TRP - Lambda Nihil Interit (Patreon)

"Lambda Nihil Interit - The Eyes in the Emptiness. Lambda is about pushing scientific limitations, filling in the empty spots on the map, so to speak. If it's something that isn't understood too well, their first instinct is to dive in, head first." - Samuel

Once again we have a lovely story + illustration combo, this one completely done by the talented RabidBadger of FA! The story follows the path of a student who hopes his acceptance to Lambda Nihil Interit, a house within The Rendering Pit, will save him from the burden of failure. But as with all things in The Pit, everything has its price.

- - - 

  

“A little to the left, and lower.”

The voice sounded like a rolling thunderstorm with a slightly nasal tone and sing-song cadence. Julian swung down on the many, thick fibers he was climbing through. Rough, bunched up clusters of strands of protein in shades of gray. They made the climbing easy, that much was a welcome relief, but they also made it hard to see what he was looking for, and left the young black rabbit forced to rely on the feedback he was getting from his partner. 

To the left, and lower. Going down was easy, left was a bit on the blind side – too much of the sideways fiber strand forest he was climbing to see. It was when the booming of his guide let out a girlish yelp that he stopped, looking more closely at the roots of his handholds. It wasn’t terribly easy to find until the light caught it, a shard of metal buried in an angry red spot amid the strands he was navigating. 

“Okay, I’ve got it – hold this thing still okay?”

Julian swung himself over carefully, making sure he was good and secure, before he reached out to the errant piece of shrapnel. He wanted to be sure his grip was serious, a precaution that paid off when he felt the entire structure he was climbing shudder as he pulled, like the stability of the whole area was balanced on it. 

“J-just do it quick, okay?”

The ebon rabbit took a quick breath, making sure once more that his grip was solid on all fronts. It took wiping a bit of sweat from his palm, pawing around to find the safest place to get a solid hold of the thing, and then making sure he was properly braced. After that it was just a question of effort, fast and steady. The extraction took two pulls, as the embedding was deep enough that Julian’s arm simply wasn’t that long. 

The quake that followed was the problem. He felt the shard of metal come free, and then the shuddering began – dismantling his grip, leaving him in a screaming free-fall. It was an insane, disorienting experience. He seemed to be falling far faster than he ought to, air whipping around his fur, his surroundings a massive blur. Then, a moment later, came the impact.

*** 

Arcturus winced, but didn’t move. The massive raccoon looked around from where he lay on his bunk, a war between relief and worry on his face as he reached up to touch the contact point by his ear.

“Oh hells, that feels better. Julian, you there? Are you safe?”

There was static at first. Just a moment of real fear crept into the puffy cheeks before he heard a voice in his ear.

“Y-yeah – fell down, landing was insane, but I’m not hurt. You were right about the math on that apparently.”

A huge sigh left Arcturus’ form, the raccoon took up his entire bunk, or at least his ass took up more than its fair share. Bottom-heavy as he was, he couldn’t see much of anything apart from the giant swell of his own lower body forming a horizon of flesh between him and the far wall.

“Okay, good. So, it’s not safe for me to move yet. I need you to find the shard, then affix the rappelling gear to the surface you’re on and go over the edge. Let me know when you’re down.”

*** 

Julian exhaled, taking a deep breath. The gear was easy enough to use though, that helped. Beyond that, it was just a matter of securing the line at his waist, and then making the trek to the edge. He’d done plenty of climbing before, even if the circumstances here were a bit strange. The landscape was unsteady, like sand mixed with netting – not fun to walk over – and he had a ways to go. About ten minutes of walking in fact, of losing his footing a couple of times as the ground shifted upward on him, but a spill or two was the worst he encountered. Eventually, tired and disoriented still, he found himself staring at a curvature 

He worked a hook into the ground below him, an uneven surface full of rough outcroppings of fiber and small breaches, one of which he worked the D-clamp of his gear into. After that, it was just a question of double-checking the lines, and easing himself over. The drop below was dizzying, an abyss of space down onto a gray plain. Julian shut his eyes, focusing back against the cliff side of the strange material, then pushed off and began his descent.

*** 

It wasn’t until he got a clear message from Julian that the raccoon sat up on his bed, and that took a little doing. The young man’s hips had always been a bit on the womanly side, and that was long before he took up aggressive implantation practices. All that driver software had to be stored somewhere. It ended up being housed in enough hard-pudge to make him, well, house-sized. Metaphorically. Arcturus plucked his glasses and their curious, gold lenses from the bedside and donned them while peering down and being very careful not to lean too far over.

“Julian, you want to head for the green spot on the floor, okay? You’re there? Alright. That was fast…”

Arcturus rose. Not that he set foot off the bed, no – he rose into the air entirely in defiance of the laws of gravity. Indeed, something with as much mass as the raccoon ought to have been feeling an immense amount of pull from it, but he drifted upward like a feather (a really fat feather) and zeroed his gaze on the green circle on the floor. It was about a centimeter across, and there in the center was a miniscule, ebon lapine and something shiny.

The raccoon reached for something inside himself that, essentially, felt like moving his own body at this point. Hardware laced around his bone structure warmed up, the gold spectacles he wore tracked telemetry for what he was doing – finding the nothing in a thing, and displacing it, or in this case – allowing it to return to its natural state.

For Julian the experience was a great deal less familiar. The rabbit felt a queasy pressure, from the outside (last time it had been internal) and a full-on assault of vertigo as the world’s perspective warped like someone had taken an overactive mouse wheel to it. Shortly afterward, Julian was laying on the floor atop a three foot long shard of metal, looking up at the hovering, blubbery visage of Arcturus.

“Yeesss! That’s it, I was hoping that was it! Perfect job Julian, absolutely perfect. Consider the application approved.”
 The rabbit let out a relieved smile at that, rolling off the chunk of metal and staring upward. He hadn’t exactly meant for that to end with ogling the raccoon’s ass, the way the two wobbling globes just kept gently rolling to and fro, but it happened regardless. At least the black fur obscured any signs of blushing.

“Th-thanks! Heh, that wasn’t all that hard really. I thought the size alteration would be worse based on what I kept hearing.”

Arcturus chuckled, his drifting in the air bouncing a bit for it (to say nothing of his belly). The raccoon ended up touching the ceiling, bouncing off and drifting like a massive, furry balloon.

 “People are spooked by this kind of science – a little too visually evocative I guess. Now, as we agreed, I have a thesis for you. It’s written out, but you need to be able to defend it before your professors so you are going to have to have some experience with the direct science, understand?”

Julian’s expression took a turn for the serous as he nodded.

“Definitely! I’m committed here man, I just… time got away from me.”

The raccoon extended a pudgy hand, arm wobbling a little, stretching each finger delicately – the arrangement of them seemed to be important for some reason.

“Good. You came to the right place for help – we’re just as interested in time as we are in space. But! Space first. So hold still.”

The rabbit blinked then – and began getting up, before re-evaluating that idea. Arcturus probably had a fantastic reason to ask him to hold still, and he might want to listen to the raccoon even if he planned to argue.

“W-wait, what are you doing? I thought I got the whole thing and-“

The raccoon ended up wearing a broad, mischief-saturated grin. Points of light flared into being around Julian, forming the corners of a ‘box’ of space, which all drew a faint line in the air toward a small sphere in the raccoon’s other hand.

“You did, but your thesis is on the effects of extended time spent at extreme mass reduction.”

Julian might’ve risked moving for that, but the box shimmered the same instant Arcturus finished speaking. Once more, the bunny felt the effects of mass manipulation – albeit a trifle more potent this time around. Pressure, inside, flowing outward – as if his entire material form had sneezed for five straight seconds. Even when the even had ended he couldn’t quite string a thought together, everything was floating and tingling – and he could swear the room around him kept moving. Arcturus’ voice entered his awareness a moment later, booming like thunder on the horizon in the raccoon’s jovial tenor.

“Hey! So, you’ve got living space in there – no gravity, for safety reasons. Supplies to last the six months to the end of the semester and communication devices, games, all your work for your classes is set up for long distance. We’ve got you covered there. Just let me know if you run out of anything or need to arrange a visit. We can send people in with you for a while but for your study to be valid you have to go uninterrupted.”

The rabbit forced his eyes open a bit more fully – he really was in a room. A weird one. It was spherical, furniture bolted to the edges, and no gravity as said. He was just floating around, the bed was a sleeping bag with a zipper tethered to the walls it seemed but the rest of the furnishings were ‘normal’ apart from being set in an insane perspective.

He had to put up with six months of this?

“Dude! We didn’t agree on this, it was just supposed to be me finishing early with your help and moving on to post-grad!”

Julian gestured violently at what he thought was ‘up’ toward Arcturus, but everything outside the sphere looked so violently out of focus and oversized he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. Only that there was a thundering to the voice when it replied.

“Yes. We know. And you came to us for help managing your thesis – you didn’t state in your letter you came for help in cheating, or we’d have turned you down. So you’re getting help on your thesis. You have six months to get real, living experience with this, and then you’re going to report on it to a board of your peers and professors. Get comfortable, check the fridge, watch a movie, and in the morning? Get to work. Wardrobe starts in your size now on the left. Gets bigger going to the right.”
 That brought on another narrowed gaze, and indignant tone from the bunny.

“Bigger, why would I need-“

This time Arcturus’ tone was well past mischief, it might be bordering on the mildly sadistic. It was most clearly amused.

“Because you’re going to be spending six months in zero gravity and mostly living on pizza rolls, ice cream, soda, mac and cheese. I don’t think I need to spell this one out for you – do the math.”