The Galaxy, and the Ground Within Becky Chambers (books to read to get smarter .txt) 📖

learn their adulthood scents, maybe even touch them if allowed. He had never seen them with hardened shells, and had spent tendays steeling himself for the possibility that he might not recognise them. As he stood there with a garish legal document glued to his thorax, this idea no longer troubled him. They were his boys, and however they looked, they, too, would be beautiful.

Day 16, GC Standard 308

SPEAKER

‘Speaker?’ Tracker called down the hall.

Speaker was awake, but hadn’t left her bed. She had no plans to do so anytime soon. It was very, very morning. ‘What?’ she called, lying flat on her belly, not bothering to lift her head.

‘Are you expecting a mail drone?’

Speaker thought. She hadn’t ordered anything recently. ‘Might be that hull paint you bought?’

‘That’s what I figured, but …’

‘But what?’

‘Well, its delivery address is for the shuttle, not the ship.’

Speaker raised her head. ‘That’s weird. Who’s it from?’

‘I have no idea who—’ Tracker paused. ‘Is this that Quelin you met?’

Speaker got up. ‘Let it dock.’

The crate the drone delivered was small, and not particularly heavy. Within the crate was an unmarked box, and tied to the top of this with a bit of ribbon was an info chip. Speaker picked up the chip, plugged it into her scrib, and read the message that appeared on screen.

Hello Speaker,

I hope me sending you something unannounced isn’t an intrusion. I thought about contacting you ahead of time, but you know I can’t resist a surprise.

I’m taking a risk here, in sending you a gift that I have not been able to test. I admit, I’m not sure if it will work. You see, I did some digging after we left Gora, and it turns out that the GC Medical Institute has brain maps of every known sapient species. I’ve never worked with a map that wasn’t part of a pre-built sim design template, so building off of such raw material was quite a challenge. If this doesn’t work as I hope it will, I’d appreciate hearing exactly what went wrong, so that I might try again with improved results.

But, in the optimistic scenario that it does work: I fervently hope this is a positive experience for you (and for your sister, and whomever else you wish to share it with).

If you ever find yourself near Chalice, please do come say hello. I’d love to throw you that party I promised.

Kindly,

Roveg

PS If you are wondering, my sons are doing very well.

‘What is it?’ Tracker asked.

Speaker had an inkling – a bewildered, sceptical inkling, but an exciting one all the same. She opened the box, and her suspicion was confirmed.

Roveg had sent her a sim hub, a box of one-use slap patches, and a download drive hand-printed in Klip. Wushengat, the label read.

Flower Lake, she remembered.

On the back of the drive were instructions in tiny print:

1. Lie down or sit somewhere comfortable.

2. Place a slap patch on the back of your neck, right over your brain stem, with the red stripe facing upward.

3. Turn on the sim hub. You’ll hear a ping when it connects to your patch.

4. Plug in the drive.

5. Close your eyes and wait until the count of ten for the sim to load.

Tracker moved into Speaker’s periphery. ‘You’re not seriously going to plug that thing into your head, are you?’

‘Oh, yes, I am,’ Speaker said. She put everything back in the box, gathered it beneath her less dominant arm, and headed back toward the bedroom.

‘Speaker.’ Tracker swung after her. ‘Speaker, hang on. We can’t use—’

‘We don’t use them. That’s not the same as can’t.’ Speaker handed the box to her sister. ‘Can you take this?’ She nodded toward their bed, which she couldn’t climb to one-handed.

Tracker took the box with her feet, frowning. ‘You could hurt yourself,’ she said. ‘That’s some modder shit. That’s some hackjob—’

‘It’s not hackjob,’ Speaker said. ‘Roveg’s a professional. He knows what he’s doing.’

‘Yeah, for other types of brains. Do you not want to think about this?’

‘I thought about it.’

‘For two seconds.’

Speaker sat down on her bed and pulled a cushion behind herself, letting it support her weight. She looked her sister in the eye. ‘I trust him.’

Tracker continued to frown. With slow reluctance, she handed the box over.

‘Thank you,’ Speaker said. ‘And if it’ll make you feel better, you can sit with me while I do it.’

‘Oh, ho, I absolutely will,’ Tracker said. She swung herself into bed and sat directly across from Speaker.

‘Okay,’ Speaker said, setting the hub down. ‘Sit somewhere comfortable, check. Put a patch on my neck …’ She opened the box and took one of the patches out. It was thin, no thicker than a bandage, and somehow soft despite the wires running through it. She applied it to the back of her neck, right below the base of her skull.

‘Does it hurt?’ Tracker said.

‘No. It feels like … nothing,’ Speaker replied. She switched the hub on. A mild warmth spread through the patch. The hub beeped as a connection was made. ‘All right,’ she said, holding up the drive. ‘Here goes.’

‘If you so much as twitch, I’m ripping that thing off,’ Tracker said.

Speaker crinkled her eyes, reached out, and put her sister’s palm over her own heart. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘If I start to feel worrisome, you can shut down the hub.’

She inserted the drive, closed her eyes, and began to count.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. S—

Everything hit all at once.

There was light. She had stood on dozens of planets, and on moons, too, in marketplaces and transit stations and parks and spaceports, all basking beneath alien suns. But in each of those situations, her view was confined to the window of her mech suit, a metal-framed border that stood between her and every vista the galaxy had to offer. The only places she’d ever been without her suit were ships and shuttles, and these, too, were made of metal, of walls, of end points. Here, in this illusion Roveg