Helaine-Mtalenon-Ashul:
[You believe those lies?] I demanded. Torfan shrugged.
[It is an open secret, that Prince Alloran utilized a Quantum Virus on the Hork-bajir homeworld. That the People were deeply shamed by his actions is irrelevant. He nearly wiped out an entire, innocent species… to ensure our survival] the aristh said, his thoughts curiously flat.
[But they would not permit such a crime again, and not against such a heavily populated planet] I protested.
[I believe the Yeerk spoke truth. Its people learned carnage from the People] Torfan said slowly.
I eyed the cadet warily.
Torfan caught my look, and shuffled uncomfortably, and explained his reasoning, [Carnivores kill to eat… but they usually only kill a few at a time. The meat is not wasted… so the kill has purpose. When an herbivore kills though… the meat is not consumed… and we slaughtered our predators to extinction. We showed no moderation, because we did not kill for food. We killed to kill, because they were a threat to be removed]
I did not appreciate the direction of his thoughts.
[You have been talking to Jacob again] I said tightly.
[I enjoy our philosophical discussions] Torfan said firmly.
[But is it Jacob, or the Yeerk you speak with?] I asked suspiciously.
[I have begun to wonder if there is a practical difference… and furthermore, if it even matters] Torfan admitted.
[The People would never sanction use of a Quantum Virus on Earth] I said coolly.
[As Prince Evaan proved, things may be done without sanction, as long as the People do not learn of it. Such as torture] Torfan said, a shudder of revulsion sending his stalk eyes twitching slightly.
I turned a stalk eye to check on Jett habitually, even though we were using private Thoughtspeak… which was prudent, considering the conversation.
Jacob Nyles:
"On the other hand though, when are you ever going to be able to have a real philosophical discussion with someone?" I asked.
Tin man frowned. Clearly, he'd already figured out that we couldn't just let him go… Yeerks were practical that way.
"What have you got to lose?" I said softly.
"Other than pride, which is no great loss?" Tin man asked, shrugging.
"Exactly!" I grinned.
Because I had a plan.
[A stupid plan] Esplin grumbled. She didn't like this.
[It was your idea] I pointed out.
[I was being facetious and you know it] Esplin fumed.
[I have never lost an argument] I asserted firmly.
[Because you cheat if you lose] Esplin said sullenly, shooting pictures of an enraged Neanderthal with a club smashing up a school auditorium stage… it looked liking something involving buzzers, and an incorrect answer. Quizz bowl, maybe?
Tin man watched us patiently, clearly noticing that we were having an internal conversation of some kind.
"Okay, let's start simple. Why do we fight?" I asked.
"To survive," Tin man snorted.
"Really? And our siblings on the homeworld, do they not survive, in quarantine beneath the guns of the Andalite fleet?" Esplin asked.
"English is an imprecise, and clumsy language," Tin man shrugged.
"Well… actually, that's because it's not really a language," Jacob admitted, remembering something Courtney had told him.
"Basically, the reason there's so many words with similar sounds and different meanings, as well as different sounds and similar meanings, is because we stole words we liked from other languages, and decided organizing the resulting mess with latin grammar rules would be awesome. Voila, English," I said smugly.
"You are the host," Tin man said, surprised, "But you are dominant."
"He wishes," Esplin snorted.
Tin man narrowed his eyes, "He has done most of the talking. Why?"
"Esplin's shy. I'm not," I shrugged.
[I am not shy] Esplin complained.
[Work with me here]
"Or you like to hear yourself talk," Tin man decided.
"Who doesn't?" I shot back.
Tin man slowly began to smile… much like a tiger showing his teeth.
"I will likely die… slowly. If words are all I have to cut you with…" Tin man said slowly.
"I'm a big boy," I said cockily.
Good. It was working.
[Do you realize how manipulative you've become?] Esplin wondered.
[Must be your influence] I chuckled.
[You scare me sometimes] Esplin said seriously.
[Oh? Intimidated?] I asked.
[Normally, you like to blunder around, and cause as much chaos as possible, to confuse, and distract everyone, because you think it's fun. Then, every once in a while… you do something so pinpoint, and precise, to perfectly influence or destroy something… it can't be a coincidence] Esplin said trailing off with an uncertain shrug.
[And why does that scare you?] I asked, thinking of a velociraptor playing a Gameboy.
[Because I can't tell if it's intentional… or not… like a random idiot-savant] Esplin mused.
Behind it though, I caught a hint of her actual fear.
She was afraid I might be manipulating her. Subconsciously.
"Do you do that often?" Tin man asked.
"Do what?" I asked.
"Converse," Tin man clarified.
"How else would we cooperate?" I asked.
"As a Yeerk should," Tin man said, flexing his fist.
"Simple domination?" Esplin asked flatly.
"Talking is too slow. What happens when you fight?" Tin man asked, "Do you hold council meetings when the shooting starts?" he sneered.
"No. I do the fighting. I'm better at it. She just gives me objectives," I said.
And back-seat nagging.
[As I have explained many times. I. Do. Not. Nag]
I shot a picture of a neighing horse at her, all curling lip and tossing head.
"It's called delegation. Let those best suited to a task carry it out," I said easily.
"You are a fighter," Tin man agreed, studying my face and shoulders, "I assume she is not?"
"She's the scholar," I confirmed.
"Then your practice might be sound… but what happens when two fighters most delegate? When the differences are harder to determine? Which areas are better suited to a particular mind?" Tin man asked.
"I'm guessing you're both fighters," I said.
"Correct."
I frowned, and Esplin shrugged.
"Swap with someone else," she suggested.
"Experiment?" I hazarded.
Tin man scowled, "I move well in this body. It took several weeks to make that so."
"You still miss stuff though, right?" I asked.
"What do you mean?" Tin man asked.
"You have all the answers, but you forget to ask the question… so it catches you by surprise," Esplin clarified.
Tin man cocked his head, a real predatory gleam in his eye.
"You're a second gen, aren't you?" Tin man asked, referencing the rather frantic mating and division that had occurred during the tenth year of the escape from the Yeerk homeworld, in an effort to replace their numbers after the losses inflicted by the andalites, when several experimental pool ships (the ship design was still undergoing developments) were caught flat-footed and annihilated… wiping out nearly 25% of the escaped yeerks in less than a day. Most of the mating pairs had been young themselves, and had little in the way of memories to pass on to their spawn. They were looked down on by most of the "Old guarde," those that had been born on the Homeworld… and were experienced, in contrast.
Second gens were thought of as substandard, or menial yeerks. Immature. Rushed. Premature. Cannon fodder.
"I'm f—" irst gen!
I snatched my speech away, [Stop!]
[What?] Esplin asked, wary.
[This only works as long as he doesn't know who you are] I snarled.
[There were thousands of young yeerks aboard the—] Esplin started to protest.
[Yes. Thousands. Not millions. Much smaller pool to wade through, if he ever gets away. Look for missing Yeerks from that group… and what do they get? You] I predicted darkly.
Tin man looked quite pleased with himself… but curious too.
"You must be a second gen, if your host can interrupt like that… and if you forget to ask the questions."
He smiled smugly, "A real Yeerk knows everything a host knows… can imitate them perfectly can—"
"Ah yes. The nature of the beast, imitation," I interrupted, turning away from Esplin. Technically she was second gen… but her parents hadn't been juveniles. They'd been the more traditional pod of world-weary and experienced yeerks. Esplin had gotten lucky.
Tin man faltered, rattled by my irreverent tone.
"You built an Empire. What does it look like?" I asked.
Tin man opened his mouth, but I ground on.
"You built fighters. What do they look like?"
"They are—"
"You built dracon beams. What do they look like?"
"Now—"
"You created a society, what does it LOOK LIKE?!" I roared.
I sat down heavily on the stool.
"What is Yeerk? You had an identity, once. What is it now?" I asked softly.
Tin man stared at me, wide eyed.
"Who are we now?" Esplin asked, "We dared much… but what have we lost in turn? Who are we now?"
I was enmeshed in Esplin's scanty fore-memories, foggy things inherited from her sires… and I wasn't just Jacob at that moment. I was both of us. And it hurt. Because it was so freaking sad. The Yeerks had snatched up so much, making it theirs… to the point that it overwhelmed their culture… like a flood of immigrants overwhelming a small country with their own customs and language. In a way… they had already lost. They'd been consumed by their meal… like flesh eating maggots.
They were still monsters…
"There was art, once. We had music," I said hollowly.
"We can still sing within our pools," Tin man pointed out.
"You know the difference, we do not sing now," I said, staring pointedly at Tin man… until he averted his gaze. He had sung in the past. Before the exodus. That which was barely perceived by Esplin, he had experienced, personally. And he knew the difference.
"I have often wondered why we began to search the stars. At first, it was curiosity, I think… but then… it turned to fear, and finally panic," Esplin said softly.
"The Yeerk Empire spans hundreds of systems, we control—"
"But we always expand, moving on, never satisfied, always searching… searching for something," Esplin said harshly, and there was frustration in our voice.
"What are we looking for?" she demanded, but it was an actual question.
She thought she had the answer, but she wasn't sure. She wanted a second opinion.
Tin man's glare slackened, as he began to consider the question.
"Strength. To live. Others would kill us… so we must make their power ours. To survive. To live," Tin man said.
"And what of home?" Esplin asked softly.
"The homeworld?" Tin man asked.
"No. What of home. That place that belongs to us, that was made for us? That place that becomes more than it was by our presence, not lessened?" Esplin wondered.
"We have no home. That is the price of power. We alter the world around us with our passing," Tin man said.
But Esplin smiled softly. Almost gently (which was weird as hell).
"I have a home," she said smugly.
[Mine], she thought, possessively, letting a barrage of images slide through her thoughts for a split second… I was in a lot of them. But most were Earth.
[Ours] I corrected softly.
The parasite considered this for several seconds.
[Ours] the symbiot agreed.
Sonili-Esth-Fastil:
One of my computer programs pinged to alert me. I stopped my attempts to break Mother's encryption, and brought up the trawler program, curious.
It was the program I made several weeks ago, to monitor suspicious human activity (which tended to indicate Yeerk activity by proxy). The one related to ongoing electronic searches involving the words Jacob and Nyles.
What interested me, was there was a second trawler program, also searching for such searches… of Yeerk design.
And then I really was surprised. The file in question was part of the civilian warrior network for "North America" and it was flagged, to send an alert to an unspecified server. A hidden flag. A human flag. More surprisingly, it was formatted in such a way, that I doubted the Yeerk program would detect it as more than a hand-shake query protocol. It was elegant.
I hastily modified one of my trawler programs, and sent it sniffing after the data trail… while I turned my attention to the task at hand. Who was looking for Jacob?
I studied the authorization of the individual responsible for accessing the "open but inactive" case files on Jacob's mysterious disappearance. Apparently, it belonged to someone named Thomas Hamilton II.
I was the first to find this information. I considered altering the entry, but realized it was not an unauthorized access. There would be redundant system entries. Too many to find and change before the Yeerk program found one, and noted the inconsistencies… became suspicious, looked deeper…
I let my fingers move away from the interface. I let them find the human.
I protected my family.
But I erased the human flag, removing it from system memory. My trawler returned with the information I sought, and I erased the data trail.
One sacrificed. One saved… both faceless.
Esplin 1894:
"You have less time than we thought," I observed, studying the sweating man closely. Much less time.
Tin man curled his lip at us.
"We may have lost what we were… but we are still something. Something worthy of power," Tin man growled, trembling.
"And when we have all the power, when there is nothing left to threaten us… what will we become? Will we still be able to grow? Or will we be static, forever frozen? Without new ideas to steal, to absorb… this experimental empire will fail. We have stopped innovating, and become satisfied with mere imitation," I spat.
Tin man snarled at us.
"I was born among the second gen… but I am not like them… and I am not like you," I sneered. I am third gen. My sires tried something new. They rebelled against Andalite control. Now I too was trying something new. Coexistence.
The controller's face scrunched in confusion.
"Arrogance is the cost of victory… and defeat is the cost of arrogance," Tin man whimpered, his face contorting, the veins and tendons in his neck bulging.
Jacob squeezed the man's shoulder.
"It's almost over," he whispered. A few of my predecessor's memories rose to the fore… of starvation, resonating with this man's pain. I shied away from those thoughts of Jacob's that were not his.
My kind was mostly immortal (not invincible). There were few ways for us to die… all of them horrible. Death within a host was particularly common on the homeworld, as the Gedds (the most readily available hosts) were prey (and I won't go into details involving the Vanarx… a predator that ate the Yeerk without harming the host. Which I suppose might be similar to a human shepherd shearing sheep).
Another was kandrona starvation.
But the last method of death, the most painful… was also the key to our survival. Immortality is a terrible thing (I think, based off my sires' memories). It gets boring… and eventually, it loses its appeal, until the very act of living becomes a crushing burden. So three yeerks who are tired of life come together… and die… creating new life, from the fragmenting mass of dying tissue.
Like a virus.
[Or a phoenix] Jacob pointed out, interrupting my musings.
"Ghh…" Tin man slurred. We both refocused on the trembling man, as his mouth and tongue moved, uncoordinated. Controlled by two different minds.
The sweating continued, intensified, and the man tried again.
"Ghet… howt…"
"Get out!" the human screamed, straining and throwing himself against his restraints frantically, as control flickered from him, to the Yeerk, then back again.
[The power of Christ compels you] Jacob thought, with dark humor… and yet, he was also oddly serious.
Something dribbled from the man's ear, sliding down a cheek.
But wafer thin strands of the Yeerk remained behind, tissue bonding and grafting to the host's mind, for survival. So, in a way, the Yeerk lived on.
But this Yeerk was dying. Still dying, slowly, drying out, withering—
Jacob picked up the twitching alien gently, holding it in his palm. Then we crushed it.
And its pain ended.
Then we focused on the living.
The man was still bound, panting, weak…
And there was hatred in those weary eyes.
"Don't touch me," he snarled, when Jacob reached towards him.
"Yeerk!" he howled.
Jacob shook his finger mockingly at the man, "How do you know?"
"You're a controller!" The man roared.
Jacob smiled, from ear to ear. It was a Joker-killing-Batman smile.
"I lied," he giggled.
[That knocked all the wind right out of him] Jacob smirked, eying the limp, gasping man.
[Or your psychotic smile might have something to do with it] I sniped.
[Unstable, possibly dangerous, but not psychotic] Jacob retorted calmly.
[At least, mostly not psychotic] Jacob allowed reluctantly, after a moment of silence.
[I think?]
((()))
"Now… I have a very, very simple question for you," Jacob said, having freed one of the man's wrists from the tape, and given him a Styrofoam cup of water. We were also outside of grabbing distance. (Reckless… not stupid)
"I'm listening," the former controller said. Reluctantly.
"You up for a little havoc?" Jacob asked, smirking.
The former controller was not a compassionate person. Probably not a "good" man either. That was acceptable.
We weren't very good either.
Earth and humanity didn't need good people, at the moment.
They'd just get in the way.
"What did you have in mind?" Tin man asked.
So we told him.
Tin man frowned, considering the request.
"Yeah… I can probably do that," he agreed.
"How soon?" Jacob asked eagerly.
"Couple days… problem will be people looking for me… since Aftran obviously didn't visit the pool within the three day period," Tin man said, shuddering, and rubbing at his ear.
"So, let's get started," Jacob said, flicking open a switchblade.
"I'll do it alone. I don't want you attracting any—" Tin man began to protest.
"I don't trust you, and you don't know if I'm really free. I might have juiced up before grabbing you… which means I might still have thirty hours left," Jacob said flatly.
Tin man considered us for several seconds.
"True enough," he admitted.
We still didn't like him.
But we were willing to use him.
Sonili-Esth-Fastil:
I studied the meager information I had found on the unknown human. I was curious, and had little to do… since Jacob and my mother were otherwise occupied with their mission… and did not currently require my assistance at the moment.
Curiosity is a terrible thing… though not so terrible as boredom. Also, to my surprise, I found that the unknown individual was currently using the "Internet."
Although it wasn't the part normally accessible to the average user… but the more difficult to find, hidden layer beneath. The one typically used by non-authorized personnel.
People like me.
I set up partitions, and boxed the individual, replacing their interface with a decoy… directly handling their search queries.
They were investigating, trying to access the flag I had deleted. I sent a credible information bundle, that included a subtle virus.
The user immediately input some kind of kill-code, and their search activity terminated… and the connection died.
I frowned, studying the empty screen. It had been manually done.
The human had seen the raw information… and somehow noticed the trap.
It hadn't been a defense cipher, or "watch-dog" program.
Someone had physically disconnected their modem. I had an IP address though… and a handle: dRkUv2n6.
I was fairly certain my opponent was human. The prompts and command sequences used by the faceless adversary relied solely on computer language developed by humans… but applied in new, and interesting ways. This implied human… because Yeerks had access to higher level algorithms, that simply overpowered human coding, similar to, but less sophisticated than my own interface.
But this was human, using the strength of the system against itself, through unpredictability.
How… interesting.
Helaine-Mtalenon-Ashul:
"How does retaining my shirt on my body relate to this?" I demanded.
"It's an expression. It means calm down," Jacob replied.
I clutched the communicator tighter, as Torfan helped adjust the human clothing for me.
"You should have informed me of your plan," I said stiffly.
"I am. Right now," Jacob grunted.
"Before you left with the human," I snapped.
"Oh… well… now you know. Check your mail. Bye, m'kay?"
I scowled at the communicator. Jacob had severed the connection. He was irritating me on purpose. I was certain of it.
[Jacob does not believe the human can be trusted] Torfan observed.
[And how did you come to that conclusion?] I asked.
[He is avoiding contact between the human and us… and he left a note] Torfan said, holding up a scrap of paper.
[It was pushed under the door] Torfan said helpfully.
I looked at the scrawled words. It took a few seconds for the translation to appear. But it was still a jumble of nonsense:
Going for a ride. Grabbing groceries, lots of popcorn and sparklers. Delivery boy looks kind of shifty, ride-along.
Bust him up if he tries to short change me. Have the Jet keep an eye on me, alright? Oh, and I hope you read this soon. Or track my spy gear.
XOXO
J
I scowled, and reached for my communicator. I despise allegories. But my daughter would probably understand the instructions. On second thought…
I handed the paper to Torfan.
[Send this to my daughter] I said coldly, reaching for the plastic clasps of my human clothing, and began to remove the constricting garment.
[I assume you are going to follow Jacob?] Torfan enquired, as he set up the link.
[There may be squirrels] I said darkly.
