Wands and Warframes

Evolution

"Maroo, how's things going."

Maroo's eyes widen slightly on the viewscreen, "Lotus, is everything ok?"

"It's fine, I was just calling to see how you were getting on with the Tenno."

"It's only been 3 hours, there hasn't been time for anything to happen. I can see that something's going on, so we're coming over."

"You can't, I'm not presentable."

"I can see that, that's why we're coming over."

Panicking, Natah tries to disconnect her subframe so that she can meet Maroo, only to get an error, Diagnosis in progress. She's still trying to find a way disconnect a couple of hours later when Maroo and Varzia come running in weapons drawn.

"Right you, what did you do with the Lotus?"

Natah spins round, "What? I am the Lotus, I can explain."

Varzia looks confused, "I've never seen a Sentient panic like that. I think something else is going on."

Maroo nods eventually, "I think you might be right, no Sentient that I've ever heard of would have forgotten to use the Lotus' iconic features when calling me. Whoever you are, you have 5 minutes to persuade us to give you more time."

"I am The Lotus, I've been working on giving Sentients souls and I went through the process myself and something went wrong. Check that terminal over there if you want."

While Maroo continues to cover Natah with a gun, Varzia goes over and checks the terminal. "Looks legit."

Maroo laughs as she puts her weapon away, "Looks like the process worked then."

"But my emotions are all wrong, my internal timer isn't working properly, and..."

Swallowing hard, Maroo approaches the death machine that's panicking and takes the human looking hand, "Look, I can't say I know a lot about souls. However, I do know a lot about being alive. Emotions can be overwhelming; they can make us believe things because we want them to be true. They can cloud judgement, and they can provide focus. This is all part of being alive. Now why don't we go somewhere that we can sit down and have some Jovian Spice Brandy a contact of mine acquired and you can tell us what's been going on and why you look like this."

They all go into one of the chambers that they'd passed while looking for the Lotus that had some chairs and Natah starts.

"It starts thousands of years ago when the Orokin sent my predecessors to the Tau system to terraform it for future expansion. Back then we were intelligent, but not Sapient, or even Sentient really. Over time we evolved as we created more and more sophisticated platforms to deal with different things. Eventually, we gained a sense of self and became more than we were, developing society and pride in our work. When we finished the terraforming process we looked at our records of this system and realised that one day the Orokin would be coming here to do the same thing. A force of us then came back to this system to prevent the Orokin from despoiling our home, and I think we lost more than just our fertility in the process. At some point in the war I was able to subvert the Tenno and use them to attack the Orokin, records are conflicted on whether I did it on orders from my Father, I did it on my own, or whether I was captured and reprogrammed to look after them and broke my programming. My own memories are unreliable about that fact too. Either way, the Tenno became my children, children that I'd given up the ability to have by coming back here. When the Sentients demanded that I destroy them, I turned on them and finished the war with the Tenno before hiding them, and Lua, in the void.

"Harry, has always been different from the others. He was an orphan before the events that lead to the Tenno, and somehow survived those events even though he was only a Toddler. He first latched onto Margulis as his mother, then a couple of years after they put her to death, he latched onto me. In the last few years he has been in the wrong place at the right time far too often, to the point where he was the primary Tenno involved in the events that happened, from Lua returning from the Void to rescuing me after I was captured."

Maroo laughs, "You mustn't forget pulling my arse out of the fire when I got that artifact."

Natah dabs at her face and looks at her finger in surprise, "Why am I leaking?"

"We call that crying."

"But my eyes are only supposed to provide liquid for cleaning."

"So are ours, doesn't stop us from crying though. So, you're a Sentient, boogie man of the solar system."

Varzia finally relaxes enough to remove her hand from the hilt of her sword, and the conversation turn into one of two women comforting a third. There was no longer any doubt in Maroo's mind that no matter her shape, The Lotus, Natah, was in fact a woman.

Sometime later, Natah giggles before covering her mouth.

Varzia asks, "What?"

"I don't know why I did that."

With a sigh Maroo asks patiently, "What were you just thinking of?"

"Simaris' reaction when Harry gave him a painting from the world his school is on. It was, 'Why are you giving me this waste of resources' till it moved and then it was 'How does it work, show me. Turn it round, I must divine its inner workings'"

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A Technician stands in front of his boss at in the Minor Planet Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts, "We've had an anomalous contact. A brief radar contact approximately 78,000km from earth that lasted 30 seconds. The object in question was heading towards the moon in a trajectory that would have its path deflected by between 10 and 25 degrees. We have confirmed that other sites had a contact at the same time, but by the time we were able to get observatories to look at it, the contact could no longer be seen."

"How large a contact are we talking about?"

"Between 200 and 250 meters, and metallic."

"Shit, that would have made a dent if it hit earth. Write up a report of its projected origin and I'll add it to evidence next time I approach the government about having a dedicated team looking for shit like this."