CHAPTER 012: Elysium I

Adam Rytman

TCS Cutlass/Pontifex-A System

Long War

18 April 2547, 06:12

It took us almost seven hours to get the green light from the Choir’s government to go on with the scouting mission. I spent the time in the ship’s gym - I followed Nymphae’s suggestions about trying to improve my in-game body. I wasn’t nearly on the level of King (whom I met there as well), but… there should be progress if I do that regularly.

According to Shalyn, there were a lot of doubts, but the need to discover the origin of the Numbers’ and find out if they were a threat won at the end. Narrowly, it seems.

Though the Voice supported it, and since he was essentially a dictator, trying to go against him could not be pretty. He didn’t look bloodthirsty - though I met him only once - but it was easy to get dismissed from your position in military or government when you were really pissing him off.

One thing we had to agree upon to get the acceptance for the mission was having Shalyn accompany us. On the bridge. Whenever she really wanted to. I guess the Choir’s government wanted to have an eye on me. Or at least get information about the other star systems and Numbers’ firsthand.

I had a weird feeling that she would accompany me more often in the future.

She wasn’t looking exactly comfortable wearing the practically indecent space suit, but her wearing it was a requirement on my side. Not because I was enjoying the views (though I totally was), but because I would not let the niece of the Voice himself die on my ship. Not when I could avoid it.

Asking to connect with the game system for respawns was too much for now. I guess I’d be reserved if I were them as well. The technology was far too advanced for them to feel comfortable with. Moloch gave them a bit of a scare.

A normal warship crew would be ready to depart immediately… but we weren’t a normal crew. You could transfer necessary skills via cerebral implants and then have them trained by simulated exercises… but only clones had the necessary implants. We had exactly seven people capable of that, out of twenty-five required to man the Cutlass properly.

We also had forty-five crewmen from the Choir - additional numbers were because we had to train people with the other ships in mind - but they were of subpar quality. The number included Avran and his squad of soldiers. In the case of battle, I could always use them as a repair crew since all of them knew at least something about engineering.

Not like the people from the Choir were incompetent or stupid. The Choir promised us the best people available, and it sends exactly what it promised. They were probably much more talented than me, but they needed a lot of time to learn basics properly.

We were still basically a warship equivalent of a mentally impaired individual. Or maybe one with a wasting disease? But one that could ultimately be healed?

Normally, making the ship go from A to B was easy. But here, we had to make sure we could travel from A to B without losing too much of the valuable fuel. So we had to use the manoeuvre thrusters as little as possible. Decelerate in the precise moment and have the ship stop right in front of the Hypergate.

It wasn’t easy. The distance between Diamond and the ice giant designated Pontifex A-6 was 2,8 billion kilometres. This required a lot of precision. And we lost so much of the navigational data when the Task Force Pontifex got wiped out that we had to at least partially rely on astronomical data from the Choir’s observatories. Otherwise, we wouldn’t even know where exactly Pontifex A-6 was.

It took two hours for Einstein - our navigation officer - to figure out the proper course. Though it was mostly because she relayed most of the work to the two candidates for navigational officers for Yataghan and Sword. Both physicists, mathematicians and reserve officers of the Choir’s army (as most of the people after university).

According to Einstein, it should be much faster next time. We’ll see to that.

Then again, it wasn’t necessary. It was just another exercise even if some data was useful. Because we would not travel there with STL speed. It would take days, who has the time for that?!

Nymphae quickly explained what’ll follow.

“The Cutlass is outfitted with a Phaseshift Drive. It’s also called Subspace Drive or Ghost Drive.” I’m not sure if I like the last name. “It’s an addon to the hyperdrive that allows us to enter hyperspace, but only partially. It’s not very pleasant, but it makes us travel much faster. We could go to Pontifex A-6-VI ‘normally’, but it would take us four days. If we jump using Phaseshift Drive, we’ll get there in two hours.”

Oh. That’s an important difference.

“It’s used for travelling within a star system’s borders.” Nymphae continued. “You can’t enter Hyperspace fully within the gravity well of the star. The effects are… unpleasant. So there is a niche that the Phaseshift Drive fills. Trying to use it to travel greater distances, for example from one system to another, carries rather negative side effects on human bodies. The list of them includes various neural and psychological disorders, for example paranoia, aggression, self-mutilation, schizophrenia, various types of psychosis and phobias. More physical side effects include nausea, dizziness, vomiting, headaches, unexplained disappearances, mutilations…”

“Alright, stop it.” I sighed. “You will make me bind all our forces to Diamond’s orbit. In short - don’t phasejump too far. And, if I’m right, don’t jump too often.” She nodded.

“In short, yes.”

Thirty minutes later we started the phaseshift jump.

Our navigational officer made one last check to the calculations. Then she sent the data to the helmsman - a petty officer from the Choir, responsible for executing the ship’s manoeuvres. Then he started the jump procedure, with Nymphae silently overseeing him to avoid us ramming into a moon or having us break into pieces because of wrong settings.

The jump was exactly as bad as I presumed after Nymphae’s information. I felt like I was in a weird rollercoaster. Something was pulling me back as if the ship hurried so much that the inertia compensators couldn’t compensate. I felt as if the ship surrounding me was distorting itself, changing shapes. Einstein’s head - she was sitting in front of me - split open and something looked at me.

What the fuck.

Then I felt that something was watching me from the corner of my eyes. I tried to turn my head, but I couldn’t. It was large. And dark. I couldn‘t see any shape or anything, but I was sure it was there.

Suddenly, everything was normal.

What?!

“Jump successful.” Nymphae informed me. “We missed the target by a million kilometres, but that’s relatively good for our inexperienced crew.

Judging from the sounds coming from the side, one crewman was busy emptying his stomach. Both Einstein and Shalyn looked… bad, but seemed to have avoided the worst outcome.

“What the fuck. Wasn’t it supposed to be two hours?!” I asked, fighting through nausea.

“Well…” She looked embarrassed now. “I think we should avoid further phasejumps. Something was very wrong with this one.” WHAT?! “The jump shouldn’t be instant. If that wasn’t impossible with modern Hyperdrives, I’d say we narrowly avoided the fate of the Prehumans.” Seriously?! “I never heard of any ship suffering from temporal displacement in the last two hundred years, but... “

“I saw things.” She looked at me, raising her eyebrow. “During the jump. Weird things.”

“Impossible. There was no ‘during’, the jump was instant. Unless…“ She looked at me. She seemed worried. Damn, now I’m worried as well. “I must check a few things, I’ll tell you when I have something to show you.”

Great.

I used the ship intercom.

“This is the captain speaking.” Yeah, feel my AUTHORITY. “We finished the phaseshift jump. Worse than expected, but beside that, everything is alright. One hour to recollect ourselves, then we continue the travel. If any of the symptoms you are now experiencing will be too strong for you to continue doing your job, go to the medbay.” I switched the intercom to the medbay. “I want a report before we depart.”

And now, let’s return to trying to avoid ruining my image by painting half of the bridge with my vomits.

***

TCS Cutlass/Pontifex-A System

Long War

18 April 2547, 8:20

Thankfully, we had no serious medical problems. After an hour, the Cutlass chief medical officer - from the Choir, naturally - contacted me and reported that all the crew members were in working condition.

Then we left towards the Hypergate. We reached it soon enough. That’s when I discovered that despite the designation, the Precursors didn’t build the Hypergate in the orbit around the sixth moon surrounding the sixth (Neptune-like) planet of the Pontifex-A star system.

The moon WAS the Hypergate.

“Holy…” I was looking at the view on the monitor in front of me. With a lot of disbelief.

“Well, it’s comforting that even for transcendent tech-gods like the Precursors, they still required a lot of space to do the impossible.” Nymphae added with sarcasm. “It’s a relatively small moon, two thousand kilometres in diameter. And about 1/10 of it was replaced with complex machinery. So it’s still mostly moon.”

Right.

“Em, Shalyn?” I leaned towards her. She was sitting on the seat near the captain’s one, reserved for various important guests on board and rarely used. “I’m wondering - how’s it possible you haven’t seen it from your world?”

Mechanical additions were visible on its surface.

“We’ve seen it.” She answered. “A long time ago. We knew that the Precursors lived not only on our planet but also in the entire star system. We also knew they were dead, and for a long while. We never imagined them existing outside of the star system though.”

I guess that makes sense. It probably made the first contact easier. After all, they were almost sure the aliens existed. The Precursors were most likely a ‘local’ species, at least according to them, but aliens nonetheless.

Might explain why the guy in their communication headquarters acted like that. For thousands (I never asked how old their civilization was, huh) years they knew of one alien species… and it was both dead and a part of their theology. Which improved their expectations about the aliens. Then, some aliens suddenly come and they all are pretty casual.

What a letdown.

“Nymphae, how many Hypergates are in the Pontifex System?” I asked for further.

“Three in Pontifex-A and two in Pontifex-B. But right now I’m only sure of the locations of two. A-6-VI and A-5-XVII. Codenamed Gateway and Rainbow Bridge by the Corporation. We must find out the rest either by hand or by using the Choir’s observatories.”

I see.

“That’s a lot of Hypergates.” I commented.

“One of the main reasons why the Corporation presumed the Pontifex System to be the Precursor’s capital system.” Nymphae said. “Most of the data was purged, but I found mentions of at least two major colonies and several minor ones. All of them changed into mass graveyards by the Archenemy. Together with the number of ruined installations and Hypergates this system most likely surpassed pretty much every one of Humanity’s star systems.”

Makes sense. With so many Hypergates (each of them requiring TWO moons to be partially rebuilt into a giant mechanism), it had to be important.

“The Corporation came here through the Rainbow Bridge.” Nymphae answered my next question before I had time to ask it. “But something happened to that Hypergate. It seems to be locked in some self-maintenance mode and it currently doesn't work.”

I wonder how long will that last. Hopefully, enough for us to gather enough strength to have the Corporation reconsider having stupid ideas. Like, trying to retake their lost ‘assets’.

“Alright, so what’s next?” That was important.

“Right now I’m finishing the process of reactivating the Hypergate. The key fits, I can tell you that much.” Phew. My credence as space admiral would fall down the drain if the Choir saw me retreating from a mission after a blunder like that. “The Hypergate will open a stable hyperspace corridor of very high spatial compression, which will allow u… alright, in short, we would then have to fly right at the moon from the right direction.”

Sure. Let’s hope it will work - ramming the moon with our frigate will ruin my credence even more.

“The flight will not be instant.” Hey, as long as I don’t see weird hallucinations, I’m fine!. “Instead, the ship will travel for approximately three hours. It’s still much less than naturally existing hyperlanes, but still much more than in case of normal hyperspace travel.” Which doesn’t tell me a lot. Sigh.

I guess I’ll use the time in the real world. I really need to go pay something to eat. I could just order pizza, but… I have little to do in the game for now, so I can as well stock myself for a few days at once.

***

Suburbs of Certain City/European Union

Real World

18 April 2137, 10:34

I left the apartment block I lived in.

The city was exactly as I remembered it. I could see the Spire at the horizon - it’s hard to hide something several hundred floors high and a few kilometres in diameter.

I was never in it. That was a place for people earning money, instead of living on the benefits. I saw a lot of pictures though. And many films, games and so on. I guess it’s almost as if I was there myself.

For the plebs like me were suburbs. The land surrounding the Spire, together composing one large megacity complex. There were better and worse neighbourhoods there. Mine was somewhere in the middle.

There were exactly twenty-four of such megacities in the European Union. They packed pretty much the entire EU’s population there. Each had about fifteen million citizens, though it varied. The suburbs contained a majority of them, most, like me. The overwhelming majority of them lived only on Universal Income and occasional odd jobs. Few had proper jobs.

Identical buildings. They levelled the area surrounding the arcology and put unending forests of exactly the same apartment block. With streets and so on arranged in an equally perfect, geometrical way. Squares after squares. From time to time, one of the squares was focused on providing services for the inhabitants. Always several stories high shopping mall. Hospital. That sort of stuff.

Everything you needed to live. Without leaving the two-kilometre radius from your home. Everything buyable through the Universal Income Card, provided by our generous government.

The only thing that gave buildings at least some semblances of uniqueness were the advertisements. The buildings themselves were perfectly identical, all the adverts were digital. The system knew my preferences because of the internet. So everywhere I looked, my implants showed me adverts tailored to my taste.

Buyables for Long War. Local pizzeria. The nearest citizens that marked themselves as willing to have sex for money as long as they were similar to my tastes according to the pornography I watched. Probably half of the locals were on the list, easy money.

Some sex adverts included videos of the target… performance.

Sigh. I’m not really in the mood. Besides, who would go for some local girl in much too heavy make-up, when you spent a few past weeks watching Einstein’s bouncing assets in a tight spacesuit?

Most of the adverts that assaulted my eyes, ears and in a few more expensive cases even nose were… well, when compared to people from Long War… like Einstein… or even Shalyn, they were an atrocity on my sense of aesthetics.

I switched off the adverts, returning to the world of endless identical buildings flanking street that seemed to be equally endless. Officially there was no such option because besides adverts that channel was also supposed to be used in emergencies. For example, to announce evacuation or something. But there were ways of switching it off, and the government didn’t really seem to care.

Booring. The street was mostly empty. Few people going somewhere. Some drones above the street, carrying ordered food and other packages to houses. The street was mostly for police, military, firefighters and so on. Plus public transport, of course. Private cars belonged mostly to people from the Spire. Very few of them showed up around here.

Ugh. Maybe I’ll run to make it faster? I won’t be able to do that on the way back, but here…

I tried. I ran for maybe fifty meters before my lungs died. Ugh. Yeah, I’m 1,70m high while weighing 120kg. At least the last time I checked, I probably got fatter since then. A lot. No wonder I’m not fit. And when was the last time I made some physical exercises?

That’s why I prefer playing VR games. And doing running there. My body in the Long War was like a hundred times better. I felt as if somebody bound a large metal ball to my ankle. Or as if I tried to run in full plate armour. Ugh.

“You are doing it wrong.” I almost jumped up when I heard a voice coming from behind. Some guy stood there. Never saw him before. Looked… well, seems like someone was training. He even wore something that looked like a dress used for training in a gym.

“W..what?” What does he want from me?!

“The running.” He looked at me and shook his head. “Listen, I don’t know if you are doing it for real. Most people don’t. But when you want to run while overweight, trying to run all out like that will just get you killed. Start with walking. Five minutes slow, then 20 to 30 fast, and then five minutes of a slow walk again to calm your heart. Only after improving your condition proceed with mixing in some running.”

“Why…”

“Because it pains me to see such an amateur running. If you’re doing something, at least try to do it well.” Then he simply run away in a pace much faster than I could achieve.

That was weird.

I was sure I would not keep doing that for long, but since I had nothing better to do, I walked fast - as he told me - to the mall.

***

TCS Cutlass/Hypergate Corridor

Long War

18 April 2547, 12:22

I’d bought enough supplies to last me for the next three days at least. The mall was exactly as I remembered it. Fifteen stories high, filled with pretty much every product you could imagine. Self-service cash registers. Drones carrying stuff to the shelves above our heads. No human worker in sight.

At least a lot of buyers, most of them in hurry. Some, like me, avoided any eye contact. Others were busy doing stuff. Judging from the sounds from the toilet, some were VERY busy doing stuff.

Day like any other.

I came back home and then returned to the Long War.

I woke up on the bridge. In the meantime, my character was ‘napping’, though if directly threatened it could engage a sort of an auto-pilot mechanism. While sending me a warning in the real life. I could enter the game from pretty much any place in the world (all of the megacities had perfect internet connection).

I think I saw a person who was urgently resummoned to the game in the mall, the guy was just sitting on the bench with an empty stare.

Glorious 21st century.

The ‘glass’ window in front of the bridge was pitch black. Hmm? Is that how Hyperspace looks like?

“Actually, no it isn’t.” Nymphae decided to tell me. “But prolonged exposure to it, even simply seeing it for too long, is detrimental. Especially to mental health.”

I’m beginning to think that everything in this game is detrimental to mental health. Or at least causes changes in behaviour. That you probably don’t notice until it’s too late. Like in some bad horror movie.

“Because of that, what you are seeing is Hyperspace filtered through the Cutlass’ computers.” Nymphae continued. “However, the space inside the Hypergate corridor is empty. So there is nothing on the screen.”

Suddenly, a small dot showed up before disappearing again.

“That’s a navigational beacon.” Nymphae quickly explained. “One more technological miracle of the Precursors. Our technology doesn’t allow us to put stable beacons in hyperlanes, the naturally existing counterpart of the Hypergates. But it looks like they could do that. It informs us how far we are from the exit. To avoid jumping right at the enemy guarding it, we’ll exit a bit earlier. You can’t leave the stream in the middle of the journey, but near the ends of the line, the borders are… thinner.”

I think I understand how that works. At least from the practical point of view.

“Also, the thermal sensors don’t work in Hyperspace.” When I looked at her, obviously demanding more information, she continued. ”It’s hot out there. The stronger compression the hotter, at least normally. With the outside temperature being around 700C, our thermal sensors are blind. We can detect gravity sources, but it’s a very unreliable method. It’s possible to sneak up on a ship in Hyperspace, maybe even in the Hypergate corridor, though it’s yet to happen to anyone. And with that one opened like two hours ago, the chances for anyone to sneak in yet are minimal.” She shrugged. “If there is a hostile presence on the other side, it’s waiting by the Hypergate exit. Or is en route to it after detecting its reactivation.”

“Still, the Numbers’ had the key. So they could travel around.” She nodded.

“Theoretically, yes. Practically, that Hypergate seems to have been shut down around the time something attacked the Corporation. We were the first ones to reactivate it.” Hmm… makes sense. “The Corporation had no time to check the other side earlier since they were busy establishing the bridgehead in Pontifex System.”

Time to change the subject.

“So, how does the FTL travel works?” I might take the occasion to finally learn something conclusive.

I mean, the FTL drive tends to be quite important in sci-fi settings. Right?