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“Uhm, Gentle Caring? Are you here?”
“Oh, is that you Thoughtful?” The muffled voice came distantly from the other side of the unusually irregular, resin-coated door.
However, when Thoughtful Curiosity thought “open” at the door, it didn't budge. Eye-ridges furrowed, she realized that it was an outdated model, though none she could recognize.
“Caring? Did you unlock your door yet? Wait, do I need to emote a one-time pass-phrase or something?”
“Oh, sorry about that... Little Irving can get a bit cranky around changelings he hasn't met.”
“Little... Irving...?” Thoughtful poked the door tentatively with a hoof. It emitted an angry buzz in response, and a short burst of slime spattered from a small hole near eye-level – completely missing the changeling, and quickly petering out into a trickle that ran down its frame ineffectively.
“Was that... a defense mechanism?” Thoughtful tilted her head, feelings of skepticism rising to the forefront of her mind.
Hoof-steps could be heard approaching from the other side. “Now now, Irving, I know it's been a while since I had any-ling over, but Thoughtful Curiosity is a dear friend. And what have I told you about spraying my guests?”
The door gave a petulant gurgle in response.
“She did? Oh my...” A pause. The sound of chitin rubbing on hard resin. “You're a good security door, Irving, I'm sure she didn't mean it.” Another pause. “Now, please let her in? Please?” Another pause. “I'll even feed you extra for an hour. A whole fifty milliwedds, yummy!”
The door slid open so fast Thoughtful could taste the eagerness.
“Sorry about that. I picked him up when I was cultivating a security system for the Dhaundax Bank. They wanted to just replace the poor thing with a younger model!”
“I wonder why they would do something like that.” Thoughtful thought in the private section of her mind, rolling her eyes.
“Anyway, can I get you something to feed on? Old love? Young love? Young Love Light?”
“No, thanks.” Thoughtful waved the offer off with a dismissive smile.
Not even three steps into the home proper, Thoughtful Curiosity was struck speechless.
Tools and organic machines were everywhere.
Gentle Caring had access to no less than five high-end genetic computing engines side-by-side, each of different make and model, and fully stocked with mutation-scanner, DNA-printer, and targeted gene editing system. The chromatophore display the size of a wall was merely an afterthought.
Thoughtful's mouth watered at the mere sight.
The disembodied spare parts, on the other hoof, made her feel a bit squeamish.
Thoughtful Curiosity had to tread carefully – an entire colony's worth of cleaning-spiders were scuttling about, fuzzy furry bodies rubbing against floor and walls as they went on their hunt for dust-mites and the occasional bit of detritus for their nests.
“Oh, that reminds me...” Thoughtful pondered. “Have you finished repairing my PDA?“ She stepped around several more cleaning spiders and... something else, only for a tickling sensation to scuttle up her left foreleg.
She looked down to see a thin, rectangular slab of chitin, with full chromatophore display – and eight tiny legs that firmly grasped at the holes in her own leg to climb it.
“Even better! I upgraded him!” Gentle Caring's cheery smile was a bit too strong for Thoughtful's taste. “Aww, he missed you!”
“Guh...” Thoughtful kept staring down at the device, as it rubbed against her foreleg affectionately.
“Why... does my PDA have legs?”
“Oh, the little one just wanted to be more helpful!”
“But... It doesn't need to have legs, I just need it to send messages, and keep track of my checklists,” Thoughtful pointed out. “Oh, and the organizing apps. To help me... sort... things...” She trailed off. The device had finished its climb and was now nestling on Thoughtful's backplate, right between her wings.
It was a particularly sore spot – she had been flying around all day.
And the tiny, spindly legs were just the right size to reach into the cracks in between plates and apply just the right amount of pressure.
It was the perfect spot.
Thoughtful couldn't stop a flicker of relaxed calm from escaping at the unexpected massage.
Gentle Caring's slowly widening grin made it clear it hadn't escaped her notice. “Very helpful.”
“I don't know...” Thoughful glanced back at the PDA apprehensively.
“Oh, don't be like that...” Gentle stroked the PDA across the screen, somehow without accidentally selecting anything.
“I also expanded his memory. I just so happened to have the... right parts.” Gentle smiled sadly.
Sensing the shift in emotion, the PDA buzzed and trilled, grasping Gentle Caring's foreleg with its own tiny appendages.
Gentle's mood shifted, as the small device struggled to climb her foreleg.
“Aww...” Gentle cooed. “You're right, let's show Thoughtful what you can do!”
It took some false starts, but eventually, the device found its place quite firmly latched on her right foreleg. Demonstratively, Gentle took a couple small steps, the PDA still attached to her leg.
“Oh, that's... useful.” Thoughtful suppressed any uncertainties she still felt about Gentle's little “upgrade”.
“Here, why don't you take him?”
With a sigh equal parts amusement, bewilderment, and mild irritation, Thoughtful Curiosity held out her foreleg and let her Personal Dictyopteric Assistant latch onto it.
She looked up, just in time to see another device waddle up to the bioengineer on unsteady legs.
The thing looked like it might once have been a basic broadcasting station, but had been modified into Chrysalis-knew-what, complete with eyestalks. Thoughtful wondered if all of Gentle's home appliances had mobility enhancements.
“Oh dear, is it the legs again?” Gentle Caring frowned down at the blinking apparatus. “I know you aren't used to them, but if you want to keep them, you have to use them every day, or else they won't get proper bloodflow.”
The device blinked and chirped, then flopped upside down.
“Awwww...” Gentle cooed. “Alright, I'll see if I can reprogram your genome to make it easier for you. But right now, I've got a friend over, so... just wait a bit, okay?”
Thoughtful's mix of confusion and curiosity did not go unnoticed by the other changeling.
“Oh, I've memorized the genomes of all my little friends...”
Thoughtful opened her mouth to comment on the impossibility of the statement. Then she closed it.
Entering the other room, Thoughtful Curiosity's questions got pushed back in the queue by her next observation.
A series of toy train-capsules were running along a complex web of wall- and ceiling-mounted tracks, dropping off little chunks of different types of food to food-bowls and countertops, or straight into the fuel-line for some of the machines that didn't have legs. There were at least four dozen train-capsules running all at once, perhaps more, sometimes passing each other by just by mere inches in a complicated dance.
As she watched, several of the toy trains changed directions mid-sequence, arranging themselves on the tracks in a way that... resembled a smiley-face?
Gentle walked over to the other side of the room, to a somewhat slimy, irregularly shaped wall.
No, not a wall, Thoughtful realized, just something occupying the entire height and width of one of the walls. And about half of the room, now that she'd done a quick estimate of the home's dimensions.
“Oh, isn't she just the cutest?” Gentle beamed and lovingly patted the wall-sized irregular growth of carapace and slime-secretions on its side. “She loves playing with her trains.”
A few more trains joined in on the formation, displaying a wider smile.
Idly, Thoughtful took note that the remaining trains had increased speed to compensate for the loss in food-delivery efficiency. Just looking at the blur of activity made her eyes hurt.
“So...” Thoughtful ventured slowly. “You've got an industrial-grade free-learning organization engine in your home.”
“I'm... I'm just holding on to her until I can find her a new home.” Gentle Caring fidgeted nervously. “I... I wouldn't want to keep her for myself, o-of course not, that wouldn't be fair for the Hive!”
Thoughtful's understandably still dumbstruck silence was mistaken for something else.
“M-maybe I can find a charity that can take her? I-I-I mean, maybe they need an intelligence to make sure all the funds really go to the right places...”
“No no no, it's fine! It's fine.” Thoughtful cut off what might have become a panic-attack. “I was just... wondering, is all.” A pause, in which Thoughtful's face scrunched up in a futile attempt to overcome her confusion. “How...?”
“Oh...” Gentle Caring drooped. “They shut down her old home... I was called to uninstall the old equipment...”
“AaaaAAAAaaaAAAh! It secreted on my mane! My beautiful mane!” The shrill transmission cut off whatever Gentle had been about to tell her.
Gentle Caring was gone so quickly, weaving through and around all of the equipment shuffling, scuttling, walking, lying, flying about everywhere, Thoughtful had to wonder if the bio-engineer had augmented herself, as well.
“Reminder to self,” Thoughtful absentmindedly thought at her PDA, which twitched to life on her foreleg. “Ask Gentle Caring about her qualifications and certificates later.”
Flying indoors was out – too many small things in the air, too many cramped corridors filled to the ceiling with bio-machinery – so it took Thoughtful a bit to make her way to the front door.
The scene she walked in on was one showing averted disaster:
Faithful Bravery was emoting something rotten at the door, who bleeped indignantly.
Both Boundless Cheer and Reassurance were covered in slime-secretions – one of them more upset than the other, who was adding her own secretions to make the slime into a rubbery ball.
Then Laevigata walked in, blinked, and burst out laughing.
They spend the rest of the evening just chatting, and playing a few games. Boundless Cheer found an even match in the industrial superintelligence Gentle kept insisting she wasn't keeping for herself.
Eventually, Laevigata brought over her saddlebags, clinking with cans and bottles.
“Organic Love, only harvested from free-roaming animals?” Thoughtful read out loud. “Laevigata, all love is organic.”
“Oh, Ih azzure you, zis very vell dezerves zee label. Just give iht a try.” Laevigata gave her a lopsided fang-toothed grin. “Nozhing like vhat zee love factories churn out.”
With a shrug, Thoughtful accepted the container, and fed.
Her senses were assaulted with a plethora of flavors, too many to count, each nuance of emotion ever so subtly different. Wild, animalistic emotions mixed with calm and careless feelings of happiness and contentment, blended together into a cocktail of varying nuances of love from many different sources. There was also some flavor of adoration she couldn't quite place.
Gentle was simply radiating happiness. “Can I... visit sometime? It tastes beautiful.”
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“But, dear, you simply must let me help you redesign your home, these walls-cavities are simply atrocious!” Reassurance dramatically raised a foreleg to her head. “Simply atrocious! And so last-cycle!”
Forelegs extending to match the contours of the wall, she instantly began doing measurements.
“A little hard-resin here, a little raw-resin there...”
“Raw-resin?” Laevigata interjected into the exchange.
“Yes, dear, it's all the rage these days in Plectricona!”
“Izn't zat just ze unfinished spittle zat comes outta ze –”
“Who's hungry?!?” Boundless Cheer broadcasted openly. “Cause I brought snaaa-aaacks!~”
Boundless Cheer wasn't the only one who had developed an appetite.
Soon, Laevigata, Boundless Cheer, and Gentle Caring had all brought out a large spread of different emotions, ranging from Delight to Joy to Exuberance. Faithful's contribution was half a six-pack of “Tripple-X” love energy.
Boundless was already stuffing her face, and Thoughtful had just taken a sip from Laevigata's special brand of “Organic Love”, when Faithful Bravery submitted the feeling of disapproval. “Hey, aren't you all forgetting something?”
“Oh?” Boundless Cheer looked up from playing with Thoughtful's Personal Dictyopteric Assistant – which was odd, since Thoughtful didn't have any games on it.
“What'zzat?” Laevigata inquired, about to take a sip herself.
“Our thanks to the Queen, duh!”
“Gah!” Thoughtful did a perfect spit take, splattering the intangible concept of love all over the table – and her friends.
Boundless Cheer giggled.
Reassurance shrieked.
Laevigata and Faithful Bravery just rolled their eyes.
Gentle Caring gasped – though not at her friends' antics.
A single, very small cleaning spider skittered onto the table and began vigorously absorbing what little it could, scuttle off to its nest, only to almost instantly rush back to continue its sworn duty.
“Oh, Jenny!” Gentle Caring scooped up the tiny spider. “You can't clean all this on your own, it's too much!”
The mini-sized cleaning spider waved its barely hair-thin legs around wildly, standing straight to its full height of about two-and-a-half centi-hooves.
Gentle Caring sighed. “Please, will you at least let me help you this time?”
A hasty apology drenched in embarrassment, an argument with overeager household equipment, handling a PDA trying to help with physical tasks, and an impromptu game of shapeshift-hide-and-seek later, in which Boundless Cheer somehow managed to replace the table while it was still being cleaned, every-ling had calmed and sat down again.
They all closed their eyes, and opened their minds to share thoughts.
“Thank you, Queen Chrysalis, hive-mother, great protector, and love-bringer, for providing us with this feast to feed upon.”
Several variations of “Thank Chrysalis” were broadcasted between the six friends, and into the larger hive-mind, where, if they all thought just hard enough, maybe the Queen would hear them.
Thoughtful couldn't help but smile.