“Pressing forcefully” encapsulated most interactions with her mothers, as they reminded her often that they worried about her solitary tendencies. The Tiralan cannot live alone, her foremother had said, at least a hundred times.

It wasn’t as if she was completely by herself either; she lived with Aevi, but her foremother, Inatol, claimed that Aevi didn’t count, and this essential disagreement offered another source of contention.

Qalu wished she could earn a respite from the constant meddling. She eyed Helix’s Tiralan form. A ridiculous yet convenient solution glimmered to life, carrying with it all the excitement of a new experiment. It would solve her problem and protect Helix from discovery. But she shouldn’t mention it yet. They probably had time before the interruptions began, and there were more critical issues to assess.

“Can you move?” she asked.

“Move what?”

“Your body. The process will likely be different than the way you interacted with your mechanical format.”

After what looked like a struggle, Helix raised his left lower limb, and then he snapped, “This meat vessel is broken! It does nothing that I request or require.”

“You were trying to lift something else? I wonder if the interface is interpreting your neural signals correctly. There may be…challenges.” She fetched the scanner and ran diagnostics, but all the readings fell within expected parameters. “Or it could be that you must adapt to this new style of communication and there may be a learning curve.”

“What does that mean?” He was cross, which she’d theorized was possible, but it was exciting to have the hypothesis proven.

The ones she had developed were all calm and somewhat remote, and none of them had reached the level of self-sufficiency that made her feel comfortable putting them in the prototype. But the code she’d glimpsed in the ship database—gorgeous, pure, a complete cascade with complex connections and—

Don’t forget your primary purpose. Qalu often got distracted, and sometimes she forgot to consume nutrition when she fixated on a problem.

“That there will probably be a period of adjustment, and I will assist you in any manner you require as you learn what it’s like to be Tiralan.”

“I am not—” Helix started, but then he appeared to recollect his new situation. “Yes. There is a great deal of new knowledge I must acquire. And if it is possible, I would like to uncover how precisely I arrived in this predicament.”

“Though I can’t guarantee efficacy, I’ll work with you to try to recover those lost memories,” Qalu promised.