For all the impact I have had on my friends lives, they have had just as big an impact on mine. Me taking on Frydai as my ward. Is that the right word? His presence certainly reminded me about what I did, and perhaps that was the point. I still have guilt over that. I was so short-sighted.
I'm being given the year to think it over, but if I am to be a true elder of the tribe, I have to take a mate of my own at the next festival. I protested that we are not the same species, and the other elders clarified that they understood that. They explained that it wasn't so much about producing off-spring for an elder, but more about being a mentor, much in the way I have been for Frydai. Though they wouldn't be averse to children as well.
I don't even know how I could do that without serious genetic manipulation, or borrowing from someone like Frydai or Hearl. I get a year to think about it.
Weighty questions on my mind.
Frydai's scans are done processing, and he's testing out the communication implant and oxygen cell. He really seems to like it. I've been reviewing the scans, and his systems are more than capable of accepting the implants with simple and minimal modifications. Some of the connections have to be routed differently. He is a different species, from an entirely different planet after all, but otherwise his body works much the same as mine. At the same time, his body if very different.
The Lou'orth have two separate cardio pumps, and a half dozen secondary ones. They actually have what amounts to eight lungs, and based on the efficiency, they can survive with just two of them, though very degraded. His neural system will accept the implants readily, and even has what appears to be engineered connection points. Took me a second to recognize what I was seeing for what it was. I knew their species had undergone genetic modifications, the addition of artificial base pairs and a few extra chromosomes, much as mine did in millennia past.
The reason I could so easily accept temporary implants is because my body had the connection points for certain types of implants hard-coded into my genetic code. The Lou'orth have much the same types of hard-coded connection points. I'll need Frydai to go in for another battery of tests and a much more detailed scan to map them out, but it will actually make things easier. It is also even more definitive proof that they are like me, refugee's on this world.
I picked up a signal, very briefly, during one of the rare times the satellite still in orbit was in a place I could communicate with it. The window only lasted a few hours and most of that was burned downloading the data store and uploading instructions to hopefully alter it's orbit to be in contact more often and for longer. I'd take either really. The signal appears to have been from Edix. Just a check-in, but an active check-in, which I am very hopeful means that he survived the tide somewhere.
Sadly, the ET/EC comm to that satellite failed very early on. Not sure if I mentioned it. It isn't the unit here with the module I have, but diagnostics indicate a fried board on the ET/EC of the satellite. I fear similar may be why I am not able to communicate with the other modules. Assuming they made it down intact. The AI's are still a loss, at least for me. Their code is so corrupt that I cannot fix it, and it is too complex for me to try and re-write it. That is simply beyond my abilities.
I called Frydai back from his testing. I'm going to go over the results with him. He'll probably want to jump into the A-Doc for the full scan right away. I'm reluctant, but I understand his drive. I think he understands better than most what his people have lost, because of what he has learned from me. I'm going to ask him if he wants me to add his logs to my schedule as well.