Chapter 13

Craig grinned as the crowd around him cheered. He had just won a third time at a beijinkind carnival game where he had to quickly build as tall a structure as you could manage with given materials, all while avoiding the sabotage attempts of your fellow players. Kayla cheered from behind, chewing on what looked like a corndog, but was actually an edible cattail that tasted like raspberries. The festival was in celebration of the Gropth New Year, which was celebrated in the sun of the first day of the year, unlike Earth’s tradition of celebrating on the turning at midnight. It had been an interesting display of the beijinkinds’ culture, to say the least.

“Your prize, sir!” the carny announced from their spot behind the booth. Their vessel was painted in red and blue stripes and was adorned on the top with large, wobbly, decorative antennae making it almost look like a large piece of hard candy. Craig felt a push from his neural band and accepted the gift, which was a kind of video game you played in your mind using the neural band. He hadn’t tried it yet, though Kayla had taken to it in her downtime. She’d been up late most nights over the last week, obsessively learning how to play.

“Hey, the prize was a game. You want it?” he asked her.

“What is it?” she asked, He passed it on to her, and she smiled, “Cool, don’t have this one yet. I’ll check it out tonight.”

They began walking through the crowd, milling around the different attractions they hadn’t yet visited. Many of the booths were operated by the more traditional mound that looked like a cross between a termite hive and an adobe. They were four feet tall with speakers and neural band interfaces built into the sides. The individual colony running a stand scuttled around the hives as they maintained their booth. Craig was fascinated by them, but couldn’t ignore how they gave him goosebumps every time he saw them. He did his best to push that feeling aside, given how insensitive it felt.

They passed by a busy group: a smattering of different vessels and a few kaiseichans who were gathered around a purple vessel resting on a park table. The lights of the purple vessel were dimming, while those of the vessels surrounding it were hued in blues and grays, which Craig’s neural band told him were commonly the colors of melancholy in many beijinkind cultures. He and Kayla tentatively approached the assembly, worried they were intruding on something private; however, they were quietly beckoned closer by one of the onlookers. He poked his head around a kaiseichan and saw the individual workers within the purple vessel frantically scurrying, growing more disorganized by the moment. Glyph appeared next to Craig, watching from his perspective.

“The queen is passing,” Glyph explained in a somber tone. “Her daughter will now take over the colony.”

Something about watching the purple vessel fade struck Craig deeply. He was brought back to the moment that he approached his mother’s casket during her wake, and the emptiness he’d felt in that moment. Feeling the tears building up, he balled his fists as the lights blinked out. After a few somber moments in which many in the crowd sobbed in grief, the lights blinked back on, now a light shade of lavender rather than the deep purple of before. The vessel rose and faced the crowd as the workers took their stations within.

“My name is Grorvuk,” the tinny voice declared to the cheering crowd, “And I am harmonized!” Kayla and Craig shared the moment, and each took the time to congratulate the new queen and offer condolences before venturing back into the rest of the festival. Craig glanced back as they walked away, wondering whether the new queen got her own identity, or if she maintained that of her mother. Would it have been insensitive to ask?

They took a seat on a bench to finish their snacks and do some people watching. A human woman walked by with a humanoid AO in tow. It resembled those which Kayla and Craig had seen in the Gilded Roost; with the dead eyes and the unnatural movement patterns. The goosebumps he’d experienced at the casino returned as he watched the strange android covered in something almost resembling human skin walked past with steps that were just a little too perfect.