Science Will Save Us

Sophie was able to overcome her dementia. With my assistance - offered via subconscious conditioning while she slept - "her" ideas to transform the education system were successful. Teens are now permitted - nay, required - to attend the new high schools opening around the town. I even attended myself, just before my 18th birthday.

My skin colour may be human, but my facial features are still very much those of my Takisian heritage. However, this has not proven the handicap it might have been. I recalled the number of Shantell from my original host's time at Boot Camp. She seemed not to have aged a day, and she was more than amenable to meeting the "son" of Tachyon.

She had been one of those I was grooming as a possible mate before I decided on Sophie. There was no reason not to make use of Shantell now that I had a fresh new host. We hit it off - it's fairly easy when you remember their likes and dislikes.

I am on a schedule. No long drawn out romance for me. Barely 24 hours after she arrived, I asked for "mother" to gift me the ring "Dad" had bought her.

Things progressed fairly normally from there:

My new host, Trips, was born. Shantell studied cooking; there are ridiculous restrictions on food rationing at present that are largely due to most traditional recipes not being appropriate with irradiated poisonous ingredients. I have some knowledge of antitoxins and have produced a few crude nanobots based on my own symbiotes; via hypnosis while she sleeps, she is learning these tricks and hopefully will be able to teach others to produce edible, nutritious, or even tasty foodstuffs.

I have much better access to the equipment I need now; this host has been recognised as a budding Scientist and while the military still controls all the best facilities, I have made some subtle technological advances. Slowly I will introduce new power sources and bioelectronics that will be powered by the latent gamma radiation in the atmosphere, but I must move cautiously.

Sophie has lost vital signs.

The usual Takisian phrase translates as "she is no longer with us", but for these humans, that is clearly not the case. I have taken some surreptitious scans of both Sophie and my former host Tachyon, but it could take decades to learn how these manifestations work. It is a puzzle that needs solving; can it be harnessed? Or even reversed? If I can make it work on a large scale, could I perhaps bring back Baby?

But I must be realistic. Start with the basics; I cannot properly study a quantum phenomenon when my equipment is barely capable of analysing macro scale objects. I am forced to study biology once more to see if the keys to this process exist in simpler forms of life, such as plants. And I must become expert in what technology the humans still have, so that when I produce superior examples it will seem a logical improvement rather than the product of my more advanced culture. I may even need to study marine life, but I am uncertain how that can even be accomplished; what fish remain in the nearby lakes and oceans are not easily baited with traditional lures, and I am uncertain as to whether my slim Takisian physiology is capable of landing such fish without mechanical assistance. I shall have to see if I can invent something, in whatever off time I get.