Fallen-SilentOnce this was a great ship of the Silent-One empire ... now it is just a relic of a bygone civilization. It rests in its grave on the mirror-planed Morpheus. Ever since the rescue of its last inhabitant, the ship has grown silent; it's just a collection of old ceramics, crystal panels, and grand hallways leading to dust and silence.

Since the ship is one of the few collections of 'habitable' areas on Morpheus, outside of the tower that Morpheus himself controls, it is where Icarus, Daedelus, and Thorndike have made camp. It's also because they intend to scavage for parts. Some to finish the work on their gravity ship, some for Daedalus to use in repairing the genetics pod and sequencers back in the old base on Abaddon. The hope is she will be able to get it working well enough to build Morpheus a remote body he can pilot and join them when he is needed.

"How is it that even after thousands of years the beds on this ship still have piles of shed fur?" Envoy heads Thorndike complains as he drags an old mattress into their makeshift camp near one of the airlocks they were able to force. Well, Icarus was able to force. Being able to distort local gravity fields does wonders for stuck doors.

"The protein structures of the material you call fur are quite resilient. It also helps that they are not considered living matter and do not readily get consumed by micro biotic life," comes the somewhat emotionless voice of Cypher. She's sitting on the floor and well, staring at Thorndike apparently. Daedelus and Icarus are nowhere to be seen currently.

"Is everyone settling in?" Envoy asks she enters the airlock, then shakes off some of the Morphean 'dust' that falls and swirls around outside. "Hello Cypher! Are you finding my friends interesting?"

"This place is a tomb," Thorndike complains. "Where is the brass and gears? Where are the windows? Where is anything that would make this place feel welcoming. It's not very comfortable, but we'll manage. I'm finding beds. Icarus and Daedelus are searching deeper. I insisted he stay with her because, well ... if anything is dangerous down there I think he can handle it. And don't get mad! We have to be practical."

"I doubt there is anything dangerous here besides us," Envoy says reassuringly, and looks for her box full of crystals. "Morpheus was able to isolate my crystal network.. now I hope Cypher here can encrypt it. Then we'll know it's safe enough to try on Icarus."

"He oozes a solution comprised of calcium chloride hydrogen dioxide when he exterts himself," Cypher comments. "Along with trace amounts of ammonia and other compounds. It is curious. Its evaporative temperature is just below his current skin surface temperature. Therefore, I conclude it is part of an inefficient evaporative cooling system."

"We call that sweat!" Envoy notes happily. "It also can carry pheromones that indicate age and health and sexual maturity status."

"It is called sweating," Morpheus explains as he enters, following Envoy. "It is something humans do. Other species do not release excess heat in quite the same manner. If they did not, they would overheat and their cellular systems would disintegrate due to their own heat waste byproduct."

"Envoy, really! what kind of talk is that around a child?" Thorndike complains.

"Well.. Cypher isn't really.. I mean, any more than I am a.." Envoy stumbles, then gives up with a sigh and turns to Cypher, "It's something that really doesn't apply to creatures like us, but is very important to reproduction in mortal, flesh-and-blood beings."

"We'd need a compatible female for that, which we don't have," Envoy explains. Then she turns to Walter and says, "By the way, Walter, be careful what you dream here, because it might manifest itself."

Thorndike looks like he's about to complain again, then stops, mouth open. "Excuse me?" he asks.

"This is the world of dreams," Envoy points out. "So.. they can actually show up."

"The systems are shut down. It is unlikely that any neural waveforms will induce manifestations through the projection systems of the ship," Morpheus claims. "And I manage everything else here ... so it should be perfectly safe."

"You could have told us this before we came," Thorndike notes, "It is rather important information."

"Oh, that's good to know, Morpheus!" the Aeolun says, and finds her box. She rummages around until she finds the power crystal - being careful to avoid the ring of contact points. "I was hoping Cypher could locate the Tribunal loyalty code in this.." She blinks and then apologizes to Walter. "I'm sorry for the oversight. I've only just begun to dream myself, and I forgot that it was a common thing for humans."

"Locating any code contained within a recursive quantum-fractal control algorithm will take considerable time. At least sixty-thousand milliseconds," Cypher states as she holds out her hands for the crystal orb. "What do you want with it once it is located?"

Handing over the orb, Envoy says, "I'd like to know if it can be replaced with loyalty to us instead."

Envoy has to think about that. She ends up singing the code that worked on the drone that was trying to kill her.

"Hmmm," Envoy muses, and sits down next to Cypher. "I can't read the coding in crystals, exactly. What would you say uniquely identifies me to the crystal awareness?" she asks.

"You cannot? Are you broken?" Cypher asks. "As for what identifies you; you are a dual-pattern waveform. Normal autonomous, aware, systems only generate a single-waveform. Is that why you are broken? Is your resonance generator fractured?"

Envoy blinks at this. "I'm.. yes, I'm broken still," she admits, and taps her head. "Unless you are seeing the pattern of the crystal intrusions as distinct from my own natural signature?"

Cypher somehow manages to look confused. "I am not sure. I simply detect a dual-signature instead of a single one. The equipment to repair fractured resonance systems are not available on this sub-sphere of the main system," she states. "I am ... sorry ... that you are still broken. Does it cause you physical discomfort?"

"Not.. yet," Envoy says, pursing her lip. "Without knowing the cause of the duality, I can't really say if it is a sign of my impaired mentality or something else entirely. Does it disturb you?"

"No. It is what you are, and you are now classified as my mother, according to my indexes," Cypher claims, "Your different form of existence does not disturb me. Should it? I am having difficulty in knowing what is the appropriate reaction to most situations. Am I broken too?"

"No, you're more.. growing," Envoy explains. "You'll continue to change as you experience new things. For now though, can you help me secure my nodes? Morpheus has made them less open, but I need encryption to ensure they cannot be forced back open."

"I .. am not sure. I do not see a way to detach your head to work," Cypher states. She sets the sphere on the floor next to her, then reaches up and tugs on Envoy's head! "Stuck," she confirms.

"You do not need to remove her head," Morpheus says, "Just use her secondary input channels."

"Removing her head would be simpler," Cypher seems to complain, but at least she quits tugging. She just grabs onto Envoy's horn instead!

"She really does remind me of myself when I was younger.." Envoy notes to Morpheus.

"The one about how a parent should always be cursed to have a child who was as bad as they were," Morpheus answers. It looks like he's about to smile but her vision fades to chaotic static before she sees it happen! Colors and noise swirl about her! She seems to take the colors and even smell the noise at varying points in the madness. There is some sort of pattern to it all, but it is complex and multi-layered. She feels oddly fortunate she could even make out that there was a pattern at all.

I should be worried that things extend so deeply into my mind now, Envoy thinks, in the moments of clarity between the static. White noise is a good encryption, and.. well, it's not exactly random. Nothing truly is if you look deep enough. But.. was I a bad child? I thought I was innocent and clever. It's not like I ever actually ate anyone's brain or anything..

Things spin. or maybe Envoy spins. It's really, really, hard to tell. Fragments of memory float by, from her early life, to her time in Babel as Inala's avatar, to the smiling, pleased, face of Repath! It's probably just Cypher going through and encrypting her memories ... but it's still a bit unsettling. There are points where she feels more than she sees ... and that must be Cypher encrypting her emotional memories, too. They surge from highs to lows; when she lost friends to when she gained new ones. The spike of happiness of meeting Morpheus, the anger when he was almost destroyed, and the fear when she almost watched Icarus die in his life-pod.

Can I put Icarus through this? she wonders, during the dips in the roller-coaster of memories and emotions. It's exhausting! But it's better than having her mind be an open book.. and the same applies to Icarus.

Everything snaps to darkness. There she floats again for a time that's hard to gauge. She feels it before she sees it, a hand gripping her horn. "Are you sure it isn't removable?" she hears Cypher's voice. "It does have a handle."

"No, it's not removable. People do not normally have removable body parts. Well, except for the ... nevermind. Just do not go around trying to remove body parts," she hears Morpheus say.

Soooo like me when I was new, Envoy thinks, with a little bit of pride. She knows what Cypher will go through, and can help her through it from experience.

Hoping her nerves haven't been encrypted, Envoy attempts to open her eyes, and even speak! "Is this thing on? Can everyone hear me in the back?"

Envoy feels the hand release her horn right before her eyes open. She finds herself staring into the puzzled face of Cypher. "There is no back," she says. "At least I do not think there is. Back is too nebulous a term. Positions should be expressed in exact coordinates from a fixed point of observation, such as the universal center point, or from the central point of a system's stellar mass."

"Bits 18, 27 and 92 of the particle communication band," Envoy recites. "And I meant the back of the room. It is an ancient ritual phrase for the testing of vocal communications.."

"Well.. I don't know?" Envoy asks, looking to Morpheus. "Can you read my mind anymore, or control my functions?"

"Her thought processes are now completely isolated by an entoptic sequence," Cypher states. No one will be able to access her mental systems through any means, from subconscious waveform communication to active injection. When she is in shutdown and her neural systems are indexing, her mind will also be unaccessable by any system, including the entity with the identification code Morpheus."

"So I will no longer be able to visit her in dreams," Morpheus notes. It's hard to really tell with someone made of crystal, but he somehow looks a bit upset.

"He does not have the access sequence, so no," Cypher says. "You wanted complete security."

Envoy sighs. "Well, another reason to get Morpheus a remote body," she says. "At least until the Tribunal is no longer a threat."

"Then you do not wish me to encode the key into him so that he may access you?" Cypher asks. "Very well, I will delete my knowledge of it in the next thirty seconds."

"WAIT!" Envoy yelps, clutching Cypher's shoulders. "Yes, please encode it into Morpheus."

Cypher blinks. "You do not have to use sound pressure levels in excess of eighty decibels. My current relative location to you does not require it," she claims. And apparently Morpheus decides to mess with either Envoy or Cypher, because he removes his own head and hands to to her

"Entity designate Morpheus has been given access key to entity designate Envoy," Cypher claims after what seems like no time at all. The smaller lifeform then sticks it back onto Morpheus' body. Unfortunately, it is upside down.

It occurs to Envoy to see how Walter is handling things, even though her hands want to grab Morpheus's head and twist it back upright.

Walter is watching the goings-on with a very confused look on his face. "Are there no normal people in this universe?" he asks weakly.

"It will be very awkward to kiss you like that you know, unless you hang from the ceiling," Envoy points out to Morpheus, and then.. tries to pull his head off.

Morpheus' head pops off with a rather disturbing popping sound. "Congratulations, you have gotten a head," he remarks dryly.

"You listen to too many crazy dreams, I think," Envoy claims, before flipping the head over and setting it right-side-up on Morpheus's shoulders.

"That is likely true. I could tell you about the dreams an Eeee named Roogi has had. But ... I think I shall spare you the torture," Morpheus admits. "And on your shoulder, why?"

"Two heads are better than one, right?" Envoy says with a grin. She sits down cross-legged, and takes the power crystal in her hands. "So, now it should be safe for me to try to interface with this device without being corrupted by the Tribunal programming within it?"

"Yes, but I thought you wanted me to locate and clear the Tribunal coding in it," Cypher points out.

"I want to.. taste it first," Envoy says. "I don't have the faculty yet to counter it, but.. I can learn from it. It is the only potential vulnerability the enemy has: their dependence on their instrumentality to accomplish anything. Take away their control, and their plans are for naught."

"I am not sure that is entirely wise. It may alert them to your presence and the modifications ... Morpheus begins to explain. He's cut off, though, by the sound of a reptilian, yet female, scream from somewhere deep in the ship!