Page 36 of Music of the Ocean

Holy shit, it wasn’t just the city. It was an entire planetary system. Every current and cell and biological process was accessible to Indigo. That’s why the ocean itself had responded to Indigo’s smallest gesture.

Indigo was the nerve center, the consciousness that gathered every byte and pulse on this planet, filtering it through some inscrutable alien logic, then acting as judge, warden, and caretaker all at once.

There was no protocol for this. Saxby tried to imagine the Federation’s best xenoanthropologists encountering a being that was both the mayor of a planet and the living nervous system of a world, and his brain locked up.

He wanted to pace, to shout, to ask questions, but his knees gave way. The urge to sit down was so strong he sank to the floor before he realized he’d decided.

This was bad. The Federation of Allied Planets had one rule above all others: You did not touch what hadn’t asked to be touched. You did not reach into the dark and rearrange what you found there.

You left civilizations to their own unfolding, especially the ones that didn’t know you existed.

Officers swore an oath to uphold this Principle of Non-Interference, theoretically even at the cost of their own lives or ships. Strictly adhering to it had always been contested, though, especially when it meant standing by during genocides or planetary extinction events.

Saxby could see, as clear as the water in front of his face, how easy it would be for a certain type of person to want this power, this leverage, this pure and total unity of control.

He thought of the officers he’d trained under, each with their own private definitions of the Principle of Non-Interference, each with their own thresholds for intervention. There was always a rationalization, always some “greater good” at stake.

He’d watched one commander stand firm while millions died of a treatable plague, citing the doctrine with a trembling voice; another had slipped a cure into the water supply and called it fate when the survivors rebuilt their world.

Everyone broke the rules, eventually.

The only difference was in the stories they told about it afterward. And the winners were the ones who wrote history.

Captain Mollen was shady as fuck, in his opinion. He’d view the living network of this planet as a tactical asset and a scientific jackpot, all in one. Saxby could hear his voice now, clipped and precise, weighing the risks and rewards.

Saxby pictured his captain’s face when he realized the city’s sensory organs didn’t only monitor or warn or defend, but adapted and grew, shifting at the faintest suggestion from a single will.

He’d want it mapped, catalogued, dissected, indexed, and exploited. He’d want a leash on the nerve center, which was Indigo. And Saxby would be that very leash.

The idea made him sick. It was one thing to lose autonomy to an alien system; it was another to imagine that system shackled, corrupted, bent to the purposes of another.

Saxby tried to imagine the briefings, the classified memos, the endless committees tasked with ethical oversight. It was an opportunity too enticing to ignore. The Federation would justify the intrusion as an act of preservation or mutual understanding or benevolent stewardship.

They’d find some legalistic wiggle room, some clause that allowed for “protective assimilation,” and the planet would become another line in the registry, another asset to be managed.

Saxby’s gills fluttered as if he might retch. Noninterference was the doctrine drilled into him since cadet school. But the reality was that the doctrine existed because no one really believed it was possible.

The entire apparatus of exploration was built around the fantasy that you could observe without leaving a fingerprint, that you could map and measure and sample and record and somehow not change the thing you were touching.

But now the equation was inverted. Now he, Saxby, was the anomaly, the contamination, the thing needing to be contained. He wondered how Captain Mollen would spin that to the powers that be.

He could almost see the logical progression, the cascade of decisions made far above his own pay grade. First, they’d send in the probes. Then, the data. Then, the teams of doctors, diplomats, and mediators would arrive.

At each stage, the story would be that they were doing it to save him, to bring him back, to fix what had gone wrong.

But the real project would be the same as always—control. And if Indigo ever faltered, if the city ever stopped responding, or worse, chose to respond with violence, the Federation would have a perfect justification for escalation.

For war.

Because if humans couldn’t have that power, no one or nothing could. A shudder ran through him, and Saxby realized he was gripping his own forearms so hard the skin mottled white.

Indigo watched, saying nothing.

Saxby wanted to ask him what he would do if the Federation came for him. Would he fight? Did Saxby actually want a war in his name? Or would Indigo welcome the Federation, let them see what they wanted to see, then quietly erase them as he had the probe?

“Of course I would fight. You belong not only to me but to this planet. You are now part of this world and of me. Again, I remind you, this planet is far more technically advanced than your people think.”

Huh. He must’ve dropped his shield, and Indigo heard his thoughts. He sincerely hoped Indigo knew what he was talking about because the Federation was fucking powerful.