Selene put her face close to the surface of what would have been its abdomen. Its flesh had a pliant, organic quality to it when pressed, but it also had that reflective metallic sheen. Dimly, she could see her own face there, the hard line of the terminator down the centre of her features.
“Are you an Aetheral?” she asked it out loud, stepping back to peer up at it.
The reply, as before, came as words in her mind, their tone fluting. “I hadn't heard that word until you used it. Is that what I am?”
However it was doing it, it was clearly speaking to both of them at the same time. Ondo replied, “We don't know for sure. Do you have a name?”
“I have never had the need for one. Who would use it?”
“It's going to be a hell of a lot easier for everyone if you do have a name,” said Selene.
“What name should I use?”
Simply calling the entity Aetheral felt oddly disrespectful. Selene spoke out loud to Ondo. “You talked about the myths; what names were given to the Aetherals in those stories?”
Ondo was minutely studying the entity's fingers, although his perception would be limited without his multiglasses. “I can think of several. Perhaps the most well-known tale concerns an entity called Surtr, a giant who came to the rescue of the people of the planet Mannenorm when an asteroid was identified on an impact trajectory. The descriptions of Surtr bear some resemblance to this entity: the great size and the three eyes. Interestingly, the name Surtr or something like it crops up in multiple unrelated civilisations.”
“What did the Surtr in the story do?”
“It flew into space, intercepted the asteroid and punched it so hard that it split into three lumps of rock. In some versions of the story, they became the triple moons of Mannenorm.”
“Okay, so not a hugely reliable piece of evidence.” She turned back to the entity. “Can we call you Surtr?”
“It is as good a name as any. All that matters is that it uniquely identifies me within my social grouping, yes?”
“Yeah, sure. Are you an organic entity or a mechanism?”
“I don't know how to answer that. I have had to infer the meaning of some concepts used in your language, and I have not been able to translate a number of terms with a high degree of confidence.”
“Organic means alive, growing naturally, reproducing, whereas a mechanism is artificial, constructed.”
“But then, what are you?” Surtr asked. Its triple eyes stared down at Selene. “I can see that you are dual in nature.”
It made a good point. “I'm a fun combination of the two: half natural, half artificial. You are able to detect the distinction?”
“I see two different classes of structure, intertwined and yet diverse in nature,” Surtr said. It reached out to touch the side of her face with one of its eight fingers, stroking the flesh of her right cheek. She let it do it. Its touch was surprisingly soft, little more than a caress, sending a shiver through the muscles of her jaw.
“This is organic skin,” she said. “This is what's left of my original body.”
She took its hand, powerful digits dwarfing her own, and put its fingertips to the left side of her face, the bare black substrate with its sparkling flecks of silver. “And this is artificial, constructed by Ondo in order to save my life after I was injured.”
“Who injured you?” asked Surtr as it touched her biomechanical flesh.
“I'm just one more victim of Concordance.”
“That name is associated with strong emotional responses of rage and fear in your mind, but I do not know who or what Concordance is.”
“They've never been here?” Ondo asked.
“If they have, I have never seen them or recognized them.”
The entity lowered its hand and considered Selene, as if trying to process what it had learned. “It seems there is much that I don't understand.”
“We'll talk about Concordance later,” said Selene. “Can you at least see the difference between my two halves?”
The entity blinked, its three eyes opening and shutting in a rapid cycle as if it didn't dare lose visual perception even for a split second. It was an oddly organic action, the sort of little motion a person might make while they tried to get their thoughts in order.
“There is such intricacy in both aspects of your form,” it said. “There is beauty and complexity. I see a difference, but I still do not understand what organic denotes, so I cannot answer your original question.”
“If you don't understand the distinction, how did you heal us?” she asked.
“Entropy-spirals reversed the breakdown of order in your forms, just as they do in mine. I did nothing but bring you here. Was that the wrong thing to do? I was unsure of the correct step to take, but it seemed incorrect to let your systems decay to the point of irreversible inactivity.”
Irreversible inactivity. It didn't appear to even have a solid understanding of the concept of death. Perhaps that was significant in itself. “You did good,” she said. “But you must know about your own origins, how you came to be here. Were you constructed or did you grow?”
“I do not know.”
“That makes no sense,” said Selene. “From what you've said, your memory recall would have repaired automatically if it had become impaired.”
“It would,” agreed Surtr, “which leads me to believe that I have never had such memories. My origins are unclear to me. If I scan backwards far enough there is only a greyness that I cannot push through. Is it different for you?”
“No,” said Selene, “I guess that's how it is for everyone, but those around us pass on the stories of our origins. If you've been alone all this time, you won't have had that.”
“Or someone has expunged the memories from you,” said Ondo.
“That
