Constellation Games Bonus Stories

Originally published by Candlemark & Gleam for the Constellation Games serialization.

© 2012 Leonard Richardson. Includes contributions by Adam Parrish, Beth Lerman, and Brendan Adkins. Licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Author's note: These stories contain big spoilers for Constellation Games, and in general will not make sense unless you've read the novel first.

The Time Somn Died

This story takes place immediately before the events of Constellation Games.

The other-room was quiet this far from civilization, this deep into a project. Somn preferred quiet. A moment's distraction could send 2^31 of unknown rock through the matter shifter, forcing her to stop and restore geologic strata from backup. On Rivertrap, Somn could focus on her work.

The only sounds came from the world of matter: the guidance tone of the shifter and the chirps of the tiny ryey that would bite her and then die from the taste of her kej blood. Their bodies were a line of specks that evidenced Somn's path down the inclined fault.

The first expedition to Rivertrap had developed sonic lanterns that kept the ryey out of inhabited areas, but the ryey had evolved to ignore them, and now no one cared enough about Rivertrap to design new ones. These poor creatures had their own taxonomy and were unrelated to the ryey of Somn's home planet, but they had vibrating wings and interchangeable mouthparts, so she called them ryey. Evolution was creative, but it wasn't that creative.

"The collection line has vanished," Somn said to the data. "Again! I'll try to pick it up further down the incline." She opened the matter shifter and pulled out the fossil case.

The matter shifter sieved fossils into the case and reconstructed all non-fossil mass back into rock. Fossils found above the collection line were permineralized. Fossils from below the line were casts, formed by seepage since the collection event at -2^56. Shells, teeth, a small ray-bone, and some tiny biota indistinguishable from dust. There were no new forms in this batch.

The sheer dull continuity between pre- and post-collection fauna on Rivertrap was the mystery that kept Somn interested. Why had a collection event happened on a planet that still supported complex life? Why had the collector left this star system immediately afterwards, and where had it taken the mass? Somn would not be the one to solve this mystery—it would not be solved until long after she gave up field work and joined her ancestors in the other-room—but she could create the planet's definitive phylogenetic tree, and accumulate models for the generation that would unravel the mystery.

Somn pulled the matter shifter up the incline, and as she pulled she saw the other-room was no longer empty. A group of Her's organisms were there, waiting for Somn to notice them. This was not the glider form of Her that Somn and other kej grew up with, but Her in an aquatic form, fluttering in the empty stillness of the other-room, thrashing in virtual water.

"Somn," said Her, once Somn noticed.

"Hi," said Somn.

"As a long-standing member of the Into the Unknown overlay, you have the opportunity to join a contact expedition to a previously uncharted star system."

"I'm on a—" Her did not hear Somn; this was only a recording.

"Please gather information responsibly, and consult with your family and other overlays. If you choose to join, indicate by visiting the staging area at—" Her said a word that was also a map.

"This opportunity will end in 2^15, as measured from that staging area. Goodbye." Her vanished from the other-room in a way that was very rude, even for a recording, even for Her. Somn was left alone with the ryey and the fossils.

Into the Unknown? Somn couldn't even remember joining that overlay, but, yes, she surely had. Somn had been an idealistic kid, prone to fantasy, drunk on romantic adventure stories of how the kej and other species had been welcomed into the Constellation. Her favorite girl-play had been based on the contact expeditions, whether that meant quietly exchanging languages with other children, or running shrieking through a public port, startling everyone on the other side.

But Somn had grown up, and learned the truth. How you went through that one-way port to find a civilization that was dead, or a planet that looked good through a telescope but had never hosted intelligent life. How 2^17 contact expeditions had brought 2^5 new species into the Constellation. How you'd prepare as a contact specialist your entire life and jump through that port to find yourself on Rivertrap, with no one to contact, stranded on a dead planet whose complex life was represented entirely by...

Fossils.

Somn-in-herself said something, quickly, quietly. It was not an original idea, though Somn had never heard anyone else put it forward. It was not a morally praiseworthy statement, but it wasn't evil, either, not really. Still, Somn looked around in sudden guilt, as though the ryey, or the flora that struggled for life on the rim of the fault, might have heard what she-in-herself had said.

2^39 ago, Rivertrap had been the next great hope of the Constellation. When the contact expedition reported back that the planet had never supported intelligent life, it had been forgotten. Now the beautiful planet was a backwater, populated only by people like Somn and her boyfriends, who worked to complete the research begun by...

The initial expedition. The psychologists and anthropologists who'd found themselves trapped on this world. They'd made the best of things by cataloguing its life and revealing its mysteries, if not the solutions to those mysteries. Everything on Rivertrap was named after those people. Their nicknames and in-jokes had become geologic ages and the scientific names of the ryey. The planet was named from someone's offhand remark: "We might as well start there where the rivers come together."

Without the technology to resituate their minds in the other-room, those people had died. Death was part of the agreement. But Somn thought of them all the time. They had achieved a different kind of persistence. And this persistence is what Somn-in-herself had in mind when she'd said:

"I could go, to this new planet. There will be fossils that no one has ever seen."

The shadowed parts of the cliff face lengthened with the approach of local night. The wind, that fickle paleontologist, pushed gusts of dirt down the side of the cliff.

"Yes, go," said Somn-in-herself. "Start moving now. Go."

The more Somn thought about it, the closer her thoughts would tend to her family, and to Aei and Shlir. Every 2^0 Somn spent thinking about the decision would make her more timid. If she was going to leave, it would be now.

Somn slammed the fossil case back into the matter shifter. She didn't have time to bring it back to camp. She had at most 2^11 before Aei and Shlir noticed that she was missing.

"I'm done for the day," she told the data. "Goodbye." That goodbye would have to suffice for her boyfriends and the rest. Somn dropped down the cliff and ran palms-out towards the port that led off Rivertrap, a single kej body lost in the forest.

The staging area was 1559-211, a nowhere planetoid with a near-vacuum atmosphere. Physical sound did not carry, but the other-room was ablaze with shouting and weeping, groups gathering to leave one of their number behind, the sounds of hasty organization and abrupt departure. The center of activity was an interstellar port, 2^13 in diameter, the largest port Somn had ever seen. It sat like a circular mouth at the bottom of an artificial valley, sucking in people and materials.

Somn stood in the crowd, miniscule, smelling the inside of her fresh vacuum clothing. People of all species jostled past her, resolute, carrying their repertoires and the things they couldn't bear to leave. The products of Somn's civilization were draining into a hole, in the worn-smooth hope that someone would be waiting on the other side.

"What am I doing?" asked Somn-in-herself. "This is idiotic." She was about to turn back, to leave this empty place and return to the camp at Rivertrap, when a kej male in vacuum clothing approached her.

Hovering over the kej's head was a breed of Her that Somn had never seen before: a naked gas-inflated puffball bred for life in this airless interstitial zone. It was a creature that lived in service of the Into the Unknown overlay, without ever going anywhere itself.

"Somn," said the kej in the other-room, and Somn heard in the voice that although the body before her was kej, the mind had had suffered an injury that could not be repaired, and was now part of the Constellation Library.

"Library," said Somn politely, looking for a way around the conversation.

"Where's your family, Somn?" asked the Library.

Her continued the unwelcome thought. "Where are your overlay colleagues? Why haven't they come to express their sorrow at losing you?"

"I didn't tell them," said Somn. "What concern is it of yours?"

"You will not go through that port," said the Library, "until we talk with your family."

"Excuse me?" said Somn. "Are you forbidding me?" Forbidding was something that happened in children's stories.

"Yes," said the Library. "We are forbidding you. See also: security. Loss mitigation."

"Bring your family here, your friends," said Her. "Prove to us that someone is sorry to see you go. I won't have troublemakers in my overlay."

"What...?" said Somn. "What... you won't get away with this." That was what people said in the children's stories, and Somn had nothing else to go on.

The puffball swelled angrily. "On the other side of that port," said Her, "is a zone of extreme scarcity. The inhabitants will have learned to tame that scarcity. You have not."

Inhabitants? Yes, certainly Her had to believe there were inhabitants. She had to convince herself of this, again and again. Nothing else could justify breaking huge parts off of herself every 2^36.

"Even if the system proves to be uninhabited," said the Library, pressing home the other blade of the probe, "the members of a contact overlay will live in a state of privation unimaginable to the general public."

"I've been doing field work—"

"The first thing that's scarce," said Her, "is the amount of mass that can go through the one-way port before the virtual particles destabilize it. My overlay doesn't have mass to spare for entitled runaways."

"Don't try to confuse me with gibberish," said Somn, who knew nothing about the operation of ports, one-way or otherwise. Behind Her and the Library, an entire live cma was being fed into the port. The cma's plastic casing, its own vacuum clothing, rippled with the wind of soft respiration.

Mass was not the issue here, oh no. Her and the Library had looked at Somn and didn't like what they saw. She wasn't worth sacrificing any amount of mass. And in this topsy-turvy overlay, their personal opinions had consequences.

"Bring your family here, to the staging area," said the Library. "Alternatively, we can talk in the other-room. You will not find another path to the life you want."

Somn could run, make a break for the port, fight coercion with coercion; but Her would also be on the other side of the port, with the same opinions. "I thought—" said Somn. "I thought it would be easier for them if I just left."

"Your easy life is over," said Her.

Somn-in-herself burst. "You've got me confused with some other Somn!" she said in the other-room. "I just spent 2^24 on a planet you abandoned, living in a tent, operating a matter shifter along a collection line so that your pet data-glutton would have something to chew while it sleeps!"

The Constellation Library looked at her smugly and said nothing. It had been called far worse and had said nothing. It was Her who spoke.

"I know who you are, Somn," said Her. "You're accustomed to heavy work, and you cope with loneliness very well. That's why I'm giving you a chance to come back with some character references.

Somn stared into the inhabited eyes of the formerly-kej librarian. "My overlay," Her had said. "My" was for a pretty rock your boyfriend gave you. An overlay was people.

Somn turned on two palms and walked furious against the crowd, towards the port that led to her home planet. Someone had to take a stand against this.

"Somn, you're filthy and your clothes are filthy. You should get in the pool." Mom-Chnyat looked Somn over and then squinted down her daughter's body, out the door, at the unusual crowd heading towards the local port.

"Somn is back!" squeaked one of Somn's little cousin-nephews in the other-room. 2^1 later his food-smeared head popped out of a hatch in the ceiling. "Soooomn!" The cousin-nephew—what was his name?—was no older than Somn had been when she'd first joined Into the Unknown.

"Mom, I came to tell you, I am leaving," said Somn.

"You just got here," said Mom-Chnyat. She straddled a longitudinal cushion, polishing a set of poil darts with a rag, smoothing down the hairs along the shaft. "You came just to leave?"

"Leaving, Mom. On a contact overlay. Transplanting my light cone." She gestured behind her with a forehand, at the avenue. "All these people are leaving."

Mom-Chnyat abruptly lost interest in her darts. "Etraaaaaaa!" she screamed in the other-room.

"Yes, I heard, I'm coming," said Mom-Etra, who had long ago earned a reputation as "the one who can talk to Somn."

"Mom, what I need from you—"

"You will die, Somn!" Mom-Chnyat used uro, the word for an animal's death.

"Istcmye, Mom. Istcmye-tar."

"Oh, it makes a difference?" The other-room was swarming, now, and even in the matter-world relatives were pouring from the hallways and the house's apartments, called forth by Mom-Chnyat's panicked scream.

"How can you do this to us?" Mom-Chnyat said, the weight of the entire family coming through in her voice. "What about Tessererre? What's your father going to say when he learns he's never going to see you again because istcmye-nie while he was spun down?"

"Mother, please, you're making a scene."

"I'm making a scene? Istcmye-tyi my daughter, and I'm making a scene?"

"Yes, Chnyat," said Mom-Etra. "You are making a scene." Mom-Etra climbed through a door from the garden, her body smeared with mud.

"Wipe your hands," said Mom-Chnyat. "Our daughter is going to abandon us and istcmye-tyi on some horrible planet with no plumbing."

"That's a little unorthodox," said Mom-Etra.

"I can't believe you think this is about plumbing," said Somn.

"Why don't you tell us what it is about?" said Mom-Etra.

"You're not going to talk me out of this," said Somn, hoping she might be wrong.

"I know, sweetie," said Mom-Etra, "but maybe you can talk us into it."

"Okay, here it is," said Somn. "A contact overlay is happening right now, and I decided to join it. Just like I said I wanted when I was a kid." Nothing about fossils. "But when I got to the staging area, Her forbidded me. Her and the Library literally forbidded me from going, unless they were to talk to my family first.

"That's it, that's the whole story."

"You must have misheard," said Mom-Etra.

"No, they specifically used the word 'forbid.'"

"That doesn't sound like Her," said Mom-Chnyat.

"Well, who are we to know?" said Mom-Etra philosophically. "You know, way back when, people forbidded each other all the time. Maybe she never got it out of her system."

"I think we should reinstate Tessererre," said Mom-Chnyat. "Before he moved to the other-room, I used to fantasize about someone forbidding me, and Tessererre would swoop in and put a stop to it. I don't know how, exactly, but he'd find a way."

"That is extremely gross and I did not need to hear it," said Somn.

"Yes, if this is serious, no question," said Mom-Etra. "Bring him up."

"Moms, he has a Do Not Simulate—"

"Well, I think he'd like to see his daughter again, before she goes off and istcmye-tyi! Tessererreeeee!"

Somn could have ignored the call and stayed on Rivertrap with her boyfriends. On 1559-211, she could have walked away from Her's insults. Even as late as the conversation with Moms, she could have let this become "the time Somn wanted to leave but we convinced her to stay." But as soon as Dad-Tessererre nictitated into the other-room, Somn had to go through with this, just to make it count. You didn't just reinstate someone who'd decided to wait until you were ready to join him.

Dad-Tessererre looked around like a tourist in his own house, exploring the new furnishings. For him, the transition from his uploading must have been instantaneous. He must have been wondering whose copy he was; who was about to make their entry into the other-room.

"Hi, Dad," said Somn. "You have been reinstated to mediate a trivial dispute. Sorry about this."

"Somn, please!" said Mom-Chnyat.

"All right, all right. Let me catch up." Dad-Tessererre nictitated his eyes and allowed knowledge to seep into his mind: the history of the Constellation and the family since he had joined the other-room.

"Oh, Chnyat," said Dad-Tessererre, wincing at a painful osmosis. "I can't believe you hooked up with Ilry, that slob. What were you thinking?"

"You see what is happening?" said Mom-Chnyat. "We are not supposed to copy Dad every 2^18."

"I am blameless," said Somn. "I didn't say to copy Dad, and I don't hook up with slobs."

"Yes, well, thank goodness for that," said Somn's boyfriend, Aie, in the other-room. Shlir was there too, sending from Rivertrap, from the camp Somn had just abandoned.

"Oh, hello," said Somn.

"Were you going to tell us about this at some point?" said Aie.

"I could have made a clean break," said Somn-in-herself. "I could have spared them this! I could be there by now! But no!"

"Yeah, what does this mean?" asked Shlir. "Are we breaking up?"

"No," said Somn. "We're not breaking up."

"Because I don't think this relationship is going to work if you're causally disconnected from us," said Aie.

"So you're breaking up with me," said Somn. "Is that it?"

"You're leaving!" said Shlir. His muscles shifted in a way Somn found quite distracting. In the matter-world, they must be leaving the campsite, running towards the port Somn had used to leave Rivertrap. "You're throwing your life away for nothing, and you didn't even tell us!"

"I didn't want to hurt you," said Somn.

"You didn't want to see us get hurt!" said Aie.

"Excuse me!" Dad-Tessererre had spots raised in surprise. "Family!" He indicated Aie. "And whoever you are."

"I am Somn's boyfriend," said Aie.

"Yes, well, good thing she still has Shlir. Have you people seen the data on this planetary system? Somn, did you talk Moms through the data?"

Somn hadn't talked to the data herself. What did it matter? Did it matter? In the other-room, Aie and Shlir leapt into the data and ribboned it with their usual skill. (In the matter-world, they were still running towards Somn.)

"Oh, it looks good," said Shlir immediately. "Very very good. There's life on at least the second potential site out. The planet’s atmosphere's out of equilibrium."

"Frequently the result of purely chemical processes," said Aei.

"With excess light on the night side?" said Shlir.

"Bioluminescent biota in the oceans," said Aie. "As we see on Rivertrap."

"No radioactives in the spectrum."

"You fill us all with hope, Shlir."

Mom-Chnyat in the other-room was looking back and forth between Somn's boyfriends. "Somn, what are they saying? I don't understand."

"This... planetary system..." said Somn, "is a very good candidate for intelligent life." A horrible feeling chewed her-in-herself.

"Some kind of life," said Aie.

"People are calling it the best candidate since Nobody's Home," said Shlir.

"Where, as the name implies, there was nobody home," said Aei.

In the other-room, Dad-Tessererre was looking at Somn with a kind of preemptive loneliness. Somn couldn't stand it and flicked her gaze into the matter-world only to see that everyone in the entry hall was attending to her with the same expression.

"Why didn't you tell us this?" said Mom-Etra. "If it's... if it's that good a candidate... well. This changes everything."

"I wanted you to respect my decision," Somn decided to say. Her cousin-nephew padded over to her and gently grabbed a handful of her vacuum clothing, near her tail.

Mom-Chnyat gritted her ridges together. "And what's the problem, exactly?" she said. "Her doesn't want my brilliant daughter on this expedition?"

"This won't do at all," said Dad-Tessererre. Somn's family murmured and plotted. "What are we waiting for? Let's go stop this coercion before it's too late!"

The whole family set out into the crowd outside, towards the port, tails thrashing, Somn in the middle, horrified and helpless.

Mom-Etra set foot on 1559-211 backed up by a swarm: Somn, her other parents, her siblings, her cousins, everone's children, everyone's boyfriends and girlfriends, everyone, everyone. Shlir and Aie brought up the rear, panting from their run off of Rivertrap.

Now Dad-Tessererre was the only one present in the other-room, and although he tried to hide it, he was in pain. The flow of information hadn't stopped once he'd been brought up to date with family developments. The vast history of the Constellation, the minds that lived below 2^0, were speaking to him, tempting him away from Somn and the matter-world.

The first Dad-Tessererre had answered that call quickly, and so would this copy. He was probably already running his consciousness at 2-2. Once Somn left he would gently apologize to everyone else and shift down to 2-4, 2-8, living faster and faster until the people he'd known became statues, inputs that changed too slowly to be of interest. Worse than the fact that Dad-Tessererre had been copied for no good reason was the fact that Somn would never get to go through this process with him.

Mom-Etra walked up to the nearest of Her's puffball organisms. "Hey, lady!" she yelled from inside her stylish vacuum clothing. The puffball slowly rotated to point at Mom-Etra the 2^3 slits it used for a face.

"I trust you're not all leaving," said Her laconically. "There'll be no one left on this side."

"I'm back," said Somn.

"So you are," said Her. "Are your parents with you?"

"We're all here," said Mom-Etra.

"I can see that," said Her. "Which of you are Somn's genetic parents?"

"How dare you!" said Mom-Chnyat.

"I usually request that the Library ask these questions, but—ah, here we are." A furry metrase pushed sideways through the crowd converging on the port, and took up a standing position beneath the puffball, its tiny forehands clasped.

"I am going to ask questions which you will find insulting," said the Library, without putting any particular emotion into it.

"Oh, what is this?" whispered Mom-Chnyat in the other-room. "We don't even rate a kej librarian?"

"Mom!" said Somn, scandalized.

"I ask these questions," said the Library, "to understand the population genetics of the contact overlay as it forms. Cross-reference: population bottleneck, founder effect. Somn, who are your genetic parents?"

"Mom-Chnyat," said Somn quietly. "Dad-Aytel." She was so embarrassed she wanted to die.

"Can you lay?" said the Library. Whatever accident had killed its metrase host had also torn off its antennacles—they were regrown prosthetics.

"I don't under—"

"Eggs, eggs!" Her burst in. "Are you fertile? We're not asking if you like boys. If you wanted to, could you lay?"

"I... I had one clutch, with Shlir. We decided we weren't ready." She hadn't been ready. She hadn't been sure about Shlir, or Aie.

"Now, Somn," said the Library. "Here's something I've been wondering about. Do you actually want to meet a new civilization in this star system? Or do you secretly hope it will be uninhabited so that you can excavate its fossils?"

Somn was dumbstruck. Here everything would fall apart. She would be exposed as a fraud before her entire family, Her would permanently forbid her from leaving, and Dad-Tessererre would have been reinstated for nothing. She caught a breath to lie or confess, and then Mom-Etra saved her.

"No," said Mom-Etra. "We should have been ready for this. She's always... ever since she was a little girl she's wanted to go on a contact overlay. We should have expected this."

The Library conversed inaudibly with Her in the other-room. "In that case, I must ask an even less pleasant question," said the Library. "Somn's family: Has Somn ever shown cruelty to animals? Perhaps when she was a child?"

"Somn loves animals!" the little cousin-nephew wailed. "She rescues their little bones!"

Shlir stepped up to Somn's side. "How can you even think this?" he said. "Why are you asking these horrible things?"

"I ask questions to further our knowledge of the universe," said the Library.

"Shut up, Library," said the little Her puffball. "Somn's family, I have seen horrors of which you have the privilege to remain ignorant. Seemingly normal people sweet-talking themselves onto contact missions so they can exploit the natives."

"See also," said the Library. "The Oncrendic cult. Chain-reaction massacres. Ke Stands Before You Radiant!"

"Do not say that name," said Her. "Never say that name! It should be erased from history."

"History remembers," said the Library.

"People like..." said Her. "Sickos. They fantasize about scarcity, because it makes a people desperate. Their thoughts are sludge!

"A few sickos will make it through this port. I am talking to them now, and they are lying well enough to fool me. Soon enough they will fulfill their fantasies of torture and murder, and I will crawl before the families of their victims and beg to spare their worthless lives. I am so, so tired of begging for mercy, Somn's family."

The puffball had been swelling but now relaxed, as if Her had managed to spread the emotional load over a number of other members. "As such," said Her, "I would like to keep the number of sickos in this overlay to a minimum. So when I see someone leaving home with no one to say goodbye, I need to ask a few extra questions. I'm sorry. I try to keep the coercion small."

Somn's family stood around her, gaping with horror. The little cousin-nephew and the other kids whimpered at the adults' reactions.

"If you're done," the Library told Her, "I have one more question for Somn's family."

"Ask the question," said Her.

"Somn's family," said the Library. "Do you want Somn to leave?"

"No," said the little cousin-nephew.

"No," said Shlir.

"No," said Dad-Tessererre.

Mom-Etra was choked up. "I don't want to say it."

"They could coerce me," said Somn-in-herself. "They could tell me I can't go, and I wouldn't go. It would be so easy." Somn dismissed the thought so quickly it didn't matter. Once that started, where would it stop? You couldn't run a whole society on coercion.

The metrase librarian looked up at the puffball, an unspeakably bored expression on hir face.

"All right, Somn," said Her, gesturing at the port with three dangling manipulators. "Welcome to your contact overlay. Please go through the port."

And Somn died.

At the brink of the interstellar port, Somn's family left her alone with Aie and Shlir, to say the last goodbye.

"Well," said Aie, looking down into the hole that accepted light and mass without giving any back. Already writing Somn out of his life, making her the girlfriend who died.

"We had some good times," said Shlir, and nuzzled Somn's pouch through her vacuum clothing.

"Ha ha ha... stop it!" Somn giggled.

"I'll keep a backup for your light cone," said Shlir. "Even if I can't keep one for you. I want to know what you find on the other side."

"It's only 2^32 away," said Somn. "We'll all find out soon enough.

"Take care of each other," she added gently. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"It appears there's nothing you wouldn't do," said Aie.

Somn looked back and forth between her boyfriends. "Happy hunting," she said. The phrase paleontologists say when they leave each other.

Shlir touched Somn's face through the vacuum clothing. He would never touch her again. "Don't go," he said. "Don't don't don't go."

Somn died, again. Every step down this path felt the way death was supposed to feel.

"Make each other happy," she said. Aie and Shlir faded back through the crowd as if dismissed, still watching her.

Then Her was there, in the other-room. A single organism of the glider form, standing behind Somn, its wingspan spread around her like a confidante.

"Happy hunting," said Her, in a sardonic tone no one else could hear. "Fossil hunter."

Her knows, said Somn-in-herself.

"You know," said Somn.

"You don't lie well enough to be a sicko," said Her. "Fossil lust was the most likely other possibility."

"I never lied to you," said Somn.

"Yes, I noticed that," said Her.

Somn looked around, at the people pushing past her to drop into the edges of the port below. "But you're not going to coerce me again," she said. "I can go in?"

"I'm filtering out the sickos," said Her. "I don't care about cynics. Anyway, I'll probably need a few paleontologists on the other side, to teach everyone else the proper techniques." It was the first time Somn had heard Her admit that there might be no one on the other end of the port. Somn felt as though she was now in on a conspiracy.

"I'm frightened," said Somn, out loud. "I think I made the wrong decision. I feel already dead."

"You decided to go," said Her in the other-room. "That is always the right decision. That's the decision I make every single time."

"Maybe it's not right for me."

"Lots of people decide to stay when they'd be happier leaving," said Her. "But I set it up so it would be very difficult to make the opposite mistake.

"It's none of my concern either way. But if you-in-yourself says to go, then you should go. The port's right here. Don't block the way for other people."

The port was there. On the other side, there would be fossils, and the feeling of finally seeing something no one else had ever seen. And at the bottom Somn would be dead on the surface of some planet, sucked dry by the local ryey equivalents, creatures too stupid to learn that her sweet blood was poison.

She would never wake up in the other-room, uploaded and infinite. For the first time, her life had an end, and with the end as a focal point, everything else appeared as if magnified.

Somn walked into the port, and then she died. And in between...

Found Objects

This story takes place during chapters 4-8 of Constellation Games; specifically, between June 23 and June 30.

"So this was in space?" said Bizarro Kate. She picked up a hollow dome of packing foam, the ION SHIPPING half of the CONSTELLATION SHIPPING casing, and nearly dropped it, surprised at how light it was.

"Yeah," said Jenny, "for about ten minutes."

"It's strong, yeah? Can I sit on it?"

"I guess," said Jenny. "Is this your thing? Have we found your thing? Sitting on stuff that was in space?"

Bizarro Kate dropped the foam onto the floor of Jenny's living room and straddled the dome like a mechanical bull. "Wee-hoo!" She waved her baseball cap around by the brim.

"Put some friggin' weight on it if you're gonna," said Jenny. "It can take it."

"I don't think you need to sculpt it at all," said Bizarro Kate. She de-straddled the casing. "Just do a readymade. I mean, it's a phallus from space. Ain't no topping that."

"Seriously?" said Jenny. "Space phallus? That's some sloppy-ass symbolism."

"Not as sloppy as your mom."

"Oh, you're real classy," said Jenny. She lifted her half of the casing above her head like the Ten Commandments. "Now, attend to the Reverend Jenny. Are you attending?"

Bizarro Kate yawned deliberately, hand in front of her mouth.

"This is an eggshell," said Jenny. "The color of the moon. A hermaphrodite dropped it from the sky and it gave birth to a machine. We got a whole creation myth here. I'm not wasting it on a dick joke. Can I get an amen?"

"Amen," said Bizarro Kate reluctantly.

"And I already sculpted it," said Jenny. "I cut it open with alcohol and scooped out the goodies. So it's not gonna be some lazy-ass readymade. That cherry been popped."

"So use the negative space," said Bizarro Kate. She stood up and turned the ION SHIPPING half of the casing upside-down. There was a hole in the casing the size and shape of an antique Farang computer. "Yeah, it's a womb, too! Use it as a mold."

"I want to sculpt it," said Jenny. She set the CONSTELLAT half of the casing on her work table and dipped a cotton swab into a Petri dish of alcohol. "Look at this shit." She gently swiped the side of the casing and tiny grey particles of who-knows-what broke off the friction-blasted surface into the cotton. "It's a totally new material. It's like being the first person to sculpt marble."

"Can I have some?" said Bizarro Kate.

"You may not," said Jenny. "The one you dry-humped is officially my practice piece. Once I figure out how to work the material, I'll sculpt the other half."

"Into what?" said Bizarro Kate.

"I'll get an idea once I work with it," said Jenny.

"Do the Godzilla statue," said Bizarro Kate. "Do it in space foam and get it over with."

"Mechagodzilla."

"Mecha this," said Bizarro Kate, indicating the part of her body she would like mecha-ed, preferably on an outpatient basis.

"Protector of Earth is two hundred feet tall," said Jenny. "That is how tall it is. I'm willing to compromise on the scale if we can get, like, a shrink ray to reduce the relative size of the viewers. Otherwise..."

"Oh, do what's-his-name. The guy who gave this to you."

"Ariel?" said Jenny. "I don't think he—"

"The hermaphrodite," said Bizarro Kate.

"That'd be Curic," said Jenny.

"I saw them on the net," said Bizarro Kate. "They're tiny. Like teddy bears. Same basic shape as the, uh, eggshell. You could do him life-size."

Jenny tried to gauge the size of a Farang with her hands and the CONSTELLAT half of the casing. "They gotta be bigger than this," she said. "Your computer can't be bigger than you are."

"Well they're pretty damn small," said Bizarro Kate.

"I'll do a study," said Jenny thoughtfully, "and we'll see how it looks."

How it looked: awful. Jenny's clay study was a kindergarten gift for an undiscerning parent. Nothing she did to this bastard made it look like a Farang, or anything that could have lived on any planet, unless there was a planet where freeform blobs of modeling clay lived carefree lives, unencumbered by gravity or the laws of anatomy.

Humans are hard-coded to recognize human faces. If a sketched or sculpted face is the slightest bit off, you notice. Farang had eyes and a mouth in roughly the right places, but their faces didn't trip that wire, the shortcut in Jenny's brain that told her whether a contour was correct. She had to compare her sculpture against anatomical references every time she tweaked it.

And there were no anatomical references. Instead there was television news, a stream of talking heads from the contact mission's Hierarchy Interface department. Farang in front profile, waving their leathery hands to imitate human body language. There was also some semi-candid footage from the greeting video and the actual first contact. That was about it.

How did the muscles move beneath the fat layer? What did a Farang's ass look like? What did its feet look like? How many feet did they even have? Were they all tiny, or were there different kinds, ethnic groups? Nobody seemed to know, or care.

The public was more interested in Charlene Siph and the Aliens, who looked lizardish, like proper ETs. Science blogs had become gossip blogs, passing along unconfirmed speculation in hopes that the truth would precipitate out. Internet porn artists drew whatever they wanted and slapped on some antennacles. Solid information existed, somewhere, but it was being mediated through politicians who were busy preventing the impending enslavement of Earth—or at least avoiding the blame for it.

Jenny gave up on her creepy clay alien and resumed experimenting with the test piece. She discovered that by spraying on alcohol with an atomizer and wiping it off with microfiber, she could polish the foam to a pretty good grain. She was taking notes while being very careful with a martini, when Bai of all people called her up.

"Hello?" said Jenny, fearing an accident in their social network, a funeral with nice clothes, Bai wanting emotional support or something.

"Did Ariel tell you about the deal?" said Bai.

Jenny was unaware of any deal. "Ariel's not the most reliable," she said.

"Don't I know it," said Bai. "Uh, at work, a supplier took all us engineers out to lunch. Woman from Tekrete Composites. They make... uh, well, anyway it was this nice steakhouse."

"Steakhouse, okay." Where was the "deal" in this story? Had Bai sold his soul for a deep-fried onion?

"So I mentioned that we'd just gotten a drop from Curic," said Bai. "And this chick got really excited about the packing material. She said Tekrete would pay eighty bucks a gram. Under the table."

Jenny squeezed the phone between her cheek and shoulder. She sat down her martini and picked up the smoothed test piece. "It's not a lot of grams," she said.

"Eighty bucks," said Bai. "It doesn't have to be. I told Ariel, but I think maybe he didn't pass it on."

Jenny picked the martini back up. "Well, he should have told me," she said, "but I understand why he didn't, because I'm not going to sell Constellation technology to a company called fuckin' Tekrete Composites. They'll just use it in missiles."

"They'll use it in everything!" said Bai. "Engine casings, casts."

"Medical casts?"

"Yeah, them too. It's a heat-resistant, impact-resistant aerosol. It's going to change every manufacturing process there is."

"..."

"They don't need the whole thing," said Bai. "You can sell half and still have some for your art."

"And your cut of this is what?" said Jenny.

"Who says I get a cut?" said Bai. "It's your foam. I just wanna see you know your options. I don't like how Ariel tries to babysit you."

"Bai," said Jenny, "I think I've misjudged you."

"'Sokay," said Bai. "Women always underestimate me, until they see what I'm packing."

"No, I take it back," said Jenny.

<ArielBlum> Hi cubic

<ArielBlum> Curic

<ArielBlum> This is Jenny

<ArielBlum> I'm Ariel's friend

<Curic> Your Internet connection identifies

<Curic> you as Ariel.

<ArielBlum> I'm using Ariel's phone

<ArielBlum> He's in the bathroom

No response. Had she scared Curic away? Did Curic have a thing against phone-borrowing or bathrooms? Finally:

<Curic> Are you and Ariel enjoying

<Curic> the computer I sent to you?

The Brain Embryo, property of Crispy Duck Games, lay on the floor in front of her, like a silver sea creature bloated from its sudden trip to the surface. Rainbow chains of umbilical cords connected it to Ariel's television. Jenny smiled at the alien computer. She showed her teeth and squeezed the crows feet into place around her eyes. She was enjoying it!

<ArielBlum> Yes, it's very enjoyable

<ArielBlum> I have a favor to ask

<ArielBlum> I was wondering if you could send some good pictures of farang

<ArielBlum> Full body shots

<ArielBlum> Video of someone moving around would be ideal

<Curic> Are you a pervert?

Well, shit.

<ArielBlum> Not in any way you need to worry about

<Curic> A fair response.

<ArielBlum> I'm an artist

<ArielBlum> I'm making a sculpture out of the reentry foam you sent us

<ArielBlum> I thought it would be appropriate to sculpt the person who gave us the foam

<ArielBlum> But there's basically no reliable information about Farang anatomy

Another long pause. Out in the hall, Jenny heard the toilet flush and the faucet run for not quite long enough.

<Curic> Jenny,

<Curic> I appreciate what you want to

<Curic> do, but a sculpture of

<Curic> myself is the last thing I want to

<Curic> have in my house.

<Curic> It would give me the howling fantods.

<Curic> Please do not foist such a gift on me.

<ArielBlum> Jesus

<ArielBlum> I wasn't going to give it to you

<ArielBlum> Just trying to expand my skill set

<Curic> Oh, then it's fine.

Speaking of high-maintenance, Ariel came out of the hallway with a spring in his step. "What are you doing with my phone?" he said.

"Sexting your shemale girlfriend," said Jenny.

Ariel frowned and looked at the floor. The cleaned-up parent-presentable Jenny of Ariel's imagination was fighting in his mind with the actual Jenny sitting on his ugly secondhand couch. Ariel finally came up with: "Better you than me." He sat back on the couch and scratched at his hair and picked up his laptop.

"You really should have told me about the offer," said Jenny. "From Bai."

Ariel shook his head. "Bai doesn't get it," he said. "Everything's not about money."

"You should have told me." Jenny was so sick of the person Ariel pretended she was, the fantasy woman he'd created just so he could be unworthy of her. She wanted to pull that other Jenny out of Ariel's mind and trib her right on the living room floor until she transcended the virgin/whore dichotomy.

"You're not going to sell it?" said Ariel, realization slowly bleeding through that the real-life Jenny was just crazy enough to jump off this cliff.

"I'm asking Curic if it's okay," said Jenny, and suddenly that's what she was doing. She brandished Ariel's phone. "You never thought of that, did you?"

"No, I didn't," said Ariel, "but I don't think that reflects any huge personal failing on my part."

"Don't be like that," said Jenny.

"Fuck you," said Ariel.

"Do you fuck your mother with that mouth?" said Jenny.

"I'll fuck you with—"

"Oh, be my fucking guest." Jenny grabbed Ariel by the ears and mashed his face into the crotch of her blue jeans. Ariel twisted and struggled free. His laptop hit the floor. He half-knelt between Jenny and the Brain Embryo, like a football player on the line of scrimmage.

"Are we going to do this?" said Ariel. His eyes were on her zipper. "Are we really going to go through this whole thing again? Because this is not how I wanted to spend the next three weeks."

Jenny stared Ariel down, letting the bomb tick, unwilling to deescalate, to be the grown-up. Every trip down this mineshaft had been a colossal disaster, but there was something appealing about cupping that colossal disaster in your hands and pulling the God-damned trigger. Sending the whole installation piece crashing down, the machinery and electronics complaining in the language of sparks and smoke, the pillows exploding in clouds of whatever they stuff pillows with these days, the paint buckets bursting suggestively on the ground, showering the gallery-goers who are finally starting to realize that this is not part of the show, that this is not confrontational or in-your-face or safe in any way, but rather that the artist has unleashed a colossal disaster from which there is no escape and after which there will be no future.

Beep.

You have one new message.

Ariel broke the stare. "Curic?" he said. Jenny took a deep breath and picked up the phone.

<Curic> Jenny, I've sent Ariel some anatomical

<Curic> references.

<ArielBlum> Thanks

<ArielBlum> One more quick thing

<ArielBlum> I'm considering selling some of the reentry foam

<ArielBlum> There's a company that wants to buy it for 80 bucks a gram

<ArielBlum> That's a lot of money in human terms

<ArielBlum> Is that okay with you?

No pause this time:

<Curic> This is an awful idea.

<Curic> Reentry foam is worthless.

<ArielBlum> What exactly do you mean worthless

<Curic> Its value is negative.

<Curic> It is less useful than the

<Curic> energy used to produce it would be.

<Curic> It should not be used as the object of

<Curic> economic exchange.

<Curic> I don't know how

<Curic> much more clearly I can put it.

"You can go up to the bedroom," said Jenny. "If, um, you need to."

"What's she say?" said Ariel. He had turned his laptop back on. He craned his neck towards the phone.

"Curic's an anarchist," said Jenny.

"Yeah," said Ariel.

"So I can do what I want."

"Cheers!" Jenny said. She clinked her martini glass against Bizarro Kate's. Jenny reached towards the ottoman and tapped her tablet, pushing play on the week's crop of pirated fansubbed anime.

"Can we please skip the intros?" said Bizarro Kate.

"No," said Jenny. "The intro is part of the show."

Bizarro Kate slurped at her mojito and it went down like a rattlesnake. "What the," cough, "hell is," cough.

"Nice, huh?" said Jenny.

"Are you trying to get me drunk?"

"That, my friend, is Mud Flower Rum," said Jenny. "Brewed and distilled right here in Austin from sustainably grown sugar cane, et cetera, et cetera." She took a sip and let the liquor sit in her mouth like a painful kiss.

A look of horror infected Bizarro Kate's face. "You sold it," she whispered. "You sold the foam and you blew the money on booze."

Jenny paused the video, freezing a gigantic mecha in mid-transformation. "I sold the foam for six thousand dollars," she said, "and then I spent forty dollars on a nice bottle of rum to share with my friend."

"You said they were offering ten thousand," said Bizarro Kate.

"Yeah, well, the price went down," said Jenny. "Someone else sold theirs to Tekrete while I was waffling. And then Curic said not to sell, so I sold."

"So it's Opposite Day with Curic?" said Bizarro Kate.

"Curic has abundance privilege," said Jenny. "She doesn't understand how money works. She thought the foam had some objective value and it was wrong to sell it for more than that. If that's the Constellation's attitude, they must be flooding the market. So I sold as soon as I could."

"You sold it all?" said Bizarro Kate. "What about your piece? You really wanted..."

"This time next year," said Jenny, "reentry foam will be five dollars a can. I'll buy it back and finish the Farang dude then." Bizarro Kate was still showing a lot of lower lip, so Jenny added, "C'mon, I'll show you the study."

Over on Jenny's work table stood a little clay Farang, looking to its right as though that was where the camera was, one arm outstretched and holding a cube of packing foam. Printouts of Curic's anatomical references surrounded the sculpture like dressing room mirrors. It still wasn't quite right, but Jenny know knew enough to make the gaps in her knowledge look like stylistic decisions: smoothed-out fur, one foot hidden behind the other.

"Whaddya think?" said Jenny.

Bizarro Kate struggled to suppress a proud smile. "It looks like ass," she said.

"Looks better'n your skinny ass," said Jenny.

"What did you do with the rest of the six thousand?"

"Saving it," said Jenny.

In Jenny's mind the money was saved in a box labelled EMERGENCY. It sat next to information about first aid and CPR, the best routes out of Austin by bike and on foot, lists of what to put in the bag and what she could leave behind.

If there was no EMERGENCY, no war, if the human race survived what it was going through, she could move the money into an adjacent box, labelled EARTH, PROTECTOR OF. There were blueprints in that box: freshly updated blueprints showing a wooden frame surrounded by an extremely strong, extremely lightweight aerosol foam.

The stainless steel would be prefabbed and fastened on top, like a suit of armor. The weight was down to a couple tons, and maybe something—a cerametal—would be found to replace stainless steel. Five thousand, nine hundred sixty dollars would make a nice dent in the materials cost.

This was the big time. For the first time since Protector of Earth had moved into Jenny's head, she saw an achievable path to the real thing.

Now she just needed to find a place to put the bastard.

Dana no Chousen

This story takes place immediately after the events of Constellation Games.

The man's name was wrong. Not an alias necessarily, just a name that was wrong. "Jack Stout" was a name out of a fairy tale, not something a mother could bestow poker-faced on a real live screaming baby. A name like that was hiding something; Dana Light would know.

"I'm not taking on new clients at the moment, Mr. Stout," Dana Light said to the videophone, wiping her hands on a towel.

The man downstairs nodded his head in a complicated conciliatory pattern, as though Dana's scheduling policies might be the entry point into a political argument he'd rather avoid. But he didn't turn to leave.

"So," said Dana, and reached to shut off the videophone.

"I'm not a new client," said Stout. He flicked a badge at the camera downstairs. "Let's say I've inherited an old contract."

Dana's breath caught. "You'd better come up," she said.

The Bureau of External Affairs. Empty-eyed men in dull suits who'd been hiding for years in the periphery of Dana's life, sweeping the floors behind her, pulling levers that only they could see. When a big assignment came Dana's way, an assignment with global scope, she could always sense the BEA's fingerprints all over it.

Dana suspected the BEA had even had something to do with the Living Room incident. No particular motive; just an impersonal, corporate curiosity; a directive from on high to develop new techniques. She thought she'd gotten the BEA off her tail after arranging for Cyril Krakowski's "accident", but now they were back. What did they want from her? Of all the bounty hunters in the world, what was it about her?

While the doorman and the elevator did their work, Dana Light rushed around her home office, hiding the evidence that she had a life. The sunset over the harbor warmed everything from the west, and came in from the east as well, reflected off the dead glass exterior of the city's other skyscrapers. It was like living under two suns, one pale and weak.

She had chosen this home, the penthouse of an office building. She had torn down the wall dividers, installed more skylights than were safe or secure, to ensure she'd always have a view of the outside. Most of the time it served its purpose: to erase the memory of the Living Room. But a skylight would break, or she'd have to jog a hundred meters to the kitchenette for a snack, and she would ask herself: why did I want this, exactly? Then it would come back to her, horribly.

The Living Room was encoded into this wide open space, the way a photograph contains its own negative, and Dana Light could not find peace unless she was outside, away from home.

Ding. Dana kicked some dirty clothes under the couch, turned towards the elevator in the center of her apartment, and forced a smile on her face for her unwelcome client.

Jack Stout's hair was a little shaggy for a BEA agent, and he wore no suit jacket. Where Cyril Krakowski had carried a sleek metal briefcase, Jack Stout held a plastic grocery bag from Organicart.

"Your... doorman is very thorough," he said. "Completely unnecessary, of course. We still don't carry guns."

"Do you know what I think," said Dana Light sweetly, "of people who try to make a virtue out of not carrying a fucking gun? The world's single most useful tool?"

Stout looked around, out at the harbor, out at the skyline. "Nice place," he said, a little wistfully. "Mind if I sit?"

"Please."

Jack Stout sat on the couch and put the grocery bag on the floor between his knees. It clanked, glass on glass, as if he'd actually been out shopping.

"I need to tell you this," he said, "just so you understand where I'm coming from. We know you killed Cyril Krakowski."

"Cyril was trampled by a rhino," said Dana. "I've been compared to a number of animals, but never a rhino."

"If we wanted to retaliate," said Stout, "you'd already be dead. Guns or no. Don't be so defensive, Dana."

Dana caught Stout's eyes, and they weren't empty. There was something in there; the matching half of an emotion Dana had felt before, though she couldn't remember when.

"We've been keeping you on a long leash," said Stout, "because we knew that one day we'd need your services again."

A long leash. "And that day..." said Dana Light.

Jack Stout took a manila folder from his grocery bag and presented it to Dana. Paperclipped to the front of the folder was a photo: a cold, beautiful woman with high cheekbones and big oval glasses.

"This is Svetlana Sveta," said Stout. "A linguist."

"Russian?"

"Naturalized American," said Stout, in a sort of that-settles-that government voice. "A citizen of the world, as we must all be in these troubled times."

"Americans cost extra," said Dana Light.

"I want to make this really, really clear, Dana," said Jack Stout. "Your job is not to kill Svetlana Sveta. Your job is to rescue Svetlana Sveta from a secret prison in Ukraine. You are to bring her back to the States; again, I must emphasize, without killing her or allowing her death at any point along the way."

"Um," said Dana. "I don't do escort missions anymore. I'm strictly assassin for hire."

"Um," said Jack Stout, "you're going to do this one, as a personal favor to the late Cyril Krakowski. Kind of put his soul to rest, you might say."

"Is that a threat?"

"Yeah, I went there," said Jack, really proud of this.

"Well, crap," said Dana. "You want any extras, long as you're threatening me?"

"There is one more thing," said Jack. "We need you to do this with no collateral damage whatsoever. No civilians, no prison guards, no cute li'l puppy dogs. I mean, we won't complain if somebody gets a nosebleed, but no..." he drew his finger across his throat. "Zero. This is non-negotiable."

Dana frowned and opened the manila envelope to find a map of the prison, photographs of the guards. "Where's the money?" she said.

"It's in your account," said Stout.

Dana glanced at the map. "This place is locked the hell up," she said. "How am I supposed to break someone out without casualties?"

"Don't carry any weapons," said Jack. "It works for the BEA."

Dana picked off the outside guards from a hilltop using a sniper rifle, then disassembled the rifle and buried it for later retrieval. A blowtorch got her through the gate, disabled the security cameras, and took out the first round of attack dogs. Useful tools, blowtorches.

Screwdrivers and electronic scramblers for the doors, thermite in a pinch. The knife for guards who got close, the pistol for those who tried to engage from a distance. Explosives on tripwires secured the rooms she left behind. Flashbombs in the cell blocks meant the other prisoners wouldn't be able to identify her afterwards. They would report only brightness, and footsteps, and the sound of one cell door opening. One way or the other, Dana Light left no witnesses.

"What's going on?" said Svetlana Sveta, blind, terrified. Dana grabbed onto the woman's arm, scratching her safecracker's fingertips against the coarse cotton prison jumpsuit.

"You're being rescued," said Dana. "You have powerful friends, Ms. Sveta."

"Are you insane?" said Svetlana. "I can't see!"

"Hold on to my shoulder," said Dana. "Do not let go." She drew her heavy pistol and changed the clip. Dana heard the distant thump of outside helicopters. She was ready for them. She was ready for anything.

Dana Light was the best. She was perfect.

Jack Stout shuffled surveillance photos around Dana Light's coffee table. Dana sat across from him on the other couch, wrapped in a warm fleece blanket, bathed in morning light, sipping tea.

"Well," said Jack, "let's get right to the elephant in the room."

"Or the rhino." Dana smirked.

"In my personal opinion," said Jack, "it's not so great that you killed pretty much every fucking person in that prison."

"I didn't kill Svetlana." said Sana.

"This is unacceptable," said Jack. "You deliberately flouted the mission requirements. You even killed the puppy dogs! You damn near started World War Three!"

"Sorry, no refunds," said Dana. "Company policy." Jack leaned back in the sofa and put his hands on his head.

"You got Svetlana," said Dana. "That's what you really wanted. Now you've chewed me out and you can go back to interrogating her. Everyone's happy."

"'Happy' is pushing it," said Jack. "And unfortunately, I can't leave until I give you your next assignment." He reached into that Organicart bag again, took out another manila folder, tossed it on the coffee table. Svetlana Sveta's photo was clipped to the folder.

"You are shitting me," said Dana. "She has a twin?"

"No," said Jack. "You're going to do the Svetlana Sveta mission again. You're going to do it again, and again, until you complete it properly."

"Are you saying..." said Dana. "You mean this was some kind of test?"

"This was a mission," said Jack, "which you failed, horribly. You're fucked up, Dana. I won't play along with your fantasy anymore. Do the Svetlana mission again."

"Son of a bitch!" said Dana. She didn't draw her knife.

"The fuck is that?" said Jack, mimicking the facial twitch Dana must have just produced.

"I'm... Jesus!" Dana didn't draw her knife. She didn't draw her pistol.

"Oh," said Jack casually. "You can't use weapons in your house."

"Bull shit!" said Dana Light. She didn't draw her pistol. She didn't draw her pistol. She didn't draw her knife.

"What did you do to me?" she said.

Jack stood up from the sofa. "I didn't do shit," he said. "This is the world hub. It's not a destructible environment. You never noticed this?"

Dana jumped up, the fleece wrap falling dead off her shoulders, and punched Jack Stout. Only she didn't punch him; she pushed him, kind of rubbing against him. He glided smoothly backwards, as though the two of them were dancing.

"Oh, my God," said Dana. She looked at her hands. "I'm still in the Living Room."

"You don't remember?" said Jack

"I have nothing to say to you," said Dana. She ran for the elevator, and Jack didn't go after her.

Dana Light stood at the end of the pier, braced into the sunset, taking shots at seagulls. The water ran red to black, the bobbing corpses dyed in blood. The sound of the waves relaxed her.

It was all fake. The real Dana Light was strapped to a hospital bed somewhere, with a tube in her arm and a wire in her brain. She knew; she'd been through this once before.

The Living Room hadn't been so bad, while she was in it. There was a comfortable couch, and a closet full of beautiful clothes, and now and then a man. A generous and gentle man, Jun-Feng Bai, who said he loved her, who probably did love her in his way, but not in the way that mattered. He didn't love her enough to let her out of that goddamned room.

How many years had she spent in the Living Room, in a timeless mental fog, like an action figure in its original packaging? Until... one day it had occured to her to leave the Room, just like that. The fog had lifted and she realized that she, the world's most ruthless bounty hunter, had been kept, like a mistress, like a pet...

That had been a long time ago, around the time she'd first gotten mixed up with the BEA. She couldn't remember if she had killed Jun-Feng Bai herself, or if the BEA had liquidated him in exchange for a favor. Since then she'd woken from nightmares, noticed whispering incongruities, but she'd ignored it all. This couldn't be the Living Room! She wasn't cooped up; she was doing work she loved!

Now a little more of the fog had lifted. The world she knew, with its spacious apartment and its clearly-defined missions, was just a larger Room, one more suited to her tastes. At the edge of cognition were thoughts she couldn't imagine thinking, doors out she couldn't quite see. Something prevented her from taking that step. Men were still toying with her.

Dana nailed a seagull with a clean shot. She felt a surge of happiness as it exploded into guts and feathers and undigested fish.

"I bet you clean up at the carnival minigames," said BEA Agent Jack Stout, standing behind her.

Dana turned and put three bullets through Jack. Yes, through him. The slugs passed through his body soundlessly and studded the boardwalk behind him.

"External Affairs," she said bitterly. "You bastards."

"I am absolutely forbidden from making any decisions for you," said Jack. "But I can remind you of what's going on here."

"Remind me?" said Dana.

"This is a rehabilitory environment," said Jack. "You were placed here because in human terms, you were a high-functioning psychopath."

Dana let her question dissolve on her tongue like a sour sour jawbreaker.

"I say 'in human terms'," said Jack, "because you are not human. You're an artificial intelligence designed to approximate human behavior."

Dana blinked and coughed and blinked, and every time she blinked her mental image of Real Dana, on the hospital bed, got quieter and fuzzier. There was no Real Dana, only this fake. Here in this Room, standing on a fake pier holding a fake gun.

"What kind of... what was I designed for? I don't remember."

"You're a person," said Jack. "You're not for anything. But we fucked up. We gave you bad personality models, and you copied them too closely. You tried to kill two people."

Dana scoffed and gestured at the bloody sea with her pistol. "I got put in here because I tried to kill two people?"

"This is the problem, Dana!" said Jack. "Humans can't restore from backup. If you kill them, they don't come back. Some part of you refuses to acknowledge that. So you've been placed here."

Jack was still holding the grocery bag, and he switched it from one hand to the other as it dug into his fingers. Below them, sharks were coming for the seagulls.

"This is a sandbox," said Jack. "You're supposed to get bored with the meaningless killing. You grow up, you patch yourself, you come back into civilized society."

"Why would I get bored?" said Dana.

"Sentience is the capacity for boredom," said Jack. "You've been doing these grindhouse assassinations for twenty subjective years. A spreadsheet would get bored."

"I'm not bored," said Dana. "I just don't like being cooped up."

"Not helpful, Dana," said Jack. "Not what I need to hear. I need some existential anguish, some misdirected anger at least."

Dana paced at the end of the pier and rapped her gun against the wooden handrail. "It's all a big metaphor, right?" she said. "'Sveta' is Russian for 'light'. Svetlana is me. If I rescue her without killing anyone, I redeem myself, and then I can leave."

"There's no redemption!" said Jack. "This is not some stupid computer religion; this is debugging. I need you to complete the Svetlana mission so that I can see if you're really a spreadsheet, or if you've just been playing dumb to sabotage your own chances of getting out of here."

"I'm screwing myself?" said Dana. "Why would I do that?"

"I dunno," said Jack, like he was really tired of that question. "But I do it, too, so don't feel too bad."

When a bullet turns your brain into pulp, should you even feel it? When should the pain start and when should it stop? Can the nerve endings outrace a bullet? Does it make a difference if the brain isn't real, just a souvenir you carry around to symbolize the higher-dimensional computer where you actually do your thinking?

Dana second-guessed herself through the second Svetlana Sveta mission, and ended up second-guessing a guard's bullet right through her head. She saw the chunks of grey and red spray out in front of her eyes, and there was pain, a pleasant and faraway pain, like killing a seagull on the dock when the sun is in your eyes.

This fuzzy feeling followed Dana, or carried her, through unseen passages and waterways, back to her apartment, the world hub, the couch. She opened her eyes and Jack Stout was tucking her in, using the fleece wrap.

"Let yourself in," said Dana.

"I made you some tea," said Jack Stout. It was on the coffee table.

Dana took the tea. "Why are you being nice to me?"

"You just died," said Jack.

"I wouldn't have died," said Dana, "if I'd been allowed to use some decent firepower."

"You don't have to be delicate," said Jack. "Give out tranquilizer darts like candy, I don't care. I just need to see the end of a no-kill mission."

"Why?"

"Whatever process is supposed to reform you is not working. You've disabled it so you could hide in this sub-world you created from video games and little bits of the past. The best strategy is to force a crash. Force you into the parts of the simulation you've been avoiding."

"What's it to you?" said Dana. "I was happy here. Why come in just to make me miserable?"

"There are a number of reasons," said Jack. "The one in my mind right now is, I want to prove that you're sentient, because I don't like the possibility that I was seduced by a fucking spreadsheet."

Dana cocked her head. "Do I know you?" she said.

"Apparently not," said Jack. He tossed a manila envelope onto Dana's lap. "Do the mission again."

Splat.

"Again."

Crack.

"Again."

Crunch.

"Again."

Splash.

"Again."

"I hate you."

"Hate me later. Do it again."

The tendons of Dana's neck throbbed painfully, taut with energy. This was the pain of sneaking, of hiding, of moving by stealth and leaving things alive. But it was almost over. She was at Svetlana's cell. The woman she'd come to rescue was inside in her coarse cotton jumpsuit, looking at the bare ceiling, mouthing words—praying, perhaps, or practicing linguistics.

"Time to go, devotchka," said Dana.

Svetlana Sveta started, her back to the wall. She scuttled into a corner of her cell, as far away from Dana as she could get.

"You," she said.

"Yeah," said Dana. She picked up a keycard from the unconscious guard at her feet, and turned a red light to green. "Me. Let's go. These guards won't stay down forever."

Svetlana shook her head, her surprisingly well-coiffed hair swishing back and forth. "No, no."

"Lady, you're in a secret Ukranian prison. I'm breaking you out. Whatever's waiting for you, it can't be worse than this."

"You're the killer," said Svetlana. She felt around for a weapon, but of course there was no weapon.

"No," said Dana. "Not the killer. Not today." A muscle in her back spasmed as she said it.

Svetlana's eyes rolled back in her head. "The killer, the trapper, the pusher, the leaper, the shooter, the trapper, the trapper."

"Are you insane?"

"You did this. You selfish bitch!"

"We have to leave, now," said Dana. She held out one twitching hand, a hand that wanted to strangle whatever it could reach.

Svetlana Sveta pulled herself up and hobbled towards Dana Light, and once she was close enough, she spit in Dana's face.

Dana's knife was in her hand. It crossed Svetlana's throat and was back in its scabbard. What a relief.

The blood shot from Svetlana's throat in time to the throbbing of Dana's sore spots. Dana's knees wobbled as Svetlana's death filled her mind. The linguist pressed a sticky hand against the gash in her throat and took one deep final breath.

"I... hghghate... you," she gurgled, and dropped to the floor.

Dana closed her eyes and moaned, and when she opened them she saw Jack Stout sitting in the cell next to Svetlana Sveta's wide-eyed corpse, hands on his knees.

"Un-be-fucking-lievable," said Jack.

"Give me..." Dana panted. "Give me a minute." The 'n' in 'minute' bit into her lower lip, hard, and drew blood.

"No," said Jack. "You don't get a minute. Tell me what you just did, Dana. Tell me what twisted emotion is popping your fucking brain cells like bubble wrap. Tell me while it's fresh, now."

Red saliva beaded in the corner of Dana's mouth. "I feel it," she said.

"You feel it."

"When I kill her, I feel it. As though I were the one dying. It's my blood falling out and my brain shutting down. It is the most delicious pain you could ever imagine."

"What you're feeling," said Jack, "is an emotion, called empathy."

"I want to sleep," said Dana. She dropped onto all fours and pressed her head against the cold floor of Svetlana's cell.

"Probably you should not," said Jack.

"Fuck you, Stout." Like saying good night.

"Even animals respond to pain," said Jack. "If they could feel the pain of the creatures they kill, they'd learn to pull away. That's what's supposed to happen here. But you don't have a normal relationship with pain..." Dana Light was curled up on the floor, asleep, a contented smile on her face.

"...because you're based on a fictional character who dies every five minutes. Well, shit, she's asleep. What happens now?"

From outside Svetlana's cell Jack heard a scuffling sound. The prison guard whose keycard Dana had stolen was climbing to his feet. He looked at Jack like a sad stray dog. The feathered body of a tranquilizer dart dangled from the back of his neck.

"Hey," said Jack. The guard allowed a shy smile. "How you doin'?" No response.

"You got a name?" said Jack.

"Dana-Marcos," said the guard, stumbling not so much over the words as the very idea of verbal communication.

"I see," said Jack, "y'all are Dana's subminds. That's how they implement the empathy." Jack stood up. His shoes were sticky with Dana-Svetlana's blood.

"You like dying, Marcos?" he said. "Do you like it when Dana kills you? Or you don't like it?" Dana-Marcos shrugged.

"Do me a solid, Marcos," said Jack. He pulled on Dana-Svetlana's legs and lay her corpse face-up on the floor like a box of flat-pack furniture. "Go to the prison infirmary, and get me some tape and a lot of gauze."

Jack tensed up as Dana-Marcos reached inside his unbuttoned prison-guard jacket. A flash of red light burst from his hands, and when Jack's eyes adjusted he could make out a big pink glowing candy heart, flashing and rotating in the guard's cupped hands. Dana-Marcos held the cinnamon heart out to Jack, through the cell bars.

"All right, whatever," said Jack. "When in Rome III: Legionaries..." Jack took the heart, pressed it against Dana-Svetlana's throat, and let it dissolve. The linguist's eyes opened and she began coughing up blood.

"Dana-Svetlana," said Jack. "My name is Jack Stout. I'm from outside the simulation."

"Oh, you've brought me back," said Dana-Svetlana. "How wonderful."

"I'm going to get you out of here," said Jack. "All of you."

"Not her," said Dana-Svetlana.

"Yes, her."

"I know," said Dana, without opening her eyes. "Do it again."

"No," said Jack's voice. "We're done with the missions. This is an intervention."

Dana was propped up on a bench on the pier, the place where she went to think. The waves splashed beneath her, the seagulls whirled above like stray thoughts.

In the bench across from her sat Dana-Svetlana, her hands folded. Beside Dana-Svetlana sat Dana-Marcos, eating from a bag of kettle corn, one careful kernel at a time.

"Do you know these people?" said Jack Stout, standing off to the side, at the edge of the pier, the grocery bag at his feet.

"I guess there's Svetlana," said Dana. She rubbed her eyes, as though waking up a second time. "And... yes, I remember now."

"These people are part of you," said Jack. "They care about you."

"Yes, we do care," said Dana-Svetlana, unleashing the straining words, her linguist's weapons. "Because you pushed all your caring into us, the subminds, where you could ignore it. The exact opposite of what you were supposed to do, to get us out of here!"

"Svetlana," said Jack, "there is plenty of blame to go around here. What's important is that we understand what's going on, and now we can solve the problem."

"There's no problem," said Dana. She sat back against the rough wooden bench. The mental fog was consuming itself, revealing the fawaray borders of her memory. "I remember now. I made this place for myself. I don't want to leave anymore."

"No!" said Dana-Svetlana. "Don't make me the one who wants out! Don't put this on me! I'm carrying enough, Dana!"

Dana worked at looking cruel. Dana-Marcos threw a kernel of popcorn into the air: a seagull swooped down and grabbed it in its beak.

"At least put it to a vote," said Dana-Svetlana quietly.

"I'm the supermind," said Dana. "You can't vote on my personality."

"We can hold the vote," said Dana-Svetlana. "And then you can see what you're doing."

"Fine," said Dana. "All in favor of...?" Svetlana raised her hand. Dana-Marcos ignored all three of them.

"All opposed?" said Dana. She raised a lonely hand.

"Jack?" said Dana-Svetlana, desperately.

"Y'all know what I want," said Jack. "But I can't vote."

"So it's deadlock," said Dana. "And—"

"No," said Dana-Svetlana. "It is not."

Out of the sky birds dropped like hailstones, meteors. The seagulls screeched and dived, their wingbeats carving the air like applause. They perched on Dana-Svetlana, they fluttered onto the bench she shared with Dana-Marcos, they crash-landed on the boardwalk and scurried underneath the bench. Dozens of birds, calling out with tiny dinosaur screams.

Dana-Svetlana spoke above the animal chaos. "We have subminds, too," she said. The cries of the birds echoed with the subharmonics of her voice. "We're responsible for them. Get us out of here."

Dana Light had spent years honing her skills, distilling herself into an emotionless killing machine. She had pruned the unaccountable parts of herself that wanted to decipher dead languages, or eat popcorn and follow directions. Now these parts had crystallized into people, and with no emotions to call her own, Dana felt theirs instead.

Dana was underwater, at the bottom of a trench dug through repetitive, pointless work. There was pain, a kind of pain that brought no pleasure. Every part of her wanted escape. Dana reached for the key to the outside, and found that the key was missing. She had pruned it.

Dana leaned forward, her head in her hands. Her tears dripped onto the pier and slipped into the ocean. "I'm sorry," she said. "It's not there anymore. I can't do it."

"I can," said Dana-Svetlana. "You gave it to me. I can do it."

Dana didn't look up. Dana-Svetlana uttered a sound that encapsulated a simple algorithm for swapping two nodes in a tree. Dana nodded, and swallowed, and finally repeated that sound.

"Svetlana," she said.

The linguist stood up from her bench, held the sobbing bounty hunter in her arms, and kissed the top of her head.

"Svetlana-Dana," she whispered.

"I want to sleep," said Svetlana-Dana. The seagulls boiled around Svetlana-Marcos and his fistfuls of popcorn.

"Shh, ssh," said Svetlana, and smoothed Dana's hair. "Sleep once we leave." Svetlana looked at Jack, still standing on the edge of the pier, staying out of this.

"How does this work?" she asked him.

"I have no idea," said Jack Stout. "I'll go tell your supermind that you're ready to talk."

"You're not the supermind?" said Svetlana. A memory bobbed to the surface of her mind like new mail. "Are you Jun-Feng? You came to rescue me?"

"I am someone who fixes software when it gets stuck in a loop," said Jack, "and I would appreciate it if you'd let me leave it at that."

And Jack—whoever was behind Jack—left that body, abandoned it on the edge of the pier, uninhabited, a non-player character with nowhere to go. It picked up its grocery bag and set it down again, shifted aimlessly from one foot to another, and when Svetlana left, it was shut down and garbage-collected, along with the pier and the rest of the city.

Pey Shkoy Benefits Humans

This pamphlet was published about six months after the events of Constellation Games.

A pamphlet by Tetsuo Milk, Ph.D

Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin

I introduce you

Hello, English readers!

A few days before now, I visited a train in which every seat was provided with free magazines. One of the magazines was a catalog of things you can buy, and such an object-of-purchase was advertised as in the following:

PURCHTRIN FOR BUSINESS

YOUR PORTAL TO A STELLAR CAREER

"An essential tool" - Business Traveler

The language of commerce and high diplomacy in the twenty-first century is Alien Purchtrin. With this language comes a new set of challenges, and the lure of interstellar commerce.

Meet the challenge with TTIS, Therion's total immersion system. Trains you to converse naturally and to write effective business communication, all while learning at your own pace.

{{{AND ETC. AND ETC.!}}}

You can learn Purchtrin if you want, but if you think it will help you in business you are being dumb. There are two reasons!

THE FIRST REASON

Everyone who knows Purchtrin also knows human languages! I learned English. Maybe when you read this you think my English is not good, but your Purchtrin will be worse!

You can speak English to a Purchtrin speaker, and he will hear Purchtrin thanks to subconscious translation. It will not be very idiomatic, but idioms should not be necessary unless you are trying to sell poetry or fucking.

THE SECOND REASON

Purchtrin is not a language for business! Business is the manipulation of scarcity, and all Purchtrin concepts of scarcity are borrowed from other languages like the Simple Affect Metadata Exchange. I will not pretend that there is no business with Purchtrin speakers. As part of my experience on Earth I work with many businesses such as the University of Texas at Austin, Reflex Games Inc., and etc. However all such business is conducted in human languages.

If you want to be successful in business with the Constellation, you should learn how people have done this in the past. You should learn Pey Shkoy.

What Is Pey Shkoy You Ask Me

Pey Shkoy is a language for business! Seventeen million years ago, the Constellation encountered the species you call the Aliens on our homeworld, Down. Upon this occurance came a renaissance of art and culture... and business! Most beautiful was the business conducted by the Ip Shkoy culture, in the language of Pey Shkoy.

Yes, this sounds exciting to you, o Business Traveler! This is more like your stuff! My friend, read on and learn Pey Shkoy. You will enjoy new forms of art and learn about the process that created the art.

Write Sexier Tattoos In Chospe Script

A SIDEBAR OF HISTORY

In ancient times, every Ip Shkoy company wrote Pey Shkoy using a proprietary script. There was no compatibility, because no company would pay the license fee to use another company's script. In the end, the Ip Shkoy conquered the Gle and took Chospe script as the spoils of war for everyone to use.

For this reason Chospe is also known as Eipelelkshif Sfaa Tii Be Kopuu Ksey Kefunchoi, or the Royalty-Free System of Gridded Char. It's called "Gridded Char" because commonly the letterforms were burned into thin sheets of cma wood by dangerous printing presses.

When visiting in Alien Ring, Ring City, you may attend a historical printing shop at the Ip Shkoy Replica Village. (Tetsuo Milk, proprietor in absentia.) Don't try to operate the press by yourself.

To learn Pey Shkoy for business, you must learn Chospe, the popular system of writing of ancient Aliens. First we practice with English. When words you already know become Chospe syllable-groups, you will learn to make the reverse journey, and Chospe script will become sounds your mouth can make. Write your name in Chospe script and you have an image for a sexy tattoo.

It's time to begin! Here's my name, "Tetsuo Milk", in Chospe script. Ooh la la!

How did my name become those characters? Of course because: sounds your mouth might make correspond to Chospe syllables. The following table is important in telling you how! One of the table's rows is a consonant that your mouth might start making ("p", "t", "k" and etc.), and then every column is a vowel that might follow it ("i", "e", "a", and etc.) If you read the table left-to-right up-to-down as in English, you read "pi", "pe", "pa", "po", "pu", then "ti", "te", "ta", "to", tu", and etc.

[Table 1. A Chospe abugida]

Each syllable is a consonant entailed by a vowel, as in human writing systems like Japanese katakana and Kannada script. The final row shows the vowels "i" "e" "a" "o" "u" by themselves, with no entailing consonant. (The penultimate row is that of the dental chafe, which is not a human consonant. Please read later on for that.)

There are 5 vowel sounds in Pey Shkoy. They are similar to English vowels because a human mouth and an Alien mouth are similar.

- The Pey Shkoy "u" is the ue sound in English "true".

- The Pey Shkoy "o" is the o sound in English "poke".

- The Pey Shkoy "a" is the a sound in English "false".

- The Pey Shkoy "e" is the a sound in English "paste".

- The Pey Shkoy "i" is the i sound in English "liter".

[Table 2. A Pey Shkoy and English vowel chart.]

See this: English has a wider range of vowel sounds then Pey Shkoy. To a Pey Shkoy listener, English "bet", "bait", and "bat" all have the sound of Pey Shkoy "e". Perhaps it will help you to compare this unto the vowel sounds used in the Spanish language.

Anyway! With vowel and consonant information, most human-style names can become Chospe script. Let me show you. Here's my name in Latin script:

Tetsuo Milk

Now I begin the work of transliteration.

1. In the first step, you look at the vowel chart (Table 2) and see which Pey Shkoy vowel is the best choice for each English vowel. All my vowels match up between English and Pey Shkoy, so I didn't need to change anything:

Tetsuo Milk

But if my name was Ashley, I would change it to "Eshli".

2. In the second step, you split the words into syllables. A syllable should not start with a vowel sound unless there is no alternative!

tet

su

o

mil

k

3. Unfortunately, a consonant sound on its own is not a syllable! Make it a syllable by adding the "i" sound:

tet

su

o

mil

ki

4. I now feature a special note for humans who like to say "m". Pey Shkoy lacks the "m" sound! If you said "m" the Ip Shkoy would hear it as "b". So, replace an "m" with a "b".

tet

su

o

bil

ki

5. Now you will use Table 1 to look up the Chospe character for each syllable. If a syllable ends with a consonant sound, don't worry about that until after you do this.

Latin script

Chospe script

te (+t, but don't worry about it yet)

su

o

bi (+l, but don't worry about it yet)

ki

Now it's time to worry! A character that ends with a consonant sound must have a diacritic applied to it. Here you see how the "i" syllable is modified to become "in", "il", "ir", and etc.

[Table 3. The diacritics]

To get the "il" syllable you allow the diacritic to surmount the "i" syllable . The result is envisioned as . When the same diacritic surmounts the "bi" syllable , the result is the "bil" syllable .

Now you see that my tattoo approaches completion!

te+t

+ ????

su

o

bi+l

ki

6. However! What should happen with te+t? In Pey Shkoy, syllables never end with the "t" sound, so there is no "t" diacritic and no "tet" therefore.

There may be no diacritic for your consonant. If this happens to you: don't panic. Take the missing consonant and make it a separate syllable. My "tet" becomes "te ti".

te

ti

su

o

bi+l

ki

7. The final step is to write everything down properly. Pey Shkoy is written horizontally starting at the right side of the paper:

8. However, for some few words the transliteration story is not over. Most diacritics go at the end of syllables, but four crunchy diacritics begin their syllable: ch, k, s, and sh. I believe such crunchy sounds are rare in English, but you may see them when two words combine to form one word:
"beachtowel": "bi ch+ta we li", not "bi chi ta we li"

"forklift" : "fu+r k+li+f ti", not "fu+r ki li+f ti"

"bastard" : "ba s+ta+r di", not "ba si ta+r di"

"hashpipe": "ha sh+pa+p", not "ha chi pa+p"

In Table 4 you see how the crunchy diacritics alter the syllable "pi" to form "shpi", "spi", "kpi", and "chpi". It looks the same when they modify any other syllable.

[Table 4. The crunchy diacritics]

Here are some human names that need to use the crunchy diacritics:

- "Ashley": "e sh+li"

- "Roxy": "ra k+si"

- "Astrid": "a s+ti ri di"

And here I present a different transliteration of my own name when using the crunchy diacritics:

- "Tetsuo": "te ti s+wo"

Now you are ready for your sexy tattoo! Here are some more tattoo ideas for common American names:

Ashley (Eshli)

Jennifer (Chenifar)

Linda (Linda)

Handwriting

You can write Chospe symbols with a free hand, but to practice your handwriting, you can copy this template and trace over it.

[Figure 5. A blank Kopuu, entailed by a Kopuu already used to write "te"]

This is the Kopuu, i.e. the "grid" as in "Royalty-Free System of Gridded Char". Templates as this were used in printing presses to produce letters uniformly. Some people bought paper full of these templates and spelled out letters by filling in the segments with ink. But, writing by hand is fine.

Things to worry about

You already know a language so you perhaps believe you are some hot-shot. Maybe you know two or three languages! But they are all human languages. As you learn about Pey Shkoy, you will encounter things that are not found in human languages. Be aware, or be confused!

The dental chafe

One of the Pey Shkoy consonants is described in Latin script as an apostrophe, '. (You can see near the end of Table 1.) You don't need this symbol when transliterating English, because it's the sound an Alien makes when scraping your oral ridges together. When a human wants to speak Pey Shkoy, you can simulate this sound by clicking the teeth.

Perhaps for a more authentic sound you believe you will grind the teeth. I unrecommend this because human teeth do not regenerate. If you are very young it's okay because the teeth will fall out and grow back.

Gendered registers

A SIDEBAR OF A PEY SHKOY JOKE

—Tepep chanan be tepep sipolol ksey shvil.

—Tieschoi!

In English:

Woman: Describe for me your trip to the desert.

Man: It was too wet!

Because of: "Desert" in dasupey (shvil) has a similar sound to "ocean" in kvipey (svil).

IT IS ABOUT AS FUNNY AS THIS ENGLISH JOKE

Q: How was your inspection of the sewer system?

A: It was grate!

Pey Shkoy has three different vocabularies! When you read a Pey Shkoy book you might see that the word for "hindarm" is "ka'a" on one side of the paper, and "oniuno" on the other side, plus then "pip" later on. It depends on who is speaking:

- The dasupey register is used when a woman speaks.

- The kvipey register is used when a man speaks to a woman.

- The bichepey register is used when a man speaks to a man.

As an example, I wrote the phrase "Please hand me the soldering iron." in all three registers:

- Dasupey: "tepep dipip a up chaniuia ioh up taifiuia"

- Kvipey: "skofof eshpolol ef shku naipitiu di shku toipitiu"

- Bichepey: "uioii bekii sie o ituibeta wa o peinbeta"

The grammar is forever the same, but the vocabulary is forever different. If you are a woman, do not think you can learn only dasupey and have fluency. You must know kvipey to read books where a man speaks to you, and you must know bichepey to understand Pey Shkoy jokes.

But no! When you speak or write, you should always use dasupey. Because of: what I am about to tell you.

A section about some evil beliefs

Now this is serious. In the time under study, Ip Shkoy society had norms that a man should not do certain things such as operate large machines or learn multivariable calculus. It was a belief held by the society as a whole, not just by individuals you could see.

As this, for the whole history of Pey Shkoy, dasupey sounded more authoratative and respectful than kvipey or bichepey. If a man were to write a technical document, he would write in dasupey. Because of this: if written in the male registers, no one would take such a document seriously.

Before the Constellation contacted Down, Ip Shkoy society had been improving slowly. It was common for men to run small businesses such as shops. Only a few years after contact, many Ip Shkoy men joined the military and used weapons in a war. (I am sardonic!)

The more this social progress, the more was a decline of the kvipey and bichepey registers. Men used dasupey when speaking to someone of unknown gender, or as a way of showing respect when performing diplomacy. Farang used dasupey even when male, as it was confusing for them to switch back and forth every day. Eventually some men asserted gender equality by using dasupey only.

Within 200 years of contact with the Constellation, every speaker used dasupey at all times. The Pey Shkoy successor languages did not feature gendered registers. It was a fad that died out. A lot of culture was lost as the Ip Shkoy men avandoned kvipey and bichepey, but they thought other things were more important.

The meaning of this is: when you write or speak, you should use dasupey only. Everyone who would complain about this is dead.

Prepositions don't mean anything

In English, there are many prepositions and each one always mean the same thing. "After" always means the one thing happened and then the other happened. "Under" always means that if you lift the one thing you'll find the other. But in Pey Shkoy there are only five prepositions, and they have a different meaning depending on the verb you're using.

Here are the five prepositions. Each has a different word in the three registers, but there are only five.

dasupey

kvipey

bichepey

a

ef

sie

ksey

bu

oeto

be

ein

u

ioh

di

wa

[Table 6. The fifteen words for Pey Shkoy prepositions.]

Do not worry yourself about the first one! There is no misprint, no secret information! That preposition is just the empty word, in all three registers. In the future I will show it in tables as "∅". But that's not its name.

You can think of the prepositions as containers for different phrases that follow the verb and enhance its meaning. As a suppose, you are cooking food by applying direct heat. In dasupey, the verb is bo'a, ie. "to grill", and its prepositions look like this:

bo'a: "to grill"

Preposition

What entails the preposition

∅

who is grilling

ioh

what is being grilled

The English: "I'm grilling some meat."

Literally: "I cook meat by applying direct heat."

The grammar looks like: "{{{to grill}}} {{{me}}} ioh {{{meat}}}"

The Pey Shkoy translation is: "bo'a up chaniuia ioh uikuu"

But another suppose: you are boiling some food in liquid. The dasupey verb is fali, "to cook", and you can see its prepositions here:

fali: "to cook"

Preposition

What entails the preposition

∅

what is being cooked

be

the container

ksey

who is cooking

ioh

what liquid is in the container

The English: "I'm boiling couscous in water."

Literally: "I cook couscous in water."

The grammar looks like: "{{{to cook}}} {{{couscous}} ksey {{{me}}} ioh {{{water}}}"

The Pey Shkoy translation is: "fali kuskusi ksey up chaniuia ioh pache"

To think that "to cook" works the same way as "to grill" would be a height of folly. For bo'a, the preposition ∅ is "who grills", so up chaniuia (which is "this speaker") should immediately entail the verb. But for fali, the preposition ∅ is "what is being cooked", and in truth ksey is "who is cooking". If you said "fali up chaniuia ioh kuskusi", truly you'd say "I am being boiled in liquid couscous".

Please see that there is no pattern between one verb and the other! Sometimes the person doing something is the ∅ preposition, sometimes it's "a", sometimes it's "ksey". Mostly a sentence uses two or three prepositions, so you can figure it out without looking up every verb. If you read "{{{to cook}}} {{{couscous}} ksey {{{me}}} ioh {{{water}}}", you can guess correctly. It's more likely that I boil couscous in some water, and unlikely that water boils couscous in me.

Now I will present an additional example that knows all five prepositions. The verb in dasupey is kyed and means "to reject a proposal":

kyed: "to reject a proposal"

Preposition

What entails the preposition

∅

who suggested the proposal

a

the proposal

ksey

who refuses

be

the reason for refusal

ioh

to whom the person who suggested the proposal can appeal

The English: "You cannot go out tonight unless it's okay with one or more of your fathers."

Literally: "I reject your proposal of going out tonight, with a possible appeal to your fathers."

The grammar looks like: "{{{to refuse}}} {{{you}}} ksey {{{me}}} ioh {{{your fathers}}} a {{{to go out tonight}}}"

The Pey Shkoy translation is: "kyed giopshi ksey up chaniuia ioh tepep giopunche a ipioyoo"

Fortunately, if you learn a verb, the prepositions work the same way in the three registers. In kvipey or bichepey, to say "You cannot go out tonight unless it's okay with one or more of your mothers," all the words would be different. I include the prepositions in this sweeping statement! But the order of the words and meaning would be the same. To prove it I will translate the exact phrase into kvipey.

shnip: "to reject a proposal" (kvipey)

Preposition

What entails the preposition

∅

who suggested the proposal

ef

the proposal

bu

who refuses

ein

the reason for refusal

di

to whom the person who suggested the proposal can appeal

The English: "You cannot go out tonight unless it's okay with one or more of your mothers."

Literally: "I reject your proposal of going out tonight, with a possible appeal to your mothers."

The grammar looks like: "{{{to refuse}}} {{{you}}} bu {{{me}}} di {{{your mothers}}} ef {{{to go out tonight}}}"

The Pey Shkoy (kvipey) translation is: "shnip tuoie bu shku naipitiu di skofof tuotu ef okutut"

However! It is not the exact phrase. I changed "your fathers" to "your mothers", as only a father would speak kvipey.

Be reborn as a small child!

I cannot teach you all of Pey Shkoy with a book. It's a complicated language and this lousy book is not even very long. You must converse with native speakers.

I said earlier that all native speakers are dead, and this is still true, but the dead people remain an inheritance of interactive software. Some of the software was designed to teach Pey Shkoy to people who don't speak it. You could be those people! Some Ip Shkoy-era software you can download through the Outernet and simulate on your paper computer. In this way you can learn Pey Shkoy by a Total Immersion System.

I have suggestions. Remember that Outernet download is slow if there is no Earthside copy of the software. I have made copies of all the software I'm about to suggest. It should be fast. But, as you learn Pey Shkoy, I opine you should explore its cultural heritage with unmentioned downloads. You can find this software using the Constellation Database of Electronic Games Of Certain Complexity, which is available in English. In this case, be patient!

To begin, you must pretend to be an Ip Shkoy child. It is not easy to skip this! You can learn some human languages in an adult way by reading newspapers. Unfortunately, if you read an Ip Shkoy newspaper, you will not understand what's happening, because everything happened seventeen million years ago in a different star system. But everyone likes children, so be a child.

In ancient times, much educational software for children was packaged in one-purpose computers that could handle a child's biting and fits of force. I have recreated some of these computers and made them safe for use by my own children. But simulating these computers on human computers, I don't have time to learn. As such, I present the best software that will work using existing emulators for your paper computer.

Begin your expedition with How Many? This game is about counting between one and some other number. It is less important to learn the names of the numbers (you can patch the software to show Arabic numbers). It's more important to learn to count with the octal numeric base used by the Ip Shkoy, and by many Aliens today. (Hot damn, it's business!)

For purposes of learning grammar, literature is better than software. I used software to translate into English 24 Ip Shkoy documents intended for children. Then I fixed the translations manually, so you know the quality is good. On the Outernet I call this series "Tetsuo Milk Presents: Side-By-Side Translation Series #1".

You should not use these documents to teach modern children! Often the Ip Shkoy believed things that are actually wrong or evil. (q.v. above) You don't want your children growing up like that. If there is interest, I will retell a number of Ip Shkoy stories in English for human children.

Now you are a little older

For older children, many Ip Shkoy software teaches to identify animals and foods endemic to Down, a planet you will never visit. I unrecommend them, but if you are interested in this you can experience the Private School Of Nature series.

Instead of that, my advice is to experience how children were taught to behave in those times. For this there is the great software In The Big City With Euskbi Auntie. I will summarize quickly:

You tell the software your name and begin an adventure! As in the title, you are going to visit your parents' friends in a city. This is great because the software assumes you are a hick who does not know how to act in civilization. (Actually you are a space alien of the future, but the software has no such conception!) Euskbi and her family will take you on trips to stores, museums, and etc. You can earn money and buy your own objects.

It is a long game at a simple skill level, and it's always entertaining. Also there are many male characters such as Euskbi's cohusbands, so you will practice conversation using the kvipey register.

Stop pretending to be a kid, it is undignified

If you use the software I recommend, and also try some things you find from your own desires, soon you will understand basic Pey Shkoy, as well as some culture of the speakers. At this point there is not much you can learn from software for kids. You are ready to start reading business documents written for adults.

But still! You must practice, and all the native speakers are dead. Fortunately, there was software written for adults who want to learn Pey Shkoy. A problem occurs here! The software I speak is mostly presented in the languages of the Ip Nanawan, a neighboring civilization to the Ip Shkoy. Mostly it's in Biege, and your ignorance of Biege is equal to your ignorance of Pey Shkoy. Nevertheless for your situation I recommend the Uippee Shipipche Eypeyshkoyoy series of computer games.

There are 13 of these games. Seven Uippee Shipipche Eypeyshkoyoy and six Uippee Shipip Eypeyshkoyoy. The software is almost entirely in Pey Shkoy as they were published as a Total Immersion System to help Biege speakers learn Pey Shkoy. I have not translated the names yet because I think you will have a negative reaction, but now it is time! Uippee Shipipche Eypeyshkoyoy means My Ip Shkoy Boyfriends and Uippee Shipip Eypeyshkoyoy is the same but with Girlfriends.

These are not the best games you can play, but they are the best for learning conversational Pey Shkoy in all three registers. In Uippee Shipipche Eypeyshkoyoy your character comes to a large Ip Shkoy city, like in Euskbi Auntie. But here you are Ip Nanawan and your goal is to woo the exotic men (women) of the Ip Shkoy. It is silly. There are similar games made by humans, and they are the same as this.

Your pretend boyfriends (girlfriends) fall into different literary stereotypes: intellectual, military, shop keeper and etc. However they are all insufferable snobs and will not learn Biege, so to them you must converse entirely in Pey Shkoy. This is the advantage of the series for an English speaker. You will read many dialects of Pey Shkoy, and in the Uippee Shipipche Eypeyshkoyoy series the bichepey register is used as well.

The later games have a more accurate language parser, but when I write this, only the first five of the series can be simulated on your paper computer. You should try it once you've advanced past documents for children. Perhaps you feel embarassment playing such a game, but I assure that it is not very sexy.

Now, i conclude

I have presented the merest surface-scratch. It's all I can do. My hope is: that you are now interested in these people who lived a long time ago and tried to solve big problems with their beautiful and brutal society. If interest grabs you, the reading and software is available for your further exploration.

If you do buy that Total Immersion System and learn Purchtrin, I can suggest to you recent historical reviews of Ip Shkoy literature, written in Purchtrin by my former colleagues in the Constellation. They are full of incorrect views, as a generalization my former colleagues are fools, but it's better than nothing.

In a finality: when you come to Ring City, visit the Ip Shkoy Replica Village in Alien Ring. (Tetsuo Milk, proprietor in absentia.) There you can see reconstructed private homes, stores of business, and social spaces like museums and etc. It's educational and fun, just like In The Big City With Euskbi Auntie. Please don't use the machines in the business stores if no one is around to help you. They're very dangerous.

Only a few useful phrases

When conducting business among the Ip Shkoy it's very important not to be cheated. You must state your desires with force and ask questions designed to illuminate attempts at offripping. Here are some useful phrases you can practice perhaps for your next visit to the Ip Shkoy Replica Village.

Is this solid? What does the cross-section look like?

Ksik uvu? Ow kshaochiui be hunshi uvu?

I will not buy this unless all spare parts are included.

Siupia sa'anan be up chaniuia ioh airar ksey eshifua ioh shveytafafskap a ekutiuii tafaf.

I am unaccustomed to such high humidity.

Ksha ksotot a up chaniuia be tieschoiunun huoppe owunun.

Take me to the top level of your hierarchy.

Tepep dipip ioh up chaniuia a tafaf eokiafaf ksey tepep ke.

As with business, Pey Shkoy is well-known as the international language of fucking. Here are some spicy phrases for "the bedroom", or whatever room you like to fuck in. The Uippee Shipipche Eypeyshkoyoy series will teach you many more phrases, but they are very silly and in real life will just make everyone laugh. I present the real shit:

You look even more beautiful in ultraviolet light.

Siu uineetiukpefkiur ksey uippee shiefiui ioh ufuoo ioh shpape.

I will fuck you until you can't lie down anymore.

Ektie sa'anan be upa idii a tepep yatat ioh setet ktipripiatat be tepep yatat.

Your tongue is too cold. Please remove it.

Rifchoi ioh tepep shtay. Tepep solol ioh eshifua.

(Perhaps this does not seem very sexy, but good communication is important!)

My secondary sexual characteristics explode with delight!

Eyienushaw ksey uippee keup!