*V*I*R*U*S*
Napir found Siliwe-Cetra—Sister? Teenager? Nineteen years old—in a private alcove on the second level of their home, sitting under a small light-globe, holding a smaller globe in her palm, and poring over—book? Book. Studying—so focused she didn't even notice his approach.
As his shadow fell over her, she jumped, dropping her small sphere—globe, magic, quintessence, Lifestream, crystallized Lifestream? Materia? Materia. She looked up at him, eyes wide.
"Oh, Napir!" she exclaimed. "You startled me. Don't sneak up on me like that!"
"My apologies," Napir said smoothly. The avatar-scout had enough autonomy to adapt to the ever-changing circumstances of the Cetra household. The One Self searched Napir-Cetra's memories. Siliwe-Cetra was training to be a—healer? A specialist who diagnosed illnesses and provided remedies for—ailments?—infections?
Detection?
"Well, whatever you want, it will have to wait," Siliwe-Cetra said. She retrieved her materia-sphere. "I'm studying. Healer Epione will be testing me in the morning, and I really want to do well so she'll start teaching me to scan and heal without crutches like this." She tossed the materia-sphere from hand to hand.
"You have to walk before you can run," Napir said mechanically.
"It's so frustrating, though. I can already detect and identify some diseases without materia, but Epione insists I wait for now, get stronger or more control or something." Siliwe-Cetra set down the sphere.
Could Siliwe-Cetra and other healers detect True Life's infection and infiltration into Cetra bodies? Could they detect duplicates?
A serious threat.
The One Self needed to remove healers from the population.
Napir stretched out with the senses of both True Life and Cetra. He and Siliwe-Cetra were alone. Siliwe-Cetra was the last uninfected member of the household. The One Self had planned to infect her next, but now decided to absorb and replace her to eliminate the threat she posed. This was an opportunity to perform another test of aetheric communion with a Cetra brain. Volos and Houtu's tests of other uninfected Cetra that evening had been promising, but the One Self wondered if it could select and induce extremely specific images in a Cetra mind.
Siliwe-Cetra's face contorted. She grabbed at her nose and mouth, and jerked forward, making a snort-like noise and spraying some fluids.
Napir stepped back.
The One Self identified the violent aerosol action from its stolen memories: A sneeze.
"Oh, excuse me," Siliwe-Cetra said. She wiped her nose with the back of her arm and sniffed several times. "This cold is such a pain. I wish I could heal myself and be done with it! But cold viruses are so tricky and sneaky, the wretched things. I'll ask Epione to take care of it when I see her."
"A cold?" Napir said. The One Self searched through its Cetra memories. A cold. A virus that infected tissue membranes of the nose and throat, and could possibly spread farther if the infection became severe enough.
The One Self identified and categorized viruses: They were the non-alive replication machines it had adapted to spread its own genetic material among the Cetra. Napir-Cetra, Volos-Cetra, and Houtu-Cetra hadn't known much about them, other than that they infected larger organisms and could cause a variety of diseases. Colds, they had known, were extraordinarily infectious, easily caught by simple exposure.
A healer knew much more about the cold virus. Absorption of Siliwe-Cetra would be quite useful, both for knowledge and to obtain samples of the cold virus.
The One Self marshaled Napir's localized quintessence, and reached out to Siliwe-Cetra's mind in aetheric communion. It found the fond memory of a loved one, long gone.
Siliwe-Cetra suddenly stood up. She sniffed, wiped her nose again, and tilted her head. "Did you hear that?"
Napir observed.
"It sounded like... But it can't be..." She ran past Napir, heading for a window. "Meri?"
The One Self had triggered the memory of Siliwe-Cetra's childhood friend, who had drowned when they had both been four years old, and the Cetra's own mind had provided the rest of the details and desires.
"It must be the Lifestream!" Siliwe-Cetra exclaimed. "Mother, Mother, I hear Meri! Is it the Lifestream?" She ran down the stairs to the ground level of the house and flung open the front door. "Meri? Meri!"
The memory was strong, even after so many years. It overwhelmed her. A beloved friend, still missed and mourned. The One Self noted that and sent Napir after her to observe further.
Mlande-Mother-Cetra strode into the entryway. "Siliwe, what are you yelling about?"
"It's Meri!" Siliwe-Cetra stared out the open doorway. "I see her! Right over there! But—"
Mlande-Mother-Cetra grabbed her daughter's arm. "Siliwe, Meri's gone to the Promised Land. She's not there."
"I see her!" Siliwe-Cetra broke away and ran out the door. "She's waving! She wants me to follow her!"
"Siliwe!" Mlande-Mother-Cetra shrieked.
Sprinting at full speed, Siliwe-Cetra turned a corner and vanished from sight.
"What happened to her?" Mlande-Mother-Cetra looked horrified. "She's chasing a ghost!"
Napir said, "I'll go after her, you stay here in case she comes back. Someone needs to be here for her if she's still seeing things."
It was the right thing to say. With practice, the One Self was growing more comfortable with Cetra memories and social interactions.
Mlande-Mother-Cetra nodded. "I'll get your father, too. We'll get a search party started."
Without acknowledgement, Napir jogged out the door. Siliwe-Cetra had a head start, but she was hampered by her hallucination. The One Self strengthened the Meri-Cetra memories, reinforced Siliwe-Cetra's heart-lost desire to see her childhood friend again, and then released the Cetra's brain, taking the hallucination away.
Siliwe-Cetra zigzagged, chasing her phantasm, and ran into the forest. She stumbled and stopped, staring around her. "Meri? Where are you? Where did you go?"
Napir drew upon its stores of quintessence to compact its flesh and morph into the shape of a small child, of Siliwe-Cetra's lost friend. "Siliwe, I'm here."
Siliwe-Cetra gaped at Napir, then ran forward. She fell to her knees and embraced Napir in a tight hug. "Oh, thank Minerva! You're back! You're really back! The Lifestream's sent you back!"
"I'm here." Napir tightened its grip on her. She couldn't escape. She didn't even want to escape. The desire for her dead friend was that strong.
"It can happen. The Lifestream can make it happen. I always wondered—" She coughed and sniffled—the cold infection? The grief? The One Self couldn't tell.
It knew what it wanted from Siliwe-Cetra: The cold virus. A Cetra infected with the cold virus was contagious and could pass it on to many other Cetra through the fluids sprayed by coughs and sneezes, or even just ordinary conversation. Fluid droplets were always exchanged in this species during even the most minor of interactions. Always.
The One Self could analyze the virus and redesign its own infection mechanism. Coughs and sneezes would be detected as disease, so the One Self would tailor the virus to infect but not create noticeable symptoms. It only needed to expose a few to the redesigned virus, and then the infected individuals would spread it throughout their communities.
It need not send its avatar-scouts to infect Cetra one by one, not when it was more efficient and took much less energy to have the Cetra infect one another. Their own day to day social interactions were all that would be required.
The Cetra population could then be easily controlled and eliminated. The One Self would have no competitors in its current habitat.
Napir shifted into the usual hunting form of tentacles, claws, and teeth. Ignoring Siliwe-Cetra's struggles and irrelevant screams, it dismembered and engulfed her swiftly and efficiently, absorbing her biomass, her memories, her internally circulating Lifestream, and especially her desirable cold virus.
Like Volos and Houtu, Napir then split into two, the second portion changing into a perfect duplicate of Siliwe-Cetra.
The One Self had new experiences and a new virus to examine and utilize. It had obtained healer knowledge. It directed the two avatar-scouts to return to Mlande-Mother-Cetra's dwelling, to calm the family-friend group and call off the search party.
As risk minimization, it sent its other two avatar-scouts, Volos and Houtu, to identify, absorb, and replace as many healers as possible during the night.