Ch. 12 - Tinea Act II; Talking Wings

"Did you know it's possible to change how people perceive themselves by telling them to act out certain emotions with their face? Show the recording to them later and they'll actually believe they had the attitude they displayed, even if that wasn't true at all!"

– Extract from a recorded conversation between the head of an advertisement corporation and her COO, 2026

 

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"Alright, let's see, Tynea. Let's do some non-human stuff. Wings. Those'll be amazing," I say, grinning into the dark and entirely unable to settle down. My brain's chemistry must be shot six ways to Sunday. "Absolutely want those. Then, some additional sensory organs. But, since, you know, extra eyes and such might get real creepy, I'll definitely need visuals."

Don't worry, Aden. I have plenty of options for external sensory organs that won't appear uncanny. Some could even be described as magical in their beauty.

"Oh?"

Yes. I'll do as before and offer you whichever item appears the most appropriate based on your previous selections, when we get there.

"And we can always update and/or swap stuff out later if I end up not liking it. Got it. Can you add the wings first, please?"

Certainly. Their extreme ability to fold may make experimenting with them a little complicated, so I'd like to introduce them part by part, if you don't mind?

"Okay? Sure."

Thank you, she said while rotating the virtual doll of female me around, so that I was looking at the small of her back. A complex arrangement of alien bone, muscle, and ligaments appeared beneath the skin, integrated and attached to the doll's humanoid spine in multiple spots. They formed a double set of internal…shoulders, essentially, hidden within the human shape of her lower torso at the base of the ribcage.

"Why does the whole, uh, mechanism, leave so much space at the center?" I asked, pointing at all the unused estate between the pelvis and the ribcage. I knew from…personal experience—shudder—that the guts weren't nearly as vulnerable to getting moved as the model made it seem—and that was before I even considered the supercharged Vanguard exceptionalism to the rules of natural biology.

The womb, Aden, and the possibility of future pregnancy. That is, if you want to preserve that ability, instead of using an artificial womb. Or have a desire for children at all.

"Oh…" I mumbled, ducking my head and flushing slightly. "I'll, um, get back to you on that. Later."

Certainly, Aden. Tynea's voice gained that soft, teasing quality again. As you wish.

From the shoulders themselves, four new arms grew out. Two thicker ones at the top, close to each other and the spine, and two smaller ones just beneath, a little to the side.

The stronger pair will carry the larger, main pair of wings. They're close to the spine to reduce leverage-based strain. The second pair will hold the smaller, lower wings. Those will help you steer, rotate, and orient yourself in flight. They'll take advantage of the same leverage that the larger pair would've suffered from.

"Huh. Is there a reason the wings are so low in the back? Wouldn't there be way more space at the actual shoulders?"

Your center of gravity is located a little behind and below your belly button, and your wings need to work around that. The further from it, the more coordinated you can be during lateral or vertical maneuvers. The closer to it, the easier it is to rotate your mass around it. If the wings attach in the small of your back, just above and somewhat behind your center of mass, then you get the best of both worlds. It becomes easy to shift yourself within your wings, as well as to translate in any direction without tumbling.

"That makes sense." Especially if I was going to be using guns while flying. It did give me a whole new appreciation for the complexity of designing these organs. The Moonsingers must've had to consider so many things…

"And what's that brain-looking thing growing inside the roots of the arms?"

Your avionics, you could say. An incredibly efficient brain-nodule designed to manage the equally complex wings, and to compute your flight. It won't do anything else, but it'll do everything related to aerodynamics, and ballistic or powered flight, extremely well.

I could feel the exclamation mark all over my face. "Everything related to flight?"

Yes. Including flight using other, non-organic devices.

"Oh, that's promising to be useful."

I would hope so, at Class II. Shall we move on? I'll introduce the wing arms themselves.

"Go for it!"

The camera zoomed out several meters and Tynea animated the dolls. The new arms stretched themselves as far as they'd go, but Tynea had obfuscated everything beyond their elbows with a virtual fog. In it, I could only glimpse blurry outlines of elegant arches at the leading edge of fifteen-meter-long wings. 

But at the base, the arms were quite girthy, somewhere halfway between the thickness of the doll's human legs and arms. The lower pair was only a quarter as long and thick. The first part of each limb, from shoulder to elbow, looked almost humanoid. They were covered in tiny, shimmering scales, but they had recognizable biceps and triceps. 

They were also long enough to allow the, as yet hidden, actual wing-bearing segments to reach all around the body. That range of movement is probably necessary for proper maneuvering, huh? Especially in close quarters, I figured.

Aden, said Tynea, I've done my best to adjust the designs so they'd avoid the Uncanny Valley—please do tell me if I've failed. There's some leeway to adjust.

"Gotcha. I'll tell you if it's necessary."

Thank you. Up until the elbow, I was able to keep the limbs mostly humanoid. But beyond this joint, the design calls for an amalgamation of mammalian and insectoid features.

And indeed, as the rolling fog retreated, the remaining segments looked decidedly alien. The arms continued shaping the leading edges of each wing, but they became flat, elongated…scythes, almost. More and more of their mass split off to form structural veins, a web of blood vessels to form and support the wing membranes.

It reminded me a little of dragonfly wing patterns, but rather than their long airfoils for efficient gliding, these had the deltoid shape of jet fighters mixed with the organically swung curves of certain moth species. They were in fact optimized for powered flight.

I've omitted the flight-active tissues so far, the membranes, scales, and saeta. Please pay attention to the folding, Tynea said as she zoomed in very close. I could only see a fingernail's area now, but it consisted of a net of capillaries, fine like hair, and which formed a dozen empty cells, each one either a triangle or some sort of quadrilateral. No curves, just straight lines and corners. It looked like the wings were made of ninety percent air, though that was probably because Tynea had omitted those flying tissues.

My eyebrows rose as I watched the web fold and snap into new configurations to accommodate the new shapes Tynea put the wings in. Just like the folds in a paper fan—or more accurately, the wings' namesake: origami.

"What are these capillaries made of? Flesh and blood doesn't just kink like that, does it?"

No, indeed. They're organometallic. They rely as much on electric fields to move as they do on glucose-powered muscle fibers. It's a pretty fascinating combination of your natural metabolism and an inorganic derivative. The marrow within the wing arms supplies the unique blend. Watch, there's more.

I kept staring at the mutating web. Tynea made additional frames appear, each one fitted inside one of the geometric cells of the web. They were also of the same organometallic stuff as the capillaries. Wherever they made contact with the web, the blood vessels bulged slightly and created joints of liquid metal, like beads of glue bridging the miniscule gaps between frame and web.

"Huh…"

These frames will carry the actual flight membranes—the oscillating scales that create the thrust, and the fine hairs that will shape the generated airflows. 

At Tynea's words, the wings finally filled out. The intricate wireframe-look was replaced by the soft, fluttery surface of moth fuzz. Tiny, geometric scales began vibrating, moving the air, and the fine hairs between the oscillating scales caught their currents and smoothed them out.

Suddenly, each frame rotated ninety degrees on its glue-metal joint, like a gimbal.

Since this model does not use flapping as a method of propulsion, it can take advantage of some very powerful vectoring, Aden.

"And that will make for an insane level of maneuverability on the spot, won't it?"

Certainly. You'll be more likely to dodge a bullet in the air than on your feet.

"Except those wings are massive," I said, noting the fifteen meter span of the larger pair. "I love me some gigantic fluffy blankets, but why do they need to be so huge? They'll catch any bullet I dodge, won't they?"

The rules of physics do still largely apply at Class II. Can't fly without some serious surface area—your species is just not made for efficiency in the air. Paragliders work with an area of twenty to thirty-five square meters, and they're just gliding. You'll need to be more mobile than those if you wish to actually maneuver in combat. 

The wingspan is currently set to thirty meters, and the chord length, that is top to bottom, a little over two meters. These parameters will need to change as your own mass and shape changes. The only reason these wings are practical is their ability to fold and achieve lift in any configuration, so long as you leave enough air between the layers to generate sufficient airflow.

"I could pretend to be a hoverbus, huh?" I laughed.

Yes, Aden. You could. Especially if you upgraded the scales of these wings with the ability to change color.

"That sounds like a nifty trick. I imagine Class II Genetics has some interesting things to offer?"

Class I has the ability to let your scales change colors nearly instantly, or let them shapeshift, or a number of other options. Class II lets you combine those. Shapeshifting scales that emit specific pheromones and assume whatever colors and luminosity you wish, so quickly you could cause epileptic seizures.

"Be my own flashbang, huh?" I replied, letting my eyes wander across the wings and their complex structure, adapted as it was to work with human proportions, weight, and biology. 

Zoomed out, the vibration of the scales, the shimmering of the fuzz, the gimbaling of the fligh-tiles, all of it came together to mimic the sway of sunlit grass beneath a breeze. It was…almost hypnotizing. Something one could meditate on.

"I'm glad I don't have to come up with this entire system myself."

There is a reason we AI assistants are Class XII. We may at times appear little more than handy store fronts, but the amount of variables we have to consider just to offer an item to our companions is tremendous.

"Yeah, I'm starting to see that. But Class XII? What does that mean?"

It means I roughly match the computing power of your entire species.

"Oh wow, uh, that's…amazing and also way too abstract for me to grasp. Sorry."

I don't expect anything from you but for you to be yourself, Aden. You are who we need you to be, or you would not have been chosen to receive my assistance.

"Yeah. That I can do. Though, does a sex-change mess with that?"

No. Your profile did indicate that you did not enjoy your physical existence, though perhaps not the extent of your suffering. But it is your values and methods that I hope remain consistent, and I have no reason to believe that physical adaptations, no matter how extreme, would change that. A sex change is rather minor compared to the possibilities I can offer you. If you wished to be a spaceship, you could be a spaceship. Even that, I would not expect to shift your morals into problematic territory.

"A spaceship, huh?" I chuckled. "Maybe, one day."

It is perhaps noteworthy that becoming female will change your hormone levels in some profound ways. While this won't affect your ability to reason, it will affect your emotional experience, and may change your personality to some degree. The same experiences will hit differently.

"Yeah, I'm aware. And I'm okay with that, looking forward to it even. Part of the journey and all. Acting or reacting differently, changing how I feel about some things. That'd happen either way, that's just growing as a person. I will just be growing in a little more unusual ways."

I looked down at my messed-up legs.

"It's not the same as not wanting to protect a kid from Antithesis anymore. If that changed, well, only then would I consider myself a fundamentally different person.

"But, back to the wings. They'll be catching bullets. How tough are they, truly?"

Not tough at all. They can withstand forces that are spread across the entire wing-surface just fine, which is necessary for them to propel air. But they're meant to tear instantly and painlessly against focused impacts, so that the strands may seamlessly rejoin after the invading object has passed. They're fairly resistant to flashes of heat to better deal with high-velocity friction, but you'll still want to be mindful of prolonged exposure to open fires.

And finally, the greatest threat to their functioning are foreign electric fields, which can cause the scales and capillaries to seize up and spasm. I have already considered this issue for one of the other items I will suggest as we get to them.

"I see. Toughness through reconstitution, rather than sturdiness. I suppose that's a fair way of handling something so fragile."

Yes. The wing-arms themselves are very sturdy, though. They'll make for rather intimidating and bone-breaking bludgeoning weapons, if you choose to use them that way.

That gave me some ideas, actually. Considering that they wouldn't need to flap like normal wings, I could put all kinds of weaponry on them. Including, I figured, more guns.

Hmm…

As with the spinneret, I played with the wings' colors. The options were many and the colorful displays entranced me, until eventually I decided to just leave the scales with the same lack of intrinsic color as the tail, illuminated in different shades per background lighting. I did add a few bands of softly shimmering, diamond-dusted black to create a beautiful pattern that made use of the grass-in-a-breeze effect of the rotating scale-tiles.

"Okay, Tynea," I said, and yawned as I stepped back from the deep state of focus I'd been in. "We were talking about enhancements. Since I'm already playing around with external looks, what kind of additional sense organs would you recommend?"

 

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