Evolution
Once they get back from the shopping trip Natah tags along with Harry while he delivers their present for Simaris, one country landscape oil painting with farm animals and a couple of people in it. The reason she was tagging along is that the painting is animated with magic. Her own gifts were in her home on Lua, a breeding pair of white owls, apparently enchanted for post. An expanded trunk filled with one of every book in the bookshop, a few children's toys, and a cauldron and ingredients. The books include the not-so-invisible book of invisibility that she'd noticed in the bottom of a loading trolley they had by the back door. It had put a dent in Harry's available resources, but they both felt it was worth it.
"Greetings Tenno. Lotus what momentous occasion has brought you to my doorstep in person?"
"I am just accompanying one of my children."
"Ah," – He turns towards Harry – "Tenno, are you here to see knowledge of the path?"
Harry chuckles, "No, I'm here to give you a gift. Though it is a physical gift that can't be sent by mail. Before you digitise it, I suggest you spend some time looking at it with your optical sensors."
With that said, he takes the painting out of the wrapping he'd put it in and leans it against a wall.
Simaris looms over the painting, "What is this? A construction of plant matter, all be it in the fashion of a made-up scene from earth. Why have you gifted me such a waste of... What is this? It moves? How, turn it around, quickly."
Humouring the cephalon he lifts it up so that it's side on. Simaris' avatar move around it studying it intently, "This seems to be entirely inert organic matter consistent with archaeological finds, but the surface oils move along with their pigments. How does it do that?"
Smiling Harry responds, "Honestly, I have no idea."
"This is a handsome gift, what do you wish in return?"
"I'd like a corpus medical data-slate linked to one of your scanners with the solar charging widget. Finally, I would like a nanite injector."
"It is not that handsome."
"I can also take scans of creatures from the same place as the owl and give them to you."
"You will give me 10 unique scans that cannot be found in my library."
"Sure, I'll need that stuff first though."
"I will arrange for it to be delivered to you. Now go, I need to divine the secrets behind this picture."
Walking out of his audience hall, Natah smiles as Harry picks up a cello that he left outside, they then walk the short distance to see Cephalon Suda. While the gift giving goes just as well, she doesn't have the same over the top reaction as Simaris did. Probably because of her recent brush with the anthem. She is very appreciative of the fact that it is voice activated, even if there are no detectable energy emissions. With some good will built, they both return to Lua.
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"Tenno Harry, your Railjack has passed final systems checks. We are ready to launch on our maiden flight when you are ready."
Harry looks up from the book he was struggling through, "Thanks Cy."
The painting that is instructing Harry in English speaks up, "Young Master, you still have 30 minutes left on your lesson. What would your parents think if you left now?"
"I need go. Lesson later."
With that he walks off wishing once again that he could just digitise the lessons and flash learn them. Pulling his warframe to him, he quickly makes his way onto his Railjack. Checking that he has the Auron and scanner assembly stowed, he heads to the helm.
"Ok Cy, take her out and set course for the deep void. Remember to take into account the increasing blueshift on beacon."
"Yes captain. All non-essential personal have left the Railjack. Releasing clamps. Taxiing out of the dry dock. Deploying stabilisers. Engaging void drive, now."
Harry takes his place on the pilots pedestal and watches the void pass while ignoring the man in the wall that is looking around the cockpit. After around an hour flying through the void they come out in orbit of an Earth.
"Captain, detecting EM signals and communications, suggest setting course for the satellite and staying in the shadow while we analyse them."
"Good plan", Harry points the railjack at the moon while Cy readies the drive. As soon as the course is set they jump into the void again and reappear in the shadow of the moon a matter of seconds later.
"So, that happened. I think we're going to need to set up the main beacon here. Well, on the far side of this Moon from Earth. I wonder why Minerva didn't mention anything about the space presence?"
"I cannot comment. I estimate that it will take me 48 hours to analyse the EM radiation and associated energy radiation to determine what countermeasures we can deploy. Initial readings suggest that only the EM radiation analysis will have any results."
"Great, well while you're doing that, I'm going to equip my archwing and start using that corpus drill for more than just mining ore and gems. If that doesn't work, well I've got more than one repurposed mining laser."
"For what purpose Captain?"
"If we're going to have to come here every time in order to avoid the locals, we might as well have a drydock for you to receive repairs and store goods in."
"I see. I will leave you to it then."
As Harry was leaving, he made a note to see if Legs could help him craft a mining MOA that could be left to excavate things according to a supplied pattern.
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With Harry gone and a 100% success rate on upgrading sentients with cores over the last 50 samples, Natah cancels the capture bounties and transports the ensouled sentients to the plains of Eidolon. With that done, she contacts Maroo to activate her temporary position. Briefly she reflects on the fact that the Human may not be so human anymore as her scans from the interviews indicated high levels of Orokin Nanites as well as untreated void exposure. Coupled with the reports of her exploits and explorations going back 30 years, and how young she seems indicates that she will probably be around for many more decades. If not, she can always ensure that she has an Oro installed, given that a reliable proxy will be useful in the coming years.
With that done, she pre-prepares a request for aid to go out in 48 hours unless it's cancelled and sets the process for upgrading her chassis to start in 30 minutes, giving her a 10 minute buffer to get situated and cancel if she chooses to. The buffer comes and goes and then the world metaphorically lurches a meter to the left and seems to gain more depth. Leaving the cocoon that the process took place in, she cancels the automated call, noting that it has 12 hours left on the counter. She then starts a systems diagnosis to try to determine what if anything has changed. Irritatingly the diagnosis says it will take 15 hours and 30 minutes to complete. She then spends what feels like an hour or so performing the clean-up of the process and checks the diagnosis progress, 15 hours and 5 minutes to go. She double checks the time and comes out with the same result every time, only 25 minutes passed while doing the clean-up which is how long it should have taken. To pass the time she went to do some of the paperwork that always piles up when managing the Tenno. Next time she checks the progress there's 14 hours and 15 minutes to go. Deciding to check in on how things are going with the Tenno, she calls Maroo.
"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."