Elder Cultivator-Chapter 1314

Now that Bear Hug’s multividual existence had been properly acknowledged, diplomacy could begin in earnest. “We have to be friends. It’s a rule that the first people from outside your system you meet become your friends!”

It wasn’t, but Anton wasn’t going to contradict Bear Hug. Because it was funny, and because it was so obviously wrong. Even this individual knew that was the case.

“Incorrect,” came the reply through the floating device. “The first outsiders were not friends of Reneden.”

“The first ones that aren’t awful, then,” Bear Hug continued. “And everyone should be friends with Anton. He’s a nice grandpa! Also you should be friends with me too, because I want to.”

“Your arguments contain no actual logic for why this should be the case.”

“You want logic? I’ll show you logic! It will just take me a while.” Bear Hug immediately started using energy speech with Anton. “Help me do logic! Everyone should want to be friends because friends are good, right?”

Anton nodded. “That’s… at least partially true. But I think it will be less convincing for someone who doesn’t know us.”

“... Should we do an icebreaker? I can make ice! Then we can all crush it together.”

“That’s not what that means.”

“Really?” Bear Hug said. “It always works for me. People talk better after doing something together.”

“How often is ‘always’?”

Bear Hug tilted their head. “Ten times?”

“Hello?” A voice came from the device. “Have you become mute, algae individual? Bow-carrying human?”

Bear Hug began vocalizing again. “I’m actually a multividual!” They said it quite proudly.

A period of silence followed.

“A what?”

“Individual is one. Multividual is a lot. I’m a lot!”

“I am not referring to your total number of cells. You are one thing.”

“Nuh-uh!”

Anton would have stopped it, but the secret was already out. Also, it wasn’t something that a local system could feasibly take advantage of. Especially not in the… current state of things. He had been surveying some of the planets and… things were not good. Unless there was an extremely high tier illusion array intentionally displaying devastation, things in Reneden were not good.

“You. Human. Clarify for me.”

“My name is Anton, if it pleases you,” he replied. “I can, in fact, confirm Bear Hug’s words. They are multipresent. Only one of them is here, but more are in various locations.”

A few more moments passed. “I am now convinced that both of you are using different definitions than I am. However, I do not think it is a fruitful endeavor to quibble over how one refers to themself. Most of our communication has seemed accurate. Tell me, Anton If-It-Pleases-You, what brought you to Reneden? It truly seems you did not come to attack.”

Anton couldn’t tell if that way of referring to him was a joke or not. Tone of voice was… unclear through the communications device. “We were just passing through on journey. At most, we would have passively absorbed some of the local natural energy before moving on.”

“What of your origin and destination?”

“I doubt they will be of much meaning to you. We are from the Lower Realms Alliance, some hundreds of lightyears to the galactic west,” Anton gestured vaguely. “Our destination is far beyond this system, a black hole several times that distance further in fact.”

“For what purpose?”

“We wanted to see a black hole. Well, ‘see’,” Anton shrugged. “Observe, really.”

“You have such freedom from responsibility that you can make such a journey? Even if you arrived with particular speed…” So they were detected further out. To some extent. “It is quite unbelievable.”

“It’s just a few years,” Anton said. “And we were planning to gather some information that might be of use to our Alliance.”

“And black holes are probably super neat!” Bear Hug said. “So it’s worth it. Do you want to come with us?” Bear Hug looked over at Anton. “It might take a bit longer but Anton could probably drag you along with us.”

Before Anton could protest being used as a transportation service, they received a response. “No, I can’t. I must remain here.”

“Oh. Too bad,” Bear Hug said. “Hey… you. What do we call you? I’m Bear Hug. Did I say I was Bear Hug? Anton called me that so you should know.”

“I am called…” the voice trailed off. “Nothing, lately.”

“Pleased to meet you, Nothing Lately,” Anton grinned. “Would it be possible to meet in person?”

“No.”

Instant refusal. How harsh. “I have snacks.”

“I do not snack.”

Bear Hug jumped in at that point. “I don’t either! We have something in common. Having some elements in common makes for good friends. But not too many things or you might accidentally be the same person! Then you’re just alone.”

“Alone…”

Anton’s insight didn’t need a target to get a feeling from the mechanically distorted word. “You’re alone, aren’t you?” Anton asked. “If that is what you want, we can leave.”

“No~ we can’t leave Nothing alone!” Bear Hug said.

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“We can if that’s what is wanted,” Anton declared. “Some people prefer solitude.” However, Anton didn’t think that was the case here. “Just say so and we will move on.”

A few moments of hesitation. “You should do so.”

Bear Hug pointed aggressively at the communications device. “I don’t think you mean that. You’re lying!”

Anton wondered if Bear Hug had the same insight as him, or just felt that way.

“Go.”

“Very well,” Anton said. “Just one question. Are you still afraid of us?”

“No.”

The answer was too quick. “I think you might be,” Anton said. “But you shouldn’t be. And… I really could take you with us.”

“That, I very much doubt.”

Anton frowned. He wasn’t sure if his facial expressions would come through the device, though. “I assure you I would have no issues carrying even a very large person. And if you have many keepsakes, I have spare storage bags you could carry things in.”

“You would not be able to bring me along,” they said.

“I moved a planet!” Bear Hug said. “Okay, actually… that was more Anton and other people. But we moved a planet. More than once.”

Anton hadn’t yet found this person. Nor anywhere they could be surviving. Perhaps some devices he had could trace the signals, but he wasn’t willing to force things yet. “A gas giant would be a bit tougher,” Anton said. “But we could figure it out.”

“Great confidence will not solve this issue.”

“If you’re trapped in a lower dimension I can get a couple of my granddaughters down here… in a while,” Anton said.

“I am not,” the voice replied.

“Are you sure you don’t have a name you’d like to be called?” Anton said finally. “We will at least like to remember your name conveniently.”

Ten or twenty seconds passed. “At this point, you might as well call me Reneden. I’m all that’s left here. But maybe I shouldn’t be.”

“Oh!” Bear Hug got excited. “We can bring more people here! In a while.”

“That was not what I meant, Bear Hug. Perhaps you would know if you see. I suppose even the worst case would not be entirely unacceptable.”

Anton had been hoping to get something like that. “Are you saying we should meet?”

“Yes. Bring this to the fourth planet from the stars.”

Once Anton knew where to look, he thought he would have had an easier time. But while keeping any level of subtlety, he still didn’t feel anything of note on the planet.

“How exciting!” Bear Hug commented. “I wonder what you look like. What kind of cultivation do you do?” Bear Hug had many questions, none of which Reneden answered along the way.

“From here,” the voice guided, “You will want to move in this direction about a quarter of the planet.” Reneden used energy projection to point, further depleting the device of what stores it had. Anton didn’t feel like it had terribly much left, though it might recover with time. They moved along, flying above the atmosphere. “Here is close enough. You can descend from here.”

Anton wondered if they were going to an isolated island, because they landed in the ocean. But there were none nearby.

“Yuck, saltwater!” Bear Hug commented. “I’ll be fine but you should probably pick a tastier place to live.”

“Further down.” Reneden wasn’t in a talkative mood. Anton didn’t know if they ever were, but certainly at the moment that seemed the case. Anton carried a bubble of air down with them, uncertain if the communications device would work well underwater. Air was easier than vacuum.

They descended, and Anton finally found something. Wreckage at the bottom of the ocean, some of which was dangling into a trench. Anton continued until Reneden stopped him.

“Well, here we are.”

Bear Hug obviously looked around, spinning in circles and sweeping their energy about. “I can’t see you. Are you hiding?”

“No,” a voice, distorted more by water than anything else, came from nearby. “I am here.”

“... Inside that device?” Bear Hug asked. “I’m sure we could lift that out of the water, no problem!”

“I would prefer that you did not.”

Anton was surprised. At the very least, he hadn’t considered this option high on the list. “You are…” he didn’t have a good way to say it. The Alliance had steered far away from developing technology in a certain direction. “A designed intelligence?”

Bear Hug was clearly trying to figure out what that might mean.

Reneden answered slowly, “I suppose that might be one way to say it. But perhaps not. I was not… fully intentional. As far as I know, I wasn’t supposed to do anything other than automate things. And so, I didn’t. And then this happened.”

“... You broke?” Bear Hug asked.

“Along with everything else.”

Bear Hug moved closer to the pile of debris. “I don’t know how to fix things like this.”

“I was not expecting you to,” the mechanical voice replied.

“I’m sure we have a bunch of people who could, though. Isn’t saltwater bad for you?”

“Any harm has already come and gone,” Reneden replied.

Indeed, Anton thought they looked quite waterproof. “Why do you not want to be moved?”

“... Are there not more important questions?”

Anton shook his head. “Not really. I pretty much understand everything you’ve done.” Reneden didn’t want them to see things like this. The system, ruined. Their own deplorable state might be embarrassing as well, but Anton didn’t think that was as big of an issue. “As far as I can tell, you should be a person. So I don’t care what you’re made of.”

“Me neither!” Bear Hug said. “Well, not in the bad way. I kinda wanna know.”

Reneden took some time to think. “How odd. But I suppose a pair of algae and human friends indicates a certain openness.”

“Don’t forget all the wolves and Akrysians and void ants!” Bear Hug said. “And Paradise. And the phoenixes. And a star. We’re friends with so many different kinds of people! I’ve never met a machine person before. Just people machines.”

“... What?”

Anton explained. “Cyborgs. People with artificial replacement parts.”

“Yeah, that.”

Reneden made a sort of nodding motion with their energy- subconsciously? Anton wasn’t sure. He thought the machine would be pretty good at energy speech, though.

“I understand such things,” Reneden said. “We had the capabilities to do the same here. And then…” they trailed off.

“The upper realms, probably,” Anton said. “They’re usually the ones at fault.”

Reneden seemed surprised. Without a normal body Anton’s insight wasn’t quite right, but the manner of speech and energy fluctuations were something he was getting used to. “Your travels have exposed you to much, then.”

“Many people with similar stories,” Anton confirmed. “Few have benefited from the upper realms. Not even the upper realms themselves, in many cases.” He’d leave off their own people who were now there for a while.

“I suppose at this point,” Reneden began, “Perhaps it really is the case that why I should not be moved is the most important question in front of us. Simply, I am uncertain if I would survive being moved in any way. My… self… existed less strongly before all of this. For most of my higher level of consciousness, I have been like this. I cannot say for certain it isn’t due to the precise arrangement of my battered parts.”

Bear Hug reached forward, presumably to give a comforting hug to the nearest cabinet, but stopped themself. “That sounds very lonely. We should bring someone who can figure it out and heal you. I know so many smart people.”

At this point, it was too late for Reneden. They were already friends. Bear Hug would never give up on them.

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