### Chapter 7
The weight didn't arrive all at once.
It settled.
Slowly, inexorably, like pressure equalizing across a sealed chamber she hadn't realized she was standing inside.
She stayed still as it did.
The Keshin remained where it had manifested, posture neutral, tentacles in their constant, low-level motion. The space held steady now—no longer compressing, no longer rearranging itself. As if reality had finished accommodating the new variable and was waiting to see what she would do with it.
And with that stillness came the realization.
This was first contact.
Not the abstract kind. Not the kind discussed in panels or white papers. The kind that ended civilizations, or rewrote them so thoroughly that no one could remember what had been lost.
And she was nobody.
No rank. No clearance. No badge, no authority, no delegation behind her. No one waiting for a report. No committee prepared to argue over what she should say next.
She hadn't even taken the kind of job people expected her to have.
She'd chosen chemicals over people on purpose.
It had been easier to work with systems that followed rules - even complex ones. Easier to know when something was wrong. Easier to fix what could be fixed and accept what couldn't.
People were noisy. Full of hidden variables. Resistant to optimization in ways that made engineers sloppy and administrators cruel.
And yet here she was.
She breathed out slowly, letting the weight settle without letting it tip her.
"All right," she said.
The word wasn't agreement. It was acknowledgment.
She shifted her stance slightly, grounding herself in balance and posture. She didn't approach the Keshin, but she didn't retreat either.
"If this is going to continue," she said, "we need to slow it down."
The translation came immediately.
"Clarify."
She nodded.
"I need a way to understand you that doesn't rely solely on the interface," she said. "Not just words. The rest of it."
The tentacles' motion changed—subtle, but unmistakable now that she knew how to watch.
She gestured lightly toward its body.
"Posture. Orientation. Tentacle movement. Frequency shifts. Whatever correlates to internal state."
She met the place where its attention would be, if attention had a direction.
"I need a translation key."
"For what purpose?" the translation asked.
"So I know when you're deciding something," she said. "And when you're not."
She let that sit.
"So I know when you're optimizing," she continued, "and when you're observing."
The space went very still.
She pressed on, before anything could reframe this as defiance.
"I'm not asking for access to your internal states," she said. "I'm asking for context. For warning signs. For the ability to say _stop_ before something crosses a boundary I didn't know was there."
The clicks deepened, the subsonic pressure returning in a faint, steady pulse. She felt it along her spine, at the base of her skull.
"We do not conceal intention," the translation said.
"I know," she replied. "That's not the same thing as making it *legible*."
The tentacles reorganized again, slower this time, more deliberately. She could not help but feel a bit judged.
"Your request will reduce efficiency."
"Yes," she said simply.
The answer required no defense.
After a moment, the translation responded again.
"We can provide correlation matrices. Movement-response mappings. Frequency interpretation within tolerances."
Her shoulders eased, just slightly.
"Good," she said. "That's enough to start."
There was one more thing she needed to establish. Not as a demand.
As a signal.
"And," she added, almost as an afterthought, "if I'm going to be here longer than a conversation…"
The Keshin remained still.
"…I'm going to need food."
The space shifted again—but not around her.
In front of her.
A container resolved into existence with the same careful precision that had marked everything else here. No flourish. No announcement. Just presence.
Inside it was a viscous substance, uniform in color and texture. Neither opaque nor translucent. Smooth enough that light slid across it without catching.
She didn't react.
She stepped closer, just enough to observe.
The scent was faint. Vegetal. Neutral. No sharpness. No complexity.
Her mind categorized automatically.
High nutrient density. Emulsified proteins. Lipids stabilized for easy absorption. Micronutrients suspended evenly throughout. What humans would classify as a superfood, that hype word that made no sense as a categorial label...
She refocused.
No particulate matter.
No structural resistance.
No carbohydrates beyond trace sugars.
It was sustenance.
Efficient. Complete. Optimized.
She felt a small, quiet click in her chest as the last piece settled into place.
This wasn't food.
This was what you fed something you didn't expect to stay.
She didn't say anything right away.
She watched the surface of the slurry shift slightly as the container adjusted to the space. Watched how it moved as a single body, no internal variation.
No choice.
No texture.
No time-release energy. Nothing that required digestion to work for it.
She let the silence stretch.
The Keshin did not interrupt it.
Finally, she spoke.
"This tells me how you think about time," she said.
The translation paused.
"You provide what is required," it said.
She nodded.
"Yes," she agreed. "Optimized. For a process."
She straightened, stepping back into her original position.
"You're feeding me like a variable," she continued, calm and precise. "Something temporary. Something meant to function, not participate. This seems efficient now, but. It will lead to compounded inefficiency, down the road. You should fix it now, before this seed grows."
The tentacles shifted again, slower now, as if reallocating threads.
She didn't accuse. She didn't demand.
She simply observed, the challenge hanging in the air between them.