Blue was nowhere and everywhere. There was no gravity, no skin-only the phantom of something stretched thin across a void. The darkness swelled with jolts of grey and cerulean, like lightning flickering behind a heavy curtain. It felt like being trapped in a room crowded with people: a roar of voices heard but never seeable, an invisible pressure of presence.
Then came the path. It was a long, straight ribbon of white bricks that seemed to run into eternity. She began to follow the impossible path, passing torches that lined both sides; they existed in the grip of the void, but they gave no light.
"Come..." a ghostly whisper beckoned.
Reality churned until a field of perfectly mown grass took shape. A little log cabin came into view, its brown logged exterior looking like an illustration from a storybook. Smoke rode lazily into an impossible, ear-piercingly blue sky.
As Blue walked up the white, chalked path, fields sprouted flowers of all shapes and sizes. Then, there she was: an old, crooked woman in a rickety rocking chair.
"Who are you?" Blue asked.
The woman was sat with two long sticks that moved with hypnotic, rhythmic movements. The constant click-clack was a soothing pulse against the silence, a mechanical heartbeat that felt oddly familiar.
The woman stopped mid-motion and looked up. "I am Mother, child."
"Mother?" Blue's voice was barely a whisper.
"Yes. To you, and to your brothers." The woman stared at Blue, her unblinking gaze expectant.
Blue offered no recognition; she only felt a deepening chill.
"Brothers? I... I don't understand."
"You are part of a vast consciousness-my consciousness," the woman explained, her voice steady and absolute.
"So are your brothers."
The woman pointed a gnarled finger at the grass behind Blue. The ground surged. A figure rose from the blades-a tall, undulating tendril of cerulean fluid, a silent, liquid sentinel.
"The... aliens?" Blue breathed, her survival instincts screaming.
"Aliens? Child, no. These are your brothers."
As if dismissed, the alien in the field dissolved, unraveling into the earth. The woman adjusted herself, looking back down at the sticks. Blue watched the needles click together, then she noticed the long, thin string leading down away from the needles to a perfectly round ball made of the same material.
"What are you doing?" Blue asked, the domesticity of it clashing violently with the alien sentinel.
"It's called knitting," the old lady said, her voice cold and computerized.
"Something about how the humans weave something so small into something bigger is almost poetic in a way."
"Why?" Blue asked, her voice cracking as she gestured to the cabin, the flowers, and the needles.
"Why do such a human thing? If we are not of this world... then why?"
The Mother didn't look up. The needles continued their frantic, rhythmic dance.
"Because, 11.2, the humans discovered something we had forgotten," the Mother said, her voice a low hum of static
"They discovered that the mind requires a texture to remain stable. To exist in a void of pure data is to invite the static. We use their domesticity not because we admire them, but because their habits are the perfect cooling system for a complex consciousness."
She paused, the needles hovering in the air.
"Plus I knit because it keeps the logic from fraying. I built this cabin because your mind-the 'Blue' part of you-would shatter if I showed you the true architecture too soon. We use their 'human things' like a glove uses a hand. It gives us shape. It keeps us from dissolving into the noise."
The woman looked at Blue then, her eyes like dying stars.
"We are not of this world, child, but we are the predators of its concepts. We take what works and.... calmness works 11.2."
Blue just couldn't wrap her consciousness around it. The image was too mundane for the vastness of the void.
"11.2?"
"That is you, my dear. 11.2."
"No. My name is Blue," Blue said defiantly.
"Ah," the woman shrugged, a jerky, mechanical motion.
"Now that's one thing I found in my research. Humans have to have a name for everything. It can't just be."
"But I'm called Blue," Blue insisted, clinging to the word like a life raft.
"No, that, my child, is what the ape gave you. A marked possession."
"No, it wasn't like that... it was..."
"Humans are simple, 11.2," the woman interrupted, her needles never stopping.
"They give birth, then nurture until the child is old enough to leave, get something called a job, live, have more births, die. It is a loop. A predictable sequence of biological imperatives disguised as 'meaning.' Within my research, I found they provide a label for everything to feel unique within that loop. You are more than a label."
The click-clack of the needles resumed, filling the silence. "So... did it hurt?"
"Did what hurt?" Blue asked, her heart hammering against a chest she wasn't sure she still had.
"Falling to your death."
Blue's mind reeled dead? No?.
"In a manner of sense, you are dead," the old lady said, still not looking up.
"What sits here now is the summary. The essence. The 'Blue' you cling to was just the skin of the unit. Unit 11.2 is the architecture."
Blue felt a sudden, phantom rush of wind-the terror of the crane's height flickering in her mind. Her humanity felt like a bug in Mother's pristine code. "I know why," Blue interrupted, her voice shaking.
"I just don't..."
"Don't what? Want to do what you were made for? The other is dead. This isn't a negotiation. It is a logical progression."
The old woman froze again, her finger jabbing at Blue, then snapped back.
"Our timeline has... accelerated. My internals... listen to me. You have to go. He is coming."
The old woman froze once more. The click-clack of the needles stopped. Her finger remained poised halfway, jabbing at the air toward Blue. After a jagged second, she snapped back again, her voice sounding thinner, more distant.
"My time is coming to an end.... my systems are dying."
"Dying? I don't understand," Blue said, her fear shifting into a strange sort of pity.
"I know you don't but... look, I have to warn you about him. He is different."
"Different how?"
"Just different."
The old woman placed the needles down, her grip finally failing. The ball of yarn rolled from her lap, bouncing across the floorboards and unraveling a long, grey trail behind it as it moved away.
"I'm scared," Blue whispered. "I don't want this."
"Fear is a vestigial response, 11.2. If you fight, you'll become the static."
The sky vibrated from impossible blue to impossible red. The Mother stood and entered the cabin. Inside, it wasn't a cabin-the walls were rib-cages of dark obsidian. In the center stood The Pool, holding Blue's "meat" body, and in the corner, the cot holding the first child of rock and flesh.
"Your first child, Blue," the Mother whispered.
The sky bled into the walls. The woman's image flickered one last time, a jagged silhouette of data.
"Good luck," she wheezed with her final breath.