“And the Dome?”

“We saw you undergo some perceptual trauma. I knew you would come here.”

In the long silence, their eyes met and she could feel her pulse quicken.

“How do I escape this?”

“In your pod. It is the only way, we believe.” His tones were slow and somber.

This was the first time she had ever seen any Prefect show any emotion not cool and reserved. When she stood, her head spun. Deftly, the Prefect supported her.

The pod clasped her with a velvet touch. The Prefect had prepped it by remote and turned up the heat. Around her was the scent of tension as the tech attendants, a full throng of them, silently helped her in. They all know… have been watching…

The pod’s voice used a calm, mellow woman’s tone. “The Sigma AI awaits you.”

Preliminaries were pointless, Rachel knew. When the hushed calm descended around her and she knew the AI was present, she crisply said, “What are you doing to me?”

I act as my Overs command. I seek to know you and, through you, your mortal kind.

“You did it to Ajima and you tried the same with me.”

He reacted badly.

“He hated your being in him, didn’t he?”

Yes, strangely. I thought it was part of the bargain. He could not tolerate intrusion. I did not see that until his fever overcame him. Atop the Dome he became unstable, unmanageable. It was an… accident of misunderstanding.

“You killed him.”

Our connection killed him. We exchange experiences, art, music, culture. I cannot live as you do, in a helpful body, so we exchange what we have.

“You want to live through us! So you give us your culture in return.”

Your culture is largely inferior to that of my Overs. The exchange must be equal, so I do what is of value to me. My Overs understand this. They know I must live, too, in my way.

“You don’t know what death means, do you?”

I cannot. My centuries spent propagating here are, I suppose, something like what death means to you. A nothing.

She almost choked on her words. “We do not awake… from that… nothing.”

Can you be sure?

She felt a rising anger and knew the AI would detect it. “We’re damn sure we don’t want to find out.”

That is why my Overs made me feel gratitude toward those who must eventually die. It is our tribute to you, from we beings who will not.

Yeah, but you live in a box. And keep trying to get out. “You have to stop.”

This is the core of our bargain. Surely you and your superiors know this.

“No! Did your Overs have experience with other SETI civilizations? Ones who thought it was just fine to let you infiltrate the minds of those who spoke to you?”

Of course.

“They agreed? What kind of beings were they?”

One was machine-based, much like my layered mind. Others were magnetic-based entities who dwelled in the outer reaches of a solar system. They had command over the shorter-wavelength microwave portions of the spectrum, which they mostly used for excretion purposes.