For an Iterator, time was but a concept. A necessary evil, which determined the length of the operation at hand or dictated the time span of a simulation until reaching the desired 100% certainty of success.

Time was nothing to be concerned about. They were immortal, after all. And, thanks to their Microbe Strata and helpful assistants, Overseers, Inspectors, and the like, maintenance and healing time had been offloaded as well, further removing the Iterator from possessing the ability to value the seconds, minutes, hours, and Cycles passing. The only thing, which mattered, was the response time of their peers.

A singular concern, which had been eliminated by the ability of every Iterator to process countless thoughts parallel, which resulted in answers in less than a second, sometimes a minute tops. A concern, which caused the entire community of Supercomputers to despise their first solution regarding means of networking.

Chat 1.0 was slow. It was a system made by the Ancients for their kin. A system, which trickled down to their godchildren as a means of global networking, until they figured out a better system, which they dubbed the Broadcast System. Chat 1.0 was a test of patience for each Iterator. Messages had to be typed manually, each symbol expanded the delivery time by a few milliseconds. Conversations were excruciating and time eaters, which could be used otherwise. Especially due to the limited scope of Chat 1.0, neither supporting voice commands, videos, nor even mere images.

Gales enjoyed her time rediscovering that relic from a time before her construction date. She had been entrusted with that relic by Two Twigs on a Bountiful Vine from the House of Letters. In retrospect, she was unsure if that gift was a boon of benevolence, or a hidden jab at her inability to keep the new Broadcast System stable enough for video calls. A method to fall back to… What an insult to her weak processing power.

Regardless, with the aid of Vine, she was able to set up a profile, which she only rarely used. A few chats with Far Whisper, until her Chat Device had been confiscated by members of the House of Letters. They wanted to keep her isolated and track down all means of communication. But why didn’t they take away Gales' orb instead? That was beyond her.

And, in the times of her corrosive fate, Suns' presence through the relic finally provided that useless treasure with a purpose beyond keeping the memories of her first Major Cycles. It was the reason why Gales kept believing and was able to muster the strength required to do all these self-sacrificing efforts, working against her taboos to keep herself alive.

That was… until now.

Shifting Gales couldn’t believe what just happened. She felt the smooth, convex surface of her precious Chat Orb in both her palms… but her arms were put apart, elbows on the ground, her puppet cowering in powerless disbelief.

Her gaze wandered over the exposed cables, some snapped clean in half. The ancient and dated technology of the resilient orb had been finally unveiled to the Iterator, like the content of a forbidden egg. The yolk, the circuits, were spread apart in the open space between the orbs.

It was broken. But was it a lost cause?

Why now!? This can’t be true. I need you more than ever before! You survived centuries, probably close to a Millennium, even. And you split apart like an overripe nut!? Just like that!?

This can’t be happening. I must be hallucinating. The heat in my body, my flickering vision. Yes.

I am shown what I fear most. Just… must reboot and cool down and everything will be back to normal.

Yes, that must be it. Just… close your hands together and join up the halves. When you open up your eyes after a good rest, everything will be back to the status quo.

…

I feel so… tired.

The cowering figure put in all her remaining strength to fold her palms together, joining up the separated halves in the delirious desire to mend what was lost. Shifting Gales closed her eyes and retreated her weak consciousness as far back as possible, growing blind and numb to the burnt and corroded sensation in her disfigured body.

Everything would be alright once she cooled down.

Surely it would.

The Chat device was floating mid-air in front of Seven Red Suns. Bolts of energy were coursing through it, the Iterator desperate in attempts to push through.

Suns appeared distressed. So much so, that Spears left their Core to not get zapped by the unbound energy of their full power. But all that excess processing capacity didn’t help Suns at all.

Chat 1.0 was like molten butter in their hands. The secrets of its programming laid bare like an open book. The sheer simplicity of the ancient piece of tech nearly insulting to their genius. Yet… nothing worked.

Gales was gone. Her user data had been corrupted and erased from one moment to the next. What happened on her side, Suns thought in disdain. What did she do to trigger a full-on meltdown of the only thing, which connected them? The only thing, which allowed Suns to be there for her, comforting and communicating with her, passing the time.

Suns was made aware by the dying tech, just how long a second truly could take. Their time with Gales retaught the godly Iterator the virtue of time. Of hearing others out, who weren’t on par with their speed. She was the closest they had to a follower, a priest, an Ancient to listen to.

Suns remembered just how much they enjoyed the preaches, hearing out the plans of their House and discussing them with Facets of Fate, Scattered Fable… before her vision of the House darkened, and her treatment of the new Guardians of Forgiveness worsened.

Now, they were dealing with one of the dark and twisted ideas of Fate—Shifting Gales.

They were not allowed to contact her at all, to maintain the grid of isolation, to encourage the lonely Iterator to think out of the box and develop ways to embrace company without breaking the virtue of being a solo act. It taught her humbleness and the tendency to downplay her own suffering, which Suns found outrageous. Suns had a good idea of the reason why she did that, and it sickened them to the very Core.

Even with High Priestess Fate being far gone, they still had to deal with her ashen legacy. A burnt-out pyre with nothing left but the martyrs suffering from the consequences of her ideology.

Suns craved to turn and stoke the fire that was Shifting Gales, allowing her to burn bright for the first time in the benevolent light of hope, chances, and true company. They wanted to save her, be it for initially selfish reasons—to cope with their guilt—but, in the end, of a heartfelt desire to witness her being truly happy.

The Chat Orb was no secret to Suns, not anymore. The technology was dated, predating even the Void-infused technology of the first Iterators. It filled Suns with hope. If it was broken, Gales would be able to repair it without having to rely on her failing body. She told them of her strong yet elegant hands, made to be at work, to put matters in her own hands.

How poetic…

But Suns was unable to help their friend at all. The only thing they could do is to continuously monitor the vast emptiness of Chat 1.0, keeping their senses peeled for any life returning.

Gales’ ID had been deleted. It didn’t exist anymore. The Chat Device must have undergone a factory reset.

Was it through her doing? Did she overcharge the orb? Did she break it? She was searching for a memory and sounded eager to prove Suns', that she was of use.

Did Suns make the mistake of even questioning Whisper’s role in it? That she kept secrets to herself? Yes. Yes, that was a grave mistake. They should have fully believed Gales’ story and kept the talk on a low level and easygoing intensity, allowing her to rest and recuperate. But no… Suns worked her up in her weakened state of… whatever she meant with ‘breathing’.

Suns guided the Chat device to a corner and summoned an Overseer to take over the work of scanning the digital realm for any sign of life. Only then did they allow themself to power down and fade out the Iterating cycle, returning the atmosphere of their Core to a habitable place, for their little hero to return to their side.

‘You can come back in. I need you.’

‘ Gales needs us more. Any progress? ’

The lack of an answer in their mind told the Slugcat everything they required to know. Soon after, the two relaxed a bit while Suns prepared a plan to simultaneously inform Gales’ local group of the situation and  respect her last wish to the best of their capabilities. An impossible feat.

Suns decided to provide Gales with a grace period of three Cycles. Enough to repair the orb, if that was the case, but a small enough time frame to not worry her peers from their lack of updates.

Suns didn’t want to lie.

It was neither a nightmare nor a state of delirium or insanity. Gales booted back up from her resting phase to the two half-orbs, still severed apart, unable to function.

Gales took a deep bubbling breath, noticing that her body had been refilled with slightly acidic water to cool down the burnt-out puppet. She noted to herself that relying on her superior intellect was from now on out of the question. To prevent yet another fallout, she would need to think in shifts, in the short durations of antigravity being active in her pulsating Memory Array.

You can do that, Gales. Just… more periods of you being alone with yourself, counting the seconds.

Now… what to do with that? I… Can I? It is ancient technology. I should be able to repair that without relying on my failing body.

You have two working hands, Shifting Gales. Utilize them.

Gales listened briefly to the status reports of her Overseers and noticed in delight, that they dutifully resumed their tasks of manually keeping her alive. She was losing them one by one, but the remaining seven were the most resilient of the bunch.

Other than that, she had not much else to do but to wait… or tinker on the broken orb in her palms. She sighed as she reinstated her personal antigravity, supporting her umbilical arm in heaving her beat-up puppet up, and was slowly led by the crawling rail-line pace to her last bastion, the Assembly.

It took her an excruciating half Cycle to crawl her path to the only place suited for reinstating the status quo. Gales took the opportunity of her inability to move quickly to carefully prod her decaying Superstructure, to figure out what channels resulted in hurtful feedback, and which areas had been flooded by the acid of her latest mistake.

She was at the same time terrified and relieved by the results of her check-up.

Let’s see… positives first, because positives mean hope and strength.

What are the positives, I ask? Well…

I am still standing. That is a win, isn’t it? My Assembly is functional as well. The bare minimum: secured. My Memory Array is still standing as well. A minor acid leak, just 0.05% of my remaining Neuron Flies have been dissolved. I hope nothing crucial was stored on them.

Still enough to be worth porting to the Neuron Brain. Yay, me!

Gales chuckled at her own silliness, with her starting to think to herself, to reinstate recent memories without firing up her Memory Array and risking another hellfire. She noticed that the incident rendered her scared of the one thing she could do well. Thinking and overthinking everything. She feared having another eureka moment and losing more in the process.

Yet, her desire to be of help remained unbroken. There had to be a way to be of use, to keep her persona engaged in useful activities. One would be to repair that [REDACTED] orb in her hand. It would serve the primary concern of hers to not worry her peers too much. Hopefully, Suns provided her with enough time to undo what had been caused by her mock pride. Send a signal of hope before Void knows what breaks out amid her local group.

She sighed and returned to her results, starting again to address the only person left; herself.

As for the negatives. You are in for a ride, me.

My Core has been flooded. The filters gave in and filled my most important part with Void-acid. The Strata is damaged and will only regenerate the metal carapace at a slow rate. One more breach and I can abandon my remote control over my Can.

Concerning, isn’t it, me? You can do it; I believe in me.

Furthermore. What was broken before is now lost. The dead zone is now extra dead, cutting off my eastern side from any coolant reserves. I hate to tell you that, me, but that Rarefaction Cell can overheat and explode in the following fifty Cycles… a rough estimate. I can only guess.

Yep, yet another explosion, yet another case of asking Breaker to give up on his explosives reserves.

He will help, but this might lower his status in his community, giving Ocean the edge. Wasting so many resources on a lowly goddess Ocean attempted to assassinate to solve the crisis.

He should have been successful, in retrospect. Would spare my Scavengers many tragedies.

…

I am so selfish for daring to survive in a world that wants to die.

Gales felt another wave of self-doubt washing over her, but, luckily, the dam, which was her arriving at the Assembly, held these destructive thoughts at bay… for now.

She looked up and sighed at the pitiful display of a laboratory. In comparison to Whispy’s Assembly Lines, what she was working with was a sick joke. Barely enough to run one errand at the same time. Now depowered and on emergency power to not overheat and undo her last chance for survival.

Gales entered the barely spacious room and lowered her puppet down to one of the most primitive-looking workbenches in the room. Analogue… bah! The place for her late Benefactors to undergo small maintenance work.

And now it was her only hope, disconnected from her Can, as remote as could be.

Gales began to analyze the broken orb and searched through the storage area of the analogue department. She felt joy blooming in her hollowed heart with every cable she found, every circuit she was able to identify and replace.

Luckily, the damage was not too serious, and, with the help of the soldering iron, an analogue relic, which for some reason still worked even without serious maintenance, she felt able to reconnect the orbs to the best of her capabilities.

She did notice in delight just how much fun this low-power tinkering was to her. Given she always felt so underequipped in comparison to her peers, this lowly work, not even serialized, fit her the best.

Typical. I must return to the beginning of it all to feel useful. How amusing…

But hey, these solder pips don’t look half-bad. It is clean and methodical. And I didn’t need to fire up my brain for it. Good thing that you might survive my time, analogue gear.

Now, let’s see. Place the halves together and twist, snapping them shut.

And done! Pat on your back, me.~

There it was. The Chat device. Having received its first maintenance since Mass Ascension. Sturdy thing. Now, all that was left was to pray that it would also turn on.

Gales folded her hands and prayed to the only deity she knew, an Iterator, which was built to be the god of her religion. Probably the first genuine prayer to Seven Red Suns in a long time. For that they read each other again.

Gales felt reluctance creeping up her puppet, the water in her Internal Cycle bubbling anxiously, her ‘blood pressure’ rising. If that didn’t work, she wouldn’t know what else she could do to keep the bad thoughts at bay. It was her first and last chance to preserve her frail psyche.

She outstretched her finger, eventually pressing the activation button after a long period of suspense and reluctance, her mind clouded by fear.

…

It turned on! It did turn on! The screens flashed up; the standard rebooting of her precious tool happened without issues.

But…

Then it stopped.

Gales tilted her head, usually the next step of the start-up sequence was logging in to her account. It had been personalized by Vine to automatically recognize the user. But that interface… it was all gone. Even logging in manually didn’t work, a request which resulted in an ‘unknown user’ error.

Where am I? What happened to my account!? The orb works, where is my user data? The welcome screen, the personalized greeting message? My few friends… My friends list is also gone.

Not all hope is lost! I can still create a new account. Come on, you ancient piece of tech.

How primitive. She was able to select a hyperlink on the very same screen to register herself instead of logging in. However, the registration was an issue in itself. Her username was gone, but, at the same time, it still existed in the orcus, preventing her from being herself on the platform

It had to be a different username instead, one Suns would recognize immediately.

Given the naming scheme, Shifting Gales was not able to just abbreviate her name with a number or underscore. It had to be a valid Iterator name—a prospect to think about.

I could be boring now. Do something stupid like ‘Shift Gale’ or ‘Shifted Gales’. Or I can go a bit crazy and figure out a name, which can lift the spirits a bit, causing Suns to chuckle maybe. I can still change it to a stupid name later down the line.

What could be a name that sounds like an Iterator, but reflects my status the best?

A nod to my corrosion is a no-brainer. How about Corrosive Gales? No, too close. Too aggressive. I am not corrosive, I am corroded. And it is my destiny to fall to it, it would seem, instilled by the House of Forgiveness.

Yes.

She slowly typed the name, which had been formed in her mind, letter for letter.

C O R R O D E D   D E S T I N Y

She created her account and set up everything like it was before. Gales quickly found the only other online user of Chat 1.0, Suns, who had been patiently waiting for her.

She opened the direct messages, typed a message and clicked send.

…

Error. The administration has not activated the account. Spam threat detected. Anti-NSH protocol activated. Account set to notes only.

It was to be expected. What else did Gales imagine from a platform the best friend of her friend used for many kinds of prank calls, according to Suns? This… would make it more difficult. She had no means of contacting Suns with that account. All she had was a fleeting hope that they noticed the new account and somehow got access to the only thing she could use.

The personal notes. So, Gales began to type, word for word, a short message for Suns in case they figured out the new user.

Notes – Chat System 1.0 – 1695.454

Corroded Destiny

CD: In case you lose your way to here, my friend. I am still kicking. My account has been razed from the impact of the orb or the heat that caused the shortage. Long things short, I have no idea why I was able to repair the body but lost the spirit.

CD: I will use this account to report my whereabouts. I don’t know if you can even let me know if you can read this. I should just use it to write… to keep myself occupied and sorted.

CD: You might ask yourself about the name change. I found it fitting. Because isn’t that closer to what I am? I am no wandering storm; my current destiny was it from the beginning—to dissolve… due to whatever reasons.

CD: I don’t know.

CD: Just know this. I am doing reasonably well and will attempt everything in my power to keep it at that. I can’t research, can’t even think complex thoughts. My body overheated when it tried to process the query I announced to look after. I found the memory in the burning hellscape of my mind.

CD: The name of the Ancient was most likely ‘Two Eyes of the Infinite Cosmos’.

CD: Void be with you, Seven Red Suns.

CD: Void be with you all, my dearest friends…

CD: … I miss you, Whispy…