 |
| Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 3, and by Pixlr AI image editor |
Tinaya and Aristotle got Spirit and the rest of the gang up to speed on what
happened after they left Verdemus. They made introductions, and integrated
themselves into a new society. It’s been four years since their return, and
this planet now has a significant population. They actually represent only a
small fraction of Verdemusians at this point. Omega made 18,000 drifting
clones of himself. The drifting part is important, because while they
were all sourced from the same progenitor, their personalities ended up
straying at around the same rate as the genetic drift. The 18,000th clone is
the least like Omega than the first, and it scales fairly predictably from
latter to the former. What would not have been predictable is the responses
that they gave when asked whether they wanted to stay on mission for the Ex
Wars, or start to live their own lives in peace.
In the end, after giving a choice to all clones 147 at a time, 42% of them
chose to reject their mandate entirely, and live the rest of their lives on
the surface in peace. But it’s not like it was the back two-fifths, or even
the front two-fifths. Their personalities gave rise to sporadic
fluctuations, leaving them with a hodge-podge of differing viewpoints. A
side effect of this variability was that they didn’t all see it as a binary
choice. Only 56% chose to go back into their stasis pods, and await the
start of the war. Roughly two percent had other ideas. These were the
leaders, and the misfits. Some of them wanted to become part of an elite
force, or the executive officers, while others wanted to leave entirely.
This was not an easy process. Once Omega and Tinaya started receiving these
unforeseen ideas, they realized that they hadn’t asked the right questions
for the first several batches. So they were reawakened, and given the new
choices. They could stay awake to train at a new Officer’s Academy, or
maintain their positions. This resulted in a few hundred of them agreeing to
train under the guidance of one Eagan Spurrs. They constructed a campus
right on top of the original settlement, allowing the peace-seekers to live
separately in the megablock many kilometers away.
But these warriors are not what Tinaya is concerned about at the moment.
Precisely 83 drift clones don’t want to be a part of this at all. They don’t
want to train as officers, they don’t want to be enlisted hibernators, and
they don’t want to live in the megablock. They’re currently staying in the
mess hall, because no one knows what to do with them. There is no leaving
Verdemus. There are two ships here. The shuttle can make interplanetary
trips, and while the Anatol Klugman can travel the stars, it sort of has a
different purpose. What they need is something in between, which will allow
these independents to escape the star system, and forge their own
paths. Omega is not being cooperative. He doesn’t hate them. In fact, that
would probably be easier to deal with. The problem is that he has no strong
feelings about them, and sees no reason to expend resources to help them. To
him, if they don’t want to live in the megablock with the others who don’t
want to fight in the war, they can...suck it up, and do it anyway.
“These are your people, Omega,” she argues.
“No, they’ve drifted the most from me, neurologically speaking,” Omega
reasons.
“Are you sure about that? Half of them are within a hundred degrees of
separation from you. The rest aren’t far behind.” She starts getting sassy.
“Why is it your name is Omega? Oh, that’s right, because you were born with
a complex that caused you to go AWOL from your own calling, which is
what has led us to this in the first place! The independents are probably
more like you than any of them.”
Omega doesn’t want to admit that she might be right. “I can...see where you
might think that. But I don’t know what you want me to do about it.”
“The Klugman, it has shuttles of its own, right?”
“Yes.”
“And they’re reframe capable?”
“One class of them are. There are only four of that kind.”
“Can twenty-one people fit in each one?” she asks.
“Tinaya, I need those. They’re for advanced recon, resupply missions, and
multi-front engagements.”
She sighs, and itches underneath her eye. “Omega, the war is not for a
hundred and thirty years. You don’t think you can rebuild them in that
amount of time?”
“I see your point.”
“Give them the shuttle stocked with supplies that were grown and
manufactured at the megablock, and let them leave.”
“Where the hell are they gonna go?” Omega questions. “There’s nothing out
here, except for the Goldilocks Corridor. And I don’t think they want to go
there. I sure as hell don’t want them to. What if they alert them to our
plans?”
“They don’t know your plans.”
“They know enough. Our only advantage is a surprise attack. It has to be a
complete surprise.” He spoke demonstratively with his hands.
She laughs. “You don’t trust...yourself?”
He was ready for this counterpoint. “No, I don’t,” he replies quickly.
Tinaya nods gently, and looks down at the ground. He doesn’t need to trust
every single one of them. “I’ll go with them,” she offers. “I’ll make sure
they don’t give your plans away, even unintentionally. You can trust me,
right?”
“Tinaya, you can’t do that; you have a life,” Omega contends.
“I’ve had many lives. This would be just one more.”
He shakes his head, trying to work through the consequences. “I wanna say
that I can’t ask you to do that, but I’m not asking for anything. This is
all you. I straight up don’t want you to do it.”
“This planet, it comes with radiation. It does weird things to time powers.
It probably made the two explosions worse than they should have been.”
“I heard.”
“Aristotle can’t get us out of here. There is no way back to Extremus. If I
can’t see Arqut again, it doesn’t matter where I am. I can do this. I can
care for your wayward children. Give us the shuttles.”
Omega looks awkward, like he wants to spill the beans, but he doesn’t want
to have to clean them up afterwards.
She can sense his reluctance, but can also tell that it’s important. “What
is it?”
They left the Kamala Khan in cislunar space. After rigging up teleporter
relays on both the planet, and the moon, they now use the shuttle as a
midpoint to allow them to travel freely back and forth. Well, it’s not free,
per se. You either have to go to the jump terminal, or have an emergency
teleporter on your person, which not everyone does. Not even Tinaya, though
that’s more because she doesn’t really need it. Omega places hands around
her upper arms, and jumps them to the moon. But they don’t end up in the
cloning facility. This place is unfamiliar.
“Where are we?”
“My secret lab,” he answers.
“All of your labs are secret.”
“Yes, but this...is the big one.”
“Bigger than the clone army?” That seems unlikely.
He walks over to the wall, and rests his elbow against it, ready to pull a
big switch down, the purpose of which she does not yet know. “The time
mirrors. They worked fine while they were active, but you can only fit one
person through at a time, and they were an annoying drain of power. People
who weren’t supposed to know about this operation would have eventually
noticed the discrepancies. We actually had to bribe the independent energy
auditor with a lifetime of contribution points.”
“Why are you telling me this? I don’t wanna know this.”
“It was a temporary measure while we worked on a permanent way to travel
back and forth. And we certainly needed the time.” Omega drops the big
switch down. As lights flip on, a set of blast doors open.
More lights illuminate on the other side, revealing something that Tinaya
only ever saw once in her life. “A Nexus.”
“That’s right.”
Nexa are a mysterious interstellar transport machine that were invented by
an even more mysterious alien race, and placed on an unknown number of
inhabited worlds. It could take you tens of thousands of light years in
minutes, but there had to be another one on the other side to receive you.
What good would this do them?
“I know what you’re thinking. What good is this to us? The Extremus doesn’t
have one of its own. We could go back to the Gatewood Collective, or maybe
to Earth. But why would we want to?”
“I can think of a few reasons.”
“My mistake. The point is that you would be wrong either way. Extremus
does have a Nexus.”
“Since when?”
He steps a little closer, and admires the thing. “It’s not done yet, but
Valencia is working on it on her end. I built this one muhself.”
“How do you know what’s happening on Extremus at all?”
“They’re both complete enough for a phone call.” He offers her a hand.
She hesitates for a moment, but takes it. He escorts her down the stairs,
and into the machine. The original design apparently comes with four walls,
but two of them were excluded from this one, as they were on Gatewood. Each
machine must fulfill a strict set of requirements to function properly, but
some components are evidently negotiable. They step down into the cavity.
“Hey, Opsocor. Can you connect me to the Extremus?” A dim orange light
appears from above. “We’re waiting for her to answer. She may not be there.
Our scheduled check-in isn’t for another couple of hours.”
Just then, two holograms render in the cavity in front of them. One of them
is Omega’s wife, Valencia Strong. The other is Arqut. Arqy!” Tinaya
exclaims.
“Teeny Toon!” he shouts back. They almost hug, but don’t try, because
they’re not really in the same room together.
“He figured it out,” Valencia explains to Omega with a shrug.
“She didn’t,” Omega replies. “I just thought she oughta know.”
“Finish this,” Tinaya orders, gazing upon her husband. “Get me back to him.”
No comments :
Post a Comment