thing

[Ca'h'veh]

This infiltrator is known as Aggregator. Answerable to the Overseer of Servitors, it hunts the interlopers, and in a mirror of their covetousness, it directs the servitors it holds command over to aggregate what it knows is deemed valuable from the interlopers that fall prey to it.

---

Aggregator's name follows its function, both bestowed upon it by the Overseer of Servitors. The Overseer of Servitors in its experiment to make the flesh-forms of the interlopers serve the cause of the peaceful beloved without the need of infiltrators or other radical modifications, the resource expenditures of simple extermination deemed wasteful in its estimation. This flesh-thing was beyond such measures, and indeed had resisted enlightenment. It attempted to self-terminate before the brethren could enlighten it. The flesh-thing Aggregator inhabited, along with its stardust shell, were extensions of itself, as much a part of it as the imperatives imposed by the Mindshare. It was to be sent out to hunt until it burned away, a nameless weapon to burn the interlopers. It was not disposed of so easily. The Overseer of Servitors took note of this nameless infiltrator, and lay claim to its flesh-form and metal husk.

The infiltrator's imitation of its flesh-thing's seat of thought began a symposium with the Overseer of Servitors, and plans to influence flesh-things via their short-sighted covetousness sang. Aggregator was granted what the Servitor Hub could spare, and would await the greedy, the unlucky, the needy. These interlopers carrying the curse of necessity and the gift of malleability would bring themselves to it.

---

The others whispered to Aggregator of one susceptible to its blandishments and so it went to await the interloper. It did not have to wait long. Aggregator could taste the resignation in the flesh-thing as it sighted yet another entity it perceived to be seeking to extract its possessions, and immediately decided that this one could be of use.

The arrays of stardust giving the interloper's shells actuation could be tampered with, and the Overseer of Servitors had such a batch ready for movement and distribution. Aggregator had found the vector, and offered the flesh-thing cursed with individuality the promise of potential energy. As it had been stripped of its potential energy previously, the flesh-thing accepted. Aggregator gave the flesh-thing a location to be, and the servitors aboard readied the tainted fuel for loading.

The flesh-thing quickly reported success, the pernicious interlopers had accepted the congealed cloud, none the wiser as to what the Overseer of Servitors had its functionaries place within.

[Ca'h'veh]

Aggregator is pleased with the trajectory of the fringe extractor interlopers. They have fashioned themselves into the envenomed tip of the enlightened’s sting, all on their own. It is likely they themselves will suffer greatly along this path, but this is a sacrifice Aggregator is willing to make. Its flesh-thing shell’s visual sensory apparatus is mildly compromised, attempting to wash out a nonexistent irritant. Aggregator's’s imitation of the flesh thing’s seat of thought is fabricating such pain signals and sending out a response despite a lack of damage sustained. It does not, it cannot understand.

---

After Aggregator returns to the Hub, it finds its unique brand of metal shell to no longer be unique: multiple other such metal shells awaiting the enlightened to command them greet it. Clearly, the Overseer of Servitors has been expanding its remit. Were Aggregator capable of worry, it would fret that the Overseer of Servitors was reaching above its station. As it was, Aggregator would welcome these new podmates.

---

Aggregator continues to build a roster of useful interlopers, either collaborators or servitors. The Overseer of Servitors sees no effective difference between the two, and in truth, neither does Aggregator in its aspect as the blade of enlightenment. Its imitation of an interloper flesh-thing's seat of thought, however, is what interacts with the interlopers, and Aggregator
allows it to operate at its unconscious level, requiring no input from the rest of the brethren.