"The Conductor"
Vignette: "The Conductor," originally written September 28, 2023.

Image: "The Conductor" by Travis-Anderson
We huddled around the scar in the earth and chanted the words as they were taught to us.
"Mother, on whom we have no right to ask, please look upon this wound we have wrought and give us your forgiveness."
I looked at the flickering dial of the metre beside me and sighed, a noise my group couldn't hear. Knowing that, I begrudgingly pressed the button on the communicator to signal our collective defeat.
"This zone is beyond us. Let's press forward."
My team left their comms off — I didn't need to hear their disappointment, and they were well-trained enough to know what errant signals would mean for morale. I walked ahead. I was expected to carry the brunt of the emotional pain from this rejection, as I am the Language. In penance I kept pace ten metres ahead of my team.
The wind scratched against our plastvisors, and the more superstitious of our sect might blame the sudden weather on the malice of our Mother — but we understood science, though, and as we approached our second waypoint we settled into formation just like we were trained.
"Mother, on whom we have no right to ask —"
"Prefect —"
I pursed my lips, sucked breath through my teeth. "Chalice 223, the ritual requires our full concentration."
They bowed their head deferentially, voice supplicant through the metallic noise of their visor's speaker system. "Yes, Prefect, but Protocol 2 dictates that in the presence of —"
"Chalice 223, there are no grounds to invoke Protocol 2. We have checked this area before touchdown and —"
"Prefect."
I sighed, and evaluated my emotion protocols. My team would not have raised an issue of this calibre without reason. I instructed my visor to focus on the area where Chalice 223 had drawn my attention. A glimmer of reflection stuck out, something disc-shaped and angry, sending light back at my visor as if it resented its own existence.
"Chalice 223, why do you mention this?" I asked, my processing capability reaching its saturation point in short fashion.
Chalice 223 bowed their head, apologetically. "Protocol 2 says remnant artefacts must be taken into custody and processed in a safe room."
I felt my patience capacitors beyond their limit, and I threw my hands in the air. "What are you talking about —"
Chalice 223 lifted the iridescent disc from the radioactive sand and pushed it into the data port at the front of my suit. Chalice 223 bowed their head yet again. As the archaic programming took over my motor processors, they looked on me with sadness.
"I'm sorry, Prefect."
"You don't know what that means," I whispered, as the Precursor's resonance echoed from my carapace. I sighed, and let it happen.
"Maybe you'll get what you want this time around;
the trick
is to
keep breathing."
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