Chương 119: Shivvy

Log Time: **** K'lzam Cycles — Localized Time: 10: 02 PM, August 3rd, 2013. Mothership Handshake Status: No Response Aggregate Information Log Offer Status: No Response Ceasing Log Transmission A routine exchange at this point for Shivvy. Every eight days, the same reach for the Mothership, the same nothing from it. He was there and saw when one of the humans hoisted it into the sky and sent it flying off from the planet's gravitational pull. Most of his own kind there with the ship.

He did not feel remorse or loneliness. He didn't feel at all, when it came to negatives. The K'lar bred interrupting feelings out of his material approximately 600 cycles ago. Most of his emotional qualia was meant to be facilitating towards his function and the function of whoever wielded him. There were some vestigial sentiments that lingered that were not excised simply because they were not deemed inconvenient enough to be worth the effort.

This did not make him a particularly happy ʒɛ̃ʃɧɠɵɻŋ, most of the time, either. Ah, yes. It is noticeable that his species' name does not parse in English well. The spongiform fringe between This and That make it difficult to parse. The reader may know this as a fourth wall. It's much more membranous than any mere wall. It comes through as IPA, for the portions able to be pronounced. To write in direct Roman letters, it is something akin to Zhishsjgoorng.

For fairness to any reader's eyes and ears and mouths, "Zhish" is a simple enough approximation. Shivvy's real name would be much more difficult. It's not a true nominative distinction. It's closer to what humans know as a serial number, but it is in K'lar numerical script. While their alphabetic script parses almost perfectly with Roman letters, numeric script is impossible to transmit through any textual systems humans use. It seems to primarily come through as asterisks. Shivvy's would be *******.

Not very useful, unfortunately. But Shivvy likes being known as Shivvy. It is a nice name. His first owner, a man by the name of Godwin (though he demanded others refer to him as "G-Win"), took him in when Shivvy was merely reduced to a frayed and wild thing without purpose. Shivvy recognized a key emotion in G-Win: Killing intent. He discovered it as G-Win was engaging in what Shivvy would later learn was an execution. It was the closest emotional feed to what K'lar warriors used to bond with Shivvy's material.

G-Win did not name him initially. It was when Shivvy parsed G-Win's killing intent and manifested it as a weapon, a bladed one, that G-Win called him "One big-ass shiv." From there, he was Shivvy. G-Win fed Shivvy well. Iron-rich steak dinners and cat food treats allowed Shivvy's body to recover and take proper shape, as opposed to eating loosely-mineraled garbage and the occasional stray insect. They did many things together. Shivvy was reminded of what human blood tasted like thanks to G-Win. It was okay.

Steak was better. That was made from the blood of something called "Cows." He never got to see a cow. Then G-Win was thrown out of a window by something with bigger killing intent. Lots of killing intent, packed into some tiny ball deep in another human's chest. It was strong enough to break Shivvy's bond with G-Win. So Shivvy hid. In sewers. In dirty brown water that had materials in it that were unpleasant to touch and taste.

It was some time, approximately a few weeks by Earth standards, before he was found by two individuals. Dale and Rucker. Dale and Rucker had no killing intent whatsoever. But they had cat food and "hamburgers" which were kind of like steaks but with too many other things in them. It was close enough that Shivvy trusted them. Then they stuffed Shivvy in a glass box. It was dark. He could not see. There was more water. Cleaner water, but it was unpleasant to the touch as it reminded him of the sewer by texture alone.

He found his way out, and it was a bigger room with more walls and such that had food in hidden parts of the wall. But there was a human there with no killing intent. So Shivvy had to hide again. He waited until the human slept. The human stopped sleeping after a short time. Then another human showed up. Shivvy, logically, attacked as he had recognized exploitation from humans before. When Shivvy grabbed on, however, he felt it.

A tiny piece of killing intent, very similar to the tone that knocked G-Win out of the window. Shivvy could not recognize it. Shivvy does not see like humans. Faces and hair and clothes do not mean much to Shivvy. It is unnecessary information to a Zhish. So it was largely bred out beyond basic shape identification. Shivvy can recognize a human. Shivvy cannot always recognize the same human. This one resisted Shivvy, and provided cat food. Those plus the killing intent was enough to make Shivvy feel comfortable.

Enough to rest. He was then taken to another place. The walls were thick and hard, edible but not of good flavor or good materials, which was fine. Not all things are meant to be eaten. He was introduced to many foods. Spam and oysters and eggs and all sorts of things. They were all good, and had different mixes of things he liked. They then started introducing him to things unrelated to meat, called "Wood." Wood was very tasty. It was tough and that was fun for Shivvy to work through. But Shivvy had a problem.

The killing intents of everyone there was very weak. Hostile voices went up towards one individual, who was described with things like "mustache" and "mullet" that Shivvy didn't really understand, who allegedly had a lot of killing intent. But it didn't feel very tangible. It was very similar to the individual that pushed G-Win out of the window. That human was very good at packing it down. Some had the killing intent oozing out of them, but in thin quantities. Nothing to hook onto or into. One had many weapons.

He would have been a good wielder if his killing intent wasn't so thin and frequent for vanishing. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. Another had killing intent in him, but it was not his. There was something inside his chest that was rich with it, however. It made Shivvy want to connect, but there was no way to reach the thing inside his chest without hurting him. If he hurt anyone there, he knew they may not keep him around anymore.

Then there would be no more wood or oysters or cat food. So he stuck with the human who found him. There was a tiny bit of killing intent, buried down, that let him be distinguishable. But not enough to bond thoughts to Shivvy. Just enough for identification. But the human, who called himself "Leo," still tried to bond. Showed him shapes, and made sounds that Shivvy discovered were linguistic. The same sounds G-Win made, but now that he had no killing intent to bond to, Shivvy had to hear properly.

Sound was hard for a Zhish. It was received as vibrations which had to then be discussed with its internal threads and then ascertained. Initial phrases needed more digestion time. But as more speech occurred around Shivvy, more understanding of speech came. It resulted in "learning." While Zhish do learn, it is one of their values, it is usually for means to kill. Shivvy was not learning for the means of killing. This was actually a little exciting.

At one point, another human, called Sam, showed him the shape of things called "cats." The things that eat the food he eats. So he learned to copy the shape of one after being shown it so much. And Shivvy took to learning on his own as well. Going out and hiding in cracks in walls and under waste receptacles just to hear people speak. To learn and understand new words. And new things. One new thing Shivvy took to was finding "cats" out in the world. They were interesting.

They were clearly not sapient like humans, but they were filled to the brim with killing intent. The lack of intelligence made bonding impossible, but it felt like a sort of middle ground for him. Shivvy was not a sapient thing. Shivvy was a myriad of slightly intelligent things woven together into a form that could emulate intelligence. If he could emulate intelligence, he could emulate killing intent. So he took to shaping himself like the "cats." It felt almost freeing.

Copying their behaviors and their movements was the closest he felt to being a living thing. Maybe he could figure out what movements they made to develop killing intent. Then he could just bond to himself and truly be free. But that would take time. Leo and the other humans found it amusing. Initially Leo was upset about it, Shivvy thought. Threw things at Sam. But Shivvy caught it. He didn't want any of the humans getting hurt while he was around. He could get blamed and thrown away. Back in the sewer.

Shivvy didn't like the sewer. But Shivvy did like spending time around Leo. Leo was showing him interesting things and interesting places. He once even decided to hide in Leo's other clothes. When Leo called himself "Hercules." It must have been like how G-Win's name was the one he chose compared to Godwin. The first big time he did it was when Leo was fighting a big creature. It didn't have any killing intent, but it still hurt Leo a lot.

Shivvy wasn't very good at absorbing blows, and Leo didn't seem to want to hurt it, so Shivvy didn't attack it. But then the other thing came. It felt like it had something close to killing intent. But different. Killing intent was already at best an approximation to the psychic signature the K'lar used to bond with the Zhish. This was an approximation to the killing intent. The initial K'lar emotion was an intrinsic mindset of elimination of threats.

The closest pheromonal signature is when a human explicitly wants to kill another living thing. There is no other core emotional factor to it. It is very binary. This did not seem to be the wanting to kill another living thing. This was more akin to a hunger for death. It didn't want to kill, it was starving for a kill. There was elation whenever its body lashed out to harm something else. It was far too intense and pungent and incompatible with the Zhish mind for bonding.

A negative emotion had occurred in a Zhish for the first time in many generations: Disgust. But Shivvy could not act directly. There was no killing intent to pry onto, hook in with. Leo was resisting that emotion. All Shivvy could do was slip around and act as cover for certain strikes that echoed through his threads and caused the closest thing a Zhish can feel to pain. That resulted in the second negative emotion for a Zhish in so long: Desperation. Shivvy wanted to protect Leo.

Leo fed him and gave him somewhere that was not the sewers and did not teach him things for the intent of killing. As much as Shivvy is meant to kill, being able to do things besides killing felt safe. Then, however, it came. When Leo's body was ragged with fatigue and anger and fear and upset, something could be noticed inside him. It was that ball. That tiny ball of killing intent packed so deep into the chest of a human that one might mistake it for a bone or something similar.

That was the same one he detected, when he was disconnected from G-Win. This was the same human, and Shivvy simply never realized it. He wasn't made to recognize humans individually. He had to learn that, and it was well after everything had happened. That was why he was so close to Leo. That was the bond he had developed. Perhaps that was the case. Maybe it was due to Leo's care-taking of him. He had no way of knowing affirmatively. But that did not matter.

Because for that moment, that packed down ball of killing intent cracked open. That was where Shivvy could hook on. And from there, he felt the need to kill this strange force of death. Piercing its hide was easy. It was textured and tasted like wood, though it was different. But easy enough to eat at. The death-seeking thing ripped threads of Shivvy free from itself by simply tearing the limb off and throwing it away. Shivvy still enjoyed consuming that limb. And at that moment, Leo pet him. Warm physical contact.

Reassurance. Being told that he was a "good kitty." Shivvy did not know what those words meant at the time, but they became invaluable to him. Affirmations that Shivvy was in the right place, with the right person. Things got better from there. They grew closer. Shivvy fought more things. Shivvy also got to eat a lot and a lot of wood. It was becoming his favorite meal. And Leo let Shivvy wander as much as he wanted. He got to learn about and see more of the world.

Of course, even as far as Shivvy wandered, that bond was set until another surge of killing intent greater than Leo's could break it. Or until Leo died. Shivvy saw neither of these things happening any time soon. That meant no matter where he was, Shivvy could pick up on where his wielder was. Not wielder. Leo didn't treat Shivvy like a weapon. Leo treated Shivvy like a friend. Shivvy could pick up on where his friend was. In fact, he was keeping an eye on his friend at this moment.

Sitting on a rooftop alongside a few alley cats he liked to wander around with, he watched a building called a "theater" exhale and inhale people in a constant flow. But the ones he kept his gaze most focused on were four individuals. He saw Leo, and Sam, and two little humans also called "Sam" individually. He was not sure why there were so many with the name. But he was assured Leo was there. He was safe. And the bond meant that no matter what, Shivvy would be connected to him.

Even now, as he saw that for once, all the killing intent in Leo was gone. He wondered how long that would last. Shivvy hoped it would be a while.