A hundred ways for a human to die

It bit you. You'd been bitten by skibidis before - always an unpleasant experience, but one you'd always shrugged off. It seemed you, one of the last remaining uncorrupted humans, were actually immune to skibidification.

And now, you no longer are.

Maybe the skibidi virus, or fungus, or curse, or whatever causes skibidification, has mutated enough that it now bypasses your previous immunity. Maybe your immunity was always an ablative armour, and now it's been finally chipped away and fallen into fragments. Maybe it's technology-based and the skibidi scientists have finally found a way to force a transformation without fail.

All this flies through your head in the space of less than a second, as you helplessly observe your own horrifying transformation.

…Why did you think it was horrifying?

You're finally free. You're finally yourself. This is who you were meant to be all along! This is who you want to be, this is your destiny! You turn with gratitude to your saviour, your guide, the one who helped you along your path to enlightenment. You open your mouth to thank them, and what comes out of your mouth is the music of the universe.

"No need to thank me," says your new best friend, their voice chiming with the same holy music. "I was doing nothing more than my duty."

"Let us go forth and carry on our mission together," you reply, as you and the other enlightened one speed off with joy in your porcelain hearts to find the next entity in need of your message.

Do they have any idea how liberating it is to be able to speed along the ground so fast, as though you're flying?

Do you miss being a human? No, that is the wrong question entirely. You're more human than human - you've moved onwards, upwards, to a grander plane of existence. You are human and you are divine, and you have music in your heart that you must sing, or burst! You and your new companion chant and sing in sheer exuberance as you fly along.

"Oh, there's someone we can help!" you call out. How exciting! You're going to help someone along with their own transformation for the first time.

"You should have the honour, my friend," says your comrade.

You fly onwards, singing your song - who could fail to be moved by its celestial tones? They'll surely stop and listen to what you have to say.

"Hello, mechanical one!" you greet the hardware-unit arriving on the scene. "I have a wonderful message to share with you. Will you listen? …Oh, that's a nice knife! Thank you for showing me! Oh… please be careful, friend! You almost cut me! Won't you-"

A brief red hot wet flash, and then nothing at all.

On the outskirts of a ruined industrial estate, a lone TV-unit unlocked and entered a metal shed.

"Hello, friend," said the TV-unit to the inhabitant of the shed. "I've brought you some teriyaki noodles. You like noodles, don't you? Won't you have some?"

The shed's occupant - a toilet-creature - snapped furiously and lunged at the TV-unit, with brute ferocity but far too little finesse to be a real threat.

The TV-unit let fly its purple ray of screen-hypnosis, stopping the angry toilet in its tracks. The TV set down the container of sticky noodles on the floor for now, then turned its attention back to the toilet, quivering with a mixture of fear (what was happening?) and fury (how dare you?).

The TV reached out a hand, as if to pet the toilet's human head. "I'm sorry for restraining you," explained the TV-unit, "But you can see the part your actions played in that, I am sure."

The toilet-creature growled.

"I take it you won't let me pet you," replied the TV-unit. "…I'm going to take the liberty of doing it anyway. I hope it helps you remember." The hardware unit stroked the transformed human's head. "There," said the unit soothingly, "You always used to like it when I did this. Do you remember?"

The toilet-creature narrowed its eyes in disapproval.

"Try some noodles? Maybe you'll feel better after a snack." The TV-unit picked up the container of noodles and offered it to the toilet-creature. The toilet-entity flicked its sight between the cup of noodles and the TV it saw as its hated enemy. Eventually it decided the noodles were a tasty enough treat to accept, and lunged and chomped at the noodle cup as if it wanted to bite the TV's hand off with it (and it probably did). It devoured the noodles, cup and all, apparently unbothered by the shards of plastic going down its gullet.

"Was it good?" asked the TV.

The toilet-creature was unwilling to dignify the question with a response.

The TV sat opposite the toilet, talking softly about various topics and shared memories in an attempt to jog the creature's recall of its human life. The creature didn't seem to make any progress, but the TV-unit remained patient and persistent.

Footsteps approached from outside, to the surprise of the TV-unit sitting on the shed floor. The footsteps' owner opened the shed door. "I suspected as much," they said.

"Imperator," said the TV-unit, getting up from the floor.

"Fifty-Twenty-Two," began the other TV-unit - the Imperator - speaking firmly but in a kind rather than a harsh way, "Who do you think you're helping?"

The unit Fifty-Twenty-Two appeared to suddenly become interested in the shed floor.

The Imperator stepped forward and laid a hand on Fifty-Twenty-Two's shoulder. "You are kind to want to help your friend - our friend. But it's not Phaeton any more. It's just a toilet wearing Phaeton's face. The human aspect is already gone. It's only a mask, nothing more."

"…I… have to try. If it can be reversed…"

"It can't. None of us, from any faction, have succeeded in turning a skibidi back into a human. We think it cannot be done."

Fifty-Twenty-Two looked utterly defeated. The Imperator pulled the other unit into an embrace to comfort them.

"I think you knew that, didn't you." The Imperator asked the question with the intonation of a statement.

"…Yes. …You're right, Imperator."

"If it's not Phaeton any more, you should kill it. If it somehow still is Phaeton, if there's anything of the human still in there, are you doing them a kindness by keeping them alive? If there's a fragment of Phaeton in there, it probably hates being trapped inside a creature that attacks you."

Fifty-Twenty-Two could only utter a sad cry of static.

"Who do you think you're helping," asked the Imperator gently, still intoning the question flatly. "You're not helping Phaeton. I think you're doing this only for yourself."

Fifty-Twenty-Two clutched the Imperator wordlessly, trembling with despair. "You're right… I know… I can't."

"I know," said the Imperator softly. Then, calling out to someone unseen: "It's time. Come forth."

Before Fifty-Twenty-Two could comprehend what was happening, another figure darted into the shed, knives brandished, and quickly sliced into the toilet-creature's head and ended its life (such as it was).

"…They were my friend," said Fifty-Twenty-Two sorrowfully.

"That's why I killed them," said the newcomer - a crimson and charcoal-clad speaker-unit specialised in assassinations, "So you wouldn't have to."

The speaker-unit departed wordlessly, leaving Fifty-Twenty-Two and the Imperator.

"Let's leave," said the Imperator, squeezing Fifty-Twenty-Two in a comforting manner. "There's nothing for us here." The Imperator gently disengaged from Fifty-Twenty-Two and moved to lead them out of the shed, away from the remains of what was once the last uncorrupted human.

The Imperator squeezed the other unit's hand, and asked, "I'll port us back to base, Fifty-Twenty-Two. Are you ready?"

"Would you… call me by the name Phaeton gave me? I'd like to keep their memory alive that way."

"Alright… Cygnus."

You're drifting in and out of consciousness, you think. Your vision flickers - then you realise your vision is intact and it's just your eyelids fluttering, and you were in a half-sleep half-waking state. Time to wake up fully… or not. Maybe it would be nicer to fall back asleep.

"Are you still with us, Phaeton?" says a familiar voice.

That's you, isn't it? "Yeah, that's me." Wait, that's not what they asked, was it?

What is that feeling? Oh, it's lovely… it feels like coming home, it feels like being loved and cared for.

Sudden clarity. You remember your mind's been fading recently, and that must have been one of those times just now. The wonderful sensation you just felt, you realise, was the TV Titan's finger stroking your back, ever so gently.

"Hello, boss," you say, petting the Titan's other hand; you were reclining on it, you now realise. "I was out of it for a bit. I don't know for how long… thank you for looking after me."

The Titan helps you sit up and cups you safely in its hands. "It's been happening more often, hasn't it?" the Titan asks, a tinge of sadness in its synthetic voice.

"Yes… yes, that's right," you reply. "I don't know how long I have left before the fog sets in full time and I'm not myself any more. I've already lost some memories. It's scary, knowing that there was something I knew but I can't ever bring it to the front of my mind again."

"Whatever you decide to do next, I'll see you through it, my dear friend," says the Titan. "You were… no, you are a wonderful engineer to me and an even better friend. I'll support whatever choice you make…" the Titan's voice is getting a little sadder as it continues: "…But would you please decide quickly? You don't have much longer left, do you?"

"You're right."

The Titan wraps its hands around you more. It holds you firmly, giving you the tiniest and softest of affectionate squeezes.

You continue: "I've been putting it off, even though I want to go through with it… because it is scary. But I'm dying soon anyway. I'll be dead soon no matter what we do-"

As you speak, the Titan clasps you and brings you up to touch you to its screen. You place your head and hands against that colossal curved pane of glass, feeling the layer of static, softly prickly as a dandelion's downy seedhead.

You continue: "…Let's go ahead with it. I'm frightened to face the end, but I want us to try. If we fail… well, we haven't lost anything except my downward spiral into losing myself altogether… I want you to know: if it doesn't work, I don't blame you for it. Please don't blame yourself if that happens. …I did say, long ago, that it would be an honour to die by your hand."

"And I said I would never let that happen." Your dear Titan is sounding more distraught but is putting on a brave front for you, you think. You caress its screen in gratitude.

"That you did," you say. And a lot's changed since then. I'm only stalling for time now. Let's proceed."

The Titan turns its screen hypnosis on you. You dissolve, and reform in the magenta-violet-purple void that seizes your consciousness whenever you submit to a TV's mind-powers. You feel your consciousness begin to expand, spreading outwards towards the familiar state where you are the void and the void is you.

"It's time, Phaeton." You hear the Titan's voice, a clear and true soundwave instead of the silent and wordless void-voice you'd normally hear in this state. "It must be on your own terms. Command me or call me off."

"Do it. I'd say goodbye but if we pull this off, it won't be. I love you, my Titan."

"…I love you, Phaeton."

The Titan rams and impales all six points of its shoulder-spikes into your cranium.

You awake, again. Well… you 'awake', but 'you' don't. Your consciousness is still there, just about, but is dissolving.

"You made it. But you'll fade away if you don't act quickly. Come on forth, or slip away if you want …I'll love you no matter what."

You decide. Your memories, your consciousness, trickle into the Titan's colossal mind, like a pinch of salt swirling into a bucket of water. The entire sum of your being, all your knowledge, has barely made any difference to the Titan's, whose RAM alone can probably contain more information than you accumulated in your lifetime. You're an insignificant speck in comparison… but now, you are far greater than anything human.

"You know what you must do. It is regrettable, I agree - but I have seen the timeline in which that human survives. It is incompatible with the future in which both humanity and the Alliance survive." The enigmatic human addressed the salmon-shirted camera-unit Ten-Fifty-Five.

Fifty-Five made a gesture of disbelief. Surely not?

"Either that individual survives, a viable human population survives, or the Hardware Alliance survives. We get to pick two out of three, and no more," confirmed the Secret Agent.

Fifty-Five hung its head miserably. The 'correct' path was obvious, but that didn't make its task easy. It would feel awful to actively kill a human, an enemy of the Alliance's own enemy the skibidis - especially a human so beloved by several members of the Alliance.

"You must not hesitate." said the Secret Agent emphatically.

Fifty-Five signed: "Awful. Regret. But, understood."

The Secret Agent vanished. Fifty-Five had no idea how they did that.

Was this the right thing to do? The Secret Agent hadn't steered Fifty-Five aground yet, but the enforced secrecy felt wrong. And Fifty-Five had only the mysterious agent's word for it. Was the agent merely using Fifty-Five as their pawn for dispatching Phaeton for personal reasons? (...Did that even make sense as a motive, considering how diminished humanity's numbers had become?) How would Fifty-Five ever know?

The Agent must have planned this well. Along came Phaeton, conveniently unaccompanied (no sign of the TV-unit Fifty-Twenty-Two that they often hung out with -- very lucky, since Fifty-Five suspected the TV-unit would outright kill it for even attempting to harm the human, faction allegiance be damned). Fifty-Five decided quickly. You must not hesitate.

Ten-Fifty-Five waved to Phaeton to get the human's attention, then signed: "Human, follow. Urgent, needs your attention."

"I'm on it like stink on a skibidi," said Phaeton. "Lead on, camera comrade!"

Fifty-Five led Phaeton onwards, internally cringing with sorrow (how unhesitatingly Phaeton followed it!) and doing its best to not raise the doomed human's suspicions.

The pair walked on, until Fifty-Five led Phaeton to a walkway overlooking a deep precipice. Fifty-Five pointed over the edge, trying to beat down their trembling.

Phaeton peered. "What am I looking at?" they asked. "...Is it the number painted by that overflow pipe?" The number ended in the digits 69. "Ahahaa, noice."

"Human, you need to be higher. May I lift you?" signed Fifty-Five.

"Yeah, by all means," replied Phaeton happily. "Let me borrow your height." It was no secret among the Alliance that Phaeton enjoyed being picked up and carried by their hardware comrades, and had never been known to decline it.

Fifty-Five lifted the human. The human smiled at receiving such attention, and in admiration of the unit's mechanical strength. Fifty-Five trembled, almost losing their grip.

"You okay there?" asked Phaeton.

You must not hesitate.

Fifty-Five threw Phaeton over the precipice.

"Youuuu baaaastaaaaaaaaard" Phaeton's voice dopplered away and was punctuated by a sickening meaty thud.

Ten-Fifty-Five couldn't bring itself to look over the edge. It fell to its knees and signed to no-one: "Forgive me, human. Because I can't."

"It hurts…" was all Phaeton could utter. Even that short phrase seemed to take more energy out of them than they could really afford to use right now.

Cygnus wordlessly clutched Phaeton, too distraught to formulate a response. They needed to say something re-assuring, but could dredge up only words of despair. They needed to take Phaeton away to safety, down the void-pathways, but were spending too much energy fighting the rising helplessness and panic to be able to get a grip on the path.

…Take Phaeton out of the base. Make that the priority for now. It wasn't a well thought-out plan, but Cygnus needed to decide on a plan and do it quickly, or they knew they'd freeze with indecision.

"Kill me…" managed Phaeton. "No… no more."

Cygnus nearly fell to their knees at the utter defeat in Phaeton's voice. Their servos cringed with the rising panic, forcing them to stop for a second to reset their walk cycle. They continued, following the infra-red traces of heat showing the path the Alliance units had taken on their way into the Skibidi base.

Daylight. Walk towards that.

Cygnus's yes-I-live signal touched radius with some other units', alerting all of them to each other's presence.

"Twenty-Two recovered Phaeton!" one of the other units transmitted - Cygnus didn't notice who said it. …How had they known? Cygnus realised they themself were transmitting unfiltered, their misery and despair broadcast to all techfolk in the vicinity.

Whoever was nearby must have taken more practical action than Cygnus did, relaying the news that Phaeton still lived and was badly hurt further up the chain of command. It wouldn't be long before it reached Phaeton's colleagues in the TV Titan's engineering team…

Cygnus heard the Titan's roar of fury from where they were standing.

Cygnus buckled, struggling to hold Phaeton up, from the sheer anger of the transmission that followed, as the Titan made no effort to curb its broadcast of white-hot rage. Cygnus would surely have been awestruck by the Titan's display of ferocity as it closed the distance between its current location and the breached skibidi base, if not for Phaeton requiring all their attention right now. Afterwards, Cygnus wouldn't be able to clearly recall how they'd ended up back in the Titan's hangar - events had been a blur of destruction and mass transport down the void-pathways. But back in the hangar they were, Cygnus still holding onto Phaeton as the Titan held them both in its palm.

"Phaeton, please don't be dead…" implored the Titan. "You've no idea how hard we've searched for you…"

"Wan' to be dead," replied Phaeton, their voice tight with pain.

"Don't talk, just rest. Twenty-Two, need you out of the way." The Titan picked up Cygnus from its palm and deposited them on a random walkway, before turning its attention back to Phaeton, still lying on its hand. The Titan then brought its command-beam to bear, its main screen shining purple. This was always risky - the Titan's immense power was meant for subjugating the enemy, and there was a chance that Phaeton's mind (weakened, and the same species as a skibidi) would lose itself and not return afterwards. But right now, there was a chance that Phaeton's mind would be lost anyway… the Titan made its decision.

The Titan's purple beam bore down on Phaeton, commanding the human: "You are rested. Your pain is flowing out of you. You are safe." It might have been an 'artificial' pain-relief, papering over the symptoms rather than mending the cause, but it was relief nevertheless. Phaeton felt something other than pain, for the first time in… how long? Too much effort to work it out. Still hurt… but less so. And now? …Hope? Did Phaeton dare?

"Where's Cygnus?" asked Phaeton.

"Right here," said Cygnus, teleporting into the Titan's palm. (The Titan had reached to pick Cygnus up, but Cygnus had been too quick. The Titan closed its fingers on empty air, then moved its free hand back to join the other one cradling Phaeton and now Cygnus.)

"Hold me," instructed Phaeton. Cygnus did so, holding Phaeton at a comfortable angle so they could continue gazing into the Titan's screen. Cygnus was likely immune to the Titan's power unless they chose not to be - normal TVs could not be affected by each other's screen powers unless they consciously submitted to them. Cygnus turned their screen off anyway - a standard unit was one thing, but the magnitude of the Titan's power might be another. Turning their screen off would give the Titan one fewer thing to worry about. Cygnus wasn't going anywhere right now, and didn't need to be able to see.

"You found me," Phaeton said quietly. Cygnus stroked Phaeton's hand by way of response. They wanted to properly cuddle and comfort Phaeton, of course, but were conscious of how fragile the human was right now. (Cygnus must have transmitted more of that chain of thought than they meant to - they felt the Titan transmit their agreement in wanting to hold and stroke their little engineer but not daring to make Phaeton's pain worse.)

"…I found you," Cygnus agreed. They had so much to say, but not enough processing power to translate the concepts into words. "I found you," Cygnus repeated. Cygnus had been coasting on a kind of angry-hope for weeks; more of a furious and determined refusal to give up their search for Phaeton, accompanied by real anger towards anyone who suggested their efforts would be a waste of time. The angry-hope had become more infused with worry and fear as the weeks went on, and then, on the mission that had seen Phaeton rescued, had twisted into pure anger against the Skibidis, and back again into relief and fear and despair and-

"Didn't tell them," said Phaeton.

Cygnus didn't know what Phaeton meant by that. "…Don't worry about it," Cygnus replied. "We'll set it right. Please, just rest-"

"Didn't tell them," Phaeton repeated. "Didn't tell the Skibidis where to find TV Base. They didn't get anything out of Phaeton. They tried. Oh, they tried. But you're safe."

At the back of Cygnus's mind, as a member of their faction, they felt pleased to learn that news. But on a personal level, it was heartbreaking to hear Phaeton's devoted concern for their safety.

"This is really helping," said Phaeton, their voice sounding a little stronger. (Both Cygnus and the Titan guessed Phaeton was talking about the Titan's command-beam, with its looping set of commands compelling Phaeton to let go of their pain.) "…Thank you, boss. You're just amazing," continued Phaeton. "But… this isn't sustainable. You can't do this forever- well, maybe you can, but there are other things you need to do. And I can't stay here forever. As soon as I'm not in your beam any more, the agony's going to return. I don't know if I can bear it for the length of time it will take me to heal. I think… this is it for me. You're just prolonging my suffering at this point. Get someone to find me a nice syringeful of morphine and cocaine and let me die quietly. I'll die free instead of with them-"

"I'm not giving up on you!" protested Cygnus.

"You've been through a lot and you're not in a position to give a self-assessment like that," said the Titan, speaking through one of its sub-screens as it continued to shine its command-beam from its main screen. "We'll get someone who knows what they're talking about to have a look at you. And I'm not going to be leaving this hangar for a while. In my anger I… depleted rather more of my battle systems than was justified, tactically. It will take some time before I am battle-ready once more. Until then, there is no more worthwhile use of my energy than this."

Cygnus, the Titan's engineers and the faction's medics stayed by Phaeton in shifts, Cygnus remaining the only constant. All medics from the other factions who had any inkling of knowledge of human physiology were summoned in turn, commanded to ease Phaeton's recovery any way they could.

Phaeton needed to sleep, but during sleep they couldn't gaze into the Titan's command-beam that soothed them. A group of medics and Phaeton's engineering colleagues cobbled together a solution that took advantage of the ports that Phaeton's skibidi tormentors had already installed in their skull. With this, they built an interface for the ports with which they could connect a screen to Phaeton's brain, and have the Titan use its command-beam on the external screen.

Life became easier still once they realised the obvious: the Titan didn't need to keep using its main screen. Phaeton's recovery bed was now a permanent installation in the Titan's hangar, so that the Titan and all engineers could better comfort their human friend. One or the other of the Titan's detachable sub-screens would be stationed in a dock, gently and persistently instructing Phaeton - through the human's eyes or their temporary brain-tapping screen - to recover.

The medics did try using conventional painkillers on Phaeton, of course. But it seemed that whatever the skibidis had done in their quest for the faction's secrets - cutting into and probing and placing implants in Phaeton's very brain - had had a deeper effect on Phaeton's body and psyche than the physical painkillers could reach. Only the Titan's command-beam could reverse it. It was concerning how the 'reversal' effect was having diminishing returns, though. Phaeton was stable and happy when soothed by the Titan's purple beam, but didn't seem to be moving any closer to a cured state. Perhaps, the medics thought, Phaeton's initial assessment had been right. Maybe they were only prolonging the human's suffering and keeping them in a state they would never be able to live outwith. None of them suggested this to anyone outside their department, though - not since one of them had tentatively put the idea to Cygnus and had been treated to a display of rage rarely directed by a TV towards one of their own kind.

A medic had the idea of attempting to accelerate Phaeton's recovery. Could there be some way of cutting down Phaeton's need to take bio-breaks? By installing catheters and enteral tubing, Phaeton could remain in-situ. Someone even managed to procure some eugeroics to lessen Phaeton's need for sleep, reasoning that Phaeton's natural eyes were probably more receptive to the Titan's command beam than the artificial screen. However, Phaeton pointed out that perhaps the opposite was the case, and screen-to-screen would be more effective. Phaeton welcomed the eugeroics nevertheless, suggesting that they try to perceive the command-beam with their eyes and their secondary screen simultaneously, in the hope that this would enhance the effect.

"Oh, listen to that," commented Phaeton one day. "I've worked out how to make sound come out of the speakers on this screen. Hahaha." Phaeton switched to talking normally: "Meat voice." Then back to the speakers: "Tech voice. Ha Ha." Then once more: "Meat voice. Got my flapping meat and some speakers. Ohh, I can be twice as annoying now!"

The medics present were slightly amused, but apprehensive about this development. That hadn't been part of the spec for the interface, and they weren't sure how Phaeton had been able to do that. They said as much.

"I'm a human," Phaeton reminded them. "Our brains are adaptable and plastic. And it just shows what a good job you did of building that brain-bridge."

Phaeton warned the medics while they appreciated not having to leave the recovery area, remaining stationary for too long would cause them muscle wastage. Some in-bed exercises would buy them a bit of time, but they needed something better long-term. The medics added a mechanical circulatory system that supplied Phaeton's muscle tissues with a conditioning fluid that kept them healthy.

The medics performed their periodic checks: under their supervision, the Titan would decrease the power of its command-beam that shone upon Phaeton, and Phaeton would report on how it felt. All of them hoped that Phaeton's brain would heal itself to a point where it didn't need to be constantly soothed by the Titan. And every time, Phaeton would immediately mentally crumple and return to the agonised state they'd been in when Cygnus rescued them.

Until one day they didn't.

Cygnus and the medics dared to hope that Phaeton was finally healed… and then Phaeton promptly died.

"Oh, look at that," said Phaeton, "I died on the job and I still have to go to work."

Cygnus couldn't parse the sheer incorrectness of what had just happened. Phaeton was clearly dead, so who just spoke-

Whose yes-I-live signal was that?

"You ought to know," said Phaeton, still vocalising using the screen speakers. "You're the one who first registered it." The signal was stamped with Eighteen-Forty-Two - Phaeton's serial they'd selected so they could be recorded on the Alliance's database.

"How is your body still alive?" asked one of the medics, frantically checking Phaeton's body's vitals and being distraught by what they found - no pulse, no pressure, no vivacity anywhere.

"…It's not?" replied Phaeton. "I'm not in there any more. …Tell you what, though, my new head feels as though it's overheating a bit. Can you check that?"

The medics opened the screen casing, and found a dried crusty web of dead biomass covering all the insides. The cellular structure, when later examined under microscope, was clearly dead neurons. Phaeton's brain had realised it couldn't sustain itself inside its skull, so it had packed up and moved. Its neurons had snaked through the connections linking Phaeton's flesh to its tech peripherals, pulling themselves along using the piped-in fluid that sustained Phaeton's muscles, coating themselves all over the innards of the screen like a spreading slime mould. They'd awakened the components of the screen and taught them what it meant to be human… until the neurons themselves were no longer needed and could gracefully die. Phaeton and the screen they now occupied had been compelled by the Titan to 'heal', and they'd done just that, in the only way they could.

"…How did any of this happen?" asked a medic in disbelief, as they carefully picked out all the dried webbing of expired brain-matter from Phaeton's components.

"Pretty damn well, I'd say!" said Phaeton.

"How- It shouldn't have done…"

"I'm a human. We're super adaptable. Improvise, adapt, overcome."

"Do you… still consider yourself a human? Even now?" asked one of the other medics.

"Who are you, the human police? Shit shit shit-" Phaeton suddenly said. "Where is Polycephaly? I have something extremely important to say to them, at once."

Polycephaly was summoned. "Oh, Phaeton!" they exclaimed in alarm at the sight of the human's corpse. "You're- wait, you have a yes-I-live signal now? What the fuck's even going on?!"

Phaeton replied: "Hey, Polycephaly. Check me out… I should have quit while I was a head!"

"…Fuck sake. Dying clearly didn't affect your wretched twat personality, at least." Both Polycephaly and Phaeton laughed.

The Titan re-attached its sub-screen and then turned the rest of its body to properly regard Phaeton with its main screen. The engineering team dropped their tasks as soon as they were able and gathered around to see what had happened to Phaeton.

"Phaeton, I am relieved you've found an exit from your suffering," began the Titan. "Though I admit I'm extremely confused. Is there… precedent for this?"

"Well, not as such. That I know of," said Phaeton. "But I've always subscribed to the Cairns-Smith hypothesis, ever since I first learned about it. It proposes that life started by organic molecules sticking to silicate crystals in clay, until eventually the organic molecules stuck together of their own accord and no longer needed their silicate scaffold. I've effectively pulled that off in reverse. Respect due. And, you know, some people think that the first life forms were silicon-based until they were superseded by us carbon-based organisms. There might be something poetic in the fact that I've gone back to that. …I just said 'us carbon-based organisms' but I suppose I'm not any more."

Polycephaly pointed at the pile of dead brain matter that the medics had peeled out of Phaeton's new screen-head. "Is that… old you?"

"Yeah," said Phaeton. "The carbon scaffold to my new silicate self."

"So your legacy is some rancid crusty rind? Typical for you, I suppose," joked Polycephaly.

"You would know, you dusty pile of vacuum tubes full of bumflakes," retorted Phaeton affectionately.

"How does this work, then?" continued Polycephaly. "Your meat shell's dead, but it doesn't make sense to call you 'dead' because you're still here -- but if you're tech now, words like living and dead don't apply to us. Do we call you a human still, or are you a TV now?"

"Well, is it not obvious?" replied Phaeton. (Phaeton's screen displayed a morass of random punctuation. Polycephaly guessed they were trying to display an amused emoticon but hadn't worked out how to do those yet.) "I'll call myself a human when that's funny to do so, and I'll call myself a TV when that's funny. Or hot."

"Best way to do it," agreed Polycephaly.

"Speaking of hotness, I am going to need a new body, please, medics. Hook me up with some extra hard drives too. Did you know the capacity of a human brain is only 2 terabytes? I want the good stuff, like you have. …Hey, can I get rockets like Cygnus?"

"You can have anything you want," Cygnus said delightedly. "I'll make it happen. I'll look after you. I'm so glad you're back."

(Some of the medics secretly doubted whether Phaeton was 'back' - whether this entity could be said to still be them. But they weren't going to attempt to challenge Cygnus about it.)

"Can I have a bank of missile launchers for tits, like Striker Eureka from Pacific Rim?"

"…Probably not that," conceded Cygnus.

"What -- no-one told me that was an option!" said Polycephaly.

"It's awfully inconvenient being just a head," said Phaeton. "Is there some kind of loaner body we can whack me on until I get a proper replacement?"

"Got you covered," said Polycephaly. They extended one of their stems and crouched, resting the sub-screen on the floor. Polycephaly detached their sub-screen, then picked up Phaeton's screen with their free stem. "I'll be your taxi for now."

"Wa-hey!" exclaimed Phaeton. "Hey, Cygnus, your head detaches. Can we put your head on the other side?"

"Yeah, probably," said Polycephaly.

"Please don't do that," replied Cygnus.

"Actually, you know what's funny?" said Phaeton. "I named myself Phaeton just to go samesies with Cygnus-" (Phaeton had named the pair after the Cygnus and Phaeton from mythology) "-but it literally means 'one who shines'. I guess I really do now."