While Nirann seemed willing to try his hand at entering the simulation, Marae did not seem nearly so enthused at the idea. She reached out and grabbed at Nirann’s wrist. Her hand passed partially through his, but he did still seem to be able to “feel” the touch. “Now hold on. You know I don’t approve when you do this.”

Turning to face her, Nirann gently took both of her hands in his and stepped in closer to her. “I know, my dear. We’ve had this discussion-”

“-argument…” Marae snapped.

“[i]Argument[/i]…many times before. I know you made my mind to be as Rothian as it possibly could be, but you also gave me far more capabilities beyond that, even ones you didn’t intend. Nothing dies when I reunite with a fragment. We just…become one.” He said softly. 

Marae’s eyes narrowed. “That is [i]very[/i] debatable, Nir. And what if a copy of you dies every time you do this? I can’t handle the thought of that.” 

Nirann was silent for a moment as he leaned in closer to her. He lifted a hand up to her cheek and encouraged her to lower her head, then pressed his forehead against hers. “You know I would never do anything that I believed would hurt you. I’m only doing this because I genuinely believe it.”

A slight smile crept across Marae’s expression. “I never said you didn’t believe it…I just think you’re the smartest idiot I’ve ever met.”

Nirann laughed along with her. “I know, but I have a plan.” He said, finally pulling away from Marae and giving a quick look over to Freyr. “Here’s what we’ll do. Right about now, I’m having one of the ship’s security droids cart in the strongest Rothian computer I can get a hold of on the ship. Now, it’s no Core, but a Rothian computer still has far more processing power than the average organic brain. I’ll download a copy of my central neural network onto the computer. You can have your technician stay here in the real world; until we get that transit station set up, it’s just not safe to send any of you organic people in. Just download all of the schematics, technical manuals, any data you can think of even tangentially related to the transit stations into that computer. I’ll organize it all into an abstract service layer; think of it as a…brain outside my brain, but still in my head. It allows my to gain access to functions a normal Rothian mind would not have, without making any changes to my core mind. Long story short, if you give me all the information you have on the transit station, and anything that might possibly be affecting it, I should be able to fix it myself. Before I go in, I’ll perform a detailed scan of the copy’s mind. The only changes that should occur are in the mind’s memory center, so when my copy does come back, we’ll separate out and quarantine the memories, then I’ll meld back with my copy [i]only[/i] if the rest of the neural network is identical to when we sent it in.”

Nirann glanced back and forth between Freyr and Marae. “Does that make everyone happy?”

[hr]

Rareth’s eyes glanced around at the villagers surrounding her. As expected, her translator could not identify any of the words being spoken around her, which likely meant they could not understand her either. She went ahead and had her neural implant start examining their words and try to begin the translation process, though that was not a task that could be done in a short time. For the moment, she spoke back to the Humans watching over her. “Plenty of weapons, yes, but they are crossbows, spears, and farming tools. They’re primitives. If I harden my shields, they wouldn’t be able to scratch them, much less my armor. If I am attacked, I will just return back to the transit station, and we can leave without bloodshed.”

Seeing as none of the villagers had tried anything violent so far, Rareth opted to try and start establishing some degree of a rapport with them. The first, and simplest step towards that was exchanging names. Even without speaking the same language, that was something she felt they could accomplish. She kept in a passive position and did not make any sudden moves, but looking specifically at one of the envoys, she pointed to herself and said “Rareth’Jharn.” She repeated the same words, and the same motion several times to try and get the point across.