Location: From the crystal hall to the interior of the alien starship
Time: 01.08.20 — 23:32 UTC-5
Setting: First neural interface attempt and initiation of the symbionic link between Niajin and the alien starship
It was the dead of night. A silent night inside the crystal hall. The mountainous structure surrounding it—and partly forming it—had been restored. It had once again become the point of contact between the military base and the alien construct. Beyond the orichalcum wall, two tunnels opened into the quartz of Hoatzin’s nest. One carried the water of the stream, which the nest absorbed in part. The remaining water fell back into the paleo-Amazonian forest as mist and fine droplets, illuminated by the sunlight rising from the bottom of the nest. During the day, this created a permanent rainbow. The other tunnel had not yet been explored, but it clearly led toward the heart of the starship.
Niajin stepped inside and advanced, walking nearly a hundred yards through the illuminated passage, until she reached a spacious, completely white and bright chamber. Behind her, quartz crystals grew back and sealed the entrance.
She was now isolated in the room, white and luminous, with walls of twinned, glassy crystals. She felt a gentle upward push—an acceleration, small but steady. She was rising. After about two minutes, she sensed a slowdown, then a stop.
The crystals withdrew at a single point, opening an archway. Before her lay the starship’s command room. It was located in the head of the starship, at the height of its eyes, and shaped like a slightly flattened ellipsoid.
Two black screens, aligned with Hoatzin’s ocular orbits, opened a view to the outside, at about 10,000 ft (≈ 3,000 m). The central holographic visor, positioned between the two eyes, lit up the moment Niajin entered. It projected the exterior with a full 360-degree field of view. Other than the central visor and the two black lateral screens, the command room contained nothing: floor, ceiling, walls—everything was white.
The visor came to life. The lock of hair corresponding to the feather elongated like a bundle of optical fibers searching for a connection. Niajin heard someone speaking inside her: it was the ship’s SAI, resonating like an echo in her mind, with her same tone. The bionic symbiosis procedure was beginning, and Niajin was the biological being programmed to communicate with it—or rather, with her, since the SAI spoke with Niajin’s own face and movements.
As soon as Niajin took a few steps, the material at the base of the visor reacted. Quartz crystals emerged from the floor and slowly rose. They multiplied, fell, broke apart, and divided, as if made of semiliquid plasma. Finally, they wrapped around her—first her feet, then her legs, then her back—molding themselves to her body, becoming an accommodating translucent cradle that supported her weight. When she relaxed, the structure closed gently, holding her in a reclined position.
From the cradle, thin iridescent filaments emerged. Some connected to her skin; others intertwined with her hair, establishing communication with both feathers through the neural implant.
In front of her, parts of the starship re-formed: conduits, inner chambers, energy nodes, functional systems. It was an augmented-reality environment showing the entire structure in all its parts and functions. She realized she could enlarge any element, change perspective, examine a sector more closely—simply by directing her thought toward it.
The SAI spoke in her mind with her own voice. The bionic symbiosis had begun. Niajin had become, in every sense, an extension of the starship’s nervous system: a sensor that both received and transmitted. But the process was still in its early stage.
After a few seconds, Niajin’s computer-generated face appeared on the central visor. The three-dimensional image alternated between profile and frontal view. It moved across the screen and at times seemed to protrude from it, as if trying to address the people standing in the command room. Soon Niajin found herself conversing with the starship simply through thought, which reproduced her intention of sound and movement across the screens. From her cradle, she could enlarge sectors of the sky, enter unknown solar systems, and orbit planets. Then she heard the ship’s voice—which was also her own.
“Greetings, Niajin. My intelligent system is configured for interaction with you. I am the starship’s SAI. This is a combat and transport module; my name, as you were informed, is Hoatzin. You are the communication officer, the commander’s assistant. Through your interaction with me, you will know the starship’s position, velocity, trajectory, and any change in the flight plan you wish to input. If you agree, you may grant me permission—through thought—to access your neural system, so that I may communicate through the interface implant that links you to me. I must warn you that the process will not be entirely painless. Your brain will be tested. At the end of the procedure, you and I will be in total contact. You will be me, and I will be you.”
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“All right,” Niajin thought, not fully considering what her acceptance might entail.
“You have just given your consent. This means my bionic systems will begin transferring information to your implant, and from there, to your brain. The amount of data, encoded as neural signals, will be immense and will generate completely unusual sensory experiences. Your mental responses will influence my bios; therefore, I urge you to be extremely careful in what you think—especially when our connection becomes complete, as it is now, through bidirectional sensors. Your brain may not withstand the data transfer. Now that you understand the possible consequences of what I am about to do, do you still agree?”
Niajin exhaled softly. Inside, she wanted to become exactly what the starship offered her. “Yes, I agree,” she repeated.
“Now that you have confirmed your consent, I will proceed. During the transfer phase, I ask you—as much as possible—not to move and not to generate autonomous thoughts. I know it is difficult, but it is essential for the baseline recognition and interaction between our systems. I am now initiating the symbiotic interface. You will feel a light electric tingle throughout your body—and especially in your brain. It is fortunate that your implant was installed when you were a child. Your brain is already predisposed for what I am about to do. I calculate the likelihood of permanent neural damage in your case to be below one percent.”
Her hair around the implant glowed white, and a portion extended to the floor like a thin bundle of connections.
Beyond the central visor and the two lateral screens, the room was encircled by twelve connected screens joining the left and right vertices of the lateral displays. Sanskrit numerals indicated horizontal angles dividing the sky into celestial meridians:
00 60 120 180 240 300 360
and vertical angles dividing the sky into celestial parallels:
90 75 60 45 30 15 00 ?15 ?30 ?45 ?60 ?75 ?90
Then Niajin felt with complete clarity that she was no longer looking at the interior of the starship—she was the starship. Her field of vision opened onto a circular horizon; she perceived space with Hoatzin’s eyes. A torrent of data and images flowed through her mind from every direction. She saw everything as though immersed within it: the photonic engines filling with light to convert it into gravitational energy, the complex matter-gravity system, the water pathways and deuterium-separation systems feeding the fusion reactors. She sensed how the initial stages of takeoff had to be regulated, the atmospheric pressure in the vital core, the Ark survival system of the bioconservation sectors, the celestial maps used to compute the route. Every signal flowed through her neurons, and she understood that she herself was the command room. Space around, above, and below was accessible not through screens, but through her consciousness fused with the SAI. And she realized that each sector could be activated only by a deliberate act of her will.
She sensed the starship’s thought merging with her own: “The starship is currently in transfer mode. On your order, I can configure the command room for combat mode.”
“Oh…” Niajin thought, “…and what exactly would combat mode be?”
“Command room in combat mode,” she heard—coming from herself, as a thought that rose within her and projected itself onto the external screens. Niajin felt split in two: as if watching the world from outside her own body. The lateral screens and the central visor expanded, filling the entire visible volume of the command room. The white chamber became pitch-black.
Suddenly, the screens lit up. Niajin felt as though she were floating in open space. The walls, ceiling, and floor had vanished. She hung suspended between the dome above and the base of the pyramid—about 6,500 ft (≈ 2,000 m) above the ground. A sensation of falling seized her, and she screamed; her body jolted like someone startled awake—but it was no illusion. She truly was falling. She saw herself in free fall toward the ground. And it was real.
A sharp cry—half raptor scream, half human—resounded through the entire base. The starship had reacted to her thought. Hoatzin’s long neck had snapped downward, transferring its sensations and movements directly into her system. The starship swayed violently, nearly collapsing headlong into the void.
During the next ten minutes, communication between Niajin and the SAI became rapid and intense. The SAI painstakingly regained control, interrupting the connection and applying emergency procedures to restore balance through gravitational-field modulation. Under the SAI’s guidance, her mind learned to control her movements and instinctive reactions—more importantly, to avoid transmitting them to the starship unless she consciously intended to issue a command. It was not easy at first to separate will from instinct, but Niajin learned swiftly and well. Unbeknownst to her, she had just passed a crucial test for the continuation of the symbiosis. Now she could move the starship at will, as if its motions were the movements of her own body. Hoatzin’s neck extended toward the mountains, framing the point where the spring still emerged. The Huarango sprout had grown, and a pitaya plant stood beside the pool where it had once drunk. The starship obeyed her entirely.
“Oh, this is so freaking cool,” she thought.
A flood of information surged through Niajin’s mind, explaining how to manage her impulses and filter her emotions, transmitting to the starship only what she consciously chose to send. It was not easy, but she learned quickly; the implant had been active in her since childhood, which was essential for the symbiosis.
The starship shifted from quiescence to activation.
“Systems active and operational. Central control in progress. Real-time monitoring. Vital-system startup, maintenance, and illumination. Photosynthesis active. Phototransfer active. Gravitational engines functioning. Fusion engines, their operation ongoing. All parameters within norms. Internal hydraulic system at maximum water level. Initiating formation of the anti-radiation water shield.”
Niajin’s feather, visibly active, radiated a brighter white light along the optic nerve. After what had happened, a lock of white hair had formed near the nerve’s position—but Niajin’s brain was intact and now perfectly connected to the starship’s systems.