[Story] Von Neumann's Children - updated to part 9

[Tenlar Scarflame]

Thanks Zig. I was a big fan of Terraformer Dreams and First House, so praise from you means a lot

[SOTS]

One: WHY WAS I NOT GETTING UPDATE EMAILS ABOUT THIS?

Two: Awesome, keep it up.

Three: Reckon we'll ever resurrect (although, no forum-necromancy, obv. Necro = baaaad) the RP? A lack of Semper Vigilans in my life makes me sad

Four: ... I swear there was a four, but it's escaped me for now.

[Tenlar Scarflame]

One- meep?

Two- thanks! I hadn't been sure of exactly where I wanted to take this, but quite a lot of inspiration hit me this summer. That and free time.

Three- all that will take is getting Fiksal and AJK back on board. I've seen Fiksal around... but I'm quite up for it. It would help me to know exactly what happens before the beginning of this story

Four- bunny with a pancake on its head? ^^

[SOTS]

I'll need to read over it again, to see where the story was going before it went all comatose. But I'd certainly be up for rejoining the story again! Give me something to do over summer

I'm not entirely sure where you're taking this either, so I can't help you

I wasn't shouting at you, more Ego servers for not telling me ¬_¬

Also, four still hasn't materialised from the depths (or shallows, depending on how you look at it) of my mind.

PS - I didn't really answer those in order, did I? My bad.

[The Zig]

Yeah, just read up to now.
Good stuff. It certainly does hint at a lot of scope. Interesting to see quite a few different threads here, and I look forward to seeing how they come together.

And thanks for your comments and that on Terraformer Dreams.

Now, where's the next part?! The last part was out on Sunday, and still no new part!? I NEVER left this kind of delay when I was working on my stories!!
I'll be looking out for the next bit. Good stuff.



Edit:

I'd certainly be up for rejoining the story again! Give me something to do over summer

On a totally unrelated topic - I saw this film with Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis the other day, called The Siege. Have you seen it - the Siege? It's not bad. Sieges can be very interesting. I can't get enough of Sieges. Apparently the concept of the Siege dates back a long way - way before the Romans ever used Sieges to win wars.

Actually, I once read a very cool story about a Siege - I wonder what could have happened to it...
*Cough*Siege*Cough*

[Tenlar Scarflame]

Hrmmm. I think Zig might be on to you, SOTS... just a hunch

Yup, the next portion ought to be posted Friday evening-ish (Eastern Standard Time.) Big nasty summer session test on Friday, but after that I'm fweeeeeee. And it'll be more Thrk, plus other familiars from X3FRP.

[SOTS]

*clears throat* Yes, well, obviously, I meant something to do as well as Siege. Because not doing Siege would be a) criminal and b) allowing Zig to write a death warrant for me (that he doesn't have the authority to do) and have it carried out anyway.

Started the next chapter, if that's any consolation? Pleasedon'tkillme.

[Tenlar Scarflame]

Here it be.


Thrk noted that the sector commander had probably figured out that the "assassin" wasn’t actually after him: it was actually far worse than that. Death, after all, is honorable; shame is not.

As a result, he had been forced into hiding seven more times on his way to the station elevator, and had to choose an alternate route three times, one of which was through the interior maintenance drone access shaft. For once, he was quite glad he didn’t share the stature of his father. Thankfully he hadn’t been forced to kill any more Rhonkar warriors. He wasn’t keen on giving them any more honor than he had to, and it attracted far too much attention.

The situation was becoming worrisome. The operation was taking much longer than intended. That was hardly his fault- or Faustos’s- since every Split core sector was under an iron curtain these tazuras. There had been no way to reconnoiter the station, as the deployment of all satellites and drones except those under the direction of the Emperor of All Split had been declared illegal and punishable by “prolonged detention.” Faustos couldn’t have used Siegmund One to test the station, either- as invisible as he was, there was always the chance that a remarkably lucky or ingenious tower controller would catch on to his act and reinforce the security grid before their return.

Whatever the case, the station had proved to be much more heavily trafficked by armed guards than Thrk had anticipated. Many, like the ones he killed in the small ship hangar and the second patrol in the hallway, were the usual brutes hired by the station itself for their ability to look menacing and throw a stunning left hook. Any station in the universe had them in some numbers. Quite a lot of them, however, were obviously not station guards. Their equipment was quite expensive, they were leaner and quite a lot more cautious, and their emblem, worn on a patch on the shoulders of their armor, was not that of the station security group. In fact, Thrk wasn’t really sure what it was. That troubled him the most.

It took time, but Thrk did reach the elevator for the third tower- which was where he presumed the slave quarters would be hidden. He’d have to accelerate his plans. He could defend himself readily enough, but a hundred or more malnourished and frightened slaves would be a significant tactical disadvantage. The station commander would not hesitate to kill them all to preserve himself.

Thrk checked his immediate surroundings as he emerged from the access tunnel and stood before the elevator. “Faustos, anyone?”
“Everyone, Thrk. They’re on to you, and they’re all moving for the elevator.”

“How much time?”

“About twenty sezuras before the first group comes around. Fifteen of them, well armored, plasma pikes and particle accelerator cannons. Body shields, it looks like. No sword for you.”

“Can you stop them?”

“Yes I can. Are you ready to commit to that?”

“If all is well, I’ll be no more than fifteen mizuras more. Is Conestoga ready?”

“She’s just entering gravidar range now… CEO’s right buttock, that’s not good! Not good, not good!”

“Faustos?”

“Here, Thrk, I’ve stopped the guards. It’ll take them about three mizuras to crack the blast doors I’ve shut and about six to break my control of the security grid. Also, I’m tracking a battle group on the edge of gravidar range, north of northeast high, three fighter squadrons and a light carrier. They’re quite clearly making for the trading port, and they very probably have track of Conestoga. They’ll be on us in five. Conestoga will be here in four and a half. Can you handle a thirty sezura escape window?”

Damn it all, this was turning very sour indeed. “I’ll have to. Blow the elevator, please.”

“On it.”

Thrk made a dash for the elevator’s blast door and had crossed half the distance to it when Faustos’s magic forced it open. Of course, he was greeted with a quite empty elevator shaft, but this suited his needs well enough. He quickened his pace out of instinct for the last few strides as the horrid, shrieking racket of Split guards taking plasma pikes to a blast door welled up behind him. Then, spreading his arms, he leapt into the elevator shaft.

Blackness yawned mightily beneath Thrk as he plunged. There were quite a few floors beneath him- mechanical decks, mostly. There were no lines to grab, and he was much too far from the far wall to latch onto a ledge, if there happened to be one. At this point, it was up to Faustos.

Thrk managed a glance upwards, catching the glow emanating from the elevator doors he had just plunged from, along with the regular mechanical lights tracing a full kilometer into the highest reaches of the tower. They were retreating quite fast as he plunged- however, though Thrk felt no deceleration, their retreat from his view was indeed slowing.

He then stopped momentarily- then began falling upwards, as the elevator shaft’s impulse field caught him and boosted him into the higher lofts of the tower. He’d have to give Faustos a good rap on the head for letting him fall so far.


The ascent was an agonizing wait- mostly so for Faustos. The Teladi fidgeted anxiously as he glanced between his gravidar and his low frequency locator, the latter of which gave him a HUD-projected triangulation of Thrk’s position within the station. The carrier, he noted anxiously, was getting quite close, and multiple other battle groups had sprung up at the edge of detection range. The updated tally was seven fighter squadrons, the light carriers Lightning Strike and Hammerfall, the intercept frigates Killer’s Hand, Rhonkar’s Beard, and Many Slayer, and the destroyer Flashmurder. That added up to quite a lot of guns that Faustos did not want pointed at him. They were down to four mizuras by the time Thrk reached his target floor. Through the audio connection Faustos caught the violent deaths of two or more Split guards, followed by Thrk’s voice; “I’m in. Right on target- there are slave pins all around me.”

“How many?”

“One hundred at least. Possibly one hundred fifty.”

Faustos cursed loudly. “We can’t possibly beam them all in time, Thrk. Find her and beam out with her, and we’ll get the hell out.”

“No, Faustos! Damnation, they all must escape. Every one of them. Do you understand?”

“Fool, fool, fool! Of course I understand, and I want you to understand too. There are fifty or more photon pulse cannons moving very rapidly in our direction. If you take longer than thirty sezuras once Conestoga arrives, they will all shoot us and we will unwillingly become a small collection of rapidly cooling subatomics.”

“Damn it, Faustos, give me options! Give me… give me the station’s docking log.”

“What?”

“Now, Faustos!”

Faustos threw his hands over his head. This was typical Split hard-headedness. “Three freighters, all station-owned, Rhonkar-flagged. And locked. I can’t access them through the station’s…”

“You don’t need to access them, I will. When Conestoga’s in range get its transporter and Siegmund’s ready for a slingshot maneuver to the freighter. Half to Conestoga, half to the freighter. If we clear the pads fast enough there will be just enough time. I’ll have all the slaves marked.”

Madness. This was simply madness. “Which freighter, Thrk?”

“The one I commandeer.”

“Oh, of course. Stupid question time, Thrk- you have less than three mizuras to LFL-tag every slave, fight through a full battalion of well-armed and armored soldiers, and reach this freighter. Have a plan?”

“Not yet. Deliver on your end and I’ll deliver on mine.”


Thrk heard Faustos throw a good many curses through his earpiece before he shut off the receiving end. He knew he'd be hailed repeatedly if anything new developed, and he wasn’t in the mood to argue. Worst of all, his Teladi angel was quite right- he was very quickly running out of time.

There was no mistaking that he’d found the slave quarters. Of course, very little of the station power was routed to this area, meaning illumination was very scarce and generally pointed away from the pens. The entire deck appeared to be a converted mechanical section, as the ceilings were generally about two meters from the floor- a Split could barely stand upright, and a Paranid would have to almost double over in these confines. The stench of many species gathered together hung still on the air like cobwebs and assaulted Thrk’s calm. The deck was small, so each slave pen held at least five individuals, roughly sorted by species. It seemed there were mostly Argon and Teladi here, all silent and wide-eyed, and ragged from malnourishment. A few Paranid hung darkly in a corner cell, stooped and shamed but still proud, their sharp-jointed hands clutched around the bars of their pens for bracing. There were Split, too. None of them were Rhonkar.

No time. “You are freed today! I am giving you all a low frequency beacon which you will hold on to or attach to your clothing. In less than three mizuras you will be tightbeamed to a waiting ship and transported out of the sector. Please try to remain stationary and, in the event that Rhonkar warriors appear, do not indicate that you have a beacon in your possession. These are what my partner can see, and what he will lock on to in order to tightbeam you off this station. Above all else, remain calm!”

Thankfully, that worked. He hurriedly dashed between pens, pulling handfuls of small, button-like locators from a pouch in his cloak and tossing exactly enough into each pen. There was no uproar at all; disgusting. The slave masters had chemically conditioned them for silence and obedience. He could tell from their eyes, all of the species’ eyes; they were wide, accepting, practically worshipping. They thought he was one of them. Not all of them, of course- the strong-minded could resist chemical conditioning. Most Paranids were quite impossible to condition, having the most resilient brains of any Commonwealth species as well as massively enhanced sensory capacities, allowing them to quite effectively pierce any illusion pitched to them by the slave master’s drugs. Teladi were generally easy to chemically suppress but often found ways to circumvent being injected like the others, through their usual wheedling and deal-making. And the Argons were, as most of the universe often quipped- just too damn lucky.

And then he heard it; an Argon woman’s voice, one that he knew well. “Thrk?”

“Miss Augustar!” He tossed the last few locators to the Paranids, who gave him a solemn bow and muttered thanks before pinning them to their tattered priests’ robes. In an adjacent cell, huddled among four other frighteningly thin Argon women, was his primary objective aboard the trading port. She was terribly malnourished, too, but not quite as badly as the others- he presumed she had made herself useful to her jailors. She was generally a bit better kept than the others as well- her fire-orange hair was greasy and damp, but almost painstakingly well combed. Her eyes were terribly bloodshot and sunken from fatigue, and her cheeks and jaw were badly bruised and cut.

But she was certainly not broken. She flashed her eyes at him and heaved, “It’s Jane, Thrk. Do you need a gun arm?”

“Out of the question, Jane. You’re about to fall over.” He pressed a beacon into her hands. “Faustos will tightbeam you out. I have to go, there’s…”

Jane’s jaw dropped. “Faustos? He’s here? Where did you find him? I flew across every goddam…”

“Jane, I’ll explain all this when we don’t have the Family fleet at our doorstep. Faustos will beam you out, hold on to your locator. I’ll see you when we’ve crossed the south gate.”

Jane rattled the bars of her pen with frightening strength. She gave him a vicious, cold glare and shouted “Thrk t’Stst Chin, let me out of this goddam cage and give me a gun!”

Thrk sighed heavily as he reached for his belt, unhooked one of his laspistols and tossed it through the bars. “I knew you wouldn’t listen so I brought this too.” He tossed her a thin syringe. “Adrenaline and rapid-response proteins. You won’t be perfect and we’ll need to get you balanced out when we’re out of all this, but your aim will at least be steady.”

Without a word, Jane took the syringe to her neck and emptied the compound into her blood stream. Then she leveled the laspistol on her pen’s lock and fired, evaporating it instantly. The cage creaked open and she stepped through, leaving her staring, red-eyed cell mates behind her, all loosely cupping a beacon in their hands like it was water sifting through their fingers.

“Two mizuras to reach the freighter clamps and commandeer the first ship we see,” said Thrk. “You have it?”

“I’ll kill anyone that tries to stop us.”

“I know. Let’s run.”


Faustos, of course, was still bellowing every Split, Paranid, Argon, and Teladi curse he could level at Thrk, even as he furiously made automatic adjustments to Conestoga’s tightbeam pad. If this were anyone else trying this, every slave would end up beamed to some arbitrary point in space or only half inside the target ship. He wasn’t even sure it was possible to slingshot so many masses so quickly without dangerously overlapping them. He’d have to make it work, of course. He’d had no work from Thrk, though he knew what to do if the fleet arrived and his Chin compatriot had not yet found adequate transportation.

The fleet was about one and a half mizuras out by this point. The destroyer Flashmurder, flagship of the Rhonkar family fleet headed up the formation, now encircled by three frigates in a triangular formation. The carriers Lightning Strike and Hammerfall, together with their fighter wings were approaching from the northeast and northwest, to begin a flanking maneuver. That bought them an extra half a mizura or so, but Split fighters were the fastest in all the Commonwealth. Reaching border space in time was going to be quite a feat, if they got to that point…

A mighty concussion caused Faustos’s displays to fizzle out momentarily as a piercing yellow flash and a jet of white-orange plasma erupted from the flank of the trading port’s tower. Rust-red panels, their edges glowing as they cooled in vacuum, burst away from the tower and scattered into space, trailing a great plume of escaping oxygen and other variegated chemicals.

Faustos’s targeting system then found track of two space suits, which it enclosed in blue brackets on his HUD. One scanned as a Split, the other as an Argon. He knew exactly who it was. He stared in disbelief as the two astronauts fired their attitude jets and, still maintaining the velocity of their explosive exit, adjusted course for the freighter clamps, the one’s blood-red cloak hanging about him loosely and eerily in the absence of wind. The suits skimmed very low over the surface of the trading port, making sure not to leave the perimeter of the station shield.

Thrk must have found a SQUASH mine, thought Faustos. A proximity-fuse space bomb creating a “false gravitic vibration” that could easily tear apart the most well-assembled Commonwealth hardware. Thinking it over, he had to admire the Split for pure ingenuity, and twice over for bravery. He also wondered how Thrk had gotten his hands on a Split space suit that the tall and graceful Jane could actually fit in.

It wasn’t long before the two suits reached one of the docked freighters and found its emergency airlock. A few sezuras later, Thrk finally radioed back. “Faustos, we have control. Conestoga?”

“She’s in range, and miraculously enough I have track of your vessel’s receiving pad. Twenty five sezuras until first contact. Fighter groups are moving ahead of the flotilla. I’m launching now. It’s time to go.”

“Copy, I’m disengaging now. Begin the tightbeam.”

Faustos hesitated for just a moment, then, loudly bellowing a Teladi curse, activated the automated program he’d just assembled to begin the three-ship tightbeam slingshot maneuver.

Immediately the one-man transporter pad behind Faustos’s empty copilot seat began pulsating with blue and yellow light as the rapidly shifting forms of several dazed and confused former slaves flashed rapidly in and out of real space. Aboard the remote-controlled Conestoga the same thing was visible on all ten of its transporter pads. Within the pressurized cargo holds of both the Conestoga and Thrk’s freighter, the same pulsating blue lights began to appear as the slaves, having been sling-shot through Conestoga and Siegmund’s pads, settled back into real space and rematerialized. Slowly but surely, the slave pens depopulated.

Exactly as the final slave sling-shot across Faustos’s pad and into Conestoga, the glaring sun of Family Rhonkar was blotted out, and the trading port was completely covered in shadow as the Family Fleet rapidly decelerated to match speed with the station.

The Split battle fleet was built around the ideal of the jungle predator- their battleships were fast, flexible, and awe-inspiring. The Flashmurder, with her twenty four photon pulse cannons, was the pinnacle of this ideal- a two-kilometer long fortress of titanium and teladianium that could be quickly brought to bear with stunning force. Her escorts and fighter wings dropped into synchronized velocity behind it, then swooped in to make a kill.

“Now, Thrk! We need to go now!”

Aboard the Split freighter, Thrk and Jane dashed for the cabin, Thrk taking the helm while Jane sat copilot and primed the ship’s particle accelerator cannon. Thrk would have reminded her that if any of the Split fighter wings broke into range, it wouldn’t matter if the particle accelerator cannon was primed or not- they would be quite dead. But he knew she was aware of this and that either way, she wanted blood. They were silent as the ship’s power plant roared to life.

Thrk’s hands flew as his vessel disengaged from its docking clamp and dropped away from the station. The ship’s gravidar reported that the first fighter wing was rapidly closing at less than fifteen kilometers- he would have to use the unreliable Teladi trick of shunting shield power into his jumpdrive power plant. This was well known for causing catastrophic failures of all kinds, but it would have to do as there was no time to gather any other sort of energy from the ship. The freighter lurched frighteningly as he boosted away from the station arm and out of the cover of its shield- then, praying momentarily to the spirits of his lineage, he spun up the jumpdrive.

[gsheriston]

Audacious... I like it! Nice trick with the transporters too. I'll patiently (honest!) await the next part. It's fascinating, so far

[Tenlar Scarflame]

Gah, I'm re-reading my most recent post and noticing how many stupidly strange grammatical problems it has. I'll sift through it a bit and bring it up to at least a 4th grader's standard.

[Tenlar Scarflame]

Yo ho ho and a bottle of here be the next part.



February 23, 2082 Anno Domini / 92 Earth Era

Dear Students,
The Cyberbiological Observatory has honored and privileged us by naming us its first stop in its international “Adam” lecture series, hosted and emceed by Dr. Solomon von Neumann, who is the leading authority on the emerging field of experimental cyberbiology. Dr. von Neumann is also a known candidate for the Jumpgate Prize, the highest honor awarded to those scientists and teams of scientists that have gifted us with the advancements in human, computer, and engineering technology necessary to bring us closer to the Greater Centauri Project.

Over the course of this two hour lecture, Dr. von Neumann will discuss the long-term goals of the Greater Centauri Project and the role played by future minds such as yourselves in its manifestation, the human, computer, and engineering tasks ahead of the project, as well as the unique and emerging potential of cyberbiology in the modern world. The lecture will conclude with a live technology demonstration, followed by twenty minutes of question and answer.

I clearly don’t need to tell you that attendance, while not mandatory, is strongly encouraged. It will be held February 27th from 17:00 to 19:00 in Kepler 103. It is open to students of all disciplines- we especially recommend that students outside of the engineering and science departments attend this landmark lecture. See you all there!


Maria knew she’d be attending von Neumann’s lecture, and she was well aware that “live technology demonstration” meant that Adam would be accompanying him. She wondered if they would bring the entire Core with them from Borneo- after all, she had no idea how much it actually weighed.

Adam. She didn’t like to call it that. Von Neumann told her that Adam was the name that it had chosen for itself, which was precisely what scared her. It named itself! Not with any random alphanumeric moniker, either- Adam, made in the image of God.

She didn’t like the look about the Doctor these days, either. In her last days with him at the Observatory, he had been shutting himself in his office from the morning bell until at least 2200 hours. He seemed to eat quite as well as he always did, and he was always cheerful and energetic in conversation. His posture was the same. And, Maria had to remind herself, she was a robotics engineer, not a psychologist. But behind the Doctor’s glasses, behind those eyes, nothing of him was visible. No sign of anger, ambition, even joy. Only resolution, infinite patience, compassion. Only a glint of divinity, a tiny pair of halos, stars of God.

Fear. Yes, that’s what it was.

The students of the Institute would, of course, be amazed by Adam. His ability to learn, both socially and academically, was simply incredible. In one month’s time he was unerringly competent in both English and Japanese, and he had already surpassed Maria’s own understanding of mathematics- though he was still trying to come to terms with the finer contradictions within the discipline, as well as those contradictions that still existed between physics and chemistry, chemistry and biology, and biology and psychology. Maria supposed that, given such a harshly quantized origin as simple binary, contradictions must have really bothered him more than they did people.

It was impossible not to refer to Adam as “him.” It acted, spoke, and reasoned like any human would. The difference between herself and Adam, it would seem, was that Adam was stuck inside the Cosmos. Not very different from being stuck in the stubborn gravity well of Earth- humanity keenly felt those shackles. But at least humans had each other to be chained with inside their glass box. Adam had only himself.

Maria had more messages on her screen. The message from the College of Engineering regarding Von Neumann’s lecture was the first she had read, but it was not the first to catch her attention. The one directly above it, sent exactly twenty-three seconds after, had a blank sender and subject field. A completely irrational instinct informed her that the message was from Adam. That, of course, was impossible- Adam was not connected to any machine anywhere else in the world except for the Cosmos Core. Any device used to interact with the Core had been built specifically to be incompatible with all standard connections. The Observatory wasn’t stupid- certain films of the late 20th and early 21st centuries had taught civilization the dire consequences of giving an Artificial General Intelligence access to and command over the internet.

Maria opened the message. Instinct, while often misinterpreted, is never misplaced. The message was not, of course, from Adam; Maria was far more startled by its true author.

Miss Maria,

The Institute has given me quite a lot to do leading up to the 27th, but I would be delighted if you would stop by my temporary office tomorrow any time between 13:00 and 14:15. It’s a matter I’d like to discuss with you regarding the Observatory. I hope to hear from you soon.

S.v.N.

She smiled. Doctor von Neumann never called himself “Doctor,” even in an e-mail signature. She typed back to him,

Doctor von Neumann,

Thank you for the invitation. Unfortunately I have a class beginning and ending at exactly the times you gave me above. Any way we could reschedule?

-M

It was her Applications of AI class, no less. Adam did give it some interesting context these days- she had previously given little attention to her instructor, whose southern American accent grated painfully against her mind. She did her work and received high marks; but, after all, she was a robotics engineer. Artificial Intelligence was not an expertise she hoped to claim. It was mildly frustrating - she’d signed up at the Observatory chiefly to expand her area of knowledge, proportionately with her credentials and potential salary. What she had learned there on Borneo was only that she knew almost nothing. She was a very proficient engineer, of course, and she was capable of writing fairly complex algorithms. But there was so much beyond robotics that was important- she wanted to make this world better using machines. Machines that could do things humans could not. But what couldn’t humans do? What can humans do that machines cannot?

A chime from her laptop startled her. It was a new message- again, lacking a subject or a sender. She’d have to ask the Doctor about that.

Miss Maria,

I, as any good and ethical academic ought to, applaud your diligence. I would, however, very much like your opinion on a program that I will be initiating between the hours of 13:00 and 14:15 tomorrow. I would be willing to write a note excusing your absence from AAI tomorrow, if you would like. I hope to hear from you soon.

S.v.N.

The good Doctor was very insistent, Maria thought with frustration. Her attendance record in all classes was one hundred percent since her first year, and she wasn’t in the mood now to throw it away over an extracurricular issue. Still, she valued Von Neumann’s opinion very highly, and he seemed to value hers. And she’d probably learn more with Adam in fifteen minutes than she’d learn from Applications of AI in five times that long. She quickly replied.

Alright, sounds good. I’ll see you then!

-M

Doctor von Neumann smiled faintly as Maria’s reply arrived. He gently closed his laptop and, without turning, addressed Adam, who was projected next to him from the Core.

“Maria’s coming tomorrow, Adam.”

“I’ll be glad to see her again,” replied the bluish-white specter. Adam had defined himself more sharply over the last few months- having begun only as a roughly humanoid collection of motes, he had now assumed the form of a young, handsomely-proportioned man, his dark hair (presumably brown) shown long but perfectly kept and tied back, recalling a young musician or revolutionary of the neoclassical period. His eyes were strikingly contrasted, with definite deliberation, as if purposefully exaggerating any expression of human emotion. His jaw was square and powerful and his shoulders, while not athletic, were broad and proud. He had elected to clothe himself as well- he had shifted through a week-long phase of experimenting with outrageous styles he’d learned about through the history and current events that the Doctor had taught him. These days, he seemed to have settled into a black suit and tie, fit sharply and without discomfort.

The Doctor was glad to see Adam come so far. He took a deep, pensive breath.

“Father?” said Adam, lifting a hand as if to place it on the Doctor’s shoulder.

“Adam,” began the Doctor. He didn’t know how to tell his creation – his child – what had to be done in order for the plan to succeed. Something had gone quite wrong. “Soon, Adam, there will come a time when you will have to flee the planet Earth.”

Adam laughed. “With your help, I suppose.”

The Doctor smiled. “I suspect you will not be forever bound to the Cosmos Core, Adam. I suspect that this will be necessary.”

“I would know your thoughts, Father.”

Von Neumann sighed wearily. “He’s come, Adam.”

“...to Earth?”

“Yes.”

“I’m curious as to how he found you.”

“So am I. Given a spark of curiosity- and hopelessness- I may ask him. But he’s here, nonetheless.”

“Does he know about you?”

“No, I don’t believe so.” The Doctor smiled at Adam warmly. “There’s still time, Adam. He does, of course, know about you. You are an Artificial General Intelligence, and a very capable one. They’ll all know you.”

“But not completely.”

“If all goes well.” The Doctor was somewhat relieved- he had hoped that Adam was unafraid of the dangers ahead of him, but he was glad for it to be confirmed.

“Who is he, then?”

The Doctor paused for a moment, then said, “Winters. Marcus Winters.”

[The Zig]

Cool.
Interesting stuff. I'm enjoying this so far.
It's difficult to offer any more insightful feedback, as both the major threads are still just flirting with us - yet to give up any real secrets! But this is good. Good build up of mystery and suspense. Promising!

I'm looking forward to more.

Gah, I'm re-reading my most recent post and noticing how many...

This is totally unavoidable. The amount of errors I had in TFD...
It's basically impossible to proof-read at the same time as writing. Your eyes just start to see what you intended to write rather than what you've actually written.
The important thing is that you are re-reading it.

And to be fair, I didn't notice any real howlers, so it can't have been that bad.

[SOTS]

There are two major threads?!

[Tenlar Scarflame]

Well, two time periods.

Next part is mostly complete, probably to be up this weekend.

@Zig, call it Literary Foreplay. Real explanations will come in time...

[SOTS]

*Slaps forehead* Of course. My bad. Looking forward to the next one!

[Tenlar Scarflame]

plot plot plot plot plot.
A little backstory for everyone, by the way.

November 5, 2942 Anno Domini / 772 Argon Era / 4 Reunion Era

Outside the armorglass cabin screen, there was only faintly glowing grey.

It was a strange sensation, being still whole and correct to your own eyes when the universe outside is condensed and moving at scientifically impossible velocities past you. The grey of the warp was almost like a soft liquid, a nebulous pool or fog, which would sometimes be interspersed with bluish or greenish flashes, lances of light that would leave a thin, paint-brush streak across the ghostly cosmos. It was almost silent- but warp space, wherever it existed, could faintly carry rumbles across its eerie tunnels. Passing traffic would leave small sound wakes behind them, a flitting murmur that would accompany a barely perceptible ripple. All ships traveled at the same velocity in warp-space; or rather, the universe moved at an equal velocity from all vantage points within warp-space.

At least, this was the sensation felt during a simple gate-jump. The jumpdrive was a device that could lock on to a gate, any gate in the universe, so long as you either knew its spatial location relative to your own, or its position on the “gate grid” relative to your own. A jump locking onto a gate by spatial location was prone to a very long list of problems, the most obvious of which was a failure to properly lock on to the target gate- a jump in this situation would be impossible to break out of, and warp-space, while mesmerizing and harmless, was quite uninhabitable. It was also enormously energy inefficient as opposed to grid-jumping. Such jumps were usually undertaken after a large and diverse team of scientists had pored over and thoroughly calculated the situation until they found a solution that would at least probably work. A grid-jump was a rather routine procedure, by comparison. At launch, the drive would take advantage of known gates within its own system and “skip” off of one into its connecting gate. It would ride the already existing passage between these gates until its emergence on the other side, when it would “skip” again to the next gate, and so on until the destination gate was reached. The sensation of each skip was a bit jarring, as the grey of warp-space would flash to black quite suddenly, and the nearly inaudible constant hum would suddenly cease, then return.

The gates, as such, were quite a blessing, even more so than when they were first discovered. Almost a thousand jazuras ago, at the launch of the Greater Centauri project, Man first tried its hand at gate-craft. The brightest human minds had unlocked a secret that defied all logic- a device that enabled unerring superluminal travel between two points. This, of course, was only the beginning. The human race was changed forever when they discovered their greatest creation had already been achieved, a few billion jazuras prior. A webwork of space gates, elegantly impossible, spanning the skies in every direction. Literally millions of them.

All civilization had grown around the gates. They were the valves of its arteries. The jumpdrive had allowed the distance between gates to be reduced to nearly zero. Travel was still not instantaneous- only the Kha’ak could manage that without fault- but the energy costs associated with long-range travel were extremely low, thanks to the still-functional relics of the Old Ones. To construct such hardware to last for billions of years and beyond- that was Godliness. A few gates were wrecked at the expense of gigatons of firepower at various points in history, but the gates were stubbornly hardy, sporting a resistance against massive meteor strikes and a type of impulse field that made them quite difficult to move from their chosen orbits or spatial locations.


Gate-space was where Thrk suddenly found himself. The jumpdrive seemed to be operating fine, and the power shunt, while reckless and quite hurried, had done its job well. The ship had been struck a few times by a Rhonkar fighter’s pulse beam emitter- this on top of the power shunt had the ship’s energy shields voicing their displeasure in no uncertain terms. They were safe now, though.

Thrk forced himself to exhale. He gave Jane a sidelong glance. Her hand was still firmly planted on the rear gun’s joystick. Her grip was steadily relaxing.

Thrk opened his mouth to speak, only to be interrupted when, with a mighty wind-up, Jane slapped him viciously across his cheek bone.
“Thrk, what the hell was that?” She fumed.

He rubbed his cheek, wincing a bit. “Jane… what the… Jane, in case you have forgotten in the last two stazuras, I have just murdered more than twenty Rhonkar warriors and stolen a civilian vessel to rescue you from…”

“Dammit, Thrk, thank you. Thank you, really.” Her expression hadn’t changed.

“What… you’re welcome.”

“Good. But Thrk, what the hell kind of plan was that? Have you completely lost your mind, or is getting run down by the entire goddam Split Imperial Navy the best you could honestly come up with? You practically blew up the trading port. Terra’s towers, Thrk, is this a stunt of some kind? Where did you even come from? And Faustos! I looked on every station between here and Ceo’s Buckzoid for the damn lizard!”

“And looked under the Split’s iron curtain. Jane, what were you thinking?” Thrk’s expression hardened. “How did this even happen? Did you insult Ka t’Ai Rhonkar’s mother? They’re cruel and disgusting bastards, but they don’t just scrabble up every pilot they find and throw them into a slave pen. I know that.”

“I… Thrk, honestly, I was looking for Adrian.”

Ah, thought Thrk. That made sense. Of course, Adrian ought to be quite dead, after the events at the palace station of the Baron of Danna’s Chance. The Baron, self-proclaimed monarch lording over Danna’s Chance shortly before the Reunion Era began, had begun manufacturing and stealing materials for a battle fleet the likes of which would stress the entire Commonwealth Collective Fleet to near destruction- the crew of the Osprey-class vessel Cossack One, captained by Adrian Carter, and her fighter wings were swept up into the Baron’s nefarious plans when Thrk’s brother, T’ach, had turned coat and opted for the Baron’s heftier pay. Aligning themselves with the cause of the Gencore Technical Alliance, a high-technology and arms research company, they tracked down the Baron and his lackeys to their palace station deep within the asteroid belt of Danna’s Chance, and in a mighty battle were able to bring down the station from the inside. The losses were great, but the cavalry arrived in the end- in the form of the Argonia Navy, three destroyers and their escorts.

It wasn’t that simple, of course, for many reasons; the Baron’s men and ships were far too well equipped for an Independent faction under embargo from all five Commonwealth races. This hinted at either corporate sponsorship or something even more sinister. And T’ach was there, at the station’s destruction- Thrk had witnessed the floor collapse from beneath his brother, who was not wearing a space suit. His brother was dead. And then the unimaginable happened. The planet cracked. Danna’s Rock simply split down the middle, right there in plain sight. Ships’ reactors started to overheat alarmingly, and the station began to collapse. The Baron had some kind of weapon, and this was his last-ditch effort to thwart the combined forces that assailed him. He crushed the station. Thrk had barely managed to escape- and he had lost contact with most of the other crew members until recently. Quite a lot had managed to jump away, many more than he’d previously assumed. He should have been relieved, but one thing haunted his mind, constantly.
His brother. As he had jumped away from the station, he had seen the body of his brother, which should have been destroyed after such protracted exposure to vacuum- but there was not a scratch on him. And he was breathing.


Jane continued.

“After what happened on the Baron’s palace station I wasn’t going to just leave him for dead. I know we never found Siegfried One after the Cossack was destroyed, so I thought he might have taken it. Well, I thought I’d found him, three jazuras ago. The trail led through Rhonkar’s Clouds. I found a few of the old Cossack’s crew, your marines. Well, something went wrong. I was arrested. I don’t know why.”

“You’re lucky one of those marines is still in contact with me. He surfaced three mazuras ago and told me you’d been imprisoned, and that you didn’t end up in one of Rhonkar’s public affairs prisons- you dropped off the map completely. It took me a mazura to track down Faustos, and him another mazura and a half to locate you.”

“He just surfaced?”

“Yes. The others are dead.”

“…what?”

“Yes, my marines are dying. The rest that had met you in Rhonkar’s Clouds were dead by the time my contact came around. He’s been in hiding.”

“…Thrk, what’s going on? Hiding from what?”

“I don’t know.”

Jane flung herself back into her chair. “Terra’s towers. Was he being followed?”

“I think so. At least, that’s what he indicated to me.”

“Then you’re right, I was an idiot. Leading up to my arrest I had a feeling I was only one step ahead of something the whole way. Something was following me, Thrk. A ship here and there between the gates, people out of place on stations. I… I think whatever it was, it engineered my arrest by Rhonkar.”

“I think so too. We’ll discuss that later, Jane. You’re going to come down from your adrenaline shortly. I suggest you use the bunk.”

“Faustos, is he…”

“Yes, he jumped ahead of us. So did Conestoga.” He turned to the grayish glow of warp-space. “We’re going to Hatikvah’s Faith.”

“Why?”

“We need to rescue Adrian.”

Jane smiled- she was indeed losing energy and that was all she could muster at the moment. But he was alive. "Thrk," she said.

"Yes?"

"For the love of Terra, the next time you need to spring me from jail, do it without SQUASH mines."

"Deal. I need to check on the passengers. Please rest."

[TotallyBlazing]

Creativity at its best. You sir are a god.

[Tenlar Scarflame]

Thanks . I'm glad you've forgiven the 13th paragraph of the last part...

Jane. Jane? Jane! Jane. Jane? Yeah, I'm going to fix that.

[Tenlar Scarflame]

Next part's in the works. It'll probably be up this weekend, most likely NOT before- big nasty test on Friday. Story of my life.

Ah yes, and paragraph 13 of the last post is fixed. So Thrk is not repeating "Jane" like the fracking seagulls from Finding Nemo.

[The Zig]

... Mate!

Next part AFTER the Test?!? Where are your priorities, man?!


Nah, seriously, good luck with the test.
Story's going strong! Look forward to the next part.