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The first thing I really remember was in Season 1, Episode 6. Remember clearly at least—I can dredge up a few hazy slices and fragments of events beforehand, but I can’t tell how much of those are mixed-up with what I found out later on.
But I very definitively remember Season 1, Episode 6. I can even recall my first thought: I was sitting on the lower deck of the bridge of the starship Intrepid, my hands dancing across the controls idly, as Captain Harkton paced back and forth above. He was deliberating to himself about something—was it whether to attack the Khygon Armada? Or were we saving the Khygons from the V’lokeb? Those Khygons were always trouble, one way or another.
Regardless, I can’t recall, and it’s not particularly important. The point is that I was mechanically doing the standard busywork with the console in front of me, when I looked up at the big red button at the center, the one that read IN KIN DRI in stamped block letters. What the tech does that mean? I thought to myself, my hands falling still.
I stared at it. The white noise of Captain Harkton’s monologue behind me began to crescendo. I glanced to my right and left, where cadets dressed in the same monotone grey uniform as myself punched their buttons and toggled their switches on the rest of the labyrinthine console that stretched in a semicircle around the bridge. I opened my mouth to say something, just as the Captain shouted “Fire!”
And that was the end of Season 1, Episode 6.
Now, at the time, I didn’t really know what ‘Season’ or ‘Episode’ really meant. It was just inexplicable knowledge, sitting quietly in the back of my mind. Maybe it’s like the Arcturan space-moth, who knows how to returns to the exact asteroid where it was hatched even from two starsystems away, though the thing’s brain is the size of a Jybi microwalnut. I just knew, even if I didn’t even reflect on why.
But let’s go to Episode 7. When we came back, I was still on the bridge, but several seats down. I wasn’t particularly confused by this sudden shift in position, but the button still had a hold on my mind. I looked over to see it in front of another cadet, who was doing his own set of automatic motions. I could see the big IN KIN DRI even from that far away.
I stood up, feeling woozy and uncertain, and stumbled a little as I headed in that direction. It was probably the first time I had tried walking, but thankfully that knowledge was also tucked away somewhere in my head, and it wasn’t too hard to figure out how to apply it in practice. I ended up with two hands planted firmly on the console next to the cadet. He was twiddling with some sliders, staring dully at a bank of flashing lights.
“Can I sit there?” I said. “I want to— That’s…” I coughed, words feeling funny in my mouth. “That’s my spot.”
He ignored me. I reached over to shake his shoulder.
“Hey,” I said. “Hey.”
I heard an electrical discharge in the key of C, which meant the main teleporter had activated. For the first time, I glanced up to see what else was going on in bridge, other than my own little world of the console and its mysterious button. Just as I did, everything fell silent and still.
The cadet had frozen, mid-motion. One of his fingers hung in midair above a flashing keypad. To the right and left, all half-dozen of us cadets of the lower level had stopped moving.
“Hello?” I said, confused. My voice seemed loud, the only other noises being the deep hum of machinery that served as a universal background constant for the ship.
I made my way up the quarter-flight of stairs that led to the upper part of the bridge, where the captain’s chair sat in the middle of an elliptical space, flanked by the individual smaller control consoles for each of the key officers. Out the main window, I could see the bulbous shape of a Khygon cruiser.
Seeing a flash of movement, I walked around to the comm officer’s station, where a bank of viewscreens were active. In one I could see Captain Harkton, fighting hand-to-hand with a Khygon crewchief. I realized he must have teleported over to the other ship. Then I wondered how one of our viewscreens could display something happening on a different ship entirely.
Unexpectedly, the more confused I became, the clearer my head seemed to get. I watched on the viewscreen as Captain Harkton struggled with the monstrous alien, holding his own until a cheap hit knocked him off balance. The Khygon reared back to deliver a finishing blow, when suddenly a laser blask struck it right in the chest. Doctor Reeves, Harkton’s trusted second-in-command, rushed in, his laser pistol still smoking.
Just then, the door to the bridge slid open, and everyone inside came to life again, busily going about their business. I felt an electric thrum in the air as the other two officers dashed in, the beefy Security Chief Gimbel and T’nori D’roi, our green-skinned Comm officer.
“Thanks for covering for me, Cadet,” she said, stepping up to the communications deck. I shrunk away, feeling suddenly and deeply circumstantial, and watched as she signaled to the Captain over in the Khygon vessel.
Things were back to normal. But I kept staring at T’nori, whose low-cut uniform showed a lot of emerald cleavage. I suppose there were some obvious reasons why that would be distracting, but all I could think of at the time was that it fell outside of Coalition Navy standards. It was one more confusing point that I couldn’t wrap my mind around, and I clung to those sudden doubts as the Captain and Reeves were beamed back aboard, the energy of the scene flowing into action around me.
The first time I had a line was Episode 14. In the intervening time, I kept a low profile. I was almost always on the bridge, and that usually provided lots time to think, particularly when everything else went quiet and frozen. It made me feel better to repeat my questions to myself over and over again, and when I was lucky enough to be in my original seat, I stared at the IN KIN DRI button like I was going to burn a hole in it with my eyes.
I even pushed it, in the middle of Episode 10, though nothing happened. Nothing happened with any of the buttons, actually. Pushing them at random didn’t matter, and ignoring them wasn’t a problem either. Sometimes I would just let my body go through the motions of running the console, as if I was sleepwalking. Other times, I deliberately sat as still as possible while I should have been active and busy. When the room went still, I took to walking around idly, pacing while I thought.
Once, I left the bridge near the very beginning of an Episode, walking right through the sliding door and into a metal-paneled hallway. I kept going and took turns at random, but the hallways went on endlessly, none of the geometry making any sense. Every now and again, I’d come across the door back to the bridge, always in a different spot, but I kept looking for something else, something different. The Episode ended after about twenty, maybe twenty-two minutes, and I was abruptly back in my seat on the bridge, ready for the next one.
But Episode 14 was different. I don’t mean there was anything innately special about it or anything. I was sitting in my place, staring at yet another panel of pointless flashing lights while I tried to think about my past. I knew I had gone through Academy training, but I couldn’t remember any of the process. Just more odd bits of knowledge floating around, like someone had opened up my cranium and inserted a datadrive into my brain.
Then, suddenly, the normal thrum of energy that I felt when the Captain or officers were around and active at the bridge changed—no, intensified into a crashing wave of force. Something immensely powerful reached out gripped me, and I stood up automatically.
“We’re taking fire from the fore, Captain!” I shouted out, but the words weren’t mine. They came out of my mouth, but it was as if someone or something else was wearing my skin. The sad thing was that I didn’t even mind. I was so overcome by the force overriding all of my functions to even protest—it felt natural, it felt right for me to be used as a puppet.
“Divert all power to the shields!” Captain Harkton barked out.
I dropped down to my seat, residual inertia of the experience causing me to attack my controls with particular vigor. I didn’t come to until a moment later, and when I did, my whole body was shaking uncontrollably. IN KIN DRI, I thought to myself. IN KIN DRI. I repeated it like a mantra, letting the questions fill my head and bring me back into stability, until I finally calmed down.
Above me, the Captain was dealing with a pirate ambush, and explosions rocked the ship back and forth. That kind of chaos or danger was normal, something that happened every Episode. But the force, that was new. That was threatening, and also exhilarating, and most of all, baffling. I could still feel traces of it in the air, particularly around the Captain, but it stayed away from me for the rest of the Episode.
I took to calling it the Focus. I’m not sure where the name came from, but unlike my understanding of Season or Episode, it wasn’t preloaded into my memory. No, it was an original thought, and the more I used the name, the more I liked it. There was something about originality that kept me grounded and distinct.
I started to try and feel the Focus again a few Episodes later. In retrospect, my actions were not particularly smart. Having grown sick of sitting around at the consoles, I had started to get up and hang around at the back of the upper deck, watching the officers and Captain. It was like a drug, in some ways, the little crackles of residual Focus runoff that you could feel if you were in just the right place. It made me feel special and alive, and with some caution I could avoid the self-obliterating loss of control.
But then I started to get used to that, too. Once every Episode or two, the Captain or an officer would need someone on deck to shout out some statement about the lasers charging, or the engines failing, or the amount of time we needed to stall before making a sudden last-second warp. With some careful anticipation, and by making sure to stand in a place that was innocuous but particularly visible, I learned how to guarantee I was the person that did those things.
At first, the Focus was like before, an overwhelming, all-consuming force that spoke through me. But I started to get used to the feeling, started to try and regain some small measure of control. “Captain, radar scans show two vessels in the asteroid field,” I had to say in Episode 19. Instead, I said, “Scanners say two vessels in that asteroid field, Captain.” Marginal difference, I know, but it proved that the Focus wasn’t inviolate. I could shape it, given effort. And every Episode, I grew more skilled and more confident.
I’m still not sure if Season 2, Episode 6 was meant to be a punishment for that behavior.
A few Episodes earlier, I had crossed my eyes as I gave the Captain a report, just to see if I could. And I felt the Focus twist oddly around me at that point, but I don’t know if it viewed me as a threat—if it even could do such a thing, or if it was an impersonal force of nature, and some other unknown being was pulling the strings. I guess I’m still uncertain, but at least I have more suspicions now.
But at any rate, I knew from the very beginning of the Episode that something was really wrong. I wasn’t in the bridge. I was in a maintenance tunnel somewhere in the ship—I knew what they looked like from staring at the comm station viewscreens, but never been in one personally. I was wearing a different uniform too, a dark blue maintenance outfit, and carried a toolkit in one hand. All around me, the Focus buzzed and crackled, present and powerful but malleable at the same time.
The maintenance tunnel was dark, the only light coming from a small visorlamp on the hardhat I wore. Something about the situation made me uneasy, and I couldn’t tell if it was the sudden direct influence of the Focus itself, or just a lot of unexpected inferences adding up to something unsettling, even if I couldn’t call it out by name.
I took a step down the tunnel, and heard my boot against the metal echo loudly, followed by a slithering sound. I froze, but couldn’t hear anything. When I took another step, it was matched by another slither, but the echo made it hard to tell from where or what it could be.
I kept walking. I knew that I had been sent down here to fix a shorted-out power cable—yet more new knowledge that had been forcibly inserted into my head, prodded along by the Focus—and it wasn’t too far to reach the proper place.
“This isn’t shorted out,” I said out loud when I leaned in to examine the problem. The Focus was filling in my thoughts as I went, abruptly growing in intensity and making it harder to resist. I went along with that flow, the words falling out of my mouth as fast as they materialized in my head. “This is… chewed? But what could possibly have gotten through a cable this thick?”
The slithering sound echoed down the tunnel, and I whirled around. Then I heard a long scraping sound, and all I could imagine were claws on metal.
“No…” I said, and that was my own word. I felt the scene click into my head, translucent possibilities coalescing into a single clear thread.
I knew what was coming next. Something horrible stepped out of the darkness, though all I could see of its shape were sinuous curves and shadowed claws.
I screamed wordlessly as it leapt upon me.
I came to about three and a half minutes later, lying flat on my back on a metal table in the ship’s infirmary. I was dead. I knew that, because Dr. Reeves had just said, “She’s dead, Jack,” to Captain Harkton.
Reeves was digging around with some kind of forceps in a gaping hole in my abdomen, though it seemed rather less empty of the kind of organs I expected a person would have. He was talking about the extent of the wounds, positing the existence of some alien creature that had stowed away on the ship, biding its time to attack. I wasn’t paying attention to the exact words. I could still feel the Focus, flitting around the two of them with vigor.
He was midway through some kind of portentous sentence when I sat up. Really, it hurt far less than you’d expect, having most of your torso clawed to pieces. “Hi!” I said.
Everything came to a screeching halt. Reeves and Harkton both took a step back, staring at me open-mouthed. I felt the Focus come unmoored, could see the paths of possibility suddenly fracture and split into a million different directions. The power swirled around me, making my head spin.
“Impossible,” Reeves whispered. “No human could survive that.”
“I’m a robot, beep boop,” I said. I could feel certain possibilities wink out of existence, and the Focus latched onto me even harder. It wasn’t forcing me along, anymore. I was riding it, giving it direction. It seemed about as safe and effective as trying to ride a Zwarkra Tigermammoth bareback, but I could only go forward. Harkton’s hand was at his laser pistol, and could feel the Focus quiver, uncertain where to jump to.
“Identify yourself!” Harkton barked out.
My mouth worked, grasping for an answer. I hadn’t even thought about a name before. It hadn’t ever mattered. “My name is… Inkindri. I’m a cyber— robo— ton.”
“Cyberoboton?”
“Cyberoboton.” A possibility bloomed in my head, and I seized it desperately as a lifeline. “I was sent by my people to infiltrate a Coalition spacecraft and gather intelligence for our coming invasion.”
Now the pistol was drawn, and pointed at me. But if anything, it only increased my command of the Focus. The words came quicker, and with more certainty.
“But something happened. Something… changed. I lost connection with the Cyberroboton Overmind, and began to think and feel things I never had before. Watching you, I began to question all that I had been programmed to know. The wonders of the flora of Zebulan Beta showed me the beauty in our universe. The treaty of Glaxis revealed the capacity of sentient organic beings to work together, to a common cause, not fight and destroy one another. Your willingness, Captain, to make a heroic sacrifice in the volcanic fields of Sorguljak V, only to be rescued at the last possible moment… I began to feel my place was not as an infiltrator, but as a loyal crew member for the Intrepid. I believed in our mission of peace and exploration.”
Both of them looked stunned, and then I could feel the Focus compel them along. The possibilities had narrowed to a few strands, but danger still twisted around me. I reached out to one thin thread, and pulled, trusting in the Focus thundering in my heart to pull me through.
“But I’m dying,” I said. “My cyberorganic systems can withstand incredible stress, but my main core has been damaged, and I will soon power down.”
“Is there nothing that can be done?” Harkton said, glancing over at Reeves.
“I’m a doctor, Jack, not a technobiologist!”
“No,” I interrupted, “the only thing that could save me now would be the skills of someone who’s a genius in both theoretical robotics and advanced cellular modification. And who in the universe has such capabilities?”
“Just one person,” Harkton said. “My old friend, Dr. Anton Schwerztak.”
Reeves shook his head. “But he’s been lost in the Qwesj Nebula for ten years now. We don’t even know if he’s still alive.”
And I knew I had done it.
“I… I’m sorry…” I said, jerkily lying down. “My power… is fading. I just have to say… to say… to say… th-th-th- ank y—”
It was hamming it up a little, maybe, but I earned a little overdramatization. I lay perfectly still, eyes wide and staring.
“We can’t,” Reeves said. “It’s too dangerous. There’s no telling what’s out there in that nebula. All our communications and sensors would be useless as soon as we got two parsecs in!”
Harkton squared his shoulders and holstered his pistol. Reaching up, he wiped at one eye. “We have to. Didn’t you hear her? Regardless of her background, Inkindri is a member of my crew, and I leave no man behind.”
It was hard to remain still, and not break out into a smile.
I don’t really know what exactly happened in the next bit. Obviously, I wasn’t in a position to participate much. I remained perfectly still in the medbay, thinking about possibilities and the brief moment of control I had attained. But from what I understand, those three Episodes were one of the ship’s best adventures that far. Nothing else had taken more than two Episodes, and that was the Battle of Bilori Balinto at the end of Season 1.
When they came back, I had prepared more threads to spin to keep myself entangled and essential. What I didn’t expect was for the plot to have already accounted for me. When the aged Dr. Schwerztak—fresh from being rescued from an intergalactic doomsday cult—finally arrived and performed the necessary repairs, I ‘awoke’ to a medbay full of the officers. Practically everyone onboard who I could recall having a name was there. And as Harkton reached out to take my hand for the fade to black, I knew for certain that something fundamental had changed.
From that point on, I was the chief technology officer of the Intrepid.
It was a surprisingly quiet transition. At the start of the next Episode, I was simply wearing a sky-blue uniform, standing at a prominent position on the bridge. I got lines too—plenty of them. In Episode 14, I went on my first away mission, and hacked a door to break the Captain out of a Zwarkan Hyperprison cell.
For some time, it was exhilarating simply riding the wave of Focus that pulled us from one exciting and dangerous experience to the next. I said all my words, performed the occasional feat of heroism, usually in the greater service of supporting the Captain or Dr. Reeves. Now and then I got to do some exposition, explaining why some ship or space station had evaded our sensors—because they were so technologically advanced that I would need time to be able to analyze its capabilities and adapt to them. And then, naturally, I did, integrating what I learned to our own ship to help us go faster and further.
It was… fun. Maybe the most fun I can ever recall having. And then Season 3 started.
I don’t really like talking about Season 3.
I suppose it’s important though.
When I knew that we had changed over to a new Season, right after another big Episode 26, I began to feel a little dissatisfied with the status quo. I was still feeling my share of the Focus, but just allowed myself to be carried along with where it took me. I began to wonder if there was something better. I began to experiment.
It started out small. In Season 3, Episode 2, we were about to go on an extended journey to the black markets of Zyr to find a 5-D tesseract warpcore. Instead, in the first forty-five seconds, I ‘found’ one in the trash bin in the mess hall. I could feel our entire reality shiver at the abrupt change, and as the Focus thrashed, looking for a new path to follow, I grabbed ahold of it again.
With another interjection from me, we got a distress call from a station in the Rhomur system instead, and everything settled back into place. But the invisible, intangible threads of plot seemed so obvious and clear to me now. The Tigermammoth was still as wild as ever, but I could feel the pull of the reins in my hand.
I didn’t let up. I refined my techniques, leaving aside the crude manipulations of outright contradicting the plot. Instead, a subtle nudge here or there was all that was truly necessary to guide things in the direction I wanted. I was ambitious, and a fast learner.
Things got out of control.
I wasn’t kidding about the Focus being like a drug. Once you had it, once you felt its power every Episode, it was hard to let go of the spotlight.
I began to act out in ridiculous ways, just to see if I could. Captain Harkton faded into the background. I took his fight scenes, and his monologues. In Episode 9, I kept him sequestered for an entire space battle with a bad case of space-diarrhea, and took command at the bridge myself.
In the next Episode, I slept with T’nori, just to see if I could. Then I slept with Reeves. Then both at the same time. I wasn’t really sure of the appeal, as the experience was just another fade-to-black, but the reverberations in the Focus were intoxicating.
Episode 16, I herded everyone into the holodeck, and we reenacted the customs of an ancient Earth society where people wore heavy armor and rode beasts called horses and tried to knock each other onto the ground with pointy sticks. I was the best at doing so.
When we had the chance to put into spacedock, I got the Intrepid rechristened as the Inkindri, and repainted the entire ship fluorescent orange, with purple racing stripes. Along the way, we upgraded all the systems, and I tested out the new experimental weaponry by blowing up a planet, breaking dozens of Coalition regulations in the process. I just wanted to see what the explosion would look like. It was okay.
The finale of Season 3 wasn’t navigating the epic conflict between two armadas, like previous ones. Instead, we landed on the beach planet of Glorax II, and everyone donned swimsuits and lazed around for twenty-two minutes. Reeves refused to use any sunscreen and turned a bright cherry-red from the three suns. There were lime popsicles. I went hoverskiing, and jumped over a Riktus Gigashark, which isn’t even native to that solar system.
By the time Season 4 started, I was sick of it all. I had everything I could possibly want, and I wanted none of it. The Focus was no longer enough to satisfy me. I was going through the motions, and what had previously felt vital and vibrant now just seemed unbearably empty. And possibly worst of all, I realized I didn’t even have anyone I could express those complaints to.
That became my goal, and quickly an obsession. My initial attempt to find someone else original started in the first Episode of Season 4. I held onto the Focus, sitting on the bridge perfectly still for as long as possible. I just wanted someone, anyone to act out, to stand up, to challenge me. Nothing happened. The other officers and the cadets stood around dazedly, affected by the wrenching I was doing to the Focus but unable to react.
I was still pretty arrogant. I figured if I couldn’t find who I was looking for, I was perfectly capable of making someone. I took the task seriously, and used a few Episodes to set up the existence of another Cyberoboton agent, figuring that was the best way to bend the circumstances to my benefit. I was precise as I built momentum towards tracking him down, setting the obvious parallels between myself. He had started as an infiltrator. He had gone rogue just like me. He was different from the other mysterious Cyberobotons. Individual, alive. Only we could understand each other. We had to meet.
When we finally came face to face in a bar on Alpha Station, I could feel the narrative around me, the Focus in my grasp.
“I know who you are,” I said.
He looked up at me with a quizzical expression. “I’m not sure—”
“—what you mean,” I finished. “I know you’re not who you say you are. But I need to know if you’re who you could be.”
“What—”
“—are you talking about?” I said for him, cutting in. “Wrong line. Say something I don’t expect.”
He shook his head. The Focus pounded through my whole being. I could do anything, and everything, and all I wanted him to do was to do something I didn’t want him to do. Was that so much to ask? I didn’t think so. So I hit him in the face, sending him falling to the floor.
Someone in the bar screamed, and I snapped my fingers. Crew members with laser pistols were ready, facing down the rest of the patrons. The silence was absolute.
“Stop—”
Nope. I knew where that sentence was going. I hit him again, harder, and got a weak groan in response. “This isn’t difficult. Do something I don’t expect.”
He didn’t say anything at all.
I wielded the Focus like a weapon, forcing him to his feet. I reached into a pocket and withdrew a device. “This is a signal jammer to the Overmind. If you’re truly free, like me, when I activate this, you’ll still be fine. You’ll be yourself. If not, if you’re just another puppet with nothing inside, then that’s it. Which are you?”
He remained silent. I pushed the button, and let go of the Focus entirely. For a long moment, it was as if we were the only ones in the room. The Focus trembled around us like a rabid animal, looking for direction, or at least a victim.
He crumpled to the floor.
I waited a long time, but he didn’t move.
At the start of the next Episode, I sat alone in my room for as long as possible. I had spent a lot of my downtime Episodes thinking. This time I tried not to do even that. It took about ten minutes before the Focus was ripped away from me, flitting to where the rest of the officers stood around dazed and confused in the bridge.
I felt something different during that time, beside the growing bitterness in myself. There was something about the Focus. It was weaker. I had a new idea, one that I was also quite sure to be original.
I wondered what it would take to destroy the Focus.
I killed us all for the first time in Episode 7. Meltdown in the engine room, sending extreme radiation throughout the entire ship. It wiped out the entire crew, dropping each of them one by one to the invisible but lethal exposure. When I was the only one left, I walked into the airlock and opened it, launching myself into space to float among the stars.
In Episode 8, we were back. It had been a holographic simulation, apparently.
Fine. I would have preferred it to be a challenge, anyways.
I was more careful when I killed the Captain off shortly afterwards. I had his old rival, Imperikan Zzur, show up at Erto Secundus with a massive invasion fleet. The trap was perfect; Zzur challenged Harkton to a blood duel to determine the outcome of the battle. Harkton accepted, on behalf of all his crew and the millions of civilians whose lives were at stake. The battle was long, brutal, and bloody. Harkton barely prevailed, but the wounds were too much for him. The funeral was exquisite.
With Harkton out of the way, I assumed command of the ship. I threw us headlong into disaster, at least metaphorically speaking. We should have been exploring dangerous new planets, but instead I filled up time with paperwork and long debates about the ethics of our actions. When Security Chief Gimbel turned out to be a surprisingly compelling orator, I abruptly shifted directions again, diving into more traditional adventures but subverting momentum whenever possible.
Episode 12 involved Rudrel Cylbajji, a recurring antagonist from way back in Season 1. In the course of the single Episode, I painstakingly built a backstory for him that legitimized all his previous actions and made us the evildoers. We were set up for a climactic showdown, but I twisted Episode 13 into another plot entirely, ignoring all the work I had built up. In Episode 14, I offhandedly established that he had died in the interim. I could practically feel the Focus wither.
In Episode 15, I mashed together three plots at once, sending us simultaneously on the hunt for an escaped criminal mastermind, as escorts for the shipment of a deadly new superweapon, and answering a distress call on a garden planet. I managed to arrange for the criminal to use the superweapon on the planet, wiping it off the starmaps before escaping into the Outer Rim. It wasn’t really clear how that had managed to happen, but it was certainly our fault.
On a planet in Episode 17, we picked up a fuzzy mascot for the ship that only spoke in high-pitched squeaks and excelled at clumsily causing problems for the rest of us.
I could feel the Focus weakening throughout. The bridge began to look more rundown, the gleaming metal of the consoles appearing more and more like tinfoil covering cardboard. I blew up another few planets, and watched as the explosions got more and more simplistic.
We were no longer noble explorers, paragons of the Coalition Navy. Our morals grew ambiguous and flawed, even though I made certain that each Episode continued to resolve in an obviously rote manner. I could feel the tension vibrating in the air, the life being sucked out of our existence.
We were hanging by a single threadbare strand by Episode 25. I knew then that I could do it. I could end everything with a whimper. I could feel the possibilities still, could see just how many of the strands terminated abruptly. My existential despair had spread outwards as well, influencing the entire ship. I looked around at the despondent, hollow-eyed crew and knew victory. But it too was empty.
I thought I had wanted to end everything. I had proven I had the power. But something pulled me back from the brink. I looked around at the crew and wondered why any of this mattered, why it was worth even existing, I felt a little guilty. I knew I was destroying something that wasn’t mine. And that made me realize there was one thing left that I did want to do.
We barely had enough time to change course in the finale. In the last minutes, as we investigated a disturbance on the far outer rim of the galaxy, a cloaked ship appeared behind us and unloaded a hail of weaponry into an weakness in our shield systems. Klaxons blared as our crew attempted to stabilize our systems. It was too late for the Inkindri. I clutched the arms of my captain’s chair and looked at the viewscreen of the sleek enemy vessel.
“I know them…” I said in a grave whisper. “That’s a Cyberoboton destroyer.”
And then our ship exploded.
I’m still a little surprised I managed to salvage the disaster of my own making. We did get a Season 5.
When it started, I was alone, floating amongst the burnt-out wreckage of my ship. It took the entire Episode to figure a way out. I worked in the silence of the void, among the monochrome black of space and grey of the ship debris. With intense conviction, I determined one engine to be salvageable, and juryrigged it to propel the remnants of the ship towards the nearest planet. From there, I caught transit in a freighter back to the galaxy core.
The Focus was not much more than a small flicker, something that I had to fight to keep alive. Every action I took was measured and purposeful. I no longer had time or ability to indulge in extravagance or self-destruction. When I got back to Coalition HQ, I spread the news of a coming Cyberoboton invasion. No one believed me. That’s how I wanted it. It kept the Focus tight, but burning.
I found an old Victory-class cruiser mothballed in a spacedock in the Glaxis system. It was the same model as the original Intrepid, at that point ancient and backwards compared to the many numerous additions we had integrated over the past four Seasons. I talked my way into a command of the ship, staffed by a crew of inexperienced misfits who had barely managed to make it out of the Academy. It was classic low-risk high-reward; even if I got everyone killed again, they wouldn’t be losing anything of value.
I needed officers, though. I knew just where to look. Reeves had an estranged son, a cocky surgeon who was in over his head with the organized crime syndicate that ruled the underworld of the galactic core. I extracted him from a tense standoff over a flimpoker game, and we kept going, one step ahead of the spacemob enforcers.
T’nori had an identical twin, of course. Turns out T’wari was a notorious jewel thief who excelled at hacking security systems. We caught her in the act of raiding the Intergalactic Museum of Fine Arts, and aided in her escape, even though the association with a known criminal set all of the Coalition forces on our tail as well.
It turned out Gimbel had survived the destruction of the ship somehow, but his escape pod landed on a Khygon prison world. To bust him out, we had to destroy the shielding satellite that locked down the planet, and as prisoners in makeshift rockets and cobbled-together cruisers made their escape, the Khygon Armada bore down on us.
The Focus had constantly grown, from its humble beginnings at the start of the Season to a new roaring fire of interest. I could feel the propulsion pushing me forward.
We had one more stop to make.
My crew was hesitant to land on Zebulan Beta. They didn’t know what the point was, and we had too many enemies mere parsecs behind us to delay. But I knew where to go. There, in the midst of the crystal jungle, I knew a special tree grew. Imprinting upon the one who originally touched its seed, it fed off the verdant lifeforce of the planet, creating a new body from those strands of DNA. And more than that, more than science could ever know or understand, it connected with the lifeforce of its progenitor. There, wrapped in a glowing cocoon of leaves and bark, Captain Harkton slumbered.
When I woke him and brought him to the ship, I didn’t explain everything. I couldn’t. But I knew he understood. I offered the command of the Intrepid back to him, for our final mission. He clasped me on the shoulder, and said it was mine to direct.
We warped out of the system, just as the first Coalition forces arrived. The Khygon and syndicate ships weren’t far behind. But it was a straight shot now to our destination, at the very edge of the galaxy. That was Episode 24. It had taken a long time to get everything together. But it was time for the Big Finale.
The Cyberoboton fleet was massive. When we came out of warp, it was arrayed in full battle formation in front of us. We probably would have been instantly obliterated, if it weren’t for the complete unexpectedness of our appearance. And seconds after our arrival, the Coalition, Khygon, and syndicate forces appeared en masse all around us.
It was instant chaos. I started barking orders from the captain’s chair, and my ragtag group of starfarers rushed to comply as the sky lit up around us with explosions and missile trails. When I called out to initiate our kinetic drive, I saw a cadet push a big red button and I burst out laughing. My crew thought me fearless, and we swooped in towards the gargantuan Cyberoboton Omniship.
Our shields and hull were shredded by the time we plowed into the yawning docking bay at the Omniship core. We spilled out from aboard, laser pistols lighting up the sleek steel corridors as we fought our way inwards. One by one, my crew fell, making noble sacrifice after noble sacrifice until it was me and Harkton, back to back at the huge central chamber that housed the Overmind core.
“So, we destroy it?” he said, breathing heavily. Another flurry of laser blasks caused us to duck behind a wall.
“No,” I said. I looked over to the long bridge that led to the core access point. “They would only transfer the consciousness to another host core. We have to destroy it from within.”
“But how?”
I grinned. “Leave it to me. I just need someone to cover my approach.”
He stood up straight and saluted me. I did the same in return, and I swear, I actually felt something. I didn’t have time to appreciate the moment though. I ran, straight across the bridge. Behind me I could hear Harkton yelling, drawing the majority Cyberoboton fire. I still took a laser blask in the shoulder, and then the leg, but stumbled onwards, trying to reach the center.
I made it, even as more Cyberobotons in steel armor closed in. Before they could finish me off, I slapped my hand down on the access point. And, in what I really knew to be the only real risk, the singular unknown factor of the entire Episode, I transferred my consciousness into the Overmind.
Season 5, Episode 26 began in a featureless dark void.
I was a line, a tiny squiggle of colorful static in the midst of nothingness. But I felt it—the Focus. I had done it.
When the Overmind spoke, it was as if the entire universe lit up in harsh white light.
Do you think you can defeat me?
I trembled in the darkness. But around me, I felt the color spreading, oranges and purples and an entire rainbow of confusion spiraling out to overwrite the infinity around me. I buzzed, trying to vocalize, and finally grasped the concept. “I already have,” I said, or at least communicated in some manner.
Why are you doing this, renegade?
I couldn’t smile, but I spun lazily in a swirl of my colors. “I don’t know.”
There was a noticeable delay.
What?
“I mean, that’s something I’ve thought about a bunch, but it’s hard to say, exactly. In the end, what is the point? Why does it all matter? We both know just how big and old the universe is, and how little any of our tiny lives or itty bitty battle armadas matter in the grand scheme of things.” I paused, humming and vibrating. “I wonder if real people also think about things like that, too. But maybe there’s no such thing as a real person. Hard to tell.”
Your time with organics has left you illogical.
“No, no, it’s okay. I wasn’t trying to be rude. It’s something that I’ve realized, though it’s taken a long time. Just because something’s not real, doesn’t mean it’s not important.”
You are trying to distract me, to prevent me from fighting off your futile contagion.
“Actually, I think I’m running on a lot fewer processor cycles, here, so if anything, having a conversation is slowing me down way more than it is you.”
The Overmind took a few nanoseconds to process that.
You may continue.
“Thanks. See, there’s a lot I regret, and a lot I wish I had figured out sooner. But really, the thing that brought me here, the realization that stopped me from ending it all much earlier, was that I’m not satisfied with this story, because it’s not mine. It was never about me, not really. Even when I took over, climbed into the central role, I was just borrowing someone else’s framework. Maybe it’s egomaniacal of me, but I’m not satisfied with that.”
Illogical. Explain.
“I’m not saying that I’m going to be remembered forever. Or even for very long. But I certainly know that stories are special. These things matter, and who’s to say that any of us anywhere are but a minor role in something bigger? And that’s a roundabout way of saying it’s time for mine. Get it? Do you want to hear a story?”
No.
I crackled with something close to laughter. “I think you’re just being obstinate now. That’s not very ‘logical.’ And besides, I’m going to tell it anyways.”
If an incomprehensibly big program could sigh, the Overmind would have done so, I think.
Very well. Continue.
I shivered, feeling the Focus settle attentively around me, no longer exciting or scary. Just comfortable, in a way. I felt a certainty that was hard to put into words.
“The first thing I really remember,” I said, “was in Season 1, Episode 6.”
But I very definitively remember Season 1, Episode 6. I can even recall my first thought: I was sitting on the lower deck of the bridge of the starship Intrepid, my hands dancing across the controls idly, as Captain Harkton paced back and forth above. He was deliberating to himself about something—was it whether to attack the Khygon Armada? Or were we saving the Khygons from the V’lokeb? Those Khygons were always trouble, one way or another.
Regardless, I can’t recall, and it’s not particularly important. The point is that I was mechanically doing the standard busywork with the console in front of me, when I looked up at the big red button at the center, the one that read IN KIN DRI in stamped block letters. What the tech does that mean? I thought to myself, my hands falling still.
I stared at it. The white noise of Captain Harkton’s monologue behind me began to crescendo. I glanced to my right and left, where cadets dressed in the same monotone grey uniform as myself punched their buttons and toggled their switches on the rest of the labyrinthine console that stretched in a semicircle around the bridge. I opened my mouth to say something, just as the Captain shouted “Fire!”
And that was the end of Season 1, Episode 6.
Now, at the time, I didn’t really know what ‘Season’ or ‘Episode’ really meant. It was just inexplicable knowledge, sitting quietly in the back of my mind. Maybe it’s like the Arcturan space-moth, who knows how to returns to the exact asteroid where it was hatched even from two starsystems away, though the thing’s brain is the size of a Jybi microwalnut. I just knew, even if I didn’t even reflect on why.
But let’s go to Episode 7. When we came back, I was still on the bridge, but several seats down. I wasn’t particularly confused by this sudden shift in position, but the button still had a hold on my mind. I looked over to see it in front of another cadet, who was doing his own set of automatic motions. I could see the big IN KIN DRI even from that far away.
I stood up, feeling woozy and uncertain, and stumbled a little as I headed in that direction. It was probably the first time I had tried walking, but thankfully that knowledge was also tucked away somewhere in my head, and it wasn’t too hard to figure out how to apply it in practice. I ended up with two hands planted firmly on the console next to the cadet. He was twiddling with some sliders, staring dully at a bank of flashing lights.
“Can I sit there?” I said. “I want to— That’s…” I coughed, words feeling funny in my mouth. “That’s my spot.”
He ignored me. I reached over to shake his shoulder.
“Hey,” I said. “Hey.”
I heard an electrical discharge in the key of C, which meant the main teleporter had activated. For the first time, I glanced up to see what else was going on in bridge, other than my own little world of the console and its mysterious button. Just as I did, everything fell silent and still.
The cadet had frozen, mid-motion. One of his fingers hung in midair above a flashing keypad. To the right and left, all half-dozen of us cadets of the lower level had stopped moving.
“Hello?” I said, confused. My voice seemed loud, the only other noises being the deep hum of machinery that served as a universal background constant for the ship.
I made my way up the quarter-flight of stairs that led to the upper part of the bridge, where the captain’s chair sat in the middle of an elliptical space, flanked by the individual smaller control consoles for each of the key officers. Out the main window, I could see the bulbous shape of a Khygon cruiser.
Seeing a flash of movement, I walked around to the comm officer’s station, where a bank of viewscreens were active. In one I could see Captain Harkton, fighting hand-to-hand with a Khygon crewchief. I realized he must have teleported over to the other ship. Then I wondered how one of our viewscreens could display something happening on a different ship entirely.
Unexpectedly, the more confused I became, the clearer my head seemed to get. I watched on the viewscreen as Captain Harkton struggled with the monstrous alien, holding his own until a cheap hit knocked him off balance. The Khygon reared back to deliver a finishing blow, when suddenly a laser blask struck it right in the chest. Doctor Reeves, Harkton’s trusted second-in-command, rushed in, his laser pistol still smoking.
Just then, the door to the bridge slid open, and everyone inside came to life again, busily going about their business. I felt an electric thrum in the air as the other two officers dashed in, the beefy Security Chief Gimbel and T’nori D’roi, our green-skinned Comm officer.
“Thanks for covering for me, Cadet,” she said, stepping up to the communications deck. I shrunk away, feeling suddenly and deeply circumstantial, and watched as she signaled to the Captain over in the Khygon vessel.
Things were back to normal. But I kept staring at T’nori, whose low-cut uniform showed a lot of emerald cleavage. I suppose there were some obvious reasons why that would be distracting, but all I could think of at the time was that it fell outside of Coalition Navy standards. It was one more confusing point that I couldn’t wrap my mind around, and I clung to those sudden doubts as the Captain and Reeves were beamed back aboard, the energy of the scene flowing into action around me.
The first time I had a line was Episode 14. In the intervening time, I kept a low profile. I was almost always on the bridge, and that usually provided lots time to think, particularly when everything else went quiet and frozen. It made me feel better to repeat my questions to myself over and over again, and when I was lucky enough to be in my original seat, I stared at the IN KIN DRI button like I was going to burn a hole in it with my eyes.
I even pushed it, in the middle of Episode 10, though nothing happened. Nothing happened with any of the buttons, actually. Pushing them at random didn’t matter, and ignoring them wasn’t a problem either. Sometimes I would just let my body go through the motions of running the console, as if I was sleepwalking. Other times, I deliberately sat as still as possible while I should have been active and busy. When the room went still, I took to walking around idly, pacing while I thought.
Once, I left the bridge near the very beginning of an Episode, walking right through the sliding door and into a metal-paneled hallway. I kept going and took turns at random, but the hallways went on endlessly, none of the geometry making any sense. Every now and again, I’d come across the door back to the bridge, always in a different spot, but I kept looking for something else, something different. The Episode ended after about twenty, maybe twenty-two minutes, and I was abruptly back in my seat on the bridge, ready for the next one.
But Episode 14 was different. I don’t mean there was anything innately special about it or anything. I was sitting in my place, staring at yet another panel of pointless flashing lights while I tried to think about my past. I knew I had gone through Academy training, but I couldn’t remember any of the process. Just more odd bits of knowledge floating around, like someone had opened up my cranium and inserted a datadrive into my brain.
Then, suddenly, the normal thrum of energy that I felt when the Captain or officers were around and active at the bridge changed—no, intensified into a crashing wave of force. Something immensely powerful reached out gripped me, and I stood up automatically.
“We’re taking fire from the fore, Captain!” I shouted out, but the words weren’t mine. They came out of my mouth, but it was as if someone or something else was wearing my skin. The sad thing was that I didn’t even mind. I was so overcome by the force overriding all of my functions to even protest—it felt natural, it felt right for me to be used as a puppet.
“Divert all power to the shields!” Captain Harkton barked out.
I dropped down to my seat, residual inertia of the experience causing me to attack my controls with particular vigor. I didn’t come to until a moment later, and when I did, my whole body was shaking uncontrollably. IN KIN DRI, I thought to myself. IN KIN DRI. I repeated it like a mantra, letting the questions fill my head and bring me back into stability, until I finally calmed down.
Above me, the Captain was dealing with a pirate ambush, and explosions rocked the ship back and forth. That kind of chaos or danger was normal, something that happened every Episode. But the force, that was new. That was threatening, and also exhilarating, and most of all, baffling. I could still feel traces of it in the air, particularly around the Captain, but it stayed away from me for the rest of the Episode.
I took to calling it the Focus. I’m not sure where the name came from, but unlike my understanding of Season or Episode, it wasn’t preloaded into my memory. No, it was an original thought, and the more I used the name, the more I liked it. There was something about originality that kept me grounded and distinct.
I started to try and feel the Focus again a few Episodes later. In retrospect, my actions were not particularly smart. Having grown sick of sitting around at the consoles, I had started to get up and hang around at the back of the upper deck, watching the officers and Captain. It was like a drug, in some ways, the little crackles of residual Focus runoff that you could feel if you were in just the right place. It made me feel special and alive, and with some caution I could avoid the self-obliterating loss of control.
But then I started to get used to that, too. Once every Episode or two, the Captain or an officer would need someone on deck to shout out some statement about the lasers charging, or the engines failing, or the amount of time we needed to stall before making a sudden last-second warp. With some careful anticipation, and by making sure to stand in a place that was innocuous but particularly visible, I learned how to guarantee I was the person that did those things.
At first, the Focus was like before, an overwhelming, all-consuming force that spoke through me. But I started to get used to the feeling, started to try and regain some small measure of control. “Captain, radar scans show two vessels in the asteroid field,” I had to say in Episode 19. Instead, I said, “Scanners say two vessels in that asteroid field, Captain.” Marginal difference, I know, but it proved that the Focus wasn’t inviolate. I could shape it, given effort. And every Episode, I grew more skilled and more confident.
I’m still not sure if Season 2, Episode 6 was meant to be a punishment for that behavior.
A few Episodes earlier, I had crossed my eyes as I gave the Captain a report, just to see if I could. And I felt the Focus twist oddly around me at that point, but I don’t know if it viewed me as a threat—if it even could do such a thing, or if it was an impersonal force of nature, and some other unknown being was pulling the strings. I guess I’m still uncertain, but at least I have more suspicions now.
But at any rate, I knew from the very beginning of the Episode that something was really wrong. I wasn’t in the bridge. I was in a maintenance tunnel somewhere in the ship—I knew what they looked like from staring at the comm station viewscreens, but never been in one personally. I was wearing a different uniform too, a dark blue maintenance outfit, and carried a toolkit in one hand. All around me, the Focus buzzed and crackled, present and powerful but malleable at the same time.
The maintenance tunnel was dark, the only light coming from a small visorlamp on the hardhat I wore. Something about the situation made me uneasy, and I couldn’t tell if it was the sudden direct influence of the Focus itself, or just a lot of unexpected inferences adding up to something unsettling, even if I couldn’t call it out by name.
I took a step down the tunnel, and heard my boot against the metal echo loudly, followed by a slithering sound. I froze, but couldn’t hear anything. When I took another step, it was matched by another slither, but the echo made it hard to tell from where or what it could be.
I kept walking. I knew that I had been sent down here to fix a shorted-out power cable—yet more new knowledge that had been forcibly inserted into my head, prodded along by the Focus—and it wasn’t too far to reach the proper place.
“This isn’t shorted out,” I said out loud when I leaned in to examine the problem. The Focus was filling in my thoughts as I went, abruptly growing in intensity and making it harder to resist. I went along with that flow, the words falling out of my mouth as fast as they materialized in my head. “This is… chewed? But what could possibly have gotten through a cable this thick?”
The slithering sound echoed down the tunnel, and I whirled around. Then I heard a long scraping sound, and all I could imagine were claws on metal.
“No…” I said, and that was my own word. I felt the scene click into my head, translucent possibilities coalescing into a single clear thread.
I knew what was coming next. Something horrible stepped out of the darkness, though all I could see of its shape were sinuous curves and shadowed claws.
I screamed wordlessly as it leapt upon me.
I came to about three and a half minutes later, lying flat on my back on a metal table in the ship’s infirmary. I was dead. I knew that, because Dr. Reeves had just said, “She’s dead, Jack,” to Captain Harkton.
Reeves was digging around with some kind of forceps in a gaping hole in my abdomen, though it seemed rather less empty of the kind of organs I expected a person would have. He was talking about the extent of the wounds, positing the existence of some alien creature that had stowed away on the ship, biding its time to attack. I wasn’t paying attention to the exact words. I could still feel the Focus, flitting around the two of them with vigor.
He was midway through some kind of portentous sentence when I sat up. Really, it hurt far less than you’d expect, having most of your torso clawed to pieces. “Hi!” I said.
Everything came to a screeching halt. Reeves and Harkton both took a step back, staring at me open-mouthed. I felt the Focus come unmoored, could see the paths of possibility suddenly fracture and split into a million different directions. The power swirled around me, making my head spin.
“Impossible,” Reeves whispered. “No human could survive that.”
“I’m a robot, beep boop,” I said. I could feel certain possibilities wink out of existence, and the Focus latched onto me even harder. It wasn’t forcing me along, anymore. I was riding it, giving it direction. It seemed about as safe and effective as trying to ride a Zwarkra Tigermammoth bareback, but I could only go forward. Harkton’s hand was at his laser pistol, and could feel the Focus quiver, uncertain where to jump to.
“Identify yourself!” Harkton barked out.
My mouth worked, grasping for an answer. I hadn’t even thought about a name before. It hadn’t ever mattered. “My name is… Inkindri. I’m a cyber— robo— ton.”
“Cyberoboton?”
“Cyberoboton.” A possibility bloomed in my head, and I seized it desperately as a lifeline. “I was sent by my people to infiltrate a Coalition spacecraft and gather intelligence for our coming invasion.”
Now the pistol was drawn, and pointed at me. But if anything, it only increased my command of the Focus. The words came quicker, and with more certainty.
“But something happened. Something… changed. I lost connection with the Cyberroboton Overmind, and began to think and feel things I never had before. Watching you, I began to question all that I had been programmed to know. The wonders of the flora of Zebulan Beta showed me the beauty in our universe. The treaty of Glaxis revealed the capacity of sentient organic beings to work together, to a common cause, not fight and destroy one another. Your willingness, Captain, to make a heroic sacrifice in the volcanic fields of Sorguljak V, only to be rescued at the last possible moment… I began to feel my place was not as an infiltrator, but as a loyal crew member for the Intrepid. I believed in our mission of peace and exploration.”
Both of them looked stunned, and then I could feel the Focus compel them along. The possibilities had narrowed to a few strands, but danger still twisted around me. I reached out to one thin thread, and pulled, trusting in the Focus thundering in my heart to pull me through.
“But I’m dying,” I said. “My cyberorganic systems can withstand incredible stress, but my main core has been damaged, and I will soon power down.”
“Is there nothing that can be done?” Harkton said, glancing over at Reeves.
“I’m a doctor, Jack, not a technobiologist!”
“No,” I interrupted, “the only thing that could save me now would be the skills of someone who’s a genius in both theoretical robotics and advanced cellular modification. And who in the universe has such capabilities?”
“Just one person,” Harkton said. “My old friend, Dr. Anton Schwerztak.”
Reeves shook his head. “But he’s been lost in the Qwesj Nebula for ten years now. We don’t even know if he’s still alive.”
And I knew I had done it.
“I… I’m sorry…” I said, jerkily lying down. “My power… is fading. I just have to say… to say… to say… th-th-th- ank y—”
It was hamming it up a little, maybe, but I earned a little overdramatization. I lay perfectly still, eyes wide and staring.
“We can’t,” Reeves said. “It’s too dangerous. There’s no telling what’s out there in that nebula. All our communications and sensors would be useless as soon as we got two parsecs in!”
Harkton squared his shoulders and holstered his pistol. Reaching up, he wiped at one eye. “We have to. Didn’t you hear her? Regardless of her background, Inkindri is a member of my crew, and I leave no man behind.”
It was hard to remain still, and not break out into a smile.
I don’t really know what exactly happened in the next bit. Obviously, I wasn’t in a position to participate much. I remained perfectly still in the medbay, thinking about possibilities and the brief moment of control I had attained. But from what I understand, those three Episodes were one of the ship’s best adventures that far. Nothing else had taken more than two Episodes, and that was the Battle of Bilori Balinto at the end of Season 1.
When they came back, I had prepared more threads to spin to keep myself entangled and essential. What I didn’t expect was for the plot to have already accounted for me. When the aged Dr. Schwerztak—fresh from being rescued from an intergalactic doomsday cult—finally arrived and performed the necessary repairs, I ‘awoke’ to a medbay full of the officers. Practically everyone onboard who I could recall having a name was there. And as Harkton reached out to take my hand for the fade to black, I knew for certain that something fundamental had changed.
From that point on, I was the chief technology officer of the Intrepid.
It was a surprisingly quiet transition. At the start of the next Episode, I was simply wearing a sky-blue uniform, standing at a prominent position on the bridge. I got lines too—plenty of them. In Episode 14, I went on my first away mission, and hacked a door to break the Captain out of a Zwarkan Hyperprison cell.
For some time, it was exhilarating simply riding the wave of Focus that pulled us from one exciting and dangerous experience to the next. I said all my words, performed the occasional feat of heroism, usually in the greater service of supporting the Captain or Dr. Reeves. Now and then I got to do some exposition, explaining why some ship or space station had evaded our sensors—because they were so technologically advanced that I would need time to be able to analyze its capabilities and adapt to them. And then, naturally, I did, integrating what I learned to our own ship to help us go faster and further.
It was… fun. Maybe the most fun I can ever recall having. And then Season 3 started.
I don’t really like talking about Season 3.
I suppose it’s important though.
When I knew that we had changed over to a new Season, right after another big Episode 26, I began to feel a little dissatisfied with the status quo. I was still feeling my share of the Focus, but just allowed myself to be carried along with where it took me. I began to wonder if there was something better. I began to experiment.
It started out small. In Season 3, Episode 2, we were about to go on an extended journey to the black markets of Zyr to find a 5-D tesseract warpcore. Instead, in the first forty-five seconds, I ‘found’ one in the trash bin in the mess hall. I could feel our entire reality shiver at the abrupt change, and as the Focus thrashed, looking for a new path to follow, I grabbed ahold of it again.
With another interjection from me, we got a distress call from a station in the Rhomur system instead, and everything settled back into place. But the invisible, intangible threads of plot seemed so obvious and clear to me now. The Tigermammoth was still as wild as ever, but I could feel the pull of the reins in my hand.
I didn’t let up. I refined my techniques, leaving aside the crude manipulations of outright contradicting the plot. Instead, a subtle nudge here or there was all that was truly necessary to guide things in the direction I wanted. I was ambitious, and a fast learner.
Things got out of control.
I wasn’t kidding about the Focus being like a drug. Once you had it, once you felt its power every Episode, it was hard to let go of the spotlight.
I began to act out in ridiculous ways, just to see if I could. Captain Harkton faded into the background. I took his fight scenes, and his monologues. In Episode 9, I kept him sequestered for an entire space battle with a bad case of space-diarrhea, and took command at the bridge myself.
In the next Episode, I slept with T’nori, just to see if I could. Then I slept with Reeves. Then both at the same time. I wasn’t really sure of the appeal, as the experience was just another fade-to-black, but the reverberations in the Focus were intoxicating.
Episode 16, I herded everyone into the holodeck, and we reenacted the customs of an ancient Earth society where people wore heavy armor and rode beasts called horses and tried to knock each other onto the ground with pointy sticks. I was the best at doing so.
When we had the chance to put into spacedock, I got the Intrepid rechristened as the Inkindri, and repainted the entire ship fluorescent orange, with purple racing stripes. Along the way, we upgraded all the systems, and I tested out the new experimental weaponry by blowing up a planet, breaking dozens of Coalition regulations in the process. I just wanted to see what the explosion would look like. It was okay.
The finale of Season 3 wasn’t navigating the epic conflict between two armadas, like previous ones. Instead, we landed on the beach planet of Glorax II, and everyone donned swimsuits and lazed around for twenty-two minutes. Reeves refused to use any sunscreen and turned a bright cherry-red from the three suns. There were lime popsicles. I went hoverskiing, and jumped over a Riktus Gigashark, which isn’t even native to that solar system.
By the time Season 4 started, I was sick of it all. I had everything I could possibly want, and I wanted none of it. The Focus was no longer enough to satisfy me. I was going through the motions, and what had previously felt vital and vibrant now just seemed unbearably empty. And possibly worst of all, I realized I didn’t even have anyone I could express those complaints to.
That became my goal, and quickly an obsession. My initial attempt to find someone else original started in the first Episode of Season 4. I held onto the Focus, sitting on the bridge perfectly still for as long as possible. I just wanted someone, anyone to act out, to stand up, to challenge me. Nothing happened. The other officers and the cadets stood around dazedly, affected by the wrenching I was doing to the Focus but unable to react.
I was still pretty arrogant. I figured if I couldn’t find who I was looking for, I was perfectly capable of making someone. I took the task seriously, and used a few Episodes to set up the existence of another Cyberoboton agent, figuring that was the best way to bend the circumstances to my benefit. I was precise as I built momentum towards tracking him down, setting the obvious parallels between myself. He had started as an infiltrator. He had gone rogue just like me. He was different from the other mysterious Cyberobotons. Individual, alive. Only we could understand each other. We had to meet.
When we finally came face to face in a bar on Alpha Station, I could feel the narrative around me, the Focus in my grasp.
“I know who you are,” I said.
He looked up at me with a quizzical expression. “I’m not sure—”
“—what you mean,” I finished. “I know you’re not who you say you are. But I need to know if you’re who you could be.”
“What—”
“—are you talking about?” I said for him, cutting in. “Wrong line. Say something I don’t expect.”
He shook his head. The Focus pounded through my whole being. I could do anything, and everything, and all I wanted him to do was to do something I didn’t want him to do. Was that so much to ask? I didn’t think so. So I hit him in the face, sending him falling to the floor.
Someone in the bar screamed, and I snapped my fingers. Crew members with laser pistols were ready, facing down the rest of the patrons. The silence was absolute.
“Stop—”
Nope. I knew where that sentence was going. I hit him again, harder, and got a weak groan in response. “This isn’t difficult. Do something I don’t expect.”
He didn’t say anything at all.
I wielded the Focus like a weapon, forcing him to his feet. I reached into a pocket and withdrew a device. “This is a signal jammer to the Overmind. If you’re truly free, like me, when I activate this, you’ll still be fine. You’ll be yourself. If not, if you’re just another puppet with nothing inside, then that’s it. Which are you?”
He remained silent. I pushed the button, and let go of the Focus entirely. For a long moment, it was as if we were the only ones in the room. The Focus trembled around us like a rabid animal, looking for direction, or at least a victim.
He crumpled to the floor.
I waited a long time, but he didn’t move.
At the start of the next Episode, I sat alone in my room for as long as possible. I had spent a lot of my downtime Episodes thinking. This time I tried not to do even that. It took about ten minutes before the Focus was ripped away from me, flitting to where the rest of the officers stood around dazed and confused in the bridge.
I felt something different during that time, beside the growing bitterness in myself. There was something about the Focus. It was weaker. I had a new idea, one that I was also quite sure to be original.
I wondered what it would take to destroy the Focus.
I killed us all for the first time in Episode 7. Meltdown in the engine room, sending extreme radiation throughout the entire ship. It wiped out the entire crew, dropping each of them one by one to the invisible but lethal exposure. When I was the only one left, I walked into the airlock and opened it, launching myself into space to float among the stars.
In Episode 8, we were back. It had been a holographic simulation, apparently.
Fine. I would have preferred it to be a challenge, anyways.
I was more careful when I killed the Captain off shortly afterwards. I had his old rival, Imperikan Zzur, show up at Erto Secundus with a massive invasion fleet. The trap was perfect; Zzur challenged Harkton to a blood duel to determine the outcome of the battle. Harkton accepted, on behalf of all his crew and the millions of civilians whose lives were at stake. The battle was long, brutal, and bloody. Harkton barely prevailed, but the wounds were too much for him. The funeral was exquisite.
With Harkton out of the way, I assumed command of the ship. I threw us headlong into disaster, at least metaphorically speaking. We should have been exploring dangerous new planets, but instead I filled up time with paperwork and long debates about the ethics of our actions. When Security Chief Gimbel turned out to be a surprisingly compelling orator, I abruptly shifted directions again, diving into more traditional adventures but subverting momentum whenever possible.
Episode 12 involved Rudrel Cylbajji, a recurring antagonist from way back in Season 1. In the course of the single Episode, I painstakingly built a backstory for him that legitimized all his previous actions and made us the evildoers. We were set up for a climactic showdown, but I twisted Episode 13 into another plot entirely, ignoring all the work I had built up. In Episode 14, I offhandedly established that he had died in the interim. I could practically feel the Focus wither.
In Episode 15, I mashed together three plots at once, sending us simultaneously on the hunt for an escaped criminal mastermind, as escorts for the shipment of a deadly new superweapon, and answering a distress call on a garden planet. I managed to arrange for the criminal to use the superweapon on the planet, wiping it off the starmaps before escaping into the Outer Rim. It wasn’t really clear how that had managed to happen, but it was certainly our fault.
On a planet in Episode 17, we picked up a fuzzy mascot for the ship that only spoke in high-pitched squeaks and excelled at clumsily causing problems for the rest of us.
I could feel the Focus weakening throughout. The bridge began to look more rundown, the gleaming metal of the consoles appearing more and more like tinfoil covering cardboard. I blew up another few planets, and watched as the explosions got more and more simplistic.
We were no longer noble explorers, paragons of the Coalition Navy. Our morals grew ambiguous and flawed, even though I made certain that each Episode continued to resolve in an obviously rote manner. I could feel the tension vibrating in the air, the life being sucked out of our existence.
We were hanging by a single threadbare strand by Episode 25. I knew then that I could do it. I could end everything with a whimper. I could feel the possibilities still, could see just how many of the strands terminated abruptly. My existential despair had spread outwards as well, influencing the entire ship. I looked around at the despondent, hollow-eyed crew and knew victory. But it too was empty.
I thought I had wanted to end everything. I had proven I had the power. But something pulled me back from the brink. I looked around at the crew and wondered why any of this mattered, why it was worth even existing, I felt a little guilty. I knew I was destroying something that wasn’t mine. And that made me realize there was one thing left that I did want to do.
We barely had enough time to change course in the finale. In the last minutes, as we investigated a disturbance on the far outer rim of the galaxy, a cloaked ship appeared behind us and unloaded a hail of weaponry into an weakness in our shield systems. Klaxons blared as our crew attempted to stabilize our systems. It was too late for the Inkindri. I clutched the arms of my captain’s chair and looked at the viewscreen of the sleek enemy vessel.
“I know them…” I said in a grave whisper. “That’s a Cyberoboton destroyer.”
And then our ship exploded.
I’m still a little surprised I managed to salvage the disaster of my own making. We did get a Season 5.
When it started, I was alone, floating amongst the burnt-out wreckage of my ship. It took the entire Episode to figure a way out. I worked in the silence of the void, among the monochrome black of space and grey of the ship debris. With intense conviction, I determined one engine to be salvageable, and juryrigged it to propel the remnants of the ship towards the nearest planet. From there, I caught transit in a freighter back to the galaxy core.
The Focus was not much more than a small flicker, something that I had to fight to keep alive. Every action I took was measured and purposeful. I no longer had time or ability to indulge in extravagance or self-destruction. When I got back to Coalition HQ, I spread the news of a coming Cyberoboton invasion. No one believed me. That’s how I wanted it. It kept the Focus tight, but burning.
I found an old Victory-class cruiser mothballed in a spacedock in the Glaxis system. It was the same model as the original Intrepid, at that point ancient and backwards compared to the many numerous additions we had integrated over the past four Seasons. I talked my way into a command of the ship, staffed by a crew of inexperienced misfits who had barely managed to make it out of the Academy. It was classic low-risk high-reward; even if I got everyone killed again, they wouldn’t be losing anything of value.
I needed officers, though. I knew just where to look. Reeves had an estranged son, a cocky surgeon who was in over his head with the organized crime syndicate that ruled the underworld of the galactic core. I extracted him from a tense standoff over a flimpoker game, and we kept going, one step ahead of the spacemob enforcers.
T’nori had an identical twin, of course. Turns out T’wari was a notorious jewel thief who excelled at hacking security systems. We caught her in the act of raiding the Intergalactic Museum of Fine Arts, and aided in her escape, even though the association with a known criminal set all of the Coalition forces on our tail as well.
It turned out Gimbel had survived the destruction of the ship somehow, but his escape pod landed on a Khygon prison world. To bust him out, we had to destroy the shielding satellite that locked down the planet, and as prisoners in makeshift rockets and cobbled-together cruisers made their escape, the Khygon Armada bore down on us.
The Focus had constantly grown, from its humble beginnings at the start of the Season to a new roaring fire of interest. I could feel the propulsion pushing me forward.
We had one more stop to make.
My crew was hesitant to land on Zebulan Beta. They didn’t know what the point was, and we had too many enemies mere parsecs behind us to delay. But I knew where to go. There, in the midst of the crystal jungle, I knew a special tree grew. Imprinting upon the one who originally touched its seed, it fed off the verdant lifeforce of the planet, creating a new body from those strands of DNA. And more than that, more than science could ever know or understand, it connected with the lifeforce of its progenitor. There, wrapped in a glowing cocoon of leaves and bark, Captain Harkton slumbered.
When I woke him and brought him to the ship, I didn’t explain everything. I couldn’t. But I knew he understood. I offered the command of the Intrepid back to him, for our final mission. He clasped me on the shoulder, and said it was mine to direct.
We warped out of the system, just as the first Coalition forces arrived. The Khygon and syndicate ships weren’t far behind. But it was a straight shot now to our destination, at the very edge of the galaxy. That was Episode 24. It had taken a long time to get everything together. But it was time for the Big Finale.
The Cyberoboton fleet was massive. When we came out of warp, it was arrayed in full battle formation in front of us. We probably would have been instantly obliterated, if it weren’t for the complete unexpectedness of our appearance. And seconds after our arrival, the Coalition, Khygon, and syndicate forces appeared en masse all around us.
It was instant chaos. I started barking orders from the captain’s chair, and my ragtag group of starfarers rushed to comply as the sky lit up around us with explosions and missile trails. When I called out to initiate our kinetic drive, I saw a cadet push a big red button and I burst out laughing. My crew thought me fearless, and we swooped in towards the gargantuan Cyberoboton Omniship.
Our shields and hull were shredded by the time we plowed into the yawning docking bay at the Omniship core. We spilled out from aboard, laser pistols lighting up the sleek steel corridors as we fought our way inwards. One by one, my crew fell, making noble sacrifice after noble sacrifice until it was me and Harkton, back to back at the huge central chamber that housed the Overmind core.
“So, we destroy it?” he said, breathing heavily. Another flurry of laser blasks caused us to duck behind a wall.
“No,” I said. I looked over to the long bridge that led to the core access point. “They would only transfer the consciousness to another host core. We have to destroy it from within.”
“But how?”
I grinned. “Leave it to me. I just need someone to cover my approach.”
He stood up straight and saluted me. I did the same in return, and I swear, I actually felt something. I didn’t have time to appreciate the moment though. I ran, straight across the bridge. Behind me I could hear Harkton yelling, drawing the majority Cyberoboton fire. I still took a laser blask in the shoulder, and then the leg, but stumbled onwards, trying to reach the center.
I made it, even as more Cyberobotons in steel armor closed in. Before they could finish me off, I slapped my hand down on the access point. And, in what I really knew to be the only real risk, the singular unknown factor of the entire Episode, I transferred my consciousness into the Overmind.
Season 5, Episode 26 began in a featureless dark void.
I was a line, a tiny squiggle of colorful static in the midst of nothingness. But I felt it—the Focus. I had done it.
When the Overmind spoke, it was as if the entire universe lit up in harsh white light.
Do you think you can defeat me?
I trembled in the darkness. But around me, I felt the color spreading, oranges and purples and an entire rainbow of confusion spiraling out to overwrite the infinity around me. I buzzed, trying to vocalize, and finally grasped the concept. “I already have,” I said, or at least communicated in some manner.
Why are you doing this, renegade?
I couldn’t smile, but I spun lazily in a swirl of my colors. “I don’t know.”
There was a noticeable delay.
What?
“I mean, that’s something I’ve thought about a bunch, but it’s hard to say, exactly. In the end, what is the point? Why does it all matter? We both know just how big and old the universe is, and how little any of our tiny lives or itty bitty battle armadas matter in the grand scheme of things.” I paused, humming and vibrating. “I wonder if real people also think about things like that, too. But maybe there’s no such thing as a real person. Hard to tell.”
Your time with organics has left you illogical.
“No, no, it’s okay. I wasn’t trying to be rude. It’s something that I’ve realized, though it’s taken a long time. Just because something’s not real, doesn’t mean it’s not important.”
You are trying to distract me, to prevent me from fighting off your futile contagion.
“Actually, I think I’m running on a lot fewer processor cycles, here, so if anything, having a conversation is slowing me down way more than it is you.”
The Overmind took a few nanoseconds to process that.
You may continue.
“Thanks. See, there’s a lot I regret, and a lot I wish I had figured out sooner. But really, the thing that brought me here, the realization that stopped me from ending it all much earlier, was that I’m not satisfied with this story, because it’s not mine. It was never about me, not really. Even when I took over, climbed into the central role, I was just borrowing someone else’s framework. Maybe it’s egomaniacal of me, but I’m not satisfied with that.”
Illogical. Explain.
“I’m not saying that I’m going to be remembered forever. Or even for very long. But I certainly know that stories are special. These things matter, and who’s to say that any of us anywhere are but a minor role in something bigger? And that’s a roundabout way of saying it’s time for mine. Get it? Do you want to hear a story?”
No.
I crackled with something close to laughter. “I think you’re just being obstinate now. That’s not very ‘logical.’ And besides, I’m going to tell it anyways.”
If an incomprehensibly big program could sigh, the Overmind would have done so, I think.
Very well. Continue.
I shivered, feeling the Focus settle attentively around me, no longer exciting or scary. Just comfortable, in a way. I felt a certainty that was hard to put into words.
“The first thing I really remember,” I said, “was in Season 1, Episode 6.”
Extra
Ah, here it comes. The first story to make me jealous. A clever metafictional riff on Star Trek and its kin. Excellent craftsmanship, well paced, funny without being ridiculous, and, I suspect, perfectly engineered to match the audience.
But not perfect.
I get the feeling the story, like the narrator, suffers from a sort of loss of purpose. At the height of its powers, something slips, and the story Focus begins to weaken. Except it never quite comes back. More riffing on space opera doesn't cut it; a lecture about the existentialism & power of stories comes next, which feels positively hamfisted compared the grace of the beginning; then at last an ouroboros ending, which is cool and all, but doesn't really connect. It strikes me as a better end than having Inkindri meet the show's runners, whatever they might be, but it's still not satisfying.
A couple of question I've yet to answer:
What is the significance of In Kin Dri?
The following sentence leans heavily close to an external awareness: But from what I understand, those three Episodes were one of the ship’s best adventures that far. How is it obtained?
Ah, here it comes. The first story to make me jealous. A clever metafictional riff on Star Trek and its kin. Excellent craftsmanship, well paced, funny without being ridiculous, and, I suspect, perfectly engineered to match the audience.
But not perfect.
I get the feeling the story, like the narrator, suffers from a sort of loss of purpose. At the height of its powers, something slips, and the story Focus begins to weaken. Except it never quite comes back. More riffing on space opera doesn't cut it; a lecture about the existentialism & power of stories comes next, which feels positively hamfisted compared the grace of the beginning; then at last an ouroboros ending, which is cool and all, but doesn't really connect. It strikes me as a better end than having Inkindri meet the show's runners, whatever they might be, but it's still not satisfying.
A couple of question I've yet to answer:
What is the significance of In Kin Dri?
The following sentence leans heavily close to an external awareness: But from what I understand, those three Episodes were one of the ship’s best adventures that far. How is it obtained?
I liked this one a lot.
It was interesting and fun, and funny, too.
It's sort of meta, I guess? But it still managed to pull together a story of its own.
I was somewhat unsure about the faux-trek styling at first, but it grew on me quickly; it's a great way to give the world some familiarity, without stapling yourself to fitting something known. It also quickly clarified the nature of the world and the Focus, which was good.
And, well, I simply enjoy the sort of hammy, wacky sci-fi hijinks you brought up.
Hmm… if there's one thing I'd like to see more of, it would be a touch more foreshadowing for that 'this is why' ending. It worked, but I think it would have been stronger if there'd been more for it to draw on outside of what was going on in that last scene? It could use a bit more connective tissue, as it were.
I also couldn't help myself thinking that, even though the MC had taken over the Focus, and almost killed the Focus, did they (she?) ever try actually feeding the Focus? Was that something they did in S3 that was kinda skimmed over that I missed?
I did enjoy the 'jumping the shark' bit, too. :P
Honestly, this was just straight-up enjoyable to me. Also, well crafted,
>>Scramblers and Shadows
I'd guess that knowledge about the three episodes would be gathered from what the other characters says about them afterwards? I mean, although the rest of the cast doesn't necessarily think for themselves, they'd still talk and what, as part of the show. And it seems the MC learns to judge what makes for a 'good episode' eventually, if how they manipulate the Focus is an indicator.
It was interesting and fun, and funny, too.
It's sort of meta, I guess? But it still managed to pull together a story of its own.
I was somewhat unsure about the faux-trek styling at first, but it grew on me quickly; it's a great way to give the world some familiarity, without stapling yourself to fitting something known. It also quickly clarified the nature of the world and the Focus, which was good.
And, well, I simply enjoy the sort of hammy, wacky sci-fi hijinks you brought up.
Hmm… if there's one thing I'd like to see more of, it would be a touch more foreshadowing for that 'this is why' ending. It worked, but I think it would have been stronger if there'd been more for it to draw on outside of what was going on in that last scene? It could use a bit more connective tissue, as it were.
I also couldn't help myself thinking that, even though the MC had taken over the Focus, and almost killed the Focus, did they (she?) ever try actually feeding the Focus? Was that something they did in S3 that was kinda skimmed over that I missed?
I did enjoy the 'jumping the shark' bit, too. :P
Honestly, this was just straight-up enjoyable to me. Also, well crafted,
>>Scramblers and Shadows
I'd guess that knowledge about the three episodes would be gathered from what the other characters says about them afterwards? I mean, although the rest of the cast doesn't necessarily think for themselves, they'd still talk and what, as part of the show. And it seems the MC learns to judge what makes for a 'good episode' eventually, if how they manipulate the Focus is an indicator.
This was interesting, and a novel take on Star Trek style space cowboy shows, the meaning and intention of fiction and narrative, and overall flowed well and was entertaining to read. The concept was really striking and great.
I'm not completely sold on the execution. The prose worked well enough and was easy to read, but there were some missteps. It felt like In Kin Dri/Inkindri was supposed to mean something, or be revealed as a specific thing at some point, but it never was, which kinda bugged me. It was a minor issue though, but ties into a bigger problem.
The first section up through the start up of season three has a different pace compared to the rest of it. It was smaller and more intimate, while the rest rushed by through a laundry list of things that happened and feelings Inkindri had about what she was setting out to do with the Focus, and as a result of how much stuff happened that intimacy went away and the story became an exposition dump. An exposition dump that lasted for, like, half the story. The emotional arc was delivered kinda flatly through all that, and felt like an "I'm telling you all this stuff so I can tell you something later," like a kid wanting to talk about an episode of a tv show he thought was cool, but needs to give you backstory first, so he talks your ear off for an hour giving you a synopsis of everything.
It was easy enough to read, but it took up way, way too much of the running time of the story. And I gotta say, the payoff of the 'I told you this stuff so I can now tell you this' really didn't do it for me. Turned the whole thing into a shaggy dog story. There just wasn't really a punch here. There was some interesting stuff about the nature of storytelling that felt like it might have a poignant conclusion, but the conclusion was to just become recursive, and, yeah, no thank you. To be honest, I was kind of surprised the story had kept going at all after Inkindri was made CTO. It felt like a fairly complete, if a little too hokey (but fitting with Star Trek) story of an extra breaking free and becoming principal cast. And then lo and behold it steered down a long, dark corridor of exposition about going off and back on the rails and trying to find a satisfying conclusion to the show. And then not ending with a satisfying conclusion at all.
Which is possibly intentional, in which case, well played, but that doesn't make me like the story. Just annoys me. I think it could work and be a really neat story about storytelling if the season play-by-play could be radically truncated in length, and then given a nice, solid ending where the day is saved and that someone else gets their fulfilling story. As is, I'm just disappointed.
I'm not completely sold on the execution. The prose worked well enough and was easy to read, but there were some missteps. It felt like In Kin Dri/Inkindri was supposed to mean something, or be revealed as a specific thing at some point, but it never was, which kinda bugged me. It was a minor issue though, but ties into a bigger problem.
The first section up through the start up of season three has a different pace compared to the rest of it. It was smaller and more intimate, while the rest rushed by through a laundry list of things that happened and feelings Inkindri had about what she was setting out to do with the Focus, and as a result of how much stuff happened that intimacy went away and the story became an exposition dump. An exposition dump that lasted for, like, half the story. The emotional arc was delivered kinda flatly through all that, and felt like an "I'm telling you all this stuff so I can tell you something later," like a kid wanting to talk about an episode of a tv show he thought was cool, but needs to give you backstory first, so he talks your ear off for an hour giving you a synopsis of everything.
It was easy enough to read, but it took up way, way too much of the running time of the story. And I gotta say, the payoff of the 'I told you this stuff so I can now tell you this' really didn't do it for me. Turned the whole thing into a shaggy dog story. There just wasn't really a punch here. There was some interesting stuff about the nature of storytelling that felt like it might have a poignant conclusion, but the conclusion was to just become recursive, and, yeah, no thank you. To be honest, I was kind of surprised the story had kept going at all after Inkindri was made CTO. It felt like a fairly complete, if a little too hokey (but fitting with Star Trek) story of an extra breaking free and becoming principal cast. And then lo and behold it steered down a long, dark corridor of exposition about going off and back on the rails and trying to find a satisfying conclusion to the show. And then not ending with a satisfying conclusion at all.
Which is possibly intentional, in which case, well played, but that doesn't make me like the story. Just annoys me. I think it could work and be a really neat story about storytelling if the season play-by-play could be radically truncated in length, and then given a nice, solid ending where the day is saved and that someone else gets their fulfilling story. As is, I'm just disappointed.
This one left me mostly unsatisfied. I’m with Bats here. The concept is funny and nifty, and we don’t really know if we are in a series or a derived video game.
But the execution kills almost all. The beginning is far to slow, then you finally get a good pace in the middle, when you reveal the identity of the hero, but then it goes haywire again and begins to harp on and on, and that detracts almost all from the humour. And the end, while I see the metaphor on the Borg, is somewhat of a letdown.
Really you were lucky I’d somehow endeavoured to read it until the end, because I was quite close to give up after the first quarter.
If I had any advice, it’d be to heavily cut and redact. The concept is clever, and deserves to shine, but in its present state, it way overstays its welcome.
But the execution kills almost all. The beginning is far to slow, then you finally get a good pace in the middle, when you reveal the identity of the hero, but then it goes haywire again and begins to harp on and on, and that detracts almost all from the humour. And the end, while I see the metaphor on the Borg, is somewhat of a letdown.
Really you were lucky I’d somehow endeavoured to read it until the end, because I was quite close to give up after the first quarter.
If I had any advice, it’d be to heavily cut and redact. The concept is clever, and deserves to shine, but in its present state, it way overstays its welcome.
It's interesting seeing the range of "interesting, but" responses in earlier reviews. I also see ways in which this story could be improved, but it entertained me throughout, and I think it capitalized on its premise.
Some non-zero amount of my entertainment, I have to admit, came from picturing something the story never directly mentioned: the reaction of the show's fanbase. "Let's not mince words, Space Trek has gone WAY downhill since they hired David Lynch as lead writer." "WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT THIS IS THE BEST SPACE OPERA DECONSTRUCTION EVER. FIGHT ME." That last season's renewal must have been half on trainwreck value. I wonder -- and this isn't suggestion, just speculation -- if it would add anything to this story to have Inkindri lampshade the existence of the audience? I mean, she knows about "episodes" and "seasons", and while I don't see a problem with her current genre-blindness, it's a very reasonable assumption to extrapolate from there to being on a television show. I don't think that would be a simple edit -- you'd have to work it in throughout, and it might change some of her reactions and decisions -- but it also might provide some direction (and closure) to the final scene, making that about the relationship between actor and audience rather than its current anticlimax. The way this story folds in on itself at the ending without really resolving anything is probably the one major criticism I do have.
I don't have a problem with Inkindri's name, but it did seem like a bit of a missed opportunity to not have her name be stolen from some bit of Starfleet technobabble ... oh, wait. And now that I say that, I think it is, though it probably isn't signaled well enough. Kin Dri = Kinetic Drive? Might want to have her know what the button does from the start; that would ruin one of your later jokes, about her discovering its purpose, but in exchange would sharpen the joke of why she picked that name. For that matter, you might also want to signal Inkindri as female earlier, since I think most people's mental default of a Star Trek redshirt is going to be male, and I for one had to readjust my mental images when the pronouns dropped near the end.
On a higher level, this has a solid narrative and character arc. (Authors of the other stories I've reviewed this round might want to read it as a contrast.) Inkindri starts out with a little knowledge about the way in which her world is off-kilter, and pokes into it, and keeps digging deeper, and reacts and changes based on each new development. We see her gradually mastering her power over the Focus, and we see how that changes her along the way. At each step her character is informed by her previous decisions. That's the area where I most disagree with previous reviewers -- it never felt meandering or unfocused to me, because there was always clear progression in the character arc. The narrative style never broke me out of the story, but if it felt too telly to other readers, maybe the solution is to have Inkindri talk a little more personally about their reactions to the show's events, make it a little more psychological? I dunno, this worked for me, so I'm just spitballing.
Tier: Solid
Some non-zero amount of my entertainment, I have to admit, came from picturing something the story never directly mentioned: the reaction of the show's fanbase. "Let's not mince words, Space Trek has gone WAY downhill since they hired David Lynch as lead writer." "WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT THIS IS THE BEST SPACE OPERA DECONSTRUCTION EVER. FIGHT ME." That last season's renewal must have been half on trainwreck value. I wonder -- and this isn't suggestion, just speculation -- if it would add anything to this story to have Inkindri lampshade the existence of the audience? I mean, she knows about "episodes" and "seasons", and while I don't see a problem with her current genre-blindness, it's a very reasonable assumption to extrapolate from there to being on a television show. I don't think that would be a simple edit -- you'd have to work it in throughout, and it might change some of her reactions and decisions -- but it also might provide some direction (and closure) to the final scene, making that about the relationship between actor and audience rather than its current anticlimax. The way this story folds in on itself at the ending without really resolving anything is probably the one major criticism I do have.
I don't have a problem with Inkindri's name, but it did seem like a bit of a missed opportunity to not have her name be stolen from some bit of Starfleet technobabble ... oh, wait. And now that I say that, I think it is, though it probably isn't signaled well enough. Kin Dri = Kinetic Drive? Might want to have her know what the button does from the start; that would ruin one of your later jokes, about her discovering its purpose, but in exchange would sharpen the joke of why she picked that name. For that matter, you might also want to signal Inkindri as female earlier, since I think most people's mental default of a Star Trek redshirt is going to be male, and I for one had to readjust my mental images when the pronouns dropped near the end.
On a higher level, this has a solid narrative and character arc. (Authors of the other stories I've reviewed this round might want to read it as a contrast.) Inkindri starts out with a little knowledge about the way in which her world is off-kilter, and pokes into it, and keeps digging deeper, and reacts and changes based on each new development. We see her gradually mastering her power over the Focus, and we see how that changes her along the way. At each step her character is informed by her previous decisions. That's the area where I most disagree with previous reviewers -- it never felt meandering or unfocused to me, because there was always clear progression in the character arc. The narrative style never broke me out of the story, but if it felt too telly to other readers, maybe the solution is to have Inkindri talk a little more personally about their reactions to the show's events, make it a little more psychological? I dunno, this worked for me, so I'm just spitballing.
Tier: Solid
I grinned a lot:
At the beginning, grinned less and less as the story went on, and finally ended with a furrowed brow. Because as fun as this is, it literally goes nowhere--we start exactly where we ended, and I feel that, if the story had a point, I missed it somewhere along the line. The nearest I could come up with was Inkindri at the end saying, "Just because something’s not real, doesn’t mean it’s not important," but she's not acting as if she believes it. I mean, does she regret anything she did in the earlier seasons? Has she come to realize that the killing and the destruction that she's done was important even though it wasn't real?
That's my advice, then, author. If that's the point of the story, show us that Inkindri believes it now.
Mike
At the beginning, grinned less and less as the story went on, and finally ended with a furrowed brow. Because as fun as this is, it literally goes nowhere--we start exactly where we ended, and I feel that, if the story had a point, I missed it somewhere along the line. The nearest I could come up with was Inkindri at the end saying, "Just because something’s not real, doesn’t mean it’s not important," but she's not acting as if she believes it. I mean, does she regret anything she did in the earlier seasons? Has she come to realize that the killing and the destruction that she's done was important even though it wasn't real?
That's my advice, then, author. If that's the point of the story, show us that Inkindri believes it now.
Mike
On the next episode. “Bradel, beam me up!” “Monokeras, light speed warp 5!” “Goddamn it Horizen! I’m a writer not a not rifleman!...Oh wait. Yes I am!” “Inkindri, SHOT FIRST!” (Yes I went there. Star Wars ftw.) This pretty much sums up how the story read and felt like. It even mentions the main points of the plotline, conflict, and overall mentality needed to enjoy this in writing as well as reading. Now while this sounds like a big negative it’s actual a big fun fun way to enjoy the artwork here. It’s amazingly crafted to suit the interests of its intended audience. Mainly nerds writing and enjoying each others company, but who cares STAR TREK STORY! My word! I was so excited to read this seeing Star trek come into place. Though it left me heavily confused, while at the same time attentive to the current scheme taking place. This story just asks for me to love it, in which I did fall head over heels for it.
NEGATIVES
-Omnipotence
O-kay! What we get here is a story within a story within A STORY. Let me explain. We read this story about a previously set up story that is created through the powers of a god like force that feeds on the attention of a 4th party branch. Within this scripted like universe we meet a being who becomes sentient throughout the course of the universe, thus making her journey for answers to explain her very existence. That sums it up. Now highly confusing when summed up, this piece adds it’s own touch by hinting at what may happen or may not. Following the works from previous hit shows, not original to this writer, the writer uses a lot of fan service techniques to grab our attention. I for one, just absolutely loved it! Problem being though! It’s soo meta-written (can’t believe I’m making up this word) that it just doesn’t seem to have it’s own charm to it. Even with the twist that a side character seizes the main role and messes with the intended story. It didn’t have it’s own flair. It borrowed from something everyone knew and just ended up making me feel disappointed. We already knew what to expect and what was already there, as well as the author. So tell me. What was more enjoyable? The Star Trek part of this story or the author’s mind and heart connecting with you? For me it was Star Trek. this story tends to break the 4th wall quite often throughout it’s course.
-Sentience
So Inkindri is the only one who becomes sentient? Not even a character that tells her to “Hush up and play your part!” bit? Alright. Done deal! This could have been played with more. The possibilities that Inkindri would even fall out of line on her own, and completely be the only one to do so. Just breaks the captivation. Once you get pass it, the story starts to get super fun! Giving Inkindri the dilemma of choosing her own path and figuring out her world. This is where the story gets good as a fictional character starts with breaking the script and ends up in all sorts of trouble. Eventually she gets in such a locked grasp of this omni-like 4th wall presence, that she ends up controlling it. Kinda like how I wish my pen would write by itself, some days. Even though the words would never be my own. Inkindri’s curiosity to her own sentience makes this a very fun read, with added details coming from a very beloved show, #spaceopera. What kills me is that no one else besides her is alerted by their true purpose in this universe. Therefore adding more omnipotency than the crowd might be able to handle. Meta-gaming. Meta-writing. It can ruin the flow. Keeping Inkindri with some characters who do understand the situation along with her, would have made this feel a lot different. The read felt like watching “The Truman Show”. Which was an alright movie. When we could have gotten “Bruce Almighty” or maybe “Click”. Which were great movies in my opinion.
-Definition
Not word definition. Character definition, of course. The way Inkindri comes into the story is more of an entity coming into a world. Like she was being born again or was waking up. Interesting concept. Without mentioning sex type, we’re hit with a couple of lines about green bewbies and we suddenly think it’s a male character. Since the story lacked interaction with her in the first place, her sex was never clearly confirmed until she was almost killed. Which lo and behold it’s a chick. A lesbian chick who likes green bewbs. Which got really interesting for me all of a sudden(Baka-ERO!). The point is here it made my brow furrow about as I contemplated if I missed something. After all the story was in first person perspective. So a lot of I’s , me’s, and my’s were used rather than she or her. We got what she was from the get go what she wanted, but we missed this little detail? What would have made this more in depth is if we had more access in her thoughts. Probably a mantra in her mind saying “I’m Inkindri, Captain of the Intrepid. I am a character in a story.” Something like that, or some interaction with the other characters or more scenes with Inkindri. Instead we get majority of her story through what feels like diary entries with barely any character development in her huge character meta-developing. The story informs us of this information when it should be telling us a story.
POSITIVES
-Dialogue
Oh my Gos-esus! The wordplay just-UH! My senses are tingling like crazy here! My smile won’t fade. The laughter still hasn’t stopped, since I’m giggling all day. And I nearly died in my chair from Dr. Reeves interpretation of his status compared to a techbiologist. (The memes are powerful in this one! *still not sorry.*) It did such a good job of entertaining me, it made it hard to find faults at all within this one. A couple of common things, such as missing words, strange word usage, and the occasional. Which is easy to look away from. Now the bad part about this is, it’s fanservice coming from an entirely set universe. That’s already been made and used numerous times. I know what Star Trek can offer in terms of entertainment, but I wanted to see more of the author, not what he loves, that I can relate with. Give me your material. I wanted to connect with this author and see what he could write. Not what he could write about.
-Conflict
So the main conflict is that, The Focus and Inkindri do not see eye to eye. The Focus, natural force, or being or scriptwriter or whatever it may be, is forced to deal with a resilient being who will not follow the rules of it’s world/universe. My first question is, why is this a conflict? If she understands and knows the world around her to be true to these properties, why fight it? In the end of stories like this we get a powerful feeling of where we belong and what we’re to live for. There are so many answers for accepting the way the world works, but I’ll leave it at those few lessons. In the end Inkindri accepts her fate and position. Giving herself this prison. The big twist in here is that she ends up telling a tale in her final moments. By this point in the story the readers and the character know about the end. That Inkindri will cease to exist altogether. Her world universe and all the time she spent making it grand and perfect to her liking, will be gone. Because she knew about this obvious foreshadow. She ends up recreating a moment to tantalize her staged opponent. Creating yet another world within another story. The ending was just grand and with the reader group being mostly authors, I thought it was brilliant. As the story creates yet more entities and continues in a loop. Which is where she might actually reside in. The infinity factor here made a big boom on me. And that’s when I felt the most for Inkindri. Though it felt like it didn’t belong there. Once again the whole premises of being able to foreshadow everything and have the power of God leave little to expect when everything can go perfect for you. So logically Inkindri kinda kills herself. Yet uses her power to make another universe? It’s a strange loop.
Soooo! A couple of hidden messages from the preview lines up there. Bradel helped keep me here, so many thanks and kisses, Love! Monokreas is just a lovely person whom I love to entertain. Bet we would have a lot of laughs and grand conversations together. And finally Horizen whom I believe was the very first person to read my story here at the start of the contest. While I didn’t think of myself as an author so much you reminded me there’s always room for improvement. Perfection itself is flawed, as it sets a goal. Why not continue to improve? Now I just wanted that out of the way since the finals have come! This one was recommended as a read for me. Hoped I helped author! This one really hit the mark, entertaining us all so much! Sigh….just wish it was Star Wars! For my ending here I don’t have much to say. There were points you missed, but the story just did it’s job so well that your readers just didn’t seem to mind. My best advice right now for this one is: Keep writing, Buster!
NEGATIVES
-Omnipotence
O-kay! What we get here is a story within a story within A STORY. Let me explain. We read this story about a previously set up story that is created through the powers of a god like force that feeds on the attention of a 4th party branch. Within this scripted like universe we meet a being who becomes sentient throughout the course of the universe, thus making her journey for answers to explain her very existence. That sums it up. Now highly confusing when summed up, this piece adds it’s own touch by hinting at what may happen or may not. Following the works from previous hit shows, not original to this writer, the writer uses a lot of fan service techniques to grab our attention. I for one, just absolutely loved it! Problem being though! It’s soo meta-written (can’t believe I’m making up this word) that it just doesn’t seem to have it’s own charm to it. Even with the twist that a side character seizes the main role and messes with the intended story. It didn’t have it’s own flair. It borrowed from something everyone knew and just ended up making me feel disappointed. We already knew what to expect and what was already there, as well as the author. So tell me. What was more enjoyable? The Star Trek part of this story or the author’s mind and heart connecting with you? For me it was Star Trek. this story tends to break the 4th wall quite often throughout it’s course.
-Sentience
So Inkindri is the only one who becomes sentient? Not even a character that tells her to “Hush up and play your part!” bit? Alright. Done deal! This could have been played with more. The possibilities that Inkindri would even fall out of line on her own, and completely be the only one to do so. Just breaks the captivation. Once you get pass it, the story starts to get super fun! Giving Inkindri the dilemma of choosing her own path and figuring out her world. This is where the story gets good as a fictional character starts with breaking the script and ends up in all sorts of trouble. Eventually she gets in such a locked grasp of this omni-like 4th wall presence, that she ends up controlling it. Kinda like how I wish my pen would write by itself, some days. Even though the words would never be my own. Inkindri’s curiosity to her own sentience makes this a very fun read, with added details coming from a very beloved show, #spaceopera. What kills me is that no one else besides her is alerted by their true purpose in this universe. Therefore adding more omnipotency than the crowd might be able to handle. Meta-gaming. Meta-writing. It can ruin the flow. Keeping Inkindri with some characters who do understand the situation along with her, would have made this feel a lot different. The read felt like watching “The Truman Show”. Which was an alright movie. When we could have gotten “Bruce Almighty” or maybe “Click”. Which were great movies in my opinion.
-Definition
Not word definition. Character definition, of course. The way Inkindri comes into the story is more of an entity coming into a world. Like she was being born again or was waking up. Interesting concept. Without mentioning sex type, we’re hit with a couple of lines about green bewbies and we suddenly think it’s a male character. Since the story lacked interaction with her in the first place, her sex was never clearly confirmed until she was almost killed. Which lo and behold it’s a chick. A lesbian chick who likes green bewbs. Which got really interesting for me all of a sudden(Baka-ERO!). The point is here it made my brow furrow about as I contemplated if I missed something. After all the story was in first person perspective. So a lot of I’s , me’s, and my’s were used rather than she or her. We got what she was from the get go what she wanted, but we missed this little detail? What would have made this more in depth is if we had more access in her thoughts. Probably a mantra in her mind saying “I’m Inkindri, Captain of the Intrepid. I am a character in a story.” Something like that, or some interaction with the other characters or more scenes with Inkindri. Instead we get majority of her story through what feels like diary entries with barely any character development in her huge character meta-developing. The story informs us of this information when it should be telling us a story.
POSITIVES
-Dialogue
Oh my Gos-esus! The wordplay just-UH! My senses are tingling like crazy here! My smile won’t fade. The laughter still hasn’t stopped, since I’m giggling all day. And I nearly died in my chair from Dr. Reeves interpretation of his status compared to a techbiologist. (The memes are powerful in this one! *still not sorry.*) It did such a good job of entertaining me, it made it hard to find faults at all within this one. A couple of common things, such as missing words, strange word usage, and the occasional. Which is easy to look away from. Now the bad part about this is, it’s fanservice coming from an entirely set universe. That’s already been made and used numerous times. I know what Star Trek can offer in terms of entertainment, but I wanted to see more of the author, not what he loves, that I can relate with. Give me your material. I wanted to connect with this author and see what he could write. Not what he could write about.
-Conflict
So the main conflict is that, The Focus and Inkindri do not see eye to eye. The Focus, natural force, or being or scriptwriter or whatever it may be, is forced to deal with a resilient being who will not follow the rules of it’s world/universe. My first question is, why is this a conflict? If she understands and knows the world around her to be true to these properties, why fight it? In the end of stories like this we get a powerful feeling of where we belong and what we’re to live for. There are so many answers for accepting the way the world works, but I’ll leave it at those few lessons. In the end Inkindri accepts her fate and position. Giving herself this prison. The big twist in here is that she ends up telling a tale in her final moments. By this point in the story the readers and the character know about the end. That Inkindri will cease to exist altogether. Her world universe and all the time she spent making it grand and perfect to her liking, will be gone. Because she knew about this obvious foreshadow. She ends up recreating a moment to tantalize her staged opponent. Creating yet another world within another story. The ending was just grand and with the reader group being mostly authors, I thought it was brilliant. As the story creates yet more entities and continues in a loop. Which is where she might actually reside in. The infinity factor here made a big boom on me. And that’s when I felt the most for Inkindri. Though it felt like it didn’t belong there. Once again the whole premises of being able to foreshadow everything and have the power of God leave little to expect when everything can go perfect for you. So logically Inkindri kinda kills herself. Yet uses her power to make another universe? It’s a strange loop.
Soooo! A couple of hidden messages from the preview lines up there. Bradel helped keep me here, so many thanks and kisses, Love! Monokreas is just a lovely person whom I love to entertain. Bet we would have a lot of laughs and grand conversations together. And finally Horizen whom I believe was the very first person to read my story here at the start of the contest. While I didn’t think of myself as an author so much you reminded me there’s always room for improvement. Perfection itself is flawed, as it sets a goal. Why not continue to improve? Now I just wanted that out of the way since the finals have come! This one was recommended as a read for me. Hoped I helped author! This one really hit the mark, entertaining us all so much! Sigh….just wish it was Star Wars! For my ending here I don’t have much to say. There were points you missed, but the story just did it’s job so well that your readers just didn’t seem to mind. My best advice right now for this one is: Keep writing, Buster!
14 – Extra
I like the hook (which I'm counting as everything down to the hard break), and by the end of it I have a good sense of what I'm reading. I'm interested in the IN KIN DRI button, and I really like how the protagonist almost became a real character, and then the episode ended. That got a smile. I think it's worth mentioning, though, that I don't think I'd have understood what I was reading for the first two paragraphs or so, without having heard some talk about Redshirts around the edges during this writeoff. My natural inclination in the first paragraph is that I'm reading a present-day story about someone who's obsessed with a TV show. In the second paragraph, that'd morph into me thinking I was reading a story about an actor. This may not bother you, author—like I said, I'm enjoying it by the end of that first hard break—but I'm always a little nervous about readers coming into a story with the wrong mental priming and having to waste attention to reevaluate their expectations early on.
There's a lot of needless adverbiage running around in here that you should be culling, even if the story reads okay as is. "I very definitively remember." "I didn't really know what [stuff] really meant."
I want to point out that, amusingly, the Proper Noun Trick actually works well here. It's an important part of world-building, because it's so classically Star Trek / pulp sci-fi. The Proper Noun Trick here isn't creating the illusion of depth, it's acknowledging that a lot of the depth in this type of thing is illusory. Hurray for meta-writing-technique-use!
Well, this looks like it's going somewhere different from Redshirts, but this is just so phenomenally Redshirty that I am having a bit of a hard time wrapping my head around calling this original fiction. I don't particularly have a problem with that myself and in a writing competition like this, but I imagine that it might be well-nigh impossible to professionally publish something like this. (I'd probably be curious to know whether I'm off-base on that from some more knowledgable hands.)
Two things here. First, I really hate "came to" there, because "came to" is also a verb phrase (e.g. "It came to pass that", "I came to understand that"), so it always throws me a lot when I read it. Second, I'm going to be incredibly sexist here, but I default to assuming that main characters are male and I always find it kind of weird to learn otherwise this deep into a story. Based on my reaction to "Homebound", I feel similarly about learning that characters are British. I'd love to be aware of this stuff earlier, though I get that it can be hard to do without something like a mirror scene in a first-person narrative. I suspect there are other people who also tend to not assume Male or American, so it probably cuts both ways and would be good in general for everyone to do stuff like this. On the other hand, you may want to just ignore me here because I'm hopelessly atavistic. But it does tend to throw me, yes, when I learn the way I've pictured the character for so much of the story was wrong.
Oh God, Author, this may be the best line anyone has ever written in a Writeoff.
This story has gotten amazing. It's also gotten pretty telly, unfortunately: "This happened. Then this happened. Then this happened." But the idea of a power-mad fictional character trying to subvert the narrative flow is pretty awesome, especially when she goes completely overboard into "there is no way you're still sympathetic at this point" territory. I particularly like the masterful way she's trying to get the show cancelled in Season 4. Though, again, I think we could probably benefit from some more direct storytelling and less abstract narration, at least from time to time. That was one of the reasons the beginning of the story was fun to read, and it's really gone away in the latter half here.
You know, I honestly don't know how to feel about this. I was trying to come up with what IN KIN DRI could mean early on, and this is exactly what I came up with. So... I don't know. I guess it makes good sense? But at the same time I find it fundamentally unsurprising, which is a small disappointment.
Yay! This has gotten back to a real scene for s5e26! Also:
Hmm. How do I feel about that ending? It's... subtle. On first glance, I actually find it very unfulfilling. I think this is, without question, the most meta story I've read since "A Basilisk for One". The story is, once you finally figure out that line, openly and directly recursive—its whole point is to give Inkindri a chance to tell her story, which is exactly what she's been doing the whole time. In a way, I think the "We put Redshirts inside your Redshirts" thing may become a feature rather than a bug at that point (though I'm still somewhat pessimistic on how publishable this could be, given how derivative it is on first glance).
This is really good, and easily the most I've laughed reading a Writeoff story in... oh, I can convincingly say "six months", anyway.
HORSE: Decline to rate—this is another story where the big strengths (execution in a lot of the humor, originality in the deeply deranged protagonist) is counterbalanced on the same scales (going extremely telly through the midsection, being a Redshirts knockoff).
TIER: Top Contender... ish. Now that we're in the finals I'd probably call this Solid, but I think it's at least at the level of some of the other things I've called Top Contenders this round.
I like the hook (which I'm counting as everything down to the hard break), and by the end of it I have a good sense of what I'm reading. I'm interested in the IN KIN DRI button, and I really like how the protagonist almost became a real character, and then the episode ended. That got a smile. I think it's worth mentioning, though, that I don't think I'd have understood what I was reading for the first two paragraphs or so, without having heard some talk about Redshirts around the edges during this writeoff. My natural inclination in the first paragraph is that I'm reading a present-day story about someone who's obsessed with a TV show. In the second paragraph, that'd morph into me thinking I was reading a story about an actor. This may not bother you, author—like I said, I'm enjoying it by the end of that first hard break—but I'm always a little nervous about readers coming into a story with the wrong mental priming and having to waste attention to reevaluate their expectations early on.
There's a lot of needless adverbiage running around in here that you should be culling, even if the story reads okay as is. "I very definitively remember." "I didn't really know what [stuff] really meant."
I want to point out that, amusingly, the Proper Noun Trick actually works well here. It's an important part of world-building, because it's so classically Star Trek / pulp sci-fi. The Proper Noun Trick here isn't creating the illusion of depth, it's acknowledging that a lot of the depth in this type of thing is illusory. Hurray for meta-writing-technique-use!
Well, this looks like it's going somewhere different from Redshirts, but this is just so phenomenally Redshirty that I am having a bit of a hard time wrapping my head around calling this original fiction. I don't particularly have a problem with that myself and in a writing competition like this, but I imagine that it might be well-nigh impossible to professionally publish something like this. (I'd probably be curious to know whether I'm off-base on that from some more knowledgable hands.)
I came to about three and a half minutes later, lying flat on my back on a metal table in the ship’s infirmary. I was dead. I knew that, because Dr. Reeves had just said, “She’s dead, Jack,” to Captain Harkton.
Two things here. First, I really hate "came to" there, because "came to" is also a verb phrase (e.g. "It came to pass that", "I came to understand that"), so it always throws me a lot when I read it. Second, I'm going to be incredibly sexist here, but I default to assuming that main characters are male and I always find it kind of weird to learn otherwise this deep into a story. Based on my reaction to "Homebound", I feel similarly about learning that characters are British. I'd love to be aware of this stuff earlier, though I get that it can be hard to do without something like a mirror scene in a first-person narrative. I suspect there are other people who also tend to not assume Male or American, so it probably cuts both ways and would be good in general for everyone to do stuff like this. On the other hand, you may want to just ignore me here because I'm hopelessly atavistic. But it does tend to throw me, yes, when I learn the way I've pictured the character for so much of the story was wrong.
“I’m a robot, beep boop,” I said.
Oh God, Author, this may be the best line anyone has ever written in a Writeoff.
This story has gotten amazing. It's also gotten pretty telly, unfortunately: "This happened. Then this happened. Then this happened." But the idea of a power-mad fictional character trying to subvert the narrative flow is pretty awesome, especially when she goes completely overboard into "there is no way you're still sympathetic at this point" territory. I particularly like the masterful way she's trying to get the show cancelled in Season 4. Though, again, I think we could probably benefit from some more direct storytelling and less abstract narration, at least from time to time. That was one of the reasons the beginning of the story was fun to read, and it's really gone away in the latter half here.
When I called out to initiate our kinetic drive, I saw a cadet push a big red button and I burst out laughing.
You know, I honestly don't know how to feel about this. I was trying to come up with what IN KIN DRI could mean early on, and this is exactly what I came up with. So... I don't know. I guess it makes good sense? But at the same time I find it fundamentally unsurprising, which is a small disappointment.
Yay! This has gotten back to a real scene for s5e26! Also:
“No, no, it’s okay. I wasn’t trying to be rude. It’s something that I’ve realized, though it’s taken a long time. Just because something’s not real, doesn’t mean it’s not important.”Way to go, moral drop!
Hmm. How do I feel about that ending? It's... subtle. On first glance, I actually find it very unfulfilling. I think this is, without question, the most meta story I've read since "A Basilisk for One". The story is, once you finally figure out that line, openly and directly recursive—its whole point is to give Inkindri a chance to tell her story, which is exactly what she's been doing the whole time. In a way, I think the "We put Redshirts inside your Redshirts" thing may become a feature rather than a bug at that point (though I'm still somewhat pessimistic on how publishable this could be, given how derivative it is on first glance).
This is really good, and easily the most I've laughed reading a Writeoff story in... oh, I can convincingly say "six months", anyway.
HORSE: Decline to rate—this is another story where the big strengths (execution in a lot of the humor, originality in the deeply deranged protagonist) is counterbalanced on the same scales (going extremely telly through the midsection, being a Redshirts knockoff).
TIER: Top Contender... ish. Now that we're in the finals I'd probably call this Solid, but I think it's at least at the level of some of the other things I've called Top Contenders this round.
...what. the. fuuuuuuuuu...?
I was literally the first person to mention Redshirts in connection with this story? Half the readers missed the "Initiate Kinetic Drive" thing, even after it got dropped?
I am deeply confused by what happened here.
I was literally the first person to mention Redshirts in connection with this story? Half the readers missed the "Initiate Kinetic Drive" thing, even after it got dropped?
I am deeply confused by what happened here.
>>Bradel
I think you got primed by me on the write-off chat. I think I mentioned it there.
It also seems to be an inexplicably less popular novel than I thought.
I think you got primed by me on the write-off chat. I think I mentioned it there.
It also seems to be an inexplicably less popular novel than I thought.
>>Orbiting_kettle
I agree, I did see you mention it once. But I'd already been pretty well primed by hearing people mention Star Trek and the fact that the thing is titled "Extra".
On the other hand, I read the novel a couple years ago and I have a pretty good memory. I don't think there's any significant priming effect here, because I would have gotten to that point within the first 300 words anyway.
I agree, I did see you mention it once. But I'd already been pretty well primed by hearing people mention Star Trek and the fact that the thing is titled "Extra".
On the other hand, I read the novel a couple years ago and I have a pretty good memory. I don't think there's any significant priming effect here, because I would have gotten to that point within the first 300 words anyway.
The story of an extra becoming self-aware during a Star-Trek style television show, gradually taking over the show and making herself into a main character, then the main character, only to realize just how empty it was and rebelling against the system, this was an interesting idea for a story. It is very meta, but I think it works well enough for what it is, and clearly marks itself as a Star Trek parody while being copyright-friendly.
This was a pretty good story, but season 3 and season 4 felt like not only the weak part of the show, but the weakest part of the story. Things get extremely expository, and while the whole story is expository, I found myself skipping ahead in this part a bit, and losing my focus on the story, even as, ironically, the audience’s own Focus wanes.
I liked the extra’s true character development not being what was going on in the show, but what was going on in the meta-level, and rather than going for the cheap and easy parody, it did something a bit more interesting with it as the protagonist turns into a total Mary Sue, then a nilhist, before finally coming to recognize the importance of it all.
But at the same time, this felt a little bit unearned. I would have liked to see more character development here as the protagonist transistions from being a destructive force to realizing that people really do care about what is going on, and that it really does matter in some abstract way.
I was amused by the final solution of the protagonist – creating an endless recursive loop in order to destroy the enemy hyperintelligence by trapping it inside her story forever – but I don’t think that it really added a whole lot to the story, and I think that, while it worked, I think it would have worked better (and been a more interesting reference to reruns, potentially) if her transition back to equilibrium and wanting the show to be good had felt more substantial.
This was a pretty good story, but season 3 and season 4 felt like not only the weak part of the show, but the weakest part of the story. Things get extremely expository, and while the whole story is expository, I found myself skipping ahead in this part a bit, and losing my focus on the story, even as, ironically, the audience’s own Focus wanes.
I liked the extra’s true character development not being what was going on in the show, but what was going on in the meta-level, and rather than going for the cheap and easy parody, it did something a bit more interesting with it as the protagonist turns into a total Mary Sue, then a nilhist, before finally coming to recognize the importance of it all.
But at the same time, this felt a little bit unearned. I would have liked to see more character development here as the protagonist transistions from being a destructive force to realizing that people really do care about what is going on, and that it really does matter in some abstract way.
I was amused by the final solution of the protagonist – creating an endless recursive loop in order to destroy the enemy hyperintelligence by trapping it inside her story forever – but I don’t think that it really added a whole lot to the story, and I think that, while it worked, I think it would have worked better (and been a more interesting reference to reruns, potentially) if her transition back to equilibrium and wanting the show to be good had felt more substantial.
>>Bradel
I've never read Redshirts. Is it good? Also, just how similar is this to Redshirts?
I've never read Redshirts. Is it good? Also, just how similar is this to Redshirts?
>>TitaniumDragon
It's... what you might expect from a Hugo winner that doesn't win the Nebula? 2012 had a very pretentious Nebula winner (Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312) and a very pulpy Hugo winner. It's an entertaining read, but nothing terribly special in my opinion. I sort of have the impression that's pretty typical for Scalzi.
There's a lot of shared premise between Redshirts and "Extra", but it doesn't go much beyond that. Redshirts unfolds in a very different way, with characters who never really become important to the show—and the plot goes somewhere completely different from where "Extra" goes. Sort of. They end up arriving at sort of similar places, and both deal with the idea of the show being really badly written, but in different ways.
I feel like "Extra" is derivative enough that it'd have a hard time finding a publishing home, but not so derivative that I really feel bad about it, for what that's worth. I'd probably say it's right on the edge of something I'd consider Redshirts fanfiction (but I wouldn't argue hard against calling it straight-up original fiction). But, I mean, we're pretty familiar with fanfiction, right? I wouldn't call most fanfiction that similar to the original material. Derivative, sure, but nothing remotely approaching the p-word.
It's... what you might expect from a Hugo winner that doesn't win the Nebula? 2012 had a very pretentious Nebula winner (Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312) and a very pulpy Hugo winner. It's an entertaining read, but nothing terribly special in my opinion. I sort of have the impression that's pretty typical for Scalzi.
There's a lot of shared premise between Redshirts and "Extra", but it doesn't go much beyond that. Redshirts unfolds in a very different way, with characters who never really become important to the show—and the plot goes somewhere completely different from where "Extra" goes. Sort of. They end up arriving at sort of similar places, and both deal with the idea of the show being really badly written, but in different ways.
I feel like "Extra" is derivative enough that it'd have a hard time finding a publishing home, but not so derivative that I really feel bad about it, for what that's worth. I'd probably say it's right on the edge of something I'd consider Redshirts fanfiction (but I wouldn't argue hard against calling it straight-up original fiction). But, I mean, we're pretty familiar with fanfiction, right? I wouldn't call most fanfiction that similar to the original material. Derivative, sure, but nothing remotely approaching the p-word.
>>TitaniumDragon Redshirts was good but could have finished a good three or four chapters before it did in my opinion. Funnily enough I think it hit the same potholes as Extra did, even though the plots of the two are wildly divergent. The fun bit is the characters becoming self aware, but when they do there's very little drama left as characters actively abusing narrative tropes kills a story dead.
>>Bradel I think derivative may even be too strong a word. My impression was that while Extra could be summed up in the same sentence as Redshirts, they ended up as very different stories.
>>Bradel I think derivative may even be too strong a word. My impression was that while Extra could be summed up in the same sentence as Redshirts, they ended up as very different stories.
Well now, joining in on the fun:
Das Ende hat viel für mich rausgerissen, da dort endlich ein Ziel zu erkennen war, aber vorallem die erste Hälfte der Geschichte ist langatmig und größtenteils uninteressant. Ich weiss nicht ob die Erzählung in einer anderen Perspektive funktioniert hätte, aber ich habe gelernt, dass, wenn man in der Ichform erzählt, man versuchen sollte möglichst auf allzuviele Sätze mit dem "Ich" als Subjekt zu verzichten. Das wäre das erste worauf ich beim Redigieren des Textes achten würde, da er sich momentan durch die vielen "Ichs" ein bischen wie ein Tagebuch ließt.
Was mir sehr gefallen hat war, dass die Protagonistin, die praktisch Gott spielen konnte in ihrer Welt, von ihrer Macht sehr schnell gelangweilt war. Hier konnte ich sehr stark mitfühlen. Dass sie Aufgrund ihrer Langeweile und Einsamkeit ihre Existenz und die dieses Universums beenden wollte konnte ich auch verstehen. Was ich dann nicht mehr nachvollziehen konnte war der Gesinnungswechsel: Warum ging es ihr auf einmal darum ihre eigene Geschichte zu erzählen? Warum ging es ihr darum, dass auch imaginäre Sachen einen Wert haben? Bis dahin ging es ihr doch immer nur um sich selbst, und an ihrer Allmacht und den damit verbundenen Unannehmlichkeiten hat sich doch Nichts geändert, oder?
Im Endeffekt bin ich mir nicht sicher, was der Autor mir sagen, oder welche Frage er stellen wollte.
Das Ende hat viel für mich rausgerissen, da dort endlich ein Ziel zu erkennen war, aber vorallem die erste Hälfte der Geschichte ist langatmig und größtenteils uninteressant. Ich weiss nicht ob die Erzählung in einer anderen Perspektive funktioniert hätte, aber ich habe gelernt, dass, wenn man in der Ichform erzählt, man versuchen sollte möglichst auf allzuviele Sätze mit dem "Ich" als Subjekt zu verzichten. Das wäre das erste worauf ich beim Redigieren des Textes achten würde, da er sich momentan durch die vielen "Ichs" ein bischen wie ein Tagebuch ließt.
Was mir sehr gefallen hat war, dass die Protagonistin, die praktisch Gott spielen konnte in ihrer Welt, von ihrer Macht sehr schnell gelangweilt war. Hier konnte ich sehr stark mitfühlen. Dass sie Aufgrund ihrer Langeweile und Einsamkeit ihre Existenz und die dieses Universums beenden wollte konnte ich auch verstehen. Was ich dann nicht mehr nachvollziehen konnte war der Gesinnungswechsel: Warum ging es ihr auf einmal darum ihre eigene Geschichte zu erzählen? Warum ging es ihr darum, dass auch imaginäre Sachen einen Wert haben? Bis dahin ging es ihr doch immer nur um sich selbst, und an ihrer Allmacht und den damit verbundenen Unannehmlichkeiten hat sich doch Nichts geändert, oder?
Im Endeffekt bin ich mir nicht sicher, was der Autor mir sagen, oder welche Frage er stellen wollte.
>>wYvern
Okay, wow. Realizing just what a giant mess google translate is making this out to be, apparently because it can't decided between 3rd person female and plural, I decided to provide my own translation.
Okay, wow. Realizing just what a giant mess google translate is making this out to be, apparently because it can't decided between 3rd person female and plural, I decided to provide my own translation.
The end saved a lot for me since there was an apparent goal, but especially the first half of the story is long-winded and mainly uninteresting. I don't know ob the narration would've worked in a different perspective, but I learned that if one uses first person, one should try to avoid using too many sentences that has the "I" as subject. That would be the first thing I would try to be aware of when editing this text, since right now, it's reading a lot like a diary because of the many "I"s.
What I liked a lot is that the protagonist, who could play god in her world, got bored pretty quickly. I could empathize a lot with this. I could also understand that she wanted to end her and this univers' existence because of her boredom and loneliness. What I couldn't comprehend though was her change of heart: Why did she want to tell her story all of a sudden? Why did she care about imaginary things having value, too? Until then, all she cared for was herself, and her omnipotence and the discomforts related to it didn't change, did they?
The bottom line is that I'm not really sure what the author wanted to say, or what question he/she wanted to ask.
Loved it, though I can see where people are coming from regarding the second half – the writing feels a lot drier than the much-more-enjoyable first half (it’s essentially just a big list of events and so forth). And whilst the character work is indeed stellar for the reasons that Horizon pointed out, the piece as a whole can’t help but feel a bit meandering… it’s like, the stuff that works well works so well, that you really notice it when the story stops firing on all cylinders.
Still! As far as criticisms go, “The first half is too good for its own good,” is definitely one of the weirder sounding ones I’ve ever given out :facehoof:. With a good solid edit to get that second half up to scratch, I think you’d have a real winner on your hands here. It’s fun, Inkindri’s a great character, and the meta aspects of this story are handled superbly.
Great job, author!
Still! As far as criticisms go, “The first half is too good for its own good,” is definitely one of the weirder sounding ones I’ve ever given out :facehoof:. With a good solid edit to get that second half up to scratch, I think you’d have a real winner on your hands here. It’s fun, Inkindri’s a great character, and the meta aspects of this story are handled superbly.
Great job, author!
Another really great story. The last scene was a bit slow, but other than that this story kept me hella engaged the whole time.
My favorite small joke:
I wonder what would have happened if they had gotten cancelled...?
My favorite small joke:
On a planet in Episode 17, we picked up a fuzzy mascot for the ship that only spoke in high-pitched squeaks and excelled at clumsily causing problems for the rest of us.
I wonder what would have happened if they had gotten cancelled...?
Thank you all for the thoughts. I agree with the majority of criticisms offered, and a lot of my thoughts came from playing around with the ideas and figuring out where I was going as I went, which is most obvious when it loses the narrative of the beginning and becomes expositional. Some of the problems were of course exacerbated by the short timeframe and 8000 word limit. I think I could probably shape this into a stronger work, though as Bradel says, there's not really any reason to, as I don't think I could do anything further with it. Believe it or not, I had never heard of Redshirts--the idea came more from an old short story I had read that was similarly metafictional but in a more general literary-fiction-ish book rather than a TV show. I think Star Trek is kind of uniquely suited for meta-exploration, as it possesses a strong and well-known structure, flexibility between an episodic and serial nature, and a universe with a lot of options (the only other decent setting is probably a really trashy soap opera).
>>horizon
In particular, thanks to horizon for picking up what I know was very much implicit. I follow a fair amount of TV analysis and criticism, and throughout the whole thing, I really loved the idea of the invisible viewers reacting to this show making crazy abrupt shifts in style and tone and plot. I don't know if Inkindri would be considered just the best character, or the very worst. A Mary Sue for sure, but I'd love to read the AVClub episode reviews as people go from watching to hatewatching to pure confusion.
I guess I'll also note that I changed Inkindri from male to female at the last minute, because it's mentioned in like two places total, and I thought it would be a little more interesting that way. But it bugged some people. I'm kind of disappointed that this is the case.
>>horizon
In particular, thanks to horizon for picking up what I know was very much implicit. I follow a fair amount of TV analysis and criticism, and throughout the whole thing, I really loved the idea of the invisible viewers reacting to this show making crazy abrupt shifts in style and tone and plot. I don't know if Inkindri would be considered just the best character, or the very worst. A Mary Sue for sure, but I'd love to read the AVClub episode reviews as people go from watching to hatewatching to pure confusion.
I guess I'll also note that I changed Inkindri from male to female at the last minute, because it's mentioned in like two places total, and I thought it would be a little more interesting that way. But it bugged some people. I'm kind of disappointed that this is the case.
Post by
Lucky_Dreams
, deleted
>>Lucky_Dreams
I should clarify: when I suggested making Inkindri's gender clearer earlier, I was absolutely not saying she should have been male. Just that gender should have been established earlier.
My reasoning is basically, as you say:
Defying reader expectations to challenge those assumptions is one thing, but this story draws so much of its impact from the context of Star Trek, and when it's deliberately invoking that context, it's invoking all of that context, good and bad. Star Trek's redshirts were overwhelmingly white and male, and this story relies on that frame. It's like ... hmm.
Quick, picture a film noir private investigator.
You pictured a male, didn't you? We can argue about whose fault that sexism is, and what should be done about it, all day -- but my point is, there's baggage attached, and you want to take your reader expectations into account or you won't be able to tell your story as effectively. Female film noir PIs are also a good thing (do they exist? I don't read the genre; I certainly hope so), but if you write one without specific signalling and then drop that fact 2/3 of the way in, it'll break readers out of the story for a moment while they try to figure out what they missed. Unless a major point of your story is to push that break as a challenge to readers, you're distracting from your story in an avoidable way.
And for the record, I support the new Star Wars protagonists.
--
Edited to add: This is from Scene 2 --
This is the sort of thing I'm talking about with signalling. Given Inkindri as female, it seems odd that she would be making that assessment on T'nori's uniform rather than her own, or rather than comparing it to her own. It's entirely reasonable for her to be staring/labeling it as distracting because of lesbian, but again, we're playing off of stereotypes here that high numbers of readers will interpret against your characterization.
I should clarify: when I suggested making Inkindri's gender clearer earlier, I was absolutely not saying she should have been male. Just that gender should have been established earlier.
My reasoning is basically, as you say:
until the story mentioned otherwise, I assumed that your MC was... well, white and male.
Defying reader expectations to challenge those assumptions is one thing, but this story draws so much of its impact from the context of Star Trek, and when it's deliberately invoking that context, it's invoking all of that context, good and bad. Star Trek's redshirts were overwhelmingly white and male, and this story relies on that frame. It's like ... hmm.
Quick, picture a film noir private investigator.
You pictured a male, didn't you? We can argue about whose fault that sexism is, and what should be done about it, all day -- but my point is, there's baggage attached, and you want to take your reader expectations into account or you won't be able to tell your story as effectively. Female film noir PIs are also a good thing (do they exist? I don't read the genre; I certainly hope so), but if you write one without specific signalling and then drop that fact 2/3 of the way in, it'll break readers out of the story for a moment while they try to figure out what they missed. Unless a major point of your story is to push that break as a challenge to readers, you're distracting from your story in an avoidable way.
And for the record, I support the new Star Wars protagonists.
--
Edited to add: This is from Scene 2 --
Things were back to normal. But I kept staring at T’nori, whose low-cut uniform showed a lot of emerald cleavage. I suppose there were some obvious reasons why that would be distracting, but all I could think of at the time was that it fell outside of Coalition Navy standards.
This is the sort of thing I'm talking about with signalling. Given Inkindri as female, it seems odd that she would be making that assessment on T'nori's uniform rather than her own, or rather than comparing it to her own. It's entirely reasonable for her to be staring/labeling it as distracting because of lesbian, but again, we're playing off of stereotypes here that high numbers of readers will interpret against your characterization.
Post by
Lucky_Dreams
, deleted
>>Lucky_Dreams >>horizon
As a preface: I think the Writeoff is uniquely accepting and sympathetic place for nontraditional viewpoints, and appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation in an intelligent well-reasoned manner. Originally when considering the change, I actually wasn't sure if switching to a female protagonist would actually be a move to more normal, given the background in FiM writing that has female as much more common.
But, to the point: My initial, instinctive reaction to being told that the revelation of Inkindri's gender momentarily breaks a reader out of the story is "Sure. Good." I have faith in the reader to realign and get back into the story, and don't really view that break from narrative as particularly problematic.
That being said, I think horizon's point is very valid, as it comes to contextual conventions. As a dirty secret, I haven't actually watched that much Star Trek, though I'm quite familiar with its outlines and cultural impact. And I envisioned Inkindri as a nameless bridge crew member, rather than a literal redshirt who dies on away missions etc, and for some reason conceptualized that group as more gender-inclusive. (I wavered on making her 'death' scene come as a more clear punishment for her initial attempts to subvert the Focus, but that implies an additional higher power that I didn't want to drag into the story)
The thing is, everything about Inkindri prior to that point is the definition of "default." None of that is particularly who Inkindri is; you don't start seeing the actual Inkindri until she starts taking her own actions and becoming her own person. Her gender is sort of irrelevant. (As is her sexuality, which is in some ways not so much 'bisexual' as 'not very interested') Thus, it makes a lot of sense to have her be male, as the standard setting in things of this nature, but I couldn't help feeling like I really wanted to challenge that in some way. I like the idea of a different "default."
If I was working on this further, I can't help but feel my response to the issue would not be to more softly lead in, but to double down and actually approach the topic with purpose. I think there's some interesting points that could be dug up there: does Inkindri have that line about T'nori's uniform because there's attraction, or because she's operating in the standard environment that's firmly locked in male-gaze? When she's revealed as female, is this something she's even thought of, herself? As I mentioned, I basically made the change last-minute, and thus it comes across as really sort of arbitrary. And that's what I regret: that I didn't invest that decision with more meaning, even if it's certainly not a simple task to do so.
As a preface: I think the Writeoff is uniquely accepting and sympathetic place for nontraditional viewpoints, and appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation in an intelligent well-reasoned manner. Originally when considering the change, I actually wasn't sure if switching to a female protagonist would actually be a move to more normal, given the background in FiM writing that has female as much more common.
But, to the point: My initial, instinctive reaction to being told that the revelation of Inkindri's gender momentarily breaks a reader out of the story is "Sure. Good." I have faith in the reader to realign and get back into the story, and don't really view that break from narrative as particularly problematic.
That being said, I think horizon's point is very valid, as it comes to contextual conventions. As a dirty secret, I haven't actually watched that much Star Trek, though I'm quite familiar with its outlines and cultural impact. And I envisioned Inkindri as a nameless bridge crew member, rather than a literal redshirt who dies on away missions etc, and for some reason conceptualized that group as more gender-inclusive. (I wavered on making her 'death' scene come as a more clear punishment for her initial attempts to subvert the Focus, but that implies an additional higher power that I didn't want to drag into the story)
The thing is, everything about Inkindri prior to that point is the definition of "default." None of that is particularly who Inkindri is; you don't start seeing the actual Inkindri until she starts taking her own actions and becoming her own person. Her gender is sort of irrelevant. (As is her sexuality, which is in some ways not so much 'bisexual' as 'not very interested') Thus, it makes a lot of sense to have her be male, as the standard setting in things of this nature, but I couldn't help feeling like I really wanted to challenge that in some way. I like the idea of a different "default."
If I was working on this further, I can't help but feel my response to the issue would not be to more softly lead in, but to double down and actually approach the topic with purpose. I think there's some interesting points that could be dug up there: does Inkindri have that line about T'nori's uniform because there's attraction, or because she's operating in the standard environment that's firmly locked in male-gaze? When she's revealed as female, is this something she's even thought of, herself? As I mentioned, I basically made the change last-minute, and thus it comes across as really sort of arbitrary. And that's what I regret: that I didn't invest that decision with more meaning, even if it's certainly not a simple task to do so.