a body like mine, then perhaps a good and virtuous soul can be found in a body like yours. The true ugliness of Goa'uld like Ashtoreth and Ba'al is on the inside. The Tok'ra understand this. That is why they choose to be something better not by denying their physical form, but by embracing their identity as symbiotes and rising above the Goa'uld on a moral level. The Goa'uld have no dignity, for all their godhood—by seeking to repress and replace the host, they flee from what they are.

This is why Apophis clung so desperately to the falsehood that nothing of the host remains.

Now you're getting it. Only by realizing that your dependency is not a flaw can you have the self-respect to own your true form. Only then can you rise above your self-loathing and become what you truly are.