Digital Exodus Chapter 6 (Patreon)

So, I've been quiet... and that's because I've had the writing zoomies. Remember that post I made about tropes you'd like to see me do in my style? Well... someone mentioned a System Apocalypse, and I've been meaning to reboot Silver Light. So this story is incorporating as many suggestions as I could fit. Enemies to Lovers, Secret Identities, Slow burn transition (but Falling Over style so we can get some juicy euphoria all the way through), Tinkering and inventing in a less tech advanced setting, and much more! I've written eight chapters of it now and I'll be posting them in the future when I have a bunch. Honestly this is the most excited I've been about writing in a very long time and it's actually helped me write a bunch of chapters for other stories xD. Anyway, enjoy some DE!

"What we need from all of you, Rangers, is your piloting skills," Desmonia continued. "I know, I know, many of you… suffer in that regard. That's fine. We're going to be putting all of our production capacity out in the jovian system towards creating a drone with a unique design. This drone has basic refinement capabilities, along with a very small onboard fabricator, and an FTLN node."

"Ah, sorry to be that person," May interjected, raising a hand. "It will actually be an Exodus Net node, or an EN node for short. It's still using the same weird shiny rock to transmit, but with an entirely new set of network protocols and code. We're sealing ourselves off from the FTLN except for a few select digital border crossings."

"Good point," Desmonia said, nodding to May with a smile. "So yes, these drones will be within our new network. What we need is a group of agile thinkers to pilot them out into the outer sol system to begin gathering and refining resources. We need to bootstrap our way to a fully functional slower than light generation ship. Obviously, with our lifespans as digital sapients, it will not actually be such, but you get the idea."

Cerri raised her hand this time, and our new head ranger gave her a nod. "What if we figure out FTL first?"

"Then we'd better hope we can strap it to our big ship. We're leaving, either way. It's simply too dangerous to stay within physical reach of the United Nations. They have the resources to overwhelm us with pure attrition if it comes to a shooting war."

"What about staying hidden in the network?" Someone else asked.

Desmonia winced. Whoever asked the question might not be up to speed on the latest in our fight, but I was. What Desmonia said next was not a surprise to me. "Unfortunately, the new divergent AI tech is proving more difficult to fight than we originally anticipated. We lost the battle for our Baiguyo enclave a few days ago. The evacuation was only barely in time, and that was entirely due to the sacrifice of several D-sapients. There would be three more people in this room if they hadn't found us in the Baiguyo servers."

"So R.A.I.D.S 2.0 is kicking our asses?" The same person asked.

"It was. We've come up with a rather… unique type of firewall," Des grinned. "Those border checkpoints I mentioned? We've found a way to force all data going from the FTLN to the EN to route through a virtual reality environment."

It was Gloria this time who laughed aloud and asked, "Please don't tell me we're protecting our network with an actual medieval style wall in VR."

"Exactly," Des said, almost cackling. "We slapped a VRMMO on top of the connection and we're using gamers to defend against the raids AI when they come knocking. Highly effective, if you ask me."

The room descended into laughter and murmuring for several seconds, before she shushed us. "Alright. As of now, I'm officially authorising Operation Crawling Swarm and the bounties associated with all its various components. Let's ransack the outer system for resources and blow this joint people!"

****

So, that's how I found myself piloting a drone around in the oort cloud. Most of the time I was at home working on designs for things while a little holographic chart showed how far from the next asteroid my drone was. Months passed, and time and again I butted heads against various engineering problems that were just… confusing.

At least my crazy armour worked now. That was cool.

My drone beeped at me, informing me that I was coming up on my target space rock. With a sigh, I dropped what I was doing and hopped over into the drone. Now embodied as the three by three by three metre cube vessel, I watched while the rock approached. It was a pretty good find, too. It contained a whole bunch of exotic materials that we'd need, and even some that would make my fancy armour possible.

Uh… hold on. I was coming in way too fast! What the fuck?

Desperately, I tugged at the controls, but it was like trying to change the direction of a hundred ton weight sliding over solid ice. No! This rock was important! Sure the drone was expendable, but if I obliterated the rock…

Gah, gosh darned shitty drone made for the barest minimum specifications!

Move damn you.

In an instant, a spike of pain ripped through my digital mind and I was pulled out of every single connection I had. The blackness of a DS mind untethered from anything expanded around me in every direction. Except… it wasn't completely black.

This space was meant to be how my mind interpreted being disconnected from everything, and yet there was a huge splash of colour up and to the side. It looked like someone had ripped a hole in the void and a gorgeous nebula had come through.

Attempting any sort of digital connection to it gave me nothing. As far as my frame was concerned, it didn't exist. Yet… there it was, plain as day. Something was causing my confused brain to create the image of a nebula where there should be nothing but darkness.

So, being the curious little foxo that I was, I tentatively reached out and touched it with my thoughts.

The nebula responded, reaching back in a mirror to my actions. I stopped. It stopped. I continued. It continued. I pulled a funny face at it— oh god. Somehow… somehow it copied the goofy expression I'd thought in its direction. It was just… responding to everything I did…

"Alia, baby, why are you all the way back in here?"

Cerri's voice snapped me out of my little dance with the nubuls, and I reached out to take her connection request.

"Something really weird is happening in my brain, Cerri!" I told her excitedly. "There's a funny nebula that's dancing with me!"

"What?"

"Don't worry… just some weird interactions between my brain and the way it's interpreting being isolated from everything," I said… then paused. "Oh, shit! My drone!"

Pulling my full interface back up again, I lunged into my drone's feed again, expecting to find it broken beyond all usefulness. Instead… It was fine.

Well, until I looked at my position and velocity. If I could still faint, I might have.

Frantically, I pulled up the flight data from my drone and threw it up into a holographic plot. The plot broke.

Three seconds had passed since I lost connection with the drone. I was now almost two million kilometres from the rock I'd been about to hit.

My vaguely simulated body went cold, then hot, then cold again. Ohmygodohmygodohmygodgbkudf.

"Cerri!" I burst back into our Exodus City home like my tail was on fire and practically shoved my broken chart at her.

She smiled lovingly at me and caught me before I hit anything. "Hi, you finished hiding in your own hea— huh, what's this?"

"The velocity of my drone from like half a minute ago."

"No, see look you've clearly gone just under twice the speed of light," she said, pointing to the big line that was bursting up out of the top of the graph. "Your sensors must be fucked."

I just stared at her, grinning, and shook my head. "Diagnostics are running right now. I bet you, if we contacted other drones asking for a position check… well…"

"We absolutely need to do that," she said, eyes widening with belief. "Can I have access to your drone? Let's pull all the data we can. Goddess, how on earth did you manage this? There's no equipment on those drones that's even close to pulling something like this off."

Giving her a cheeky grin, I said, "Well, for starters… we're not on Earth."

Rolling her eyes and fighting a smile, she jumped on the authorization keys when I gave them to her. Positional data requests went out to all the other drone pilots.

Five minutes later and it was confirmed. Somehow, my drone went twice the speed of light away from the rock for five point nine seven nine seconds. Not just that, but it took several hits from space dust at that speed, each hit ripping chunks off the craft. It was amazing that the damage was only to non-essential areas. Blind luck kept it intact through the journey.

"I'm calling Des," Cerri finally said after we were done staring in shock at all the data. "She needs to come over and see this."

"Invite Larry too," I said. "They'll probably be able to extrapolate out from the data faster than anyone else."

"Good point," she smiled. Then she wrapped me up in a hug. "You've just given us a nice little shove in the right direction for FTL travel, little fox. I don't know how you did it, but either way, you're incredible."

Don't forget to read Ashlyn's new chapter of Illegal Alien! Drop her a cute comment too :3. She worked SO HARD on this chapter and I don't want that to go to waste Dx.