First

Home at War

“I must admit sir, this was not at all what I expected to be my first assignment.” The Urthani woman says with a strange look only vaguely visible on her face under the fur. Her neck is incredibly thick compared to most, placing her as a Spear Urthani and very dangerous to anyone within a fair distance of herself.

“Well strange situations result in calls for skills that one would not normally expect.” Harold replies as he watches the trooper set up the easal, canvas and start preparing paints even as they examine the image of the oil painting that depicted The Weeping Crescent and it’s wielder.

The Haffria had elaborated on exactly who the woman was. Her bio-mother, the woman her mind was cloned from her treated her as a daughter. Halth’Su’Cara. Apparently Su’Cara was a title for red weapon wielders.

“It’s a very... interesting portrait. But the style means I’m going to need a lot of white. They’re clearly using white paint rather than just leaving the canvas bare, which is fine.” She says before chuckling. “Be the best you can be, well looks like I’ll be the best painter and soldier I can be.”

“That’s the spirit.” Harold says. “Now from what I understand, you’re going to sketch me out first than fit it in. So for the sketch, we can take a picture of me with a different knife of similar dimensions and-”

“Oh no no sir. I use a faster style. It... It lets me capture a moment more... not cleanly, nor clearly. But completely. Let’s me put more feeling into things.”

“Really?”

“Oh yes, with cameras everywhere in the modern day artistic skill is really needed. If I wanted to give an oil rendering of something I or really anyone that knows how to work a basic search function on a communicator or console could have a picture of something converted to an oil style in minutes at most. Seconds if they don’t have to search for the program. Actually getting an image of something isn’t hard. So you have to put in something else. Feeling, passion, emotion and impression.”

“I see. However, while this is interesting, this is a commissioned piece. Additional pay on top of you being on deployment for this and that pay as well. We need at the least one very technical very obvious and not embellished image.”

“Then you’ve given me a bad example. This piece shows the blade trailing a dark smoke that tells of despair and pain. The example is an emotive piece.”

“Not so much. Now, we are within multiple layers of protective films and barriers. You have also, truly left behind all recording devices?”

“Yes.” She answers and he nods before reaching for the sheath on the nearby table. He opens it and draws out the blade. “Oh... Oh that... sir!”

“Yes, as you can see, the only stylization in that smoke is the impression of movement it gives.”

“It’s not that sir! Your markings! Your eyes! I hadn’t even noticed them before! I can see them now and... oh my... oh dear...”

“Yes?”

“You’re... gorgeous.”

“Ah that. Yes, I unfortunately am.”

“Unfortunately?”

“This is a familial trait. Coupled with a supernatural gift of stealth that causes people to overlook us. I’m sure that you have the imagination to grasp at the implications of a family with relatively little political or martial power being so unfortunately attractive.”

“Oh... the stealth sounds like a goddess given gift in that light.”

“It may very well be, it is fuelled by the same energies we’re tiptoeing around. Which lets us know it can be used delicately enough to not just break recording technology, but we’re nowhere near that skilful with it’s use yet.”

“Oh... Hmm... I think two portraits would be best with this. Let me do the impressionist one first and then I can use a picture of you with a normal knife to make the technical portrait. The impressionist one will let me add the unusual traits of the knife and your own...” She gestures around her face. “everything. Is this alright?”

“So long as we can communicate what we have as clearly as we can to our allies, then it’s fine. We’re working around the limitations of failing technology.”

“Out of curiosity is this sort of power just in these weapons and your family?”

“Oh no, we’ve found several families with these kinds of blessings each one is very different and it’s not just in humans. If you’ve heard of Matriarch syndrome them you know about possibly one of the most common of these strange abilities. We also have soldiers who can perceive anyone the same way they’re perceiving him and another with flawlessly accurate knowledge of anything he’s carrying or holding. And like my own gifts, they pass through the family line.”

“Wow... and the knife... it’s not exuding Axiom.”

“No, it’s not. And what it is bleeding out will brick any scanner used on it.” Harold says.

“I see...”

“A great deal apparently. Normally most people don’t notice my eyes or markings. Or even my general good looks. Holding the knife has exposed me.”

“It only showed up when you held the knife.”

“Interesting. Very interesting. If it was interfering with my stealth then why wasn’t this spotted earlier? I was plainly in the sight of others when I was last holding it unsheathed.” Harold ponders out loud. “Now, how would you like to do this?”

“Just, as comfortable as you can be as I do this. It’s been a bit since I did a portrait. And as I said, I’ll do the emotive version and then a precise version following it.”

“Excellent.”

“Now sir, hold the blade in front of you in some way and look my way. I want your face and those markings n this too.”

“Of course, quick question though.” Harold asks as she sets up her pants, looks him up and down and mixes a couple to darken her brown a little.

“Yes?”

“Why didn’t you request any brushes?”

“Oh... I make my brushes. Out of my own fur.” She says and between the sharp claws of an Urthani now dances a thin length of metal with a bit of sheer white fur on it. She brings out five of them. Three have pointed tips and are large, medium and quite small. Two have square tips, one is medium sized and the other quite small too.

Harolds muses with the knife and then clearly holds it by the edge of the blade and the end of the handle. Showing that it cannot cut him as he holds the blade.

“... Glare at me.” She tells him and he narrows his eyes and she openly gasps and starts to paint quickly and glancing up and down constantly as she paints faster and faster, bringing out more and more paint as she starts switching the brushes and quickly cleaning things, switching things and then going back. Small bits of paint go flying to the side and then she starts clearly using her own claws as part of the process and then after a few minutes steps back and stares.

“Is it done?” Harold asks.

“Uh... can you... can you put the knife down please?” She asks and he sets the knife down on the table. She looks at him again and then back to the painting.

“Soldier, what’s going on?”

“I... I think I saw too much.” She says and he walks over to look at the painting.

The knife is a swirling miasma of black surrounding a silver blade, his uniform and frame are almost plain, but his eyes are a burning font of white fire. The markings in his face trail off to the edges of the portrait and there are eyes behind him. Eyes in mildly diagonal sequences of three and with no pupils.

“Oh... you saw the Hargath.”

“Hargath sir?”

“Astral Hargath, the Engine Nuzzlers are actually able to physically move into the Od, you’re seeing the energy from the Od and seeing some of the little buggers.”

“Oh. Oh it’s just some form of Axiom and Astral Hargath, I was scaring myself nearly senseless.” She says.

“Yeah, so long as you don’t actually try to use Od energy, they can’t hurt you.”

“Hurt me? They’re harmless!”

“On this side, yes. Yes they are. In the Od... no. They are the guardians at the gate. Endless, ravenous and unrelenting.”

“Oh.”

“It’s a good thing. Imagine if this kind of energy was just casually used. The only things they don’t attack are those that they can’t detect, or those they can’t bite. Meaning beings with a natural grasp of Ode and the Primals who actually use some of it to help sustain themselves. Although I’m not sure if it does or does not count as natural use.”

“Speaking of Primals sir... is HE coming?” She asks.

“Yes. But Lakron comes from a very long distance and from the wrong direction for our fleet to have him as part of it. We’ll see him and his on the front once the jaws of our fleets close entirely to crush the enemy.”

“Is he close enough to teleport to the monster and just end it?”

“Give me a moment, I’m trying to recall where all the forces are...” Harold notes. “He is... about ninety six hours, or four days and maybe some change before he joins up with Undaunted Forces that have Garden Ships with them. But the problem is, if that thing gets too close to us we have to send the gardens away and evacuate all sorcerers to prevent uncontrolled infestation. If that happens, then there’s no way to bring him in.”

“Oh... okay. Uh sir?”

“Yes?”

“You’ve met him right?”

“I have. And several other Primals, I even helped make one.”

“Oh... yes... her... Saint Redblade... The Stories about you are...”

“I’m still a person.” He says and she looks to the portrait, then back to him. “Surely I don’t look like that all the time. The knife did that.”

“No... it just exposed it... Sir... are you a Primal?”

“No.”

“But you... you’re more than a human.”

“No, I’m not. I’m part of a large demographic, each with identical changes. Granted it’s a clone line, but you can’t clone Primals. It comes out a random demographic with the Primal’s features. But not as a Primal. You can clone me, they have cloned me and I myself am a clone. I am also aging at a standard rate and possess none of the absolutely mind bending durability and strength of a Primal. To say nothing of the lack of other possible enhancements, a Primal has a whole suite of them, I just possess one. Perhaps two, but that is a family ttrait more akin to Matriarch Syndrome. Am I a little more than most humans? Yes. But nowhere near to the level of Lord Skitterway and what Primal Urthanis will one day follow him compared to yourself.”

“Then what are you?”

“A preview.”

“A preview?”

“If you had been born modified as you are now, with your proboscis enhancement and self confidence. It would have been decades before Emmanual ascended, but you would be in the same situation as I am in now. You would be a single step, maybe two steps ahead. The rest is training, equipment and sheer stubborn will.” Harold explains.

“... If you say so sir.”

“Do you have what you need to make the second portrait?”

“Perhaps a picture of you looking normal? I’m going to struggle HARD to not see you with your eyes blazing with power when I think of you from here on out.”

“Oh, of course. The important part is the knife though, it’s accurate and in the same style as the original portrait we were sent.”

“Good. I’m glad we’ve finished this then.” He says before heading back to the table and sheathing the knife again.

“Is that thing really so nasty for technology? It feels weird to not have my communicator in arm’s reach or to not be on camera.”

“Oh yeah, if you have a camera, scanner or similar piece of tech you’re willing to lose then you can give this thing a once over and see just how brutal it is on any and all tech. One of the major reasons we need to understand this thing is how to put a damn filter on it so we don’t accidentally murder our Synth Soldiers or Cyborgs.”

“Yikes. I’ve got cousins with enhanced eyes, the thought of seeing something that just breaks the eye on it’s own is spooky.” She notes.

“I can imagine. Now once again so there’s no miscommunication do you require any more paints, equipment or the like for the next portrait?”

“I just need the picture sir, thank you. This is... a rare opportunity to stretch my talents. I do appreciate this.”

“Hey, nothing wrong with finding further use your gifts.”

First Last

This story is based on an actual email I sent to a professor at a leading university. I haven't received a response (and don't expect to) but I hope it made her laugh at the audacity and stupidity of it. I'll post a version of the letter after the story.

----------------

He considered himself fairly normal. Not average in every way, but pretty ordinary. Then he got thinking. Human averages are based on ranges, normalised data points and dozens of other things. Humans derive meaning from these things, yet don't have a singular "centre point" for it all. So he nominated himself.

He wrote an email. Stupid, ludicrous, partly insane. But it made him laugh and he tracked down a researcher at a national university, and sent her an email. Not because he wanted to be famous, or that he thought he was exceptional. Quite the opposite: he led a brutally normal life. He should be the baseline.

The scientific world rejoiced. They now had someone to base everything on. He became the crux of all humanity, at least for his generation. But scientists could now definitively point to a person and calculate standard deviations based on him.

It became known as the Gacy standard, after his audacious self-nomination.

The original Baseline Human considered nominating Nicolas Cage instead, but he realised very quickly that all other humans would be negative steps from Mr Cage. Nobody could compete with such a glorious standard. How many castles do you own?!

Every generation after his would then deliver thousands of other nominations for the new 'baseline'. A whole committee was set up to review the submissions and decide who would be The One. Not because of either normalcy or eccentricity. But just to have a reference point for all other genetic, behavioural and cultural variations. Mostly the winning applicant would be decided by lottery.

--

In 2084, aliens arrived. They weren't immediately aggressive; rather, they wanted to know about humanity before deciding what to do with them.

Diplomats and ambassadors spoke at length about the virtues of humanity. The more they said, the less the aliens cared.

--

Then the Baseline Human was trotted out.

Brenda Jones was a middle-manager at a manufacturing plant. She was competent, friendly and reasonably healthy. She wasn't going to win prizes in a beauty competition, but conversely she didn't have a face that resembled an old foot.

She was also terribly embarrassed by the whole thing. She didn't nominate herself. Her kids did it as a joke.

Her first meeting with the aliens was... weird.

Alien: "We wish to understand humanity."

Brenda: "Right."

Alien: "You are the representative specimen?"

Brenda: "Apparently."

Alien: "What are your notable achievements?"

Brenda: "I once reversed a trailer on the first attempt."

The aliens were confused. Diplomats – human and alien – were mortified.

But then the aliens asked about humanity. Families. Annoyances. Work. All the mundane stuff that fills our lives.

And Brenda was the perfect representative. She spoke about her experiences. She talked about her life at home, in the office and at the shops. The aliens were transfixed by the mundanity of it all, but what Brenda had brought to the table was an ordinary life that spoke about the vast majority of human existence.

The aliens started to shift their attitude from "placating weasel-words" to "basically decent".

The invasion was cancelled before it even begun.

Thanks Brenda.

Thanks Baseline Human.

----------------

Here's the original email. It's been a couple of weeks, and I have not received a response. I suspect one will never come.

Dear Professor,

I am writing to submit, for consideration, a simple proposition: I am the baseline human for my generation.

By “baseline”, I do not mean that I am statistically average in every measurable respect, nor that other humans are abnormal. Rather, I propose that every generation should have a single canonical reference human against which normal biological, behavioural, linguistic and cultural variation may be understood.

Science routinely uses reference ranges, reference genomes, control groups, standard conditions and baseline measurements. What appears to be missing is the logical endpoint of that practice: a baseline person.

I therefore nominate myself.

My position is as follows:

Humans vary enormously, but variation implies a frame of reference. A population average is not itself a person, and a synthetic reference genome is not a human being. If we are prepared to speak of typical ranges, standard values and reference states, it seems reasonable to ask whether one extant individual may serve as a living canonical implementation of Homo sapiens for a defined period.

I accept that this proposition may be difficult to prove. However, I note that it is equally difficult to disprove.

Any attempt to reject my status on the basis that no single human can serve as a baseline appears to assume the very point under dispute. Likewise, peer review may present an unavoidable methodological problem, as all reviewers would necessarily be derivative humans assessing the validity of the reference human.

I therefore suggest the following interim classification:

Human Reference Standard: Generation 1977

Canonical specimen: [my name]

Status of all others: valid phenotypic and behavioural variants

I would be grateful if you could advise whether there is an appropriate field, committee, reference-standard framework, or sufficiently bored academic who might be willing to consider the proposition.

I am entirely serious in the sense that I genuinely wish to know what happens when this idea is presented to science.

At worst, I expect it may provide brief amusement.

At best, it may expose a previously neglected question in the philosophy of biological reference standards.

Kind regards,

[my name]

Baseline Human, Generation 1977

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—

Out of fear of sounding stereotypically xenophobic, small-minded, and/or trying to start a fight, Tobby was going to think the following rather than outright say it: ‘Humans... are weird.’

He didn't think that because every human he’s met so far had been some degree of certifiably insane, like Noah. He was not thinking that because of all the human guns, drugs, and hazardous-looking ships that he’d seen. He was thinking they were weird because, standing across from him, was a human wearing... erm... possessing the ears and tail of a purple exotic.

Step one of the ARK-2eb orientation program, which was something Noah apparently just made up, was introductions to the two other members of the crew.

Tobby had met Baba already, sort of, in frequent passing. The other, the seemingly half-Shasian one, he didn't recall ever seeing whilst helping Noah move cargo. Because if he had, he’d have had the same rude questions he had now, like, ‘What in all the patron spirits’ domains is that?’

She was tawny-skinned, quite toned, and had a notably more angular yet still feminine face, like there were hints of a shasian muzzle resting somewhere in her genes. Those were likely the same genes that dictated that her tied-back hair should be such a rich purple. Her stained shorts were simple, yet their numerous pockets were heavy with tools; she sported a tank top, too, except just like her shorts, it was marred with countless stains that Tobby’s nose said could only be oil, grease, and liquor. All this, and his attention kept being drawn back to the purple ears and tail…

“Did you seriously not fucking tell them about splicers?” She growled at Noah, not that Tobby was able to understand her human ‘English’ very well, but the translator did. It took a lot of getting used to seeing subtitles appear near the person who was talking. Reading them fast enough to avoid awkward gaps in dialogue would likely take time. “Because all three of them are staring at me like a freak show.”

“It may have slipped my mind,” Noah said, awkwardly tapping his fingers together and whistling innocently as he looked in every direction but this human shi. Was it human ‘shi’ or should he just say ‘female’? Woman? Some other word of cultural significance he was never told?

“Let's just get this over with before someone gets hurt, boss man,” Baba sighed; the rotund, darker-skinned human seemed about as exasperated as someone who knew a fight was about to break out.

“Right, right… grand introductions,” Noah said before clearing his throat. “Everyone here already knows me, your glorious captain, handler of questionable finances, head of product acquisition, lead distribution, and so on,” he said, gesturing to himself in a grandiose fashion. “Starting with our current crew,” he continued before gesturing to Baba, “Some of you may already be familiar with our illustrious Baba Ford. He is the ship's current doctor, as well as our… ‘everything else’ officer.”

“Ohhh, another doctor!” Dr. Meeb commented giddily.

Tobby slooooowly raised a hand to ask “Umm… everything else… officer?” with ever-increasing confusion.

“Baba?” Noah nodded for the big man to take the lead.

“Basically, I do everything around here that Noah and Kai don't do already. Preferably in order of importance. If I'm not doctorin’, I’m answering the phone; if I’m not answerin’ the phone, I'm cooking. If I’m not cookin,’ you get the idea.”

“Oh...” It suddenly made a lot more sense. There were a lot of roles to be filled on an FTL capable ship, but on a ship of this size, those roles likely only needed to be filled periodically. While having a doctor is a must, for a crew of just three, it would be a waste of sentient resources to have him sitting there all day waiting for one of the other two to get hurt. He’d likely be bored.

“And then there is our ever-beloved ‘Kai’,” Noah said, gesturing to the irate half-felid. “She is our resident black thumb, our grease monkey, our engine jockey, and our hard liquor disposal.”

“Fuck you,” she grouched with all the might of someone who was used to this.

It was Soapy’s turn to ask a question! “Was that just a bunch of creative ways to say she's the ship engineer?”

“Yes,” Noah answered. “She fixes everything that breaks around here, and sometimes even keeps it from doing so!”

Kai glared. “The microwave works just fine, jackass. The door isn't about to fall off.”

“The way it wiggles says otherwise.” Noah barbed back while maintaining that pleasant demeanor he’d been using for introductions thus far. “But, let's talk about the cat in the room.”

The three ‘cats’ and one Dr. Meeb all looked at each other.

“I don’t have time to go into the complicated history that led to the invention of cat girls, but you may have noticed that Kai here is what we humans refer to as a ‘splicer’. Other terms such as ‘gene-tailored’ and ‘Kemonomimi’ exist, but ‘splicers’ is just the laziest way to say it. She-and a significant portion of other humans-had parents who tampered with their genomes before they were born. They could’ve tweaked all kinds of things, like hair color, complexion, and height, but oddly enough the most common procedure is the splicing in of cat DNA.”

Neither Tobby nor Soapy needed to say it out loud, for they all wore the expression of ‘WHY?!’ Except for Dr. Meeb, whose wide-eyed and amazed expression read, ‘Tell me everythiiiing!’

“Because if God didn't want us to make cat girls, he would have stopped us~” Noah continued, gesturing grandly to Kai as a whole while she growled and gave him the middle finger. Her fangs were certainly more pronounced than those of the other humans. “The ethics of parents tweaking their unborn children are debated to this day!” He said with all the enthusiasm of a used-ship salesman.

“I can imagine…” Tobby commented. Gene tailoring wasn’t a new concept to Tobby or even the Shasian people as a whole. It was just a tech they never really embraced due to its incompatibility with Shasian biology. Shasian DNA was too ‘unstable’, or ‘mutagenic,’ if you felt like being polite, for gene-tailoring to be worthwhile. Any correction to a hereditary illness was both expensive and lacked staying power; the fix was just as likely to be mutated out as the illness was within a generation. All that assuming you managed to find where in the DNA the defect was, and deal with the ethical backlash of people trying to decide what traits were ‘defects’ and which ones were ‘natural’.

In short, Shasians could do it, too. They just didn't.

It was about then that Noah shifted to their half of the introductions and faced his original crew. “Most of you already know who this is~” he said, gesturing to Tobby. “My latest and greatest helper/apprentice: Tobby. Any questions about Shasian history, just poke him. Don't make any sudden loud noises around him,” he added before nodding quite implicatively towards Tobby’s ears.

“I still wear those dampening studs you gave me,” Tobby commented, but Noah moved on anyway.

“This is Soapy, she’s here to represent Wiskito interests during the upcoming job and do other mafia princess things. Fortunately she’s not the stuck-up kind, so we should all get along fine!”

Soapy seemed to take a second to read the subtitles too before she made a little trill at Noah. “I am not a princess! I-” She started, but Noah slid right past her to the last stop on the introduction tour.

“And this… is Meeb,” Noah said with a notably diminished amount of enthusiasm. “He’s also a doctor and is only here because Tobby’s mom would tear my head off if I didn't bring him.”

“Nice to meet you!” Dr. Meeb waved enthusiastically! “I look forward to learning from everyone!” He beamed.

“Right…” Noah trailed off before shifting to face Tobby and Soapy too. “Hennietta was quite busy and thus not able to attend, but I’m sure you’ll become acquainted in due time. That said, that's all for introductions. Now on to the physical tour!”

Maybe the joy of being the tour guide IS a universal experience…

—

Some part of Tobby felt like he should have realized the ‘showing them around’ part of the orientation would be almost as quick as the introductions. The interior of the ARK2eb was much smaller than Tobby’s imagination had made it from all his time going in and out of the cargo bay.

Unlike the cargo bay, the rest of the interior at least attempted to have an ‘aesthetic’ beyond exposed ship gore. The central hallway was a bit narrow, to the point that people had to turn sideways to get past each other, but it was paneled in a cozy, scuffed beige. Someone even added a rug. The rug looked like it used to be red but had a dull trench worn into it sometime between now and when someone stapled it to the floor.

The urge to deep clean was strong in Tobby. Surely there was a vacuum around here somewhere, and some vinegar, and baking soda… He considered a blow torch, but the rug really brought the hall together. Somehow.

His ‘Oh gods, what have you done to this poor rug?!’ senses were fortunately distracted by the ‘retro-ass kitchen,’ as Noah called it. Notably cleaner, and/or more loved, with the same beige paneling, it looked like the designer had a conniption trying to pick whether it should be as compact as possible or given all counter space in the world. Apparently what made the kitchen ‘retro’ was the fridge manufactured during the human 20th century… with rounded corners, a metal body, and-according to Noah-functional immortality.

The most impressive part was the walk-in freezer. Powered by a careful balance between reactor waste heat and the freezing depths of space… at least whenever the ship wasn’t too close to a star. The oven/stove/grill was also an oddity; it was analog, but instead of old-timey gas, it too tapped into the reactor waste heat. Tobby kinda wanted to play with it… Really embrace his inner 4-year-old and just turn the dial up and down over and over like the heat exchange was magic. Dr. Meeb beat him to it.

Then there was the reactor itself in the ship’s belly. The paneling down there was about as sparse as the cargo bay but that could be forgiven when one was distracted by the blindingly bright atomic hourglass across the room. Was it a literal hourglass? No, despite the potential for ironic comparisons, it was merely shaped like one, serving as a glowing bridge between the ceiling and the floor. Fortunately, it was sealed behind a massive glass wall that Tobby could only assume was shielding them from being irradiated.

Soapy felt the need to ask about ‘Tobby growing an extra ear’ whilst standing right next to him, and Noah assured them they were getting more radiation from cosmic rays than the reactor right now. Comforting…

“Just don't stick your ass in the reactor and you'll be fine,” Noah stated as he let everyone look around, “and like all fusion reactors, it prefers deuterium and tritium; but I’ve found it makes for a great garbage disposal. Just toss whatever you want into it and Tssst!! dust~”

That doesn't sound dangerous at all!

“It also has a fission mode!” He said before gesturing to a nearby control panel with a big red ‘emergency’ lever. “You know, in case we run out of fuel for some ungodly reason. Normally the instruction manual tells you not to flip the lever back and forth too fast, or you’ll kill us all, but I’m more of a thorium man, so it should be perfectly safe to do so if you get bored.”

“Why would anyone want to do that?!” It was a reasonable question for an unreasonable scenario.

“Don’t worry about it. Kai would kill you long before you ever got the chance to mess with it. The engine room and the maintenance tunnels are her domain. Do NOT enter that domain, else risk being accused of losing a screwdriver for years.”

As if on cue, there was a yell from one of the nearby vents, and the translator put the subtitles above it. “I know your dumbass is the one who lost it! It was right there on my rack and-”

“Aaaaand time to be anywhere else but here!” Noah said before hastily pushing the group back out of the reactor room.

Second to last was the bridge, an oddly wide yet squat room packed with seats and computer screens all arranged in a big blocky ‘U’ shape. The metallic greys had returned with a vengeance, but the bridge looked far too lived-in to feel ‘cold’ and ‘sterile’.

Noah had to duck to walk in here, and Tobby was quick to notice that if he stayed upright, his ears dragged on the ceiling like a mop. Soapy’s ears, in contrast, only lightly dragged on the ceiling, which allowed her to smirk at him and taunt, “The average height gang strikes again~”

“And welcome to the bridge,” Noah said, as he firmly plopped himself into a large patch-leather pilot’s seat that looked like the ungodly bastard child of a recliner and a gaming chair. Now that he was in it, Noah could spin around with ease, slide around on a small track, reach all eight cup holders, and, most importantly, get his hands on all the surrounding controls. “Also known as my domain~” he said, tapping his fingers together with a played-up menace, before dropping it almost instantly. “Except the comms console over there. That’s Baba’s whenever he's up here with me. Questions?”

That explained two of the seats… “What about all the other consoles?” Tobby asked, looking at all of the other empty seats.

“I’m still stuck on how we have gravity…” Soapy added, looking curiously at the floor.

“Are the fuzzy dice hanging from one of your displays there just decoration, or some kind of human luck charm?” Dr. Meeb asked, contributing to the question pile.

At least Noah was prepared for this, or at least it seemed to. “One: All these other controls are for things like scanners, comms, point defenses, electronic warfare suite, and a bunch of other crap I’ve had patched into my console here. They're for more, ‘dedicated’ roles essentially. Roles which I will be showing you how to do during the trip!”

Tobby had a feeling they wouldn’t get to lie around the whole trip…

“Trust me, it's far easier than you think. Modern human vessels are designed with ergonomics as a priority,” he said before looking to Soapy, hands clasped. “B: We had gravity earlier because of our proximity to Salafor. The gravity you feel right now, that comfy 0.8 G old people like so much? That’s a byproduct of the hyperdrive tech that's gonna get us to where we're going. The short answer is it's this weird mass distortion field thing that radiates off the drive when powered. Some guy figured out how to squish that field into a pancake so it feels kinda even across the ship rather than focused on the drive,”’ he tried to explain with a so-so gesture. “I’m not a physicist, so the even shorter answer is ‘magnets: how do they work?’”

That only left Tobby with more questions!! How did- “Oh, so like Star-Claws?” Soapy asked, flicking her tail.

“Like Star-Claws,” Noah smiled, making a pair of finger guns.

‘Mrrp?’ Tobby trilled, before quickly looking to Soapy, his tall ears dragging on the ceiling. “You’ve watched Star-Claws?”

Soapy quirked an ear, or at least would have if it didn't slap the ceiling. “We're in space, on an alien ship, and the fact that I’ve seen Star-Claws is what's blowing your mind right now?”

“Oddly… yes,” he admitted, before looking down at his paw like he could somehow test the gravity with it. “That, and curious how the grav tech described in a pre-FTL sci-fi series was so inexplicably accurate to what we have now.”

Soapy rolled her eyes, and her ears twitched against the ceiling. “That's because the show was written by a bunch of physics nerds who wanted to fuck aliens they didn’t know existed yet. I’m confident some of the stuff we imagine now will just exist in about a century or two.”

While Soapy and Tobby were off in their own little conversation, Noah addressed Dr. Meeb last. “Nobody touches the fuzzy d20s, or so help me, I will shank a bitch.”

“Will… shank.. a bitch,” Dr. Meeb muttered as he scribbled something down on his tablet. “Culturally important, got it!”

—

Tobby had been left to wonder what other speculative technologies mentioned in early Star-Claws seasons turned out to be real a century later. One thing that the show did seem to overglamorize was the potential for apartment-sized crew quarters.

“And here’s the cabins. I had to move some stuff around since we've been using them for storage, but everybody gets one. Unfortunately, due to not having another good place to store my Christmas decorations, two of you will have to share,” he started solemnly before quickly looking to Tobby and Soapy. “Thanks for volunteering!”

“But we didn’t say anything,” Tobby meeped before Noah booped a wall button, opening an adjacent sliding door.

“Didn’t have to! My room is the only other double in this place, and like hell am I sharing.” What that had to do with them being the ones who had to share, Tobby didn’t know.

“But-” Tobby started to say before catching a light night-kin elbow in the ribs.

“Whoops~” Soapy hummed ‘innocently’ as she shimmied her way past Tobby with her suitcase in tow. She also made sure to ‘accidentally’ whap him in the face with her tail as she passed. “Whoops again~”

Tobby was still blinking and suffering a minor reboot from the tail whip when she entered the room. He wasn’t so blind as to not understand Soapy was happy to share a bed, but couldn't she have done the tail-under-chin maneuver rather than gently slapping him with distractingly soft fur and the alluring scent of aurabells? “I guess we'll just have to make do…” He said, trying to play along.

“That's the spirit!” Noah cheered. “You guys get settled in; breakfast, lunch, and dinner is whatever and whenever Baba feels like making it. If you have questions and you can't find me, it's not that big a ship.”

“Thanks, Noah,” Tobby heard Soapy call from within the room before he quickly nodded in agreement.

“I’m sure we’ll think of something to ask you,” Tobby affirmed before slipping into the room he’d be calling home for the next three weeks. The door closing behind him hissed before Tobby noticed… well… everything.

The cabin was… Comparing it to a compact hotel room for two might be apt, but Tobby wasn't exactly one to begrudge his free accommodations. It was clean, if not scuffed like the rest of the ship, and the bed only took up a majority of the limited floor space. What space remained only existed because all the storage compartments were in the walls. Shelves, drawers, a small closet, and… oh hey, a little desk area. It even had assistant charging ports!

The bathroom was… small… as expected, but it had a normal-sized shower, thank Ardon, and Soapy was currently stuffing the medicine cabinet behind the mirror with things from her bag.

It hadn’t really stood out to him earlier, but the entire ship seemed to have a certain white noise, like an ever-present hum from the engines, the life support systems, or other unknown machinery at work. In here, however, it was notably muffled. It was… kinda soothing, actually.

“So…” Tobby led, glancing around the room again, “what do you think?”

“It's like someone crammed a two-person bed into my actual bedroom; that's what I think,” she said, filling the cabinet with her travel brushes and such. “You?”

“The bed looks nice,” he said, before promptly dropping himself on the corner of it for the traditional softness/firmness test. Ohhh bouncy~ “I think it’s new,” or it had simply never been used. Noah did say these rooms had been getting used for storage.

“A new mattress, huh? … Fuck it,” he heard Soapy comment/mutter to herself from the bathroom before speaking up to address him. “Want to break it in after we unpack?”

She asked so casually that the implication almost didn’t register in Tobby’s mind. He'd been about to say something when all that escaped was a trill, ‘Mrrp?!’

When he looked to the bathroom again, he saw Soapy slowly peeking around the doorframe. “I’m sorry… was that too forward?” She asked concernedly.

“It was certainly unexpected.”

It was Soapy’s turn to be a little confused… and worried. “Oh, I thought I’d been laying it on pretty thick.”

“Is that why you tail slapped me in the hall?” he questioned, feeling the urge to hold his muzzle again.

“I was going for that classical tail-drag-under-the-chin thing, but I kinda bumped into the wall… and missed,” she admitted, sounding a little embarrassed at the fumble.

Good to know she felt awkward too. “Should, umm… should I ask why?” He asked in the most indirect way possible.

“Because…” She paused, briefly biting her lip as she looked for the right way to say it. “It's been a few days since you gave me the jar and we… did it. And I’ve yet to be hit by any morning-after regrets. Minus what your mom and stuffed animals overheard about my, umm… preferred positioning,” she admitted shamefacedly, leaning, holding onto the bathroom doorframe like a social lifeboat. “I also find you attractive, lickably sweet, and thinking about how you stood up to my bum dad gives me warm fuzzies that I don’t know how to process.”

Tobby64.exe was unsure how to respond to that… or even if he should yet since she seemed to be getting so much off her chest.

“Part of me wants to reward you, another part is saying sex as a reward sounds like a really bad precedent to set, and the self-conscious part of me is wondering if I’m a slut for not knowing how soon is too soon. I just…” she rambled, and he could see just how into her own head she was getting and the stress it caused her.

Seeing her squirm and struggle with the words finally got something to click for Tobby. “Are you… nervous? About propositioning me?”

“Whaaaat? Nooo. I’m not nervous. I’m just…” Even Tobby could tell she was lying, which meant she was lying so badly the paint might start peeling off these walls. She couldn't maintain eye contact, but always came back to meet his gaze. Soon enough, she sighed in defeat. “Please… for the love of Shihere’s tits, don’t laugh.”

“I-I’m not going to laugh,” he stammered sympathetically. “You put up with how nervous I was and even came to my rescue when I offered you the passion jar. Not doing the same for you would just be cruel.” If there was anything Tobby had, it was sympathy; his bleeding heart deemed it so.

She was silent for a moment before letting out a timid “Thank you…” It took her another moment to steel herself to look at him again. “Would you-”

“Yes~” he answered, a little smile growing after not letting her finish the question.

Soapy blinked. “But… Just like that?”

“Just like that,” he affirmed. “I’m a hopeless romantic, remember? How can I say no when you’re spilling your guts like that? Just hear me out, and I’ll do anything you ask.”

She still seemed confused but played along. “Oookay?”

“First of all~” he started counting off on his claws, “I don't regret that night either; it was unforgettable,” he said, smiling fondly at the memory. “Secondly, you don't have to reward me for waving a gun at your dad, or siccing the Zarmians on him. If you’re rewarding me for anything, it should be because you want to.”

Soapy nodded but said nothing.

“Third, love is not transactional. It's messy, confusing, and sometimes even tragic, but above all, it's unmeasured and unconditional.”

“You definitely stole that from Wanderlust,” Soapy squinted.

Tobby refused to dignify that very accurate accusation with a response. “Fourth, I’ve been around Pinky my whole life, so trust me, in terms of promiscuity you aren't even ranked. The studs in your ear are proof of that. Fifth, screw you, don't talk about my girlfriend that way,” he finished with a dramatic huff, holding his arms like he was trying to scold her with that last statement.

He worried his words might not sink in, until he saw her mood start to lighten. “After much consideration, I have a different question.”

“Fire away,” he said, shifting on the bed corner.

“You said anything right?”

“Anything,” he nodded. Within reason…

“I want you…” she trailed off as she reached into her bag, and his ears twitched at the clink of glass that followed. Seconds later, she was dangling a string of vials from her index claw. Each was filled with a transparent purple fluid, and he knew exactly what they were. Eight vials, three doses a vial, twenty-four doses of contraceptive. That’s one for each day of the trip and then some. “To help me empty these~” she finished, her playful gaze making him feel naked. “We’ll make it a learning experience.”

“Oh… Oh my.” Now… now Tobby was scared.

(Author's note: Attention readers: Given how the chapter ended, as you can see just above there, how would yall feel about another loving pancake chapter like CH69? If nay, that's fine, but if yay would you prefer it be listed as CH85? or CH84.5?  (I may have also already written said pancake and am unsure if readers want it. ._. For this, I apologize))

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I believe that humans have a natural inclination towards heroism.

Let me explain.

Once upon a time, I was living far north of the equator on our little world, in the midst of so much nothing. Not just the emptiness of space beyond the world; the tiny hamlet I called home must have had a thousand trees for every person.

I had been living there for some time, and gradually getting sick of it - the cold, the nights that were interrupted only by brief glimpses of our sun, the loneliness. I was especially sick of the loneliness after my family had... well, never you mind about my family; it's enough to know that I used to have one, and no longer did. I had been gradually folding in on myself for a few years when I learned that I had a new neighbor, and had done for weeks.

It wasn't a surprise that I had never seen them - my house was so deep in the woods that I couldn't see anyone's home without a long drive or a long hike, and I had been spending more and more time indoors, grumbling about the cold and the dark and being alone.

My new neighbor's name, it turned out, was Bill. I never did find out what his last name was; he wasn't the sort to bring up a detail like that without being asked.

I only discovered his first name when he knocked on my door and explained who he was, and that he had brought over an attempt at a pie, about which he desired my opinion. I can look back and laugh now, but at the time I was completely overwhelmed. Who was this stranger? Why had he walked through the woods until his nose and ears were red to ask me to judge a pastry? What was I even supposed to say?

At length, the rusty cogs engaged and the gears began to turn once more. It would be customary to invite him in to warm up, and to accept the gift even though I had never once thought that I would like a pie in so many years that I could not recall how many.

In the process of judging the pie, which was objectively terrible (in hindsight, it was awfully rude to actually say so, but... ah well) I learned a few basic facts about Bill.

He was what I would have called old, at the time, but knowing what I do now, and with the way that modern medicine can trick the eye, was probably more like middle age.

He was also living by himself, all alone in a house meant for a family, and was so desperately bored that he had decided to learn to bake just to have something to fill up the endless, empty, dark hours. But there is only so much sourdough and so many under-baked, or over-baked, or soggy-bottomed fruit pies that one can eat by oneself without becoming heartily sick.

And so, he had brought me a terrible pie and asked me to share it with him and talk about what was wrong with it, because he was so alone and needed someone, anyone, to help keep him from going, as he would say, "just a little bit loopy."

Oh yes, I recognized myself in Bill all right. And, well, it wasn't like sitting alone and glaring at the snow was so engrossing that it counted as having something better to do.

So we would occasionally get together. Ostensibly there was always a reason - to discuss our preparations for an upcoming storm, or because Bill thought he had finally made a pie that was crisp on the top and the bottom, or because moving furniture was easier with two people. But we knew. We killed time together because it was better than killing time alone.

If we had anything, it was time to kill. We talked about anything and everything that came up. We talked about sports, and about our preference in beer. We talked about how to weatherproof a deck, and whether it was possible to know one's purpose in life.

I didn't really believe that we had a purpose. Life, after all, was just a cosmic accident. I didn't think there was a pantheon, or a single all-encompassing being, or spirits, or any of that. Bill had been raised in a faith that taught him that we had been created for a specific purpose - individually and collectively - and he wanted to live his life according to that purpose.

Fortunately, we were both adults and we knew that it wasn't really going to accomplish much to get into fights over it, especially since, when we sat down and talked it over, it turned out that we ended up at pretty much the same place. Did it really matter whether doing nice things for people made you feel good because it was your purpose, or for a completely different reason, as long as you did them and wanted to keep doing them?

We were neither of us professors of philosophy, so our arguments probably wouldn't have done much to convince anyone of either position. But it was something to do while waiting for the latest experiment in making a cake to come out of the oven.

I don't know that I was able to do much to help Bill that winter, aside from just existing as someone to talk to. But he didn't mind. After a while he started to come over and help me catch up on the little repairs I'd been putting off since my wife ... well. I tried to offer to pay him, to find something tangible that I could give back in return for his kindness.

Of course, that wasn't the point. The point was that Bill was lonely, and I had wanted to keep him from spiraling the way I had. The point was that I was lonely, and Bill had wanted to offer me a way to come back and live again, not merely wait out the years until my death.

And that was enough.

Some people seem to think that in order to show ourselves to be good, we must fight some kind of great and nefarious evil.

I don't believe that crap for a second.

That would make a pretty good place to stop, right? Wrap everything up in a bow and deliver the moral of the story. But life doesn't have such neat beginnings and endings, it's all just a mess of stories laid over each other.

Here's another story:

Once upon a time, but not a very distantly past time, there was a man named Bill.

Bill was happily married, and had a child who had just finished college. His latest book was selling well and his wife was just about to complete a massive project that had kept her busy and working late for the past few years, so Bill was finally about to have the dream combination of disposable income and also free time to enjoy it.

So Bill found a cozy little place, which was cheap because it needed someone who would fix it up a bit and because it was in a tiny little town where the weather sucked donkey balls, and made an offer. Nobody else had bid on it in over a year, so the sale didn't take long to finalize. Come fall, Bill moved up north and started puttering around the place.

Once most of the work had been done, Bill started to get rather bored. His wife wouldn't be arriving until spring, because her big project wasn't quite finished yet, and his daughter had moved in with her boyfriend, so he was all alone for a few months with nothing much to do.

There also wasn't much to do in town, which is how he ended up in the local library. There wasn't much to do there either, to his dismay, and that's why the librarian found him staring forlornly at a whole wall of nothing but cookbooks, which were not the most exciting things in the world, but they were cheap and readily available, and sometimes when you ran a village library you had to take what you could get.

The librarian, who introduced herself as Margaret, asked about Bill's apparent puzzlement, and was thankfully able to make a useful suggestion. She explained that there was a quiet fellow who lived not far (by local standards) from Bill's new house, if he was willing to get his feet wet and his face cold by walking there instead of going the long way 'round by road.

The poor fellow had been through an extremely messy divorce, which ended with him living alone - lacking both the money to move away, and also a job that paid enough to solve the lack of money before he was old and gray. The town was roughly evenly divided as to whether he had deserved it, or whether he had been a victim of a system that defaulted to trusting the mother unless she was a total monster and he was a saint. Margaret's considered opinion was that the truth was somewhere in the middle. It usually was, once you had listened to everyone's story.

Those residents of the village that didn't enjoy seeing him wallowing in his own misery were starting to get worried. It would be a weight off everyone's mind, Margaret explained, if someone were to come up with an excuse to make sure he didn't spend all of his time alone.

If there was one thing that no man living alone in this climate could pass up, it was a chance to eat something hot and filling. If there was a second, it would be having something to talk about, whether he actually knew (or cared) about the subject at hand or not.

And so Bill began teaching himself the art and science of baking.

His first pie was practically a laundry list of every possible mistake one could make without actually setting fire to the kitchen, but it served its purpose. Bill was able to see a faint glimmer of life, of interest, in his new neighbor's eyes.

Over the next few weeks, Bill's pie-making skills improved, and he gradually introduced subjects more interesting than whether it was literally cold enough to freeze your tits off, or only figuratively so. He was careful not to bring up the fellow's family, which was such an obvious sore point that he hardly needed Margaret's warning. Their chats slowly evolved from meaningless babble into actual discussions, and even friendly arguments.

Seeing his neighbor scowl in thought, and not in misery, was the highlight of Bill's day.

Eventually, as winter ground on and the calendar showed that it would (technically) be spring soon, Bill sat next to a hole sawed in the ice as he and his neighbor pretended to try to hook a fish. It would have been a more effective pretense if either man had the slightest idea how to clean or cook a fish, but it was good enough for two guys that weren't trying real hard.

It was there that Bill confessed that his loneliness, unlike mine, was temporary. That his family was still intact, and he was looking forward to living quietly together with his wife and occasionally teasing his daughter about how long she was going to make them wait to be grandparents. I didn't answer right away, but that was all right. He knew I would need to go home and think over how I felt about it for a few days, and we had plenty of time.

Oh, you want to hear how that story ends? Sorry, but life is just a mess of stories all laid over one another, and this one is still a work in progress.

If you'll excuse me, I have to go and get to work writing the next chapter. I'm meeting Maggie at the lake so she can teach me to ice-skate, you see, and I'm planning to ask her if the library needs a donation, so that I can make room on my shelves for something more useful than heroic fantasy, like a book about how to knit a sweater.

I believe that, like Bill, you're wishing me luck.

You don't know me. Whether I live happily ever after, or not, has no bearing on your life. But I don't think you can help yourselves.

Maybe it's how you were made. Maybe it doesn't have a deep metaphysical meaning. Maybe it's impossible to know whether it's your purpose or not.

All I know is this:

When a human sees someone suffering, in that moment, it doesn't matter who it is or whether they "deserve" it. Only the suffering matters, and it bothers you.

It's your first thought. You won't always act on it. But you're thinking about whether you can do something to help without getting hurt. You know that you want to.

You don't have to slay a fearsome dragon, or end a history of oppression; you don't have to stop a plague or win a war. Most people can't do those things.

But maybe you can learn to bake a really terrible pie.

It doesn't always take much to be someone's hero.

My dad works in a top secret department, a clandestine division of the government, where he’s the head suit.

“I’m practically a colonel,” he told me.

He has a hidden room underground, in a separate part of our house. It looks just like the Batman lair, rock walls protruding outward, drowning into a cave as you take the elevator down.

The mechanical floor tears apart and a circular ramp appears. The floor folds back into itself as the lift sinks towards the carved-out ground below. It’s basically the size of my school’s gymnasium, which is really big.

Unfortunately, he never lets me stay in the office-bunker. I’ve only been in there a handful of times. Inside the office, it has little TV screens, about ten of them, centered around a gigantic one. It’s as big as our living room window. I wanted to play my PS5 on it.

Which is exactly when I came up with a clever plan to sneak in behind him with my console in a bag wrapped around my shoulders. I stealthily slid down without him noticing me and hid under a desk.

That’s how I caught him on a secret transmission with an entire galactic empire. Alien heads were on each one of those little monitors, and at the center was this object, taking up the whole big screen.

Most of their faces, which were kind of weird-looking and a couple similar to ours—the closest one that mirrored a human didn’t have a nose. He-she-it kind of resembled the Master in the show The Strainbut with our pigmentation.

A couple had iguana features, and the rest looked exactly how we picture aliens today. Just not so theatrical. They were almost like deformed humans, not those cartoonish alien ones. It made me want to jump up and scream, "Turn it off, dad!"

It was paralyzing, yet totally intriguing. I kept wondering, why do they look so terrified?

Nearly all of them were. None were acting confident. They seemed confused. My dad was the only one completely calm. They wore the same mask of terror as I had on.

One of the reptile ones spoke, and the voice was groggy, almost forced. “The AlphaSimplex-Core has encountered a critical paradox.”

The humanlike one said, “It’s a multi-trillion-credit quantum supermachine. It’s capable of locating and calculating every atom in the cosmos. It runs itself. How is this possible right now, Blorqust?”

On the big screen, there was this awesome red color throbbing and rumbling like a holographic, angry, sentient thing.

“We have spent many alignments analyzing and attempting to eradicate this issue. We’ve tried sub-atomic lasers and anti-matter sonorous fields, and nothing has worked,” the reptilian cried.

Then my dad said, “So, let me get this straight. That device right there smack on this screen here, responsible for governing interstellar trade and all life-support for every species inside this universe, is totally unresponsive right now?”

“Exactly!” the humanlike one asserted.

“What are you planning on doing now that would need the vote of the twelve?” my dad asked.

Another one of the faces at the bottom right corner, in a shaky voice that crackled, said, “We have to initiate the Blackout Protocol!” He pulled at his tentacles. “The universe is ending!”

“Can we get someone to tend to him, he’s gonna melt in front of us?” my dad chimed, fixing his glasses. “Let me have a little looksy here before we decide to pull the plug on the cosmos.”

My dad used to be a technician and could fix anything. He got up as if he were walking up to the screen, but he pivoted and poured himself a coffee first. “Just a minute there, guys.”

A bunch of gasps blew out of the main speakers.

My dad walked up to the screen with the ancient tech shining like an Olympus god and took a sip out of his mug. “Send me the code for the robotic arm's control. I'm sure it just needs a brogan adjustment.”

“You are not capable of handling anything this advanced. The human brain is too primitive.” Blorqust threw his face into the screen, his eyes flaming red. “You are—“

BANG!

My dad had raised one of the robotic arms as far back as it could go and released the it with full throttle at the priceless antique responsible for maintaining life around the universe.

Every alien widened their eyes and their faces went completely blank.

The machine started to sputter. The red light ceased to glow. A sound like a washing machine or dryer spinning down slowly brought the room to a silence. Then, the it just casually lit back up in a beautiful orange glow on the walls surrounding the Core, which was now blinking a steady green, with a quiet buzzing noise of relief emitting throughout the room.

The Core was back online and running smooth. The members on the screen went from a blank look of terror, to extreme gleefulness, and then back into a serious, back-to-business silent expression.

The humanlike one spoke. “What type of manipulating, sorcery, Jedi-judo did you just use?”

My dad put his mug down. “We call that the Alabama overdrive, bud. Sometimes yuh just gotta whack it till it works.”

“My goodness, your species is terrifying, and not because you defy all rational common sense. Your solving a problem consists of taking a god and smacking it until it cooperates.”

“Nope, those are the C.I.A. guys.”

The ship had long gone. His tether had detached and despite their efforts, the crew could not save him. 

He was left to die in the AM Nebula. He found it funny that this place of creation was named after one of the most hate-filled villains in literature, but he hadn’t actually read the story and wasn’t one to judge.

It wouldn’t be long now until his suits oxygen was out, and the filtration system would kick in. He had run out of oxygen on worlds with atmospheres filled with methane, and left with nothing more than a mild headache. Stand on any world with poisonous air, and the filtration system will turn it into breathable air. An overlooked marvel of this modern-age. 

A faint odor of garlic kept hitting his nose. He tried to remember the last time he had eaten something with garlic, but was interrupted when his wrist monitor beeped. A quick glance showed him 1.6% remained of his oxygen. He took a deep breath. Maybe he should conserve his air, but it didn’t matter now. There was nothing to be done. He felt scared 37 minutes ago when the last light from the ships rear thrusters disappeared into the blackness, but he felt something else now. Something… odd…

He looked up at the star nursery surrounding him. They had flown deep into the midst of the crowded particles of cosmic dust. Their mission had been to travel to the heart of the cloud and gather samples for the scientist back on Tartan V. A remote research station where they could “safely” work to recreate a star. His job was to operate the exterior “net.” A house sized particle catcher that would allow the researchers to analyze just what makes a star. He thought they already knew what made a star, but the job paid really well and he was good at it. So he didn’t complain.

There had been concerns about if the ship could handle being this far into the cloud, but they were ordered to go anyway.

The mechanical lever that opened and held aloft the net had gotten stuck while folding back in. As he approached to troubleshoot, the damn thing dislodged and shot back open. The force of which tore his tether from the railing and launched him hundreds of feet away.

He screamed and fought to get his suits thrusters to right him, but by the time they did, the ship was so small in his view, the tip of his pinky could cover it.

He tried to return on his own but in the chaos, he had depleted his fuel.

They moved to retrieve him, but the cloud was too thick and was reeking hell on the ships systems.

His heart dropped into his stomach when he heard the captain give the order to turn around. The damage to the ship had made their chances of making it back safely slim. 

He begged them to come back. Yelling and pleading until he heard them shut off his comms. Leaving him alone in the unfeeling void of space.

That was 40 minutes ago. 

He wondered what had happened in that window that made him so calm. 

He chuckled to himself—BEEP-BEEP—BEEP-BEEP. .7% now. The filtration system was silent as to not disrupt communications, but it had a mild vibration to it. He felt that familiar hum against his back as it powered on.

He took another deep breath.

No one had ever been in the situation he was in before. Nebula’s were mostly hydrogen, helium, tiny bits of oxygen, iron, and nitrogen, but they could never plan for the cosmic dust. No one knew what it was. They knew it was there, but that’s about it. 

He felt his mind start to race. Once that dust entered the system it could rip apart his suit, or tear open his lungs, or hell, maybe just blow his heart up.

Whatever happened, he hoped it was quick.

He blinked as that .1% turned to zero, and the filtration system took over.

He closed his eyes and held his breath. That didn’t stop the smell of garlic from invading his nose once again.

He tried to shake the smell away but the tidal wave of dread made him bite his lip to keep from screaming. 

His body begged for him to open his mouth and breathe in.

His entire being trembled as it felt like the weight of this horrifying reality was being set back on him.

Totally alone. More alone than any human had ever been he imagined. And this imagining terrified him even more. 

He could feel his face changing color. His lungs screaming for him to just suck in and let the dust kill him. 

The pain became so excruciating that he could no longer bear it. He opened his mouth forced the air out of his lungs.

As soon as he inhaled, he opened his eyes to find himself nestled between the four walls of a living room.

Golden sunlight from the summer sunset poured in through the windows.

He knew those curtains. He knew that old willow tree in the front yard.

He looked about and saw pictures on the wall of him, his mom, dad, and two sisters.

His fear dissipated at the sight of his childhood dog, Wendy, asleep on the couch. She must be eight or nine. The hair on her face had started to shift from the dark black to silver and white.

He knelt down before her. Careful not to startle her. He reached out and gently stroked the top of her head. 

Her eyes flickered open. Found him. He heard her tail thump against the couch. Felt her tongue give him two quick licks on his face, before she rolled onto her back. Inviting him to give her belly rubs.

He pressed his forehead to hers. Softly running his hand up and down her chest and stomach. Remembering all the times he’d laid his head onto her, and fallen asleep to the sound of her heartbeat.

In the kitchen, he hears the familiar sound of a wooden stirring spoon rubbing against a metal pot.

He smiles as his mother calls his name for dinner.

The smell of garlic filling his nose.

"This will be an easy conquest, my Emperor. These 'humans' are so pitiful it must be questioned how they managed to discover FTL. My mission will be complete within the day." I said to my Emperor's image on the communicator.

He smiled. He gave me that sinister smile that only a father who rules a nation could give. "Good my sweet, good. You will make a fine queen one day but I must... Enquire."

"Enquire what?" I asked, curious.

"Why are you wasting time with diplomacy? We can easily mobilize the fleet and wipe them out in days." He asked, furrowing the bony crown on his forehead.

I rolled my eyes and scoffed. "Father... Don't you remember the Saranai?"

His expression changed to blind rage. "I have told you a hundred times to not mention those wretched slime ever again."

"And I have told you a hundred times over that first, we visit them to see what they are, then we decide what military forces we bring against them. We don't want a situation like that again, they wiped out four planets before we mustered the fleet and even then we suffered serious losses." I replied, crossing my four arms.

He took a deep, frustrated breath and finally nodded his approval. "FINE. You do your thing. I will continue getting the fleet ready for the invasion anyway because I don't care what you see there, they will be no match for us. No claws, only two eyes seeing in one spectrum, small brains and weak, meaty bodies. I will be lucky if this invasion produces anything of value beyond some new planets to make farms on, these creatures aren't worth being slaves. Get on with it." He said, and closed the call.

I smiled and resumed my place on my throne. The ship I was in was my personal yacht, and I intended to use one of the finest ships in the fleet as an intimidation tool. It was very well armed with the latest tech we had and sported the best crew in the state. We arrived at the so-called 'Slip Gate' that was present in the star system. Pathetic primitives, such massive structures when simple shipboard jump drives fit the same purpose. We overcame this technology millennia ago and they are not only still using it but overengineering them to such enormous sizes. I pressed some buttons, and opened the control console to transmit a request. Almost immediately a face appeared on my holo-screen. Gruff, old, no nonsense. If he didn't look so pathetically weak he would have reminded me of one of our old admirals.

"What? Oh. You're one of the Skatanii. What do you want?" He said, seemingly bored by my presence.

Goddamn audacity of these creatures to not be awed by my mere presence! I steadied myself, determined to avoid casualties. "I am Princess Arina'Aurik of the Skatanii Empire, and I come to you with a request to enter your space to conduct diplomatic operations. My father wants to negotiate with your species for the sake of the greater good in the galaxy at large." I felt quite proud of that.

The human however didn't seem as impressed as I thought he would be. He looked at me, no smile, no question, just glaring at me with an expression I couldn't quite place.

"I have been around politicians long enough to know you are lying to me. You have no intention of peace or negotiation, you just want to get inside our space to see what we have that you can bargain for or steal when we aren't looking." He said, plain and frank.

That took me by surprise and I caught myself in time to feign shock. "Ser I dare say that insinuation is an absolute lie! I am here to negotiate, not to engage in petty thievery! Surely-"

"But, I'm bored. I'm bored and I want to do something funny, and see what my bosses make of this. So come on in. Gates open. Please mind your step." He said, and closed the call.

My ships captain looked at me and questioned what was going on. I hadn't seen him like that before. And suddenly I was feeling a pang of... something. The Slip Gate in front of us roared to life and a burst of energy opened a wormhole. Such... primitive technology. I ordered us to go through and we slowly entered through the wobbly mass of interdimensional soup.

No one was prepared for the horror we saw when we got through that gate.

A single large blue giant star, one of very few we knew of in the galaxy, surrounded by a gigantic mesh of metal encapsulated by an enormous shell of solar arrays and swarming machines. Around that, a ring, millions of Klinks long, surrounding the habitable zone. In this ring, like segments in a long chain, was a free-floating planet of seemingly artificial construction surrounded by a massive circular drydock or spaceport ring. Further beyond that was a massive ring of another kind, billions of Klinks in diameter with a singular concurrent flat plane facing the star, filled with green and blue. Surrounding it all were ships. Tens of thousands of ships, all of sizes too big to fathom, and one small planet that looked like they had bolted rocket engines and a cannon to a moon.

The entire star system seemed like one enormous puzzle piece, with several rings on the outer layer containing several planets that had no business being in a star system like this, all seemingly connected to each other by this gigantic metal chain, and all seemed to be freely floating within its influence but somehow kept in place despite the immeasurable forces present in the system. Nothing like this should even exist, yet here it is. Planets kept like jewels on an armband, a large ring that looked like someone took the surface of many planets and flattened them out to spread them across a huge ribbon, and a collection of smaller, and even much larger planets kept floating about like some kind of terrifying tapestry of planet-sized puppeteering.

Before I could order a retreat, a ship seven times the size of mine suddenly materialised in front of us and we were grabbed by gigantic mechanical docking clamps and dragged into the ship's hold.

"Welcome to Eden's Gate. Please don't try to run. Its time for lunch." A voice said through the comms.

My captain was in a state of panic the likes of which I couldn't fathom, and the crew were in despair at the state of their ships systems. They had remotely accessed everything, broken our security protocols and fully taken control. My crew were locked out and we were at their mercy. I bellowed loudly at the crew to placate them, despite my own panic. Father would be proud of me for the calm I displayed.

"ENOUGH! Stand at your stations!" I yelled. "These humans have strange behaviours as our diplomats stated during first contact. They said 'lunch'. This may be their word for peace. It is true what we saw is incredible but we must stay focused. At your stations!" I barked, ordering my men to calm down.

They did... mostly. There was a momentary panic when we entered the ship proper and were greeted by the staggering size of the ship's hangar. And the hangar doors seemed to have a forcefield keeping space at bay, and we could clearly see that massive construct through it. It almost felt like the structure itself was mocking us somehow. I knew it was. We had nothing like this. I was starting to wonder why.

My ship lurched as we were locked in place and the lights dimmed. A voice spoke over the radio. "Docking procedure completed. Please exit in an orderly manner with your identification badges at hand. Please follow directions to the dining hall, lunch is being prepared."

"So lunch isn't peace, it's a type of food? Well... Maybe we can talk to them in peace while we eat. Gods I hope we can make peace. I really, REALLY don't want to fight these abominations." I said and stood out of my throne.

My captain and all crew in earshot nodded, agreeing with me as we all funnelled out of the ship onto the bigger ship. I was greeted not by humans but by robotic abominations several units in height and tonnage controlled by humans, either directly or in some kind of macabre puppetry with cabling leading into skulls and spines. I couldn't help but be nervous as we made our way down to the floor. We were slightly taller than they were by a full unit, but the intimidation factor was still quite excessive. These humans had a... very strange abnormal fascination with machinery apparently.

A holo-screen appeared in front of me and showed that grizzled old man from before. "Welcome aboard. Today's meal, meatloaf stuffed with cheese, served with a side of fries. You don't know what that is, it's food, but don't worry, soon, you won't care when you taste it!"

We followed directives and stayed far away from the human crew who seemed very... curious about us, but we made it to a dining hall of sorts and noted not only that it had enough space for all six hundred members of my ship's crew, but the MAGNIFICENT smell of food.

"Oh my... Oh my!" My Captain cooed as he excitedly sniffled at the air. "Something smells fantastic!"

We all quickly funnelled into the room and sat on a seat. I sat on the largest and most prominent one. Obviously. I waited and moments later the food arrived. Strange brown half-cylinders with odd roots cooked with them to the side. We all started eating... And our souls melted. It was... beyond delicious. I was starting to understand these creatures. And the more I knew, the more scared I got. I finished my meal, and that grizzled human from before appeared.

"So... Enjoy the meatloaf?" He asked.

"Yes, very much so." I replied, maintaining my composure.

He smiled and approached slowly, taking strong, deliberate steps. "Yes, yes. Good food it is, for such... 'pitiful humans' isn't it?" He said. His tone started to become something rather more malicious.

I cringed. How did he know that?

"Yes it is rather good food and very, large beautiful ships. Do you like our ships? These are just logistics vessels though, not military. Our warships are just so very much prettier." He said as he approached me.

I went pale. This was a CIVILIAN fleet, NOT a navy?

"Kind of a shock after all, we are so, meaty and small. Guess we never really discovered FTL. Must have been a shock hm?" He slowly approached me and positioned himself behind me.

"Wh-I... I don't..."

"I don't see diplomacy as a waste of time... do you?" He asked.

I cringed. They were listening. How. How did they do that? They heard all of it.

"I mean you can after all easily wipe us out in a matter of days after all, you must have quite the fleet! I wonder how your metal alloys respond to Gravity cannons... Wormhole spires and... telefragging. Must be quite a fleet." He approached, I could feel him breathing down my neck at this point. I had never experienced this kind of malicious energy since the last time I was in trouble with Father.

"We didn't mean to-"

"We will be no match for you and obviously we just cant be used for slave labour because we are so... primitive and fat and meaty. We have no claws or venom or anything! I mean, what possible use could we have for your empire?" I felt his hand thump against the back of my chair, and I felt a fear I never thought I would ever experience

"I-I... Uh... Uhm..."

I felt him close the distance further and he growled straight into my ear. "So... Are you really here for the sake of 'diplomacy' or are you just here to scout to see what your fleet can steal? Because... Well, I’d hate to brag, but these ships in the star system are barely a tenth of what we have in terms of military force, and we can manufacture fifty thousand more within the next few days."

I could feel the malicious, pure rage boiling from him, searing my skin with pure anger. I could hear the crackle of the chair behind me as his grip tightened, damaging the wooden material the chair was made of.

"So tell me... what are you here for, really?" He asked, waiting for me to speak.

I sat there, head bowed and considered everything I saw thus far.

They outnumbered us by a factor we couldn't reasonably tell, considering the numbers in this one star system, it was probably by a factor of hundreds to one.

They outclassed any of our ships, as demonstrated by the size of the behemoth that trapped us here.

They very easily outmatched our industrial capacity, owing to the massive construct that surrounded this star.

Their ground forces, should they ever need to deploy them, likely consisted of what I saw in the cargo hold. With a factor of their numbers and their strengths, we wouldn't win a single battle.

So many other factors I had to consider but I felt his presence behind me, getting that much more agitated.

I stayed quiet for a moment and finally spoke. "Uhh… Surrender?"

He growled at me through clenched teeth and the material under his fist finally gave way, splintering into a pile of shards in his clenched fist. "Unconditional... Surrender."

I squeaked, terrified and nodded my head. "Unconditional surrender." I repeated and started to tear up, unable to hold my emotions anymore.

"Good. Get back to your ship. Get back to your emperor. Show him, tell him. If we do not have the signed documents within one galactic standard cycle, we will burn it all. I will personally find your emperor, skin him alive and force you to wear the leather I make from his wretched hide as a hat. Understand?" He said.

I started to bawl uncontrollably and nodded frantically to get him to stop. I managed to barely garble out orders to return to the ship and retreat home.

How did we mess up this badly? Was it our fault or the fault of the gods? Did we simply antagonize the wrong enemy, or did the gods play a cruel trick to create these abominations? What do we do now?

Father, forgive me. I had no choice. None of us do.

Bob was shitting himself as he did not come out in the Pwitic system, he was closer to it than any other system, but he was definitely not fucking in it, he had came out so far away he was pretty sure he could fist bump voyager as it passed.

He was going to ease his way in, real quiet n shit, just a fucking rock fucking rocking through space, everyone be fucking chill about it.

Bob did not expect anyone to be waiting for him, he was assuming his current actions were so fucking stupid that no one would expect him to do so. Like a dog returneth to its vomit, so he was returning to his crime, fucking idiot.

Sometimes, often, he really fucking hated Bob, dickhead made terrible decisions and got him in all sorts of trouble. Whatever.

He was way below the planetary plane and sidled his way slowly into Geverine, right into a polar insertion and slipped down deep into her depths. Once deep he was fairly reassured he was beyond interception and started a low power scan of the planets gaseous seas. It took a month, a full fucking month to pick up a miniscule return from the bobbing Bitch which had fallen far further down than Bob had expected, too far for him to go exo, even his sturdy frame would be quickly crushed.

Failing that the best he could do was slowly nudge the craft upward with Jojo’s nose, slippy hull against slippy hull was an exercise in frustration, but little by little he brought it up to a more survivable pressure, when he was pretty sure he was good he dump out the top hatch, now airlocked during his weeks at the homeworld and swam over in the syrup thick fluid and tied it off. He came back aboard and dragged her higher still, now he could see what he was damn doing.

It took another few days to sort through his haul, or at least everything that remained from his flight and stashing, he was pretty sure a bunch was now down on the planets metallic core, still a bunch of cool shit remained, he didn’t recognise much of it, really wished I had paid more attention during the tour. Whatever, he brought in a few items he wanted a closer look at, he didn’t have much space left but he managed to cram a surprising amount aboard, though it was a fraction of the goods.

Fortunately one of the pieces that remained was the half a message pod with the cast screw fitting, fucking nice, he would have been happy if this was all he had managed to retrieve. Satisfied he disconnected the Bitch and she quickly sank deeper and deeper far beyond retrieval.

He crept out the system the same way he crept in. He only had one last thing to do, he had burned a bunch of fuel getting to here as quickly as possible and needed one last top up on his way out, he scanned through a map of local fueling stops and hesitated, there was one on the far edge of what was considered the local area, it was stupid to go that far just to gas up… but… he punched in the jump calc and headed out.

Bob felt dread as he dropped out, it looked every bit as shit as it had last time, a big grey green turd floating in space, not exactly the most salubrious place to end your life in the galaxy, whatever, Bob commed traffic control and was ushered to a bay. He spent a few hours sorting gear, really just delaying, and than had one final argument with a prick who would once again not fucking believe that, yes, Bob actually wanted the fighters brimmed to the gunnels with fuel, yes, he knew they were not fuel tanks, ye….just do your fucking job asshole!, fuck sake, this he would not miss.

Then he wandered round a couple stores buying a couple bits and pieces… then finally did what the fuck he came here for, he looked up the system and pinged a message, then went to a bar to wait.

He pounded them back, three deep before he arrived. Bob saw him weave his way through towering legs as he entered, waving at a couple people as he came in. He saw Bob and perked up noticeable, Bob did not, but tamped down the desire to flee, he came all this way after all.

‘’Bob?’’

Bob slid down from his stool and held out his hand.

‘’Yeah, Mykew right?’’

The pale human beamed behind his pressurised helm.

‘’Yes, yes’’

He shook the proffered hand vigorously.

‘’I was sad to miss you on your last visit, I’m glad your route brought you back here, not many of us around anymore, I wa…’’

The guy had a strong accent Bob couldn’t place, eastern European or Russian surely, didn’t matter. He babbled like he had a century of pleasantries he needed to expurgate as fast as possible lest he explode from their retention.

‘’...en someone else since I demobbed, that was over se…’’

Bob drifted in and out, it was too much, it was all too much, he shouldn’t have come, shouldn’t be here… when he tuned back in there was an expectant silence, pregnant with tension. Bob assumed he had been expected to respond and had left it a little long. He tried to lock in and stared at the… sweating?… face.

This wasn’t all about Bob, it was about him too. God knows how long it had been for him either, maybe contacting Bob the first time was something he had felt he had to do as well.

‘’Sorry, I got a bit overwhelmed, its been a long time for me too.’’

The miner smiled broadly.

‘’Lets have a drink then, join me.’’

The two moved over to a table after ordering a couple, Mykew got a similar tipple to Bob, which said a lot actually. Clearly he was another medmeced ex soldier, Bob hadn’t known what else he expected but it was obviously the most likely option.

‘’What division?’’

He saw the tension in the guys frame as he stopped midway clambering up a seat, after a pause he continued and settled himself before speaking.

‘’Second seventy third, the Shipcrackers.’’

He seemed to puff up as if in defense, waiting for the follow up blow. Bob didn’t intend to throw one.

‘’I was an ASS hole’’

Momentary confusion and then, yup there it was, recognition.

‘’I mean, I remember the armour, rough assignment.’’

Bob hopped into his own chair.

‘’Yours too, don’t think I ever came across your battalion, but I heard of the Shipcrackers, vac insertions right?’’

‘’Yeah, best record in the fleet’’

There was no pride to that assertion, Bob had heard of them, maybe not Mykews specifically but the general role, breaching crews in ship to ship conflicts, high speed actions to cut into hulls and take control or sabotage. One of the few professions with a lower survival rate than scouting.

‘’Were you in long?

‘’Nine years, you?’’

Fuck, Bob tried to be dredge specifics from his memory.

‘’Not sure really, contact to capitulation I suppose, what’s that thirty years?’’

The glass froze on its way to Mykew’s mouth.

‘’From contact?’’ Bob didn’t quite know why that had caused the reaction it did.

‘’Yeah… I was a reclamation.’’

Tears began to pour down the miners face.

‘’Oh god, dear god in heaven’’

What the fuck?

‘’Is there something wrong?’’

Mykew continued to weep, it took several moments before he could gather himself. He jumped down and back up wrapping Bob in a hug he neither expected or wanted.

‘’What the fuck dude?, get off me.’’

He was released and Mykew sat on the arm of the chair.

‘’Brother, it’s… it’s… I don’t know how to tell you…’’

He reached out again and clasped a hand on Bobs shoulder. Bob didn’t shake him off.

‘’It was almost two hundred years, brother’’

Whut.

‘’What are you saying?’’

‘’The war was almost two hundred years, you lot… fucking Arressi fucks…’’

Several minutes of presumable colourful profanity followed, the translator didn’t catch any of it so all Bob got were muffled shouts through two helmets. It took another twenty minutes to get him up to speed.

Turned out as a reclaim, a corpse essentially, the Arressi had decided that they didn’t have to bother of any of those pesky rights or whatever they had agreed to with the various governments of Earth, he was just meat, so they had treated him as such, wiping their brains anytime they got uppity, cutting out obstreperous chunks. It had only been very late in the war that anyone had found out what they were doing and humanities revolt at the revelation was the only reason the Arressi had eventually sued for peace.

Bob… didn’t know how he felt about this… did it change anything?, not really, didn’t even make him hate them any more than he already did, just was what it was.

The miner had lots of other stuff to say as well, he kept in semi regular touch with Earth and a couple other humans out and about, at large in the galaxy. There were promises from Earth of political repercussions, terrorist groups trying to enact their own, lotta shit going on apparently, Bob didn’t care.

He did find out that one of the unknown implants he carried was essentially a back up of his mind, useful for when the meat returned missing a skull. Mykew was desperate to get a copy of it to send back, he said there were people who could extract details buried deeply in there.

According to Mykew all the memories, all the data, was still there, but trauma, physical or mental severed connections and took them beyond Bobs recall. That fucked him up a bit especially when he confirmed that most pre-death, pre-implant, memories would not be retained. Why the fuck did he want to remember all the other bullshit that was back there. Still he followed him back to his quarters and let him plug something into a skin covered port Bob wasn’t even aware he had. He promised to send it back, that people would make them pay, sure, go for it.

Bob left shortly after, fighting against the miners imprecations, he had done his fighting, way more than he even knew, this time he was going to take Geviths advice and let that shit go.

On his way out Mykew insisted on giving him another set of data chips, a more recent rip of the internet than he had sold to the store, upon apparent reflection he had also run back and returned with a small bag which he pressed into Bobs hand, he had been appalled to learn of his plan and insisted these would be a touchstone back home. Bob took it but couldn’t imagine what the hell they could be that he would give a shit.

He got Jojo fired up and waved to the wailing man outside on the gantry, he commed traffic and headed out. This time when he aimed into the dark of the galaxy's edge he hit FTL, absolute minimum, and crawled his way out, into the space between.

It was over a month later that Bob felt he had truly settled into the routine that would comprise the next centuries of his life, should he live so long, and he sat on his bed fiddling with the neck of his armour, laid across his legs.

It had taken a bit of machine work, bit of fettling, but it certainly seemed like it would work just fine. He put his chest piece back on and locked in, then carefully lowered the half a pill shaped message pod over his head and screwed it on to his suits new helical neck. He had had the thought it would make a phenomenal helmet the instant he held it, he had no mirrors aboard oth… wait there might be one…

He dug through a tool chest and picked out the small inspection mirror on a stick. He examined his handywork, seal looked good, perfect height just a few millimeters above his crown, good transpa…

He saw his face, he couldn’t have told you when the last time he had seen his own face was and once again it struck an odd discordance, young but old, scarred but unblemished, he didn’t like it… but he didn’t hate it anymore either, maybe it would take the whole journey… but Bob thought he would get used to it.

Now he was fairly confident in his handywork he popped in the combination of the weapon locker and went to put on the rest of his suit. As he shuffled around the cramped room he spotted the bag Mykew had given him, discarded in a corner. He opened it up, seeds, Bob wondered what kind of plant they were for, but his musings were interrupted by the clink of the lockers opening, he put them back and headed to the cockpit.

Bob hit the controls and Jojo dropped out of FTL, he punched the makeshift buttons for the top hatch airlock and retrieved the Arressi helm from the locker. Tying himself off he climbed out the hull, message pod helm held pressure fine, and stared at the lumpy blackish grey Arressi design, then he let it go.

He didn’t throw it, didn’t cast it aside with a curse, he said nothing, felt little… just let that shit go, let it drift away in the dark. Nor did he stay and watch it till it was long out of sight, didn’t make sure it was truly gone, none of that.

He came back inside, repressurised, took off his armour and went back to the cockpit.

He considered briefly what the seeds would grow, he hoped they would remind him of Flitty, that was for later.

He checked his heading and slipped Jojo back into FTL, he sat back and stared at the black void that sped past the front window, and finally, Bob was bored.

Mert had never really been impressed by humans.

Like any new addition to the ranks of space-faring sapient species, their technology ranged from "woefully obsolete" through "laughably bad" all the way to "downright dangerous to use" and they still had remnants of the pre-contact exceptionalism of most primitive societies.

They talked about their "indomitable spirit" and half-jokingly referred to themselves as "the orcs of the galaxy" because they happened to be able to work and fight for longer, in worse conditions, than most. As if that was anything to brag about.

They also loved to explain, at length, just how much they had been dreaming of making new friends among the stars. That was at least a reasonable thing for them to want, Mert was forced to admit, but it wasn't exactly unusual or brilliant, either. Anyone with a functioning brain hoped that space wasn't full of militant xenophobes.

So when Mert was informed that a new policy meant he had to carve time out of his already busy schedule as Chief of Engineering to teach a jumped-up monkey how to maintain a fold-space drive without accidentally smearing the ship (and, perforce, Mert) across a volume measured in cubic light-spans, he was not pleased.

Tim, as the human "engineer" was apparently called, was easy enough to get along with, but Mert was perpetually frustrated.

Tim wanted to know everything about how fold-space drives worked,
and why they worked that way,
and where (and how) they were built,
and how to disassemble one,
and how to put one back together,
and how to fix one if something went wrong.

But he didn't know any of those things yet, and knowing them was supposed to come before you were allowed to call yourself an engineer.

Every time Mert explained something, Tim would need three more explanations of the principles underpinning the first answer. It felt like he was trying to get a six-year university education at the same time as he was working his apprenticeship, except that even a first-year at university knew more than Tim did about almost everything.

It didn't help that half the time Mert spent lecturing him, Tim would be staring off into space and doodling something on his tablet instead of taking proper notes.

Mert had signed off on an entire crop of apprentices, taken on a second crop, and signed off on them as well, before Tim was reaching anything approaching a level of knowledge and skill that would make Mert feel confident recommending him for a job that did not involve constant, unrelenting supervision.

When one of the third crop screwed up, Tim "eyeballed" a last-beat correction that resulted in the ship exiting fold-space with a slagged drive and a real-space momentum vector that would slam it into a planet in a span of spans, as opposed to the ship's atoms being distributed roughly equally across the entirety of the star system they had been traveling to.

Mert would later insist that the three cracked teeth he suffered that day came from banging his head when the ship made its awkward "landing" and not from clenching his jaw to keep from strangling Tim then and there.

It was in the aftermath of the crash that Tim started to win Mert over. It didn't happen all at once, of course. But he was gradually forced to admit that it was possible the chattering monkey that the company had made his responsibility might not be a complete idiot.

After consulting with the captain, Mert himself, and a fellow human with an interest in history, Tim enlisted the maintenance division's assistance and turned the slagged drive into a primitive form of FTL communication which would use the ship's reactor to create modulated pulses in fold-space. The drive and reactor would probably both have imploded if Tim's machine had tried to go beyond creating those short pulses, but it didn't need to.

Tim didn't have any schematics for his abominable creation. It's entirely possible the device was the first of its kind. It was crude and ugly and would probably destroy what remained of the ship if it was left active for long periods of time - just what Mert had expected of human technology. But all of his instruments told him that, nevertheless, it was working.

With rescue now a real possibility, discussions turned to how everyone was going to survive long enough for help to arrive.

There were several species employed aboard, but the ship had come to a stop in something that, if not a desert, was close enough that nobody had a better word for it. There was vegetation and animal life, but not a lot of it, and if there was any water it seemed like it was busy being part of those local life forms. Temperatures during the day were too hot for most of the crew - during the night, they were too cold.

The range of hostile conditions meant it was unsafe at one time of day or another for nearly every species to be caught outside for more than a span. Every species but one.

The gravity was close enough to what the humans had grown up with, and there was about the right amount of oxygen in the air. They had sunscreen, and they turned spare bedding into cold weather clothes. The possibility of local animals being hostile came up, but Tim assured everyone that he had an idea.

Mert was not comforted by the fact that all of the other humans were instinctively wary of any idea proposed by a human engineer.

Tim got to work again, and cobbled together... something.

It was probably a weapon, Mert decided, based on the general shape and the fact that the power pack pressure-taped to its side contained enough stored energy to act as a bulkhead breaching charge if it were handled wrongly enough.

Everyone demanded a demonstration before they would let him build more than one prototype, so Tim climbed onto the ship's hull, took aim through primitive sights, and fired.

When he did, Mert understood why Tim had taken the precaution of packing cloth into his ears, and then putting earmuffs on as well. Whatever the weapon fired had been quite abruptly accelerated to several times the speed of sound in the local atmosphere, and the resultant pressure wave was almost painful, even from a fair distance away.

Quite understandably, every one of the local animals that had come to indulge their curiosity about the big shiny egg that had fallen out of the sky immediately bolted for safety. Well, except for the one Tim had shot, which had a hole that was roughly the size of Mert's smallest toe-claw in one side of its chest, but as wide as his leg on the other side.

"What in the hells is wrong with you?!" Mert shouted.

And then he climbed up onto the hull, yanked the earmuffs off, and shouted it again. But of course Tim was just grinning at him like the idiot he was.

"I thought so! Remember a couple of years ago, you were telling me about how the conducting rails are made to ultra-high specs in order to power the drive without deforming from carrying so much current on them? And I forget when, but I definitely recall you telling me that the reactor shield is made up of these little round tiles that are ferromagnetic, and the field presses them into place to block radiation any time the reactor is spun up, automatic-like? So I said to myself: Tim, I said, I bet you could make a sweet rail gun out of those things. And it totally worked! It didn't blow up or melt all over my hands, not even a little bit!"

"Your entire species is crazy. How could you possibly have known that it would function?" Mert was furious - this kind of irresponsible attitude was exactly why he hated being the one expected to teach a human how to handle a position where not allowing technology to kill anyone was kind of the whole point.

"I had a good working theory! That's how technology moves forward. If nobody is willing to be the first to try it, nobody ever tries it. And if nobody ever tries it, you'll never have any proof of whether it works or not." Maybe Tim had a point, loath as Mert was to admit it.

"Besides, rail guns are awesome!" Then again, maybe not.

For the rest of his career, "a good working theory" was one of Mert's favorite ways of mocking an apprentice when they hadn't done the math and their proposed solution was something incredibly stupid which could potentially kill everyone on the ship.

Four human crew members received a rail gun for personal defense, although they were warned not to use them unless necessary, because Tim would only say that "they won't kill the user within the first eight shots, probably."

Mert noticed that in a combination of optimism (that the weapon would operate for so long) and pessimism (that they might be necessary) Tim handed out twenty of the reactor shield "slugs" to each of his fellow humans.

The four braved the desert, a week at a time, bringing back everything from the local equivalent of the prickly pear to tightly sealed storage crates of cloudy water they had filtered through a spare pair of socks to alien critters that they had reportedly "walked to death" because they didn't trust Tim's rifles enough to hunt with them.

If they needed a new tool, Tim would pull out his tablet of sketches and find some part of the ship that he could scavenge to accomplish the desired effect.

A portable water purifier. Compasses and surveying gear. Low-powered hover sledges made out of cargo handling trucks to carry the recovered "spoils" across both sandy and rocky terrain. Solar panels to recharge the hover sledges' batteries.

Anything that wasn't a functioning fold-space drive, Tim seemed to be able to put together with a welding torch, a roll of pressure tape, and some part of the ship he had learned about during the endless hours of Mert's meticulous explanations.

They went out into the wastes again and again, keeping the crew from starving, until one day the ship's local EM comm receiver stuttered to life, announcing the arrival of a ship whose human crew members had refused to shut up about "morse code in a fold-space anomaly" and demanded that their captain divert course and see if it really was someone's attempt at a distress call.

As they were shutting down Tim's makeshift beacon and preparing to head back to civilization, Mert finally asked something that had been on his mind recently.

"Hey... if you were smart enough to design all those things from your sketches, why did you never object when I would berate you? I can't recall how many times I yelled at you to pay more attention, to go back to school and learn the basics, to never stop thinking until you had worked out every consequence of your actions. Didn't that ever bother you?"

Tim seemed surprised by the question.

"That was how I knew that you were the right person to learn from. I absolutely didn't know how to do the job when I first arrived. When you're bending space-time into a pretzel to travel across light-years in a matter of days, I wouldn't have trusted any Chief Engineer willing to go easy on a newbie that doesn't know what the hell they're doing."

When Tim finished his six-year contract and went home, Mert was almost sorry to see him go.

That feeling lasted right up until he heard that Tim had been immediately hired as a professor to teach fold-space drive engineering to a bunch of humans that were even younger and more excitable than he was. Just thinking about a whole generation of gangly little Tims dreaming up new abominations to build using the modern technologies that they suddenly had access to was enough to make him cold all over.

That was humans for you, Mert thought to himself. Only they could manage to be so dangerously ignorant and yet dangerously clever at the same time.

Humans are Weird – Lost and Found

Original Post: https://www.authorbettyadams.com/bettys-blog/humans-are-weird-lost-and-found

The warm angle of the front porch really wasn’t supposed to be a lounging site. Human feet trod quickly past the site, their focus on getting into the house, or getting out into the busy little community making the site theoretically dangerous for species who didn’t want to get stepped on. The ground limestone foundation had been pressed with tessellated patterns that were visually pleasing and kept the clumsy bipeds safe from slipping and throwing their falling gate out of pattern, but it tasted of nothing save the dust that collected in the groves. However if you had healthy scutes and sturdy scales, underlayed by reasonably dense bones, and an attractive layer of fat, well what did it matter if a human stepped on you? Just keep your snout safely tucked in the curve of your foreleg and at the cost of a few non-repentant apologies you had the whole morning to bask in the local sunlight.

If the grain scattered very, very well in your direction, one of the local domestic animals came and judged you a fitting headrest and came and basked with you. Sift, stretched out a claw and ‘scritiched’ the creature under its chin. It gave a grunt and the motion dislodged a small cloud of warning pheromones from its collar. Sift made a mental note to ask what its species designation was. It wasn’t a ‘cat’. Those creatures, despite being perfectly ideal for keeping local vermin off of grain stocks were rated as far too dangerous to exist in mixed colonies. Sift thought this was a bit of over caution, but it had been agreed to by the humans. This might be a ‘dog’ but the species had so much variety, supposedly going back long before the humans mastered genetic manipulation that it was hard to tell if a given mammal fell into that category. It had fur to be certain, and it was very dependent on human interaction.

The door of the dwelling swung open, knocking against the hip of the creature and it gave a mild huff of annoyance as it heaved its mass, up and away from the door. Mary stepped out, holding the little one on her hip, Sift felt a surge of now familiar admiration of the usefulness of the baby holding ledge humans had built in. Mary’s other hand held a container of the domestic creature’s food, a mix of grain and animal fat that it particularly enjoyed and it began to cavort around Mary’s feet while Mary scanned the ground with growing perplexity. She began examining the shelving with a wrinkled face and Sift lifted up her head and idly licked her teeth.

“Rooting around for something?” she asked.

Mary started and glanced down at her in surprise.

“Oh, I didn’t see you there,” she said, shifting the little one who was focused on drinking water out of a soft cup.

“Here I am,” Sift commented, wondering not for the first time exactly how human vision worked. “What are you looking for?”

“The food bowl for Snuffles,” Mary said indicating the animal who had decided to sit down and tremble with eagerness until its food was forthcoming.

Sift rolled over and lifted her snout to sniff with dramatic emphasis. Then she swung her tail to indicate a door set low and subtly into the wall of the structure.

“I smell the grain and rancid fat in here,” she said with a yawn.

Mary’s face creased in a frown and she set the little one down. Instantly it ran, smacking its fat little feet against the porch, to vigorously pet the creature. Snuffles started back with a wince, and then braced itself to accept the affection. Mary used her now free hand to open the door and pull out the container.

“How-” she started to ask, but the little human made a dash at the food bowl, hands eagerly out, and Snuffles sat back with a resigned sigh.

Mary snatched the little one up and scolded the very unrepentant child.

“We don’t steal Snuffles’s food!” she said.

Snuffles got back up and began happily rooting through the food.

“No one would have put the bowl in the utility access point,” Mary observed out loud.

“It has very small human handprints on the side,” Sift pointed out.

Mary squinted down at the bowl and blinked in surprise before turning her attention to her offspring.

“Why would you do that, you chubby little chonker?” she demanded, pinching the jiggling rolls of fat on the little human’s thighs?

The little one giggled and smacked her face. Mary with clear effort turned her laugh into a frown and captured the chubby little arm in a hand.

“We don’t smack Mommy,” she said in what was trying to be a firm tone.

Sift gurgled in amusement.

“But why?” the adult human demanded.

“The little one does see you putting bowls in similar storage places on a regular basis,” Sift pointed out.

Mary blinked down at her in startled thought until the little one used his other hand to reach up and smack her, and she had to repeat the gentle discipline. Human hatchlings, apparently hated being restrained, at least this one did. Once that was done Mary gave a rueful smile down at Sift.

“I guess you are right,” she admitted. “I’ll have to remember that little trick until he gets bored of it.”

Sift blinked up at the human as she went back in the house. The two of them had spent many long hours discussing human learning patterns. Mary was well aware of the fact that all sapient creatures learned by mimicking their elders to one degree or another, that this was the core of the universal concept of ‘play’. Yet it seemed that she had forgotten it. Sift yawned and flipped over, stretching her hind-claws against the texture of the porch. This might be yet another manifestation of ‘baby brain’ that Mary talked so much about. Or it might be something worth noting in her research journal. At the moment Snuffles was done eating, the sun was still at the perfect napping angle, and human architecture consistently made delightful sunning nooks.

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Previous

First | Website (more chapters available)

++++++++++++++++++++++++

“Eighty-four,” he replied with gusto. The elderly man looked a lot younger than that. He wore a t-shirt with an image of some Lunar crater and the words “get off my lawn” in high impact font right in the center.

“Eighty-four, wow!” Salma said, shaking his hand gently. His grip was a lot stronger than she expected too, especially from a moonie. There was evidently something to the common assumption that people aged better here than back on Earth. “You don’t look a day over forty, sir!”

“Aha, thank you, Madam President. But I have to warn you, I’m no longer eligible to vote on Earth since I renounced my citizenship—”

Prime Minister Farid introduced him. “This is one of our original founders, Lieutenant Commander Scott Clover.”

“Wow. One of the founders of the original Lunar Alliance?” she asked, posing with a smile as the official photographers did their jobs. Hopefully this guy wasn’t some crazy terrorist during the war or something…

“Of the Lunar colony!” Scott corrected.

“Of the—” She did a double take. “From the—”

He beamed back at her. “Artemis-26 mission. 2038. Extraction module commander, at your service.”

For a moment she was at a loss for words. “Um… wow. That’s—” She recovered quickly and gave him a gentle pat on the back. “Hey NASA, we found him! After all these years!”

He laughed an old man’s laugh at her joke, with a rasp from regolith-induced asthma that was too advanced for them to get rid of. “They needed someone to stay, just to see if we could… So I stayed around. And stayed. But I never thought I would live to see this day.”

“For whatever reason you did it, I’m honored to meet you, astronaut.”

Scott turned and saluted Julia as well. “Commodore.”

Which wasn’t technically against protocol, especially in front of the flags. Earth’s national militaries generally did salute Union spacers, but she clearly wasn’t expecting it from an 84-year-old veteran who retired from his service nearly half a century ago. She hurried to return his gesture, then shook his hand. “Lieutenant Commander Clover.”

Scott smiled slyly. “I’ve heard a lot of good things about you too.”

“Thank you, uh… sir.”

“We get the news here. The attack on the colony. You didn’t let the slimy aliens walk all over us,” he said. “Good work showing them what we’re made of.”

Julia managed to keep her face straight. “I’ll keep that in mind, sir.”

The ceremony carried on around them. More handshakes, more camera flashes. Scott’s gaze drifted past the crowd to the dark curve of the Lunar horizon beyond the window. Julia noticed the change in his face. The pride had drained away, replaced by something quieter. “You alright?” she asked softly.

“You know, most folks,” he said. “Most folks don’t realize how much history hides beneath this colony. How much sacrifice, how much risk it all was from the beginning…”

“Only someone like you would know,” she replied.

“As would you. A colonist. Not like…” The elderly astronaut looked around at the room before his eyes settled back on her. “You’re a real colonist. A real explorer.”

She shrugged, unsure what to say.

He let off a dry chuckle as he changed the subject. “You ever heard of the Challenger disaster back in 1986?”

“The space shuttle that broke apart?”

He nodded slowly. “Seven spacers. It broke up in the atmosphere, just seconds into its final flight.”

“They showed a video of it in training, back in Pearl. Something about the boosters.”

“Exactly right. Eroded O-rings from its right solid rocket booster failed, causing an explosion in the liquid hydrogen tank.” His voice sharpened, almost clinical now, as if recalling a preflight briefing from decades ago. “The spacecraft disintegrated at Mach Two into a thousand pieces. In Mission Control, down in Houston, Flight Director Greene locked the doors. Fourteen kilometers above his head, the remnants of the Challenger rained down, but the main cabin pod remained intact. It had briefly sustained a few dozen gravities of acceleration in the explosion, but the crew were still alive. Conscious.”

Scott paused, eyes distant. “Three out of four emergency air supplies recovered were manually switched on, including for the pilot by someone behind him. Pilot Smith attempted to restart power to the cabin with the switches on his right hand electrical panel. There was nothing any of them could have done, but from all available evidence, the crew members tried to work the problem for another two minutes and forty-five seconds until their final impact with the ocean… Most people find that horrifying.”

“Falling in a broken pod, and with nothing you can do but wait for death,” Julia breathed. “That is utterly horrifying.”

He gave a tired half-smile. “Until my accident, I thought so too.”

“Your accident? Oh, right, I think I remember something about that too…”

“Ahaha. They made a couple movies about it. I didn’t think it was that special, but I’m not going to complain…”

“Oh! Yes! I saw one of them, Two Fingers From Death.”

“That wasn’t the good one… They got it all wrong. My late wife didn’t mind being played by Rita Marshall, but that wasn’t how it happened…”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Nearly half a century ago

The rover hummed beneath Scott as it crawled across the edge of the Serenity basin, its tires leaving perfect tracks in the regolith behind him. The thin dust lifted around the wheels and fell right back down in gentle arcs.

He had been out for most of the day already.

Samples packed. Little bags of rocks snugly fit in the webbed compartment on the back of his rover. Pictures taken. Sensor readings logged. Check.

This was not what he thought he’d be doing. Scott had signed up in another world. He was trained for another mission. The final send-off of the International Space Station. That was going to be the capstone of his career. After that, he’d expected his future missions to be endless habitability studies on whichever commercial low orbit space station NASA was going to pick to replace it.

The Artemis program expansion changed all that. It changed everything.

When the orbital scanner on Artemis II found a greater amount of Helium-3 on the surface of the moon than everyone expected, the world reacted like one of those moments where a parent would pat their child on the head for discovering a new pattern in the cloud. Good job, NASA. Very cool. A pilot program for in-situ resource utilization? How much money would it be? Yikes. Why don’t we table that for now? Let’s talk about it after the next election cycle.

The massive and continuing energy shortages of the 20’s made people desperate. And when people were desperate, governments became desperate. New solutions had to be explored. The fusion breakthroughs opened the doors of possibility, and with them, the doors of power. When people put two and two together, it was not often Congress authorized a discretionary funding figure twelve times what the department requested at the start of the fiscal year, and NASA wasn’t inclined to say no. With more funding came a larger mission scope. The Artemis program was originally funded for five missions, then ten missions, then thirty missions. There were rumblings in Washington about a whole new department to manage future lunar activities.

That was how Scott found himself on the Artemis rosters. It required additional training. But he was an astronaut. He was always training anyway.

As it turned out, he didn’t need most of it. In classic NASA fashion, the mission had been over-designed. Which was fine as far as he was concerned. Much better to be overprepared than to be underprepared. Here, his job was to follow a checklist of well-written instructions that accounted for every possibility and contingency. The only reason they didn’t just send robots instead of people was because space exploration was one of those human endeavors where the excitement and danger of failure were part of the point.

That was a fun thought.

They did send robots too. But people like him were here to smile for pictures so that NASA could go begging for more money in Washington, to send more robots.

This was… objectively boring work. And yet, oddly enough, nobody in his position had ever voiced a complaint about that.

Bump.

Scott’s teeth rattled as his rover’s deformable wheels skipped across a gap he didn’t see, jarring him back to the present. There was something about the gray expanse that made it hard to concentrate. He’d only had half a cup of coffee earlier this morning. No more than that was allowed; that was part of some experiment, and the terms stipulated exactly half a cup, no more no less.

At least the day was almost over, in more ways than one. He’d been up for ten hours, which meant that the work day was almost over. And as he stared up at the curved black sky with the sun on the horizon, the lunar day was almost over too.

Bump.

Mildly rough terrain. He jotted that down on his mission tablet.

It took him another five minutes to reach his last mission marker. Replaced a consumable part on some machinery digging into the regolith. It was so new that they were making adjustments to it even as they loaded it onto the mission package. Scott hadn’t been fully trained on it, but he’d been trained to follow instructions. The process went through without a hitch.

Right as he mounted back on his rover to turn back towards the hab modules, he saw something flash in the distance.

A glint.

Scott froze.

This was something that happened from time to time. From the days of Apollo, astronauts had reported seeing streaks of flashing lights and shapes in the distance. It was caused by cosmic rays hitting sensory cones in the human eye. Not real.

He blinked his eyes and looked again.

What the hell?

He blinked again.

The glint was still there.

For a second, he thought it was a reflection from his own headlights. He swiveled them left, then right, then back again. The glint came again from the lip of a dark crevice at the bottom of a shallow, distant crater.

No way…

That was in the mission brief. Such a possibility existed. It’d been known that it existed.

Water.

Permafrost in the lunar regolith. It’d been found elsewhere on the moon, but nowhere near the Serenity Basin which most of the new Artemis missions had been marked for. The implications were obvious.

Water is life. Water is a bigger colony. Water is more money for more missions.

It couldn’t be. Probably wasn’t. But if it was…

For a fleeting moment, the thought crossed his mind that the sensible thing was to mark the coordinates and come back tomorrow. But… the hallucination could be gone tomorrow.

Scott stared at the crater.

At the mission clock.

Back at the crater.

The glint was still there.

“Yeah,” he muttered to himself. “Plenty of time.”

He turned the rover towards the crater, into its mouth, and then down the slope.

At first, it was fine. The tires crunched over the hard-packed dust. His headlights spilled across ridges and little rocks in a thousand shades of gray. The crater wall rose behind him, blocking more and more of the sun, and the light dropped away faster than he expected.

Then faster.

Which was fine.

He had a flashlight on his rover, a flashlight in his toolkit, a flashlight on his wrist, and a flashlight on his helmet. Carried them all the way from Earth, might as well put them to good use.

The light from behind him cut out completely, and Scott finally got a sense of how dark things could truly get on the moon.

Lunar darkness.

It’d been a major concern to NASA. All of the Apollo missions had been full daytime missions. Up until now, the Artemis missions were either orbital or day missions as well. But at some point, people needed to be able to live on the moon, and that meant living in the dark.

His headlights should have helped. They didn’t. They turned the dust in front of him into a white sheet wall and everything beyond it into ink. He switched on the auxiliary lamps. Then his wrist light. Then the helmet light.

It didn’t help much.

He slowed his rover. Or at least he tried. He hit the brakes.

For one long, stupid second, Scott didn’t understand what had happened. The front wheels dipped, and the rover lurched. He saw loose regolith flowing beside him like gray water.

The wheels locked.

That didn’t help.

The rover slid. It spun sideways, the lightweight metal joints groaning as it did. His suit picked up the vibration through the seat and his boots and his bones.

He glanced at the ground, and he realized that it wasn’t just his rover. The whole ground was moving now, a layer of dust and gravel giving way beneath his seat, carrying him down into the crater.

Something big shifted in the darkness above, his helmet light reflecting the presence of its shadow directly into his eyes.

A boulder the size of a bus.

A goddamn bus rolling towards his rover in slow motion.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Previous

{Shared early on Patreon}
~~~

I checked the area around my feet before opening the door to the engine room. It was habit at this point, but there’s definitely nowhere worse for a cat to sneak into on a spaceship, except maybe an unoccupied cockpit. Thankfully, Telly was more interested in the cat walkways we’d set up on other parts of the ship. I’d made sure we didn’t install any of those around here; no point in tempting that famous cat curiosity.

Human curiosity, though, that was encouraged. Today was another session of cross-training, when I got to learn the basics of other roles on the ship along with my own. I was a big fan. And not just because that meant we were all less likely to die horribly if something happened to Mimi and no one else knew what the various warning lights meant.

Probably it would be fine. But it always paid to take precautions. And anyways, I was eager to learn about all the bits and bobs. Some of it was wildly different from Earth technology.

Today it was weirdly quiet too, because we were parked at the moment. As I shut the door, I studied the way sounds really echoed down here when the flight engines were turned off. Lots of space for noises to bounce between panels and wires and things with weird names.

I called, “Knock knock,” wondering how deep in the guts of the ship Mimi was at the moment. He’d probably hear me easily in all this silence.

“Coming,” rumbled Mimi’s gravely voice from somewhere nearby. Could have been anywhere, really. There were lots of hidey-hole options for a mechanic who looked like an octopus.

I looked around, wondering where he’d crawl out from, only to be surprised when a door slid open at knee level. Right, I hadn’t forgotten that was there at all. And I definitely hadn’t felt dumb when I’d first realized that the little thing I’d taken for a storage cabinet was actually the doorway to Mimi’s bedroom.

He scrambled out, all toothpaste-green tentacles and rough voice. “‘Morning.” The room behind him was hard to see from this angle, but it looked well-lit, and I caught sight of what passed for a chair among Strongarms. It looked like a cat bed. I opened my mouth for small talk, but Mimi asked, “Do you think hard water would work as a murder weapon?”

“What?” I asked. “Why?”

Mimi flipped a tentacle to smack the little door-closing button. “For a story. Wanna have an interesting murder weapon in this one.”

I had so many questions. “You write murder mysteries?” Somehow it had never really occurred to me to wonder how he spent his time when not tightening valves and whatever.

“Sure,” he said easily, tentacle-walking further into the engine room. “It’s just another sort of puzzle, and the ones I’ve read are fun. Started writing new ones a while ago — with accurate star drive descriptions — and branched out from there.”

I followed, smiling. “Was somebody else doing it wrong?”

“So wrong,” he grumbled. “My first plot may not have been all that original, but by the deep currents, it was at least correct.”

“Good! As it should be.”

“Yep. Now I’m planning one that I want to hinge on some sort of uncommon technology, or something otherwise unexpected. Thought maybe that Waterwill stuff could work, though I mostly see it used for soft things.”

“Hm, yeah,” I agreed. “Maybe the villain could suffocate somebody with the shopping bag version?”

“Eh, maybe. Not exactly glamorous.”

“Does it have to be?”

“No,” Mimi admitted. “But it’s also not unglamorous enough to be interesting. I’ll keep working on it. Anyways, we were going to go over troubleshooting today. What would you check first if the engines weren’t putting out enough thrust?”

I thought back to the basics he’d gone over before. “The diagnostic screen.”

“Right. What do you do if that screen is blank?”

“Ooh. Swear and panic?”

Mimi chuckled at that. “Sure, then you check the power cord for the screen, since one type of overheated decoupling can affect both things. Yes, it’s stupid, but at least there’s an easy fix.”

“That’s good.”

“Sure is. Right over here.”

He showed me where to find the safety mechanism that solved one problem by creating another, and went over what to do about it. I jotted down notes on my phone. My memory was pretty good, but I just knew that if this ever came up, I was going to want to have the steps written down to be sure.

From there we moved on to other hypothetical problems and what to do about them, sticking with issues that could easily be solved by someone who lacked his years of training. Some disasters would end in a distress call and/or an outside professional, but that’s life sometimes.

As I looked through a nest of wires for corrosion, I asked, “Have you written a murder mystery where the driver of the rescue tow is the villain?”

“Nah. Too obvious,” Mimi said as he sorted through tools. “And those folks go through an intense certification process, at least in all the parts of space I’m familiar with. There are records of where they go, so they’re unlikely to get away with anything nefarious.”

“Makes sense.”

“The traveling fuel sellers though, they’re too obvious because there’s no one tracking them at all. They get a bad rap because plenty of them really are fronts for banditry, preying on desperate folks who sprung a leak or didn’t think ahead.”

“Oh. That’s unfortunate.”

“Yep. Makes for good material about bounty hunters, though. I thought about writing some pure action stuff, but it just seems simplistic,” Mimi said, picking a tool and clambering up onto a curved bit of engine housing to tighten bolts. He pointed at one for my benefit. “These tend to work loose from the vibrations eventually, but the panel has to be removable, so we don’t want to replace them with rivets.”

“Gotcha.”

“And like I was saying, the mystery of it all is the fun part,” he said, returning to the topic. “That’s why I start with the solution, then work backward to cover it up with as many layers of clues and decoys as possible. I’ll have to do some research into obscure tech for this one. Maybe something with holograms.”

In my wire-inspecting, I recognized the spot where I’d helped hold a wire in place with chewed gum once. That made me think of something now. “What if it just looks like a technological thing, but the real answer is something really simple?”

Mimi tightened another bolt. “Like what?”

“Well, when you said ‘hard water,’ the first thing I thought of was ice,” I admitted. “What if the murder weapon melted? Is that overdone? It’s one of those silly ideas for murder mysteries where I’m from.”

“Hmm.” He moved higher, sounding thoughtful. “That’s not a bad thought, though I was aiming for something a little more complicated. I was hoping to frame it as a mystical thing where someone makes a big deal of cursing an organization, and they keep dying with no witnesses to see what’s actually doing it. Not a stab-the-victim-then-run situation; the villain would be caught if it was a close up murder each time.”

“Well,” I said, “Do the victims have to be in a locked room, or can there be a window?”

“Not one that somebody could stab through.”

“But maybe they could throw a chunk of ice really hard?”

Mimi looked at me. “That would have to be thrown really hard to kill them on impact.”

I shrugged and held up a fist. “Human baseball players can throw something this size as fast as a landspeeder. A chunk of solid ice like that could definitely kill somebody, then leave just a puddle. Like a killer hailstone with precise aim.”

“Hmm,” he said. “Hmm. That is pretty absurd. Definitely unexpected if I set things up to seem like there’s either a mystical or a technological explanation.”

I grinned. “The villain claims it’s magic, the investigator is sure it’s exotic holograms that someone figured out how to turn solid, when really it’s just somebody with a good throwing arm and a grudge?”

“The readers wouldn’t see that coming.”

“Much like the victims!”

Mimi laughed, a gravelly chuckle. “I’ll have to leave the villain’s species unclear at first, so no one thinks of that absurd human throwing ability.”

“Could be an assassin,” I suggested. “With hilariously low-tech killing methods. Though if they’ve done this before, someone would probably remember.”

“Could be a different character with a secondary grudge,” Mimi said, pausing to think it through with some of the bolts still waiting. “Maybe the primary villain roped them into it. Or they both want the victims dead, and they’re not working together at all!”

“Lots of possibilities!” I said.

“That would be pretty funny if the one claiming to curse them really had no idea why they’re actually dying.”

“There’s a classic story on Earth where the twist ending is that all of the suspects did it,” I told him. “They all stabbed him at different points in the night, because they all had reasons to hate him.”

Mimi pointed a tentacle at me. “That I like.”

“Yeah, it’s really clever. The investigator ends up covering for them too, because he realizes they all have good reasons for it. He blames it on some random stranger who’s long gone. It’s a nice secondary twist at the end.”

“Very nice,” Mimi agreed. “I’ll have to see if I can wrangle something similarly surprising. Maybe some side distraction with multiple explanations for the water.”

“Magical goo or technological goo?”

He shrugged several tentacles. “Waterwill tech, or some unknown biological process. And sure, magical goo.”

“Ooh, maybe the victims keep exotic animals, like a fish tank full of slimy things. The investigation could think something escaped from there.”

“When really it’s someone outside the window with a bucket of ice.” Mimi smiled and went back to tightening bolts. “Definitely onto something here.”

I grinned. “I’d love to read it when you’re finished!”

“I’ll let you know. For now, lemme show you another thing here.” He finished with the bolts and climbed over to a small display screen, pushing back a stray cord that kept falling in front of it. He grumbled, “Keep forgetting to fix that. Just a little spacer right there would hold it.” He pressed it back into a narrow space, which it fell back out of.

I dug a tiny foam ball out of a pocket. “Will this work?”

“What’s this?” Mimi said, picking it up with a test squeeze.

“Cat toy.”

“Of course it is.” Mimi lifted the cord again and shoved the ball under it, which held it in place perfectly. “Mark down another victory for low-tech solutions.”

I grinned. “And this one won’t melt all over the engine!”

“Oh, it had better not. That would be horrendous.”

“We can leave the melting for the murder mysteries.”

“Absolutely.”

~~~

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*the novel these are prequels to (A Swift Kick to the Thorax)
*other writing and links

We’re at the kitchen table and I try not to run my hands over the wood, knowing it will splinter into my hands like it does every time I look for a smooth surface to wash my pain away.

‘Can you pass me the salt?’

I look up, wishing the salt would slide too along the table, but of course it won’t. Nothing is ever easy, is it? Everything has to be earned, my mom would always say. I slide the salt to my brother anyway, and it wobbles as it topsy turvy makes it way over to him, barely staying upright like a spinning top running out of patience to keep going.

He catches it and glances at me sardonically, a million looks in one. He knows me and my flying pigtails will never slow down enough to pick something up, carry it somewhere, and put it down. Careful, careful! My mom always said, but my brother and I know I will never listen. It’s tough to part of me to know how annoying I can be, but really I think the world is the annoying one. Who asked me, anyway? Who asked me to be here, do this whole song and dance, rather than a song and dance I could choose freely, breeze caressing my skin in the rain, water splashing up to my knees, mud on my face dripping down my neck.

The cat jumps up onto the table, tail grey and furry thwacking relentlessly, managing to put hair into my mouth, my brother’s mouth, and onto the mac and cheese in the center of the table. The tail hits one last thing as my brother angrily grabs the cat and throws him at the couch, the cat indifferently landing against the brown ancient cushions and resumes casually grooming itself. The salt wobbles and finally lands on its side, spilling over its tiny white crystals like a crime scene outline of a person on the table.

I see the salt and start crying, my mom looked exactly like that last year, blank eyes staring up at the ceiling, arms akimbo on the floor, neither of us kids knowing what a heart attack was, much less that it looked different on women than the dramatic chest clutching I saw on the tv last month that sent me flying away from the tv and onto my tiny bed’s thin worn sheets and flat unwelcoming pillow.

‘It’s just salt, Ellie!’ my brother cries out.

My legs want to carry me as far away as I can, but instead I grab my napkin next to me, get up, and start to sweep the salt off the table into my waiting hand.

"Their lines are shattered. Press the advantage!" The War Chief raised his ceremonial sword, pointing at the large screen, where the coalition fleet was visibly losing its cohesion. He could feel the end drawing near, after years of this grueling back-and-forth. Despite his forces outnumbering and outgunning the inners, they managed to stall his advance and turn the war that should have been a quick and rather one-sided affair by now, into an absolute slog and exercise in frustration for him. Finally, he would crush the backbone of their armada before they could scatter into the void.

The flagship's captain turned to him. "My Lord, they are extending their flanks. It seems they are hoping for a repeat of last time. Despite the apparent chaos at the center, they managed to cycle out their most damaged capital ships to the back. I believe..."

But the War Chief did not wait for his subordinate to finish. "I see what they are doing. We won't have a repeat of that embarrassing display here! Send a message to charge the stellar lance! Target the planet and make it obvious! We shall see how eager they are to abandon billions of their citizens to their fate."

There were a few glances exchanged among the command crew. But none dared to question the orders of their supreme leader. It was not as if there did not exist, mountains of corpses already, on both sides. But despite their hatred and disdain for the inners, and their soft, cowardly ways, as well as the hunger for revenge, the prospect of wiping out a civilian population of that size gave even them a pause. There was a world of difference between killing an enemy in a fight, and butchering the defenseless.

It would take time for the coalition fleet to realize what was happening. The War Chief could wait a few hours more. Either they would turn in a desperate attempt to stop what he was about to do, and he would finally crush their main force. Or their display of cowardice would shatter the unity of the inner's pathetic little banding together, this alliance of weaklings and deluded fanatics putting their faith in myths and neglectful precursors. He wished he could look into those arrogant, self-assured eyes and optics again, to ask. "Where are your gods now? Want to tell me again how you are the chosen people destined to rule this galaxy?" As he pointed a giant gun at them that could wipe them out in one stroke, together with the world they were standing on.

"Energy spike!" The report came with a tone that made it clear this was not the result of their weapon firing. Not that the War Chief ordered them to fire in the first place. So naturally, he turned to the officers monitoring the sensor readings. "Where?" Before he could continue, there was a flash of light, blinding everyone in the control center.

It was not just that they were blinded. The crew all shared the same experience of disorientation, being deaf and blind, as well as not being sure which way was up for a few seconds. They needed a minute to even remember who they were and what they were doing here after the experience. Only once they managed to collect themselves did they realize that they were no longer alone.

The guards were the first to react, and it took a bit of shouting on the part of the War Chief to stop them from blowing holes into the command center's equipment as they were firing on the figure floating in the middle of it. "Stop shooting, you idiots! Have you not noticed already how it goes through them after the first burst?! It must be a hologram." He actually doubted that, but it was the best explanation that would satisfy the rest of his crew for the moment. Well, before they would remember that, likely anyone capable of projecting a hologram into this command center could just as easily flood it with deadly radiation. The other thing that worried him, besides the figure floating and glowing, was how they looked. There was something eerily familiar about them. "Who... what the heck are you, and why are you here?" He shifted sideways from the figure, like a predator looking for the best angle to pounce.

The figure spoke in a voice that did not seem like a transmission of any kind, but as if they stood there. Addressing the crew in their native tongue. "I am certain you already figured out the why, War Chief Kranona. I am here to stop you! The who? You can address me as Alex. The what, as you already suspect. I am human."

-x-

You could hear nothing but the cracking of sparks from the damaged equipment, and the occasional beep from one of the instruments still working. The room was frozen, and everyone, either openly stared at the glowing figure in the middle, or at least kept an eye on it from the side.

The War Chief was the first to speak after the revelation. "Ha! The gods of inners finally show themselves? A bit late to the party, are we?" His words were meant more for his crew, rather than the being or projection or whatever the thing in front of him was. A show of confidence, where he himself could not afford to give away his doubts and fears. He had to suppress the urge to raise his pistol and empty the magazine into the apparition, knowing full well it would just add to the embarrassment after his guards tried that already. "Excuse us, if we don't throw ourselves at your feet and beg for forgiveness. Because I don't buy it!"

The figure spoke again, still with perfect Raphali instead of the broken imitation of the language that universal translators did, or the heavy accent and distortions of other species learning their language. And took the relaxed voice of someone talking about the weather, but with a cheeky undertone. "Didn't think you would. Nobody ever does, really. They all have their own expectations, with a heavenly choir and a booming voice from a giant, idealized version of their own species. Might have something to do with the false impressions created by the overly enthusiastic reverence of our children. No matter how many times we tell them that we are not gods. Only older. More powerful. Ascended. In a generation or two, they replace our memory with perfect idols of something else, and the message with the thing they wanted to hear. But right here, right now? For all intents and purposes, from your perspective. That difference between us and gods? It is a technicality."

The being flicked its fingers, and existence itself turned inside out. The War Chief could barely find his footing again as artificial gravity stopped for a bit, and then turned back on again as the indicators for being on emergency power came on. He could only listen to his officers trying to restore order. There were shouts demanding reports, status updates about the state of navigation, how the stars disappeared, how they could not see the rest of the fleet, or the enemy, or anything at all. The ship lost main power, and was apparently drifting in an empty void.

"Now that everyone is in their own timeout box, let's talk!" The voice came from the side of the main command chair.

"Wait!" The War Chief had to raise his hand to stop his guards from trying to shoot the human again. Who was no longer glowing with that golden light, or floating. It just looked like any other living being, one similar to the Raphali themselves. Sharing the basic upright tetrapod shape didn't mean much. It was one of the most common configurations that evolution tended to gravitate towards. And mammal analogues were not exactly rare either. But now, as he looked at it, he was trying to visualize what its skeleton would look like. Also, their current predicament reminded him of certain mysteries in astronomy. Really, he was getting to a number of disturbing conclusions. But before he could voice any of them, there was the matter of addressing the apparently all-powerful being on his bridge who had just cast him and his crew into a void lacking any stars. "All right, Mr not-a-god, except might as well be. What do you want? Unless it is just to see us insects squirm as you are pointing the magnifying glass at us."

"Isn't it obvious? We, and by that I mean myself and the rest of the humans still watching over this galaxy, want you to stop murdering each other on an industrial scale!" Alex put his hands on his hips, looking at the Raphali War Chief as if scolding an unruly child. That the base human form was also quite a bit taller than a normal Raphali, did not help with dispelling that image.

Kranona, for his part, didn't feel like bowing to this interloper. Regardless if he believed that they could end him and his entire civilization, and his species, with one snap of a finger. Heck, just because they transported his ship to somewhere else, did not mean he believed the rest of it. But he was not going to demand a demonstration of their power. That was not his main issue. "Picked one heck of a time to jump in. Is it the murdering which is the problem, or just the scale of it? What am I asking? Either way. I think everyone, even our enemies would have the same question then. Why now? Why not earlier? I don't know, the start of the war, or the incidents leading up to it? Or any other war before this one?"

"That is funny coming from you." The human crossed his arms. "Sorry, did I say funny? I meant tragic, and extremely hypocritical." He grimaced. He did not need to say it. The term mass murderer would hang in the air.

The War Chief was having none of this, and was now showing his teeth. "Oh sorry, I don't have the luxury of wishing my problems away! Of snapping my fingers to make our enemies go poof."

"That this would be your go-to solution is part of the problem." Alex mused.

"No, the problem is you!" Kranona pointed at the human. "What right do you have? After watching and doing nothing. To come in and demand that we stop because it is starting to look ugly? For us it has been ugly for a very long time already. And when we finally manage to rise up, push back. You come in and demand that we stand down? Where was that sentiment when the boots were on the feet of the inners, and stomping on our heads? Oh right, that is the real problem, isn't it? They are your children, not us! Would it have killed you not-gods, to occasionally rein in your spoiled brats when they misbehaved? No, you only intervene when the consequences of their actions come back to bite them!"

"You are having a rather one-sided view of the matter." The human frowned.

"I take your word for it, Mr all-knowing. Who should not be called god, just be treated like one. Do you have any idea how it is to be on the receiving end? To be small, afraid and hurting? Every other day, mourning loved ones you could not protect, one after the other? How could you, from your throne or heavenly tower or whatever it is you supposedly watch from?" He waved dismissively. "Now, either do what you did to the Grevosians as you are planning, or begone and let us finish what we started."

The human raised an eyebrow. "We are not actually omniscient. And I am impressed that you even know about them. Or that name."

"Our astronomers have long worked on the mystery of the seemingly nonsensical trajectory of various objects in our galaxy, as if there had been some major gravity wells that just up and disappeared at some point. There were also legends of course, along with some archeological findings, rare as they might have been. We actually had scouts travel far enough to catch the light from those stars that someone or something just removed nearly a hundred thousand years ago. Seeing what just happened to my ship, and likely our entire fleet, it was not hard to put two and two together."

"And yet you still went forward with your war."

"The known history of the galaxy did not exactly hint at you still being around, or if you were, that you would care for anyone being wiped out." Kranona seemed to calm down, like a condemned man ready for his execution.

"For your information, it might have been a long time ago, but we did experience being small and frightened, and angry at the universe for it. Like I said, we are ascended. We certainly did not start out as powerful beings capable of crushing the Milky Way's civilizations with a thought. And we are not doing this now just to save our children, as you say. This is just as much for your benefit." The human's voice was softer, almost sweet in a way.

But this all just served to stoke the fire in the War Chief. "Ha! Our benefit? If you want to do something for us, step aside and let us finish what we started!"

The answer came in a tone that picked up a certain sharpness to it again. "You think you are the first ones on this path? Of endless escalation and turning your grievances into justification for horrific deeds that just fuel the exact same thing on the other side? Oh no, they bombed a colony. Time to do a genocide, I guess. Their leaders were arrogant assholes, that means every single member of that species should die, right? Even, no, especially the ones that had nothing to do with it, because how dare they keep living their lives, not even knowing what was going on a hundred light-years away?"

"What? That is not..." Kranona tried to interject.

"I am not talking about what you did right now!" The human raised a finger. "I am fully aware, by the way, that you had no intention of actually firing that stellar lance you aimed at Silago. But your subordinates were not aware, and all it would have taken for them to carry out what they believed to be your will is a sudden shift on the battlefield, and bit of trouble with communications, after say, an EMP strike close to your flagship by a stealth unit you were not aware of."

The War Chief did not say a word, only stared at the human.

"I can see that I don't need to tell you. That wiping out an entire world like that would have galvanized support for the Coalition from neutral parties. Ensuring that the war would go on far longer, with an ever-increasing death toll and no clear victor until both sides were weakened enough for certain third parties to see both your people and the inner worlds coalition as juicy meat ripe for harvest. We aren't actually omniscient. We cannot see the future or anything, but we have damn good analytics for the likely course of events when something holds our attention." He paused for a second, but there was no interruption from Kranona, Alex continued. "So you see, that is one reason why we picked this exact time to intervene. Specifically to talk to both of you at a time when you still actually have a choice without needing us to jump in. The other is, to stop you from making the same mistakes we did."

"The mistakes, you did?" Okay, this was new. The War Chief could only utter those words, and watch this supposed godly being display something like, actual regret?

"I am not talking about the Grevosians either. They were utterly incapable of regarding other advanced life as anything other than a threat that had to be wiped out. It was, not really their fault or choice. Fortunately for them and the rest of the galaxy, by then we were as we are now, and we simply put them with their stars and worlds into a pocket dimension where they can live out their existence. But on the road before our ascension..." He paused for a second. "We were on the back foot for so long, crushed under the heels of others, just like your people were. After we turned the tables, it was easy to justify the growing train of horrors, to ensure our safety and that none of it ever happened to us again, or so we told ourselves. Only we kept finding new enemies whose reactions to our atrocities against the fleeing remnants of our last set of adversaries were all the evidence we needed of their wickedness. By the time we stopped to really look at what we did, it was like waking from a nightmare of our own making. We caused more misery and death across the galaxy than a mere mortal mind could ever actually comprehend. But we certainly started to, as our final awakening started, which is why most of us decided to rather commit suicide than to have a perfect vision and memory of every life we snuffed out on our way. Tell me, would you really want your people to go down the same route?" There wasn't any malice or anger in the tone of Alex, but they might as well have been lightning and thunder in the background.

Kranona just kept staring at the human for a while, only breaking the awkward silence after he was entirely sure they had finished. "Can we go back to you just being the shitty, neglectful, but otherwise goodie-two-shoes gods of the inners? I kinda liked that setup better."

"So would I, but once your eyes are opened, you cannot go back to the blissful ignorance of your past self. Now I can already see the question in your eyes. That one of a sovereign who is fully aware that no ruler rules alone, and they are only in power as long as they do what their people, or well, at least their key supporters, expect of him. Worry not, for the time we were talking, your title of being your people's voice, wasn't just a metaphor." The human turned away, as if ready to walk out, even if there wasn't really anywhere to go in that direction.

War Chief Kranona felt like a complete mess right now, his thoughts racing. He felt a presence lift from him, something he wasn't even really aware of until it was gone. Just now, he realized that he had not been entirely himself since they were transported into this void. It was his personality and his voice, all right, but just now did he realize the truth of the human's last words to him. Well, the last words if he let them go without at least one of the many questions in his mind being answered. "Wait, there is one more thing!"

"Make it quick." Alex turned around.

"Your shape. It is, familiar. Is it just a coincidence? An extreme case of convergent evolution, that something from our past looks so much like you?"

"Ah, that!" The human smiled. "See, that is the thing. The inners are called our children, because we mostly looked after them while we still believed that direct guidance would be the best way. But our species did not emerge here. The cradle our ancestors abandoned is still in the inner rim. I think you know it well. We did not really expect another intelligent species to rise from it, to be honest. Not from the state it was left in. We are... sorry, for what it's worth." And with that, they were gone.

The War Chief remained without a word until one of his subordinates addressed him. They were asking for instructions. The stars were back, so were the other ships as the various communications came in. There was little argument against the retreat order. Nobody was quick to admit the experience they had. So the War Chief himself questioned some of his key personnel in full view of everyone. It was quickly made apparent that they all remembered the same thing, and being in their ruler's head for the duration of it. There was no arguing about it, even if some raised the idea that perhaps they and the War Chief had their minds altered to force this decision. It was quickly dismissed as a pointless perspective. By that logic, who knew if not their entire civilization wasn't brainwashed then? By the time they finished talking, the Raphalian armada was done reorganizing itself and started to jump away.

Kranona kept sitting in his throne, the command chair of his flagship, staring into nothing in particular. "Fine, we will let your spoiled adopted brats live, stupid godly cousin."

Royal Road
First|Previous|Next
“YOU ALMOST DIED?!”

“Well, I’m sure I wasn’t really in any real danger. Besides, I have this for a reason, don’t I?” At the words, Giordano’s left hand began to whirr faintly, flesh slowly melting into machine, as the fruits of his sacrifice and the gift of human technology began to make itself known.

At least until Allegra smacked it and force-stopped the process, silver metal yielding to make way for skin once more. “Not helping.” She huffed. “What do you mean that stupid bird tried to kill you during the fight?”

“That’s a bit harsh. She didn’t try to kill me per se, it was more like she couldn’t help it. Like I said, not really used to fighting unarmed humans – or armed ones, for that matter.”

“Oh, sure. She really couldn’t help nearly snapping your neck or biting your head. What an upstanding member of the clearly very moral and virtuous griffin society!” Her tone was vitriol, seething with barely-concealed fury. “Look, I know the griffins aren’t used to fighting those that aren’t their own kind. I even understand that friendly duels that don’t end with someone going six feet under are rare for these folks.”

“But that’s just the thing.” He interrupted before she could continue her soon-to-be violent rant. “They are used to fighting plenty of other different kinds of living beings, humanoid ones included. But they’re always so used to going instantly for the killing blow it’s like they’re clumsy, little amateurs again on a battlefield that doesn’t allow bloodshed.”

“So, what? They’re just bumbling under the weight of their own strength?!”

“Exactly!” His outburst startled Allegra, finally shocked out of her own anger-induced stupor. “They’re trying so hard not to accidentally break the rules – that is, killing us, pulling off a limb, and other violent stuff – they don’t even know how to fight properly any more.”

Quiet enveloped the two, the couple entrenched in their own silent thoughts too loud to be voiced in public. The canteen hummed around them without pause, everyone busy with whatever they’d decided to concern themselves with that day and paying little attention to the silent pair leaning against the wall near the counter.

Elsewhere, a table erupted into cheers. Elsewhere, glass cracked after falling from clumsy hands, before the floor cleaned itself just as quickly.

“Huh.” Allegra began at last, hand finding its rougher other half and entwining the fingers together. Giordano obliged with little acknowledgement, as though the gesture was as natural as breathing air. “We’ve really gotten ourselves into one fine mess of a universe, haven’t we?”

A grim chuckle answered her, as Giordano rubbed his face with a pristine hand (Allegra knew how to spot quick-cleansers and towels like a sniper.) and tightened his hold on her with the other, like it was the only anchor that could keep him afloat. “Yeah, griffins aren’t like humans.” He mused. “And I have a suspicion the other aliens are more like the griffins than us too.”

“I almost pity the diplomats. I wonder how all that polite, culturally-sensitive attitude is working out for them when it comes to these killer magpies.”

“Killer magpies?”

“The shoe fits, no? But, hmm. That might be insulting, actually. Magpies are cuter and more beneficial to society.”

Allegra smirked at the laugh she successfully managed to pull out of the other. Giordano looked only mildly scandalized at the comment and turned to the side, like away meant his wheeze could go unseen and the twinkle in his eye could be hidden under a veneer of indifference.

That was when he saw it. Or rather, them.

“Speaking of diplomats.” He nudged her side and she looked in the same direction.

Ah, it appeared as though they had no need to search for an unoccupied table any more.

“Fancy seeing you here, Adam.” Giordano grinned, the pair having barged their way there and jumped onto the free chairs with the confidence of people who invited themselves. “And Bob.”

“Not my name.” ‘Bob’ sighed, the usual rebuttal quick on his tongue before his head could catch up and question the two new arrivals.

“Well, if it isn’t the lovebirds! Heya, you two.” Adam waved lazily, an easy smile plastered on his face as he leaned back in his seat with the idle grace of a feline. “How’s the little bun coming along, Allie?”

Absentmindedly, Allegra rested her hand upon the slightest of bumps on her belly. At the same time, Giordano rested his on her shoulder, a light pressure meant only to provide comfort should it be necessary. A request. A question.

Never a demand, for they both knew the monumental, life-changing young’un slumbering just beneath her palm. It was barely there, invisible to all but the one carrying the burden – the precious weight of breathing in new life to a young soul still sleeping, still napping.

It was not time yet, and the soul lay, unaware that the ones who adored the little being most were waiting with full hearts, overflowing with love, and steady hands, guided by devotion.

“Healthy.” Her voice was light, a whisper that was loud in its softness. “Growing steadily.”

Then, she blinked, and the spell broke, the moment of vulnerability passing as she put back on her harsher persona like a well-beloved sweater. “You asked me this three days ago, Adam. Two days before that too. What makes you think the answer’s going to be any different this time?”

“Now, now, Allie. Let’s not be too hard on the man.” Giordano reprimanded her, but it had been done in a tone so obviously dramatic and flamboyant she immediately caught onto the move he was about to play. “He must be so exhausted from having to mop those floors day in and day out. I can only hope the janitorial life is treating you well, Adam.” He said with a grin so wide it was impossible to take his act as genuine.

But of course, Adam did so anyway, because Giordano had delivered a fatal blow to his career pride, and he should very well respond in kind – a ridiculous back-and-forth that served only as a game among men, and not to be taken too seriously. “Do not mock this wronged man, Addolorata. I was mistakenly punished – punished, I tell you!”

Allegra rolled her eyes and found the gesture reflected back from Bob, who looked equally sick of this theatre that had repeated too many times this week for it to be funny any more.

“You did massacre a substantial portion of the aliens’ population.” He commented mildly.

“It was an accident!” Despite the light tone that accompanied the words, he did look very much distraught at the notion. Allegra could see it in the way his eyes fluttered too much and the way his fist clenched onto nothing.

He may have treated the entire affair rather flippantly, but some scars couldn’t be hidden away so easily.

Bob must have noticed the same thing because he smoothly switched topics, moving on before Adam could further suffer in the hell that was his own mind. “It’s only temporary. I’m sure you’ll be joining Gio out in the field in no time. Though…”

His accent was a sharp kind, but softened with practice, and the soldier-turned-diplomat patted the other’s back that was not quite the steady pound of a comrade-in-arms nor the soothing beat of a counsellor, but somewhere in between. “I have no problem keeping you company in the meantime.”

Adam sighed, dramatically flopping his head onto the table. “That doesn’t change the fact that I’ve been banned from even watching the duels! What’s the point of me being here, if I can’t see some cool xenos?!”

“Counterpoint: laser.” Giordano supplied helpfully.

He scoffed in reply. “I still think it’s unfair. How was I supposed to know an itty-bitty little laser beam was going to be like a nuke to these flimsy excuses of birds? It’s. A. Laser.” The sound of teeth was almost audible behind the words dripping with venom. “And not even the body penetration kind. We just wanted to burn a flipping piece of wood.”

“It is an odd situation.” Bob pondered, fingers tapping the table in an inconceivable rhythm – an ordinary gesture from any other person, but from him: a sign that blared his distress and frustration to those that knew him well. “I wonder if being innately magical makes you especially vulnerable to ordinary everyday weapons. If this is their reaction to a laser, how would they react to something like a…”

He gestured vaguely. “I don’t know, a butter knife?”

“Well, any clues, knucklehead?” Allegra turned to Giordano. “You’re the one who’s been consistently fighting these weird bird-lions.”

He groaned in response. “How am I supposed to know?” There was a rip of something elastic, the music made by a man tearing away the packaging of his dearly-desired sustenance which had just been freshly delivered by an automated system. “Don’t you remember the rules? No magic. No tech. Whoever gets first blood wins. Murder attempt punishable by death.”

“Death?”

“The griffins decided that.”

“… A knife isn’t really tech though.” Allegra grimaced. “Not the good ones, anyway.”

“Apparently, to the griffins, if it comes from the humans, it is tech by default.” He stabbed the pizza with a little too much force, betraying his frustration, before he calmly continued splitting the circular shape into even triangles. “But, if you ask my opinion, something weird’s going on with their little magic translation thing. I don’t… I don’t think they’re really understanding us at times.”

Allegra exchanged a worried glance with the two, both of them seeming to share the same sentiment, Adam with a tinge of intrigue in the concerned tilt of his head, Bob in the frown of his lips and the faster tip-tap of his fingers.

“What do you mean by that, bello?”

“Ugh, I don’t really know how to word it. You remember when the elves requested the complete dictionaries for three languages, and we handed them the physical books for English, Spanish, and Chinese, right?”

“Yeah.” “Obviously.” “I don’t think they would know how to use a tablet anyway…”

“Alright, well. The elves really couldn’t have tried too much to delve into those books and just- maybe did some magic shenanigans that allowed these languages to be understood by the alien realms. Because-” He paused, putting the knife down, pizza temporarily forgotten, a feat that made the three pay full, undivided attention to him.

“The grffins act so off whenever I try to talk about technology or machines or anything of that nature! No surprise, no reaction, just a vague acknowledgement like I just described a particularly nifty spell or something-” He paused. “That’s it.” A murmur of breath. “That’s what it feels like. That’s what the translation’s doing!”

“What? What is it doing, Gio? Stop stalling!”

He looked up from where his head had bent down in concentration and was met with the concerned, slightly wary gazes of the people he trusted most, each of them keeping their lips shut from bursting out a yell at him for taking his sweet time, each giving him his space, his time to think when they must be positively shaking with impatience.

“The translation’s interpreting magic and technology as the same, exact thing.”

Silence.

Allegra stared at him blankly. Adam slammed his head on the table. And Bob…

Bob only looked resigned, like Giordano had uttered a fact too real, and had only cemented its presence by daring to speak what he had feared to say aloud. A truth could have been ignored, if it was only true in one’s heart. A truth could have been ignored, if no one gave a thought to it.

But Giordano had breathed it in, stated it, and spread that truth to the others. And Bob hadn’t stopped him.

Allegra’s tentative voice broke the string of tension that had been gradually tightening with every passing second. “Bob… You’re a diplomat. Is this true? Did you know this?”

He only shrugged. “It was a strong theory.”

“…Well, do you guys plan to do something about it?”

He sighed, slumping into himself, like the weight of the question had grown too unbearable to handle. “We tried to explain the first few days. But well, it’s difficult to claim we don’t have magic and then display said magic, especially when the words don’t translate right.”

“So, they think we’re lying.” Adam concluded.

“Can’t we try to break the magic?” Allegra wondered.

“We could, actually.” Bob stated. “If we focused on those words especially hard – and by that, I mean, keeping the exact definition clear as crystal in your head – the spell sort of fails.”

He pursed his lips. “There’s a kind of buzz, like a lightbulb fizzing out, and they will be able to hear the words as they are. The catch is-” He paused. Inhaled. Exhaled. Then, continued. “There’s no translation. They hear the sound exactly as it is, which means…”

The other three waited expectantly.

“…C’mon, you guys, it’s obvious.” He groaned at the response of many, many shakes of the heads. “We sound like actual animals. And that earns a lot more weird glances from the griffins.”

“I mean, I don’t really see the problem.” Giordano thought out loud. “It shouldn’t take too much to clear up the confusion and inform them of the missing definitions.”

“It shouldn’t, yes.” Bob agreed. “That’s not the issue here. The issue is… we’ve decided not to do that – been instructed not to, actually.”

“Why? Wouldn’t that make future communications a problem?” Allegra mused.

“Perhaps, but the griffins learning that we don’t have mana, and that everything we use is 100% non-magic might just- break them. Especially for a species who had never known or even considered life without magic.”

“Isn’t that a bit… disingenuous?” Adam softly questioned.

He sighed and looked towards the windows, eyes trailing the snowflakes that fell –and never stopped falling. “We’re here to maintain friendly relations, not psychologically torture them, not make them question their entire conception of reality.”

No one said anything, not because the words didn’t come readily, not because the perspectives didn’t brew beneath the surface, because they did.

But the moment was fragile.

Since the moment they had landed on the planet, so many had questioned why they entertained this miserable excuse of an alliance at all.

Allegra had been one of them. She was never one of those who had looked up to the stars with sparkling eyes and a heart that was all-too-plagued by fantastical dreams of otherworldly beings. And this hadn’t changed – in fact, the sentiment had only grown stronger – when the realms made themselves known.

Since first contact, they had proven themselves to be vicious, cruel, and, in Allegra’s opinion, undeserving of a second thought.

Humanity had done fine on its own, and there was no reason why it couldn’t continue to do so. The aliens were only a dangerous distraction, one she wished they could have done away with as quickly as possible.

The most reasonable decision she could think of was to eliminate the threats. Not commit genocide, of course, but at least, they shouldn’t have to entertain this farce of a friendship and pretend there was anything worth saving in this cursed galactic civilization.

But most people weren’t Allegra, and some had a completely opposite viewpoint, deluding themselves into thinking they could make friends with these maniacs and that there was a future where humanity was part of a universe that was less… murdery.

Her beloved was one.

Despite his penchant for physical violence and a love for combat, Giordano had a huge heart. It was one of the things Allegra loved most about him, and also one that gave her the most pain. He gave too much of himself, thought too kindly of others, even if they wouldn’t do the same for him.

He kept trying – kept believing – in a species Allegra had thought to be beyond redemption. And, in this dogged pursuit of belief and trust…

Even Allegra had to relent and admit there could be more to these aliens than crude monsters.

But Giordano only met them during brawls, only connected with the griffins in fights that would only take one bad move to end badly.

Bob was a diplomat, not a soldier, and that made his trust in these beings all the more confounding. He should have seen the ugliest sides of these beings, the punishing nature of their traditions, and known more intimately than most the horrid parts shown only in private.

He and all the other diplomats, some more pragmatic than others.

And that invited the question in everyone’s heads: why pursue the route of friendship with beings that would not hesitate to kill them if the fancy crossed their minds? Why try a path that could only end in failure?

The man bit his lips and answered the most practical of answers to this crucial question. “Besides, the only reason we’re still keeping up this façade of friendship is because of the immensely advantageous cultural program. And we’re getting so much: books of magic, real wands, recorded demonstrations… Of course, it’s easy to forget, but we’re still dealing with a murderous, warlike society who can – and will – kill us on a whim.”

He seemed more like he was trying to convince himself, rather than them.

“So.” He continued. “It’s best to keep some of our cards close to our chests. For both their sakes and ours.”

Their table descended into silence once again, the former warm, bubbly atmosphere dissipating into thin air.

Even if they tried to behave normally, even if they tried to pretend that this was just like home, where Mondays were the worst things about life and work was a game of who could get away with slacking the most-

It wasn’t.

Reality pressed too hard here.

A war crime had been committed, if unintentional, by one of their own.

They lived and walked on a planet curious to see their demise.

They lived among beings who murdered for entertainment and whose motivations and beliefs contrasted so harshly it was a surprise the two existed on the same plane of reality.

In a time like this, one could not dismiss the worries, the unspoken fears.

One could only learn to live with it.

“I suppose that makes sense.” Allegra began gently, trying to ease the conversation back to safer, lighter topics. “Can’t really blame them or their faulty magic, I guess. Even our own tools are still massively inefficacious when it comes to detecting mana.”

“Oh, right!” Giordano chipped in, voice deceptively cheery, looking over at her. “I was wondering about that. By tools, do you mean that janky thing you’re carrying around?”

“Excuse you.” She scoffed. “This ‘janky’ thing is a marvel of scientific innovation, using the latest technological advancements and specifically created for mana and magic-related purposes. We’re calling it MAME.”

Giordano blinked. “…Mummy?”

Adam snorted. Bob facepalmed.

The tension vanished in an instant.

“Zip it, Gio.” Despite the stern tone, Allegra couldn’t help but let a note a relief bleed into the words. “Don’t get any weird ideas. It’s MA. ME. MAna MEter.”  

“You scientists and your weird names.” Adam said breezily and leaned in closer, eyes narrowing at the unwieldy thing. “What does it even do?”

“It’s meant to detect mana and provide accurate numbers and percentages based on environmental data and a new type of measurement. Unfortunately-” She tapped a button and aimed it in the direction of Adam, who stared back, confused.

The machine slowly blinked to life, beeping away. It detected the man and began its operations, numbers cascading on the screen like a digital waterfall.

/Calculating… Calculating…/

/30% Mana Output and Over…/

/50% Mana Output and Over…/

/80% Mana Output and Over…/

/WARNING: DATA OVERLOAD/

/100% Mana Output and oVe RRRrrrrr/

BZZZTTTT!

It shut down with a shrill scream.

Dead.

“It’s not quite there yet…”

Adam blinked, then smirked. “Wow, I’m such a magical being. I’m overflowing with so much magical energy, guys!”

“No wonder your laser wiped out an armada, Addie. It must have sensed your ‘overflowing magic’, mimicked its owner, and went completely nuts.” Giordano laughed.

“For the record, I didn’t even shoot that laser.”

“You were in the vicinity.” Bob smiled.

“Big talk for someone who fainted during first contact and got us all in this mess.”

“Oh my- a man gets poisoned one time.”

Their group devolved into laugher, the fine line of stress breaking and giving away alas to a stupid bit of humour. Allegra blinked away the tears in her eyes, looking fondly at the people that could worry her so much and, yet, ease her throbbing headache in the same breath. They were all so different, all equipped with such drastic perspectives on this same terrible situation… Perspectives that could make her rage and scream in frustation-

And Allegra wouldn’t trade them for the universe.

Yes, even if everything seemed horrible, even if every alien they ever met would only be psychopathic maniacs-

At that moment in time, all was good.

She was happy.

She was in the company of those she loved.

And maybe that was reason enough to keep trying.

Reason enough to keep believing.

HEAD OFFICE:-

Head Commissioner: Robert Yell
Commissioner: Paul Grey

After hearing the news, Paul immediately stopped drinking and rushed toward Mr. Robert's office.

He slammed the door open and entered.

“Sir! The minister is dead!!”

Robert froze.

“Does anyone know about this?” he asked.

“Only his son and wife.”

“Then do not let this information go public.”

Robert's hands were trembling with fear. He immediately arranged an emergency meeting with all the heads and shared the information with them. They were similarly stunned

“We have to find the criminal before the news gets out,” Robert said. “This time, I won't be able to answer the media. Last time the Minister of Environment died , we told the public that he had died of sickness. But in reality, he was poisoned.”

Robert continued giving orders to the officers.

“No matter what it takes, find the criminal.”

“We'll do our best,” said Vivek.

The meeting ended.

Only Robert and Paul was in the room

“Paul, I'm telling you, this person is extremely smart. We need to increase security around the other political leaders, or else we could be ne—”

“May I come in?”

Vami stood at the doorway.

“Good evening, Head Commissioner. Commissioner. Sorry to interrupt, but we just got the exact time of death from the doctors.”

Robert turned toward her.

“As we checked the minister's call logs, there was nothing unusual. We did the same with his wife and son. But there's something strange.”

She paused.

“His son called a certain number at 2:01 p.m. The call lasted approximately four minutes, ending at 2:05 p.m. And that time perfectly matches the time of death given by the doctors.”

Paul frowned.

“Commonly, when someone is stabbed in the stomach, death occurs because of severe blood loss rather than the wound itself. For an average person, fatal blood loss can occur within three to five minutes.”

Paul angrily interrupted her.

“So you're saying his son stabbed him when the call started, and as soon as his father died from blood loss, his son ended the call?”

Vami remained calm.

“That's one possibility.” said Vami

“Vami, grow up! This kind of behaviour will be the reason you get removed from your rank—”

“May I come in?”

Vivek entered the room.

“Yes, of course. Come in,” said the Commissioner.

“Sir, we've matched the fingerprint we found on the knife.”

Everyone went silent.

“They belong to Edward... the minister's son.”

Vami gave a faint smirk.

The Commissioner felt embarrassed, but pretended as if nothing had happened.

“What's our next move?” he asked Robert.

“Bring his son and wife to the interrogation room.”

“Understood.”

As they left the Head Commissioner's office, Vivek turned toward Vami.

“I heard what Paul was saying to you. I guess he has some kind of grudge against you.”

“I don't remember doing anything to harm him.”

Vami paused.

“I never even kicked him in the balls like I do to you.”

“Please don't make me remember that. I can still feel the pain,” Vivek said in agony.

Vami smiled.

INTERROGATION ROOM — One Day After the Death

The room was eight feet by ten. A single bulb hung from the ceiling, throwing more shadow than light. A table sat in the middle, two chairs on one side, one lone chair on the other, waiting for Edward. A camera and microphone fed a live telecast straight to the commissioner's office.

Vivek is great, but is Vami even suited for this work? Paul thought.

Vami and Vivek stepped inside.

The plan was simple. Don't ask him directly why he did it. Ask who he suspects. Let him walk himself into the trap, get the name on the other end of that phone call.

Edward was brought in.

He didn't look like a boy who'd just lost his father. He looked like a man who'd been expecting this meeting for a long time, and had already decided how it would go.

"Hello, Edward," Vivek said.

"Hello."

"I know this is hard to accept. I'm sorry this happened." Vivek said

"Sure."

"Have you eaten?"

"Yes." he replied

"You need to be strong. Your mother needs you."

"Sure."

Every answer came back flat, even, unbothered. Not the grief of a boy in shock. The patience of someone waiting his turn to speak.

Vivek pressed on. "Who do you think did this? Anyone you suspect?"

Silence.

"Did your father have enemies? Any recent fights?"

Nothing.

"Do you think someone in your family"

he stayed silent

"Do you think it was your mother?" Edward said, calm, almost amused. "Go ahead. Finish the sentence."

The room went quiet.

Then Edward smiled.

It wasn't the smile of a man breaking down. It was the smile of a man who'd been holding something in for exactly this long, and had decided the wait was over.

"I did it," he said. Not shouted. Said, plainly, like a fact he was proud of. "And I don't regret it."

Paul, watching from the office feed, nearly dropped his glass of wine.

"Give me the chance again," Edward went on, "and I'll do it slower with more torture. Death was too easy for him. I wanted him screaming. Begging."

The words which came out of Edwards mouth was way heavier the room can handle

"Why," Vivek asked.

"He was selfish!!. Corrupt! He never thought about anyone but himself, not this country, not this family!!. He ruined my life, piece by piece, and called it love!!." For the first time, something in Edward's voice cracked, real anger, real grief, but even that felt controlled, like he'd chosen exactly how much of it to show.

"Who did you called," Vami asked. "That night. 2:01 PM."

Something shifted behind Edward's eyes. Not fear. Recalculation.

"My girlfriend," he said, after a pause just a little too long.

"What did you talk about?"

"I wanted to hear her voice." A small, private smile. "Before everything changed."

Vami studied him. He wasn't scared of being caught. He'd known this moment was coming from the second he picked up that knife.

"You knew you'd be caught," she said. "That's why you called her. To say goodbye."

Edward looked at her, and for just a second, the mask slipped, not fear, something closer to respect.

"Yeah," he said.

On the commissioner's order, Edward was taken to be processed. Two officers walked him out, one on each side, his wrists cuffed in front of him.

As they passed the observation window, Edward's eyes found Vami's.

He smiled.

Not the broken smile of a boy who'd just confessed to murder. Something else. Something that made her stomach turn, though she couldn't say why.

"See you around, Inspector," he said, quiet enough that only she caught it.

Then he was gone, led down the hallway, calm as anything.

Vami stood there a moment longer than she should have.

She had no idea yet what that smile actually meant.

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BOOKCOVER

Info:

orry for the slow updates. I am multitasking a little bit because a BLOG is on its way for all stories revolving Van Polan stories. 

Will release one more chapter later on + Chapter 2 will release of my other story. Perfidia will release its first 10 chapters when Berks story is on chapter 20 which will be soon. 

Chapter 10: Emergency Declaration: When All Hope Is Lost – Part 3

He grabbed the left side of the doorframe and stumbled slowly out of the room as he entered the area with the printer. Barely able to move properly, as he was going to grab the second door to get out to the hallway, a gang of Witches appeared, and a left kick came flying as he managed to get his right arm up barely. He heard something crack right below his elbow before he flew straight through the other door in the printer area. Darkness loomed over the room as Berk felt like he had barely any energy to get up from the floor. Something sniffed his head as he slightly turned his head and saw three red eyes in the darkness. Several Witches hurried to the room but stopped before entering. Strangely, the Witches slowly backed a couple of steps back when a leader in the group came all the way to the doorframe to check; he could see from her murderous look that she wanted to kill him, but she was fully aware of the three eyes watching her in the corner of the room. She tested the waters and stepped into the room when a growl made it clear she wasn't welcome inside. Berk moved his hands around to find out what kind of animal his brother had been keeping, and he noticed a bowl. He turned it toward the light at the entrance and saw two letters: 'B.G'. The thing started to breathe, sounding like a dog, and he slowly sat up, leaning toward the wall as he tried to focus on its breathing and avoid taking deep breaths because it was too painful.

"W... why are you sitting here in the dark room?"

The eyes moved slightly as it pushed something down on the floor beside him. He picked it up and held it to the light, noticing it looked like a one-earpiece with a seashell covering.

"What is this?" He asked when he heard three eyes bark, which reminded him of the past in that intense moment, and tears filled his eyes. He put the earpiece in his right ear, and it was chaos:

"BERRABERRABERRABERRABERRABERRABERRABERRABERRA!"

He took it off and looked at three eyes and asked:

"Berra...Berra Golden?"

"VOFF!...VOFF!"

Berra moved up close to him and sniffed him everywhere while wagging his tail, and Berk caressed Berra for a couple of seconds as he could not hold back his tears. During his childhood, Veronica told him that Berra died from the injuries in the accident that day, but it looks like Zark had him hidden all this time. He put the earpiece back on when Berra was breathing all over him as the chaos continued:

"WANNAPLAYWANNAPLAYWANNAPLAYWANNAPLAYWANNAPLAY?"

He took it off slightly, put his finger to his mouth, and Berra spread his two front paws, leaning and wagging his tail, waiting for Berk's next step. He put the piece back into his ear and told Berra:

"Okay, steady and stand up!" Berra took the orders as if they were his master's, since Berk's smell was the same as his master's.

"Good boy!"

He clapped Berra's head.

The Witch leader made another attempt to get into the room, but Berra reacted quickly with a growl.

"Do you know this cukrin dog?" Berk asked them in a lowered voice.

They looked at him and got insecure for a moment as the leader's facial expression changed completely.

"Pft! It can't be!" She uttered in disbelief.

Tamy and Famy tripped inside the area, and when they saw the dog, Tamy yelled:

"NOOOOO, I AM NOT DOING THIS! You can manage on your own, Berk!" They both quickly left the area.

"Is that...?" The leader uttered before stopping.

Berk nodded.

She looked back at the other witches and gave them instructions in a firm voice:

"Everyone, back slowly out of the area."

They started to back slowly one step at a time when one Witch all the way back yelled:

"WHY ARE WE BACKING AWAY? HE IS RIGHT THERE. IT IS ONLY A CUKRIN DOG BESIDE HIM."

Everyone stopped that stupid comment and looked at Berra, worried he would react.

"The one in the back, you seem to be new to the organization, so let me make this clear to you. Veronica Von Silfer has only lost three battles in her life: against Zark, against an unknown human, and the one she never mentions to anyone is when she lost the battle against a cukrin dog; this is most probably the same dog she lost against."

The silence in the air, with all the tension shifting to worried witches, made Berk move slowly forward as they backed away from him. From nowhere, a Witch in the middle tried throwing a black thread towards Berk when Berra flew up in the air in an instant, and before it even came close, the Witch-leader screamed:

"JUMP TO THE SIDE!"

Berra made a normal attack move:

"VAAAAAAAUUUOOFFF! A strong whirlwind wind pushed out from his mouth. It easily destroyed everything in its way, taking the big printer with it, and a couple of Witches flew around, hitting the walls and ceiling as it broke down the wall and continued into the hallway and cut through the corner in the area as more Witches flew around hitting walls, floors, and ceiling in all directions. Several Witches ran for their lives away from Berk, saw an opening, and started moving forward, with Berra taking the lead as they appeared in the hallway. The alarm was on, and the emergency water system was activated because Berra probably destroyed something in the ceiling with the bark. He tried to go left, but a lot of Witches blocked the pathway, probably idiots who didn't know how dangerous Berra was. He moved toward the corner and noticed part of a conference room had blown away when he saw Griselda standing still, her green eyes fired up behind her glasses, as she looked at him, with several witches staring at him; he realized it was some class they were having. The room flooded, and the water soaked Griselda's white blouse, revealing her blue bra.

"So...it was you who was causing all the uproar in the building?" She asked him.

Berk pointed down at Berra as she looked down and shook her head.

"I can sense a lot of Witches on this floor, and the exit out of the building is blocked, so the only way to get out of here is there." She pointed past Berk.

He looked behind him and saw the window. This one, though, was strangely placed; he had fallen through the lunch area earlier. Was it magic, or had the idiot who designed the building made it tighter on the other floor? The big difference was that this floor had walls and fewer conference rooms, while the other floor was all windows. He looked for a couple of seconds and thought that he didn't want Berra to massacre a lot of Witches, and Griselda would probably be able to stop them, so he touched Berra's head and said:

"We are going to play jump; You will go first, Berra, and I will jump on you right before the window. You need to do a small bark to lessen our impact...hopefully you understand what I said"

"PLAYPLAYPLAYPLAY!" Was all Berra responded.

"Go!" Bark said, pointing toward the window as Berra moved toward it, and several Witches were running after them. With his last strength, he followed Berra, upped his speed, jumped above Berra with impact, and grabbed him as they were falling. Berra inhaled when Berk noticed a car on the ground with a small paw sticking out from the backseat. Just as Berra was about to bark, he grabbed the dog's chin and lifted it, stopping him from barking, then changed their position as they fell toward the roof of the car, with Berk taking the impact.

Royal Road
First|Previous|Next
[Loading...]

[WARNING: DATA OVERLOAD]

[WARNING: DATA OVERLOAD]

[Confirm: Skip Technical Reports?]

[Confirmed. Skipping…]

[Record Retrieved]

[Current Displayed Record – Research Division, Engineering Technologist, Allegra Addolorata]

Allegra cursed this stupid universe when yet another cog skyrocketed itself out of its proper socket.

Up, up it went, before pitifully losing steam and flopping down onto the spotless floor like a gambler’s dice, joining another of its companions for the solace of cool, ventilated air and a mechanical interpretation of a wooden floor.

For a moment, she considered just giving up, just accepting things as they were and letting the universe swallow her whole until there was nothing left of her to be found.

Only for a moment.

With a sigh accumulated from too many hours spent tinkering with an uncooperative tool, she snatched the two rebels and heated them under a multipurpose lamp, pulling them out once what few bacteria left clinging on for dear life – if there were even any – had been thoroughly eradicated. Clicking open a compartment, she unkindly shoved them back into their proper spots with all the finesse of someone who had done it a thousand times.

Check. Double-check. Triple-check.

Alright, everything seemed to be in order now.

Perhaps she should try one last model testing. It would be prudent to know how exactly the machine would act up, and it surely would, before she presented their latest progress to the director.

After all, it was their latest advancement in the brand-new scientific field of magitech.

Ugh, that word still felt so wrong to say. Especially when it kept getting embedded between paragraphs of technical jargon in reports.

She pressed the start button on the bulky tool and directed its searching sensors towards an artifact that had been confirmed magical.

/Calculating… Calculating…/

/50% Magic Output. Baseline Detected./

Ah, all good then.

She shut off the device and carefully placed the artifact back into its sealed container, cold, professional hands carrying with them a faint tremble upon feeling the weight of that heavy souvenir.

The fact that it shone so brilliantly even with the barrier that was her gloves spoke volumes of its power.

A gift by the Griffins.

Both a token of their friendship and a test of their might.

She still remembered the day it had been presented – could not forget, even if there hadn’t been a hundred paranoid recordings etching the moment in streams of data and pixels.

Two griffins had carried opposite ends of a dead horse, a unicorn presumably, judging by the long, sharp horn adorning its head. In the middle of this unconventional cushion, draped with an elaborate carpet – that more so resembled an idea of a saddle – there lay a small nugget of gold, molded into the shape of a feather.

The head griffin, apparently the queen, had plucked the nugget between two claws, the touch making the gold shine like a firework trapped in time, and presented it to their Commander.

“A present.” She had murmured with a honeyed voice, the sweetness clashing with her cold glare. “To welcome you to Aurum.”

To this day, there were far too many video clips circulating in staff group chats and temporarily-constructed planet-bound forums, all centred around their Commander’s plainly reluctant acceptance of the artifact.

The moment it fell upon his hand, it glowed.

Glowed brighter than when it had shone in the paw of a queen. Glowed brighter than the bulbs of light illuminating their homes. Glowed as though it intended to rival the sun in its intensity, nearly blinding all those who beheld it.

The cheers from the griffins were thunderous.

It was a test, the queen had explained later through a mouthful of cooked beef. The nugget of gold had been enchanted with a clever rune, a spell designed to reveal the worthy and the unworthy.

When questioned later on the metrics of the ‘worth’ of an individual, she had laughed, hooked beak glistening with the red of oil.

“If they could beat an average griffin, of course!” She chuckled. “A very simple trick, really. Just a measurement of the magic potential thrumming within a living being.”

The griffins had found that the humans were a worthy foe who could very well beat them in a fight.

A magic fight.

The Commander said nothing more and only sipped his coffee in silence.

That was weeks ago.

The artifact had been delivered to Allegra’s division, with strict instructions to study but not tamper, for they were still unaware of what magic truly was.

And lack of knowledge to humanity was a danger they had forgotten, an insult to the endless number of libraries filled over eons. It was both a tease alluring them with promises of answers and a derision lined like thorns of a rose.

Knowledge was humanity’s virtue and vice, and one they couldn’t bear to be without. They were a species who had fought their way off their planet by strapping themselves to rockets and hoping it wouldn’t explode along the way. They were a species who leapt out of their star system and ventured towards empty space because they would rather die in a hollow, forgotten void than live not knowing the sensation.

They threw themselves into black holes, trusted stars not to swallow their holiday resorts, and built living monuments just beyond the edge of the universe, for no other reason than to prove they could.

Humanity had believed themselves to Know all that was pivotal to know.

And yet, here was magic, proving them wrong.

So, humanity would treat magic the same they’d treated other paradoxes.

Brute-force pursuit.

Or at least Allegra was trying.

Integrating magic into their technological inventions when she hadn’t a single clue how mana worked, or what it even was, had been a decidedly unpleasant and trying experience. Half-baked theories and hypotheses created during sleep-deprived hallucinations were the backbone of this latest piece of work, and it was by a thin stroke of luck the team had managed to come up with something half-way usable.

She got up from her chair and stretched, limbs numb after a long morning of intense sitting.

“Hey, [REDACTED]!” She called out to her current assigned partner, one hand already cleaning up the work table and another hanging onto the tool with indescribable care. “I’m going to hand in my report to the director now. And I was thinking this little baby’s finally ready for professional inspection. You mind if I hold onto it for a while? We can continue working out the kinks later today.”

After receiving a distracted affirmative – the other was likely preoccupied with their chart of magic particles that may or may not exist and the reconstruction of their entire understanding of atoms and the universe – she grabbed her tablet, which bent around her wrist to form a light, transparent bracelet, and secured her hold on their prized invention.

It was beautiful, if beauty was defined by impossibilities.

By any other metric, it was one ugly piece of work.

A long pole, one end drastically heavier than the other, making the whole device decidedly unwieldy. The lesser end had been curved, a design choice for an easy grip and probably to allow the device to hang onto something instead of simply getting tossed upon any random surface.

By contrast, the weighty end was a large box that wasn’t really a box, decorated with so many extra bits and bobs it only crudely resembled a rectangle, bombarded with small additions after the initial design that could not fit into the actual insides of the device.

And if the outside was ugly, it only got worse when one dared to take a peek at the inner workings: a crowd of cogs and screws and bars and tightly concealed chambers that housed dangerous chemicals. Its only saving grace was the actual most important parts of the tool – the screen that should relay information and the sensors that should receive it.

Otherwise, it was nasty, terrible, and would make Umbriel German natives cry at the complete and utter inefficiency of it all.

Good enough for a first try.

Allegra steadied her grip, stepped forward to the door, and watched the identity scanner come to life.

After registering her authority, it opened.

Allegra stepped outside.

And crunched the dirt of their newest base on the Griffin homeworld.

Their sun was a burning inferno, scorching their landscapes into fine specks of desert sand and jagged rocks. Harsh mountains and ravines existed as though they scorned the notion of life itself, molded and shaped by nature in impossible geometry. Only creatures of flight stood much of a chance in this unforgiving world, if they did not perish from the heat first.

This was one of the two terrains predominantly found in the realm.

The other was the one the humans landed on.

A barren wasteland with eternal winter, where snow never melted and ice only learnt to cut sharper every dawn. Supposedly, it was a part of the territory of yet another Griffin nation, the Kingdom of the Lowplains.

They occupied a large stretch of land spanning wide and far, dotted by bushes pretending to be trees and critters that understood the value of staying unseen. Despite it being their home, hardly any griffin lived out in the cold, preferring to stick to the warmer edges of their kingdom, which also just so happened to be their major cities. It was partly why they bore no ill will towards the humans stumbling upon what had been theirs.

After all, there was no griffin to disturb, for no sane sentient being would subject themselves to the torture of the dangerous weather and little prey.

So, the humans immediately set up their base out of ready-made terraforming-a-planet starter packages, built a double-digit number of portable heaters, and fashioned fortifications strong enough to make a city under siege salivate with envy.

With consent from the natives, of course.

Initially, the griffins had questions – inevitable ones – attempting to glean the when, how, and why in one welcome banquet. Human diplomats answered politely, just the way they were taught to: right now, flying a ship, because they had been attacked.

All very simple and delivered with a tone meant for discussing traffic jams, a nifty little trick the griffins had yet to master, if the shock that shaped their faces in response to the last answer was any indication.

Apparently, despite being on the exact same planet, this kingdom had no idea their biggest rival had enacted a scheme to invade Earth and ‘force a dance out of a rock’, or so they had phrased it. They weren’t exactly disgusted, nor did they condemn the act, but one fact remained concrete.

They didn’t know.

And fortunately, the millennia-old adage of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ rang true, even with alien species, so the griffins hadn’t pressed and accepted their arrival with open arms- uh, wings.

Humanity got lucky, because the longer story was far – far – too interesting for diplomacy.

First, there had been the chase.

The moment the griffin armada had been thoroughly demolished by two flabbergasted, very much regretting-all-their-life-choices humans, Earth saw her chance and snatched it.

They were all too aware of their place in the realms, how little they knew, and how much of a target they had unknowingly presented themselves as.

For whatever reason, the coalition of realms formed long ago through promises and oaths lost to time and space had turned their cold, ideologically-driven eyes towards humanity. The new species had captured their interest, and that wasn’t a good thing in a universe that had been characterized by a skewed morality and, frankly, a horrifying way of life, by human standards.

Humanity knew nothing.

And humanity needed to Know.

So, they’d followed, putting their latest (emphasis on the latest, Venus would not be pulling a fast one on Earth again) camouflage technology to the test.

Massive ships, cloaked in darkness, flickering with tiny lights that blended with distant stars. They had been accounted for distance and speed, to still when they needed to and to animate in a blink of an eye – appropriately. Noise did not travel across space, but it was thoroughly dampened all the same, for magic might hide tricks they couldn’t trust.

These warships were ready, with teams primed for take-off, remnants and scars of a fresh galactic war that hadn’t time to scab just yet.

And they followed, bracing themselves for another.

The griffin ships were pitiful and frustrating in their pitifulness. In their frenzy, whatever had united the fleet crumbled, leaving the tiny number to flounder like lambs slated for slaughter. They all raced back in the same direction, presumably to their homeworld, but with varying speeds: some moving so quickly they were only a blur of motion, others so sluggish their Commander had worried they’d turn back and have another go at Earth.

Even if their little magic tricks did not work, the griffins might very well try ramming their ships straight to the surface. The shields would most probably take care of it, but picking up space debris was a tedious task and promoted bad prospects for commerce.

After making a decision within a moment’s notice, the fleet split up into smaller, but still relatively large groups; a few chased the rapidly speeding ships, but a couple more, including Allegra’s, stayed behind to watch the straggling ships.

It turned out to be the correct decision, as those ships evidently had no intention of following their brethren.

They didn’t attack Earth either.

They did something that was arguably worse.

Every one of them followed the same pattern.

At first, observation had been boring. Even with all the glamorous and novel nature of real bona fide aliens, everyone began drawing their attention away from the windows, for the griffins did nothing interesting in particular. Soon, only those who were tasked with the duty were left, silent and watchful, eyes trained for the slightest of change in their habits.

For some time, the griffin’s little regimen continued as usual. A few patrolled the deck, some would fly around in their little magic bubble of air and check the sails, and eventually they would all go back down and disappear inside.

To sleep, perhaps. Or something else.

This egregious, miserable routine went on for so long Allegra and her colleagues began to question if the ship’s camouflage was failing, or if the magic detected what their technology couldn’t have hidden.

And then it began.

A single griffin. Unremarkable. Ordinary. Just another one of the lot.

Was it (he? she?) stopping for a break? Was it leaning on the railing to check for something? Maybe for the fault in their camouflage?

Suddenly, it spread its wings and took off.

It flew. Past the railings. Higher than their sails.

It flew into the darkness of space.

Surely, it must be past their magic bubble of safety, shouldn’t it? Humans may not have been able to see mana, but they knew enough to Know everything the universe gave had a limit of its own.

It was further out now, kept flying and flying and flying. It must have cast some sort of spell on itself, knowing it wouldn’t have survived otherwise.

But maybe it was too confident. Maybe it thought it could outfly death itself. Or maybe it believed it would find something that wasn’t there.

Whatever it was, the spell failed at one point.

They knew, because even with their mana-blind eyes, it was evident.

The griffin grew rigid. Froze mid-flight, wings half-lifted as though they were preparing for wind they would never feel. Blood leaked through its beak and crystallized just as fast, ice claiming and consuming the corpse whole, for that was what it became in the end.

It died.

That should have been the end of it, the end of the entire cursed phenomenon. Already, conspiracy theories had sprung up, delusions and stories of make-believe conjured up by a people who wanted to Know but lacked the context necessary to understand.

And if it was a single freak incident, perhaps that was all the theories would have been: theories. False. Untrue. A story meant for headlines quickly brushed aside and buried beneath law.

But the griffins weren’t done.

Some time later, another griffin stopped patrolling and leaned on the railing. Different position. Different place.

But it looked outwards, the same way the first one did.

Then, it flew.

It flew and flew and flew.

It died.

Another griffin. Oh, it was two this time. Siblings? Lovers? They leaned on each other, their beaks tapping once. Twice, as if they were saying goodbye in a language only they understood.

Then, they flew.

They flew.

They died.

Another griffin.

It died.

Another one.

It died.

Another and another and another.

They all died.

And throughout it all, humanity could only watch behind the safety of tinted glasses and watch as empty space gradually became crowded with dead griffins. Appalled and horrified, they had half-hoped the birds would stop racing towards certain death when their brethren began to replace the stars. Yet, the corpses only seemed to spur them on, with entire groups jumping at the same time at one point.

But every horror came to an end, and the griffins eventually ran out of bodies and souls.

The ships remained suspended in space, no one to man them, no one to steer them. They would have been lost too, a tale swallowed up by the expansion between planets and stars, a crew that would have never been found, scattered and cast in darkness unless an unlucky traveller tripped and smashed their ships against frozen flesh.

Perhaps that was their intention? To be lost and forgotten, rather than face the shame of losing? Or were they plagued by a disease that compelled them, and could that same outbreak spread to other species? Maybe the griffins knew something about space humans didn’t? A leviathan creature inhabiting the deepest, darkest reaches of the abyss?

Whatever it was, the griffins had forfeited their lives and unknowingly handed them over not just to the void, but to the species that inhabited it.

Drones, mechanical hands, and automated systems all carried out their mission objectives with the same cold calculation their owners aspired to have. Ships were gathered and contained for future research purposes. Corpses were isolated and stored in sealed packages, designed both for DNA extraction and to pay what respects the humans could to their nameless invaders.

Once all was said and done, they were anchored to the nearest uninhabited planet – for they were still in human space, though the griffins didn’t seem to have been aware of that fact – and left behind with report transcripts and a warning signed with a corporate flair.

By that point, new ships had arrived, back-ups from Earth should they require them, and from other celestial bodies that came under the official statement of aid but with an undercurrent of desire.

Desire for information they sorely lacked.

Together, the newly bolstered fleet worked out the line of communications, hierarchy, and who the final decision would ultimately fall upon, before increasing their speed to its maximum level and catching up with the ships that continued to tail the saner runners.

Because despite all the dangers and unknown powers magic offered, the one the griffins made use of was undeniably slow.

Or maybe human ships were just fast. Their engines did improve exponentially with all the funding afforded during the wartime economy.

The rest of the chase ended with a conclusion everyone but the griffins saw coming. A sizable number of the ships, kept in orbit (still cloaked, still invisible to the naked eye). The rest, parked onto the surface within the territory of a friendly griffin nation.

And Allegra walked on the ground that wasn’t theirs with the confidence of someone who knew facts could be overridden on a whim, if they so wished it.

She strode on past their neat little rows of cabins, past people hurrying about with the same blasé urgency, and past groups practicing drills. A few of them rested – lucky folks, who found themselves with some time to spare.

They had been a lot more paranoid the first few days. Especially after witnessing what was effectively a mass griffin suicide brought about by suspiciously mysterious causes.

Until their specialists had given them the a-okay, they had explored the place in a fully-kitted out zero-atmosphere-safety-approved (ZASA) suits, freaking out the first few griffins they had made contact with. Only after confirming that there wasn’t going to be a freak epidemic did they finally shed their protection, ready to enjoy the frigid, scorching breeze of Aurum.

They were never truly worried about oxygen, for, curiously enough, every species in every single realm could share the same breathable atmosphere. It was just one of those impossible coincidences – like every single alien resembling and behaving like a creature from their mythos – that had the eggheads back home ripping their hair out in pure confusion.

However, without any real answer, humanity decided to simply accept the impossible and move on.

The Kingdom of the Lowplains welcomed them eagerly, the Kingdom of the Highrocks seemed to be nursing their bruised pride in silence, and the human expedition team desperately needed a mental break.

“Allie! Where are you heading to?”

She turned around and grinned broadly when she saw who had called out. “Just to the central quarter. I need to hand this over and make a progress report…” She paused, eyes trailing the figure before her.

“Another brawl? Really, Gio?”

Giordano Addolorata, the man she’d vowed to be together with under two suns and three moons, smiled the way a boy caught hoarding candy would. His shirt had been haphazardly draped upon his back, sleeves hanging uselessly, while his real arms remained free.

Or as free as they could be when dripping mud. His skin was a wet autumn, doused in sweat and dirt alike, and his cheeks flushed mahogany, the blood beneath still pounding with a rush of adrenaline. “Maybe…” He shrugged, hoping to look nonchalant and only managing to affirm her initial guess.

“And the griffins agreed?”

“My opponent was a returnee, actually.” His face brightened. “Learnt a few new tricks since last time. Kept her wings far, far away from me, so she doesn’t lose within the first few seconds of the match again.”

Despite trying to maintain a stern demeanour, her lips twitched, amusement seeping through. “I still can’t believe your little cheat worked last time. And that she didn’t try to kill you too.”

“Hey now, it was fair game! We agreed on first blood, and I drew first blood.”

“By plucking a feather.”

“Funny how that worked, wasn’t it?” He stretched himself lazily, with all the despicable grace of a cat that got the cream. “Though, to be honest, I think the griffins are just plain bad at this. They didn’t even give me as much of a challenge as old Benny did, and you know he’s about as useful as a fish in combat.”

“You’re really saying that the bloodthirsty, warlike griffins with a culture derived from violence and conquest- are weak fighters?” She did not roll her eyes, but the sentiment was clear. “Gio, seeing you get all egoistical and proud may be cute, but you’ve got to make your descent into narcissism a little more believable than that.”

“I’m not being arrogant, Allie, I swear.” He huffed, a performative little noise conveying exaggerated outrage. “It’s weird fighting them. I- I don’t know how to explain it, but- When you’ve been into enough scraps before, you get this… sense, when your opponent’s holding back.”

“The griffin went easy on you?”

“No, it’s more like- Ugh, let’s talk on the way to the canteen. I’m starved. Your duties aren’t too urgent, are they?”

Her fingers tapped lightly on the precious tool, presently worth more than entire star systems by the value of knowledge alone. The tablet dug into her wrist at the movement, containing progress reports that could undermine and collapse entire regimes should the details be leaked.

Then, she looked back at his eager face, crinkled with an edge of fondness only a relationship carved from gentle love – warm mornings tinged with the scent of freshly baked bread, comforting nights when the shadows stretched too long – could nurture.

“Yeah, I can spare some time.”

“Awesome! C’mon, I heard they’re doing a one-day pizza special! No artichokes, of course.”

He talked her ear off the entire way there, and she simply listened to his random ramblings, humming and gasping when appropriate. Yet, in spite of the aloof exterior she tried to project in the name of professionalism, even she couldn’t hide the smile tugging at her lips and the warmth that bloomed – lovely and true – in the soft, hidden shadows of her heart.

First

-- --

Blurb:

When a fantasy kingdom needs heroes, they skip the high schoolers and summon hardened Delta Force operators.

Lieutenant Cole Mercer and his team are no strangers to sacrifice. After all, what are four men compared to millions of lives saved from a nuclear disaster? But as they make their last stand against insurgents, they’re unexpectedly pulled into another world—one on the brink of a demonic incursion.

Thrust into Tenria's realm of magic and steam engines, Cole discovers a power beyond anything he'd imagined: magic—a way to finally win without sacrifice, a power fantasy made real by ancient mana and perfected by modern science.

But his new world might not be so different from the old one, and the stakes remain the same: there are people who depend on him more than ever; people he might not be able to save. Cole and his team are but men, facing unimaginable odds. Even so, they may yet prove history's truth: that, at their core, the greatest heroes are always just human. 

-- --

Arcane Exfil Chapter 85: Substrate (2)

-- --

Clearly, chasing decoys one by one was a losing proposition. Cole needed a play that hit the mimic as a whole, not the individual constructs it was throwing at him.

Fortunately, the repeated exposure had given him a structural observation to work with. Every single copy and every single tendril shared the same gelatinous substrate underneath the cosmetic skin – apparent in the way they dissolved and extruded both.

That discovery opened the door to a fairly straightforward solution that Cole was a little embarrassed not to have arrived at sooner. Anybody who’d ever stuck a bowl of Jell-O in the freezer as a kid was already in possession of the key insight: namely that gelatinous matter loses cohesion and becomes brittle once its temperature drops past a certain threshold. In other words, cold was the bane of Clayface and pretty much every other shapeshifter out there.

With that in mind, Cole pulled his wand, planted his feet, and dropped the ambient temperature in a tight ring around his position. Of course, he also made sure to calibrate the spell carefully enough to mess with the gel’s biology without giving himself frostbite in the process.

Rather than dump the siphoned thermal energy into the void, he funneled it into a small barrier at his off hand. Conservation of energy being what it was, parking the heat for later beat venting it outright – especially with another spell almost certainly on the docket.

The effect manifested within a second. The moisture around him condensed and crystallized in the same instant, materializing a cloud of vapor dotted with glittering ice. The fog sank as quickly as it had appeared, pouring down in a slow-motion waterfall reminiscent of liquid nitrogen.

The mimic, naturally, wasn’t going to extend him the courtesy of waiting its turn like some anime villain. A tendril whipped through the vapor before the chill had even had a chance to propagate, forcing Cole to catch it across his blade in a heavy parry. And yeah, ‘heavy’ wasn’t usually in the lexicon for parrying, but with how long the fight had gone on, the fatigue was unavoidable.

And it wasn’t just the body, either. The headache that had crept in earlier throbbed in earnest now, a low pressure behind the eyes that sharpened the longer he held the cast. Having to sustain this level of physical and magical exertion was just straight-up fucking brutal.

Mercifully, the spell finished before the strain got any worse. The next copy to come at him – a Graves this time – slowed as it crossed the field, moving like it was underwater. Frost spread across the surface, the gel beneath turning cloudy, almost opaque. The three tendrils that lashed in to support it suffered the same fate, all of the mimic’s constructs stiffening by the second.

To its credit, the demon caught on quickly. It yanked the affected limbs back in the same way anyone would jerk a finger off a hot stove. The frozen sections, stripped of their flexibility, fractured at the boundaries and snapped clean off. The remains crashed to the floor like a bag of ice cubes dumped onto pavement.

Cole stomped on the nearest chunk at once, shattering it into fragments hopefully too small and ruined to reabsorb. Two more he crushed the same way, grinding them under his heel with the same petty satisfaction as smushing an annoying-ass bug.

Unfortunately, the aches had started to catch up now, his periphery blurring as tunnel vision set in. Despite that, he still had a bit more kick in him, mostly because he didn’t have to shit out a new spell from scratch.

He drew on the cached heat from earlier and assembled the rocket fireball he’d tried to throw earlier – the one the mimic had so rudely interrupted. With the spell actually completed this time, if a bit underpowered due to mana exhaustion, he shot it downrange.

The demon, presently occupied with amputating its own frozen limbs, barely got a defense up. It threw a wall of its own substrate into the fireball’s path, which was actually pretty damn interesting – because it hadn’t bothered to defend against the rifle rounds earlier.

The spell slammed into the wall, its surface erupting into steam and foam on contact. Meanwhile, the jet itself drove straight through, lancing like a shaped charge punching through armor. The thrust eventually vented out the back, launching boiling spall in a violent, narrow cone. The backspray perforated the demon’s torso along the exit axis, though not so dramatically as a real HEAT round liquefying a vehicle crew.

Cole turned to the others, ready to call out the play, but apparently, he didn’t need to. Every one of them had already worked it out, each shrouded in the same miniature cloud he’d just conjured for himself.

So he pivoted back to the mimic, preparing to dump his mana into one more attack before falling back to replenish his reserves. But before he could even start the cast, it let out a screech that just about split his ears. The closest thing he could compare it to was a fork scraping against a plate, but cranked up about a hundredfold – and even that probably didn’t cut it.

The demon’s shield wall then bubbled and churned across its surface before blowing apart in a sudden release, loosing a volley of blackened needles like a hwacha unloading its full rack.

The windup gave Cole just enough warning to get a barrier up as he broke for the nearest pillar. The projectiles flew across the entire passageway, perforating every unprotected surface like this was some gang shootout. Against his barrier, the needles shattered on impact.

The demon kept the pressure on after that, churning out a steady stream of shards like some fucked-up machine gun emplacement.

The barrier miraculously still held, but given Cole’s present mana reserves, it was only a matter of time before it faltered.

He strained as much magic as he could into both his legs and the barrier – as much as the pounding headache would permit. Hell, just a few more strides and he’d be safe. Alas, proximity to cover couldn’t just conjure mana out of thin air; the barrier failed just a few fucking meters short, leaving him wide open.

Most of the shards pelted him across the back. Each impact stung, but it was hard to tell whether they’d actually penetrated through the armor. Turns out they likely hadn’t, because the moment a cluster bit into his right arm, he learned real quick what penetration actually felt like. And damn, did it sting on a different level.

He barely had time to register that before even more shards caught him in the back of the leg. They must’ve hit the hamstring this time, given the way the limb involuntarily folded out from under him.

He scrambled the last stretch into cover, dragging himself around the pillar just before a line of shards impaled the floor beside him. Only once he’d gotten past the pillar’s edge did he roll onto his left side.

It stung like a bitch in all the places he got hit, enticing him to just yank the needles out. But he knew better than that; removing embedded shit was an invitation to turn a plugged hole into a bleeder, not to mention being unable to actually inspect the injuries. Hell, even the slightest attempt to twist around hurt too damn much to push through.

He sucked air through his teeth. “Agh, fuck.”

He needed somebody else’s hands on this. A scan of the room gave him his options: Ethan and Miles tucked behind a wall to his left, lit up about as bad as he was, with Mack already crouched over them and working. Elina had ridden out the volley behind Graves and Vale, the two Celdornians having caught the shards on a shared barrier of their own.

“Elina,” he gritted out, forcing her name past the pain.

She didn’t waste time asking what for. She threw up a barrier and broke from cover, sprinting the distance to him with the shield angled toward the threat. Having read the move, Vale and Graves opened up on the mimic with a relentless volley of ice and flame. It didn’t bother targeting her – or more like couldn’t, not with the punishment the two of them were dishing out.

Cole put the window to use. Working his good arm free, he fished a mana potion off his belt, thumbed the cork loose one-handed, and drank it down in one go. It’d take a few minutes to fully digest, but even the early trickle was enough to take the worst edge off the headache and push back the gray creeping in at the margins.

Elina reached him a second later. She dropped into a slide and came to rest behind the pillar on her knees, already on the wound before she’d fully settled.

“Leg first,” Cole said. He shifted to give her room at the wound, bracing through the spike of pain.

Elina got to work, easing the first needle out slow enough to keep from tearing anything loose, healing magic threading in behind to seal the wounds.

Cole held his position and let her, fishing a second mana potion off his belt with his good arm and knocking it back.

Behind them, the others kept the Alpha Mimic occupied. Cole couldn’t see it from where he sat, but he could definitely hear the battle rage on – shit blowing up over and over, the demon screeching somewhere under all of it. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel at least a bit useless right now. But somehow, sitting out of the fight bothered him a hell of a lot less than he’d have guessed.

A few needles in, Elina’s hands slowed at the back of his thigh, then stopped altogether. “The barb has set against a great vessel. Were it drawn out now, the blood would not be stayed.”

“Then don’t – don’t pull it.” The words came out faster than the thought behind them, a hundred hours of Mack’s lectures doing the talking. “If it’s pressed up on the vessel, it might be the only thing holding it shut. You pull it, it opens, and back there I can’t – there’s nothing to clamp it against, you get me? Brace the vessel first. Throw a barrier on the wall, something to hold it closed, then ease the barb out once that’s set. Not before.”

“Hold still, then,” she said, already adjusting her grip to do exactly that.

He did as she asked. This one took the longest by a mile, her getting the barrier set into the vessel wall and holding before she’d even dare touch the barb. When it finally came out, it lit the whole leg up, hot and wrong in a way that had him bracing for the floor to go red underneath him.

“Be still,” she said with a soft, gentle smile. “You’ll not bleed out, brave as you are. The wound is well in hand.”

He took her word for it over his leg’s, and sure enough, no flood ever came. The pain dropped off to a dull ache soon after. The rest were nowhere near as bad, thank Christ – just splinters, nothing he couldn’t have dug out himself given the angle and a free hand.

A couple minutes later, she sealed the last of it and sat back.

Cole stood and twisted the leg around to test it. The initial bite of the healing magic aside, Elina’s work had left no residual pain. The leg now basically good as new, Cole peeked around the pillar.

The battle had progressed in their favor since he’d gotten lit up, with the Alpha Mimic down to about half its original mass and on the back foot. Graves and Vale had pushed it back toward the security kiosk, keeping it contained on the sides. Mack finished up his own treatments right about then and rejoined the fight with a slew of fireballs, spamming them like there was no tomorrow.

Cole would’ve called it a done deal, if not for a fresh racket emerging from the concourse they’d come from. All that shouting and stomping had to be the cultists, no doubt having narrowed down the team’s position from the last few minutes of chaotic fighting.

“Elina, with me.” He moved off toward another pillar as he said it, putting a few obstacles between his back and the Alpha Mimic on the way.

Once he’d settled into cover, he pre-aimed the corner and waited. The first orc to round it caught a bullet before it had finished the turn.

The sight of it dropping in the chokepoint split the ones behind it down the middle, half recoiling back behind the corner while the other half, already too committed to stop, spilled forward into the open. That half-second of disorder was all Elina needed to drop another runner before the enemy started firing back in earnest. Revolver rounds cracked off their pillar, with a scatter of shoddy firebolts chasing behind – terribly inaccurate, but thick enough to keep the two of them pinned in cover.

“Mack, stay on the mimic with Graves and Vale,” Cole called over the noise. “Everyone else on the cultists!”

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Next

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First / Previous / Royal Road / Patreon (Read 30 Chapters Ahead)

XXX

The next morning, after they’d all had a chance to complete their early-day chores and get ready, the five of them set off for one of the dojos Father Toshi had mentioned to them earlier. He’d specifically mentioned one close by that they could check out, and so they’d headed out as a group, intent on seeing it for themselves.

Of course, that was easier said than done, given Carmine’s distracting new look from yesterday. Chase made a point to take up the front of the group along with Victoria purely so his gaze wouldn’t wander over to the former Demon Queen. Hopefully, with time, he’d adjust to her appearance, but for now, he was forcing himself to keep his eyes off her.

“So, what’s the gimmick behind this place, exactly?” Melanie finally asked as the five of them stepped out of the shrine’s grounds and onto the road. “Because you just know that this place has a gimmick behind it.”

“No idea, love,” Heinrich replied. “I don’t believe Father Toshi mentioned any gimmicks to us, either.”

“If I’ve learned anything from traveling with these people, it’s that there’s always some kind of gimmick involved, one way or another.”

“Well, whatever it is, it’s nothing we can’t overcome,” Chase said without looking back.

“Wow,” Carmine stated. “Rare moment of optimism from you. Consider me impressed.”

“Hey, come on, I’m optimistic,” Chase argued, still keeping his gaze fixed on the road ahead. “Just, you know… not all the time.”

“I rest my case.”

“Can we not do this right now?” Victoria questioned. “I’d really just like to focus on getting somewhere without us being at each other’s throats for once.”

“We’re not at each other’s throats,” Chase pointed out. “We’re just having a conversation.”

“Chase, I’ve seen this play out before. It may not start that way, but it’s going to end that way.”

“Oh, come on, have a little faith,” he emphasized. “We’re all adults here, we ought to be able to talk to each other without wanting to also throttle each other.”

Victoria let out a small grunt, then shook her head. “Fine. But if this ends with you and Carmine shouting at each other, I will thump you both.”

“It’ll be fine,” Chase assured her. “Seriously, now who’s the pessimist?”

Victoria’s only response was to grumble as they all continued on their way.

XXX

About twenty minutes later, they all took their first steps into town. Chase and Carmine were rubbing at matching bumps on their respective heads, but everyone else, at least, seemed quite comfortable and content, if not in outright awe of the sights around them.

“Wow…” Melanie said. “This place looks pretty nice, I won’t lie.”

Chase was inclined to agree. All around them, wooden houses with tile roofs had been erected, with the odd cherry blossom interspersed between them. Pink leaves were blowing in the wind, scattered across the stone walkways below. All around them, people milled about, talking to each other in the language of the Far East. It was a sight Chase had seen many times in the west, though with enough of a foreign and exotic tinge to it that it felt completely different to him, though far from a bad way.

“Alright, then,” Heinrich offered. “Where’s this dojo, anyway?”

“Father Toshi said it was down the street from the market, to the west of the town,” Victoria said. “He told me it was basically impossible to miss – apparently the building is colored differently from the others in town. I guess the people who run the place wanted it to stand out to any prospective challengers.”

“Makes sense, I guess,” Carmine conceded. “In the sense that it makes about as much sense as anything else we’ve encountered in the past few years.”

“You mean none?” Chase asked.

“Your words, not mine.”

“Do I need to thump you both again?” Victoria asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh, come on, that was hardly an argument,” Chase protested. “That’s barely thumpworthy. At this point, I’m convinced you just took a perverse amount of pleasure in bashing Carmine and I over the head.”

“Maybe so, Chase,” Victoria said. “Maybe so.”

Without another word, she pushed past him, and they all continued on after her.

XXX

It only took them a few more minutes of wandering through town before they all came across the building Father Toshi had mentioned earlier. True to his word, they really couldn’t miss it. No words were exchanged as they approached the dojo, and then stepped inside of it.

The first thing they saw upon entering was a crowd of students seated before a teacher in a large, open room. The students were all dressed in white robes with different-colored belts securing them around their waists, while the teacher – an older man with a shaved head – was dressed in all black, with a black belt around his waist. Chase noted that while several of the students were also wearing black belts, the instructor’s belt additionally had several red lines embroidered on it as well.

As the five of them stepped into the building, the instructor suddenly paused, staring at them. He didn’t seem surprised to see them in the slightest, which put Chase just a bit on-edge. Before he could voice his concerns to his friends, however, the instructor suddenly gave a loud shout in his native tongue, and the students jumped up in unison before turning around to face them. They stood rooted to their spots as the man wearing the black robe stepped past them, approaching Chase’s group.

“Westerners,” he greeted, his tone mostly jovial but with a slight edge to it. “We don’t get many of you in town. What brings you here? Interested in training at our school?”

“It’s a bit of a long story,” Chase confessed. “But to make a long story very short, yes, we’re all interested in training here.”

“We’re looking to Level our various Skills, mostly,” Victoria emphasized. “Is that something you’re able to assist with?”

“Hm. I would not be a skilled sensei if I was incapable of assisting you,” the man replied. He eyed Chase up and down before finally offering him a hand. “Sensei Ryo.”

“Chase Ironheart,” he replied, taking the man’s hand. “And these are my-”

Before he could finish his introduction, though, Ryo suddenly grabbed him and flipped him over onto his back with a loud yell. Chase came crashing to the ground, wincing as he did so. Before he could fight back, though, he found himself pinned down by Ryo, who wasted no time in putting him in a headlock. The rest of Chase’s companions suddenly tensed and drew their weapons, only to pause when Ryo spoke.

“Oh, yes, you still have much to learn, I can see that,” he said.

Before Chase could begin gasping for breath, though, the black-clad instructor let him go, then jumped to his feet. Chase laid on the ground for a moment, staring up at the ceiling, even as Victoria moved to stand over him.

“You okay, Chase?” she asked. “Does anything hurt?”

“Just my pride,” Chase answered. “That bald old man just laid me out faster than I could make fun of Melanie. And I can make fun of Melanie fast as all fuck.”

“We’re aware,” Melanie said dryly.

Carmine offered him a hand. Chase stared at it for a moment, and she rolled her eyes.

“Come on, you really think I”ll flip you onto your back the way that old man just did?” she asked.

He hesitated. “I mean, if you’re offering-”

Her gaze narrowed. “Just for that, you can get up on your own.”

She pulled her hand back, and Chase shook his head before forcing himself back onto his feet. Sensei Ryo was still standing there, his hands folded in front of his waist.

“Much to learn, indeed,” he commented, shaking his head. “Anyway, if you insist on learning from my school of martial arts, then I will not turn you away. However, you should know that we don’t just admit anyone here.”

“Oh, here we go…” Melanie muttered.

Chase, meanwhile, let out a tired sigh. “Alright, fine. What quest do you need us to do?”

“Oh, no quests,” Sensei Ryo stated. “I can see just from the way you all carry yourselves that you are accomplished adventurers. No, what I propose is more of an entrance exam than anything. I will set each of you up with one of my students who I think is capable of matching your skill level in martial combat, and if your fight impresses me, then I will allow you to begin studying at my school.”

“Sounds simple enough,” Heinrich stated.

“Does it matter how we win our fights?” Victoria questioned.

At that, Sensei Ryo shook his head. “No. In fact, you don’t even need to win. Impressing me will be enough, even if you lose your fight in the process.”

“Alright, then,” Chase agreed. “You have a deal, Sensei. Who are we fighting?”

“Well, since you asked…” Sensei Ryo turned towards Chase and eyed him up and down. “You will fight first. And as for your opponent…” He thought for a moment. “...Homura, you will fight him to begin with.”

To Chase’s surprise, a little girl no older than thirteen suddenly came bounding over towards him from the back of the group. She was just under five feet tall, had her hair done up in pigtails, and had a wide smile on her face. A dark brown belt was affixed around her waist. As Chase stared at her, she gave him a wide, friendly, gap-toothed smile, then took a bow before him. He blinked at the sight of her, then turned towards Sensei Ryo.

“...You’re kidding, right?” he asked.

“Not at all,” came the response. “You could always refuse to fight her, in which case you can then go find another dojo to train at.”

Behind him, Chase heard the rest of his party begin to snicker. He let out a tired sigh even as he drew his sword.

“Well, I’m not usually in the business of hurting children, so I’ll do my best to pull my punches,” Chase promised the teenager standing before him.

“Are you both ready?” Sensei Ryo asked.

“Ready!” Homura chirped.

“Sure, whatever,” Chase replied.

“Okay… begin!”

Chase wasn’t sure what to expect from the girl standing before him. Having once been a precocious teenager who was nonetheless still capable of taking on full-grown adults and winning, he knew better than to fully underestimate his opponents. That only went so far, however; for example, the girl standing before him looked harmless.

He was completely blindsided, then, when she suddenly sped towards him and struck him in the middle of his plate armor with an open-handed strike so intense it sent him skidding backwards about a dozen yards.

XXX

Name: Chase Ironheart

Level: 11

Race: Human

Class: Warrior

Subclass: Swordmaster

Strength: 20 (MAX)

Dexterity: 15

Intelligence: 13

Wisdom: 13

Constitution: 18

Charisma: 16

Skills: Master Swordsmanship (Level 10); Booby Trap Mastery (Level 8); Archery (Level 4); Unarmed Mastery (Level 1)

Spells: Rush (Level 7); Muscle (Level 4); Stone Flesh (Level 7); Defying The Odds (Level 2)

Traits: Blessed

Name: Carmine Nolastname

Level: 11

Race: Greater Demon

Class: Arcane Witch

Subclass: Archmage

Strength: 10

Dexterity: 13

Intelligence: 19

Wisdom: 19

Constitution: 12

Charisma: 8

Skills: Master Spellcasting (Level 10); Summon Familiar (Level 10)

Spells: Magic Dart (Level 7); Magic Scattershot (Level 5); Fire Magic (Level 5); Earth Magic (Level 1)

Traits: Blessed

Name: Melanie Vhaeries

Level: 11

Race: Ascended Human

Class: Necromancer

Subclass: Arch-Lich

Strength: 8

Dexterity: 13

Intelligence: 18

Wisdom: 16

Constitution: 15

Charisma: 12

Skills: Raise Lesser Undead (Level 10); Raise Greater Undead (Level 3); Unorthodox Weapon User (Level 8); Bone Shatter (Level 1)

Spells: Touch of Death (Level 5); Gravesinger (Level 7); Armor of Bone (Level 3)

Traits: None

Name: Victoria Firelight

Level: 12

Race: Human

Class: Paladin

Subclass: Devotee

Strength: 19

Dexterity: 9

Intelligence: 13

Wisdom: 13

Constitution: 19

Charisma: 11

Skills: Swordsmanship Mastery (Level 5); Blunt Weapon Mastery (Level 8); Archery Mastery (Level 5)

Spells: Holy Light (Level 6); Ward of the Gods (Level 5); Bane of the Undead (Level 7); Divine Bolt (Level 4)

Traits: None

Name: Heinrich Straten

Level: 17

Race: Human

Class: Paladin

Subclass: Oathbreaker

Strength: 20 (MAX)

Dexterity: 13

Intelligence: 12

Wisdom: 14

Constitution: 20 (MAX)

Charisma: 13

Skills: Swordsmanship Mastery (Level 8); Blunt Weapon Mastery (Level 10)

Spells: Withering Grace (Level 1); Soulrend (Level 1); Umbral Ward (Level 1); Mournful Benediction (Level 1)

Traits: Broken Oath

XXX

Special thanks to my good friend and co-writer, /u/Ickbard, for all the help with writing this story.

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Chapter 17: Perspectives After a Month

"CP 1765, August 19. 20 days have passed since landing. Local time: AD 2016, September 6."

"Twenty local day-night cycles have passed since the crash landing — roughly equivalent to 23 days on Lierus. I think I should start keeping a log at regular intervals from now on. Maybe it could serve as a memoir later."

"What happened?"

"\See the 'Xi P's Memory' chapters**"

"This location should be adc-45:3, 86 light-years from Lierus Ait. What a miracle! If someone had told me before that the atmosphere here was breathable, I'd have sent them straight to a mental institution. Yet here I am. The sky survey telescopes should have spotted this ages ago — the oxygen signatures are unmistakable in atmospheric refraction spectra. Too bad the survey for this sector won't arrive for another 25 years. I suppose that's one sliver of hope for rescue... assuming they don't find other habitable planets first."

"In my previous imagination, if we discovered extraterrestrials, they might have body temperatures as high as 200 degrees C, or dwell on deep-sea beds, or even be a massive collective consciousness — anything was possible. But after landing here, it turns out that my previous imagination was a bit too rich. At least, if this isn't an exception, what I see is: On a planet with similar humidity and basic elemental composition, life forms won't differ too greatly. The similarity among beings that can be called 'people' is even higher. With respect to the local inhabitants, if they stood more than 80 metres away from me, I couldn't even tell them apart from us."

"Not only do they resemble us in appearance, but we also share many physiological similarities. We can breathe the same air, inhabit the same lands and share some of the same dietary habits. Bear in mind that they're omnivores — perhaps I should ask Ye Min what it's like to eat plants..."

***

"I've, been here, for a month, now." Xi P tells Min.

When Robinson Crusoe taught English to the native he named Friday on the deserted island, it took three months just to get him to speak a few broken phrases¹. Perhaps that story isn't real, but it illustrates the difficulty of learning a foreign language. Fortunately, Xi P has plenty of free time every day, and it's not 1659 anymore.

Of course, Min only has limited time each weekday and couldn't possibly spend entire days at home tutoring Xi P as Robinson did. But nowadays, one can be one's own teacher. Needless to say, everyone knows how much computers and dictionaries can aid language learning. Robinson Crusoe only used a Bible to teach language and converted a native into a believer — proof of the importance of learning materials.

For now, both parties remained optimistic. Xi P could produce every required syllable, although they often sounded strange. Min genuinely could not wrap his head around it. While it is inevitable that life on a planet with an atmosphere would evolve sound-based communication, why did it have to be this exact way? Not to mention why they also evolved their mouths into a shared passage for both respiration and digestion — though this did offer the practical advantage of being able to 'suck'... If it weren't for the fact that it would be inappropriate, Min would stick an endoscope behind Xi P's tongue to see what it actually looks like in there.

As it turns out, Xi P has pondered similar questions. Min simply shows him an anatomical diagram of the human throat in response.

In any case, they are not in a rush. Since neither Xi P nor Min has been reduced to a pile of pus by alien bacteria, it probably means that extraterrestrial microorganisms aren't really anything to fret over.

During this month together, Min has also become accustomed to referring to Xi P as 'he'. Following a brief discussion, they confirm that both their species require the pairing of two individuals with slightly different genotypes in order to reproduce. Xi P also belongs to the type that does not need to carry the young inside their body. Just one small issue: even when he'd seen other fox-people in photographs and VR videos, they all looked more or less the same to Min…

Regardless, Xi P's words remind Min that it's indeed been a month since Xi P's arrival. Measured precisely to the hour, or even minute — truly a moment worth commemorating. Just as they hoped, no one came to visit them. The internet has also settled back into calm. Neither the Paris Olympics nor the nuclear pulse engine capture the mainstream media's attention anymore. For scientists in specialised fields, the storm driving this technological revolution has only just begun, but for most people, it was merely a foreign technological advancement, soon forgotten. And the local meteorite-hunting groups never show up at Min's house either. Initial concerns over an alien landing now seem like a lot of fuss over nothing.

Once they had made some progress with the language, the two spent a long time eagerly exchanging views on each other's societies and cultures, keen to gain a better understanding of one another. This not only provided language practice, but also satisfied their curiosity about the alien society they had landed on — or what life was like among the fox people.

***

When Xi P finds out what Min thinks of his appearance, he is astonished to say the least.

Being told he looks cute — especially by an alien — is hardly a pleasant experience. At least Xi P doesn't share that preference. He even finds the words somewhat nauseating. He can't quite grasp why Min thinks he looks cute. According to Min's description, he appears "fluffy-looking" with "long ears".

'But why?? A species with little fur and short ears actually prefers long fur and long ears? What kind of logic — or nature — is that?'

Of course, this also suddenly clarifies one reason why Min helped him. He has once scorned the notion of physical appeal, yet he is saved precisely because of it — utterly ironic. What's this? The protagonist is accidentally stranded on an alien planet, only to discover that he is irresistibly charming to the locals, effortlessly wins their hearts? This isn't even space opera anymore; it is...hm...romance novel masquerading as sci-fi?

Truly terrifying.

'How could this aesthetic even develop?' Xi P remains utterly perplexed and adds it to his ever-growing list of Unsolved Alien Mysteries.

***

Min is deeply relieved that he hasn't told Xi P anything about Japanese Kemonomimi (girls with animal ears) or the furry fandom. He had only vaguely described the reason as having "soft fur" and "long ears", avoiding the term "animal ears" altogether. He understands why Xi P found these odd; the human aesthetic for long ears and fluffy fur is indeed peculiar.

Of course, fur comes in different types. Most of the fur on Xi P's face differs from that on his arms, but both are quite nice. In fact, it looks better than much real fox fur, largely because Xi P grooms it meticulously — nearly always combed neatly and kept spotless...

After sharing his thoughts, Min curiously asks Xi P what he thinks of him.

Min's question makes Xi P hesitate slightly. His own perspective on Min's appearance is rather... different to Min's opinion of him. He hadn't intended to bring it up himself, but since Min has asked...

'We're all civilised people,' Xi P reasons to himself, 'and we understand each other's backgrounds. There shouldn't be too much to worry about.'

"...no fur...deformed...hard..."

As Min anticipated, Xi P does not find the lack of fur attractive — it's merely tolerable. As for the ears and knees, his description is "deformed". Min is fairly certain that he didn't intend to use the word "deformed" — he probably meant something similar but less derogatory, but that's the only word that came to mind.

These are nothing to be surprised about. Putting himself in Xi P's shoes, Min understands why the alien holds these views. However, Xi P pauses for a moment and adds another point. He raises his hand, tugging and pulling at his own facial skin while shaking his head.

"This... is terrifying." Xi P states.

"Uh..."

Xi P probably finds human facial expressions overly exaggerated or frightening. Given their limited facial muscles, this reaction is also understandable. Min would probably share a similar impression if he sees someone freely contorting their skin beyond what is considered normal.

Overall, Xi P's verdict on human appearance is "acceptable (tolerable)", since both share similar body plan and neither has a tail. His sense of smell isn't particularly strong either — the human scent isn't troubling him. Though that might just be because Min is the only one around.

In general, Xi P sees Min as humans see little grey aliens. Min comes to this conclusion internally.

Finally, Xi P adds: "Better than hanging out with pigs."

Min needs a moment to process this, and then realises that Xi P truly means no insult — he simply hasn't grasped the nuanced connotations of such comparisons yet. Honestly, with Peppa Pig cartoons airing non-stop on TV, it makes perfect sense he'd misjudge human perceptions of pigs.

***

Regardless, considering they are both aliens to each other, the exchange about their appearances has gone relatively well. However, when the conversation shifts to societies, Min starts to feel a bit uncomfortable.

He hadn't realised that Xi P likes to show off at times like this. Xi P keeps pulling up photos and concept art from his tablet to show Min, which is fine — Min finds these alien-flavoured cityscapes, indoor spaces, and landscapes quite intriguing. But then Xi P insists Min to pull up similar images for comparison, pointing out shortcomings while broadly discussing advanced features and potential improvements. Even though he knows those suggestions are probably valid, Min can't help but feel uncomfortable.

Of course, it is more likely Xi P had simply been bottling things up for too long.

Note 1: Although Robinson Crusoe described it as "the happiest year", he took Friday in under his wing in September. From my understanding this means 12-9=3 months.

Chapter 18: Cities, Space Stations, and Warships

Author's note: If you ever wonder what's wrong with Min mentally... Check this out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome

Originally, Min intended to listen attentively. If such an act didn't provoke annoyance in their society, then he can't really blame Xi P for anything. The issue is, Xi P's language skills are still too rudimentary, and Min has to piece together his words through guesswork and context. On top of that, the topic itself is technically complex, so listening to it is a real test of cognitive endurance. After patiently enduring for a while, Min had to ask Xi P to stop to give his brain a moment's rest.

From Xi P's words and the experience playing with his tablet/VR headset these past few days, Min is able to sketch out a mental image of alien cities. They are undeniably sci-fi. In that earlier incident where Xi P deliberately scared him with an alien invasion movie, the city that Min saw would actually count as vintage. While many high-tech structures had been newly built, certain older, difficult-to-demolish sections remained.

Take, for example, the 'traditional' skyscrapers. The skyscrapers in that film were quite boxy in design, many visibly constructed from concrete. However, with the current trend of de-urbanisation in Lierus, newer buildings are increasingly adopting open designs, and the remaining skyscrapers are being built with more suitable new materials — plastic.

The concept of constructing building exteriors almost entirely from plastic isn't new. However, due to strength, pollution, and fire resistance concerns, few such structures exist on Earth. In Lierus, though, some new skyscrapers have already abandoned concrete. The strength, flexibility, reduced costs, and significantly lighter weight have allowed plastic to rapidly erode the market share of traditional building materials.

And as Min observed, this plastic is also quite pretty. Its vibrant, glossy hues make the city appear like a colourful toy from aerial views, with hardly any need for tilt-shift effects. Beyond this, some of the most densely populated megacities boast spectacular infrastructure — volumetric superhighways, multi-level elevated roads and tunnels. Light rail trains weave through every available space, while many vehicles on the roads operate without drivers. Nuclear power plants and facilities resembling solar thermal stations dot industrial zones. Diverse architectural forms featured smooth, open lines. Save for the absence of flying cars, they perfectly match Min's vision of ideal futuristic metropolises.

Moving beyond the city, their space programme is equally impressive. By human standards, their space station is colossal. The photos Xi P showed appeared to have taken by his ship's camera before departure, with the exhaust plume still visible at the bottom of the frame. The station resembled stacked rectangular prisms, topped and bottomed by smooth square pyramids, with the base facing the planet. Although there was no clear reference object, judging by the stairs and handrails visible through the still-closing hatch, the entire structure likely exceeded 150 metres in height and 60 metres in width — potentially larger still when accounting for radiator panels. Its footprint dwarfed that of the International Space Station by more than tenfold.

And this is a relatively solid structure. Its actual volume could be thirty times greater than the frame-like ISS.

'Now this is what a real alien artefact should look like.' Min thought instantly upon seeing the station.

Beyond its vastly larger scale and mature design, it also bore something never seen on human spacecraft: weapons!¹

Min is certain these are weapons. One level featured a ring of turrets encircling the structure, each extending a series of relatively small-calibre barrels. While these cannons may not match the firepower of naval destroyer guns, who can say for sure? After all, this is alien technology — and who knows what would come out of those barrels? Xi P explained that a group of unknown terrorists — or possibly a nation's special forces — had attacked the space station using space-air fighters. Ultimately, the surviving garrison fought back fiercely and eliminated the invading militants, defending the station. To this day, the mastermind behind the attack remains unknown. However, following this incident, a weapons system was rapidly deployed. Considering the space station's strategic position and superior range, no space-aircraft could pose a threat anymore.

It must be said that the description of this battle has a distinctly sci-fi vibe to it. The only thing that might ruin the picture is the physical appearance of the crew.

Xi P also proudly showcased their military vessels — not watercrafts, but interstellar warships! Measuring over 40 metres in length, they were equipped with three cannons/lasers similar to those on the space station, but scaled down. Surprisingly, their design closely resembled classic sci-fi warships: a massive cylinder studded with equipment and radiators. Xi P claims that their original intention was to counter space-air fighters. Comparing these spaceships with the few aircraft capable of direct space entry that humanity possesses² reveals just how thoroughly the aliens had prepared for interstellar warfare. Now, as the weaponry on the space station gradually matures, these vessels have been assigned new missions: installing faster-than-light engines to assist in reconnaissance of neighbouring star systems.

Though these warships are no match in size to waterborne ships, their mere existence reveals the pinnacle of technological advancement — or perhaps, immense financial resources. An alien nation possessing genuine space warships resides not too far (?) from Earth...

Min can't tell if this counts as good news or bad. He can only take solace in the fact that this alien society has not yet discovered Earth — and that they seem reasonably civilised.

Note 1: Soviet Union's Polyus spacecraft was planned to mount a laser weapon but it never launched.

Note 2: Or none, depending on how you define it. Here I use the definition of crossing the Kármán line.

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Chapter 158

Nick Smith

Adventurer Level: 18

Human – American

The daemons who had been standing guard outside of the giant hill had been pretty easy to deal with. They'd try to attack me, flinch once they got close enough for the crucifix to hurt them, and get finished off by my sword. However, we'd made a mistake by thinking that the daemons on the outside of the hill were the majority of their forces.

Once the daemons had figured out that they were being attacked, they called an alarm and more daemons began pouring out of the hill. Nineteen or so daemons suddenly became more than thirty, then more than fifty. We were vastly outnumbered, even with the kobolds. Without their help we'd most certainly be dead.

It was a tough fight. I'd briefly seen the daemon commander, but then I was suddenly surrounded by his minions. They pushed through the pain caused by the crucifix to attack me, and I was quickly bogged down fighting them. Daemon after daemon fell to my spells and blade, but it seemed like more and more kept coming.

They managed to push me back, but I fought them off hard enough to be able to escape the press. Doing so bought me a moment of reprieve, which I used to examine the battle. Bakobolds were keeping the daemons at bay, and the kobolds were making good use of their arrows by shooting between the bakobolds.

Then Kirian and Yulk were next to me.

"I don't know if we can take all of them," Kirain said, out of breath.

"We can certainly take most, but I agree that if we try to win the day we'll be forced to retreat," Yulk added.

"What about the kobolds?" I asked.

"They're good fighters, but they've taken some casualties. Retreating now might cause them to lose spirit, and I don't know if they'll get it back," Kirain sighed. "Meanwhile, the daemons will reinforce their position. We likely won't get another chance at this."

"We won't need one," Yulk said. "The commander is out here, so all we need to do is to get Nick into that dungeon. He can fight his way to the portal and open it, then the anyels can reinforce us."

"If they cooperate."

"We have no reason to believe that they won't."

"Let's do it," I cracked my neck. "I just need a hole."

"That's what he said," Kirain chuckled.

Not expecting that kind of joke from a literal noble, Yulk and I turned to give him a shocked look, but he'd already begun to run toward the press. We followed at a jog. The master vampire leapt over one of the bakobolds and into the daemons. Limbs immediately flew into the air, akin to water from a splash.

"We need to get to the entrance!" Yulk shouted.

As far as I knew, the bakobolds were not trained soldiers. They were certainly experienced warriors, though, and seemed to know enough about the ebb and flow of battle to understand what we needed. Pikes and greatswords flashed, daemons were shoved and stabbed, and within a minute we were able to see Kirain and the entrance to the dungeon. One of the bakobolds and two of the kobolds followed us in and stayed at the entrance to keep the daemons at bay.

Kirain, Yulk, and I hurried through the narrow corridors of the dungeon. The layout and construction of the dungeon reminded me of the one outside Talokam, where we'd first encountered Kirain and the kobolds. We occasionally met with some daemonic resistance, but they were far fewer in number than outside and we were able to quickly get rid of them.

"This is oddly nostalgic," Kirain said after we finished off a small group of daemons. "Do all of the dungeons look like this?"

"No," Yulk and I answered in unison.

"Hmm. Do you suppose this one also has a hidden passage to a manor somewhere?"

"Probably not, but that doesn't really matter," I said. "If the portal were at the end of the hidden passage, the people who kept a record of the portal's location wouldn't have known about its relation to this dungeon unless they also knew about the hidden passage. They would've mentioned a hidden passage, and they didn't, so the portal we're looking for is in here somewhere. Tellub tsac!"

The conversation died down as we encountered another group of daemons. Once they were dealt with, we continued down the corridor as quickly as Yulk could manage. Then we fought another couple of daemons, then we continued, then we fought more daemons, then we continued again. Finally, we got to a pair of ornate doors and Kirain impatiently kicked them open.

Three daemons rushed out and tried to attack us, but we quickly took them out and moved into the room. Inside was a crack of sorts, spewing an odd-looking light. It wasn't quite any one color, but it also looked white somehow. It was beautiful, and confusing to look at.

My captivation was cut short by the sound of harsh laughter. Its source was a daemon woman sitting on a grandiose chair. Her skin and plate armor were both bright red, and her horns grew from her forehead as if they had been slicked back with a comb. As her laugh faded, her angular features became more obvious. What was also obvious was that we'd been wrong about who the daemon commander was.

The seat she was on featured precious metals and jewels, but it was primarily made of bones that had definitely come from mortals. Among the elf and orc skulls I saw a couple that could only be human. As I wondered where they could have come from, she rose.

"I didn't actually believe that anyone would be foolish enough to come for this portal," she said. "But here's an unfamiliar orc, an all too familiar vampire, and a human of all things! How could it have possibly survived all this time?"

"I am a MASTER vampire, thank you, and you've got a bone-throne?" Kirain asked with disdain in his voice. "In this day and age? Really?"

"I am far older than either side of your family line," she grinned. "And what can I say? I am Minethri the Manipulator, and I love the classics. Would the orc and human like a chance to introduce themselves before I tear you all apart?"

As she spoke she reached into her throne and retrieved a steel, multi-ended chain-whip. At each end of the whip were barbed blades which looked as if they'd get hooked into any flesh unlucky enough to be struck. The chains clinked menacingly as she unfurled the nasty-looking weapon.

The thought of getting hit by it sent a chill down my spine.

"I am Ni-"

The whip sliced through the air before I could even finish saying my name, but Preternatural Evasion kicked in and saved me. Kirain wasn't as lucky, though, and one of the chains wrapped around his arm and the bladed end bit into his neck. He scowled for a moment, but his expression quickly changed to a grin. The vampire grabbed the chain and pulled.

Minethri stumbled for exactly one step. Kirain's grin disappeared as she yanked the whip back towards her, tearing his arm to ribbons and leaving a gaping hole in his neck. As he fell backwards, two spells quickly made their way toward the daemon.

Wind Spear came from Yulk, Steel Bullet came from me. Wind Spear was deflected with a spin of the whip, but the bullet caught Minethri square in her chest, piercing her armor. She hissed and leapt toward me, once again swinging the whip.

Yulk had wisely retreated a bit, leaving him outside of her range. I dodged the swing as another Wind Spear whistled past me. It struck her in the same spot my bullet had, and further cracked her armor. I aimed for her head and let another Steel Bullet fly.

The daemon's head split apart like a melon, but it reformed before she lost her footing. She grinned at me with newly formed teeth. My stomach sank as I realized that the hole in her chest was also gone.

"It'll take a lot more than tha-"

Kirain tackled her to the ground and began slashing at her face and arms. Her skin crackled and hissed from proximity to his crucifix, but that was the least amount of damage she was suffering. However, Kirain yelled in frustration as it became more and more obvious that she was healing from the wounds just as quickly as he was creating them.

Yulk and I stood by helplessly, waiting for the chance to strike.

"JUST GO!" Kirain shouted as he dug his claws into the daemon's skull. "I'LL TAKE CARE OF THIS!"

Yulk nodded at me, and I made a mad dash for the portal. I tried to ignore the splatting crunches of Minethri's skull repeatedly smashing into the ground as I focused on pouring magic into the portal. Turns out, I didn't have to try very hard.

I'd expected some sort of resistance, but the portal seemed to reach within me and forcibly remove the magic that I offered. My vision grew dark even as the strange light grew brighter, but then it was over and I took a deep, steadying breath. From behind me, I heard the fwoosh of a fire spell igniting and a terrible scream of pain from Kirain.

I turned to see nothing but bones remaining.

Chapter 158.5

Ishimialis

Adventurer Level: N/A

Anyel - Unknowable

The daemons believed that they were being secretive, sly, guileful, yet we knew that they walked amongst the mortals again. How could we not? They couldn't help but exert themselves upon the mortals.

The pain and torment inflicted by the mortals upon one another was distasteful, yet tolerable. The same inflicted by daemons felt absolutely repugnant. Disgusting in ways that mortals could never achieve, for their souls could never hold the same taint.

Yet we were forbidden from interfering unless it was directly requested by the mortals. The wylder had already asked for our interference. We held firm and denied them.

Some of the loathsome false gods had also requested that we aid the mortals. They were denied as well, more vehemently than the wylder had been. It tormented us to know that our precious ones were becoming the victims of daemons, yet that very torment was our penance.

We had sinned. Some of our own had exerted control where they should not have, and that exertion allowed the daemons to spread lies about us. Our sins were trampling over the free will that our creator had granted the mortals and allowing the daemons an opportunity to strike at our reputations.

These were not easily forgivable sins, and without our creator present to chastise us we needed to formulate our own atonement. As such, a covenant was formed. We would no longer interfere with the mortal realm unless we were called upon to do so by at least one mortal.

We notified the mortals of this covenant, yet time was cruel to us both. The cathedrals, dungeons, peaks, and pits that led to Haven all fell into disrepair and the mortals appeared to forget our agreement. We wanted desperately to remind them when the daemons first reappeared in their realm, but that would be interference.

We considered asking the wylder or even the false gods to remind them for us, but without the mortals seeking that knowledge themselves, it would be indirect interference. We had no recourse but to watch and wait as the daemons spied and crept among them, preying on the weak and helpless to satiate their desire to feel. All hope seemed lost, until we felt him.

The last of our creator's creations, named after a saint, was carried by a replacer out from the depths of a human-made hell. He and his were being directed by the usurper, the meddler who caused the world to rebirth, tearing us all from our father. Yet every step he took brought him closer to us.

The false gods, odious though they be, were guiding him to us. Out of the darkness came hope. Hope that we would be able to save the mortals again, following the last command given to us by our beloved creator before the usurper's reign began.

We watched him closely. We wailed when he was injured, cried when he was saddened, laughed when he felt happy. We walked his path with him, hoping that it would bring him to us before it was too late.

The daemons must have felt something, though, because they made their move long before they were entirely ready to. They tore open the portals to the hells and pushed their way through, to torture, to torment, to conquer. The repugnancy was nearly unbearable, so much so that we almost didn't notice when Nicodemus Liam Smith arrived at the end of the path he'd been treading for so long.

Finally, the portal opened, and I was chosen to step through.

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Time:- 10.30pm (Night)

While climbing the stairs Vami said "Man i am tired, minister's death making us work like crazy". She opened the door with fallen shoulders, threw the keys on the table and fell on the sofa without removing her shoes. She laid there in complete darkness, trying to calm her mind down, but she couldn't, Edward's smile kept moving through her head.

"Tomorrow I have to meet Rumi" she muttered.

A deep rumble echoed from her empty stomach. "I am hungry, I want to eat something."

She somehow got up and went towards the fridge, but slammed her toe against the table. "ahhhh, fuck" she cursed, hopping on one foot. She turned the lights on and went blind for a moment. She opened the fridge with hope, but she knew nothing was in there, except frozen water. She closed it, while eating some frozen water.

"What should I do, I don't have anything"

She stared herself in the washroom mirror, removed her makeup and realized how ugly she was looking. With this disappointment she wore some comfortable clothes and headed to a near by restaurant.

"It is already 11pm, it is dark outside" she mumbled. "being inspector doesn't change anything, men are still filled with monstrous amount of lust"

The restaurant was 5 minutes away walking, beautiful and full of lights, not very crowded. She sat near the window and ordered the Yakiniku Plate (Ꝟ1,600), and an ice-cream for desert.

While waiting for the food, she thought about tomorrow, which restaurant should be chosen to win the bet with Rumi, what should she wear, which hairstyle should she do and many other things. Her food arrived, she was happy like a baby and devoured it at lightning speed, within 4 minutes the food was over, with desert.

As she was paying at the counter, a man interrupted her.

"I want to pay your bill" he said.

"w- whyy"

The man smiled

"I am just returning the favour"

"I don't remember doing anything good to you" said Vami

He shook his head

"Of course you will not, cause you never realised it"

"huh?"

What the hell, this man is saying, thought Vami.

"Tell me the REASON!!"

"See, just to get cleared, i don't have any intentions with you, I was watching you"

Vami's mind:- WTFFFF

"WHAT!!, HOW!!, DID YOU PUT HIDDEN CAMERA IN MY HOUSE!!!"

He took a step back.

"WAIT, NO!!, you sure jump to the conclusion very fast, I was sitting opposite to your table, the reason I am paying isss.."

"I-I've never seen a woman as beautiful as you in my entire life. That little strand of hair resting against your cheek... those eyes framed by long eyelashes... your smile, it's the kind that makes it impossible to look away. Every little detail feels like it was carefully painted by nature itself. As a beauty like you appeared in front of me, I am returning the favour by just paying."

"tha- thank you, I appreciate you saying that, but seriously there is no need to pay"

"come on, don't worry, I will pay"

He insisted and she didn't have the energy to fight, so she said yes. He paid and left. He didn't even ask for her number or any sort of contact, just like he said. Vami was very surprised that these types of men exist.

"What a randomness." mumbled vami

Instead of walking home she booked a ride, for her safety. At home, she thought a bath would be perfect, and while cleaning herself she thought "I wonder how Rumi is like now, means I know how he looks, but his goals, how he lives his life". Then she got out, dried herself, got cosy and went to bed.

INSIDE RUMI'S HOUSE(1 AM - NIGHT)

"Man I have to do something with my addiction!!!!, I have been scrolling short form content for four hours straight, the time just flies" said Rumi.

He was thinking, I want to do something big in life, I can't just waste my time. When I waste it, I just feel like dying, I just want to leave everything behind and JUST DIEEEE!!

"I wish I could just do that" he sighed. "It's not like I don't work hard, I just can't stay consistent."

The room fell silent. The only sound was his phone, still playing another pointless short video.

He looked at the screen for a long moment... then locked it.

"...No."

He let out a slow breath.

"If I keep living like this, ten years will disappear just as easily."

"FUCKK ITTT!" he shouted. "I will start with writing my goals down."

He already had a rough idea of what he wanted. Since childhood he was interested in electronics, coding, science, and he wanted to create consciousness using technology, not just an Ai who can think, but a real living program who have goals and can work on them. He didn't know if he could create it, but he would try to get as close as possible. So the 1st goal was "CREATE CONSCIOUSNESS".

"Equality means nothing if it doesn't apply to the powerful too." He was very clear about the second thing, "EQUALITY".

He wanted to experience a girlfriend in this life, so 3rd "GIRLFRIEND". And 4th, he wanted to be "FREE", free from his bad habits and emotions.

"Now i have my goals clear, but someone said a filled stomach works harder, so its food time."

He got off the bed with excitement, kept a pan on the gas, and while the oil was heating he added chilly powder, ginger-garlic paste and salt to a packet of ground meat. Rumi is quite fond of cooking. The room filled with the aroma of spices, and he sat down with a plate and a cold glass of water on the side.

While eating he got a message from Vami, "Tomorrow 5?"

Why is she awake at 2am? he wondered. He replied "sounds great". She sent a thumbs up emoji, and Rumi thought the conversation ended, but Vami was waiting for him to say something. After some time she realized Rumi was not going to start any talk, so she asked what he is going to wear tomorrow.

Rumi was a little disappointed, but 100% sure about the outfit. He replied "white shirt and blue straight fit jeans and black shoes". The reason he was so sure, that's the only clothing he had left, he only had two pairs and one of them he already wore in the last meeting with her.

She replied "hmmmm..."

Four m's in hmmmm. Not two. Not three. Clearly FOUR!

There was absolutely no excitement in that hm, he muttered.

He asked her what she is going to wear.

"I don't really know, I am confused." she replied

She definitely have mountains of clothes thought Rumi.

He replied "wear something white, so we will twin". She replied "yeah, I will see." She was clearly not interested in twinning, he imagined.

"I am sleeping now, goodnight" said Vami

"Good night.. May this night be gentle for you to dream sweet"

Vami read the message, smiled in the dark, and put the phone down.

Two people were going to sleep peacefully tonight.

A few kilometres away, in a house that still smelled faintly of her husband's cologne, the minister's wife sat alone in the dark, staring at a photograph she couldn't put down.

She had no idea her son had confessed for the murder.

She had no idea what tomorrow would take from her.

Tomorrow, in a small dark room with one dim bulb and a camera feeding straight to the commissioner's office, Vivek would look her in the eyes and tell her the truth.

And for the first time in years, a mother who had never raised her voice would become something no one in that room was ready for.

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