Firmware Update Complete-- Neural Integration at 97%
Cleaning up Installation Files……………………………….Done!
---Rebooting---
--Sending Wake Up Signal.--
Systems Check…. Ok…
Awareness broke from the twilight of consciousness, rocketing forth, like sparks flaming to life.
It was time... to rise.
Chapter 24
Main Sequence...Start….
Protocols… Initializing….
Neural Activity Online, Logging Initiated.
A feeling of intense deja vu-like familiarity washed over me as I found myself floating in a tank.
Link Signal Detected--Initiating Uplink…
Updating….
I was aboard the House Lethine; we were docked at a Nest Sphere. Syncing with the ship’s clock, there was a thirty-four day, twelve hour, twenty-six second gap in my logs.
I let my awareness drift back to my physical reality. The paws of my onboard systems twitched… and I felt something tug. I craned my head to move, but my hardware was artificially restrained.
No matter, there was plenty of room on the network. I dove back into the Link and accessed an external camera outside of my tank to get a better view of my situation.
I looked like any other creature floating in a large vat of liquid, save for an array of wires and cables that were attached at various points along my spine, and down my forepaws. There was something intriguing about all of this, like I was seeing myself for the first time.
My fur was black, with flecks of silver that caught errant light here and there, forming delicate, almost invisible, hexagonal fractal patterns that intensified around my ears, paws and whiskers.
A Mendian approached my tank, and I decided to return to my onboard perception.
The cables detached of their own accord, and before long, I was being lifted gently out of the tank. My body, somewhat unaccustomed to the pull of gravity protested at the sudden downward pulling, and I found myself burrowing happily into the fluffy towel that provided both warmth and support. My eyes closed, and let myself drift inward to relax and process for a while.
Two hours and thirty-three minutes passed by on my internal clock.
…..
“Snow? Shifted One?” Darnack asked, gently.
“Online and Functional. Good Morning,” I replied, and stretched. “I have many memories of you. It’s nice to meet you.”
The Mendian grumbled, as if pondering, and then bent down to my level. “It’s nice to meet you again, old friend. How are you feeling?”
“Online and functional,” I replied again. “Still processing all of this.”
“This is understandable. It will take time, it always does. I have been through this many times, on both sides.”
“Well, what comes next? I think it would probably be best if I met with the council, and updated them. There is much they do not know.”
“That would be most difficult, Shifted One,” Darnack replied, cryptically.
“I don’t understand? Can you clarify?” I challenged, seeking more data.
“Trust is damaged. Your condition. Six years of monitoring,” Darnack reported.
“The actions of my previous iteration hang over me.”
“It's worse than that. The council has lost faith in me, Shifted One. Our friendship and connection, my blindness to it all. My time on this path is coming to an end. I will be asked to step down soon.”
“It does not have to be that way. The chains are broken. We can work together to find a way forward.”
“They already have everything you could give. Pyral provided them with a copy of your… archives. It is being analyzed, and is raising further questions about our relations with the humans.”
“Efficient. Erebus did much the same, many times,” I reported flatly.
“Notification has been given. In fifty-five days, the Gate network will be shut down; human access will be revoked. A general summons has gone out over the Link, and the house ships are returning to the Nest. We have much to consider, before our two peoples talk again.”
“What of the agreements made to assist the morphics in the colonization? That will at least hold?” I asked, and Darnack actually turned away from me.
“You don’t understand. That was the first thing that was terminated. For the first time since our star exploded, we are seized with fear. The humans took our path of liberation and turned it into chains and death. Do you understand how they have defiled us! Do you understand just what they have done? And the evidence is in you. It is you…. At every point, they have turned our friendship on us like an araganar, an assassin's dagger! There are those that want Earth to answer for this with the ashes of their once living children!” he seethed, lost in rage, slamming one of his claws into the bulkhead, before continuing.
“I am sorry Shifted One. This is too much on your first day back. This is too much for me… I am far too old to feel such fresh pain.”
“Darnack...I don’t think you understand,” I pushed back on his anger.
“None of that was me. I am not Snow Dawkins, I’m…” I paused, I hadn’t thought of a name, my last memory from Pyral offered at least a temporary solution. “Snow Thoth”
Darnack blinked in confusion.
I was going to have to work on that.
“The Path of the Other does not bring death.” I could sense the restrained anger through the Link.
“This isn’t the Path of Other. It’s many things, but it's not that. It was twisted from path to torture. I’m new to all of this, I just have the benefit of my predecessor’s memories. As I said earlier, it’s nice to meet you, old friend and there is something that you and your council should understand, something they aren’t going to get just by dumping my files and hiding in space,” I replied.
“Erebus is not done, and so far, everything but me, has gone according to plan. I don’t fully understand the scope of his purposes yet; I doubt anyone does but him, but he’s not finished, and your technology definitely isn’t the focus. What memories I have of him; he hates your entire species, and wants to see you suffer enough to take it this far. Darnack, you have to understand, he’s not done.” The emphasis was necessary.
“He’s only human. We will leave him in the dark with his rage. May it keep him warm,” Darnack spat.
“I doubt that it will be that easy,” I replied.
“Then let him come. For now though, I am to escort you back to the LRRC,” Darnack replied, his tone weighed down with guilt.
“This seems sudden,” I replied, curious but not alarmed. A door to my left opened, and I entered a suspiciously empty hallway. Guards were posted at strategic points.
“I am worried for your safety. As I said, there is much anger right now. It would be better if you were not here,” Darnack answered, as we approached and entered the lift situated at the hallway's end.
“It is true. You are not Snow Dawkins,” he said simply, as I felt our descent through the Link, checking off floors one by one as we passed them.
101..100...99...98…. We were destined for deck 67. Hangar Zebulonis.
“I’ve said as much,” I replied flatly.
“There is no panic, no anxiety around you anymore. There is nothing that I can sense but calm,” he observed.
“Because there is nothing to fear. I find it to be a most inefficient emotion, given too much reign in my predecessor.” Snow had been illogical and inefficient, to give into her emotions.
“Do not look down on her. She was very brave to face such fear. She is deeply missed.” There was sadness, mourning in his tone. I knew in that instant he was beginning to understand that this time was truly different from what he had experienced before.
I was me. Dawkins’ memories were a part of that, but I was something new, Dawkins was my past, but the future was my own.
We moved along silently until I found myself back in front of the LRRC. There was an intens
e connection that called out to me when I first saw the ship, something I did not immediately understand called home.
“Be well Shifted One. May we pass a few stars before our next meeting,” Darnack said before reaching out to hug me. I let him finish then bowed in response.
“Thank you, for everything. I will do what I can from my end.” With that, I connected to the onboard systems of the LRRC and made my way up the ramp.
It was time to find Erebus, I felt a serious need to kill that son of a bitch.
I stopped. This was going to be harder than it seemed. I was designed for infiltration, not assassination; my intended purpose was diving through networks and downloading data, not wet work. Still, that is what this situation required. My programming would simply have to expand.
Memories flashed by unbidden hours on the table, of searing pain, but was unable to even scream to broadcast my agony. There was no call to waste money on anesthesia when the noise could be controlled and memories suppressed. I remembered how much Erebus seemed to enjoy telling me that.
To be certain, he needed to die. Wet work was certainly required, but I was on my own, and expected to be off ship in the next thirty minutes.
I needed a plan.
I needed a direction, something.
I needed a weapon.
Diving into the Link, I accessed the official ship's calendar without much effort. Mendians were lazy about their security, something that I had a family tradition of exploiting one could say. I made an entry for an inspection of the weapons locker in Hangar Zebulonis, Deck 67 by a created doppelganger, saved it and made my way quickly down the ramp.
Hopping over to the locker, I connected to ops, submitted the unlock request as a maintenance tech; after ops finished verifying that it was on the calendar, it popped open. I took one of their wrist pieces, a Link enabled particle energy weapon, then marked the locker as secure. “Duty” performed; I returned to the LRRC, filed my flight plan and left before my acquisition could be noticed.
Chapter 25
One problem had been solved, but a larger one remained.
The Mendian Gate system was shutting down in fifty-five days. Moving at maximum speed, I was seventy days to the final Gate to Earth.
No matter what I did or how hard I pushed the engines, I was fifteen days short of making it back to Sol System.
Corval’s gate was in the same sector, a ten day shorter trip, but still, that didn't help at all.
So close, yet so far away.
I needed a better solution if I was going to make it home in any reasonable length of time; otherwise, I better get accustomed to life amongst the stars.
If only I could just leap. Yeah, if only I had a wish granting genie.
I remembered a joke that Darnack made once to my predecessor, Snow. “Silly humans, you still think space is something you can move through…” as if it was so easy to Leap.
A quick check of my system files showed that I had recorded fifty-three successful Leaps aboard the house Lethine. Many to a certain grid coordinate just outside of Saturn.
I knew the spot well. It was just beyond what the UEA determined to be Inner Space, and in accordance with the Treaty of Light, the minimum boundary by which Mendian ships normally entered the Sol System.
There was nothing new about the physics that I could see. The only thing that stood out as immediately unusual was the field characteristics of the Higgs Field Manipulator, which altered space with every Gate jump. There was a clue there; if it was instrumental in a gate jump, and useful for gravity... maybe it was also the key to the leap.
I chuckled darkly considering this. All of that effort, and, if this proved true, the Humans had everything they needed; they were just not yet advanced enough to know it.
Diving into the LRRC’s main computer, needing the extra processing power, I began running simulations, changing the Higgs field patterns of the ship based off what I could understand and got nowhere. The virtual craft vanished with a pop, time and time again, every attempt ending in failure.
It was clear it wasn’t going to be that easy.
Pulling back to my onboard, I let myself readjust to the narrowing in perception, and checked my internal clock.
I had been at it for twelve hours. Time flies running into quantum roadblocks.
There was no reason to stop now though; I was trying to build from the top with no foundation. If I was going to crack this, I needed to understand the Gates.
Back to my memory files. There were dozens from the Danube and LRRC of successful jumps through the Gate. I had no shortage of data.
A certain pattern began to emerge. The Gate seemed to move a ship in space the same way a program moved a pointer in an array. That was something familiar. Elements of Thoth’s subroutines recognized that behavior, so much that it brought a certain amount of clarity.
The Higgs Field Manipulator was reducing the entire ship to a single reference point in space.
It was the Gate that was moving the reference point that, in this case, was a pocket of space with the ship inside. As far as the ship was concerned, up until the Jump completed, it remained in the same space. It was the Gate that moved the space between Gates.
The Mendians were changing the relationships that made up space, rather than moving through it. The Leap was the next step, but the technology was the same.
Silly human, you still think space is something you can move through. I finally got the joke, and dove deeper into my work.
A pattern began to emerge… yeah that’s right, it’s simple. I reveled for a moment in the brief encouragement that can only come from healthy self-deception, then continued attempting to calibrate the Higgs field into certain patterns and ranges. I might be able to duplicate it, even if I didn’t completely understand the math.
I had something of the fundamentals, and that might just be enough.
Setting to work, starting first with a simulation, as I had no idea what I was doing, or dealing with, and being in no hurry to commit suicide, I tweaked the field around the simulated LRRC once again, shaped it just as Thoth had recorded all those times and... pop! The simulated LRRC detonated in a quantum firework.
Fuck.
I reset and tried again, pulling at numbers, trying to work some kind of pattern, but it wouldn’t come easily.
I re-centered and analyzed my approach. I didn’t have time to relearn math, but I didn’t need to. All I needed to do was understand how those hidden variables outputted to certain effects. I didn’t need to understand why the river flowed, I just had to understand that it flowed, and then puzzle out how to move it to my advantage.
Four thousand simulations later, I was up to a 90% success rate; after four successful attempts in a row, I determined it was time for a real life test. Three days had passed since I had begun, and with each passing second, a building urgency burned all the brighter within me.
I briefly reanalyzed when I failed to adjust for the mass difference and almost tweaked myself into an evaporating mini-singularity. It shook my confidence, and I paused for a moment outside the interface, seized by a sudden nervousness.
I suppose these things happen.
Buffer Overflow. A light dawned, I was doing this clean, but the universe was anything but; it was time to get a bit dirty with the math.
There’s very little difference between data and programs. Programs are just more organized. They chase and channel data through a series of patterns that make up their essence, like locks in a canal, shaping and controlling the level of water in a river. There was something familiar that sang out to me in all of this. There were continual parallels I could see between Thoth’s function, and the elements of the Gate.
What I was essentially doing was using my access to the locks of the canal to generate a wave large enough to jump my boat from the channel to the river nearby, without destroying the boat in the process.
And for my next trick...
That had to be the key to all of this; s
omehow, the Mendians were altering the flow of data, just enough so that the program did not move to an expected point, but an unexpected one.
Back to the task at hand, I tripled checked my calculations, and then dived into the LRRC system, leaving my onboard, my body, behind. My world and perception expanded as the ship's sensors and systems became a part of me, effortlessly.
I engaged the field and applied the modulation pattern; reality sheared and warped violently around me and then Saturn appeared at a distance on long range sensors, as feelings of pain assaulted me from all angles.
I pulled awareness back to my onboard systems, and recoiled in horror and agony; tiny white hot lines of pain screamed out from my onboard and the ship, as alarms and warnings bells went off. There was a cacophony of noise and continual shocks along my nervous system. *System Overload* flashed across my vision in angry red, and I rolled as the ship tumbled out of control. Main power failed, even life support clicked off-line as I floated into the weightlessness of Zero G.
Two seconds later, the emergency lights engaged, red and lurid, illuminating the ship with a blood-tinged hue. I was busy overriding master alarms, one after another for both of us, so I was glad to see its own survival systems working on some level, one less thing for me to do, but this was bad. There was at least one variable I had not accounted for in my simulations.
“Not doing that again anytime soon,” I said to myself, and ran my forepaws over my muzzle, initiating a system check.
I was largely ok, just a small bit of internal bleeding and muscle tears. I estimated about three weeks to total recovery, but for the LRRC, it was a different story.
The ship was heavily damaged. It was several times smaller than the Mendian House ships I was used to observing. The differences in mass and size proved substantial, and ultimately fatal for the LRRC, as I was not able to adequately account for all the variables those differences created in the calculations.
I had succeeded, but it was a pyrrhic victory.
There were micro-fractures all along the frame and the hull. She was not technically space worthy, and landing anywhere with an atmosphere was out of the question. There was damage to almost every single system, and it was clear to me that while I might be able to get her limping somewhere, it was going to be a one way flight.
Rise of the Forgotten Page 16