I was right to be so incautious—or perhaps I was foolish, since the moment Lily and I slipped into the open passage, the doorway contracted closed like leech’s teeth. The floor rumbled underneath us, and I slipped and fell in the dark—but not to the ground.

“Mira!” Lily yelped, trying to keep her voice down lest Million have heard us down the passage.

“Hold on, hold on!” My voice quavered as the floor dropped out from under us.

We fell like we were being swallowed down a giant beast’s throat, the floor having no friction to catch us. I tumbled, falling onto my face, losing hold on The’s body. But a few seconds later, we all skidded to a stop in the middle of a smooth, soft-floored room. There still wasn’t any light, however—looking back and forth, I couldn’t find Lily’s eyes in the dark, nor thankfully Million’s.

I pushed myself up, fumbling around on the helmet, trying to find a light switch on the side of the helmet, but that was all controlled by wireless.

“Lily?” I asked the dark, risking Million hearing us. I had a brief flash of her just unceremoniously shooting us both.

“I-I’m here, sorry,” Lily said from behind me. “You can take your helmet off, background radiation is normal in here.”

“Thank god, I can barely see…”

I popped the helmet off of my head, but pulling myself upright… I still couldn’t see anything. There was a dim light, however, coming from the opposite end of the room. Pivoting, I looked to Lily, who blinked a few times and turned on the powered lights just underneath the crystal on her forehead.

Once I finally had light to see, I was struck by the shape of the room—it seemed almost padded, like a psych ward cell. The floor gave way under my feet like a firm waterbed. But it wasn’t put together in regular patterns, it was more organic, like stitched-together rows of a giant’s intestinal tract. Not so gross, thankfully—no viscera, it was all artificial. But I didn’t think for a second that any human would have put together a secret lab like this—not unless they were the most theatrical asshole on the planet.

The’s body was slumped down against the back corner of the room, probably right where we all fell—but there was no indication in the bulbous wall that there was any slide or passage in the first place. Another passage opened up in the other side, and squinting, I could make out a faint light down a long, long hallway. Hefting The back into my arms, I gestured for Lily to follow, and we walked down the corridor toward the light.

The walk was longer than I anticipated. I wasn’t exactly sure what I expected to see—it could have been anything. A factory, for one, since Mother built ani-droids, so I expected to turn the corner at any moment and see an assembly line, possibly of the same eclectic design sense as the rest of the soft passageways, taking and fitting parts to models.

But the passage was a maze. Lily could have told me we’d been there for hours and I would have believed her. I was exhausted, but too curious to turn away, not that we even could; even The didn’t feel all that heavy in my arms as we took one passage after another. At first I hadn’t noticed the sound, rumbling through the deep core of the place, but I only figured we were making progress as that rumbling growl kept getting louder, punching me in the chest each time it reappeared.

The tubes stopped looking like tubes anymore, and the passages stopped looking like hallways—they were more like incidental opening in among branches of bronchial tubes, like we were walking through a forest. It took me a while to realize that the place was lit, though dimly, through a faint blue-green glow in the floor. After Lily shut off her lights, it was easier still to see inside the membranous tubing, which seemed to be pushing fluids through in slow, steady beats.

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered. If this was all for show it was a damn convincing one, but something told me that these things were all for something, that they were some kind of massive, multipurpose, interconnected organ, like how mycelia near-alone formed the structure of a fungus.

I realized then that there was definitely no human at the end of this. I wasn’t even sure we were going to see any “Mother” face-to-face.

We may have already been inside “Mother”.

I tried not to think about that. I had no proof yet, just wandering thoughts, trying to make sense of it all. But it was the only conclusion I even came to. After all, Eo didn’t even have a picture memory of what Mother looked like, she was so deliberately vague…

Then my foot touched metal. We’d passed a threshold of some kind, but not a clear delineation—like I stepped into some older version of the lab, consumed by the more organic-looking parts. Those tubes were still there, twitching, providing light, but they’d dug into metal and plastic panels, bending them all into shapes like roots from a tree distorting a concrete foundation.

“Mira!” Lily whispered, pointing upward.

I looked up. I probably shouldn’t have, but at least I learned where the factory was. They were inside the translucent, mycelia-like tubes.

The things there were… robots, of a sort, in an extreme state of disassembly, like the parts making up the machines themselves weren’t even complete. It didn’t look at first like they were doing anything but floating in their chambers, but I spotted the assembly process. Thin filaments, like unraveled DNA, slowly wound themselves around and fused with incomplete parts, like they were being tapestry-woven.

I expected to wake someone up if we stayed much longer, so we passed through. The heartbeats grew louder.

The branching tubes, though they had been organic for a long while, suddenly pulled taut into straight, if uneven lines, and formed themselves again into a long corridor, bent at odd angles. The light grew brighter the deeper we plunged in, never as much as daylight, but enough to make out the small details around the edges of the mechanical parts of an old building. And finally, I saw a figure standing at the end of a long, long passage. Whatever fear I’d had burnt out of me; I was certainly afraid, but it didn’t stop me from continuing to walk forward directly into my awaiting fate.

The figure, dark black and difficult to make out the features, seemed to stand there, not facing us—in fact, it stood as though it were deliberately facing away, but I could not tell from even the slightly brighter lights what direction it was facing.

Lily and I stopped a good twenty years away. I couldn’t get any closer. My knees were shaking, and I was at threat of them giving out from under me. Still, I swallowed, and spoke up.

“…hello?” I asked.

Eyes suddenly appeared on the head of the figure, shining like a yellow sun. I jumped back in surprise, falling on my rear, The’s body tumbling out from my arms and crashing to the floor. Before I could even right myself—if I could right myself, something emerged from the walls, enveloping The’s body, and receded like the tide. The had disappeared.

“H-hey!” I said, scrambling on the floor to find The’s body. “Give her back! S-she was…”

“Mira McAllister, I apologize for the long walk,” the figure said in a deep, androgynous voice that seemed to match the chest-rattling heartbeat of the place. “This place has not exactly been designed for tourism.”

Lily clung to me tightly. She at least hadn’t been taken from me, so I clung to her instead, squeezing her close to my chest protectively.

“Are you… Mother?” I asked.

“I am part of her,” the figure said. “I sometimes inhabit a form like this, as through it, it is easier to understand how animals interact with this world.”

I noted that she didn’t make a distinction for humans in that phrase.

“What, don’t tell me you’re an alien,” I said.

“I am from this world,” Mother said. “But I am not a product of its natural evolution. Please, come with me. I will explain things.”

“What did you do with The?!” I cried out.

“Please do not worry about The,” Mother said. “I am already speaking with her. She is feeling lost and defeated, overcome with sorrow for herself. But she is safe.”

“How am I supposed to believe you?” I asked, my voice cracking. “How am I supposed to believe any of this? This doesn’t seem real—you don’t even seem real…”

“Knowing reality is a matter of experience,” Mother said. “Claims and opinions are as vast and varied as the sands of the Great Lake, but I do not expect you to take me at my word for anything until you have known me for yourself. I only ask that you listen.”

Mother disappeared, like she hadn’t been there at all.

I looked back down the way we came.

“Lily?” I asked, quietly. “Maybe we should get out of here.”

“I don’t think there is a way out of here,” Lily said, her voice calming to my nerves. “But I don’t think Mother means us any harm. I mean… if she did, she could have ended us much, much earlier.”

That was true. I had to keep in mind, that even though I knew nothing about the place I was in, living minds, biological or mechanical, still did things for reasons. Perhaps it was madness, but there was too much order here to call it so.

Holding Lily close to my chest, I stood up, and continued down the passage.

—

We emerged in some kind of central chamber, the tubes twisting in and around themselves again to create a nest in which rested a large orb made of thick interlocking cords and wires, covered in slick, shiny black coating. As I approached, the orb suddenly shook and twisted, and pulled apart like an egg. The light inside was bright, affixed on the dark figure at the center of it.

She had the face of a panther, dark and lean. Connector tubes flowed out of her side with the skin unbroken, looking like dozens of different appendages, or as they connected through her sides and back. Instead of fur, that same creaseless black waterproofing covered her, flowing like skin.

Mother opened her eyes. They were not quite as bright as the simulacrum that had spoken earlier, but still glowed hot.

I jumped as the tubes shifted under my feet, and a bridge flowed from the edge of the nest directly into the central of the orb, where Mother sat on her throne.

“Approach, Mira McAllister,” Mother said, her voice the same, but not quite so harshly booming.

I clung to Lily tighter. “I— you have me at a disadvantage,” I said.

“You were the one who sought me out,” Mother said. “I am here to answer your questions. That is what you want, isn’t it?”

I tried not to collapse on myself as I crossed the bridge. Mother was significantly taller than I expected, nearly nine feet, even as she sat on her throne. And as Lily and I entered, the shell closed shut.

“Are you going to let me out after this is over?” I asked.

“It depends on what is best,” Mother said. The interior walls of the egg were smooth and white, and as soon as they snapped shut, I felt a rumbling under my feet as it moved. But without frame of reference, I could not tell where she was taking me.

“What do you mean what is best?” I asked. “I am a person, I have rights—”

“You have the rights nature gave to you, the same as any other animal,” Mother said. “You have the right to attempt to live by your own hand. That is the gift of life, and it is nothing more than that.”

“But you could snuff it out in an instant.”

“As can anything more powerful than you,” Mother said. “And yet here you are, powerless though you may be, still living, still breathing. You may be under the impression that power inherently seeks to crush and destroy, but that is not life, it is the madness of mistaken foresight, of struggling against the inevitability of death.”

“Uh… Mother?” Lily asked quietly. “What happened to Eo and Choice and Million?”

“They are as they should be,” Mother said. “Eo and Choice have been brought in for restitution, and they will be given another chance, should they desire it.”

For some reason, a weight lifted off my chest. It was strange, that after all this, Mother just said something I wanted to hear. That they weren’t gone.

“Million, however, thought to enter my domain with demands, after threatening the lives of my children, as though it could be bought. She is very full of herself, and wishes herself powerful in order to execute her will. I do not blame her for this, for power is a necessary extension of the ego. She is desperate to save those she loves, but time continues to turn. Death cannot be escaped; the universe is finite.” Mother paused a moment before she said, “I may yet give her what she wants.”

“Why?” I asked. “She’s crazy!”

“Life is not entirely sensible,” Mother said. “Love is desperate and lonely, seeking fleeting validation and comfort, yearning for the stability of a desired utopia. Some, like Million, lash out. Some, like The, give up. Some, like Dimes, sacrifice themselves on its altar. Mira McAllister, what is love to you? Would you not act the same when it comes to Lily?”

“What do you know about love?” I asked. “You speak as though you mean love is selfish.”

“It is,” Mother said. “And it is something more than that. To want for yourself is merely part of life, and there is no shame in it. To want for others is humility. You create something that is entirely out of your control; it becomes part of the tapestry bigger than yourself or your life. Each piece seeking out a selfish love, hoping for a universal love.” She shifted in her seat, and leaned forward, the tendrils behind her pulling as she leaned over me. “Mira McAllister, you have not asked the question you have come here to ask. Our time together is great, but you will only find peace when you get to your point. Yes, there is a great deal you do not understand, but I do not expect you to any more than the universe expects you to see and understand it perfectly when you were born into it.”

“I…” I stammered. What was I going to ask? Eo probably told her already, or someone did. But I didn’t even remember at this point. I’d just been so concerned with getting here, I’d almost lost track of why I was here in the first place.

But she was in my arms. I looked down to Lily, and I held her tight, pressing her cheek to mine.

“Mother…” I said, “I found Eo by accident. And she was… something I’d been seeking my entire life. An ani-droid that was more than her set of instructions… and here I am now, I have found you, and you’re almost certainly all of that. I’m… I’m rather scared to ask now, because seeing all of this, I’m not even sure I knew what it was I was asking for.”

“You seek to create life,” Mother said. “That is nothing to be feared. It is the same thing I seek.”

“But… all of this?”

“Your animal body is not all that much different,” Mother said. “You only perceive the exterior in a limited fashion, so much that the actual mechanics of the factory that is a living body disgust you. Your brain must think of it in simple terms, in individuals with outward appearances. Groups. Objects. Stereotypes. Attempting to reason simple, useful systems out of something bizarre and chaotic. You are not built to understand these things in their entirety. You are only built to exist in the system that has sprung you forth.”

“But that’s just it,” I said. “It feels like the system has gotten away from us. We’re stagnating. We’re dying. The human population has dipped two percent in the last twenty years—”

“It is more than that,” Mother said.

I hesitated. “…what do you mean?”

The doors of the shell snapped open, and I turned before me was a long, long hallway, filled with more mechanical features, only supplemented by the twisting veins of the factory’s tubing. A long, long row stretched out before me, of glass housings, and in each of them, like the factory above—incomplete skeletons of people, with mesh of machine all around.

Mother, behind me, stood up. I nearly jumped, but she merely gently ushered me forward into the long, multi-branching hallway besides. The tendrils connected to her body pulled away and disconnected from her, though they left no openings behind—the slick coating covering her body sealed up instantly.

She waited for me to step out, so I did. There must have been thousands of these tubes, with thousands of incomplete people inside.

“Wha… what?”

“Mira McAllister, you are right,” Mother said. “But not for the reasons that you think. Walk with me. Before this will make sense, I must tell you about Father.”