12 Miles Below

The giant charcoal black territory before me stretched as far as the eye could see. I’m talking entire mountain ranges ahead of me, all burned down to a crisp. The map called it the Deadlands. A long containment of completely burnt down forest, ultimately nestled between two mountains. Bob can’t climb mountains too well given his airborne nature, and there also isn’t a lot of trees and life on such rocky territory.

Since I’d reached the safe zone, I could take a bit more time to relax and wind down before I traversed this and went on. I was mildly thirsty, but within the soul trance I was able to ignore most of my body’s cravings.

Also, I wanted to learn more about Bob. Kres would try to peck my eyes out if I told him I was able to talk to the infestation but didn’t spend enough time trying to discover some secrets.

I reached a hand down to the dead dust under my boots, taking a pinch and watching the ashes float away backwards, back into Bob’s domain. “The winds keep going this direction?”

Journey returned a message ping. There weren't enough spores to communicate with Bob. “Ah.” I said, shaking the rest of the ashes off my fingers. “Bad wireless signal here. Got it.”

I had to walk a bit into Bob’s territory to get both my question and answer. If I stood still for too long, there wouldn’t be enough spores in the air for Journey to properly communicate back. So I constantly had to seek deeper pockets of the deadly miasma, in order to talk to the miasma itself.

“They do.” Bob finally returned after a few minutes of walking into and out of the domain. “It is how the mites have constructed this biome. The Odin were wise in selecting this as their barrier. My unintentional egress in this direction is forever blocked due to the wind blowing my spores away. Animal hosts would be required to traverse this stretch of land.”

Under my bootfalls in the area here, nothing was growing. Or rather, I could see small sprouts that were looking rather sickly. Brown wilting leaves is not a good sign of anything. “I’m taking a wild guess here, but your influence isn’t healthy for new growth?”

“It is not.” Bob’s ethereal voice came back. “The resource drain is too harsh against the fragile life. Even with my attempts to produce as little spores as possible. As I spread into a biome, its life cycle is disrupted and doomed to eventual decay.”

Which meant once the forest behind me died off due to Bob being Bob, there wouldn’t be anywhere else to go. Except across the vale. Which Bob could, if it needed to, with animals.

Very bioweapon-y.

“How fast are we talking? How much time do you have before you absolutely need to start moving elsewhere? Trees do live for a long time, as far as I know.”

“Enough time that this vale will regrow from the other safer end and slowly come into contact with my spores here. Before that happens, I will send animals into the vale, and draw the Odin out to burn down the vale again.”

“Ah. You’re using the Odin like a speed-control for your growth.”

“I am. My advancement across their territory was far swifter in the past when I had no mind to guide or contain myself.”

“How long have you been playing this game for now, Bob?”

Because a forest re-growing from the ashes wasn’t a matter of small cricket farming. It took years as far as I could tell.

“Decades.” Bob confirmed. “And likely longer before I gained intelligence.”

“I think I’m going to regret asking this question,” I started, my foot scratching the ashes and dust away absentmindedly before I turned back to walk through the sporeclouds here. “Probably because it’ll take you a good half hour to answer this back, which is really boring to walk around for, but what exactly is your intelligence like? How did eating up Odin make you smarter?”

It did take time to get an answer for that, but far less than I thought. Apparently Journey was very good at precision, so it started asking multiple different questions at the same time by eating up different pockets of air around my armor. And Bob could somehow multitask these questions, it just couldn’t understand super-human speed, so Journey had to write out letters at a reasonable pace.

But there was still a short delay for this answer. “The higher quantity of intelligent life I consumed, the more I gained different means of understanding reality. The knowledge and awareness was brief, fleeting. As if I was waking from and then falling back into a deep sleep. Coming back to my senses along different intervals and intensities. I am most complete when an intelligent host is recently assimilated. And I fade away as the host’s mind decays. So long as similar hosts of intelligence were active, I retained my awareness to varying degrees. Sometimes I was more intelligent. Other times, more introspective. There was a limit to how intelligent I could become. Infecting multiple Odin at the same time did not make me a genius. It only allowed me to think in new ways.”

“You became like the host you infected?”

“I did not. Personality does not bleed into my being. I borrowed their ability to think and reason. Some days the world is clearer, and made more sense. I could plan further, seek deeper introspection, and understand more nuanced topics. Other times, I could barely understand I existed and I moved with the sluggishness of one recently woken.”

“I’m noticing you’re talking about all this as if it’s in the past? Or is that Journey messing with the translation?” I asked.

Cathida shook her head at that, sitting down on a rock nearby while watching the vale ahead of us. “Not my fault here deary, it really is speaking about the past.”

“So that means it doesn’t need to constantly have intelligent beings slowly going insane in order for Bob to stay awake?”

Cathida shrugged her shoulders, “Peh, why are you asking me? Go ask your new best friend.”

It does make for a very odd kind of parasitic relationship with intelligent beings. More of a thought-virus?

The physical body itself would continue to live on without any issue, regardless of if it had someone smart in its thrall or not. But Bob as a living and conscious entity, would live and die depending on who’s under the spore cloud.

In the end, I had to ask Bob itself about this. “What changed?”

“I found a home.” Bob answered. “My existence was no longer tied to fleeting hosts slowly decaying, and instead I had a more permanent location to store memory and intelligence within.”

That was oddly upfront from Bob. Hello potential snack, here’s a highly strategic tidbit of information: I have a central heart somewhere that houses my collective consciousness. Isn’t that a fun fact? Please don’t do anything mean about this, thank you.

I decided to see if Bob didn’t understand lying, didn’t care about lying, or was up to no good. “I’m surprised you’re openly informing me of all this. Telling me there’s a location that houses your ‘heart’ is a great sign of faith for someone you just met. Some would even say that’s a strategic blunder.”

“My continued existence is in your interests.” Bob answered. “I seek self-regulation and, ideally, independence. Without me, my body is far more dangerous. The Odin and other intelligent life forms would have been forced to flee decades ago. This vale’s continued strategic importance to the Odin is proof of that. It has not been breached from a lack of ability. It was by decision.”

That made some amount of sense, backed by a potential example. But the Winterscar in me was whispering that Bob could always be playing an even longer game. There are just as many reasons to lie to my face about having one central location as an exposed weakness.

And while Bob was an odd entity, it certainly wasn’t a dumb one.

“What did you end up finding that became your heart?” If I had to guess, vegetation seemed to survive Bob’s influence for a lot longer than animals did, so it was likely some type of plant. “A tree that could store your mind somehow?”

Picturing a tree like that was a little disturbing. If Bob needed brains, and found a tree that could absorb and store brains… uh, what the fuck.

Cathida shrugged when I gave her a look that told everything.

“It is a metal structure.” Bob said, which immediately made me feel better. “Within it, there is power. And deeper inside, I found myself changed in ways I do not understand. Afterwards, all knowledge I gained and awareness I had of myself remained behind, even after hosts died. Parts of myself that were cut off from this location regressed and reacted in primitive manners, until they reconnect with myself. In this manner, I have determined it is the location that is special, and not myself that has changed.”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Metal mysterious structure that’s powered. Not a lot of things around here that’s powered without the mites. “I’m thinking Bob found a pillar heart of some kind, and occult shenanigans happened.” I said, mostly to Cathida. “But I also get the feeling talking about occult secrets to the eldritch entity which could still be deciding if I’m a snack or a friend, might not be in my best interests right now.”

“I get the feeling if you can somehow convince Bob here that you dying would increase the chances of it dying later, it’ll do anything to keep you alive.” She said, which sounded rather well thought out. “Journey’s train of thoughts on this one, not taking credit for it.” She amended immediately, after just a single look at my amazed reaction.

Made sense. Anything that would maximize my chances of survival was something Journey wanted. So it could understand a single-minded train of thought.

Bob was motivated by a few things. But number one in that motivation was to not die. In fact, it was almost the only thing it was motivated by. Any explanations always revolved around how the topic would eventually assist in Bob staying alive longer. But, I could just directly ask my new pal itself. “Bob, besides wanting to stay alive, is there anything else you’re motivated by?”

“Light.” Bob confessed. “I have found myself occasionally making poor long term decisions for the sole goal of being closer to light sources. That these losses are acceptable to myself implies that they have intrinsic value beyond my biological function. I have learned this is not the natural inclination for many species. Perhaps if vegetation had intelligence, they would understand better than an animal would.”

Can Bob’s spores detect light in some primitive way that was soothing to Bob? Huh. “All right, guess we’ve all got our obsessions. Seems harmless enough. What kind of light sources are we talking about here?”

The answer to that was morbidly hilarious in a way.

Bob was a fan of the mites.

Because all the little buggers had lights, and they moved around like stars in the night. Bob couldn’t eat them like insects with bioluminescence, so it would be able to enjoy the sight for longer. And they wouldn’t be inanimate lifeless objects like other light sources out there, which changed things for Bob feeling wise.

So, of all light sources underground, there were no ‘better’ ones out there than mites. I’d even go as far as to say there was some romantic tension here between Bob and mite colonies. Or more like deeply unrequited love.

Bob found them beautiful. And the mites clearly didn’t think the same way about Bob. “They will attack and eliminate my spores when I am in their territory.” Bob said when I asked it about the light show. “I continue to spend resources to be within sight and proximity to their colonies, for no long term goal or directive.”

“And they kick you out every time.”

“They do. I sought to understand why, and over the years, I have a hypothesis. They create natural order. I superimpose myself over natural order. They create art. I twist, corrupt and destroy it. No artist would appreciate seeing their art be distorted, consumed, and ultimately erased. I believe it would be different if I appreciated their art and constructions. But I do not. What they make, I see as resources or terrain to work around, and I draw no joy or sense of wonder as the Odin or greyroamers would. I only admire the colonies themselves. This may be why the mites do not care for my continued existence. I do not add to their design. I am not a part of their cycle. I am not the witness they seek to behold their splendor.”

“Ah, that’s a bummer. I’m guessing you tried to talk to them before?”

“I have attempted to communicate with their colonies on multiple occasions in a myriad of ways. Thus far, my efforts have not succeeded. They remain antagonistic to my appearance.”

“You’re not alone there, mites are infamous for being difficult to get a hold of. How about machines?”

“They also have lights. However, it is only one singular shade, unlike mite colonies. They are more pleasant to be around as they show no reaction to my appearance. We occupy different niches within the environment and have neither an antagonistic nor beneficial relationship. I am able to admire them more safely, even if what is there to be admired is of lesser value.”

“Keep your grubby hands off Wrath Bob, she’s too innocent for the likes of you.” I hissed under my breath, which made Cathida start cackling like a banshee.

She was the only one here who would understand that joke, sadly. Poor Bob didn’t know Wrath, and if it wanted to, there were other Feathers I’d like to introduce Bob to first. Wrath’s too much of a cinnamon roll.

“Journey, don’t actually tell Bob the bit about Wrath. Here’s my real question: I’m guessing you tried to talk to the machines at some point?”

“I have.” Bob said within thirty seconds. “Similar to the mites, no means of communication were found. I have stopped trying years prior.”

“Out of curiosity, Journey, what did Bob actually say word for word here?”

The text appeared over the HUD, scrolling down steadily.

Journey: K Talk to machine?

Bob: Y. N w

Journey: Work. (Autocompleted word)

Bob: Y.

Journey: Failed to communicate completely? Failed to compromise? Time period.

Bob: Y. N. Ye

Journey: Years (Autocompleted word)

Bob: Y. R.

Journey: Relaying.

At the same time, there was a separate communication that was steadily constructing the sentence Journey was going to pass down. Looks like Bob pulled the trigger slightly earlier, likely trusting Journey’s expected sentence to be accurate, or that Journey had asked enough questions to do Bob justice.

“Wow, you really got this down to a science.” I whistled. “Downright unreadable to me unless I’m squinting. And all that’s translated from ancient norse back to normal too?”

“Eh,” Cathida shrugged her shoulders. “It’s not as eloquent, but clearly picks up on Journey’s strong points in communicating and rolls with it. ‘R’ is its keyword for relay messages early since it still takes Journey some time to write out what it’s planned even while the two are going through questions and answers. It uses R just about all the time now. Y and N are the obvious yes and no. It’s not even the full letters, more a quicker abbreviation. K stands for you, and tells Bob the following message is not from Journey. It’s got a few other trigger letters that were ironed out with Journey earlier. Lot going on under the hood to get Bob’s voice right and speed up the talk.”

“Quite thorough too. I’d have imagined armor would make me set all this up by hand.”

“You should have been forced to. Normal armors wouldn’t go this far.” Cathida said. “You’re… different to Journey than a simple user. Might be because you’re an administrator, or that you touched souls with the armor before and parts of you rubbed off. But there’s a difference, and it is aware of the change as well.”

I got an alert beep from Journey here. Nothing about talking, it was about time. I'd spend the better part of an hour just walking around the edge of Bob’s territory, still talking to him. And I didn’t have an infinite amount of those hours to spend.

There’d be two other alerts, and the last one would mean if I left now, I would only have an hour after reaching the Icon to restock on power. Which was cutting it real close.

I needed to use the time I had to ask Bob questions, and I could continue to talk about Journey itself while we waited for an answer back.

“I might not have all the time to ask everything right now Bob, but once I leave I can certainly mull over your predicament and talk to the Odin for you. So if you want me to help, what is your actual lifecycle like? Might find a potential other lifecycle that could fit. And Journey, I’m flattered I grew on you… like mold.”

Cathida groaned for them both.

“I have determined there are two separated phases to my existence.” Bob eventually said once it was done hashing things out with Journey. “Fauna survive for far longer when exposed to me. They generate fungal growth within and release airborne spores in the immediate area. The resource required is minimal, but present. Animal hosts will consume this fauna and be infected by proximity. The animals will then be compelled to move further off into new territory, grow aggressive to spread the infection and ultimately die. Vegetation will consume the dead body, and become infected, as will scavengers. Starting the cycle once more.”

Bob explained further details, or as much as it could in the time I had left.

Plants could live with Bob for a while, the same way bad tentmates would. Eventually too much would be tapped, and the plants would die off. Trees are about the last thing that stay alive for a significant amount of time. And animals would quickly die off within the month, becoming food for the trees, giving them just a bit more nutrients to survive having Bob around.

The real problem is that Bob basically stopped the ecosystem in its tracks. An apex predator that was far too good at what it did. All animals would die, and so too would the plants until even the trees fell down one at a time. And nothing would be left growing, until all of Bob’s spores were equally dead and no longer active in the region.

“That’s all the time I have Bob.” I said, getting the final message relayed to me. “I’m running low on water and what’s in my canteen is going to kill me if I try to drink it. I’ll be visiting the Odin now, talk it out with them. At the very least, knowing you’re not actively their enemy and more in distress yourself could help things out a lot.”

“Understood. It has been pleasant to speak to someone for the first time. I am excited to hear from you again in the future. Safe travels. Do not die.”

Bob understood I couldn’t be around it forever. And it didn’t argue back for me to stay a little longer. If it had, I’d be far more worried. While I was technically food to Bob, I was the equivalent of an ant. One more or one less ant wasn’t going to make any difference to overall hunger.

Ellie always did say I make the strangest friends and ended up around the most ostracized of people. If only she knew just how far I’d take that.

With our goodbyes said, I took a step into the ash wastelands before me and didn’t look back.

I had no idea how to help Bob right now. Or the ideas I had are highly undercooked and likely to blow up in everyone’s face. The fractal of heat did the work of purging Bob’s spores, and I waved my hands around the entire armor as if it were a bar of soap.

I never did figure out a safe way to purge Bob’s influence from the tainted water, but I guess that's what made Bob a bioweapon instead of just a regular runny nose. So I had to dump the whole thing onto the dead grounds, and then burn the canteen until all the water droplets inside vaporized and every last spore was fully neutralized. Journey confirmed the work complete by spreading through every nook and cranny it had on the surface armor, triple checking that its user wasn’t going to keel over and die because it failed containment.

Further ahead, I could see dark silhouettes flying in the sky, taking formations and clearly aware of me walking in their direction.

Underground ecosystems were not my sphere of knowledge. But maybe the Odin would have a better idea, and knowing Bob was willing to talk terms might be the best gift I could bring to their doorstep.

Hopefully they’d have some food and water for me in exchange. I’m godsdamned thirsty.