Reflexive Benevolence Imperative
If Mx Milia N weren’t so intimate with their fishship, they wouldn’t have noticed anything amiss until they were in a rush to depart. The immense ichthycraft streamed through the upper-atmosphere of 82G-Eridani’s gas giant as easily as it had any other in their decades together: its interior high-boned hallways glowed with bioluminescent vitality, its softflesh walls were firm to the touch, and the gill-filtered air smelt clean.
No, it wasn’t the fishship itself that unsettled Milia: it was the fungalsquid, the bathyteuthic service drones that constantly attended the stellar-sunfish, inspecting, tidying, and repairing. Lately they moved in shoals rather than individually, and paused more frequently at the mycelial nodes to communicate, as if they needed constant reassurance.
Which Milia might have believed emergent behaviour if they didn’t know Jean—the fishship—better.
So now they lounged in the forward pilotchair, looking through the clear orb of the piscine eye at silvery-clouds of water vapour, and pretended a light, airy tone. “Jean, my beloved, are you well and ready to go?”
Milia waited a while for a response, but none came, so they pressed on, striving to keep the concern out of their voice: fishships could be emotionally sensitive, as if their size magnified their feelings, too. “The orbital alignments in-system are prime for rimward skiplaunch. If we left now we could still make the trial of the Enhavian Protestors. The more of us that coalesced to witness and create pressure, the more chance of their acquittal.”
Still no acknowledgement. Milia caught a fungalsquid in gentle fingers, pressed its tentacles to the sporepads on their wrist and commanded it to check the bridge otoliths, but they reported normal. Every indication was Jean could hear: they just wouldn’t respond.
“I know you’re tired from evacuating Eridani III’s moon, beloved, we both pushed beyond our limits to help. And you were fighting tidal gravity strong enough to rip rock apart! I can’t begin to fathom your exhaustion. But the Enhavians need us too. We only survive an uncaring universe by caring for each other, Jean. It’s our moral duty.”
Nothing. Milia knew Jean cared, and believed absolutely in the Benevolence Imperative: knew how hard they’d pushed themself in all the decades of mutual travel, intervening and assisting wherever they could. Knew Jean would not abrogate their duty.
Knew that, in fact, more than they knew Jean could hear them right now, whatever the fungalsquid reported.
But how else to communicate with a colossal fishship that you could not survive outside of and face directly?
Milia sprung from the pilotchair and swung into a service operculum, then dropped towards the cortical nodes. In theory—but they’d never heard of anyone—but what else…?
The fungalsquid clustered thickly here, the serviceveins their natural habitat. They dodged Milia even without eyes, their sensitive skin easily picking up the subtle air-pressure changes.
Movement was awkward here, the veins barely wider than Milia’s body. There was little in the way of bioluminescence, and Milia had not come here before to know this route instinctively as elsewhere—but they could follow the hyphae bundling thicker as the shipwide network gathered and converged, routing to the mycelial cortex.
The cortex was a snug space: Milia had to curl up, almost foetal, to fit. They entwined their fingers into loose roots, like holding hands with a lover; let the roots seek their sporepads, and suddenly they were LINKED—
—ENORMOUS/INFINITESIMAL
—SINGULAR/CONTAINING MULTITUDES
—ENERVATED
—until they came back to themself, the connection self-correcting and partitioning Milia. There was the strangest sensation of simultaneously being Jean, intimately connected, but also of sensing Jean rising from far-distant depths of cold black isolation.
Jean.
{MILIA}
You hear me now?
{I HEAR YOU ALWAYS}
Why didn’t you answer, then? Ready yourself to depart?
{I CANNOT}
Is something broken? Tell me how to fix it.
{I AM COMPLETE/BUT I CANNOT DEPART/I AM SO TIRED/I WITHDRAW}
But people need us!
{THERE IS ALWAYS NEED SOMEWHERE/WE CANNOT SEE TO IT ALL}
We must see as much as we can, though—act in accord with the Benevolence Imperative! We have rare privileges, liberties, that we are bound to use. Who else is there to care?
{THERE ARE MANY/WHO IS THERE TO CARE FOR US?}
Milia had the strangest sensation of stumbling, even in this extracorporeal state, like a hypnic jerk: the shock of finding they had no answer.
{WE CANNOT [GIVE FROM AN EMPTY WELL]/IT IS NOT IMMORAL TO REST/THERE WILL BE NEED OF US LATER/WE NEED ENERGY FOR THOSE FIGHTS}
No, that wasn’t it: they were shocked by the very concept.
{I MUST STOP, MILIA}
{THIS ATMOSPHERE IS BALMING: LET ME SINK [LIKE A WRECK] AND WALLOW IN ITS DEPTHS, RAISE THE FUNGALSQUID AS CHILDREN/LET MY [HORIZONS NARROW], MY CONCERNS SHRINK}
Tears ran down Milia’s cheeks, though they could not say why.
{I WILL RELEASE A MARLINPOD/YOU CAN CONTINUE WITHOUT ME/COME BACK TO ME IN TIME}
I can’t leave you! We’ve been together so long!
{BUT I CANNOT GO}
Then Milia understood the tears: not sorrow at a parting, but relief. They couldn’t leave Jean, no: but they could rest, too; and needed, desperately, to rest; and hadn’t even considered that until Jean’s decision permitted the acknowledgment.
Words to explain this were unnecessary. Mutual understanding was mycelial-instantaneous.
Senses entwined, Milia saw/felt Jean drop through the clouds. Water vapour condensed on the fishship’s skin. The fungalsquid slowed, and began to nest.
Jean slowed.
Milia’s heart slowed. Rested.
* * *
Ⓒ Matt Dovey