sunk beneath the Librarian’s surface. “Who’s ready for my scrumptious torso? You are? Here it comes!”
The Librarian is nearly shaking the bulkheads with its call, clearly pleased with the meal. In fact, it has continued to reach for her even after it has absorbed the largest parts of Observer, a fact which would make her nervous if she wasn’t on her third—fourth?—inebriant bar. Instead, she is proud. Why, you could not have done that at the beginning of this voyage, little one! Mother has your gravity field nearly maxed, and yet you can move! Oh, little one, we must play a game!
Inspired, she lowers the head out of sight, then back, for a quick game of hunt-the-prey. She does this twice before realizing that something is wrong. The hump in the silver surface, the place where the Librarian is straining toward her—it has not moved. She glances at the notch in her blade and clicks uncertainly. But if the Librarian is not reaching for Observer’s head…does that mean it is reaching for her? She flicks an unsteady Widow smile toward her own reflection. “Why, little one!” she says. “Have you finally acquired a taste for Mother?”
[For the Network’s sake], says Shokyu the Mighty. [Just give it the head.]
But the head is not the problem, little idiot. In fact…it pains her to think, but is she the idiot? Is it possible that, this whole time, the Librarian was not yearning for her little treats, but for her? Does Shenya the Widow now find herself three and a half years into deep space, alone with a Librarian who has very nearly outgrown its containment and which now hungers for her own beautiful body?
Her appetite for entertainment now gone, she raises the head and allows the field to tear it from her grasp. She watches the flesh flatten and the golden eyes widen in the massive grip of the gravity field, but the joy is gone. The eyes stare at her as the whole hideous mess sinks, backward, into the singing metal.
And the hump does not disappear.
[If I could shudder], says Shokyu the Mighty, [I would.]
Shenya the Widow will never admit that she is repressing a shudder of her own. [I have never understood the revulsion at Librarians, personally], she says lightly, but she is troubled. She backs away one step, and the small distortion does not change. But still, says her intoxicated mind, there is a large difference between a slight shape change and an actual escape. [Librarians are quite useful], she continues, determined not to allow her implant to witness her discomfort. [Did you know the best surgeons in the sector are Librarians?]
[And yet I note you had me installed the old-fashioned way. Perhaps you don’t trust them quite enough to let one dissolve your head?]
The truth is, Shenya the Widow does not. In fact, during her early career one could say she was actively hostile to her Librarian—or at the very least, treated it no better than a sanitation station. But then something happened to change the mind of Shenya the Widow forever. She returned from a particularly long voyage to find an unfamiliar ship in dock at corporate. This was not unusual; when missions last a century, the odds of any two explorers being docked at the same time are low. It was the ship itself that was unusual—and its crew.
To begin with, it was the most beautiful ship she had ever seen: a silver blade that flashed like lightning in the night. But upon inquiry, she was shocked to learn that it was both made by and crewed by one gigantic Librarian. In a very literal sense, Blazing Sunlight was its own ship. It was made of the same amorphous metal here in front of her, but the size of an Interstellar. She remembers her awe at this being that had gained so much knowledge about the universe that it could produce—that it could be—its own starship. Reactors, gravs, sensors, anything an Interstellar could possibly need, all produced when needed and absorbed when not. And unlike her own little Librarian, this one far exceeded legal tier.
Shenya the Widow, corporate wheeler-and-dealer that she was, lost no time in introducing herself to the ship. After a few moments of difficult conversation—it was not the most talkative of intelligences—she became aware of something that unnerved her greatly, that made her realize that perhaps she did not quite understand how the universe worked. This gigantic Librarian—which she had never seen