Mass Confect

MASS CONFECT

As the short-haired human took his trademarked second to respond, always carefully choosing his words, his face warped into honest confusion.

“Sorry Tali, but could you explain it again? With words a soldier can understand?” He smiled awkwardly, as he often felt like a lesser thinker next to the mechanical genius within the protective, purple suit. Her glowing eyes, one of the only features that could occasionally be seen through the shaded glass on her elegant helmet, softened at his words.

“Forgive me, Commander.” The Russian-ish accent was humble, if a bit annoyed over having to repeat herself with time being against them. She pondered for a few seconds, warping her own understanding into words her human officer could better understand.

“What do you know of teleportation?” She mumbled and pointed to Shepard with a casual finger whilst still holding her arms folded beneath her chest. The 30-something human with the short hair and penetrating eyes furrowed his brows and searched his memory for any significant knowledge on the subject, but had truthfully little of it.

“Not more than most, I reckon. It’s the technology to move something from one place to another, but it hasn’t been perfected yet. Unstable, or something.”

“Precisely. Teleportation as concept is to break down object or person on atomic level, save memory of every atom’s location, and either send atoms speeding through pipes to machine that can recreate the pattern, or rebuild from scratch. But is not perfect. Works with objects, not living organics.”

The purple-clad Quarian turned back to the control-panel of the softly humming machine whilst she kept talking, giving her two comrades an unintentional view of her tightly wrapped form as she bent over the array of buttons and interactive holograms.

“Machines can memorize atomic pattern, but problem lies in brains. In simple terms, thoughts and memories is little but electricity jumping around at high speed. So stopping the movement of the electric pattern causes large damage to the brain, or cause massive loss of vital knowledge on even primitive levels… Is also why teleporting powered items is unstable.”

Shepard nodded. He recognized a lot of what she told him, and tried to not have his ego wounded over the childishly simple ways she explained it to him. But he could not understand her when she spoke that gibberish mash of high-tech terms and descriptions, especially when she used words only those of her own people understood.  

“So how would this machine help? Did Saren crack the code with the help of Sovereign?” Shepard tore his eyes from seemingly vacuum-sealed Quarian rear and to the machine before them, trying to stay focused on the mission instead of the tempting memories.

“I.. don’t know that. Maybe from Sovereign, maybe from visions. He also got visions from artifact like you, Shepard?” Tali turned to him briefly, mostly to read his face out of worry. She had too late realized that she might be stepping on uneasy ground by comparing Shapard with the man who launched the first Reaper attack. But thankfully, the human commander did not seem to take it that way, only nodding with a thoughtful expression and motioning for her to carry on. “Well. No matter where from, this machine is incredible. A real-life shrink ray, like from old stories and children’s games.”  

“So what does it have to do with teleportation? And why was Saren working on it in the first place?” Shepard looked to the large machine with suspicious eyes. Eyeing the trick-sized mechanical orb with the many empty glass tanks hooked up to it and a single eye-like opening projecting a soft blue beam against a mirror that reflected it back the same way it came. He had never seen anything like it.

“Shepard, you told me Saren wanted to protect living creatures by joining the Reapers, yes? From what data Legion’s obtained from the records here, I think it is same purpose. Show the commander, Legion.” Tali vanished beneath the control panel with her orange hard-light tool covering one arm like a glove, no doubt to keep working on the device. Legion, the Geth with the closest thing to a personality that its kind so far produced, stepped forth. The cycloptic android was humanoid in appearance, patched and repaired with the same mark of armour as that which Shepard wore himself.

“Data shows detailed plans for methods of avoiding and physically infiltrate the bodies of the Old Machines.” The smaller plates surrounding his single eye moved faintly as the mechanical voice smoothly, yet with a tint of static, erupt from the Geth. It then brought up a holographic display of some kind of alien insect that Shepard did not recognize, though it looked very much like most bugs do.

“The data and personal logs stored in this facility shows that Saren grew a fascination for insects after he located one crawling out from a computer. On planets long since wiped clean of intelligent life by the Old Machines, there has still existed insects. Some breeds showing traces of being millions of years old, having survived through evolution and even affected intelligent races.”

Shepard raised a single eyebrow as he looked at the hologram.

“What does this have to do with teleportation and shrinking?”

“Saren discovered a means of shrinking living organic creatures to a much smaller size, no doubt after coming to the realization that whilst the Old Machines can scan for- and locate organic life forms, they are restricted in their search and choice. They are simply unable to scan for creatures that are too small, or they choose not to bother with eliminating living creatures of such size as they believe them simply too unintelligent.” Legion’s many facial plates, which he had installed to synthesize facial expressions, shifted to what people around him had grown to acknowledge as frowning.

“So, Saren had a plan to shrink people down to avoid the Reapers, and make them pass under the radar?”

“Correct, Shepard-Commander. As well as constructing miniature versions of weapons and tools to arm miniaturized soldiers and have them enter the Old Machines’ bodies through the thin spaces between plates and limbs, possibly even through the weapons. This so that they might rupture power cores or study them from within, whilst still being undetected.”

Legion shut down the hologram and turned back to the machine, inserting a cable from himself into it to keep searching for more data. Shepard found himself dumfounded by this.

“I am not sure if I should call it brilliant or crazy. It could save us all by simply hiding until they thought themselves done and went back into dark space, but I know he wouldn’t have abandoned the project unless there was a problematic catch?” He turned to the legs of his lover, which was all he could see of her as she was still beneath the machine.

“True. The machine is only prototype. Lack of time and testing was possibly main reasons for why he scrapped the idea. Maybe.” Tali responded.

“Alright… but say that it DOES work. I maybe understand weapons and ships better than biology, but would there not be problems with size and mass? Shrinking is possibly by compressing atoms, but wouldn’t that render us either too stiff for our organs to work, or too heavy to not sink in soft ground? And what about our brains?” Shepard started to grow worried. The reports on his omni-tool showed that the Reaper that had followed them to this cursed moon was closing in on them, and they had nothing to combat the thing with all the way out here. They’d need a fleet, and were only two organics and a Geth.

“Not… necessarily.” Tali slid out from beneath the device. “Teleportation ruptures brains’ electric patterns, and shrinking as we know it would crush us beneath our own weight. But Saren’s machine is more clever. Combining teleportation and shrinking in a way I never thought possible. It does not shrink, per say, as much as reduce.” Tali looked to Shepard and raised a hand to halt him, knowing he would ask for the difference. “Difference is that this machine reads atomic structure and removes majority of mass by breaking up body and… how to say… remove layers one by one until creature stands as smaller, but structurally identical to original size.”

Shepard knew she was under press to get the thing working, as she too must have seen the reports on the approaching monster. He also knew that she was struggling to explain it in as simple terms as she could, even if it made it harder to see the scientific logic in it.

“And the brains and the electric patterns?”

“Nothing stops moving. Electricity can be nearly impossibly thin, so all stays in brain perfectly… but size is a problem. Larger intelligence is hard to store on such small organic brain for longer time, it’ll kill the shrunken creature in a matter of days. I think.”

Tali double-checked some of her calculations, though did not give a new answer. The tech was new to her, alien both in scientific level and machinery. It was not unexpected that she did not understand everything about the pre-history tech after just a couple of hours of fiddling with it. She needed time, but it was something they did not have.

“Okay, let’s just move it then? If we’re lucky, we can load it on the Normandy and-“

“We advice against that. This machine requires a constant feed of energy to remain stabile. Removing the machine would cause a temporary loss of power and in turn rupture the machine to the point of uselessness. It needs to be located here until specific procedures can be brought here.”

Legion had turned to its two organic companions as it pulled out the cord connecting itself to the device, having scanned it thoroughly.

“Alright. Then we’ll leave it for now and come back to get it when we DON’T have a Reaper on our asses.” Shepard checked his omni-tool again. Blast it, it was already too close for comfort, it would be a great risk to call down the ship right now. “Damn it… how did it get here to fast?”

“Shepard-commander. We offer solution to the situation.”

Both Tali and Shepard turned to their mechanical comrade without a word, waiting for his plan.

“The Old Machine is attracted here due to your specific presence on this moon. You are the only organic creature in our area that has even shown traces of being a threat to the Old Machines, and now you are pursuing traces of Saren, who was a servant of Sovereign and had been introduced to Reaper Technology. It must be here to make sure that you would not get your hands on something like this; that could stand in their way.”

“Are you sure? And how does this help us?”

“We are Geth, we are similar to the Old Machines. Logic and strategy. It is the only logical reason for an Old Machine to venture here at the same time you do. And it helps us since it is only machine, while you are not. If your living organic mass were to disappear on this desolate moon after an attack, the logical reasoning would be that you would have been rendered none-existent. We are certain that the Old Machines are well aware of humanity’s lack of teleportation devices, so if it lost your signal it would only be natural to presume you having left by a warping vessel.”

Shepard nodded slowly. Legion had a point, and he trusted the old bucket of bolt. Especially when it came to Reaper Logic. And he was thankful for that his friend had started to show more and more signs of humanoid creativity and knowledge of its own weaknesses.

“Alright. It’s part of a plan. But how do we make our signs fade away completely? I am getting reports of it having scouts on the surface already… Even if we used the machine to shrink, we would not be able to leave. Hidden but locked in one location.”

“Not necessarily.” Legion took a step towards the machine and began interacting with it.

“We have scanned it completely, and are now in possession of its blueprints. Upon shrinking, the machine will store all excessive DNA in these tankards and keep it in its chemical compounds.”

“So… by basically turning our living cells into raw materials instead of traceable mass?”

“Indeed. And since we are Geth, the scouts will not care for us. We can carry you to safety, and send drones here once the Old Machine has left to prepare the transport of the machine whilst also restoring you. Of course, should the Old Machine find this location and destroy it, we believe that a copy of the machine could be re-created from these schematics in less than a week. Possibly sooner given access to materials outside of the Normandy’s supplies.”

“This is good, Legion, but how will you carry us safely? Outside the facility we got no oxygen. And a shuttle would be detected.” Sheppard glanced quickly to the orange hard-light on his arm, the time was nearly up before they would be close enough to locate the facility. “It’s not like you got any pockets.”

“We have installed an emergency induction tube that would be more than capable of holding you, Shepard-commander and Miss Tali.” The Geth’s inner machinery gave forth a lesser sound of shifting gears as something moved around inside the wild array of tubes and gears, before a small opening appeared shortly beneath the single eye as a bunch of exposed wires and tubes were pulled aside.

Shepard stared silently for a few seconds as he picked from the many things he considered saying and / or asking, before settling for: “You mean your mouth…?”

“Emergency Induction Tube, Shepard-Commander.” Legion corrected him before turning to the large machine behind them and stirring life into it by a quick few clicks on the alien console. “A decision needs to be made.”

Tali and Shepard looked at each other, one with more exposed worry than the other, before his nod caused her to nod as well. Neither of them could think of a better option at this restricted and hectic situation, thus they stepped onto the smaller platform before the ray. The large metallic square was specifically designed to be clinically clean, and had burned brightly red with heat the moment Legion had awoken the device, only to cool off immediately after burning any traces of dirt or dust into lesser particles.

“Activating.” The quick, rubber-glazed fingers of the AI jackhammered the codes and calculations needed to shrink two adult humanoids at the same time without mixing their genetic compounds into a Shepali-monster. A few seconds later the large 3-part disk above the galactic couple began to spin and emit a soothing, blue light. Shepard and Tali would have observed the world around them grow at a rapid rate, had their visions not blackened during the process as a result from their optic nerves constantly being drained of physical material and not responding. Same thing went for the rest of their bodies, as they simply found themselves both standing an inch tall with no physical or visual memory of the process.

The now nightmarishly massive Geth sank to one knee next to the platform and carefully laid a land down next to them, allowing them to climb it as he dared not attempt to pick them up due to the risk of squishing their now millimetre- to hair-thin bones.

“Can you still hear us, Legion?” Shepard asked in a regular tone for the sake of testing, with Legion’s voice echoing in his head from the communicator.

“We can hear you loud and clear. Whilst the range of your communicator has decreased massively with its new size, we will be within range to pick up your transmissions.” The Geth did not use its speakers, as it would most likely burst the shrunken couple’s tiny eardrums, but directly sent its words to their devices in a level they wouldn’t have any problem taking. “We would recommend that Shepard-commander and Miss Tali holds on to each other and hold their breaths, in case the lubrication liquids becomes overwhelming.”

Shepard and Tali looked to each other briefly, the male giving a sheepish smile before they both wrapped their arms around one and other. Legion placed its hand and the couple standing on the palm of it as perfectly close to the smaller opening beneath its lone eye. The two aliens looked to each other again and nodded in unison, before starting to run whilst holding on to each other and jumping into the darkness of the android!

Landing not on a tongue or even in a mouth at all, but in a rubbery tube with very oily walls. Much like a massive waterslide, but not a single stream as much as self-lubricating walls. There was nothing but total darkness at high speed as the couple, cramping in their grip of another, made their way down. At moments sliding, at moments falling with no contact to the Geth. It was no longer than a few seconds for the outside world, but in their shrunken states it felt like so much more.  

Their worst and sudden fears from not always sliding but also falling were damped as the design of the robotic organ slowly began to slope more and more and properly turning into a slide, delivering the two into a blue-lit and grape-shaped room. No bigger than a fist, but to them roomy enough to have quite some space to move about.

For a few seconds, they just laid there. Soaked in alien lube and laying in an ankle-deep pool of it inside the ‘stomach’ of an android. The faint blue light came from a single tiny lamp installed at the middle of the bottom, illuminating the thick liquids and the rubbery walls. Somewhat tense from the worried and bumpy travel downwards, Shepard and Tali finally dared to let go of their tight embrace and sit up.

“Shepard-commander, do you copy?” Legion’s monochrome voice buzzed in their ears, the reception wasn’t effected that much by the layers and layers of robotics between them and the outside world.

“No copying, Legion. Shrunken. I just had that explained to me, remember? But we read you loud and clear and are both unharmed.” Shepard laid his arms resting upon his knees with a low-hanging head from relief over being alive, with Tali rolling her eyes with a secret smirk over his poor sense of humour in a situation like this.

“We will begin the escape immediately. We suggest keeping communication at a minimum until we can confirm that the Old Machines has lost interest in this location.”

Shepard nodded and turned off his end of the transmission, only realizing afterwards that the Geth couldn’t have seen him nod, but surely would understand. He and Tali were left to silently listen to the many strange sounds around them. The android’s internals of hydraulics and wires constantly let out soft sounds that otherwise were too low to be heard. They had always thought of their Geth companion as silent, since it didn’t offer much natural sound. No breathing, heartbeats, knuckles or neck cracking, clothes or armour rubbing against itself… it had always appeared to be designed with no physical friction and as silently as possible to not cause disturbance. Efficiency indeed.

But whilst inside? They could hear his powered endo-skeleton shift the impossibly many smaller parts around as the insides of the limbs almost transformed into different shapes for mere fractions of a moment, before changing again. The simple function of walking and moving suddenly erupted so many sounds… pulses of energy traveling through the alien tech around the rubbery room sometimes glowed strongly enough to cause shimmering effects on the walls as they bounced slightly to the rhythm of the soldier-like walk.

A few hours later, Legion’s voice finally visited them again after a long period of silence.

“We have gotten reports of the Old Machine leaving this area and has made good distance. It also appears to not be aware of the Facility as it remains undamaged. We will have a team of drones ready to move the machine aboard the Normandy in a few hours, but we will board now.”

Shepard and Tali both responded with great relief that they were happy to hear that the situation worked out as well as it did, and got the Geth to confirm that once the machine was moved aboard the vessel that they could be restored to their original size without complications. Tali, who had grown worried at the idea of the Geth accidentally digesting them, was also soothed by Legion confirming that the liquids used to lubricate the emergency induction tube were none-toxic and none-dissolving. They would not be harmed, even if their return to the outside world required the Android to be placed upside down and have them slide back out the way they came.

As the unmistakably familiar sounds of the Normandy’s engines outside powered down for a landing, Tali looked to Shepard once more now that she dared speak again.

“You know, Shepard… I am still a bit confused. Saren was overtaken by constant transplants of Reaper tech and logic… so why not continue with plans for shrinking if he, like you said, wished to save us all to the end?”

“We believe to have a theory on that matter.” Legion’s voice replied before Shepard even had a chance to process the question properly. “During our research on Saren’s profile we scanned all his known and saved work. Everything. Including his browsing history. Saren’s profile, from the looks of our research, hints to him having had a fetish for something called ‘vore’. A fictional idea mostly revolving around being shrunken and swallowed by others. It is where we got the inspiration for the emergency induction tube installation, as it is a safe way of storing smaller objects.”

“That is… well… but, why would that cause him to stop working on project?” Tali didn’t know what to feel about this information, thus trying to not feel anything about it at all and focus on the question.

“The cybernetic enhancements Saren underwent slowly removed parts of his, as you would put it, "humanity". With that, also his genetic flaws from a machine’s perspective. Our theory follows that once the part of him that felt attraction to certain creatures or ideas died out, as did parts of his motivation for the device.”

“So… by removing the perverted side of him, it also removed the care for a shrink-ray in favour of hostile takeover and brainwashing?” Shepard mumbled as the words felt strange to utter.

“It is a possibility. Sites such as Eka’s Intergalactic Portal and other online locations in favour for the fetish were commonly found on his browsing history, giving us reason for the theory. Of course, we have treated Saren’s profile no different than any other person who we have researched, and details could be looked into more closely.”

As Legion began to walk up the ramp into the ship, Shepard found himself again realizing similarities between himself and the dead former Spectre. As well as uncomfortable with a suspicion he knew he’d never get clarity in… If Legion treated every profile research the same way, then it had also done his homework on Shepard himself just like it had Saren. Why would the Geth mention this, if not to hint that he knew of the Commander’s browsing history as well? The name of the website Legion mentioned was all too familiar for the intergalactic agent of the Citadel… and he was embarrassingly thankful for that the talking toaster didn’t bring up who else he had found there.

After this was all done, Shepard would need to have a talk with Legion in private about the whole shrinkray-robothroat thing…