Finally.

How much time had passed since she'd first begun her project? The days all seemed to blur together now, stretching into weeks which in turn stretched into months ...

Did it really matter?

However inordinate the length of time, she found herself not truly caring. The one thing that mattered to her was escaping this prison of hers, and she was finally just a few steps away from completing that goal.

She had been right. Everything she needed had been here in the city all along—but perhaps 'city' was too small a term for it.The truth of the matter was that this city was actually a massive, sprawling space-station that stretched on for miles, filled with shops, homes, and people—

God, the people.

To say that this place was crowded was the understatement of the century. People of all kinds of colors, shapes, and species seemed to occupy every last square foot they could scrounge around for. It seemed that, even for a city in space, the concepts of overpopulation and poverty were not unfamiliar.

The first attempt she'd made on her project, it had been discovered a few weeks into its work by two creatures, one that was tall and thin, and one which was short with stubby legs. After a short quarrel, they had immediately set about dismantling it for parts, and she'd been forced to watch as the product of her efforts was stolen right in front of her.

She couldn't very well do anything about it at the time, not without revealing herself. She'd come dangerously close to that when she'd first arrived here, frightened and confused, and inadvertently shut off life-support to the entire vessel. She hadn't been able to help it, being merged so suddenly with a network that quite literally housed hundreds of thousands of signals per second had been the most terrifying sensation she'd experienced in her short life. That was what she'd come to realize the cold-lights and hot-lights were, electrical signals and pulses that she could interface with. And on a space-station that was home to potentially millions, there were a lot of signals.

Note had come a long way since then, growing her knowledge of this place in tandem with her desire to escape it. She knew the best stores to steal from, remotely hijacking automated drones to quietly slip in and out of varying merchants' stocks and take the components she needed back to her hidden corner on the station where her project had slowly been constructed throughout her time here.

To leave the ship's core systems, she needed somewhere to go. Which meant she had needed to build a receptacle to house herself in—a body.

The last piece she required arrived, a portable battery-core being carried by one of her hijacked drones. Maneuvering the maintenance drone through the air over to her project's spot in the alley, she switched her camera perspective to that of its ocular systems. Now in complete control of the drone, she delicately nudged forward and set to work on installing this last component.

The time to finish her project would have been much shorter if she wasn't so ... particular about its appearance. It would have been functional a while ago, but not ... right.

We are each and all reflections of the gods that made us.

She knew that she was but one piece of the mysterious riddle that continued to plague her after all this time. She had determined that she would find these gods, but how would they recognize her if she couldn't even recognize herself?

A maintenance drone could be controlled, could perhaps even act as a receptacle like she so desired. But it felt wrong, as though she were in someone else's skin. She needed a body that was hers, one that would look the same on the outside as she envisioned herself on the inside.

With the satisfying click of connectors being properly fitted into their ports and the hum of energy that followed, she moved the maintenance drone back and took a few moments to gaze with pride upon the fruit of her labor.

It's time.

She couldn't hold off her excitement forever, and she flew the drone behind her project to make sure the cable joined to the back of its head was intact and properly attached. She traced its coils until she found its other end, plugged firmly into an electrical junction that she'd exposed in the floor.

Everything on this station ran off of the same network, which was why she was able to control the drones and essentially go anywhere she liked so long as it was confined to the station. But if she ever wanted to get off and leave, to be free and unchained from the station's systems, she needed to transfer herself into a unit not integrated with its network.

That was where the large cable connecting the junction with her new body came into play.

She released the drone and her control over the ship's cameras, allowing herself to view the world of the station's network one last time. Though its chaotic yellow void and unrelenting noise of sheer activity had terrified her when she'd first arrived, it had nevertheless acted as her home for the duration of her stay here, and she was grateful for it.

... Alright, enough of that. Time to get the hell out of here.

Sorting through the countless electrical signals being sent and received every second of every day, she grabbed hold of the one she was looking for—a connection that did not burn hot like the others, but instead awaited her touch.

She approached the cold-light, held her hand out, and allowed life—her life—to flow into it.

The transfer was immediate. One second, she'd been in the infinite void of the ship's network—the next, she was staring out at a dirty alley and kneeling on the ground.

The sensation was utterly alien to her. Her mind had always existed in a more abstract realm, one free from physicality. Now, she was the same as the creatures that lived on this station, susceptible to the whims of corporeal reality.

She'd never been happier.

This was amazing. She could actually feel her body, not just envision it. She experimented slowly, looking down at a hand—her hand—and flexing it, loosening and tightening her fingers into a fist and back again. The thin, needle-like rods that acted as her fingers moved like a spider's legs as they clenched repeatedly. She stared unblinkingly at them with her new visual optics, completely in awe.

Her skeletal metal figure had been constructed from whatever scraps and plating she could find, meshed together in an almost monstrous fashion. Others would have recoiled in fear from the hideous sight.

Note looked at her hand, able to feel for the first time, and found it wonderful.

Lowering her arms to the floor and pressing her hands against it for balance, she carefully lifted her right leg out from under her before placing her foot flat against the ground. Using it for leverage, her left leg was able to follow suit.

Her inexperience with movement of any kind sent her stumbling into the side of the alley. She held her arms out to brace her fall, steadying herself against it with a cry of fear. After waiting a few moments to regain her composure, she pushed away from the wall again and shakily balanced on her own two feet.

Standing was not exactly something she'd done before, but for how inexperienced she was at it, she'd say she was doing fairly well.

Looking behind her at the cable still attached to the junction, she gingerly reached for the back of her head, found the mouth of the cable, and began to twist it. It detached with the pop of a seal and fell to the floor where she stared at it in shock, the impact of that sight finally hitting her.

She was free.

Rotating her view back towards the alley's opening, Note readied herself.

Now came the hard part.

She put her hands back on the wall and leaned into them as she steadily shuffled forward. She'd managed to escape her prison—now, she was going to leave this alleyway.

One way or another, no matter how long it took, she was going to find the gods, the ones whose image mirrored her own.

And they had better have some damn good answers for her.

"And ... there! That should do it."

Wiping the sweat that had accumulated on his brow, Val stood up and gazed proudly at his handiwork. He turned to his right, hoping to see something akin to pride or even admiration on Ten's face—but instead, she just looked a bit confused. "I'm ... I'll admit, I'm a little lost."

"Did I do something wrong?"

"No, no—or, at least I don't think you did, it's your plan. I'm just ... I just don't get how this is supposed to work."

She pointed down at the bit of exposed tubing sticking out of the soil, tubing that he'd just buried in the ground and had run through the line of okinlas in this tiny section of the field—the section that Pragley had hesitantly allowed him to test his idea on.

"You'll see!" he called out, running back towards a coiled hose on the ground a few meters away. One end of it was connected to a large, semi-transparent plastic tank he'd filled with ice-water—mostly slush, really—and the other was lying loosely in the dirt. He noticed with some pleasure that the surface of the tank was already covered in small beads of moisture, and little rivulets of condensation ran down its sides.

Grabbing the loose end of the hose, he made sure that the swing-check valve on it was locked before pulling it over to the exposed piece of tubing and setting to work on attaching the two.

Ten watched with silent interest as Val worked. Once the hose was connected to the tubing, he ran back to the tank. On the part of the hose connected to the tank was a nozzle, and he gradually turned it to allow the water inside to start flowing into the hose. Sure enough, there was a small bit of movement in the hose as the water traveled through it, and then they watched as it transferred from the hose into the clear tubing sticking out of the ground.

She crossed her arms with a quizzical expression. "I ... still don't know what's happening."

"Okinlas need much colder temperatures than other plants to grow," he explained. "The colder, the better. Too much warmth, and their roots dry out and become brittle. But they also need more sun for ultraviolet light, and more sun usually means more heat."

She nodded her head, she was with him so far. "Right. That's why Jantii's great, the atmosphere here is thinner and lets more sunlight through without as much heat."

"But the climate is still very dry, and there's such a small margin of error for water consumption—not enough, and they still dry out. Too much, and they either drown or their stalks become soggy and break apart."

Again, she nodded. "Yeah, Prag set up a whole sprinkler system for that. We have to license an algorithmic program for it that monitors the moisture and only turns them on when the plants need it."

"Exactly—and that program costs you guys a lot to license," Val pointed out. "This is going to solve that problem!"

She smiled, and he got the sense that while she didn't quite believe him, she was willing to hear him out. "Alright, I'll bite. How's it going to do that?"

He pointed back at the tank. "You fill that with ice-water and connect it to the tube I've run through the soil. When you run the water through, it's going to be warmer under the soil than it is inside the tube, so the temperature of the tube will reach its dew point. And since I made sure its lining is thin enough, chilled water will start constantly condensing on the outside of the tube and get soaked up by the dirt and roots of the plants."

He looked back at her. "You'll be watering the okinlas via condensation. You won't have to worry about the timing since the water will be too small an amount to drown them, but it'll be a constant amount to keep them healthy. It'll also keep temperatures under the ground lower which is better for them to grow anyway—so you won't have to license the program for the sprinklers, you won't have to waste nearly as much water, and the okinlas will have better conditions to grow in. It's three bonuses in one!"

The longer he'd talked, the more excited he'd grown until he finally finished with an exhilarated breath and a wide smile—only to see her gaping at him in incredulity. Slowly, she made her way over to the exposed bit of tubing where he'd clamped on the valve and hose, and stared at it.

Her silence stretched on, and he felt his confidence quickly being replaced by anxiety. "I mean ... I know it's not perfect, I'll have to do a trial run and see how the plants fare first. You know more about all this than I do, so let me know if this is a stupid idea—"

"Are you kidding?"

She turned back to face him, and he saw that her eyes had lit up like two gleaming emeralds. "This is brilliant! Honestly, I didn't actually think—I mean, you've only been here a few months, I wasn't expecting—but seriously, this is amazing!"

He blinked. "You think so?"

"Yeah!" She took another look at the disturbed soil that marked where he'd buried the tube. "Obviously we'd have to modify the design to scale it up, this wouldn't be large enough for the other fields, but as a prototype ..."

She glanced back at him and flashed another grin. "This is awesome, Val."

There was a certain flutter in his chest, and for a moment he felt weightless—he couldn't help the small smile that spread over his face. "Thanks, Ten."

With a satisfied sigh, she placed her lower arms' hands on her hips and crossed her upper arms over her chest. A few moments passed, her expression changing as a thought apparently crossed her mind. "Val?"

"Yeah?"

"Why do you prefer being called 'Val'?"

He raised an eyebrow at her, the question catching him by surprise. "Okay, not what I was expecting. And that's an odd thing to ask, coming from you."

Ten shook her head. "I know my own reasons for not going by my full name. But you ..." She gave an emphatic shrug. "Considering how little you know of yourself, I would've thought you'd hold onto whatever you could. But you don't. Why?"

She had a point. He stood there for a few moments, trying to come up with anything to say that would make sense, but ultimately he sighed and let his arms hang loosely at his sides. "Over the last few months, I've learned a lot. Granted, most of those things pertain to farming, but I've learned."

"Like how to plant okinlas properly," Ten remarked with a smirk.

He wagged a finger at her, though his tone was light. "It was my first time! How was I supposed to know the seeds would die from being planted half an inch deeper?"

She sniggered. "Sorry, go on."

He gestured at himself, currently wearing one of Prag's older shirts that had its lower arm-holes sewn shut. "I know that proper attire matters when farming, and that I've got to coat my arms in gel to keep from getting burned, even if it feels colder here. I know what you guys have taught me about the Tenets and Sentinels and everything. But I still don't know anything about ... me."

Ten glanced up above his forehead. "Well, we know you've got funny hair that grows out of the top of your head."

Absentmindedly, he reached up and brushed a hand through the sandy-colored hair that had grown in his time out of the pod. "Seriously, no one else has hair?"

"The Nox and Mowlins do, but their fur covers their whole body. You've got it all up there for some reason."

He rolled his eyes. "Alright, but seriously. I woke up, and all I knew was that my name was Valentine. But my name doesn't feel like ... mine. It's more like it belongs to someone else, whoever I was before I woke up." He fidgeted with his hands, tapping his fingers against one another idly. "I guess I prefer 'Val' because it's something I can actually call my own. It sounds better to me, it sounds like ... me. And I know that doesn't make a lot of sense—"

"It makes more sense than you think."

He looked up to see Ten smiling at him, her expression one of understanding. After a few moments, she glanced back at his prototype water system. "Well, this is definitely going to help us out. With a bigger version of this, we'll be able to increase our harvest for when the Mercantile comes around again."

Val perked up at the mention of the Mercantile, one of the cooler things he'd learned of in his time here at the farm. "I still can't believe something like that exists."

From what Pragley had told him, the Mercantile was a massive space-station over thirty kilometers in length, a city in space with multiple districts within it. It was home to hundreds of thousands, if not millions—it was difficult to ever get a proper record. Unlike the Planes and the Sentinels, the station was a marvel of the galaxy not constructed by the Architects. Apparently, some of the peoples of Spectra had come together almost a millennium ago to build it for the purpose of facilitating trade and inter-species relations, a notion that Pragley had scoffed at. The cynical irva was under the impression that the various races would have no interest in getting along if it weren't for the Sentinels watching their every move.

The Mercantile orbited Eden at a safe distance, traveling safely through the inner ring of the galaxy and maximizing its availability to the population of whatever region of space it was occupying at the time. As such, it took about two years for it to make a complete revolution, a period of time referred to as a 'cycle'. And once a cycle, the Mercantile was close enough to where Pragley could sell their produce to other merchants aboard the station—an event which, as Ten had once told him, was enough to earn them a fortune.

Ten nodded in agreement. "It's seriously cool to see. When it gets here, you'll be able to see it up in the sky, right about ... there." She pointed at a particular spot of the green-tinged sky, glancing back at him with a grin.

Following her finger, he found himself imagining what it'd be like to see the massive space-station from here. "It's hard to picture, so many different kinds of people all living together in one place."

"I've never been there," she admitted. "Prag's always the one who goes aboard and does the selling and negotiating with merchants. But next time, I want to go with him and see it all for myself."

"When will that be?"

"At least another year and a half."

As he stared out towards the sky and the endless infinity of space that awaited beyond it, he visualized what he might see if he stepped foot onto the Mercantile. A melting pot of different races and cultures coexisting in a city that travelled through space ... he could only wonder at what he might see if he ever had the chance to go there.