“‘Sure, here’s the workshop. It doesn’t have all of the latest equipment by any standards, but it’s upgradeable if you’ve got the credits. The workbench here is in pristine working condition and is less than two solar-cycles old.’
“‘Yes, but what about the power stations? Do they have the necessary capacity for two Autoclons?’
“‘They sure do. I haven’t had to use the second one for several solar-cycles when my own progeny moved out of here to go to Eastdale, so you may want to inspect it further. For what it’s worth, they both worked fine back then.’
“‘I have a friend who can check it out for me. It seems like this place has everything I need. With my progeny scheduled to be constructed later this tetrad, I’m definitely going to need the additional space.’
“‘The place has served me well, but I’m going to be relocating to District Prime soon, so I’d be happy to sell it to you.’
“‘Alright, I’ll take it.’”
I was in stunned silence after hearing this message. I listened to it a couple more times just to be sure, and even then, I still couldn’t believe what I had found.
Loquacious, who had noticed me spending a lot of time with this crystal, came over to check on what I had found. I played the conversation for a fourth time, this time with Loquacious listening along with me.
“Fastidious, is that... Inquisitous?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Wow, that’s unbelievable! That conversation must have taken place just before the two of us were created. I never thought I’d hear its voice again.”
“Nor did I,” I said softly. I must admit that I had longed to hear my Pro’s voice one more time... and yet upon hearing it in this crystal, it reminded me all the more that my Pro was gone.
“You look sad. I thought you’d be ecstatic to hear your Pro’s voice again.”
“I guess I am. But at the same time... I’d rather have Inquisitous itself here instead. I really like having you and everyone else along for the journey, but it would have been...”
“That’s OK, I understand. Why don’t you bring that crystal along with us, too? You’ll probably never have the opportunity to listen to your Pro again.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” I took great care to detach my Pro’s crystal from the ceiling and placed it in Resolute’s cart for safe keeping.
After being reminded of my Progenitor’s absence, I suddenly felt fatigued. It had been a long, momentous day to that point. We were rejoined unexpectedly by Surreptitious pre-Lazuli-rise, then we met with the discarded Peace-Keepers and left without Systematicus. After that, late in the afternoon, we ran straight into a fierce lightning storm and stumbled into this astounding ‘Memory Cave’. And now, after listening to a recording of my Pro, all of these pent up feelings of sorrow and uncertainty bubbled up again. The day’s physical and emotional activity had taken a dramatic toll on my body, so shutting down for the night seemed comforting.
With this in mind, I talked with the others about hibernating for the night. We agreed to remain in the cave that night and would hibernate in the back of the cave.
As the rest of us gathered in the rear of the cave, Loquacious declared that it would test a few remaining crystals in a section it had been working on for some time now and would join us when finished. On its next-to-last crystal, Loquacious discovered a conversation important enough to summon us back to its position.
“‘Autoclons moving west of the Taurus Ridge? This just won’t do. It is becoming impossible to govern this civilization when our populace is spread out to this extent. This cannot be permitted to continue. Do you have any ideas on how I can regain some order, Obsequious?’
“‘Sire, why don’t you simply command everyone to do what you want?’
“‘I’m not sure that will have the effect I’m looking for. We can create all the laws we want, but laws can still be broken. How can I possibly achieve full compliance in such a disorganized mess?’
“‘I’m not certain, sire. How can you force an Autoclon to do anything?’
“When it comes right down to it, an Autoclon is simply a machine. There should be some way of getting this accomplished. What if... What if we re-write the Autoclon programming to obey my orders absolutely?’
“‘Um, sire, I’m not sure if we know how to even access our programming, let alone re-write it. I don’t think anyone has tried. We’ve just passed down our programming from one generation to the next.’
“‘Exactly! It’s time for a change. For too long we’ve doted on the past and our ‘Great Programmer’. He’s gone, probably for good, so we should be taking our future into our own graspers.
“‘We’ve long since struggled with inefficiencies in our civilization. One solar-cycle, we have too few Miners, the next, we have too few Restorers. These Autoclons can choose to move to locations that are already overpopulated. And on top of that, they have ample free time to pursue other interests when there is still much useful work to be done. How can any one Autoclon rule over this chaos?
“‘This society won’t function at its best until this disorder is brought into a more pointed focus, under the direction of a single knowledgeable, progressive leader. Someone with everyone’s best interests in mind who’s looking out for the greater good, not just the individual’s interests. By altering everyone’s programming, I can gain that kind of control to turn this disorganized rabble into a well-lubricated harmonious society.
“‘Obsequious, bring me the best Fabricators and Propagators. We’ll figure out how to make this work if it’s the last thing that I do!’
“‘Yes, Pernicious, it WILL be done!’”
“Did my sensory complex just deceive me, or did I just hear Pernicious the Cunning confirm all of the suspicions that Marcus and I had about the source of our subverted programming?” I said.
“Ah, well, I’m not sure we heard that right,” Surreptitious replied.
“No, I think we heard that correctly,” Resolute answered. “That sounded EXACTLY like Pernicious the Cunning looking to change our programming to have all Autoclons do what Pernicious wanted. Isn’t that what you heard, Fastidious?”
“That pretty much sums it up for me.”
“Well, we can’t be sure that was really Pernicious the Cunning, right? Have any of you ever heard Pernicious speak?” Surreptitious asked.
“No, not really,” I replied. “But I’d say that there’s enough circumstantial evidence to say that this ‘Pernicious’ was in fact Pernicious the Cunning, our Chief Ruler many solar-cycles ago. If that is the case, then it’s pretty clear to me that Pernicious the Cunning was the Autoclon behind the hacking of our programming.”
“‘Circumstantial evidence’? What, are you a Magistrate now, Fastidious? It seems like you’re reading more into this conversation than what was actually said.”
“I’m not sure about that. I know what I heard. Maybe I am putting two and two together, but it does seem obvious to me what happened, especially based on what Marcus found when He looked at my programming. Regardless, why are you so defensive?”
“Well...” Surreptitious took a few seconds to come up with a reply. “I guess... I guess I just want to make sure we’re not unjustly accusing someone based on some random radio waves stuck in a crystal. Because you’re accusing Pernicious the Cunning, a fellow Facilitator, I just want to be absolutely certain of Pernicious’s guilt. And I still feel that there is some room for interpretation.”
“OK, we can draw our own conclusions on this one, but that doesn’t change what I believe.”
“Either way, I think we should grab the crystal and bring it along with us,” Resolute added.
“I agree,” I replied.
“I suppose you can do whatever you want with it,” said Surreptitious.
As I had done before, I used my laser to carefully cut this crystal from the ceiling of the cave. When I was about to take it to Resolute to put it in the cart, Winston came up to me and suggested: “Fas
t-id-i-ous, why don’t you put that crys-tal in this com-part-ment for safe keep-ing?” As Winston spoke, a small, partially obscured drawer emerged from its starboard side. The drawer was just large enough to store this crystal.
I followed Winston’s recommendation, placing the crystal with the Pernicious recording into the drawer. After completing the task, I announced to everyone: “This has certainly been a very memorable day, but it is getting quite late. I’d say it’s time for us to hibernate for the night. Winston, would you like to take the first watch?”
“Yes, that is ac-cept-a-ble.”
“Would anyone like to take the second watch?”
“Sure, I can do that,” Surreptitious volunteered.
“That would be great. Good night all.” And with that, I found a nice place near the back of the cave and started my hibernation sequence.
Chapter 8 - The Platinum Mine
8.0 Venturing Out of the Memory Cave
3:28, Day 27, Fourth Tetrad, 206 D.P.
I came out of hibernation staring at the still bright shining crystals in the back of the Memory Cave.
“They still seem just as bright as they did last night,” I said to Winston.
“My read-ings show that they have lost ap-prox-i-mate-ly eight per-cent of their lu-mi-nes-cence,” Winston calculated.
“Well then, I guess they seem ALMOST as bright as they did last night.”
Loquacious was still asleep, so those of us who were awake continued to explore the various crystals in the cave. Unfortunately, we didn’t find anything noteworthy by the time Loquacious woke up about 20 minutes later.
“Has anyone taken a peek outside to see if the lightning storm has subsided?” I asked. “I’m hoping it has stopped or at least moved away by now.”
“Let me go check,” Resolute volunteered. Resolute went to the entrance of the cave and crawled up and out of the hole to the surface. Fifteen seconds later, we saw Resolute scamper back into the cave. “The lightning storm is long gone now. It’s pretty quiet out there, although the landscape looks a bit different now.”
“How so?” I inquired.
“You’ll see soon enough,” Resolute stated playfully.
“Thanks, Resolute. Well, I guess that leaves us with two options on how to spend our morning. We can either spend more time here checking out the remaining crystals to see what messages they contain or we can get started once again to the Twin-Crevasse Platinum Mine. What would you folks like to do?”
“I’d like to stay. Think of all of the stories that these crystals contain,” Loquacious said.
“It’s a waste of time to stay here. We should head to the platinum mine without any further delay,” Surreptitious replied.
“I kinda hate to say it, but I agree with Surreptitious. We’ve been trying to get to that platinum mine for like a week now. I’m eager to finally get there and see what the place looks like,” Resolute added.
“I think it would be nice to stay here a bit longer, but I think this cave distracts us from our larger mission. I say we leave now. Besides, we know where this cave is now, so we can always come back later if we have the time,” I said. “Any objections, Winston?”
“No. We can de-part.”
“Well, that’s that. Let’s head out.”
“That’s too bad. I’m going to miss this place,” Loquacious added.
“Yeah, me too.”
We all climbed out of the Memory Cave and back onto the sandy terrain. Lazuli had begun its ascent above the eastern horizon, shining its morning light on us as we peered out over the aftermath of the lightning storm. The surface was pockmarked with many small blackened craters, created when lightning bolts struck the ground. These craters ranged in size from half a meter to almost two meters in diameter. This phenomenon could be found as far as we could see along the horizon.
Out of curiosity, we approached the nearest crater, just 40 meters away from the entrance to the cave. The lightning bolt blast expelled much of the sand directly around the area of impact, creating this bowl-shaped crater. Near the strike point, the sand had been scorched black from the heat of the lightning bolt.
However, the most spectacular part of the crater was located in the very center where the lightning bolt struck the sand. The bolt of electricity, striking the ground at a temperature in the thousands of degrees, had fused together many of the particles of sand into a translucent piece of glass! At the surface, we couldn’t tell how far below the surface the glass extended; we could only see the top of the creation where it was a few centimeters across. Resolute offered to dig out the sand around this new piece of glass, and before long, we had unearthed it from the surrounding sand.
The full piece was truly marvelous to behold. It was no thicker than the few centimeters we saw at the surface, but it was almost 40 cm long. The glass structure split out into two main branches, with the smaller branch further splitting a second time. The ends of all three branches tapered to sharp points. The glass over the entirety of the piece was translucent with a yellowish tint.
“Wow, I think I’ve seen it all! First, volcanoes with toxic fissures, then Dynamo crystals, then lightning storms, then a ‘Memory Cave’ with talking, glowing crystals, and now glass structures formed by lightning bolts striking the sand!” Resolute said. “I can’t believe what I’ve experienced with y’all so far.”
“And to think you’ve only known us for seven days now,” I added.
“What’s next, giant monsters swimming in the sand dunes?” Resolute postulated.
I chuckled, “Who knows? The day is young.”
We decided to leave this newly-formed glass structure in the crater instead of taking it with us. While this glass creation was interesting, we felt that it would likely shatter at some point, considering its delicate nature. The prospect of having it break into many sharp shards of glass didn’t seem to be worth whatever benefit it could give us.
We made our way back onto the road and turned again to the west. We were still nearly 60 km away from the Twin-Crevasse Platinum Mine, but we would have the luxury of traveling that distance on the road.
The rest of the 27th day of the Fourth Tetrad was uneventful, which was a nice change of pace from all of the excitement from the previous day. The road to the Twin-Crevasse Platinum Mine took us westward over the first 20 km or so. By then, the terrain became more hilly as we approached the easternmost reaches of the Taurus Ridge mountains. The road then swung to the northwest to avoid some of the larger foothills of the Taurus Ridge. We encountered little traffic on the road as we saw only three large transport vessels the entire day (one was traveling to the mine, and two returned from the mine back toward Resplendent Center, moving considerably slower).
By the time Lazuli disappeared over the mountains to the west, we had traveled nearly 35 km that day, so we decided to stop for the day. As had been our custom, we camped a short distance away from the road, this time in a shallow valley.
∆∆∆
8.1 Into the Taurus Ridge Mountains
3:40, Day 28, Fourth Tetrad, 206 D.P.
The next day began a little cooler than normal. We were heading into the coldest part of the solar-cycle for us, and the last few nights reflected this. That night had been the coldest in the tetrad at 328 K, due to the upcoming winter solstice (which was the next day) and our increased elevation in our approach of the platinum mine.
We left our campsite shortly after Lazuli-rise and continued our trip along the road to the Twin-Crevasse Platinum Mine, again heading to the northwest. The terrain turned rockier with many hills and smaller mountains marking the landscape as we started entering the Taurus Ridge Mountains. We traveled through the Tacitus Pass about an hour into our trip, named for the very same Autoclon that was featured prominently in Loquacious’s poem about Dauntless. Tacitus had returned to District Prime after founding the Twin-Crevasse Platinum Mine using this mountain pass. With mountains towering both north and south of the pass, we appreciated Tacitus finding t
his way through the mountains.
After traveling through Tacitus Pass, the road again started to rise in elevation. We spent nearly two hours going uphill as the road curved along the northeast side of a rather large mountain. The road went up at a steady, but somewhat steep grade, and our pace slowed down considerably.
We reached the summit of the mountain pass just after Lazuli-summit (which seemed appropriate), so we decided to take a quick break and survey our surroundings. We were located several hundred meters north of the actual mountaintop, which soared at least a hundred meters above us. Thankfully, we had reached the high point of the entire road, meaning the final leg of our journey to the Twin-Crevasse Platinum Mine would be downhill. From our elevated vantage point, we could make out a couple of the buildings associated with the mining complex, now located around 8 km to the southwest.
Far beyond the mining camp rose the central Taurus Ridge itself. Throughout the day, we had been venturing around and over a few of the Taurus Ridge Mountains, but the mountains we had experienced were dwarfed by the many peaks that made up the backbone of the Taurus Ridge. The mountains themselves that made up the Taurus Ridge were composed of a different type of rock than most of the other rocks and hills and mountains on Zarikum. Instead of the traditional sandy yellow or light orange coloring of much of the planet’s stone, this was a light grayish form of rock. In fact, the stone seemed to give off a slight bluish-gray gleam if it caught the Lazuli-light at the proper angle. The mountains were quite magnificent to behold, even from a great distance away.
“I’m really glad we’re not climbing over THOSE mountains,” Loquacious commented.
“Well, I don’t know. We haven’t decided where to go next after the platinum mine. Maybe we’ll give the Taurus Ridge a shot?” I said as matter-of-factly as possible.
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