Silk/EDY R&D Logs - Project Bond

[Ashin Varanin]

-Done.

-Then why are you still here?

-I'm really not. You won't feel much of anything in a moment, apart from the normal feelings of a normal woman. You'll just have a part of you, an overlay maybe, that's me, and the same for my predecessor. I...

-If I have to talk about 28-L again, I swear-

-This is, I think, my last chance to apologize.

-For what?

Only silence greeted her, and as her attention returned to the medical bay she found stillness. This was a Silk ship, which likely meant she was still in control after the...incident. She hadn't been there for that, at least not up close or conscious, but one of her guests or guardians or components had passed on a set of memories. She found appreciative wariness for faces she'd learned in the second-last session, the backup, the briefing, the gift of a life in case she ever woke up and he ever moved on -- the former predicated upon the latter. He had known these magnates while being her. He had known a lot while being her, and he'd copied the better part of that knowledge into her as an apology for allowing her to stay...

...comatose.

Memory, her own memory, rushed back -- the last time she'd been out of a hospital bed or a myostim unit judging by her muscle tone -- the last time she'd been conscious and active. Manaan, Ahto City, a crash and a wave and a Jedi killing her friends.

Her feet hit the floor, and she walked.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Later, once she was sure of the silence, she went to the yards over Eshan. She went to 28-L, where she was received warmly, where she knew everyone by name though she'd never actually set foot there. She toured 28-L-Red's fusial containment production scale facilities, everything from boardrooms to model factories. She saw 28-L-Amber, the chop shop tearing apart the best other manufacturers had ever made. 28-L-Green kept on evaluating which prospective markets were even capable of handling Project Bond, let alone affording it. 28-L-Blue kept on making itself obsolete one reallocated production asset at a time. She watched 28-L-Indigo reevaluate the original product, cast a critical eye over it bit by bit. She toured 28-L-Violet as it prototyped improvements to the project's components -- and prototyped the machines that would make those components on a different scale. 28-LX kept on finding and making markets through law, clearing the way for Bond to hit the metaphorical shelves.

She found she had nothing to add. The path had been set for her, the opportunity was here. All she had to do was step into the life of Selka Ventus, a life grander and richer than she'd ever dreamed, and not lose whatever kernel of her was still the original.