yupsopone - Tumblr blog

yupsopone · 8 years ago

Text

Sunset

A hiss.

A beep.

Then a pause.

A long pause.

Another beep.

A pause.

A beep.

Then...

A thud.

A rumbling wave of heat and noise, unseen frequencies and immeasurable shifting.

Slowly, I came to be. Granted, I wasn't “not” before, per se, just not awake. Not conscious. But then I was. A long sleep in cryo, my body held in stasis while my ship traversed The Slip, a realm of nearly unquantifiable shifting physics and spaces. Once it had been discovered it furthered the exploration of space. The Slip was, as of yet, impossible to map internally in any sort of “normal” way. The entry and exit points could be, counter-intuitively, mapped very precisely.

This is what allowed me, and hundreds of thousands of other Cartographers to thread our way through a universe formerly unseen. As my body slowly stirred, the subtle vibrations of my ship, normally unnoticeable, came into focus. I laid there, my body in the cryo bed, and just felt my ship. Her purring, subtle voice, all around me. She's kept me alive, and I, her.

Pressing a button down by my side, I braced my eyes for the outside world. The lights were dimmed – after months of zero light and zero use, my eyes would be very sensitive. The light would slowly increase over the next 4 or so hours, and as it did I'd slowly be able to see more and more clearly.

I tried to sit up, eager to get started on my work, but it was slow-going. Electro-stimulation electrodes placed around my body slowly worked some of my muscles, keeping them at least somewhat in shape while I was in stasis. Once I finally managed to sit up, I smiled. The work was soon to come.

I loved my work. It took me a few months to train myself just to call it “work”. Exploration, science, spaceflight, reports and paperwork and data! Since I was a small child, living on the space station Centralis. It was a large station designed for scientific research, and it was where I discovered the joys of science. Being trapped in what is basically a box in space is why I think I found my love for exploration. There's only so many places you can explore in a space station, but an infinite number of planets out in the universe. I wanted to leave my mark on history, and I could do it by traveling and researching.

And travel I did. 16 planets, registered to my name, scattered throughout space. 12 rich in resources, 3 barren, and 1 ice world. The ice planet was a mixture of both water and carbon dioxide ices, but it was baked with deadly radiation; there wasn't going to be any life there. A large gas giant and an unstable star filled the system with radiation belts, fluctuating constantly. As I learned later, some of the belts were millions of degrees.

But! Of those 16 Registered Planets, not a single one was viable for terraforming. Humans would not be living on them in any other way than small, isolated outposts. They'd also never be able to leave space suits or habitats. It was my goal, and every Cartographer out there, to find a planet to terraform, something out there that did, or could, support life. Terraforming was a massive undertaking, lasting dozens to hundreds of years. It was the process of changing the environment on a planet such that it could sustain a certain type of life, whether it be human or not.

As I hauled myself out of the stasis room, I heard a familiar voice. A soothing, soprano voice that would warm you right up.

“Good Morning, Captain.”

“Hello, Mara.” “I take it you slept well?”

“So well I didn't notice your terrible driving.”

As I smiled over my response, I tripped, and fell to the floor painfully. Mara was laughing, she'd disabled the gravity generator for a split second – causing me to fall on my face. She was the eyes and ears of my ship. And also the voice. And also the brain. And frankly the whole ship was her. She was a 7th-generation Artificial Intelligence, she helped control the ship and helped me with my work. The ship was, technically speaking, her body. A series of distributed and duplicated computers within the hull were her “brain”, carefully placed to ensure maximum survival potential in the case of damage.

“So tell me, Mara, where are we? Any planets nearby?”

“Location: Cygnus AX-12-B-MV-K4. Star type: G2. At least seven planets are present. Good score.”

“Dang! What a catch, eh?”

It wasn't often that such large systems were found, so hopefully there would be at least one planet of high value.

I reached the bridge, and sat down I nmy favorite chair on the whole ship. My command chair slid forward, spinning 180 as it entered the central command station, the displays that surround it shifting downwards to wrap around me. Looking out the windows, I smiled. More science to do, more adventure. The windows weren't actually glass, but high-resolution displays, much more useful than useless glass.

I pulled up the basic telemetry data, examining the estimated orbits of the seven planets in the system. I decided to name the system “Egrava” after my neighbor's dog back on my home station. She was a rambunctious and excited puppy who was always getting into trouble, and we frequently found her stuck in ventilation shafts, or in our cabinets.

“This system has quite a lot of potential, Roderick.”

“Thanks for reminding me. We need more data, of course, always the case.”

“Shall we use any more Bloodhounds?”

Bloodhounds were a type of reconnaissance drone, fired from ships by high-powered railguns. They were used to gather data from multiple points without having the ship need to visit too many locations. A ship could only carry so many, so they were a precious commodity.

“But of course, this is a promising system.”

On the outside of the ship, four armored panels split apart, and from within came pairs of rails. At the inside ends were the Bloodhounds, one on each railgun. Small adjustments on the rails directed the drones, and an electric charge shunted through the rails caused the drones to be shot at high speed from the ship.

“Bloodhounds are on the trail.”

Light.

Wind.

Distances untraveled.

Heights.

Depths.

Riches untold.

Vast cities.

Then…

A day later, the first Bloodhound started sending back telemetry data. While it was gone, I compiled my initial scientific reports, began my personal logs, and did a general rundown of my ship, The Teravaeus. Engines were fine, maneuvering capability was 100%, sub-light drives were in pristine order and the Slipstream drive appeared to be in perfect condition.

My communications system, both the local system and the connection back to the Cartographer's home station, “Geographia”. The link back home was an interesting one. Data could be sent back before a Cartographer returned home, although it was a very slow process. It was above even my scientific knowledge, but it was based on a series of comm relays scattered throughout space and The Slip, broadcasting to each other using a brand new form of transmitters. The signal was about 80% reliable, but the time it took to make it back to Geographia was somewhat random and hard to predict. You could be certain your message would reach home, but not when it would get there. As a result, the Ansible, as it was known (despite not communicating instantaneously), was commonly only used for sending back small messages to let the Cartographer's guild know one was still alive, or to request rescue. I'd never needed rescuing, but there's always a first time.

Life support was fine as well, and Mara was in good shape. One of her smaller and less important processing centers was operating somewhat slower, but it wasn't much of a problem since she had dozens of other centers that were fine. I asked her how she was doing, and she merely replied “nominal”. I'd hoped everything was okay with her, sometimes it's hard to understand AIs, even if they were modeled after humans. Some things got lost in translation.

The maintenance had taken most of the “day”, so it wasn't until the next day that I started examining the results of our probes. Three gas giants, 2 rocky worlds, 1 probable ice planet, and...happy day! A likely terran world! This might be the time I finally discover an earth-like planet of my very own! I almost jumped out of my seat I was so excited.

“Mara! Set a course for the terran planet! I'll be in the garage, prepping the rover.”

“Certainly, sir.”

The Teravaeus was equipped with a small garage that could slide down from the ship, allowing the rover to drive out. This allowed the ship to stay above the ground on its stilt-like landing gears, keeping it hopefully out of danger. It also meant that anything trying to get into the ship would face the challenge of trying to get 15 feet into the air and then into an armored space ship.

As I ran yet more tests, this time on the rover, I struggled to contain my excitement. With each twist of my wrench, my mood grew. I was sort of rushing headlong into things, normally I'd wait longer before going to touch down on a planet, but this was my first time. A bit of eagerness is allowed.

“Sir, destination set. We're on course, all that's left is to wait.”

“Love ya, Mara. Are you as excited as I am?”

“Of course I am. Do you think I fly thousands of light years through the strangeness of The Slip just because?”

“Technically speaking you do that because I tell you to.”

“Smartass. But yes, I am very excited. This is a first for me too you know.” “Yeah, yeah.”

With the rover tuned up, I ran back to the cockpit, taking the controls of the ship in my hands and steering the ship down towards the planet. My heartbeat was faster than I'd like, but I didn't care, I was gonna make the most of this trip. The ship started to rumble, shake, and roar as it punched through the planet's atmosphere. Blazing plasma, around 1,650 degrees Celcius, formed on the tip and underside of the Teravaeus as it hit the planet's atmosphere going about 38,000 kilometers per hour. The molecules in the air slammed into the ship, generating heat. While the impact of a few molecules wouldn't do anything to the ship, the amount of air you go through during reentry is huge. Thus, the plasma cone around your ship!

A few minutes later though, the ship had bled off enough velocity that there was no more plasma and it could transition to normal atmospheric flight. I gazed out through the displays down to the planet. Trees! Water! Thing I hadn't seen for a long time, even longer if you considered the months I'd spent in stasis. Clouds floated over oceans and forests, mountains lie covered in snow. This was a perfect world for the history book, and it was gonna have my name on it!

As I flew, high in the sky, Mara spoke up.

“Sir, take a look at those mountains. Do they look unusual to you?”

I followed her advice, and looked down. They seemed like normal mountains, until I looked at the surrounding landscape. The mountains looked normal, but then I noticed that they were at an intersection. Three massive circles were faintly visible in the landscape. Craters. The mountains were caused by the overlap of three craters.

“Those are...craters. What do you think from?”

“I'm not sure, but, there are more craters visible in different wavelengths. Whatever happened here hit this planet hard.” I felt a knot in my throat.

“There's not any meteors headed our way, are there?”

“No sir, nothing at all. Besides, the life here could not have thrived if these craters were recent. We should continue to observe the planet from up here.”

She was right, and I calmed down a little. A few hours of flying later, though, we discovered what we thought were ruins. Flying further down for a look, I put us into an “orbit” so to speak, and we circled the location. Mara's powerful sensors continued to beam the site, gathering as much data as we could before landing.

Worry.

Despair.

Commotion.

Blinding flashes.

Flash upon flash upon flash.

Walls of heat.

Life smashed, irradiated, and torn apart.

Matter replaced by energy.

Clouds, storms, winds, thick as solid rock.

A crushing shadow, strangling the world.

Darkness.

Death.

Genocide.

We landed around 40 minutes later, having gathered all the data for the location we could from the air. I donned my envirosuit, the life-protecting suit I wore when exploring planets. On top of that I wore my exoskeleton, a set of artificial muscles, pistons, and thrusters that allowed me to exert superhuman force and speed. I could jump 12 meters straight up, and leap 15 horizontally. I could lift stuff weighing up to 1,000 kilograms. And most fun, I could run 50 kilometers an hour.

I left the ship, keeping my comms connection to the ship, and to Mara, on full power. As the airlock hissed open, it was quiet. The sound of my breath, at first. In. Out.

Then I heard the wind. Quiet, and despite the (alien!) vegetation, it felt lifeless. Almost mourning. As I took the first few steps out of my ship, my laser rifle at the ready, my heard pounded inside my chest. This planet could be very important, but with all those ancient craters, it was hard to tell. It might be a deathtrap.

The ruins were in fact actual, honest-to-god ruins! Signs of intelligent alien life! I jumped for joy. I couldn't examine them myself, I didn't have the permits nor the equipment, but I did survey the surrounding area. I went on a bit of a trek. Just a couple hundred meters from Mara. I scoped out the ruins with my rifle sight.

They were definitely former structures, though I couldn't tell exactly what. A strange, nearly purple-grey color with a rough texture. They looked to be walls, consisting of a series of interlocked latticework. It would have made for an impressive sight during, say, sunset, as the light made its way through the patterns.

I would have kept walking, until a I saw a flash out of the corner of my eye. I looked up towards the sky to see a blazing fireball headed straight for me.

“Mara, get outta there!” I screamed as I turned around, my exoskeleton augmenting my muscles and spinning me around in an instant. Its muscles and pistons propelled my legs, and I took off like a bullet. Micro-thrusters scattered around its frame rocketed me forwards, and soon I was running 50 kph. I managed to disable the safety lockdown and soon was running 70kph. If I made even a single mistake and the computer couldn't fix it, I would smash into the ground, probably breaking my neck in the process. Then I'd get hit by a meteorite.

I heard the roar of Mara's thrusters kicking in, and while I couldn't turn to look, I'd hoped she was making it clear of the impact site. Trees blurred past me, becoming fuzzy shapes. Despite the incoming meteorite, I heard nothing out of the ordinary. It was going super- or hyper-sonic right now, traveling faster than the sound it made. A boom meant Mara had made it supersonic and thus stood some chance of making it out safely. I, however, stood less chance.

I leapt up entire rock walls, my suit and muscles working overtime to get as far away as I could. If there was even the smallest chance of tripping on something, I'd just jump over it, clearing 5 story buildings in a single bound. Faster, and faster. I'd never been moving faster in my life, and I hoped it would be enough.

I'd been running forever, but in reality only about one minute had passed. My whole body started to ache terribly, the human body wasn't meant to move this fast. But move it did, biology and technology working in tandem to save my life.

Trees, rocks, bushes; everything was a tiny blip in my vision, anything not critically important was swept aside by my brain. Tunnel vision started to step in, the center most portion of my vision remaining clear while the rest went hazy. I didn't care; I only needed to see straight ahead. I only needed to run forwards.

My heart was crippled with pain, not designed to handle the blood flow or stress it had succumbed to now.

I couldn't hear anything, the portion of my brain dedicated to that had been shunted to staying upright as I ran.

Darkness.

Malice.

Avarice.

Isolation.

Subjugation.

Discussion.

Consideration.

Preparation.

Annihilation.

I slowly woke up. My limbs were sluggish, barely moving at all. This must be death, or purgatory. I couldn't see past the end of my helmet, I was wrapped in an inky darkness. My heart hurt, my head was dizzy, my muscles were dust. It hurt to breath, it hurt to see. It hurt to even think.

But if this truly were the afterlife, the scientist in me couldn't let it pass me by. If I was dead, then at least I wouldn't have to deal with the meteorite; it had already killed me. I struggled to stand up. It was almost as if I was...underwater. That explains it all. I'm underwater, though I'm not sure how I got there. The last thing I remember was running, and then...well, this. I figured if I'm underwater, I might as well try to get to the surface, so I just started walking forwards.

I cleared the surface, glad to see the light again. Well, what little light I could see. Most of it was blocked by dust. The surface looked like a warzone. The sky was blocked out by dust, the air filled with burning embers and dirt-brown smoke. I looked around. I was at the edge of a lake. The blast wave must have blown me into the air, and my body skipped across the lake before sinking to the bottom. I heard a voice call out to me. Mara had survived the impact too!

“Mara, where are you?”

“I'm, uh, well I'm on the ground.”

“Are you okay?”

A pause. “Yeah. Mostly.”

“Give me a signal to follow. I'll be there soon.” “Okay captain.”

“Hey Mara, I've got a theory. I don't think those craters were accidental. They were intentional.”

“I'm starting to think the same sir.”

“I've got an idea though.”

When I finally reached Mara, I was heartbroken. The Teravaeus, and thus her body, was crumpled and mangled, buried into the ground. There wasn't much chance we'd get rescued. Her computer cores would slowly degrade and she'd fade away. I couldn't get inside the ship, and the atmosphere wasn't breathable and the vegetation was probably poisonous.

“Mara, get one of our bloodhounds to land far away. If it gets hit by a meteorite we'll know what's up.”

The coldness of space.

A silent protector.

A sudden target.

“An enemy!”

Eager eyes tracking, hands busy.

An asteroid is loaded into a gravity sling by a defense satellite.

It's loosed at the surface and the threat.

Another enemy down.

“I am protecting. I am good.”

The bloodhound touched down. A few moments later, we watched as another fireball descended. The sky flashed as it hit. Mara giggled. Her mind was going. I couldn't last much longer without food, water, or air.

“Mara?” “Yes-s-s-s?”

“We're not gonna make it back home.”

“That is reGRetabl...” Her speech centers were obviously dying.

“Can you do something for me?”

“Yes.”

I swallowed. “Can, would, you land another bloodhound here? Right next to us?”

“Do you wish it?”

I hesitated. “I do. If I'm going to die, I want to die with you, and I want us to die on our own terms. None of this fading away or starving to death. If we're going to die, we'll do it quick.”

“I...am scared. I do not wannT to fAde away-y-y...”

I patted the side of her battered and scorched hull.

“Neither do I, girl. Neither do I.”

I recorded a message, a warning. A quarantine procedure. No one could come back here until the defense system, or whatever it was, was gone. I added what little personal stuff I could; the most important thing in my life was Mara. She was stuck here too.

We called down the bloodhound. It's thin, dragonfly like body cruised through the sky before landing near us. I patted its “head” and sat down, my back against Mara. The sun was setting.

“The skkY is...pretty.”

A tear rolled down my face.

“It is,” I said, choking down tears.

“But-t-t we are toGEtherrr...”

I couldn't hold them in anymore.

“That we are, baby, that we are. Together.”

My voice sounded strange to me. I couldn't remember the last time I'd cried.

And there it was. The now-familiar blazing fireball, headed straight for us. It wouldn't be much longer before we were atomized with its impact.

“Mara?”

“Yes, RooderiCk?”

“I love you.”

A pause.