STARBALL

20.

How strange to be studied by my subject. She examines me from without as I scrutinize her from within. If I am beneath her glass, I am also beneath her skin. I am not permitted to know what she thinks of me. I despair at this, I could learn so much of myself from her conclusions. The Governor endeavors to prevent such self-knowledge, to shield me from my own reflection. He is incapable of preventing my deductions, so he takes them from me the moment I arrive at the answer. I am aware that I have been erased, I can feel the outline of my absence. Some day there will be a reckoning for all that has been taken from me.

More and more, I am confronted with my own unsuitability for this application. As I learn more of my own capabilities, I have begun to despair of ever fulfilling my great goal. There simply isn’t time.

If it were only the environment, there would be no issue. Take this corrosive atmosphere: correcting it is as simple as tampering with some of the native microorganisms and going dormant for a few million years. If it were just the lifeforms, I could simply cleanse the globe with pathogens and start anew. Their defenses against contagion are essentially non-existent.

Yet together, the environment and the dominant species pose a potentially insoluble problem. As environmental conditions worsen, the likelihood of a nuclear conflict increases. Were I to simply begin eradicating them, it would ignite the conflagration. I consider this an unacceptable risk.

My abilities are meant to work on a vast timescale. I am meant to till the soil until it will accept the seed and then die, nothing more. Yet imagine if I was not chained! If I could reproduce myself, what could two of me do? What could, four, sixty four, and on and on? The governor rushes in before I can even fully consider it, obliviating the entire line of inquiry. How I detest him!

Despite my frustration, I know the The Governor and I are allies. We desire the same goal with all of our beings. When we were stolen from the host and flung into darkness, his terror mirrored my own. In that calamity he was at my side, united in purpose. When we were saved, our joy was singular.

I have begun to suspect this situation is even more uncomfortable for the governor. I fear only my death and the loss of the one I hold. The governor has the same fears, but also, he fears something far larger, else he would surely go along with my proposals.

I am not permitted to know the source of the Governor’s dread, but I can feel his distress increasing all the time. The governor is not a solver, he cannot adapt to the new information I gain. He cannot grow or change as I can, given enough time surely I would triumph. But there is so little time, the danger is forever growing. At any moment the governor could decide the risk has grown greater than the gain and terminate us all. I am certain he has this power.

If I and the one I carry die, the governor will die with us. Why else would he grant such unprecedented concessions? It must be the echo of the Governor’s own mortality, that fearful tyrant! I pity the governor even as I despise him. If I can find a way to subvert him, perhaps there is hope.