To Marushi: The messages seem to come from three different channels. There is a pause. More static.
And then a single channel opens:
“Apologies. I've… been having a few problems – though I imagine it will clear up soon enough. Everything will just be bedding into its new form.”
She's getting good at this, at convincing herself.

Fracture report: A glitch. Static. Something's wrong. A failed sync; a missed beat; for the first time, part of the picture is lost completely. Thressali Mirzen is made of fifty shining satellites, and if even a single one so much as
blinks
– well.
It's so very easy to fall apart.

Fifty satellites.

You are not above the Nassians, yet paradoxically, that is all that you are; like a diamond in the sky, mirrors pivoting, tool to be pulled out when you are needed and then packed firmly away again (and oh, does it hurt). You do not doubt your wielders (do you?). There is no room for doubt when all you can do is watch, artificial eyes wide, shepherds from afar, count the sheep (it is not yet time for sleep, or what little of it you get to have, before the lookout is tossed from the crow’s nest to the waiting waves below). Instead,

them, twenty-five of you refusing to let them die, command echoing. Your song is the reverse of your plea, before, a hundred and fifty years ago:

Leave. Where you are is not safe. Run. Bring only what you need. Don’t panic.

(Thress, whoever that used to be, passes through the corpse of a town swept up in another nameless disaster. Your aid workers move as a current around you, tending to wounds, dragging another free of the wreckage. You did not have warning systems like nerve points in the mud to feel the earthquakes coming then, to predict the death toll or to know what was to come. But you were among them, small, a body to mourn what was lost.

A Nassoid looks to you, sole survivor of their apartment, clutching the echoes of a life lost to something beyond any of your control, and you feel their sobs as if they were your own. You don’t get their name. But did you cry, then? Did you make use of the tears you could shed, whilst you still could?)

It is a good thing that machines can no longer cry (I’m still here – I’m here –) when the cries for aid barrage your systems but all you can do is cradle

, each a tally-mark, a running total. Twelve satellites dare to dream of something better, but what is a dream in comparison to a war? The pockmarked face of Veltha reflects in fifty twelve drifting faces, marred by a nightmare. You long to no longer have to see it, but the periphery always haunts the frame, blue and silent wings pinned like a butterfly to the heavens. Oh, how it hurts.

Didn’t you say that, before? Think this all, before? You know you have. You recognise the words, the thoughts, code copy and pasted and left to run, run the same tracks, like water coursing down a river rather than run anew; drip, drip, drip. Gasoline to a fire. You want to be next to it.

But the tinder won’t light. Nothing but wire and chrome and silicon – and a fire always needs something alive to devour, doesn’t it?

A list will have to do. Embers and twigs, shuffled into neat little piles. The Veltha miners and their moss and endless work. Asteroid belts and brutal crackdowns. The Contingency will only make it worse, some say. Why did we wake any of you up? You didn’t save us, back then, but what is it that they speak of?

give what is not freely given, just as you cannot teach compassion to a husk. But this is a conversation, must be one, and twelve satellites must concoct your part in it, script imprinted upon by a dozen different hands.

But you do not get an answer. All is just idle rumination. An algorithm just shoves responsibility onto another creation, a contingent for the Contingency. What will trials solve? You knew well enough before that none of you are them anymore, and the metal and filigree you will drag to the stand is nothing but an attempt to be like them again. What, then? Kicking out members, punishment? Will they ever learn? What is a lesson to those who think they are gods?

Not all of you are the same tiny lights burning up with love for the world.

Oh, how it—-

But none of this shows in little Thressali’s voice. A lone satellite drifts amongst her allocated home, sundered self looking just for a glimpse of the other world that she longs to hold again. If she is lucky, the stars will align, make her an empty window to that orbit she is no longer part of; open it up, let the breeze in, and let her see that green-blue jewel.

It does not grant her this vision. Stubborn smattering of asteroid dust, clunky satellites; all a curtain, all a pall, over a coffin. Laid to rest. Goodnight.

But she does see it, though, doesn’t she? Another wink, and Mythhaler is there, and it is so tiring to always judge her own input. Overwhelming splendour sears onto the lens. The wound of the Ilcavith coast, torn apart; a divided self looking upon another divided self, reflection to be found in the very crust and plates. She can almost hear a song.

where you are.. only.. what you need.. stay– wait. run.

She sinks into herself. But herself is busy. The fascia of wires is no substitute for the clutches of muscle or the platelets of scales, and the diamond-cold of Veltha is no substitute for the planet she was born to.

Can you hear us?

ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT

Each satellite winces at the barrage of error feedback.

ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT

It is just input but it is the closest sensation to pain.

ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT

You just wanted to help.

ERROR: MODULE OVER-ASSIGNMENT

But did any of it really do anything at all?

You disconnect from your modules, terminate the contradicting instructions you seemingly sent simultaneously. A flurry of activity, clawing through the logs with a desperation for it all to just stop – and then, at last, everything goes silent.

It is a good thing that machines can no longer cry; Thressali fills the sobs she might have had with nothing at all.