The Assistant let the vibroladder slide her across the filing screens, half a story up from the floor. Under her fingers the screens scrolled by, her thick nails going tick tick tick at each one. Behind each screen was an entire filesystem, and under the filesystems a giant computer system, and for all she knew, more than one.

The business of the TPL's Department of Special Projects was too large to fit in any one filing system, and part of her job was to trace the flow of finances, of shipments, of rules and rivalries and endless political squabbles, through footnotes and references and statutes.

It had only been six months since she had come to work for Commissioner Bunten, but she had come to love it. She loved riding the ladder across the vast bank of terminals. She loved that they weren't centrally accessible from one screen in order to minimize the risk of leaks. She loved the way regulations snapped together their tiny teeth and caught truth in their little jaws.

But she couldn't help but feel like her boss didn't yet trust her. There wasn't much Special about the projects that Bunten assigned her. As much as she loved her records-keeping and her research assignments, she was sure there was more to the job than this. She loved the predictability of it, but she'd taken this job to push herself, hadn't she? Instead, here she was, a faceless bureaucrat, and she didn't feel like anything she did mattered.

Oh, she still liked the job.

She was not, however, a fan of Charli.

Charli was currently headfirst in one of the broken screens – they blew out sometimes, maybe overstuffed with galactic drama? – and trying to burrow through.

She was about to grab his wriggling tail when she heard the insistent beep of The Summons. Commissioner Bunten needed her again. She reached in, but the slick tail evaded her grasp. She watched despairingly as Charli vanished deeper into the bank of screens, and started scrabbling his way along the back side of them all, inside the wall.

Gone. And The Summons was blaring louder and more insistent.

With a sigh, the Assistant slid recklessly down the ladder and ran towards the adjoining door back out to the main Special Projects office. As she got close to the door she could already hear the explosions from the Commissioner.

"You needed me, ma'am?"

The Commissioner slammed her fist on the touchpad that activated The Summons, which was reaching an annoying pitch. "Assistant? You caught that thing yet?"

"Charli? No, ma'am?"

Bunten grimaced. She was an older human woman, given to robe-like outfits she insisted made her more intimidating. Not that she needed the help, in the Assistant's opinion. And really, it wasn't so much the robes. More the swearing. And the facial expressions. And the tone of voice.

"Well, leave it. We have a situation."

The room was cluttered. There were dwarf trees in pots. There were shards of pottery from ancient civilizations predating the great diaspora, and probably the Old Ones' terraforming of the Garden, the arm of the Galaxy that humans now inhabited. There were dozens of datapads, memory cubes, and discarded half-eaten food tubes in stacks on the floor. There was a cat tree. There was a small stack of old-fashioned books, each enclosed in a custom stasis field to prevent their yellowing pages from crumbling. No fewer than five ansibles chattered away in the corner in their barely audible high-pitched way, bringing raw news from across the Galaxy to Bunten's desk long before the NewsNet got ahold of it.

The Assistant came closer to the desk, but not too close. There were too many things on the desk she didn't quite trust: that strange glowing tesseract that floated in the corner, or the little dish with the purple-green pulsating blob in it. Sometimes, she saw Bunten feeding it.

"There's a situation, ma'am?"

"Quit ma'aming me and look at this," Bunten said exasperatedly, holding out a softly glowing datapad. "Come closer, child. It won't bite."

"What won't bite?" the Assistant asked warily. "The blob, or the glowy thing?"

Bunten rolled her eyes. "The datapad, you twit." She waved it more insistently.

The Assistant darted in, grabbed it with one eye on the blob in its dish, and stepped back again hurriedly.

"Don't just stand there, read it," Bunten ordered. She put her legs up on the desk, leaned back in her chair, and closed her eyes. She was snoring before the Assistant even managed to enter her passcode.

Oh my? It was a first-person report, scrolled halfway through already. The Assistant started the laborious task of scrolling it up to the top, when a phrase caught her eye and she started reading the report in medias res…

# # #

…said that upon making contact, the Artifact rapidly expanded, unfolding what looked like a negative quantum net. It quickly covered the asteroid, then compressed and etched itself into the rock surface as circuitry.

That's when Karl and Sal booked it out of there, so they didn't have more to tell me. I paid them the customary bounty, and you'll see it in my expense report. Yes, it was probably their fault, they shouldn't have been smuggling the damn thing, but they'd been told it was inert, so don't give me any shit about reimbursal this time.

When I got close to the reported location, the asteroid wasn't there. But there were enough traces of a disturbance in the local gases that I was able to trace its path. It was not traveling along its usual orbital vector. It had spontaneously altered course and was under its own propulsion.

Turbulence from its passage through the plasma fields was evident, so it wasn't hard to track its new course. I came across at least three other asteroids that were missing pieces – like bites – out of them. Lining them up in simulations, it was clear that the Artifact had flown right through them and absorbed their mass as it went.

Once I found it, I decided not to risk my ship. So I went EVA, with a personal shield on.

The asteroid was outgassing pretty significantly, and its surface was transmuting pretty rapidly. Standard metals, and I'd say it's going to be a Type II. The jawline was already forming, and I was able to grapple one of the molars that had already coalesced and get into the throat cavity. From there, up the ear canal and into the usual control center.

It was already Stage IV when I got there. The usual glowing extrusions from the interior walls, but they hadn't yet fused and formed the full neocortex. The intermediate cognitive nodules were quiescent but the basal quasilimbics were fully operational. As a Type II, there are no signs of weaponry, but based on the size of the asteroid and rate of consumption, I'd say we are looking at a final diameter around 10,000km. So, a bit smaller than your homeworld…

# # #

The Assistant stopped. "Um, ma'am?"

Bunten shook herself awake, reached into a drawer, pulled something out, and began to sprinkle something from it on the blob. As whatever it was landed on the blob, it began to twitch uncontrollably. "Look, he doesn't like cinnamon!" Bunten cackled.

"Ma'am? Is this saying there is an artifact almost the size of Earth? Running around loose?"

Bunten grunted. "Well, no."

The Assistant sighed in relief.

"It's not that big yet. That's how big it will get, if it gets enough mass to convert."

"Oh my," the Assistant squeaked.

"Indeed, Assistant." Bunten grimaced. "So, do me a favor. We need to talk to a few people. And first up, I think, is finding out why on earth a couple of two-bit smugglers had what appears to be a very powerful Old One artifact in their hold."

"Yes, ma'am."

"These two, Skal and Jarl, or whatever their names are, they're in Holding Two. Get 'em up here."

"Yes ma'am."

# # #

According to the records, Sal and Karl were usually found hanging around Rocannon. A couple of space jockeys who preferred frontier worlds, they made a living ferrying goods around for people both wealthier and a little less feckless than they themselves were.

"We got the job from Gloib," Sal volunteered.

"Gloib?" Bunten said.

"He's a bartender in Rocannon City," Karl said.

"It," Sal said.

"He's the bartender in… it?" the Assistant said.

"No, in Rocannon City," Karl said.

"It's in Rocannon City," Sal said.

"Rocannon City is where?" the Assistant said, confused.

"Rocannon," they said in a chorus.

"And Gloib, he's there?"

"Yes," said Karl.

"It," said Sal.

The Assistant shot a nervous glance at her terrifying boss. Bunten was staring at the three of them like they needed to be pushed out of an airlock.

"You know I don't like it when you call Gloib 'it,'" Karl said.

"It's not even a Servitor. It's a basic converted robot with a job board and drink dispenser!"

"He's my friend!"

"It pretends to be everyone's friend, that's its programming!"

"He likes me. I can't help it if he doesn't like you."

"Ahem?" the Assistant said.

"It likes me fine, because it is programmed to like everyone."

"No, he doesn't, because you refuse to acknowledge his preferred organic identity, and…"

"He doesn't even have a locomotive function!"

"Gentlemen," Bunten said, firmly slamming her hands on the desk. The two space jockeys and the Assistant startled, then turned to face her guiltily like little kids caught misbehaving at school.

"We are here to determine where the Artifact came from and where it was going," Bunten continued, pinching the bridge of her nose. "You got a job off the board from Gloib, a mission terminal and sometime bartender on Rocannon, correct?"

"Yes," Sal said.

"Sort of," Karl said.

"Sort of?" Sal said, turning to his partner.

"Yeah, we didn't technically have the rating to accept the mission, so I gave it those credentials you bought…"

Sal's eyes widened, and he slapped his hand over Karl's mouth.

"Mmmfm mffm," said Karl.

Sal held his hand on Karl's mouth, and glanced over at Bunten nervously.

"I don't give a crap about your smuggling or your fake identities," Bunten said, annoyed.

Karl bit down on Sal's finger, and the other smuggler yelped and pulled his hand back.

"So, you used a false credential in order to accept a job you were not rated for, from Gloib."

"Yes," Sal said, shaking his hand in the air.

The Assistant offered Sal a tissue, while Karl spat to one side.

"And do you still have the job listing code he gave you?" Bunten said silkily.

"It," Sal muttered. Karl rolled his eyes.

Bunten glared at them both. "Assistant, would you kindly pick up the dish on my desk?"

The Assistant cringed. "The, uh, purple-green one, ma'am?"

"Do you see any other dishes, Assistant?"

The Assistant gingerly moved between the two spacemen, reached for the dish on the desk, and lifted it. The blob wasn't moving. Maybe the cinnamon had killed it. She straightened up, a little bolder. What a silly thing to be afraid of, she thought to herself.

"Would you like me to empty it in the sink, ma'am?"

"No, Assistant," Bunten said acidly. "I would like you to dump it upside-down on their heads."

The two space jockeys were staring at her in utter horror.

"Is that…?"

"Is it…?"

"He," Bunten said, "is named Glorph."