Charlie felt a little guilty as he looked at the disassembled parts of his phone laid out on the floor before him. In hindsight, he probably should have messaged Li first before he made himself uncontactable.

He looked at the tripod and shrugged theatrically, throwing a cheeky grin in as he played up the mistake to the stream’s audience. Charlie had made this kind of mistake before, but whilst Li was always a little annoyed their spouse had more or less accepted it as part of “being married to such a handsomely disorganised man”. Charlie blushed as he remembered the moment, they loved that phrase.

They pushed the thought to one side for now and blew a kiss to the livestream audience to cover for the moment of vacant silence. He was pretty sure that most of the two hundred odd stream watchers were not overly interested in the technological project, though the danger of nude soldering seemed to have kept them watching regardless. That was fine, he knew how to deal with the stream. Far more concerning was the other watcher in the room, floating in the opposite corner as a ball of amorphous darkness: The Collective.

The smooth metal of Charlie's arm sparked as it scraped along the rough edge of the metal, and he chided himself. They would end up like Al, constantly zoning out if they were not careful. He cracked his fingers theatrically and turned to the next page of Red's messy notebook, placing it under the pre-prepared closeup cam he’d setup earlier.

“Right then beautiful people, what do ya think? Do we reckon its right or do we recon it’s gonna blowup? Mods can ya chuck up a poll please!”

Charlie did some stretches as he waited for the results to come in, the messy array of cables and circuit boards looked more like an occult ritual than a medical scanner. How one could build an impromptu x-ray machine from a bunch of random machines Charlie was not quite sure, but even Biz had begrudgingly concluded that it looked like it would work.

The poll came through:

80% yes

20% no

Charlie scanned the chat history to see if any of the 20% had good points and established that they did not. Despite the general consensus Charlie scanned the assortment of cables and boards, poll or not he was distinctly unwilling to put his health fully in the hands of the audience. They grimaced, everything seemed to be setup correctly, but it was quite hard to tell when the difference between a deliberate mark and a smear of ink was so narrow.

He considered for a moment going to wake Red to check but dismissed the idea. A sleep deprived Red would only confuse things, and he was fairly sure that if he’d set it up wrong it was the safe kind of wrong, more just not working, as opposed to exploding. He turned to the camera and projected his trademark casual confidence and exaggerated accent.

“Righty’o folks, let's git started!”

He shrugged on the lead apron Biz had leant them and placed his arm in the preprepared spot, paused for a second to make sure it was aligned properly and smacked the on switch with his other hand.

Charlie expected a whirl of energy, sparks, or a burst of smoke and light. Instead, the room was filled with soft humming. They looked at the nearby laptop, attached by a rat’s nest of wires and circuit boards, where a task window simply read ‘Task complete’, and he couldn’t help but feel a bit betrayed by the lack of pizzazz that the sci-fi genre had promised them.

He pushed his disappointment down and pulled their arm out of the brace waving it at the audience as he did so.

“Well folks, there we go! Bit less explosive than I feared! I hope you enjoyed the stream; See you next week, in the meanwhile I have some new videos and pics coming out tomorrow so don’t miss them!”

He gave a last pose for the audience and turned off the camera, relaxing for the first time in hours. It was a fun job, but still a job.

They turned to the floating orb. “You can do stuff if you like now, I’m not recording anymore. “

The device began to hover across the room a haze of metallic particles forming a simulacrum of a face as The Collective got ready to communicate.

“…good…we are curious about…your scan…your condition is…an unexpected variable…allow us to…. examine the gamma ray output…we mean you no harm…”

Charlie nodded his ascent and silently doubted the latter, the amount of time The Collective spent assuring them was suspicious as hell in their book. While Charlie watched on warily, the orb shifted into the shape of a disembodied head and bobbed gently across the room to extend a metallic tendril towards the laptop. Evidently it was enough to form some kind of connection, but Charlie struggled to see how. He’d discussed it with Red previously and she had just shrugged and mumbled about something called Clarke’s third law.

Charlie had yet to lookup what that was, but it did remind them that he should probably attempt to wake Red up now that he was done streaming. They spent a few moments rooting through their discarded clothing before remembering that his phone was currently in fifteen disassembled parts behind him and yelling in the vague direction of her nap instead. Their cry was answered by the sound of movement and the muffled thud of Red rolling off whatever perch she had found and onto the floor.

Satisfied with the sound of the demi-girls' chaotic awakening Charlie set about making a simple lunch. They grabbed two slices of bread (unbuttered), a roughly hewn chunk of cheese and poured on a packet of salt and vinegar crisps, picking carefully to avoid the section of each ingredient which was to some degree of burnt, melted, or otherwise warped by their transit through the post office in order to craft something approximately edible. Charlie succeeded in taking a bite before Red burst into the room and sat cross legged in before them.

"I have noticed a pattern in the events of our world. Things have been escalating and I want to know why."

Charlie struggled down the rest of his lunch before answering.

"Makes sense lass, I'll give you a hand figuring it out, but do you think we can focus on err.... My actual hand first?"

Charlie waved his silver coated hand to indicate the mess of circuitry and wires behind them with one hand.

"I ran the thing whilst you were nappin, but I got no idea how to actually read the thing tho', an The Collective over there doesn't seem inclined to help much."

The floating being, beings? span in place for a moment, its liquid-metal surface rippling with the motion.

"... our apologies... the coalition of systems which have medical knowledge are hostile to humans... they wish to know if you are willing to negotiate...”

Charlie grimaced, negotiation? All they wanted was for the system to explain what the scan meant, why was that too much to ask? His thought process stalled as Red spoke, their words focused on a crucial comment which had eluded him in his irritation.

"Some of you is hostile? But why?"

The machine that housed The Collective flashed blue for a moment, its reply cautious and low.

".... because in some of our worlds... we were at war with a humanity out to destroy us...”

Charlie attempted to exchange a concerned look with Red only to find her frantically making notes in a silver backed notepad. He frowned and tried a few hand motions to get her to pay attention to him to no avail. Disappointed he sighed and accepted that they'd not be providing any support, emotional or otherwise and turned back the floating face of The Collective.

"Ugh, fine. I’ll negotiate. What do you need?"

Charlie watched Red from the corner of his eye as she sketched the glowing face before them, trying not to show his frustration at their lack of focus as The Collective began to speak again.

"...we require access... let us....active the device within your arm ...an experiment you and us would find interesting..."

The Collective paused, its eyes flashing as it’s constitute parts argued unseen.

"...or so we think... our behavioural simulations are still... incomplete...if we activated it…we would get better data… far better than is visible on your scan…but verbal consent is required for activation procedures…”

Charlie thought about it for a second whilst the machine and Red watched them; peace in ignorance or risk for knowledge?

Risk every time.

Charlie smiled and nodded his agreement and the world vanished into darkness around him.

When he awoke, The Collective’s flashing eyes were gone, replaced by Red’s inquisitive gaze, notepad drawn and ready to transcribe as he attempted to struggle to his feet, head pounding. Through the haze he felt something strange, there was something wrong with his arm, but he dared not look.

It felt wrong, not quite like an arm anymore, but somehow hollow or empty. It would be terrible to look down and return to the time before, to return to the years with a body mismatched against the shape of their mind. He braced himself for the worst, took a deep breath and looked down at the outstretched arm.

“The fuck’in thing looks normal!”

Red snorted. “Yup, I think it's a bit of a shame really, you lost your fancy silver skin when it all went inside.”

Charlie paled. “It all went inside?”

She just grinned and flipped through the corner of her notepad, the crude flipbook showing skin peeling away and snapping back over hidden circuitry while Red described what they had seen in excruciating detail

Charlie was stunned, and it took a second after they stopped talking to process the calm clinical explanation into something that could, possibly help. He idly wished he had recorded the conversation; It always took them a couple of attempts to follow a conversation with Red.

A strange new feeling like the movement of muscles across each other, a vividly strange sensation ran up Charlie’s arm as his pale freckled skin folded away seamlessly allowing a small metallic cylinder to fold out and brace against his wrist as it tracked Red’s face – A camera he knew some new instinct recognising the metallic appendage.

“It’s a camera…” He mumbled.

Red smiled slightly and pressed a finger to his wrist, checking his pulse between scribbled notes.

Charlie looked back down at his arm, the exposed metallics of its insides visible around the camera aperture. He concentrated, trying to flex his new “muscles” closed and after a moment managed it, forcing the image of a third hand closing into a fist.

Red gave a happy little squeak and scribbled more notes down as Charlie felt the dread that had been slowly building fade away. It was a part of him, something he could control. Now it was just a question of what else could his arm do, hopefully the scan would tell them more, which reminded him.

Where had The Collective gone?