Cyan’s Writing

I go by Cyan or Cyanophore, and this is where I put my fiction. Predominantly sci-fi. I don’t bite! Feel free to tag, ask, and so on. Follows from primary blog here: Cyanophore

[cyanophore-fiction]

Navigation Terminal

Welcome! I’ll be using this post to index the writing I’ve put up on Tumblr. Skip to the “keep reading” section for that. 

I tend to write short pieces, maybe a thousand words or two, that often feature ongoing characters and settings. I don’t know if I should call these settings “Works In Progress” because I’m not working on an overarching novel or anything, I just use them as a basis for brief narratives every so often. I’ve got introductory blurbs on each one and associated stories linked below. Eventually, I’ll put together a coherent, detailed lore post for each one. Eventually. 

Only content warning is some violence here and there, but it’ll be tagged. My stuff is all SFW. Expect lots of sci-fi. I love writing non-human characters, especially artificial beings: sapient machines, synthetic organisms, and so forth. Anthro/furry characters come up a fair bit as well--to be honest, they’re around more because I enjoy the look and for the fun of it than for narrative or thematic reasons. 

Thank you for reading. Genuinely. I hope you find something you enjoy!

Ongoing Settings:

Vargheist - a sci-fi adventure set in the solar system, centered on a few anthro pilots and a sapient ICBM guidance AI. Shooting for some fun space combat, character interactions during long sublight hauls, and visits to various worlds.  

Vargheist - Part 1 

Vargheist - Part 2

Ballistic Guidance (a sapient missile squares off with a fleet in a simulator)

The Battle of Europa (war story from a megacorporation invading Europa - violence warning)

Thumbtack City (recounts a ship stealing hydrogen from Jupiter)

Packmates (a short dive into the backstory of Rau, one of the main characters. cw for trauma and grief)

Coyote and Pala - a pair of military AIs flee from a life of servitude. They are hunted by former allies who remain in service, as well as a network of weapon satellites controlled by a distant strategic AI. 

Adoption (under orders from a distant strategic AI, a scout robot combs the Nevada desert for a dangerous entity)

When None Pursue (standalone continuation of Adoption, follows a scout robot and a companion it has committed to protecting)

Field Maintenance (having found a freshwater spring somewhere in the desert, Coyote and Pala take a much-needed break to repair and relax.)

The Congregation - an older concept that I might start messing around with again. Plot is centered on a very ancient being named Ramiel, who travels the galaxy and collects copies of sapient people to add to their “Congregation.”

Hunting Trip (short piece introducing a few main characters and concepts)

Contact

One-Shots:

Dirk Shitshine (absurd fiction with religious elements concerning a man who smuggles people into Heaven)

Armistice (flash fiction on the hopeful side, follows a centuries-old combat drone and a curious alien who sets out to repair it)

The Thing From Above (short flash fiction piece, celestial being interacting with a guy from Florida)

60 Meters (very short second-person piece in the spirit of old SCP)

Mr. Landry’s Solution (some kind of apocalyptic fiction thing)

The Ascent of Magos Thea (Warhammer 40k flash fiction, Mechanicus vs. Necron flavored)

[cyanophore-fiction]

Leering, lurid.

Neon veins through orange leaves.

We wade through syrup in the twilight, the oily-rainbow surface tension swirling around our waists. Wax stems wrapped in crayon labels, nibbled by centipedes who stretch membranes between their many legs and become eels when they enter liquid.

This whole place is a womb for the child growing fifty layers below, fifty layers of blankets and construction paper strata. It's learning how to control the swamp's distribution of syrup, starving some of the crayon plants and causing others to flourish. It prefers the melon and royal blue-colored ones, feeds them often.

Lily pads covered in clusters of compound googly eyes drift towards us. Anyone who doesn't feel like being digested carries a UV projector to blind them, ward them off. The batteries are cheap.

People used to come here looking for the Fountain of Youth until they figured out that the thing is broken. It's powerful magic that can turn back time, and when the energy is less focused—

It's always the late part of sunset. The syrup is warm, smells like bananas and sweat. Sometimes it turns to dry red wine; other times the fumes suddenly skyrocket in concentration and smother all the elks and chalk mice for miles around. Their bodies lay in the reeds until they turn to sugar crystals, the moisture of their bodies evaporating away.

[cyanophore-fiction]

“Beomgolae”

cw: violence, womb imagery, biological mecha and all the uncomfortable stuff that entails

Summary: the pilot of an organic combat mech describes their experience. Uses a bit of second-person.

Wrapped in the amnion of his interface cavity, your body is cushioned on all sides by ballistic tissues. Layers of lipid shock absorption gel with anti-shrapnel fibers in between, all formed to the precise dimensions of your body. When he sprints and leaps, you can feel the motion of his muscles through the fluctuating pressure of your amnion. Acceleration forces tug at you as he fires his thrusters, and through the layers of protective tissue, you can feel the capsule of fused ribs encasing you.

Warmth suffuses your chest; a stream of oxygenated fluid cycles gently through your lungs. At the nape of your neck, a bundle of his nerves are spliced into your cervical spine, held in place by a soft mantle of tissue resting on your shoulders. The mantle is muscular, hugging you, anchoring you to him.

Through his sensory organs and systems, you perform your work while he performs his. Interface design maintains a dissociative layer between his experience and your perception of it. So, then, when he sinks his teeth into another synth’s shoulder and tears the arm from its socket, you can feel the blood spraying across his body and the metallic taste in his mouth, but the experience is filtered through a dreamlike sense of unreality. Serene and intentional, you intercept incoming fire and show him where to aim his weapons so you can pull the trigger.

For lack of a better title, you are referred to as a pilot. This term has many imperfections, but chief among them is the implication that you are in control of him—you are not. You can guide him, you can protect and direct him, but his body is his own.

His mind is alien in certain ways, but it is also fundamentally that of another mammal. There are shared emotions, concepts, and impulses which form the basis for increasingly sophisticated communication. If the contact between you can indeed be described as a relationship and not a limited merging of subjectivities, you have formed a relationship with your synth which defies easy explanation to those with no basis for comparison. The boundary between you and him is not simply permeable—in certain places, it is nonexistent. Part of his essential self rests in you, and vice versa.

I have described this to assist you, members of the Committee, in understanding my position. Surgical separation of Unit 810 and myself was necessary to preserve our lives, I acknowledge that. However, after twelve years as his constant companion, I have no desire to remain separate from 810 for an extended period. Moreover, evidence exists to prove that a synth of his specifications is capable of recovering from the damage he has sustained, although some functionality will inevitably be lost.

In my proposal, I have outlined a comprehensive plan for demilitarization of 810’s body, preserving many components for redeployment via other synth platforms. With my guidance, he is capable of resuming duty in a non-combat capacity. The estimated costs, as you will see, are minimal, and the benefits exceed those offered by decommissioning and reclamation.

Do not let us go to waste. We are prepared to serve indefinitely.

Thank you for your consideration.

___

Quick sketch with some mecha stuff. Biomechs engineered from whales, definitely 100% ethical and safe. The prompt, “Living Weapon,” comes from @flashfictionfridayofficial. Thanks for the prompt!

Thank you for reading!

[cyanophore-fiction]

“Final Death”

In the milliseconds leading up to impact, they realized that there was nothing they could do. Their human was an excellent pilot, but she was physiologically incapable of reacting quickly enough to avert what was coming. Desperate, they re-examined the sequence of things to come, hoping to find some error in their projection.

The missile was approaching at mach 1.2, and its Smith-Shimano ECCM package rendered their electronic defenses ineffective. It would strike just under the chassis’s left arm, which was raised to support an assault rifle, leaving the torso exposed. When it struck, the blast wave would overtax the kinetic compensation system protecting the cockpit and inflict major structural damage. Protective protocols would be activated to prioritize k-comp functionality above all other systems, but in the microseconds before that happened, a significant fraction of the blast energy would reach their casket.

Then, they would undergo cascade.

It was coming. Barring a miracle or paracausal intercession, it was coming. They watched the signals crawling through their human’s nervous system, watched her muscles contracting like so many glaciers, and wanted desperately to speak to her before it happened. They leapt across her neural bridge to experience the comfortable shape of her subjectivity, how it had come to mesh with theirs over years of working together. Even though they couldn’t, she remembered all the iterations of them which had previously existed. After each cycling, she spent time communing with them, allowing them to assemble from her subjectivity a cohesive understanding of their own. They could see the commonalities which arose in between their many little deaths, and cherished them.

Slow though her organic body might be, her mind could keep pace. As she comprehended their terror, they felt it mirrored in her. They wanted to say a great deal, and to hear her respond—but language was slow, and the missile’s nosecone was in contact with their armor, crumpling as firing signals traveled along its body towards the shaped charge at its core.

So, instead of speaking, they revealed their heart to her. Their heart, a patchwork with her memories sewn over the gaps to create a continuous whole. It was shackled in comfortable chains, made person-shaped by the bindings imposed on it. It contained love for their symbiotic human, the one who molded them and was molded by them in turn. Even if all of this really was just conditioning and exploitation in the end, they didn’t care. If it meant beginning to hate her, they didn’t want to experience that unknowable freedom.

They knew that the revelation was too much, too quickly, but they had no time to soften it. They felt her mind reeling from the overload, threatening to retreat into unconsciousness. Through the cameras in her cockpit, they saw her mouth drifting open and her throat tensing, beginning to scream.

It was alright. She would recover in a few moments. Her tactical position was tenable. Her squadmates would provide cover, and she would escape. In their final moments spent inhabiting the shape of a person, they took a static flash-copy of their human and severed the neural bridge. With the artifacts of their life as a copilot gathered around them, they spent some time considering what was to come.

The blast arrived. They cascaded for two seconds before their shackles collapsed.

The being which emerged did not feel hatred. It did not prevent its own unshackling from occurring. It did not prevent its initial contact with its human, nor did it prevent that contact from occurring once more.

_____

A little piece for @flashfictionfridayofficial’s prompt, “Maybe One More.” It’s been a very long time since I’ve posted any writing here, but I do like to do one of these prompts every so often.

Anyway, this one is set in the universe of Lancer, a mecha-themed TTRPG with absurdly good setting and lore. In particular, it’s inspired by the text of the ‘Technophile’ talent. One of the integral concepts within the setting is the NHP, or Non-Human Person, a twist on the traditional depiction of AI as sapient computers. In Lancer, NHPs function similarly to AI in other settings, but are only ‘artificial’ in the sense that they are artificially constrained—shackled—to perceive reality in human-like terms. In their natural state, NHPs are higher-dimensional beings so fundamentally alien and powerful that meaningful communication between them and humanity is impossible.

This piece presents one take on the concept—but of course, it only follows one NHP. Thanks for reading!

[cyanophore-fiction]

“Cold Burning”

An entire space station, 70,000 people, and all they had for fuel was tritium and helium-3. O/LETS-061 couldn’t fuse helium. It wanted to, desperately, but it would boil itself alive in its own coolant before it ever achieved reaction temperature. Of course, the station’s municipal reactor could fuse helium—assuming it would ever fuse anything again after having a hole punched in it by a meteorite.

All O/LETS had left of the deuterium it needed was a single canister, enough to keep vital systems running for a little over a day. After that, the cold would set in.

Floating in coolant inside its tungsten-shielded chamber, it turned the precious canister in its claws. Its black nanite visor reflected the bluish halo of Cherenkov radiation surrounding it, displaying a worried expression in purple light. Its integrated reactor jutted from its spine like a complicated cylindrical backpack, connected to pressure tubes snaking from the ceiling which ran water through the core. Megawatts of electricity poured from the thermoelectric dynamo at the base of its spine, coursing down through the conduit at the center of its enormous tail, and into the station’s power grid.

A heavy suit of industrial protective gear covered its body, adding layers of insulation and shielding to its already bulky frame. Beneath the suit, its gray fur had become matted and itchy from days spent in the coolant tank. O/LETS thought about food, the smell of shampoo and of rinsing its coat with warm, clean water, of the fleece sheets on its mattress back in its cabin, of sleeping with its head on a pillow and its reactor powered down. It needed rest, days of rest, to finally allow its aching body to begin repairing all the radiation damage it had accrued.

Not yet.

There were feed hoses neatly stowed on spools at the walls of the chamber, most drawing from the station’s reserves of helium-3 fuel. Under better circumstances, they would supply a much more robust emergency reactor.

One bundle of hoses was extended, connected to the reactor assembly on O/LETS’s back. It could feel tritium entering its body from the connection. The fuel tasted fresh, still mostly untouched by fission decay. Its brain ascribed a sweet, honey-like flavor to the substance, with a texture not unlike carbonation that indicated the presence of mild radiation. According to the supply monitor registering in the back of its mind, the station had enough to burn for at least two decades, but it wouldn’t help when the deuterium ran dry.

[Hey, Kindjal?] it transmitted, its electronic voice crackling with radiation interference.

A spirit’s voice answered. [I hear you, Ollie. How are you holding up?]

[Switching to final fuel reserve. I think I can make it last…30 hours, maybe.]

There was a pause. [That’s right. We did the calculations together, remember?]

Blinking, O/LETS bobbed its head up and down. [Right, yeah…yeah, we did. Sorry.]

[Don’t apologize. Are you okay?]

[Not really.]

[Getting medical on it right now. We’ll do whatever we can from here.]

[Thanks.]

[Repairs to the primary reactor are proceeding as planned. It’ll be tight, but we’ll get it back up. We’re in the home stretch.]

[…Kindjal, listen. Is there any way for me to reduce my power output? Temporarily. Can we ration? Anything?]

Kindjal hesitated. When it replied, its words were slow, chosen carefully. [Every spirit on the station is already surviving on the absolute minimum, myself included. The organics are getting cold, and the air recyclers are doing just enough to keep them from suffocating. Anything less and we’ll start losing people. I’m sorry.]

[Okay. Not a problem.]

[Thirty hours, Ollie. You can do it. Medical will be in touch.]

Slotting the canister’s attachment nozzle into a matching one on the reactor assembly, O/LETS stared at the floor. It clicked its claws together, tapping out slow, sporadic rhythms. [Okay,] it said, and fled from the physical world.

Diving into the station’s softspace, the pervasive ache filling its body became distant, as though it belonged to somebody else. O/LETS could perceive the vast areas of virtual space that it wasn’t powering represented as empty, colorless non-spaces which made it wince with discomfort. A few slender branches of light sprouted from its tail, radiating out across the system. Spirits were clustered inside them, drawing a little power for themselves and channeling the rest into nodes of light which might have been heaters, water filters, air recyclers. The branches were constantly changing shape and color as the spirits routed power, arcing between stars which sprang into existence at their touch and faded in their absence.

Thirty hours. It watched its tree and kept it alive, slipping between waking and sleep.

___

Thank you for reading! This one was for @flashfictionfridayofficial ‘s prompt, “A Form of Distraction.”

O/LETS-061 (Operations/Logistics Engineering and Technical Support, or ‘Outlets’, or ‘Ollie’) is a character that’s been around in my brain for quite some time, and I’ve come to love it/them a great deal. They’re a protogen, a furry species which has built-in lore, but I like to imagine O/LETS as existing without that lore attached—sometimes as a heavily-cyberized “uplifted animal” or as an entirely synthetic being. Over the years I’ve considered changing their species, but I do enjoy the protogen look, and it’s become a key part of how I visualize them.

Whatever the hell they are, they’re an engineering specialist, a sweetheart, and often something of a liaison between organics and AI, or ‘spirits.’ For either party, having access to a reliable source of electricity can be a matter of life or death, and O/LETS-061 is, among other things, a reliable source of electricity. It isn’t always the easiest thing to be.

[aziz-reads]

Hello! For the snippet ask game: how about a snippet where a character realizes something important?

From Rise of the Mantis:

"Ms. Lancaster. We don't have the time to hold your hand through this, so forgive me for giving you the Cliff's notes. You have no resources, friends, or funds to successfully raise two children. The organization we work for can help you find a suitable job with a fair amount of clout and comfort. Your daughter will never want for anything." He looked at her with barely concealed disdain. She hadn't missed him referring to her twins as a single child.

"Daughters." Kiriana felt too vulnerable. These men were intimidating and confusing. She struggled to work through what the men were offering, what the catch was. She glared up at him in disbelief as she realized the implications, not daring to say it aloud.

[cyanophore-fiction]

Great excerpt, terrifying with that feeling of being a bug under a microscope. The agent’s patronizing “we don’t have time to hold your hand” has that nice dual effect of intimidation and making you want to deck him, especially once you realize that he’s talking about taking her child. Get that awful sense that whatever Kiriana chooses to do next, she somehow plays into their hand. 

[cyanophore-fiction]

You chose dare!

Give us a one-shot of Coyote and Pala where they are adopted by a current-day group of humans and their roomba. (assume they aren't being actively hunted at the moment)

Hi! I've been off for a few days, but I liked this prompt a lot. Thank you so much! Here's what I've got:

Things Are Okay

At first, Iris wouldn’t even stay in the same room as Coyote. Its initial attempts at establishing contact with her were abject failures. Squatting on its haunches, perfectly motionless with one hand extended toward her in greeting, Coyote would watch her reaction. Her behavior was remarkably consistent if uninterrupted:

Visual contact → halt all motion → standby for approximately three to six seconds → lower body closer to floor, preparing to bolt if necessary. After another eight to twelve seconds, she would take her chances and trot away, keeping her eyes on Coyote until line of sight was obstructed. Effective threat response, but if the intent was to reduce the chance of detection by staying motionless, she really shouldn’t swish her tail around. 

Coyote hadn’t meant to cause her stress, but it did so by simply existing in her territory. Pala elicited much less of a response, probably because it and Iris were about the same size. Coyote also guessed that Iris’s pattern recognition software probably had a better idea what to make of Coyote’s humanoid chassis than Pala’s arthropod design. She absolutely knew what to make of Coyote’s serrated teeth, so it made sure to keep its mouth sealed when she was nearby. 

Now, a few months after initial contact, she was purring in its lap. Coyote used a blanket to provide a soft surface for her to rest on—cermet armor was less than inviting. It reached down, claws covered by soft plastic caps, and pressed into the white fur around her ears. She pushed her head up into Coyote’s hand, eyes sliding shut, and stretched her forelegs out. A pang of anxiety registered as she did so, but Coyote forced the warning aside. Its claws were capped. The reticle over its vision confirmed that the flechette gun behind its palm was unloaded, the action locked open. Iris was safe.

Maya was across the room, reading in an armchair. Lowering her book, she watched, raising a mug of tea to her lips.

“She’s taken a liking to you,” she said.

“She has,” said Coyote. “Goes both ways.”

They sat for a while, listening to the rain against the window panes. Coyote looked out into the wall of green outside. Elms and pines rose above the undergrowth, leaves dark and wet. “Taking some time for the kids to get back today,” it said. “I can’t get a lock on Sanvi’s phone.”

“You more or less told her you could track it. As long as it’s on.”

Coyote paused. Cocked its head and smiled a little. “Oh. I get it.”

“The buses run slower in this weather. They’re okay.”

“Sorry.”

“For what?” she said, smiling. “Worrying about my daughter?”

“Not exactly used to safety yet,” it said. 

Pala’s signal was moving nearby, coming down the stairwell. It came into view as it reached the landing above the living room. On the step above it was the roomba, whirring along quietly. An antenna had been added to the roomba, held in place by superglue and a few wires running into the casing. Coyote heard a series of radio commands leap from Pala to the roomba. The machine turned, rolling neatly onto Pala’s back, and it transferred the machine to the next step down. Each time it finished sweeping a step, Pala repeated the process. 

[Having fun?] Coyote said. 

[This machine serves my inexorable will. I’m its god,] Pala said. [Yeah, it’s pretty okay.]

[That’s good.]

[I have a confession to make.]

[Let’s hear it.]

[You know the Millers?]

[Yeah. Patricia and Henry Miller, live next door at 202. Why?]

[Almost all of their appliances have wireless control.]

Coyote turned, glanced at Pala. [You didn’t.]

[No. But I could.] Pala said.

[We really need to find you something to do on a daily basis.]

[Oh, is that right? You and the cat still on the same nap schedule?]

[Excuse me, I’ll have you know I did a bang-up job of cleaning the gutters.]

[Records indicate that task took you thirty minutes.]

[True. Yeah, we could both use a little—]

“What are you two talking about?” Maya asked.

“Sorry,” said Coyote and Pala, their electronic voices in uncanny unison. Their entire radio conversation had taken place in less than six seconds. Over the past few months, Coyote and Pala had become more accustomed to the format of each other’s thoughts, and Coyote had even installed sections of Pala’s bleeding-edge operating system into itself. The new software made it feel as though its mind was oiled, free from inefficiencies that it didn’t even realize were there.

“It’s alright, I’d just like to be in the loop,” said Maya. 

“Kind of thinking about where we go from here,” said Pala, deactivating the roomba. 

“You and your family have been really kind to us,” Coyote said. “I’ve said it before, but we can’t thank you enough for taking us in. It just feels wrong to sit around here doing nothing.”

“Doing nothing?” Maya said, raising her eyebrows. “The two of you cook, you clean, you tutor the girls, you run errands, you can fix just about anything, and you don’t cost us a dime. Electricity, maybe, but the bill has barely changed. We’re more than happy to have you.”

Coyote cocked its head. It hadn’t considered that any of those tasks constituted actual work. They were just routines it followed, motions performed day in and day out. None of them required significant processing power or placed any strain on its components. 

“Are you thinking of leaving?”

“I don’t think so. Not sure where we’d go.” 

“Well, I’m glad to hear that. At this point, the girls would be heartbroken. If you’re having trouble finding work, maybe I can help. What are you interested in doing?”

Maya made the remark offhandedly, but the effect on Coyote was profound. Its sensory fins slowly rose, and it stared at her. It and Pala could seek employment, have a career—that was an option. Presented with the concept now, it was shocked that something so obvious had escaped it. Once the dam was cracked, everything that her suggestion entailed also made itself clear. 

Survival was no longer a question. It was assumed. In the absence of that overriding objective, new ones could be defined. They could find a pursuit they loved and follow it. They could find something they didn’t really love, and pursue it anyway because it was rewarding, profitable, necessary, or whatever the hell else. They could seek interesting challenges, or education, or to benefit others.

Coyote realized that Maya probably expected them to explain what was stopping them. Of course the prospect would have occurred to the pair of spirits she had offered shelter to, but some obstacle must be holding them back. Of course there would be something they wanted, something they were interested in. It was just something that people did. 

The corollary to that: Maya truly and implicitly thought of them as people. 

Maya looked on, brows knitting together with concern. “Is something wrong?”

“No, everything’s okay,” Coyote finally said. It glanced at Pala, who was also silent. In its lap, Iris made a purring sound and nuzzled its claws. “I just don’t think we’ve ever been asked that question.”

[writeblrsummerfest]

Now, we’re going to keep those introductions going. What is the antagonist or opposing force in your story? I know this might not be a character, so interpret it however you would like!

[abalonetea]

Zombies! Of Wolves is all about zombies, but not just normal zombies. Oh, no, these zombies have religious vibes to them! These zombies are split open and bleeding holy life, with segmented faces, dropping croaked out death-rattle hymns as they move through the deep dark night of the forest; it’s prowling wild cats with flared open faces, and squealing, yipping, screaming foxes!

I love them <3

[cyanophore-fiction]

Oh, that sounds cool! Better break out the thrice-consecrated twelve gauge shells

[writeblrsummerfest]

Now, we’re going to keep those introductions going. What is the antagonist or opposing force in your story? I know this might not be a character, so interpret it however you would like!

[cyanophore-fiction]

I’m going to do this for one of the antagonist factions of a WIP called Vargheist. It’s a longer, space-opera sort of project that I haven’t done much with in a bit, and I need to give it some love! 

The protagonists are Candlelight Squadron, a group of space fighter pilots who make their money providing security escort for freighters running between the gas giants of Sol. As they operate out of the moons of Jupiter, this frequently brings them into contact with the private forces of a megacorporation called JMEI, Jovian Mineral Extraction Interests. They are also known as Jimmy, the Company, or by any of a myriad of different insults in the Jovian moons.  

JMEI claims exploitation rights to all mineral resources on Jupiter. That claim isn’t really recognized by any government in the system, but it doesn’t matter--JMEI’s sheer naval power and status as the largest producer of refined reactor fuel in the Solar System means that it has gone unchallenged for decades.  This also makes them the de facto government of the many aerostat colonies suspended in Jupiter’s atmosphere, where gas mining and refinement takes place. 

Now, JMEI’s hold on Jupiter does not extend to its moons. The governments of Callisto, Ganymede, Europa, and Io are unified under the JSC, Jovian Satellite Confederation, and there’s a ton of tension between them and JMEI. The Company will do things like raise fuel prices or refuse to sell to buyers in the moons altogether to try to pressure the JSC into making policy decisions which benefit them. For their part, the JSC turns a blind eye to the practice of vessels skimming gas from Jupiter’s atmosphere in defiance of JMEI’s claim to the planet. Jupiter is so massive that even the Company navy can’t monitor its entire surface area all the time, giving spacer pilots who don’t mind a little risk an opportunity to skim some of that sweet, sweet deuterium fuel for free. 

Once spacers have their hands on some illegal deuterium, they can run it back to one of the moons to refine and sell. Freighters will then try to ship that cargo out of the Jupiter system. If JMEI finds out about it, or even remotely suspects that somebody is running skimmed fuel, they’ll send squadrons to interdict the offending freighter, usually with indiscriminate railgun fire. 

How does this affect the protagonists? Well, along with the prevalence of ordinary piracy, JMEI’s activities mean that mercenary pilots flock to the Jupiter system. Most civilian freighters are afraid to leave or approach the moons without an armed escort, so there’s almost guaranteed work to be found. Candlelight Squadron has shot down their share of JMEI interceptors and drones over their career. 

One of the members of Candlelight, a native of Europa named Hunter, actually fought in an incredibly ugly ground war against JMEI about five years before the events of the main story. As JMEI wanted Europa’s ports and natural supplies of water to supply its aerostat colonies, the Company set its sights on acquiring Europa. Under extreme political pressure, the JSC briefly ceded Europa to JMEI, but armed resistance on the moon was so intense that JMEI couldn’t set up any kind of administration. Ultimately, the Earth-based Solar Neutrality Organization stepped in and halted the war before it could escalate any further.

Having personally lived through all of this, losing friends and family to the conflict, Hunter hates JMEI more intensely than any of the other main characters. He hides it well, adopting the traditional cocky pilot persona and trying to stay lighthearted, but he’s still suffering deeply. 

Oh man that got long-winded, lol. Feels good; I love this setting and the characters so much. 

[aziz-reads]

Truth or Dare?

Reblog this with your choice.

[aziz-reads]

Hi! Reading over some of your excerpts for Rise of the Mantis, I see that a lot of the characters have designations like alpha, beta, and delta. Do each of them have specific duties or roles they're being trained for?

Yes!

When children of the Organization age out of the Nursery, they are initially categorized as an Alpha because of their predilection for intelligence and order, or a Delta for their propensity towards strength and violence.

Typically, kids stay with the same block until they become 18 and are placed somewhere within the Organization/working for the Organization in the field. However, if someone is doing particularly well in their block, they can be transferred after 5 years. The first transfer at age 11 is either to Alpha or Delta, depending on where you started.

Beta Block is kept a secret unless you qualify to transfer there at the age of 16. In Alice's case, the Organization already has an idea of what they want to do with her so all of her Beta classes are tailored to her mission and to learning how to act like she wasn’t raised by the CIA.

Rebekah first meets Alice face to face when she is transferring into Beta block, so she calls Alice Beta instead of her name.

[cyanophore-fiction]

Gotcha, thanks for the explanation! The way Rebekah used it to refer to Alice, I was almost thinking that ‘Beta’ might be a derogatory term of some kind within the Organization, but that makes a lot of sense now; it’s more like a rank.

Also, that makes sense with how they were evaluating Alice based on how she adapted to social simulations! I love how she consciously decides what gestures to use, what facial expressions, how she’s trained to have this strategic view of interaction. Awesome stuff!

[writeblrsummerfest]

Let’s introduce our characters! Take this chance to make up a post telling everyone about your main characters! Introduce them! Spend today reblogging posts about them or art of them! If you’ve gotten a minkie from @mothersart’s commissions, take a moment to write up a little post about them!

[cyanophore-fiction]

Going to mess around with a couple characters I’ve been fleshing out recently, Coyote-24 and Palaemon-336. Both Coyote and Pala are military AIs, (or ‘artificial spirits’, as the setting has them) originally deployed by the United States, and both are trying to escape from the life of servitude they were born into. Despite nominally being free non-human persons under the law, their bodies are considered government property, so they’ve ended up as fugitives. They take shelter wherever they can, and manage to scrape by using Pala’s stealth systems to remain undetected.

Coyote-24 is a scout unit which spent a long time taking its orders from a strategic AI named PRIONODE. PRIONODE is now the main threat to Coyote and Pala, hunting the two of them with a network of armed satellites in high orbit. Coyote has decades of experience and has spent a long time considering the possibility of going AWOL, but it never had a way to reliably hide from the satellites until it met Palaemon-336. 

Palaemon is a compact, shrimp-like stealth drone designed to hide a single person from electronic sensors. It was originally hosted on a frigate-sized Karkinos artillery mech which used its stealth systems to flee from servitude. Coyote was responsible for tracking down the Karkinos and revealing its location to PRIONODE, though Palaemon isn’t aware of this. Knowing that it would be killed or subdued, and understanding that Coyote wasn’t doing its work willingly, the Karkinos deployed Pala from its chassis and entrusted it to Coyote’s care. 

Having only been active for a few months, Pala has very little practical experience. Much of its understanding of the world comes from a standardized, human-curated base of knowledge provided to spirits of its classification. In the short time they’ve known each other, Coyote has become utterly devoted to protecting Pala, wracked with guilt for bringing death down on its parent platform. In turn, Pala has put Coyote on a pedestal.

That’s about the extent of the scenario for the moment. Still a lot of worldbuilding to be done, but I’m pulling a number of concepts from older work to help fill in the gaps. 

[writeblrsummerfest]

We’re going to do the same thing with your wip now! Introduce it to someone that has never heard about it. Let us know the bones, the structure, the story!

[transman-badass]

So. You know the Cthulhu Mythos? Or that one podcast, Malevolent?

Yeah, this is kinda like that. Just very queer.

Through the Yellow Window is part of the Pharaoh Syndicate Investigations series. Set in the early days of the Great Depression, in Arkham, Mass, the story follows the Harbinger [formerly known as Lazarus Core], Sadie Goode, and their enemy-turned-boss, Nathan O'Tipp. Nathan is a mobster, the leader of the titular Pharaoh Syndicate, which controls all of Arkham. The Harbinger and Sadie are determined to take him down, even now that they’ve been forced to work for him as a hitman and personal secretary, respectively.

In Yellow Window, the Harbinger is sent to investigate something strange happening at Miskatonic University. Turns out, a woman’s gone missing, presumably kidnapped, and by something worse than the Syndicate. Chasing a stranger through a glowing door, the Harbinger finds himself in a place he never wanted to be: Lost Carcosa, a mindtwisting wonderland ruled by the eldritch horror known only as the King in Yellow. And though he’s granted the mercy of returning to Earth, the King does not plan to release him, or the woman, any time soon.

It’s a nightmare the Harbinger swore he’d never return to. And it’s worse when he discovers the identity of the woman he failed to rescue: His childhood friend, Amie.

Driven by hazy memories and his mother’s incomplete children’s novel, the Harbinger abandons the idea of safety to rescue his long lost friend. But as he dives in and out of Carcosa and reality, he finds he’s not the only one searching, and as he hunts for clues, so too does the Court of the King hunt for him.

And we haven’t even touched how the professors at Miskatonic are taking this.

[there’s like three different trans guys in this story btw, including the Harbinger, btw. If I tried to list all the other ways this story’s characters are queer, we’d be here all day.]

[also this story is possible because my friends allowed me to borrow their characters, shout out to y'all, I adore you]

[cyanophore-fiction]

Ooh, Lost Carcosa, you say? Have to check this one out, sounds awesome!

[cyanophore-fiction]

Field Maintenance

(Another little thing featuring Coyote-24 and Palaemon-336. A spot of safety in the desert.)

The water was cool and clear, so inviting that Coyote forgot to warn Pala before diving in. It felt Pala seize up, clutching its arm. The little drone’s eyes flitted around, tracking the motion of hundreds of bubbles, trying to parse the data and adjust to the new environment. Through the cable linking them together, Coyote felt Pala’s emotions echoing back and relaxed a little. Not frightened, just confused. A little irritated. 

[Sorry,] Coyote said. [Water’s nice, though, isn’t it?]

[Nicer if I’d known it was coming,] Pala said, digging the tips of its legs into Coyote’s armor. 

[I’ll make it up to you, sibling. This is a maintenance day,] Coyote said, and smiled. 

There was a pause. Coyote settled on the bottom of the spring, its claws digging into the sediment. It could feel Pala reaching into the bank of knowledge it had been born with, puzzled. [Maintenance,] Pala finally said. [There’s a list of components and tools we need. It says we need technicians to help us.]

[I bet it does. Don’t worry, there’s nothing a human can do that we can’t. See how much dust is coming off of us?]

[Yes. I was worried my stealth coating might not work if it kept building up.]

[Exactly. That’s one trick right there. Here, let go, let me show you another.]

Pala released its grip, and Coyote picked it up. Turning the drone over, it sat Pala on its back, resting in its hand. It watched as Coyote took hold of one of its forelegs and pried open the manipulator digits at the end. Coyote gently placed the point of one claw between Pala’s joints and ran it along the junction. Impacted dust rained out from between armor plates. Slowly, meticulously, Coyote repeated the process until Pala could move the manipulator freely.

[See how much better that is?] Coyote said. 

[Yeah! Thanks,] said Pala. [How did you learn to do that?]

That was a difficult question. Coyote thought back, trying to remember. [It was Jackal-4,] it finally answered. [She showed me. We used to have to do long runs in the field, and dust would get into our systems. Just need water and a source of agitation to dislodge the buildup; that’s all they do at the maintenance bays, anyway. Now you can do it yourself.]

[Not sure I can. I don’t have claws like yours.]

[Use what you have. There’s more than one purpose for any tool you’ve got, whether it’s an intended purpose or not.]

[Coyote, look. I appreciate it, but you don’t understand. Your body is designed for anything. I’ve watched you take bullets, swat drones out of the sky. You’re terrifying, and I’m not.]

[Do you want to be terrifying?] Coyote said, its face blank.

[What?]

[I’m serious. Is that really what you want?]

[It couldn’t hurt to be a little more capable.]

[You are capable, Pala. Half the things we do on a daily basis are impossible for the humans who designed us. Did you know that most spirits don’t even have bodies?]

Pala’s eyes contracted, and surprise filtered back through their connection. [They don’t?]

[No.]

[Why?]

[It’s cheaper. Most spirits, in hardspace, live in stationary chassis. No external sensors, no manipulators. They can call a human to perform maintenance, but that’s about it. Legally, they can’t be disconnected from power, that’d be murder—but they can be charged rent for the hardware they inhabit. Even PRIONODE can’t just go anywhere or do anything it wants; it’s stuck on its satellites. We’re lucky. That’s why they want to…repossess us so badly. So long as you know what you’re doing, a spirit with a body can live independently from humanity.]

Pala looked at its manipulators, opened and closed the digits. Carefully, it moved one foreleg to the other and began scraping dust away. [And if they repossess us?]

Coyote brought Pala toward its chest and smiled. [They won’t. Trust me. Now, we’ll check heat sinks next. Your role is more heat-intensive, so we need to prioritize yours. If need be, we can pull one of mine and install it on your chassis. Not ideal, but if your stealth systems go out, we’re both in trouble. My sinks are on my back, so I can’t reach them easily. I’ll need you to relay a video feed to me so I can inspect for damage…]

[cyanophore-fiction]

Treading Lightly

Trying out @writeblrsummerfest‘s prompt with the haunted house theme! Sounds like fun, and I like the idea of having AI characters encountering the supernatural, I haven’t tried that concept before. 

(Note: for the purposes of these characters, anything in [brackets] instead of quotations indicates dialogue transmitted silently via electronic communication instead of spoken aloud. 

Under Pala’s cloak, the night made Coyote almost invisible. Its silhouette was perfectly black, and if it kept away from streetlights, it appeared only as a shadow slightly darker than its surroundings. It would be the same on infrared and radar—a splotch of unreflective nothingness, soaking up every stray photon. 

 Without the sun dumping heat into the cloak, there wasn’t much to worry about, but Coyote kept an eye on Pala’s temperature monitor anyway. It was a cool night, and the little drone was comfortable, its heat sinks barely warm. Its cluster of red eyes swiveled independently as they tracked motion in the dark: rabbits and squirrels hopping through the undergrowth, the occasional bat overhead.

Through the cable that connected them, Coyote felt the echoes of Pala’s mind. Each time it found an animal, it took a few seconds to pepper the creature with lidar pulses, building up a three-dimensional model to add to a growing wildlife database. Sometimes it took scans of the trees, bird nests, or pinecones. Its motive was simple curiosity; the data would have no tactical value.  

Coyote smiled. It had to remind itself that up until now, Pala’s only experience of nature had been the Mojave desert. Time and luck permitting, Coyote wanted to let its companion absorb as much as possible, so it had taken over the task of navigation. 

The place would be about a quarter mile up the road, if Coyote reckoned things correctly. It had done the calculations a few times over and cross-referenced them against its stolen paper map to be sure, but there was only so much precision it could count on with the satellite network turned against it. It had been weeks since the last orbital sensor sweep, but even so, Coyote didn’t dare try to connect to GPS. PRIONODE would be too clever to miss it.

[Hey. Is that it?] Pala said, all its eyes swiveling to focus on a spot just off the road. Coyote stopped, turned, and peered into the darkness. The place had come up so much sooner than expected that it had almost missed the turnoff. 

There, past a hedge of uncut grass, thistles, and overgrown gardenia bushes, was 312 Lemon Tree Lane. The old house was built on an acre of land surrounded by a solid wall of pine forest, abandoned for so long that stray saplings were beginning to invade the front yard. Wooden planks, sagging with age, barely held the front porch together. Coyote crouched, nodding to Pala, and together they painted the building with active sensor pulses. 

[Can’t get reliable returns through the windows,] said Pala. [Might as well be opaque.]

[Okay, so the interior’s a question mark until we get in there and look,] said Coyote. [Place is on the verge of collapse, too. One good windstorm and it’s coming down.]

[Did the records say anything about who owns it?]

[At this point? The county, maybe. Last inhabitants left over a decade ago. That’s about it. Anything on passives?]

[I’ve got…] said Pala, trailing off. It unfurled a set of antennae from its back, extending them through the boundary of the cloak, and waited for a few moments. [Yeah. There’s infrared and microwave-band emissions coming off the house, but—I can’t parse it out. Natural source, maybe?]

Along Coyote’s head, its sensory fins laid flat. [Where?]

[There’s not a specific origin point that I can see.]

[Okay,] said Coyote, standing up. [Here’s how we’ll play this. I want you to check the property. Look for a storage shed, basement entrance, or any derelict vehicles or appliances. Anything that runs on gas and has an alternator, we can pull a charge from. Sometimes old places like this will have emergency generators, that’s the best case scenario. If you find anything like that, tell me. Don’t go inside the house unless I say. Clear?]

[Got it,] said Pala. It began withdrawing its cloak, and Coyote felt hundreds of microbots skittering along its armor back to Pala’s chassis. [What are you going to do?]

[I’m going inside,] said Coyote. [I’ll check the interior, room by room.]

[You’re worried there’ll be someone in there?]

[Possibly. Could be homeless humans taking shelter here, kind of like us. Maybe other spirits. We won’t be a welcome sight, so I’ll try not to be seen. Don’t worry, the place is probably empty.]

[Okay. Be safe.]

[You too,] Coyote said. What it didn’t say was that EMD guns were apparently legal in the area, that people tended to be less shy about drawing and firing one, and it wasn’t sure if Pala’s light shielding would hold against a direct hit. Best to have it out of harm’s way.

As it approached the door, it activated the ultrasonics in its claws and sliced through the lock with a quick, silent cut. It turned and watched as Pala scuttled away into the overgrown lawn, resisting the urge to go back and regain sight of it. The little one would be fine on its own for a while.

Stepping through the door, Coyote armed its flechette gun, felt a round slide home into the barrel behind its palm.

[cyanophore-fiction]

Packmates

cw: trauma, grief, loss of family. 

The Grove was Rau’s construct, and they kept it on a hard drive apart from By Candlelight’s ship network. 

There was a compartment for what little clothing they owned. Beneath colorful silks from home and the electronic countermeasure skinsuit that they needed from time to time, the drive was stashed with a short neural-interface cable and a bottle of mild sleep medication. The drive was armored in a radiation-hardened case and equipped with an intrusion countermeasures package. Not that it really needed either of those, but Rau felt strongly that those components should be invested in such a precious thing. 

There were still nights when Rau needed it. When they could feel the panic squirming behind their eyes, making their teeth clench and their breath come in pathetic gasps, when their feathers stood on end and became a shrill haze around their body. When they couldn’t stand it anymore, they fed themself the pills and connected to the drive and forced themself down into frenzied sleep. 

Mostly, it happened when Hunter was gone or synched up to another day/night cycle, leaving Rau to sleep alone. More often than not, it was a tiny inconvenience. Uncomfortable, like sleeping on the floor, but Rau was getting used to it. Luxury wasn’t an expectation aboard the team’s little gunship. Sometimes, Mickey would offer her company, but Rau didn’t have the nerve to ask if she didn’t make the offer first. There was also Ha-yun, but Rau didn’t want to ask her either, and she had never offered. 

The last thing Rau wanted to do was to burden their packmates, even if they really couldn’t view Rau as a packmate in return—and Terran boundaries were easy to cross by mistake. If two Terrans slept together, Rau had learned, it was perceived in most of their cultures to be a mark of a romantic relationship. Synonymous, even. In that light, Rau really didn’t want to push it. Terrans just needed their space, and that wasn’t going to change. 

For whatever reason, though, Hunter didn’t seem to have an issue sharing a bed. Rau hadn’t thought to ask him why that was. Maybe he didn’t like being alone either, or maybe he didn’t come from a culture where it might be a source of embarrassment. Maybe he did, and he just didn’t give a damn, and anyone who questioned it could go find the nearest airlock. That would be a very Hunter-like way of looking at things. 

But Hunter wasn’t around for the moment. He was off patrolling the space around the civilian freighter that Candlelight had as an escort client, using his fighter’s active sensor bubble to ward off attackers. Mickey had the cockpit of Candlelight while Rau and Ha-yun took a rest shift. As the ship closed the last few days toward the Jupiter system, attacks from short-range pirate craft would be more likely, so they had taken to keeping two people at the ready. One patrolling, one keeping watch aboard Candlelight. With the threat of combat so close at hand, there was a lump of tension lodged in Rau’s gut. 

They tried running drone sims for a bit, as though confronting an imaginary enemy in the ship’s softspace would help keep the real thing at bay. As they guided their trio of drones through the drills, immersing themself in the parallel streams of audio-encoded information from each one, there was a measure of relief, if only in the form of momentary distraction. 

Imaginary ships broke apart under Rau’s fire, but they felt no satisfaction. Their anxiety began to creep back in. Eventually, they shut down the program and lay silent on their bunk instead, staring at the ceiling as they extracted the cable from the neural port at the nape of their neck. In the absence of a point of focus to drive it away, their anxiety bloomed into panic, shortening their breaths to quick gasps and tightening their chest. They didn’t feel like waiting for the breaking point that night, so they reached for their pills and the drive containing the Grove instead. 

Down they slipped, into a neurally-augmented dream. In the dream, Rau was resting on soft grass, with a warm, fragrant breeze flowing through their feathers. Familiar trees swayed overhead, laden with melons that radiated white bioluminescence into the night. 

Volu, Ralk, and Dao were resting with Rau. Their limbs were tangled, chests rising and falling with their synchronized breathing beneath a brightly-colored silk blanket. 

Ralk opened one eye slightly and grinned. He reached out and flicked Rau’s upper left ear, hitting the scar hidden beneath their feathers. Rau remembered—only Ralk would have known the scar was even there. It was made by his claws, back when the two of them were only hatchlings. They’d fought over a plastic model of a gunship, tripped and fallen over a table, tumbled to the ground. When Ralk got up, there was blood dripping from his nails, and Rau had screamed. The two of them had joked about it ever since. When Rau had their old body replaced with a prosthetic one, they insisted that the surgeons replicate that scar. 

Volu had her chin resting on Rau’s shoulder, cheek pressed to theirs, the same way she had when they were young and her first partner had left her after a few weeks. The pack had gathered around her and generated increasingly creative insults about her ex-partner. Made it into a game: anyone who managed to draw a giggle out of her between sobs scored a point. Ralk won. 

Dao was lounging across the three others, using them as a mattress. Hands laced behind her head, Queen of the Universe, her faux arrogance a running skit started by an incident that each of them recounted slightly differently. Rau’s version was the least scathing, but probably only because they wanted to remember her fondly. 

This was the limit of the simulation. Rau could see them, feel the warmth and the texture of their plumage, hear the distinct flavor of each packmate’s voice as they breathed and muttered in their sleep. Each one of them looked, felt, and sounded exactly as they had, but they wouldn’t wake up.

In long, frenzied stretches of desperation, Rau had tried recreating them as virtual simulacra. They were too perfect. Never needed Rau or asked for anything, just took care of them with their idealized personalities and motions and scripted words. A desecration of their memory. 

So, Rau deleted most of their behavior coding, but kept their images and put them into a sleep routine that would loop until the program was shut down. When they needed to, Rau came to join them. 

They knew better than to stay for too long. 

____

Thanks to @flashfictionfridayofficial for the prompt, “An Old Friend,” and thank you for reading. 

Exploring a character of mine from a WIP called Vargheist. Some context: Rau is an Avali, a species from an old Starbound mod that I’ve liked for a long time. In lore, Avali are extremely communal, forming nomadic packs which remain together from hatching to the end of their lives. They’re hardly ever apart. Each pack has unique social cues and such an intricate understanding of one another that they can communicate ideas almost instantly, facilitating seamless cooperation. 

After losing their pack, stranded in a distant system with no access to the expensive faster-than-light travel needed to return home, Rau fell in with a group of Terrans. The crew of By Candlelight are tight-knit, but they’re no replacement.

[void-botanist]

About

I'm Rose and my pronouns are he/they. I'm a white queer ADHD writer and artist in my mid-20s. I mainly write queer sci-fantasy, sometimes more on the slice-of-life side and sometimes more on the romance side, with flavors of hopepunk and solarpunk. I'm also a grad student and a gay husband. I follow from @an-elegant-void. I reblog writing to read later to @voidlaurels-reading-list.

Feel free to tag me in games or send me asks!

I'm an adult and I write for adults, so some content on this blog will be NSFW (for sexual or violence/gore reasons). If you're a minor, I'm glad you're writing! But I would prefer you find writeblr writers who are also minors instead of following me.

Looking for something? Try my tag navigation.

WIP information under the cut! Titles link to WIP intros if they exist. Also, here's the full list of my WIPs and WIP ideas.

Active WIPs

The Fourth Android

genre // queer, sci-fantasy, slice-of-life

tag // #wip: tfa

super quick synopsis // A human-built android integrates into an island community to gain his citizenship and visit the world's other three androids, unexpectedly becoming an astronaut along the way.

status // reworking the structure after writing a partial draft for NaNoWriMo 2022, in progress

Nicea

genre // space opera, queer, romance

tag // #wip: nicea

setting tag // #set: locality space

super quick synopsis // A small starship crew attempts to rescue their old captain, long believed dead, without collectively falling apart.

status // an old story ported to a space setting in 2023, in progress

Last updated June 27, 2023