Infinite Archive

1

0.18 Percent Is Still
a Lot of Murder

The worst thing about being part of an alien hivemind was you had to act like thousands of insect feet crawling over your body-including your face, neck, ears-and possibly trying to burrow into your collar was just fine.

The best part about being part of an alien hivemind? The jury was still out on that one.

Mallory sat motionless on her bed, eyes closed, reminding herself this was Just Fine. Even among the buzz of thousands of wings. Even with antennae probing and investigating every hormone she secreted. Even with a deadly allergy to Earth-dwelling insects of the Vespidae family.

She breathed slowly. Don't think about that allergy thing.

Meditating was challenging for most people, but trying to meditate in the midst of a swarm of blue wasplike aliens was a new level. Most of the members of the Sundry were as long as her thumb, their stingers and venom sacs visible. She tried to go deeper into the meditation and ignore the dainty feet crawling over her eyelids and the delicate antennae probing her nostrils and ear canals.

Feel the station, the hivemind said.

She extended her awareness past her own discomfort and fear. It was hard to fight against decades of fear responses, but she was part of the hivemind, and the Sundry took care of their own.

All at once she was in her room; she was in the large hive in the park; she was crawling along a display case in the new deli; she was inspecting a ventilation shaft; she was on the wall of the shuttle bay (and spied a familiar shuttle, which almost made her remember something but not quite); she was part of a mindless swarm that gave processing power to the living space station that was Eternity. She could almost touch the sentient mind of the station, she was so close. She could feel it on the outskirts of the Sundry processing power. She felt she could reach out-

A crash threw her out of her meditation with a gasp. This caused all the Sundry crawling on her to take wing and move as one to hover above the chair next to her bed.

"What have you gotten into now?" she groaned, rubbing her face, ears, and neck to get rid of the lingering crawling sensation. She shuddered and slid off the edge of her bed.

"Mobius!" she shouted. "What happened?"

There was no answer, not that she expected one. She stepped into the living room/kitchen area of her small apartment and looked for whatever broke.

A stoneware bowl-stoneware! how did he do that?-lay in two pieces on the floor, with green goo splattered around it.

The perpetrator was flying in circles close to the ceiling, chirping quietly to himself. He sounded pleased. Had he meant to break the bowl? Or was he just happy he had summoned her? Or was he a masochist who wanted to break her concentration?

She'd heard complaints about toddlers and pets, how they get destructive if they don't get enough attention. "But that's your food bowl, man," she said sadly, and bent to clean it up.

Mobius was a baby still, a sentient spaceship who would one day be large enough to be a full-sized shuttle capable of life support, but for now, he was a baseball-sized flying destructoid.

"Get down here," she said, holding her hand out.

The tiny ship chirped defiantly and flew into the bedroom.

"No you don't!" Mallory said, running after him. He had flown into her closet and was thrashing around.

She flipped the light on and peeked inside. She had a minimal wardrobe still, not having brought a lot of clothes to space with her, but she had a few shirts and jackets hung up. One suit. Shoes and boots lay on the floor haphazardly; she had lined her shoes up neatly the last time she had been in here.

A sneaker lay upside down, muffled chirping coming from underneath it. It leaped into the air, then fell again.

"Are you stuck?" she asked, amusement and fondness for the little ship finally replacing frustration. She remembered her old boss at the animal shelter, who told her kittens and puppies were so cute because it was their only defense.

She lifted the shoe and scooped Mobius into her hand. He was a golden orb with a green sheen, and was starting to develop lines indicating a hatch and small bumps-where wings might grow? engines? She had no idea.

"What am I going to do with you? Do you want more food?"

He chirped happily, then flew straight at her forehead. She had a moment to say, "No, wait-" before everything went dark.

Did Mobius knock me unconscious?

Mallory couldn't open her eyes, but she was far from knocked out. The buzzing of the Sundry on the station echoed loudly, and her connection with them felt stronger. Easy.

Am I dead?

The buzzing became words she could understand. Not at all. We took the moment of your dazed situation to try to connect again. This is much preferable. We recommend this in the future.

Beaning myself with a steel ball? That won't be sustainable.

Regrettable. Was that amusement from the swarm coloring that word? This newer hivemind was much different than the one that got wiped out a few months ago. They felt less stodgy, more flexible, and easier to talk to. They were still alien as hell, though.

The swarm picked up on her thought. Sundry colonies that become processing power for ships and stations don't have a lot of agency themselves. The entity forms its own personality. But when we built the current hivemind, it was done in a new way, so we and the station may act in new ways.

You're not going to override the station, are you? Mallory asked. 'Cause we already dealt with that, and it's not fun.

No. That's not in our nature. The voice sounded a tad offended that Mallory would think that Sundry would stoop to the antics of their subspecies, the Cuckoos, which had overtaken the station after murdering the hivemind.

"I know, I get it, sort of, I just don't get it, you know?" Mallory said, then realized she had spoken aloud. She opened her eyes and sat up rubbing her head.

"You little jerk," she said, wincing as she touched the bump. She sighed and pushed her hair out of her eyes. She really needed a haircut.

Mobius had wormed his way into her hoodie's pocket, making her feel like a kangaroo. He liked to sleep there. "I'll deal with you later," she muttered.

The swarm crawled over her chair still, as if waiting. Their conversation wasn't over. "If Sundry swarms have personalities, like you do, then why doesn't the station's personality come from their swarms?"

"Where do human personalities come from?" the swarm buzzed audibly.

"I don't know that either," Mallory said. "The brain, I guess, which is the closest we have to a hivemind. But no hive."

A chime sounded from her front door. She got off the floor and yelled for the living room door to open.

A tall bald Black man, wearing glasses and a gray army shirt, walked in, his eyebrow cocked.

"You okay, Mal?" he asked. He pointed to her forehead.

"The bangs don't cover it?" Mallory asked, pushing more hair into her eyes, and then reflexively pushing it back. She sighed. "So what's up?"

He crossed his arms. "You forgot again, didn't you?"

Forgot? Oh, no. She thought hard. Two days ago Xan had said their Gneiss friends Stephanie and Ferdinand were coming aboard the station to visit and they should meet at Ferdinand's bar to catch up. That, she realized, was going to happen tonight. She whipped her head around to her bedside table, but Mobius had knocked her alarm clock off it. "Oh, God, what time is it?"

"It's midnight," Xan said evenly. "They're gone. You missed everything."

"Dammit!" Mallory fell back onto her bed, rubbing her forehead absently. "Why didn't anyone call me?"

Xan pointed to the comm terminal on the wall, where a tiny red light blinked.

"Oh, you did." Mallory sighed. "I'm sorry. I've been trying to 'commune with the Sundry' more." Her voice took on a dreamy, mocking tone as she made air quotes. "While I'm getting better at it, it still makes me lose time."

Xan went to look at her terminal. "Good excuse for tonight, but you have unopened messages here that are really old. Someone paid to send you a video and you haven't opened it yet?"

Mallory followed him, trying not to squirm with embarrassment. "Yeah, my agent has been sending messages. I think it'll be bad news, so I don't answer."

"You do know that shit happens whether you get the message or not, right?" Xan asked slowly.

"I can only deal with one big-time authority figure right now," Mallory said. "And the Sundry are taking everything out of me."

"Let's see what he has to say. I'll hold your hand if you're scared," Xan said in a gentle, sarcastic tone.

"I'm not scared, I-hey!" she protested as he hit the button on the terminal to play the oldest message.

Her agent's slick grin filled the screen. Aaron Rose was in his sixties, white, a very fit build, with thinning brown hair and a mole on his chin that had probably made him look interesting and attractive when he was younger. Aaron didn't need to send her many messages; when Mallory finished writing up her adventures as "ripped from the headlines" true crime books, she would send the manuscript to him in a storage drive via Earth shuttles. Every few months he'd send her royalty checks.

Just recently the most-traded human money had entered the galactic economy, starting with US dollars, pound sterling, euro, and Japanese yen so far. Mallory still couldn't follow everything about alien economics, but she understood enough to get an account with the station and deposit her checks.

"Mallory, I have some great news," Aaron said into the camera with a grin. His pale skin was ruddy, as if he had been in the sun a bit too long. "Your Mrs. Brown lady has permitted the very first mystery convention in space to take place on Station Eternity! Or rather, beside it. We're chartering this huge new spaceship and running Marple's Tea Party, the first mystery space cruise! It'll have murder mysteries and tea and deerstalkers. It's going to be great. We will start here on Earth on May 12 and we'll get to the station on day four of the cruise. That's where you come in. When we dock, then you get to give the guest of honor keynote! Let me know what you think and I'll give details."

"A mystery convention? Here?" Mallory stepped back as if distance from the terminal would keep her away from the message. "Et tu, Mrs. Brown?"

"She's got the whole station to think about, Mal," Xan said. "And more human tourism is good for everyone."

Sentient stations and ships needed someone from a smaller race to bond with in order to communicate with their inhabitants, and Eternity's host was a tiny elderly human by the name of Mrs. Elizabeth Brown. Mallory's friend Xan was similarly bonded to the ship Infinity.

"I don't argue with Mrs. Brown," Mallory said, shaking her head. The woman was a twice-convicted murderer (she did her time, thank you very much) and it was a bad idea to cross her. Mallory didn't think she would actually kill anyone to win an argument, but she wasn't going to find out. If Mrs. B wanted a mystery convention here, then it was going to happen, whether Mallory liked it or not.

"I guess I should stop being surprised at things like this." She sighed and pulled the hair out of her eyes again, holding it back with one hand. "When did he send that?"

"Three weeks ago," Xan said. He advanced to the next message. "It's not the only one he sent, it looks like."

Aaron, in a different suit, same grin. "Mallory! I haven't heard from you, so I'm assuming you'll say yes. I went ahead and told the con you would be on board for the speech. I also set you up for a mystery LARP-I think your fans will get a kick out of that! So you'll need a speech by May 16.

"I'll be arriving on a ship called Metis," he added. "It's something. I can't wait for you to see it."

"Metis? I've heard of them. Like the Indigenous people of Canada?" Mallory asked.

"Metis like the badass Titan of wisdom, mother of Athena," Xan said patiently. "But hey, keynote speech! Are you excited?"

She opened her mouth for a sarcastic answer but then froze. "May 16?" she asked, panicked. "What's today in the Earth calendar?"

Xan thought for a second. "The thirteenth."

"Oh, God." She covered her face with her hands. "Did he say I was going to be in a LARP?"

"Yep, he did. It stands for Live-Action Role-Playing."

"I know what LARP stands for!" she said. "I was confirming. That's why I want you to kill me." She collapsed on her couch.

Instead of doing as she asked, Xan advanced to the next message, sent by himself. "Mallory? You going to meet us at Ferd's? Tina is on board but only for a few hours." Xan turned and gave her a pointed look. "That was sent three hours ago."

"I'm sorry, Xan. I admit I've been slack with answering my agent, but communing with the Sundry all afternoon and night takes a lot out of me. And time has no meaning when you're in there." She gestured to her bedroom, where the Sundry's hums were still audible, waiting for her.

Xan sat down beside her with a sigh. "I get it. Sometimes when I'm talking to Infinity it gets that way. But Tina was bummed you missed her."

Mallory smiled. "I'm surprised she didn't come break down my door."

"Oh, she wanted to," Xan said. "But I told her we shouldn't do that anymore. She was worried you were injured and she was the only one who could save you."

"She wasn't a hundred percent wrong," she said, pointing to the lump on her forehead. "Mobius got a little feisty."

Xan leaned in, examining her forehead. "He really nailed you, didn't he?" She nodded. "I'm surprised things haven't gotten easier for you."

"The minute we get someone on board who can tell me how to parent a toddler who can fly and cause concussions, let me know." She rubbed the back of her neck. "I'm exhausted, and not just from him. The Sundry are demanding."

"Are you learning much more about accessing the hivemind?" he asked.