This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Few_Carpenter_9185 on 2025-10-22 03:42:09+00:00.
Next cycle, the computer announced to Lagneb that Flower was bored, again.
Lagneb sighed. He didn’t bother to ask the computer if that: “Indicated a high probability Flower wanted a non-computer activity.” He already knew the answer to that question.
“Computer, tell Flower that I don’t know any new games…”
“Affirmative.” And the computer rumbled to Flower, and she rumbled back.
“Flower says she has a new game she wants to play.”
“What is it?”
“It is called ‘Conceal & Search.” the computer replied.
The computer explained the game to Lagneb, and it was simple. No images were needed to explain it.
It sounded very much like the things the whelps running around the nests would play every cycle, all cycle long.
Since Flower could now move the ore processors and cargo frames by herself, she wanted to conceal herself somewhere in the airbay. Lagneb would cover his eyes with his limbs, so he could not see which way Flower went, after a count of 20 beats, Lagneb would uncover his eyes and go searching for her.
This seemed like a stupendously easy game to play. Flower was a giant, it was obvious she could not really hide in the airbay, and he’d easily see or hear her moving ore processors on cargo frames, or feel the vibrations in the deck as she moved them.
Even if she was staying still, with Lagneb moving up and down the aisles, looking each way as he crossed them, he’d catch sight of her almost immediately.
Furthermore, Lagneb felt proud of himself, for realizing he should pretend to have a hard time finding Flower, the longer she believed she was successfully hiding, the longer she would be entertained.
That was the idea anyway.
And soon enough, Lagneb would be cursing himself as a smelly crack-egg that even the undernest rejected for being absolutely stupid.
At the ExpandaFoam nest, he counted out 20 beats. and listened as he heard the ore processor cargo frames shifting further and further away in sequence heading antispinward as Flower moved about the airbay grid. There was nothing in the rules about merely listening. And then the sounds stopped.
Lagneb headed in that direction carefully, so he could locate her, without actually ending the game too early so Flower could have sufficient entertainment with this game.
He could not locate her.
She MUST be in the airbay somewhere, it was physically impossible for her to go anywhere else, except for when the main spinward and antispinward ramps were open, which would only happen when the Bright Nest was on a planet with a breathable atmosphere.
Flower was the biggest single object in the airbay, and he could not see her.
And whatever the undernest she was doing, she was following the rules, mostly. There were no mass balance alarms. Nobody from the bridge was on the airbay loudspeakers yelling at him.
He then heard ore processors shifting at least six or more rows spinward.
Fine.
He’d obviously just made a mistake that she’d gone antispinward. Maybe he’d heard wrong. Or… yes… an echo off the closest ore processor had obviously confused him as to the real direction. It must have been that. He’d accidentally tricked himself, nothing more. He hurried spinward. Changing aisles in a zig-zag stepped fashion so he could see longitudinally down a new row each time. That was his advantage, speed. Flower didn’t fit in the aisles, only Hettik did, and he’d find her shortly.
He did not find Flower to spinward either.
At this point, Lagneb was absolutely ready to cheat and check the airbay cameras with his com… if he could. Because they still didn’t trust Flower’s computer with the Bright Nest’s internal network, he was without his com, they were still all deactivated.
Lagneb wished he could just yell loudly for the loudspeakers for the bridge to look at the airbay cameras and ask them to tell him where she was. She wouldn’t even be able to hear them talking.
But he absolutely could not do that. It would mean admitting to the bridge he did not know where Flower was, and he was not adequately supervising her.
Stupid… stupid… stupid… He put his limbs on his braincase, and closed his eyes. “Full forwardthoughts Lagneb… No excuses!” he told himself.
The only constructive thought that came forward was: “THIS was how Flower got onboard Bright Nest in the first place.” She was preternaturally… sneaky. It must be a species trait. Being that big, maybe they HAD to conceal themselves constantly, if they didn’t, everything they hunted would have immediately run away. The giants would have starved, and never developed a civilization and made it to space…
Then another constructive thought. Flower was able to move the cargo frames and the containerized ore processor units quietly. She could move them more carefully and they didn’t make excessive sounds. It would be quieter than if she pushed them fast, and quieter than if he used the control panels and the worm-drives!
This immediately gave Lagneb another thought. A rather discouraging one. When he did hear cargo frames moving, Flower was doing it intentionally to mislead him. She was doing it quietly when she wanted him to detect nothing at all.
Lagneb liked Flower. He could tell she liked him. He told himself this was just the game, and it wasn’t malicious. While he knew this logically, it didn’t help ease his anxiety one iota.
It was still frightening as AbsolutelyFatherEgging undernest.
Even if it was an utterly friendly game, it didn’t change the fact a giant alien was moving around “somewhere” in the airbay with him, and he had no cracked-egg idea where it was, and could not sense her, it became utterly unnerving so quickly. His fur wasn’t puffing out yet, but it was tickling like it was about to puff any beat now.
He needed a plan, FirstMother condemned it. He was an adult. No matter what weird instincts and talents a species might have, he was the older, more experienced one. He could out-think Flower. He was an officer-rate with shares on a spacecraft for FatherEgging’s sake. She was just a whelp.
A spiral search pattern. He’d spiral outwards through the aisles, and even if she was on the far side of the circle and he’d missed her one spiral inward previously, he’d have to eventually see her down the aisles from the far side of the spiral as she moved. It would be tedious, but thorough. It would work. Mathematically and logically it must.
It did not.
Then finally, it did. He felt relief when he saw one of her cloth effigy toys in an aisle, almost 20 rows away. She was hiding there. And he’d known her knapsack and toys would eventually give her away. She barely fit behind that ore processor herself as it was, and she didn’t realize her belongings she insisted on carting about with her everywhere she went didn’t fit, and it would reveal her location.
He ran quietly as he could down the aisle. He wisely shifted one aisle over before he got too close so he didn’t approach it directly.
And Flower wasn’t there. Just the cloth animal effigy.
Then like a slap, he had yet another realization. She left it here intentionally. It’s a decoy, bait, or a distraction…
His fur did finally puff out.
He was being stalked.
She was staying ‘hidden’ by following him and getting behind him, no matter what he did. He was an even bigger idiot. It had finally occurred to him that when the computer told him “Flower wanted to conceal herself in the airbay,” it never once said she would stay still.
He circled a few rows around, and in futility, he came back to where her cloth toy animal effigy had been.
There was only one thing worse than seeing it there mocking him. It was seeing that he’d only circled three rows away; it was now gone. He hadn’t heard an undernested thing.
Run all-fours for the fore or aft airbay wall? At least she couldn’t circle around him endlessly.
Quickly hide in a random cargo frame clamp gap, like where he initially intended to sleep next to her nest, before he gave up on that? If he did it fast, she might not see him crawl in, and if he was absolutely still, she’d make a mistake so he could find her?
Scream for her computer to hear him, and have it tell Flower he gave up, and she’d won the game?
He was feeling suspense to the point it was making him ill. He was beyond any sense of pride at this point at admitting utter defeat to the giant alien whelp. He tried to comfort himself again with the idea that different species obviously had different evolutionary paths, giving them different abilities and skills.
It did not comfort him one undernested bit. He drew in breath to start screaming for Flower’s computer to tell her that he gave up…
And a half-beat before he could do so, from behind an ore processor, Flower’s arm reached out and grabbed him, lifting him up. Lagneb let out a choked meep… he tried to relax. The most terrifying 600 beats of his life… It was finally over.
Losing at ‘Conceal & Search’ was its own reward. Losing meant the psychological torture was finished.
Flower rumbled, Lagneb vibrated in her manipulator. She was saying something.
Flower’s computer announced, somewhat muffled from inside her knapsack: ‘Flower says you are very bad at this game.”
Lagneb thought to himself: “No pit-fill…”