33 - Purged

Maya had to give Yosi credit where it was due. She had been the main face of the trading in Ibadan and although Maya hadn’t gone over what she had purchased or traded or even sold, one thing Yosi had obtained was a decent amount of gasoline. As vehicles and generators of newer make didn’t work anymore due to the mana saturation doing weird stuff to the electronics, Yosi had gotten a fairly good deal on gasoline.

Although life had changed for Maya, she still kept the small emergency bag that had originally been in the food truck all those months ago. It was a small duffle bag the held a simple first aid kit, some tools, and most importantly a small bundle of flares. In the beginning, her inventory would automatically separate anything within a bag, but as she got a hang of using her dimensional inventory she had realized she could make it keep everything within a bag with just a thought. Since then she had kept a few things on her that she figured she would need one day, fifty kilos of food, water, for herself, Yosi, and Bell, along with some pre-Integration items, like her old iPhone and other stuff.

Maya ignited a flare and wandered through the piles of items they had purchased from Haltor’s World and from Ibadan. She immediately found the gasoline stash, nearly forty gallons of fuel that were in everything from a milk jug to a steel jerry can.

She grabbed the five gallon jerry can and headed to another part of the ship where she had stored all of her ‘old’ stuff, everything she had salvaged from the Bonita before Big Snake had toasted her. Inside she found the original Honda generator she had used so long ago.

It felt odd using the pre-Integration technology and in a normal world, it wouldn’t’ have worked, but from what she understood; the low ambient mana of the dimensional plane didn’t interfere with electronics like it did back on Earth or the rest of the Integrated Multiverse.

The generator roared to life, terrifyingly loud in the absolute quiet of the mess hall. She attached a work light and brought illumination back into the mess hall.

Bell, Yosi, and Badblood were unconscious. Maya didn’t know what had happened, but it wasn’t too hard to guess. The System had purged all the mana out of the dimensional plane, that had been a brutal punch to the gut of anything that absorbed mana. Not only did the System suck the mana out of the dimension, it also sucked it right out of everything that used mana; SIL, machine, and AI alike.

Yet some things still worked, Maya’s dimensional inventory for one, along with her Skills, Abilities, and even the downloading engineering knowledge cubes were still active. She hadn’t been struck by the removal of mana in the dimension, most likely due to the System. It needed her to continue being its Point of Contact, so Maya assumed that it was some kind of residual protection that kept her from being knocked out.

Maya plugged in her phone and charger into the generator and smiled as for the first time in months the device lit up. She let it charge for a while, as she moved among her unconscious friends. They were breathing deeply and normally, showing no signs of distress or pain. She hoped they would be okay, as the extent of her medical knowledge was relying on Nan to do it.

“What the hell am I gonna do now?” Maya asked the empty room. There was no response. She pulled out a tablet and tried to get it to work, but like everything she had tried that used mana, it was dead. Maya sighed.

It had been months since she had been entirely alone, she realized. That first week had been hell, alone, scared, and with limited food and water. She had found the pub after that, then Bell, and finally Shen.

Maya looked around the mess hall and took a breath. She decided she needed to do something. The others would be fine, as there didn’t seem anything dangerous around anymore. Maya pulled out some extra duracloth and wrapped it around her marsani axe. After some minor experimentation she had a torch to light her way back to the surface.

The world outside shocked Maya so much she dropped the torch and nearly burned herself.

“Shit!” she cried, dancing back from the flaming axe.

She looked up at the sky and saw only absolute black. The sight sent a blast of fear down her spine that made her legs shake. The rainbow sky was gone, only a endless black greeted her. Maya cast her eyes around and saw that the world was pitch black also, the gloomy light she had gotten used to was gone and only her small patch of torch light illuminated anything.

Maya paused as she looked at the distant horizon. No, there was a light in the distance. It wasn’t bright, but in the absolute pitch black of the world, she could see it shining like some kind of beacon. The light came from the west, the orignal direction she had first arrived from. It was the endless flat plain of gray dirt that she had traveled across to reach the trash piles.

The heavy cube that was the Hangy’s mana core was silent and dead. She checked the batteries that were still hooked to it and saw that they too weren’t operational. Everything that ran on mana was drained. Maya continued onward and soon the Hab loomed over her as she made her way across the dark landscape. She nearly screamed as she came across the motionless figure of one of the defense drones. She nearly screamed again when it slowly turned its body toward her.

“Holy shit!” Maya cried, rushing toward the mech. She looked it over and saw that it was still functioning, albeit slowly. That meant its own mana hadn’t been drained completely.

Maya felt herself grinning. All the mana batteries and cores were all drained, but it seemed like the black goo was somewhat resistant to the mana purge. Maya’s grin immediately turned to a frown. Her defense drones weren’t the only thing that used black goo, every rogue AI did. Which meant all the rogue AIs were still operational.

Her frowned deepened as she realized that all the weapons she had, besides the few melee weapons, relied on mana to operate. Her guns, her explosives, and her turrets, they all relied on mana. But if the black goo wasn’t susceptible to the mana purge, or not as susceptible, that meant the giant vata of black goo she was cooking up was still useable.

“Pardon me, buddy,” Maya said as she popped open a maintenance panel on the drone. She fiddled with the internal connections and found what she was looking for, the mana battery. There was a small indicator that showed its charge levels, the drone was at seventy-five percent charge. “Sorry about this.” Maya detached the mana battery and then used a connector to attach it to her rogue AI tablet. The screen flashed once and then immediately died.

Maya frowned again and looked at the battery. A small depleted icon flashed and then it too went dark.

“What the hell?” Maya muttered. She reattached the battery back into the drone and saw the small indicator light flash, showing that it was charging. One percent.

There was another defense drone not too far away, so Maya moved toward it and did the same. This drone’s battery was at fifty percent and Maya extracted it. She plugged it into her tablet once more and it flashed and died once more. She plugged the battery back into the drone and watched as the battery showed it was charging once again, back down to one percent.

Her third attempt verified what she was figuring was happening. The mana purge was still going on, but for some reason the black goo within the drones was still holding onto it’s mana. The moment she pulled out the battery, it was sucked dry as she tried to use it. She didn’t remove the battery this time, instead directly connecting with the drone and watched with glee as her tablet blinked to life.

She ran a quick diagnostic and it showed that the dozen drones that were guarding the Hab were still operational, but they were on low power stand by. It was an automatic built in program that prevented the drones from fully running out of power, as to do so would cause a long restarting sequence. She noted that they were all burning through their batteries, nearly five percent an hour. Usually with the ambient mana their energy expenditure was steady, until they were in a fight, then they would have to topped up with mana from the cores.

Maya reactivated the ten useable drones and sent them to the hatch of the Hangy. They lined up in a defensive pattern and Maya hung on as the mech she was riding moved into position. She frowned as she saw the energy expenditure from the simple movement. On average the drones burned nearly five percent of their remaining power just moving a short distance.

The mana usage math wasn’t right. Maya ran the numbers and determined that they were using twenty times the amount of power they should have. She pulled out a few diagnostic tools and spliced them to the battery of the drone. It took a few minutes but she discovered she was correct. The drones were using far more power than they normally did, not only that but the tablets and devices she had hooked to the drone were drawing more power than they used to. Either that or the mana was being purged as it was being used.

Each of the defense drones ran off of a 500 kilogen battery, their bodies were large enough that the black goo within them could keep it seventy five percent charged. That would normally allow them about three standard days of constant patrol, but with the new power drain, they would only get about four hours of usage before they drained their battery and the mana left in the black goo.

Maya pondered in the dark for a moment, her torch having gone out and the only light coming from the tablet. She sighed and decided on a course of action.

They were still in some danger so Maya went the defensive route. She pulled out a sensor box and selected the drone with the lowest battery power to be the sensor drone. She splice the box to the battery and watched as it came to life. Maya then realized her computer wasn’t working either. She sighed and after a few more minutes managed to splice her computer to the battery also. A window appeared and Maya began adjusting the settings of the sensor box. The box wasn’t a power intensive unit, but it was still drawing a lot of the battery power. Maya estimated that she had a hundred hours of passive sensor ability on this drone before its black goo ran out of mana.

She then activated one of the drones, it was on standby mode and would be at reduced power usage. Maya figured she had twenty hours of power in the drone. That would mean it wasn’t going to be patrolling, instead it would stand guard beside the hatch and if anything arrived it would begin firing at them. Once that was done, Maya re-entered the Hangy, shutting down the sensor box until she got what she needed.

The black goo room was as dead as everything else, but Maya marched up to the test netting they had created long ago. It was a hundred square meter of netting that was able to hold over twenty five kilogens of mana. It had been untouched since Roci had last run a test on it and showed that the new method of making the netting was able to store more power.

Maya rolled up the netting, cursing as it tangled and bunched up as she tried moving it in the near darkness of the chamber. An hour and two torches later, Maya compressed the large netting into a meter wide ball. She was glad that the black goo netting was light and thin, otherwise the sheer bulk of it would have been a hinderance.

Afterward she attached a tool mana battery and began splicing wires and connectors to her computer and a series of mana lights she had found. After another few minutes she extinguished her torch and stood in a sphere of illumination.

Maya sighed basking in the light for a moment before heading toward the vat of black goo.

The black goo was a mixture of mana stones and other ingredients, not true alchemy, but more of a natural reaction. Like mixing Mentos and Coke together. There were ten vats of black goo. Each vat would be able toe create nearly ten thousand square meters of netting and once they impregnated the duracloth, would store up to 25Mg of mana. Currently all the vats were ready to be soaked into duracloth. Since Tender had left, the project was mostly abandoned, but Roci had been making more black goo as a side project. Maya was thankful for the little AI at that moment.

Once the Mentos reaction occurred, the black goo was ready to be used. Maya estimated that each vat would fill about five of the defense drones and they had been marinating for days now. She took out a tester and grinned when the readings came back with total of 50Mg for all the vats. It should have been nearly two hundred, but most were still charging and absorbing mana before it was purged from the dimension.

They had power, but with the two thousand percent penalty for using it, they weren’t going to be basking in mana for all that long.

Maya left the room and returned to the mess hall.

“You’re awake!” Maya cried, rushing to Yosi and Bell as they were sitting at a table. They looked like hell and stared at her with bleary eyes.

“What are you wearing?” Bell asked.

“Like it? It’s my mana purge collection.” Maya twirled a moment as the two stared at her with expressionless faces. “Fine. Here’s what’s going on.”

“No mana,” Yosi sighed after Maya had explained everything to them. “Is that why I feel so terrible? I feel like I’ve been sick for weeks and everything hurts.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Maya said. Yosi looked deflated, sickly, and absolutely tired, Bell wasn’t much different.

“But the black goo wasn’t purged,” Bell said. “There are still rogue AIs out there, then?”

“Yeah, that’s what I figured. I’ve got a sensor box scanning and a single drone operational, but they’re not going to last that long if there’s no ambient mana to recharge them.”

“How long do we have?” Yosi asked.

“I don’t know. If we stick to only lighting up this area, probably months with the vats of black goo we have. But if there is a fight, we’re looking at maybe hours to days. It’s too hard to determine right now. I think I have enough power to start up the Cage. I can get you three out of here if I ask the System. They promised me that I’d be allowed to send people back home if they wanted to leave and you have the golden ticket, Bell.”

“No. We’re not leaving,” Yosi and Bell said together.

“Badblood?”

“She’s from this place, maybe they’re immune to this mana purge,” Bell replied.

“She’s still out and probably will be for a couple of more days,” Maya said.

“We need mana potions,” Bell said. “I think it might work, I have four potions left over from a while back.” Bell took a breath and summoned a tube into his hands. It glowed a faint blue in color. He grinned and lifted it to his arm, but the moment it moved the glow faded and the vial seemed become inert.

“It’s depleted,” Bell said mournfully. He looked down at the vial and set it on the table. Maya stared at it and sighed.

“Everything we pull out of our inventory get’s drained,” she said. “The moment it leaves, mana purged. Even if you managed to get the potion to work, I don’t know if the purge would just rip it right back out of you.”

“We need mana,” Bell said. “We can’t remain in this state for very long. Our bodies will start breaking down if we don’t absorb some mana.”

Maya looked at the two and thought of something. “Maybe…”

***

“Will this work?” Yosi asked, hesitant but hopeful.

“I have no idea,” Maya said as all three stood above a black goo vat. “The mana in the black goo is not being drained. It is an area of concentrated mana, generic mana sure, but it’s still mana, right?.”

Yosi and Bell shrugged.

“It is an interesting theory,” Bell said looking at the black ‘liquid’. “Is it poisonous?”

“I don’t think so. Nan said it would be inert if consumed,” Maya replied.

Bell looked pained and exhausted from their short trek. He moved like an old man and Maya paused to wonder just how old he was. He had been level thirty when they met, that would mean he could live up to three hundred standard years, but after she had given him his share of the experience shards he, like Yosi, was now level thirty-nine.

“I’ll try it,” Bell said.

“Strip and fully submerge,” Maya said.

Bell grunted in agreement and then began pulling his ship suit off.

“Look away, Yosi. It’s pretty chilly in here,” Maya chuckled as the dinosaur woman hurriedly turned away.

“I feel that is a joke at my expense,” Bell grunted as he lowered himself into the vat. He let out a gasp of surprise as he sank chest deep into the vat. “I can feel the mana.” He grinned and then fully submerged himself.

After a long and concerning minute passed, Bell bobbed back up. A marked difference in his demeanor showed that the mana potion had been successful.

“It worked,” he said.

“Awesome. Now join him, Yosi.” Maya said.

“What?” the woman cried.

“He’s got the potion in his inventory, if he takes it out, it gets purged,” Maya explained.

Maya chuckled at their discomfort, not out of maliciousness but out of relief. They weren’t going to die, a little discomfort and awkwardness was better than death.

Once they were done, they wheeled in Badblood and did the same for her. She looked more terrible than she had been, but once she had been dunked and the mana potion added, she looked a lot better.

“I guess the purge only happens the one time,” Maya said as she watched Bell and Yosi move around with a pep in their step.

“I don’t think I can channel anything,” Bell said. “But my body is working fine, albeit a bit on the low side. That potion wasn’t that strong.”

“Can you make more potions?” Maya asked.

“I don’t think so. Creating a mana potion requires channeling mana into the potion. The quality of the mana potion along with how much mana is stored in it is a deciding factor. It takes nearly three times as much mana as the potion gives back and it can only be stored outside of dimensional containers for a few days before it goes inert. But I believe the saturation in the black goo was fairly heavy,” Bell said. “If we soaked ourselves in it for several hours, we might be able to absorb some of the mana.”

“But it’s generic mana, right?” Maya asked. “Shouldn’t that be impossible?”

“That mana should have been purged along with everything else,” Bell said. “Perhaps it does have some special properties.”

“Black goo for the win, I guess.” Maya grinned at Bell. “Now that you’re not going to die, let’s get planning on how to survive this whole ordeal.”

Maya opened her computer and pulled up a window. “Now, we have about-“

An alarm began screeching from the sensor box. Maya cursed, opened another window and shared it with the two. She looked at the screen and her eyes widen.

The passive sensor box created a wireframe image of what it had seen. In the pitch black sky above, a winged creature was flying.

“Is that a dragon?” Maya gasped. It looked like a dragon, long, reptilian, with massive wings that were as wide as the creature was long. She brought up the resolution and saw that it wasn’t a living being, but a rogue AI. It’s skin was metal and she could see the telltale red gleam in its eyes.

Ginishava - mid-grade, Tier 2

They all stared at the image of the creature for a moment, then the alarm blared once more. The sensor box produced another image of a different creature. It was a massive hundred legged creature that was scurrying across the gray dirt three kilometers from their position.

Rogue AI JU8547NZ - Level 80

The three exchanged glances and then the sensor box spat out more alarms.

Rogue VE8485UI - Level 90

Rogue YN7419LN - Level 77

Rogue AI GG5479VC - Level 62

Rogue AI WW7517CO - Level 57

Rogue AI XN8449MV - Level 99

“They’re all high leveled and they’re all going in the same direction,” Maya said. She looked at the two others. “Are they running from something or are they running to something?” Maya looked at the direction they were going and then snapped her fingers. “There was a glow on the horizon.”

“What kind of glow?” Yosi asked.

“I don’t know, but it was the only light out there. There’s no rainbow sky anymore and far off into the west was a light gleaming. Like a beacon or something.”

The three hurried from the Hangy and Maya winced at the alarm blaring once more. They felt a thump as something marched off in the blackness, according to the sensor box it was heading west.

They clamored to the top of the Hab, as it gave them a somewhat higher vantage point. Maya could see a silhouette of a trash pile and beyond it the blue glow in the distance.

“Mana bloom,” Bell said immediately.

“You mean like due to high amounts of mana?” Maya asked.

“Yes. There is mana in that direction and everything over level fifty is going there,” Bell said.