It has been two months. Matirin has been breathing down his neck the entire time, even though he agreed when they talked about it that he should do this before he murders Alloran because it will take much longer if Leareth has to do it without him. The existing literature on uploads is in shockingly shoddy condition; most of it is from before the war, when more Andalites wasted their time on research projects like this one without immediate applications. And of course all of it presumes an Andalite mind, or the mind of some homeworld animal; Yeerks are not very similar. Though in a way they're easier - the electrical signals that are their only limited communications channel in their natural form is easy to emulate. 

He hasn't been sleeping and has been eating only because he can do that entirely incidentally and he keeps developing bizarre body aches, from holding himself too stiffly. He morphs them off. He has uncomfortable spots in his vision all the time which he appreciates, they help remind him that everything is awful and will never be all right again and soon he will kill Alloran and die and then he at least won't have to bear witness to the brokenness of the universe any longer. 

He can make an uploaded worm that remembers aversive stimuli. That might suggest this'll work or it might turn out to be a hundred times easier with a worm than with a Yeerk, which is what happened with the last approach he tried. 

<I'm running it> he tells Leareth, and goes ahead without checking to see if Leareth responded or indeed if Leareth is around; keeping track of other people is too hard. 

He watches the computer with Mindhealing sight, but even after two months of trying to wrap his head around this he doesn't totally trust his Sight to notice.

[This is an attempt to run you from a backup] the electrical signals say. [Please respond, ideally in language but nonrandom electrical activity will be interpreted as sufficient reason to keep running it while I try to figure out why language isn't working].

It is probably not the most reassuring welcome message but in Cayaldwin's defense everything important in the universe has been destroyed forever.

There is nothing at all.

The last thing he remembers is disentangling from the Andalite senses, slipping out from Alloran's ear as Alloran's brain sank into drugged unconsciousness. In his natural form his senses are very limited, but at least they exist, there's some proprioception and he can sense heat and cold, pressure, air currents, limited perceptions of light and dark.

This isn't just darkness. It's not just the absence of anything notable for his senses to pick up; it's the absence of senses as inputs at all. 

...It doesn't take Mhalir very many subjective seconds of thought to infer what this is likely to mean, and so when something intrudes on the nothing, he's immediately attentive to it. It doesn't quite feel like another Yeerk speaking to him, but mostly because all the other sense-impressions that would go along with that are missing. He can understand the message. It's a very unsurprising one. 

Mhalir tries to answer, the way he would speak to a fellow Yeerk in a pool, though the feeling of complete disembodiment makes it hard to tell if it's working. [I am here. Who are you, and where and why are you trying to run me from backup?]

He thinks for a moment. [And when.]

The computer translates; this is the setup that worked fine for the now-completed Council trials.

He is dizzy with relief or maybe sleep deprivation, and now he should really get Leareth but it's still hard, to think about things like that - <Leareth> he says again, and still doesn't check if Leareth is even in range to hear him, and sends the computer his response -

[My name is Cayaldwin-Hashal-Firayar]

[It's been two years since this backup and two months since you died. It's February 14, 1996 on Earth]

[We're trying to run you because then it'll be a little bit less the case that you're dead]

Leareth is asleep, because it's three o'clock in the morning on Earth, but he's in range. The first thoughtspeech warning half-woke him, but Cayaldwin has run it so many times and it never worked, so he didn't bother waking up all the way to acknowledge it. This time, there's a new urgency in Cayaldwin's thoughtspeech, something seems different...

<Coming> and he slips out of the Andalite herd and trots over. 

That's an Andalite name. 

He's being run on Earth. By an Andalite. Years later - he tries to think what his projections were for the invasion, no, it shouldn't have been done - and if this were an Andalite host with a Yeerk, they would be giving the Yeerk name and rank... 

[Did the Andalites win the war on Earth.]

[Yes]

[It's kind of complicated]

[You surrendered and were working with us but then Alloran murdered you]

The last clause is literally the only part that makes any sense at all. How - did he slip up on his precautions, why would he be that stupid... 

Focus. The exact details there aren't relevant, probably - the relevant part is that he's a) dead, and b) his backup is now being run by Andalites. Which means he's completely and utterly under their power right now. Strategically he should– 

Mhalir's mind catches and trips on the thought that he should play nice, do whatever they want him to so they keep him running and don't shut him down. That's - well, not false, but it feels like a wrong angle.

[Acknowledged. Thank you] he thinks to communicate, so this 'Cayaldwin' knows he understood and doesn't get impatient, he has no idea if his subjective thought-time is faster or slower than real time, it would depend on how much computer they have to throw at this...

Step back. Reason through it. 

Whatever drove them to spend two months figuring out how to run him on a computer - which is the natural interpretation of the timing, and also plausible given his understanding of Andalite computing technology - they probably aren't going to give up in disgust and shut him down forever if he says something mildly irritating, that would be such a waste of their time. And - they can't go in and meddle with his thoughts and memories, an uploaded brain is even more opaque than the early neural-net algorithms that the Andalites made illegal to scale into full general artificial intelligence. They can get him as he is - well, to whatever fidelity the brain scan managed, he wasn't sure while having it done - or nothing. 

- running a quick check through his own mind, does anything seem scrambled or out of working order, he wouldn't necessarily be able to tell introspectively if it weren't really him that came through, but he might be able to, and no, his mind seems to be working as usual, well, as usual for being just himself, outside of Alloran's brain, he feels slow and stupid like this - 

He's confused, and that feels very important to hold onto and unpack, why would he surrender, why would he work with the Andalites - 

- of course, he has no way of verifying that anything they're telling to him is true, aside from sanity-checking it for plausibility, which isn't a great check, almost by definition this is a bizarre edge-case scenario. 

[What is the status of the other Yeerks on Earth] he asks. 

Leareth catches up, slips in beside Cayaldwin, looks at the record of communications so far up on the screen. Wishes, fervently, that his Thoughtsensing could get through here. He wants to know what Mhalir is thinking. He's not sure if it's a fundamental limitation, that Thoughtsensers can only pick up on biological brains, it doesn't seem like it should be - it's just information-processing, either way - but then again, it takes a different Gift to read animals, Thoughtsensing is narrow, and why would there be a Gift specific to digital minds... 

He watches. 

[We're letting humans be voluntary Controllers if they want to]

[Lots of them do]

[We haven't told your staff yet that we're trying this but you can talk to them if you want]

[The Council of Thirteen was executed for war crimes]

[I'm not going to hurt you or turn this off, we were working together on fixing morph when you were killed]

Mhalir tries to hold the pieces of that together. It...kind of fits, ish, none of the things said are actually contradictory, but he absolutely cannot see a sensical path from here - what still feels like here, anyway, even though he's just skipped over two years into the future - to there. 

[Several aspects of that sound implausible to me] he answers. [In particular, if the Council of Thirteen was executed for war crimes, but you are claiming that is not the cause of my death - you are claiming that, yes? I know how the Andalites feel about me. I would have expected that I would be among the first to be tried and executed, if we lost the war.]

(Actually, he wouldn't have expected to get a trial at all, but that's not the most confusing part, here, formal trials for the Yeerk leadership fit together with 'voluntary human controllers' and 'Andalites and Yeerks working together'.)

Leareth feels like he should probably offer some of his own context, here, but he has no idea where to even begin, so he goes on letting Cayaldwin take the lead. 

[We allied with humans from another civilization called Velgarth]

[They can do surface hyperspace jumps and they know twelve planes to route through which makes travel distance trivial]

[You captured their commander and then you saw that we didn't want to kill you all we just wanted you to stop enslaving people]

[And that the Velgarth humans had the resources to insist if we reconsidered that]

[So you surrendered]

[There was also some other stuff going on but it's even more implausible]

[There was going to be a trial. We were delaying it so we could finish the morph research and maybe move Andalite public opinion about you]

[Alloran got worried we were going to succeed at that I guess]

[I have sworn to go kill him but I wanted to get you first because it'd take anyone else longer]

Mhalir is following along - it's irritating that he has only a Yeerk brain's worth of working memory, when he's running on a computer that is presumably ridiculous, he should ask if they can set up some sort of external memory he can read and write to - it's sort of holding together, though, contact with another advanced civilization explains how the Andalites could have gotten in a position to win the war, he can't think why he would have risked surrendering unless he thought they would probably lose, and from where he is now it seemed almost just a matter of time before they won. 

- and then the last part slams into him and makes him lose his train of thought entirely. 

[What. Why are you going to kill Alloran?]

[He murdered you and the Andalite government is refusing to extradite him about it]

[yes yes I know this is what legal systems are for but as a practical matter no one's using them they're all just doing whatever they want]

...That is the least Andalite attitude Mhalir has ever heard, Andalites aren't like that at all, is some human trying and failing to impersonate an Andalite for some reason - except the humans certainly don't have the ability to run his backup, neither do the Yeerks really, and none of the Yeerks know, he had a file addressed to his lieutenant 'to read in case of his death' pointing to it because what's the point of a backup no one can ever find, but he wouldn't have expected the message to be decrypted and followed in two months after they just lost the war - it might not be two months, it might be two centuries, it's not like he can check, only, what would be the point of making up a bizarre implausible cover story... 

It could, in fact, just be an Andalite who's several standard deviations away from median on nonconformity. Individuals do vary and it's not like he's gotten to know very many Andalites up close. And...in the scenario where the entire story is true, he must have misjudged something, because he was very sure that the Andalite political tides would never allow voluntary Controllers, that the best-case scenario was the surviving Yeerks confined forever to their homeworld, without technology, with only Gedd hosts.

Focus. 

[Please do not kill Alloran] he says. [Alloran did not - break any agreements - if anything he was only keeping a promise. He swore he would kill me many, many times. It comes as no surprise. The fault here would be mine, for failing to take adequate precautions against it. I - do not wish him punished for it, after what I did to him. And...whoever you are, I do not wish you punished for his murder either. If we were truly working on morph research then that is more important.]

Cayaldwin stares at the computer for a while. 

[It wasn't your fault] he says eventually. 

[We told you we would keep you safe]

Huh. Mhalir notices the pause, and the fact that the answer - doesn't quite fit in his sketchy model of the situation. There are no emotions with the words, of course. Just bare electrical signals. He's not used to that; even the limited channel of verbal communication between human hosts gives him some additional information, in tone and expression and body language. 

[I am confused about your motives for telling me that] he says. 

Cayaldwin stares at the screen again. He has no idea at all what to say to that, somehow. Maybe - probably, actually - he and Mhalir only understood each other because Mhalir was able to be a Yeerk about it, before - and now they don't have that, might never have that -

He looks over at Leareth.

Leareth steps in to enter the next response. 

[My name is Leareth] he tells the computer to send. It would be neat if they could figure out some kind of metadata to confirm who was talking, he thinks. [I am the human commander of the Velgarth forces during the war.]

[You were in my head when the war was escalating between the Andalite force on Earth and your people, and I convinced you to surrender before the Andalites used a bioweapon to kill everyone on Earth.]

[I had been working with Matirin-Ashal-Nelinfir, the Andalite commander of the forces then on Earth, and I was confident in his claim that he did not want to genocide your people, and in fact intended to give the Yeerks sensory access to the galaxy.]

[You believed me, since you were in my head, and you surrendered. That was about ten months ago now.]

[After that, you discussed your previous morph research with me, and so when Cayaldwin wished to fix the time limit, and figure out how to attach multiple tethers and construct bodies create effective immortality, I suggested you work together. For much of the time since the surrender, you were regularly visiting the Andalite base and working from Cayaldwin's head.]

...Probably Mhalir is going to find that absurdly implausible. 

[Initially I used Velgarth technology] easier to start with that than 'magic' [to mentally bind you and prevent you from controlling his body. Later on we trusted you enough to stop doing this.]

[You were a very effective team.]

He glances over at Cayaldwin. 

[Cayaldwin cares deeply about you and you became very important to him over that time, I think. He took it badly when you were killed.]

Mhalir is going to need some time to process that before he can answer! 

[Can you resend that more slowly] he asks after a moment. 

Leareth can do that, one message-chunk at a time. 

<I think I took it very reasonably> Cayaldwin mutters at him.

<I fully agree, but - it would not seem at all reasonable to Mhalir with no context on you and your relationship with him. So this conveys valuable information to him.> 

He waits for a response. 

Mhalir has no idea where to even start with that. He's so disoriented. Which is entirely to be expected, when being re-awoken from an out-of-date brain scan backup, but it's still not pleasant. 

[Could you try to set up some sort of additional memory I can read and write to] he asks. [You are giving me large quantities of information to process and I have no way to take notes.]

Despite himself, Leareth flicks his tail happily. <Of course that is one of the first things he asks for> he says to Cayaldwin. <So far he seems very - himself, even in this form.>