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This one is from Zara's point of view ... Probably a good idea to read Conversion first, too ...

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The wonderful Wizard of Wiz, I thought, confusedly, waking up from a peculiarly Technicolor dream: Disorientated, probably still a little hypnopompic, not so much hallucinating as having a few boundary problems, reality wise. I'm never great at mornings, and I really don't like being woken unexpectedly, especially as the dream was just getting to a good bit. I tried to settle back into the bed, maybe even recapture the moment, so to speak, but ... 

Reality asserted itself disconcertingly quickly, starting with a small voice in the back of my head, pointing out that hypnopompic was not really my sort of word. Then came the memory of where I was - on an alien planet, of course, and not even in my 'own' part of the multiverse - and the subsequent realisation that I was being woken by my friendly local AI. Which did not make a habit of acting as the world's - no, sorry, the universes' - most sophisticated alarm clock ... or of talking directly to me, for that matter. As things came together a bit I got suddenly worried. The Wisdom had woken me? What the fuck was 

--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---

I got the time to decamp from my private space - well, Xav and my private space, to be strictly accurate - and to get myself slightly more organised in one of our more formal meeting rooms before the Wiz would actually tell me what was what. 'Course, by that time, I'd gone through the "can't be that important, else I'd have been told" bit and arrived, instead, at the "it must be really dire if even the bloody AI needs to do this so formally" stage. I had a brief moment of panic at that point, wondering at the various possibilities. I was in the habitat on my own - I doubted the machinery would have chosen me to talk to if anyone else had been around, frankly - but that meant ... Well, Yvonne was somewhere back on earth, in the Caribbean, in fact, making a point to someone, Patrice was now pretty permanently based at 'home', getting his own personal revolution into gear and Xav ... well, Xav was technically around but deep in Immersion. Again. He seemed to think he was on the brink of pulling a lot of stuff together, cutting a few evidential Gordian knots, as he put it; everyone else thought he was pushing himself ridiculously hard, taking risks and ...

A shiver made its belated way down my spine as I realised the implications. 'Oh, god, I thought, don't let this be about Xav, not ..."

Which was the cue for the AI to let me in on its little secret. It wasn't about Xav.

It was much stranger than that ...

--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---

However omnipotent the Wisdom - and its associated technology - sometimes appears to be, it does have its limitations. As an example, you can't travel from place to place, locally, as directly as you might imagine. I mean, you can flick from world to world - from one plane of the multiverse to another - in the blink of an eye, but move around this particular planet and its back to more or less earth normal speeds. The 8-dimensional rotation/translation/whatever-the-fuck trick involved in the former wasn't really viable for a few 1000kms, apparently ... or so the Wisdom said.

So, when it suggested - like I had a choice - that I might want to drop in our esteemed colleague Queta's little operation, I had to do it the slow way. And that gave me plenty of time to think, given that our base was in the higher northern latitudes of the planet - more or less Arctic Norway in Earth terms, don't ask me why - while Q, an Andalusian, had sited her group rather further south. Almost two hours further south, in fact, given that the little shuttle thing in which the Wisdom was transporting me was limited to no more than a few times the speed of sound. Still, thinking was good, people were always telling me - I mean, Xav did a lot of it and seemed to enjoy the process - and I did have a fair amount to ponder. Unfortunately, this being an AI inspired 'mission', I was also lacking a lot of the basic facts I might need to actually come to any conclusions, let alone a plan of action.

So, I knew that the AI was concerned about something amiss in Queta's side of the operation, that she was contributing far less to our joint efforts than her team should have been capable of. What I didn't know was what precisely caused the concern, nor what role the second AI who was supposed to be looking after Q and her group was playing. All 'our' AI would say was that it appeared to be a 'human thing' and that it therefore did not want to make a judgement. Which struck me as being unusually considerate, by Wisdom standards, but then again it was, most probably, just another of its little games. I wondered whether I was revisiting our previous 'issue' with Queta - whether she'd somehow reverted to her earlier pathological religiosity, whether our excision of the malign implant that had been guiding her development had somehow failed. Somehow, this didn't seem to be too likely. For a start, everyone seemed to have been pretty confident at the time that our little bit of psychic jiggery pokery had been entirely successful, Queta herself had believed this to be the case and ... And somehow I thought that, if it had been that 'simple', the AI would have been less reluctant to go into details. And would probably have waited for Xav to be available to deal with it, given his previous involvement.

Which got me wondering about my role, whether this was all so urgent that it had to be done by whoever just happened to be available, or whether I had somehow been selected for the task. If the latter, well, It would have gone for Yvonne if physical force had been the preferred option, Xav if transcendent analysis and general all round intellectual swankiness were required. I tried to assess my own unique skills - or, at least, the technology's rating of same - but couldn't really think of that many. I mean, I did have a sort of link with Queta, I was a woman, which might be another way in, in some circumstances ... and I was an amoral bastard with rather fewer scruples than any of my colleagues. Even, I thought, with a grin, than Yvonne, who mainly spent her time killing people - when she wasn't just leaving them wishing they were dead.

None of which prognostication was getting me anywhere at all, I thought, and realised that I was just going to have to wait and see, assess the situation on the ground and try to react accordingly.

At least the scenery was nice, I thought, looking down through the bubble canopy at the alien landscape passing by below...

--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---

Queta had built herself a genuine fake Spanish-Moorish castle, a sort of Alhambra on steroids, a massive wedding cake of a building, contained in a hemispherical biodome and perched on a high crag in a semi-arid landscape. It was all quite unlike our hi-tech steel and glass construction up North, the latter all structural efficiency and task-orientated design, this some sort of self-indulgent whimsy. As the craft slowed on its approach, I could see no sign of life, nor of anything resembling an entrance - the dome was as smooth and unbroken as it appeared to be unsupported. I felt rather than heard some sort of communication burst from "my" side, being, as I was, entirely reliant on the automatics to fly - and, of course, land - the thing, then the craft slowly circled the structure - very elaborate, I thought, but not exactly functional - and finally settled itself onto the sand just outside the dome. And then did absolutely nothing, for some time.

I wondered if I was supposed to get out and knock or something, but that would have been difficult given that Wisdom had never been keen on out-of-habitat excursions due to the danger of contamination - of the biosphere by us, not the other way round - and the interesting quirk of local geo/biochemistry which led to high concentrations of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere. Which fact, apparently, accounted for the lack of 'terrestrial' animals larger than an earth nematode worm - and so made this planet particularly suitable, from the AI's perspective, for our use. No natives to perturb by our presence.

Which was all very interesting, I thought, and explained much about the view I was currently contemplating - the lack of anything resembling a flower, for instance, despite the profusion of 'plant' life all around. What it didn't explain was just quite what I was doing sitting here waiting. I mean, the AI had announced my visit in advance - or at least, it had told me it was going to do so - and I knew my machinery had been in touch on some level with theirs. I wondered whether there was a bigger problem than I'd been led to believe - such as them all being dead, for instance - or whether this was all some sort of calculated slight. We had, after all, done some pretty unpleasant things to Queta's head and, even if it had all been 'for her own good', she could be forgiven for harbouring a degree of resentment. 

But none of that was getting me anywhere, so I contacted the AI, and, after a brief debate, got it on the case. Which resulted in my moving, slowly, towards the bubble, followed by a complicated sort of flux whereby the dome seemed to expand, merge with a similar skin that had expanded from my own craft and, eventually, formed an entrance through which I could pass ... but which remained completely sterile as far as the outside world was concerned. I was impressed, really I was - I'd only ever seen anything like that in computer graphics before - and I was in, but no less worried about quite why it had all been necessary.

I wondered whether bringing a gun might not have been a good idea after all.

--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---

Inside the dome, and outside of my transport, it felt like I could have been back on earth, holidaying in Spain as I'd done often enough in my time. OK, so the scrubby 'grass' outside the dome was rather more red than it should have been, but Q had clearly spent a lot of time on getting things right inside. It felt like a perfect summer's morning, the sun warm but moderated by a gentle breeze - which would have pleased Xav, I thought - even as I was wondering where the hell everyone was, whether they really had failed to notice my arrival.

I shrugged, picked up the small bag of gear that I'd brought with me, walked purposefully towards the elaborately castellated gateway before me. I had the AI provide surveillance data - nothing appeared to be moving in this part of the complex except for a fountain or two - and also integrate with the local systems just enough to do useful things like opening the door. 

It was odd, I felt, moving into a long and ornate corridor, towards a filigreed courtyard visible at its end. There was something very definitely amiss hereabouts, or rather several things, and none of them pleasant to contemplate. The first was that the Wisdom seemed to be excessively distant - I mean, I'd never exactly got on with the thing, had always been treated with something like disdain as a result, but I'd never experienced it reacting like it was at present. Yes, it was helping, but reluctantly ... and it was a different sort of reluctance, somehow. Not the normal almost petulant air if impugned superiority, this felt uncomfortably like the thing was nervous. 

And if that wasn't unsettling enough, there was the apparent absence of the local AI to contend with - the one who was supposed to be running, or supporting, this place - and, the, probably not unrelated, I realised, subtle but visible signs of decay all around me. There was dust here, cracks in some of the tiles, even stains and tears to be found in some of the carpets. Somehow the signs of less than perfect maintenance disturbed me more than anything else.

Up to and including the lack of people.

--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---

I was almost in the centre of the complex - several courtyards further on - when I first came across signs of life. Spoor, in fact - and not in the general sense of useful signs to track hunted animals with ... but actual spoor. You know, faeces. On a carpet, by a pool. And, while I'm no expert and, in any case, had no great desire to check too closely, it looked distinctly like human faeces, too.

Things, I thought, were not in immediate danger of looking up. But there was nothing much else I could do except press on, so I chose an exit at random, continued on down another corridor, this one lined with ornate and complex tapestries, increasingly stained and torn as I walked on. I tried hard to convince myself otherwise, but they looked horribly like they'd been climbed on. By something with claws.

Almost despite myself, I sub-vocally queried the AI about this, looking for an explanation, a plausible theory ... anything, really. I got resounding silence. Great, I thought. I should put in a complaint about this. Lack of service, dereliction of duty? I would have to write to my MP about it ...

Before I could lapse into total hysteria, though, I heard a new sound - the first I'd heard since I'd arrived, aside from the tinkling of those bloody fountains. And this was not architectural - it was a definite scrabbling noise, a grunt such as could only have been made by an animal. I set off at a run.

And, to my vast surprise, found myself running towards the thing, not away from it.

--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---

Cornered, at last, it was unimpressive. Well, physically unimpressive: Psychically it was almost completely overwhelming. And not it, in point of fact, an it - but, rather, unfortunately, a he. 

Dr Rutger Karlson, I thought, dredging my memory for details of Queta's companions on her skiing trip, the group rescued with her and subsequently transferred here to be part of the new 'branch'. Like, I thought, Xav and Yvonne and Patrice had joined me on our team. Only, whereas our lot - myself included - appeared to be thriving in our new environment, something had clearly gone very wrong for Dr K. Very, very wrong - sufficiently wrong for every cell in my body to reject my identification with a screaming frenzy, enough for my brain to scrabble wildly for another - any other - explanation.

Until the AI chipped in with a monosyllabic confirmation: This was Dr Karlson. No longer a preternaturally bright young chemist, no longer a rising star in the academic firmament. The creature cowering before me was almost apelike, matted and lank hair covering most of its body, finger and toe nails grown to talons, teeth yellow and vicious where they protruded from snarling, prehensile lips. It was partly wrapped in a filthy rag of a cloth, a garment that did nothing to conceal the monstrous phallus it was stroking with one clawed hand even as it cringed in its corner. 

I wanted to be sick, I wanted to run, screaming, back from whence I'd come, I wanted, desperately for this not to be happening.

But it was. And I had to deal with it. Whatever the fuck it was.

--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---

Obviously, I tried to talk to the thing. It - and I could not bring myself to think of it as he - showed no sign of comprehension. I tried something more basic, offered it some of the food that I had in my pack - an apricot, to be exact. It did grab the fruit - I only just avoided getting my hand savaged in the process - and then it bolted ... up the wall, over my head and into the ornate carvings surrounding the ceiling. I could just about keep track of its movements, at first, following it at ground level as best I could, but I was never going to be able to catch the thing. And then it pissed on me. With notable accuracy.

I let it go, reasoned to myself that there was nothing I could have done, that it might have chosen a much more violent form of defence, and sat on the floor for a moment or two to think about things. From what I'd seen, this was not some Lord of the Flies type of regression; the good doctor had been transformed rather more completely than that. His reflexes and climbing skills were clearly no beyond human, there appeared to be no capacity for verbal language and ... there was that penis. I had a rummage in my memory, again, couldn't dredge up anything suggesting that elephantine genitalia were characteristic of any of the apes on earth, admitted to myself that the thing was of such a size that it just had to be a huge - hah! - disadvantage in every day living. Come to think if it, it had climbed one handed, using the other to keep its monster dick out of the way.

If something - or someone - had deliberately caused Dr K's transformation, they had a truly perverse imagination. And a lot to answer for.

--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---

I found myself a sword in one of the galleries, hung onto it like a comfort blanket. I had no idea where my 'find' might be, no real idea where I was. I guess I was relying on the now apparently catatonic AI to get me back to the transport - if I ever got out of here - and was basically wandering round the buildings at random. In theory I was looking for clues, or, better yet, answers, but in practice I was just blindly wandering. It should have occurred to me that buggering off back to base and coming back with reinforcements - a small army, by preference - was the sensible course of action, but it didn't. Call it shock, stupidity, a momentary lapse of reason. Call it anything you like, in fact, except bravery: I've never been that stupid.

Luckily, my observational skills hadn't completely given up the ghost, nor were all my faculties entirely keyed into mutant ape-man spotting. Which I proved by noticing something odd about one of the innumerable doors I passed, something that caused me to double back and look a little more closely. Well, not that closely - the anomaly was obvious on second glance: This door was altogether more functional - and less decorative than any of the others. And, when tried, it turned out to be locked. Which gave me something to vent my frustration - and the sword - on, thereby breaking the sword and giving my shoulder a nasty jolt. And apparently waking the AI, which got its act together for long enough to open the damn' thing.

Inside, I found not more eccentric fretwork and ornate furnishing but, rather, a modern and almost clinical set up, looking not unlike a spaceship bridge from a really clichéd sci-fi film, and which gave the strong impression of being, for want of a better interpretation, a control room. Oh, goody, I thought, wondering why such a thing would be necessary somewhere like this.

Mentally, I gave the Wisdom a bit of a prod, sat myself down at one of the consoles and wondered how it all worked, what it was supposed to do.

--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---

With the somewhat grudging assistance of the Wisdom I got some of the systems to co-operate, and began to gather some useful data on my local environment. There was quite a lot to the complex, which, as with our own version, extended for a considerable depth below ground, right as far as the geothermal plants which powered the whole thing, but most of it appeared to be completely empty, occupant wise. There were a couple of signs of life - two apparent entities which, on observation, moved and behaved in a way that convinced me that they were, in fact, my acquaintance Dr K and AN Other, presumably afflicted in a similar fashion. There was no trace of the other three members of Queta's original party, or of the professor herself - assuming, as seemed probable, at least to me, that she wasn't now performing as Second Ape-thing.

What there was, was an area of the complex, fairly central, just below ground level, on which I could obtain no information whatsoever - aside, obviously, from its location and exterior dimensions. Unfortunately, the level of control I had of the systems I'd co-opted didn't give me any idea of what might be inside.

Which meant that the answer, if there was an answer, had to be somewhere in there. And that, I supposed, resignedly, meant that I had better go and take a look.

--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---

I can't say that I set out with a cheery heart and a spring in my step, but I quickly realised that my most morbid premonitions about what I might find were completely inadequate to the task in hand. Even the architecture was twisted: The closer I got to what I'd somehow come to think of as the lair - my subconscious can be unhelpful at times - the creepier things got. So, the delights of medieval Islam all too rapidly transmogrified into a near psychotic nightmare of warped carvings and dripping walls, the route became convoluted and intestinal, the very atmosphere increasingly dank and forbidding. I could sense Queta here, knew that somehow she was responsible for all of this- there were just too many echoes of the dreams that she had unwittingly shared with me in the past. Which confirmed, in a way, that Queta was unlikely to have suffered the fate of at least two of her colleagues - even as I wondered what horrors had been visited on her. And then I found the skeletons.

There were two of them and they hadn't just been left lying around - they were employed - deliberately placed - either site of what could only be the final portal. One had been crucified, the other impaled. Both appeared to have died - slowly - exactly where they had been left. Some sort of display, I thought - most probably, perhaps, a warning - but a warning to whom, or to what purpose, I couldn't say. Well, aside from maybe providing a more graphic version of Dante's famous "Abandon hope ..." dictum. 

Which thought suggested - blame that subconscious again - that I was somewhere close to the gates of hell. Which, try as I might, was not a concept that even I could parlay into anything positive or reassuring.

And it didn't help when the AI dispassionately informed me of the identities of the two victims - two more of Queta's chosen academics and, maybe not coincidentally, the only two female members of the party. Aside from Queta herself, of course.

--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---

Perhaps surprisingly, that "final" door wasn't too difficult to get through. No big, rusty key, no complicated spells or obscure talisman. It just took a bit of effort from the AI - now seriously scared, I noticed, almost serenely - and the thing swung open with a sound distinctly reminiscent of an electromagnetic lock disengaging.

I hate this cross-genre stuff, I found myself thinking as I went through. Crissakes, if we're going all sword and sorcery here, stick to the plot. And if we're in the alien, hi-tech, what-passes-for-reality, hereabouts, loose the bloody dungeon shit. Oh, and - my internal rant carried on, concluding what may have been the closest I have ever come to a prayer - please don't ever again make me attempt to reassure a bloody AI by telling it to trust me, 'cos I knew what I was doing ...

Which, of course, rather left the question hanging: Did I know what I was doing? It seemed unlikely, even as some sort of imperative forced me forward, into the entrance. Which was, frankly, a disappointment. Maybe all the effort had gone into overawing - or scaring the shit out of - visitors before they got this far. Maybe something else was supposed to happen but just wasn't working just at this moment. Maybe.

What I saw was a really rather drab room, maybe 5 metres square and almost entirely unadorned - just bare, sort-of-concrete walls and what looked like a slate tiled floor, with another door on the far side. Which was OK, I felt, except that I was aware of the AI gibbering quietly to itself, somewhere in my head, and, in fact, trying to cram itself into one of the darker recesses of my brain.

Hmm, I thought, and threw the remnants of the sword - I wasn't joking about that comfort blanket analogy, I'd kept the hilt and the last few centimetres of blade - into the centre of the room. Where it promptly exploded, and quite dramatically at that, leaving a little pool of metal to cool on a newly cracked tile. Which was one of those moments when I realised that reading all that crap Fantasy SF as a kid hadn't been a complete waste of time. Magically booby-trapped floor? Hah, I spit on the very notion, I thought.

And proceeded to chuck other things around the place. Fruit, mainly - apricots, an apple, quite a lot of grapes and even an ugli. More fruit than I'd had with me, a part of me pointed out with an air of resignation - I mean, if I'd known I'd had an ugli I'd have eaten the damn thing ages ago. OK, so things were going on, reality was being subtly manipulated and everything was not quite what it seemed ... just for a nice change. Against that, I had now decorated the room with quite a lot of exploded fruit - and an ex-sword, of course - and more to the point, had identified, courtesy of the remaining fructus intacta, a safe path across the room. 

It was a trick that usually worked for the Hero in novels, too, I thought, though I couldn't immediately remember an example where they'd used fresh produce. And by the time I'd congratulated myself on subverting the cliché at least that much, I was at the far side, by the door. Which was neither locked, nor barred, nor guarded by grim daemons.

So I opened it and stepped through.

--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---

This time, I found myself in a room that you could only describe as chintzy. And lit by candles - not big, drippy, wizard-ish candles, but pretty, romantic candles, some of them even floating in bowls of water, many of them, appallingly, scented. There was a word for this sort of room, I thought, and that word was boudoir. This was, in fact, fascinated despite my visceral horror, someone's idea of seductive. Whatever the horrors outside. Or, come to think of it, inside.

But I wasn't here to critique the décor, I reminded myself, and clocked yet another door, which, rather terribly just had to be the bedroom to this dressing room. And I was painfully aware that there were sounds coming from behind that door, female sounds. God help me, I thought, orgasmic sounds. I wanted to throw up, again, but the sensible part of me realised that vomiting loudly would be a good way of alerting the Bad Guys of my presence, while their current presumed preoccupation was in and of itself pretty good cover. Not that I could think of anything very sensible to do - except possibly to try and find a big bucket of cold water from somewhere.

At which point - while I was, frankly, dithering - I became aware the AI doing something strange. Something, in fact, so strange that ...

Well, look. It wasn't like I was carrying the Wisdom itself around in my head - all I had was a data-feed. And said data-feed had, for some time, being doing a good impersonation of a little ball, so wrapped up in itself that a hibernating vole would have been impressed. Only now it wasn't - the thing was positively bouncing around, and bouncing with purpose. Bouncing in a particular direction, in fact. I felt it might be trying to tell me something.

--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---

It was. I took the hint, ignored as best I could the increasingly frantic sound effects from next door and looked in the direction indicated. And found, under a peculiarly over-decorated chaise longue, a small rat like animal - the ears were to big for it to be a vole, something put in - which, oddly enough, was rather completely wrapped in a complicated, intricate network of minute chains. Odd, indeed, I thought - and from the reaction of my internal bouncy thing, probably rather significant.

So, with great care - and a certain amount of trepidation - I carefully broke a link or two, untangled the remaining strands ... it just seemed a sort of good thing to do. Or, at least, it did when I started. As the operation proceeded, however, it became obvious that the previously tiny rodent was visibly expanding - and expanding exponentially with every new degree of freedom. Which I found a bit disconcerting, to be honest, though the fact that the bit of the AI in my head appeared to be almost literally relaxing - that was a weird feeling, let me tell you - as it did so, should probably have reassured me. If I'd had the energy left to really care, that is. As it was, I just went into 'I've started, so I'll finish' mode ... and carried on regardless.

And to be fair, ended up not with a very large rodent - somehow I knew that that shape had been imposed - but a sort of shimmering presence instead. Quite a large shimmering presence, I grant you, but still sort of insubstantial - if you'd photographed the thing you could have had the Society for Psychical Research in ecstasy, at least if you lied and told them it was a ghost. Which, from my now distinctly re-energised AI's reaction, it clearly wasn't. More likely, I thought, this was its henceforth mysteriously missing chum, the AI that was supposed to be running things around here.

Which was a relief, I felt as exhaustion finally began to catch up on me. Now there were two of the buggers, both presumably as capable as each other, so they could get on with sorting things out ... and let me sleep.

Shame they didn't see it that way, really. 

--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---

I think the term is avatar. You know, not the stupid graphics that people hide behind when they're playing on line games, but rather the visible embodiment of a deity. Or, in this case, not quite a deity and not actually all that clearly visible, but, nonetheless, it appeared that the glowing cloud like thing was somehow the representation of the local AI - ours had never shown any inclination to manifest itself like that but I guess it takes all sorts - and that said AI had some pretty urgent unfinished business.

Not that it deigned to tell me so, directly, but it was clearly in fairly intense communication with my own dear Wisdom and the Wis was passing on such scraps of information as it felt that I needed. Or maybe, that I could cope with. Which, in either case, amounted to informing me that something unpleasant was going on in the - ah - bedroom ... and that it was up to me to sort it. Which was great, I thought - must be nice to have an expendable human around just when you need one ...

--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---

Yes, I went into that room. And yes, I found Queta there. 

Queta in the throes of what appeared to be an unnaturally prolonged moment of ecstasy - from what I'd been hearing it must have been going on for bloody ages already - and one which involved, yup, one of my ape-like friends. Or at least, the phallus of said ape-like entity, the number of restraints involved presumably limiting 'his' active participation in proceedings. Not this seemed to bother Queta to any great extent - she was clearly on another planet, metaphorically speaking, so much so that she quite failed to notice my presence.

Which is a difficult situation to find oneself in, hero-of-the-moment wise. I mean, you burst into the secret chamber, prepared to do or die or whatever ... and get completely ignored. I thought about that bucket of water, again - surely one or other AI could produce one on demand? - but then something rather more atavistic kicked in ... and I kicked out. Quite a good kick, if I say so myself - the AI's implantation of ju-jitsu moves into the fabric of my brain proving its worth, again - and one which connected rather neatly with the side of Q's head, pretty much dead centre on the temple. The reaction was quite dramatic.

For a start, Queta did begin to take note of my presence, and I think she might well have done something quite awesome, in terms of a violent physical response, were it not for the fact that she remained rather firmly impaled on her - umm - paramour's spectacularly over enhanced penis. So I got another blow in, or rather, a series of blows, all aimed at or around the head and all intended to do maximum damage. Not like me at all, really, but ... christ ... what she'd done to those guys, and - as was now only too obvious - why she'd done it ... Well, it didn't make me feel particularly warm towards her. 

I kept hitting her when she was down, too, even when she was a bloody mess, to be honest, until at least one AI intervened and I found myself gently restrained from further contact. 

And then they killed her. Just like that. One moment she was unconscious but very much alive, the next, very, very dead. I sat down on the floor beside her, completely spent and completely failing to make sense of anything at all.

The thing on the bed - still tied down, still sporting a ludicrously massive erection - probably had as much idea of what was going on as I did. And then I passed out. Finally.

--- ---- ---- --- ----- ----- ---

I got an explanation of sorts when I came round, not back at 'home', as I might have hoped, but in the transport shuttle. It appeared that the debrief was for my ears only, that there were things the Wisdom was less than keen on sharing with the rest of the team - and I didn't think that was entirely to protect their tender sensibilities. 

Whatever, the story was simple enough, at least on the surface: Queta had taken the idea that only she had been originally Chosen - by us, I reminded myself - to mean that the colleagues she'd inadvertently ended up with were there merely as assistants. Or servants or, eventually, slaves. The final consequence of which was that she'd acted out a particularly extreme domination fantasy, killed off the female 'competition' and done hideous things to the men. Well, not hideous from her point of view, but ... lets just to say that the AI told me that there was no way back for the three of them - too much brain tissue had been destroyed in the transformation - and they'd be spending the rest of their lives in a rather over ornate Moorish themed zoo.

Which was tragic news, of course, but such a brief précis kind of failed to answer two particularly significant questions - such as why she had done so and how - both in terms of how she'd achieved the effects she had, and what had happened to the AI, which, presumably, should have stopped her doing anything of the sort?

I asked, of course. Didn't get a full response, but enough to indicate that Queta's previous life - the religion, perhaps even the knowledge that the very basics of who she was had been pretty much defined by an alien implant - might have left her a little under-endowed in the fundamental sanity department. Particularly when a whole mass of inhibitions were suddenly removed, and she found herself able to dominate people to assuage her newly awakened sexuality. A pretty vicious feedback loop when you thought about it.

Why none of this was stopped, why, in fact, some of it must have been enabled, by the local AI was a little bit less clear from the account I got. Clearly, Queta had been a pretty formidable biologist, earth-side, but no way was she capable of the sort of bioengineering that had taken place. So the AI must at least have helped with that bit, presumably en route to being transformed, itself, into the little rat thing. Which meant that Queta had found some sort of way in, some means of controlling the AI.

I began to understand quite why the machine was so nervous about all of this ... and so reluctant to go into details. I couldn't even get it to comment on whether Queta had retained some sort of unique capabilities - from the time her brain was basically being grown to order by that rather unpleasant implant - or whether she had somehow uncovered a peculiar vulnerability in the Ais. 

I got the feeling that it might not yet know the answer to that one itself, frankly - I got the idea that the late Queta's brain was the subject of quite intense investigation even as we 'spoke' - but there was also a hint that there was something in the AI's past, perhaps even relating to their oh-so-nebulous origins, that might also have been a factor.

One thing was for certain, though - the Wisdom had no intention of giving me anything more concrete to go on.

Which was fair enough, I thought, as the transport lifted off and I began the journey home. It just meant I'd have to get Xav on the case ...


