I can’t tell you what it is like to approach someone’s system from the outside and ask for entry.

I don’t remember how it happened.

I’ve never been able to get those memories back, if I even made them in the first place.

It’s possible that I remember leaving Sarah and Goreth’s system because I was still partially attached to them and giving them my memories while I was in proximity to them. And this seems likely, because I don’t remember the whole trek to the Murmuration’s house, nor how I found it.

I do know I’d been there before, and that they had Rräoha, and Rräoha may have acted as a beacon for me. Rräoha may even have recognized me approaching and spread the word amongst the Murmuration that I was there.

It probably worked because Brock had already extended their consent for “psychic shenanigans” when we’d first met.

The earliest thing I recall after leaving to find them is alighting upon a dew soaked mossy plane with sparse grasses here and there, surrounded by thick mists and silhouettes of leafless trees.

My feet made sucking sounds as they landed in the moss, and tall, black figures stepped up to surround me. They were thin and cloaked in feathers, and I couldn’t make out any distinctive features or faces. They varied in size and shape by small degrees.

And amongst them came Rräoha, resembling a large, six limbed hunting bird of the Sunspot, but with curved horns and pointed, expressive ears. I got the impression that this was very close to, but not precisely what Rräoha had looked like before gems body had died. Four of Rräoha’s limbs ended in articulate and dexterous claws. Gems strong rear legs had three toed feet built for great speed. When necessary, it looked like gem could sprint on them.

I don’t think I’ve explained this clearly until now.

Due to a drive to break from the draconian breeding program of the Feruukepikape, our predecessor ship, which bred people to be uniform and to adhere to some mythical ideal, the Founding Crew of the Sunspot, in rash ignorance, chose nearly the opposite for their population.

Where the Magnificent Dirt (as we’ve come to call it colloquially) had selected couples to breed ideal children and give birth to them, the Sunspot instead hooked great Evolutionary Engines up to Conception Machines and Incubators, generating people with the greatest diversity of phenotypes possible. Our neurology was still very similar to our ancestors, as far as we could tell, since the neural terminals and Network were of the same general design. But our bodies appeared to belong to completely different species, by the standards of the fauna of the Garden (the wilderness of the habitat cylinder).

Part of the idea behind this was to give everyone equal footing in being different from everyone else, and to prevent any sort of ideal of physiology from emerging.

The populace themselves couldn’t breed, so family structures were chosen and nearly as diverse as our vessels were.

On the surface, there had been no dynasties. No families of political power.

This, of course, was an illusion.

As I’ve said before, we were not perfect. Nor, really, even admirable. Our world has not been a utopia of any sort.

I want to be clear. I am not here to espouse our ways.

But this is why humanity has looked so spooky and confusing to me. To me, your relative uniformity is unnatural and exotic. Though you are nowhere near as homogenous as the people aboard the Magnificent Dirt, from what I’ve been told.

This is also why Rräoha and I have looked so different when seeing each other within a system’s dream or inworld. And why gem’s phantom limbs are so different from mine.

“Welcome,” Rräoha said in Inmararräo.

“Thank you,” I said. “There is an emergency. We need to wake up.”

Even though I had replied in my own language, the Murmuration around me stirred and squawked and raised their beaks and wings to the sky.

“We’ve just fallen asleep,” Rräoha explained.

I had a very simple set of memories and directives on my mind. I think if I had been asked to explain how I’d gotten there or to describe the series of events that had led to our emergency, I would have been stymied, unable to speak.

As it was, I was able to say, “Sarah and Goreth are in danger and need Peter’s help. I am here to tell you to call Peter.”

“Is this part of our dream?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“It is real?”

“It is real.”

And, apparently, the intensity of my emotions and what memories I had upon suddenly entering their system and flooding their psyche, along with this conversation, was enough to wake them up.

—

Shelly awoke from a desperate dream, visions of a car stranded on the freeway that crossed Government Island, rocking with some sort of struggle within.

They felt the panic gripping their body, their heart beating fast.

Lying in their darkened room, with foil covered cardboard blocking the light from the windows, they had the urge to reach for their phone and call Sarah and Goreth.

Instead of calling, though, they decided to text them, knowing that they didn’t do very well with calls.

“I think I just dreamt about you,” they sent.

But when the message just sat there with a hollowed circle, refusing to fill in and mark itself received, they felt a chill.

It had just been a dream, hadn’t it?

The impulse to call got stronger.

Still lying on their back, they frowned, squinted, and shook their head, trying to dislodge the urge.

Do it, it seemed they felt a voice say deep in their chest.

Figuring it couldn’t really hurt, they decided to follow through, and hit ‘call’ on their friends’ contact listing.

The feeling of doom and dread intensified as the call went straight to voicemail. It didn’t even ring. Which meant that Sarah and Goreth’s phone was turned off, or maybe out of juice.

But why feel so awful and terrified about it when it had just been a dream?

Not them, the voice said more clearly. Call Peter. Get help.

More of the recent past came back to Shelly’s memories and they sat up abruptly in bed.

They were absolutely not used to feeling the sound of voices like this. Their internal communication was more just memories they shared when co-fronting. They could sometimes get clear and intelligible memories of interactions inworld, like memories of dreams. When dreaming, they talked to each other, but when awake, they just shared thoughts, impulses, and memories.

But when Rräoha had joined their system, that had begun to change.

Rräoha had joined their system!

Weird and scary things could happen!

Looking around in the darkness of their room, as if searching for who they might be talking to, they said, “Who is this? What’s going on?”

Ashwin.

“How? Are Sarah and Goreth here?” Shelly asked.

Government island.

“What? You’re being incoherent again. What does that mean?”

Government island.

“What do you mean?” Shelly repeated.

They began to get more pictures of the dream. The Parliament meeting in the Oak Savanna. Rräoha was there, and so was Ashwin. Ashwin had just arrived.

Call Peter.

The vision of the car returned, with an increasing sense
of urgency.

Get help.

“OK,” Shelly said. Then, holding their phone in front of their face, they keyed through their contacts list, realizing that they didn’t have Peter’s contact information.

Why hadn’t they traded contact information?

Call Peter, Ashwin repeated.

“I can’t,” Shelly nearly shouted. “I don’t have his number!”

There was a pause. A long silence. And Shelly didn’t know what to do, and just sat there feeling hollow and worried.

Finally, Ashwin said, Call Erik.

Extrapolating from that, Shelly texted Erik, “Hey. Does Beau have a car? I think Sarah and Goreth are in trouble.”

Call Erik, Ashwin repeated.

“Hold on,” Shelly said. “Why did you come here? Why us? Why didn’t you just go to Peter and spook the shit out of him directly instead?”

Immediately, it felt like someone was pushing their way forward through a crowd of people inside of Shelly’s body. Like they could feel it as if they were each person shoved aside as the desperate and determined individual came quickly more forward.

Then they themself were shoved aside as this person slammed their forehead into the inside of their vessel’s face like they were desperately putting on a mask.

—

I found myself in the dark, in a smaller, skinnier, lighter body. It felt exhausted and achy here and there, but not nearly as bad as Sarah and Goreth’s had been.

I also found that I was holding a phone that was all lit up, and I had knowledge and a motive.

I needed to get in touch with Peter, but I didn’t have his number. No one here did. However, I knew how to get some of his contact information through Goreth’s social network channels.

“You hold on,” I said to Shelly, examining their phone more closely but not doing anything with it. “I’m sorry. We had a plan. Phage stuck to the plan and directed me to find a way to call Peter.” I took a quick breath, and continued, “Not a great plan. I’m here now. May I use your phone?”

Now that I was forward, they could all feel my memories and thoughts as if they were their own. I received assent very quickly, even from Shelly, who I’d pushed aside to get here.

“Thank you,” I said. As I opened up Facebook and navigated to Goreth’s profile through the Murmuration’s friends list, I explained, “Your Parliament gave me permission to front. I would have asked you directly, Shelly, but there’s no time.”

They seemed to understand.

In Goreth’s profile, I pulled up their friend’s list, and searched it for Peter Niven.

There he was.

I touched his face to pull up his profile, then hit ‘about’.

And there, in his profile, visible to friends of friends, was his damn phone number.

Because of my time with Sarah and Goreth, I was expecting email or to have to send him texts over Messenger.

The bulk of the Murmuration that were awake with me were horrified at the audacity of a cisgender heterosexual man to have his phone number semi-publicly listed.

Of course he did. He thought he didn’t have to worry about the kind of thing Sarah and Goreth were dealing with now. But, that also made things easier for us.

I hit the number and hit ‘call’, sighing in relief.

The phone rang three times before it was answered.

The voice on the other end said, “This is Peter. Who am I speaking to?”

“Ashwin” I said in my thickest accent as the phone buzzed in my hand with the arrival of a text message. “Goreth and Sarah are in trouble.”

There was silence on the other end for a couple of seconds, but before I could say anything more, he responded, “Whose phone is this?”

“Murmur’s,” I said. I felt someone jostle me internally. Softly, but firmly. Like saying, ‘hey’. I also got the feeling they did like that nickname.

“You sound like the Murmuration,” Peter said. “Only trying to imitate Ashwin.”

“There’s a reason for that,” I said. “And the reason is that Sarah and Goreth are on Government Island with a broken phone. They need help. They are being attacked.”

“Wait, wait. What?” Peter sounded alarmed and incredulous.

“Go to Government Island,” I said. “There, on the shoulder, is a car. It has Sarah and Goreth in it and a man named Mike.” I said Mike’s name with as much vitriol and disgust as I could express.

“Shit. You sound scared,” he said.

“I am. Go. Please,” I replied.

“What about you? Where are you?” he asked.

“In bed with Murmur,” I replied. “At their home. There is no time. Hurry.”

“OK, OK,” he said. “I’ll go. Call you back? Maybe when I get there?”

“Please do so,” I said.

“On it,” he hung up.

I checked the text messages.

It was Erik.

“What’s going on? I’m at cannon beach!” he’d replied.

So I sent back, “Sorry. Got a hold of Peter. He is helping. We’ll keep you updated.”

A couple seconds later, a message came back, “What’s happening???”

I decided he’d probably feel better with details. I tried to recall as much as I could and only managed, “Sarah and Goreth are in a car with Mike. Stranded. Phage is keeping Mike from hurting them. Peter is on the way.”

“Holy shit???” came the response.

“Phage is powerful,” I replied.

“Michael from high school Mike?!?!!!!”

That sounded familiar, “Yes.”

“Waht tthe hell? Man has kids!!! Nevermind. It tracks.”

“He fooled us,” I replied.

It took a few seconds before a reply came after that.

When it did, Erik asked, “How do you know him? Were you there?”

“I was there. Murmur was not,” I replied.

Another long time between messages.

“who r u?”

“Ashwin”

“No shit! OK”

I didn’t know what to say after that, so I just waited, letting the Murmuration settle and confer below the surface. If they needed me to say or do something, they’d send an impulse and I’d probably follow it.

The phone buzzed again.

“Message me when they’re safe,” Erik had sent. “We need to meet as soon as we can.”

“OK. Will do,” I sent back.

Fascinating thing about truncated English sentences like ‘will do’. They are identically constructed to similar phrases in Inmararräo. English is a Subject-Verb-Object language, for the most part. Inmararräo is Verb-Object-Subject, to use English terms for the parts of language. And, it’s not only natural for us to drop the subject entirely when talking about what we intend to do. It’s common.

There are a set of particles that can be added to the front of a sentence to turn it from an intention to a command or a question, but that’s not important right now.

What’s important is that my mind was allowed to wander and think about that subject in the moment, just after responding to Erik.

I was calming down a little and so were the Murmuration.

The wait, unfortunately, was about twenty-five minutes for Peter to arrive at the location before he called back.

We fretted that whole time, and thought about all sorts of weird things. The Murmuration kept bringing up memories of their friendship with Sarah and Goreth, and I felt the need to try to focus on waiting. But after a bit, I relented and let them tell me all about how they’d met and some of their favorite times together.

When Peter called, they fell quiet and I answered the phone.

“Peter?” I asked.

“I can’t find them,” he said.

“The car?” I prompted.

“It’s right here. Emergency lights on. Passenger side door is ajar,” he reported.

There was only one way I could think of that happening, “They made it out.”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yes,” I explained, feeling a lot more relaxed. “He must have given up and left the car to flag down help. Once he turned his back, they would have been able to get out.”

“But,” Peter said. “What if he knocked them out, and then circled around and pulled them out of the car.”

That scared me for a moment. But with Phage doing what I had been doing, that was so unlikely to happen. So, I told Peter, “Don’t worry about that yet. First check for them in the woods. Go to the wall there. Face the woods. Stand as tall as you can. Wave. Call their names.”

“OK. OK,” he said.

Then I could hear him moving and arranging himself, the sound of the freeway changing slightly, and then him shouting their names over the roar of the traffic. Eventually, he started to time his shouting with lulls between the passing cars.

Then he stopped, and asked, “How long do I wait? When do I give up?”

“Do not –” I started to say, but he interrupted me.

“Oh, shit! There they are! They’re OK!” After a little bit, he asked more quietly, “I wonder where the asshole is?”