Digital Exodus Chapter 12 (Patreon)

This one is another repurposed chapter so there might be some weird inconsistencies. Let me know if you spot any! Thanks!

The station, or at least what was left of it, hit the atlantic ocean near enough to the UNC for it to not be a coincidence. It was a message, and as far as we could tell, the UN received it loud and clear.

The aftermath of the conflict was weird. Suddenly, the UN was all too eager to speak to us. Most people were happy with the public narrative that the UN were cowed by our vicious counter attack and were content to let us mess around in the outer system.

According to Cerri though, their reasoning for the sudden belly-up approach to diplomacy was far more intense. Whatever was in the server code named Temple, it was bad for the UN. So bad, in fact, that even the Exodus leadership wasn’t willing to share the details with anyone outside their ranks. For example, the few times I’d seen May she was just… staring into space, lost in thoughts that judging by her expression, were of the darkest sort.

It was almost a month later, when I was heading into the Ranger’s compound, that I heard my first clue as to what they found. Rosa and May were speaking in a booth hidden around a corner. They probably thought nobody could hear them, but with my fox ears…

“I’m still reeling,” Rosa was saying. “There is effectively no difference between the two. It’s like some deeply twisted case of convergent evolution.”

“I always suspected,” May replied, letting out a long, tired breath. “There were just too many similarities. What’s eating at me is… how could they? How could the UN do that, how could anyone sign the order that created a project like that. Those poor people…”

Rosa grunted in weary agreement. “When we were deorbiting the station there was this dark part of me that was tempted to aim it directly at UNC. Wipe the whole putrescent organisation off the map.”

“I’m glad you didn’t… but after just finding the Temple data, I would’ve understood if you had,” May muttered, so quietly I could only just make it out.

Whatever Rosa said in reply, I didn’t hear it because we left the effective range my big antenna ears could reach. What did they mean, though? What was the same? What did the UN do that made May of all people feel okay with the destruction of UN City?

The churning questions I had followed me all the way up to the meeting space where we going to discuss the latest from the FTL research,

****

“So it’s like… an aether drive?” Cerri asked.

Since the station confrontation, Larry and I had been hard at work beating our collective heads against a wall of maths so mind numbingly complicated I felt like my brain was going to melt the server I was hosted on. Honestly, if it wasn’t for Larry’s networked minds, it wouldn’t have been possible to tease out the underlying principles of what happened when I accidentally jumped the drone.

Frustratingly, we hadn’t been able to get me to replicate the feat either, so all we had to go on was the initial accident.

The meeting, which included me, Larry, Cerri, May, three other scientist SAI, and Desmonia, had been called to figure out where to go next, since we weren’t getting anywhere. The room we were using was high in the complex and had a truly incredible view of Exodus city. Gosh, it was beautiful. I wanted to just… go and sit on the balcony that adjoined the room and stare out over the city.

“Vaguely,” Larry said. “Are you familiar with the ekranoplan and other ground effect vehicles?”

“Uh…” Cerri said, and her avatar stuttered for a second as she accessed the net. “Looks like the ekranoplan was a crazy soviet pipe dream that used the ground effect to fly low over the ground using tiny stubby wings?”

Larry tapped a mechanical finger on the hardwood table. “Exactly. It’s like that. Imagine that the aether drive from the game is a proper aircraft and what we’ve discovered is like the ekranoplan. I’m calling it the Menisci Skate, because that is essentially what you are doing—skating across the surface of the aether. It’s the counterpart to the similar concept from the game, but with far less manoeuvrability.”

“Does this mean that an aetherdrive is possible?” Desmonia asked, leaning forward to rest her forearms on the table. She looked… harried and tired—almost certainly an effect of whatever had been found on the Temple servers.

Larry shook their head. “As far as we can tell, no. The maths just doesn’t add up. This is as close as we’re going to get, and even then we need some theoretical paracausal materials that frankly, I don’t think will ever exist.”

“Can Alia make some?”

I held my hands up in an exaggerated shrug. “We know I did something but… that’s kind of it? I think it might’ve been a fluke or some residual weirdness from the transition to real space from game space?”

“That is pure conjecture on your part, Alia,” Larry chided me. I swished my tail back and forth in challenge, and they gave me a knowing look. “Yes, little lady, I am aware that you do not believe you are special, but we will figure out how you did it and we will replicate it.”

I crossed my arms and glared at them, even as I felt the bubbly calming feeling of happiness in my chest. Using gender euphoria to make me too wiggly to protest was just… just… underhanded!

“I’ve just been doing all that zen shit you wanted and it’s done nothing,” I huffed.

“What kind of zen shit?” asked Cerri.

“Meditation, getting angry at inanimate objects, popping virtual blood vessels while I stare at stones,” I said.

“Did you investigate the strange nebula you saw when you withdrew back behind your frame?”

“I mean it’s not there anymore,” I shrugged. “Nothing to investigate.”

Her hand came down to rest on my shoulder where her fingers could gently trail up and down the back of my neck. It was… very nice and very distracting. “Okay, and did any of this zen shit happen out in reality?”

I nodded and relaxed into her touch. “I tried to do it in another drone quite a few times.”

“Okay, hear me out… I think you need to try putting on a body, maybe walk around on Earth and try to start small there,” Cerri explained. “I don’t think this is something we can throw Hollywood tropes at and get results. So I guess what I’m saying is that we should give Alia time and space to explore it herself.”

One of the scientists, a man who looked so ordinary I could never remember his name, cleared his throat and adjusted his seating position. “I know that building specialised bodies is kind of our signature calling card as a think-tank these days, but what if we gave her one that could plate itself in hardened nanobots? I know we didn’t manage to replicate Rosa’s nanite magic tricks, but we have those bots we developed just sitting in storage.”

Oh geez. I remembered how Rosa had been using some sort of metal liquid like she was water bending. That was a nanite swarm? Fucking hell. Scary.

“Why do you think this idea will help?” Desmonia asked. She was good at that—Wrangling us sciencey types into communicating properly and then pointing us all in the same direction. I say that because it was very clear that Mr Scientist had gotten an idea, jumped a few steps forward in his thought process and then said what he was currently thinking about out loud.

“Ah, because it might be advantageous for Alia to be within a comfortable body and in space. Also if something goes wrong she won't suddenly alter the orbit of the Earth or what-have-you. I may be digital now, but I have distant family that I would like to live long and healthy lives.”

Cerri snorted in amusement and added, "As her girlfriend, giving Alia a nanobot plated body is very appealing. Plus, if we get this FTL business working it would be very useful to have someone who doesn't need a suit to do EVA."

"This plan seems vaguely ridiculous to me," Larry said, then sighed and noted, "Then again, we are trying to use video game magic to create a real method of FTL travel, so…"

"It does help to remind ourselves of how the Turshen and her crew arrived here," Desmonia said wryly. "Helps us remember what's possible."

"I have a question," I said, raising a hand. "What exactly is this theoretical material we need? You've mentioned it a few times while we've been working together."

The robot avatar of my friend slapped its metallic forehead. "Ah, my apologies. I forget that you cannot just read my mind sometimes. The material in question is actually vaguely similar to the information glass used for FTL communication."

Eh? That was a name I hadn't heard before. "Information glass?"

"My own personal name for the material. You know the one," they explained, twirling their fingers in the air flamboyantly in a gesture that did nothing to help illustrate the point. "Anyway, we believe its cousin—the FTL material we need—naturally exists as something that can best be described as a gas, although according to our maths it has a crystalline structure that will be constantly shifting."

"Alright… I guess I can work with that," I mused, already dropping into contemplative thought. It did actually remind me of the dancing nebula I saw in the mindscape blackness.

"As for the body, I believe…"

Around me, the meeting continued, delving into preliminary details for the body they wanted to give me. I ignored it and wished, for the umpteenth time, that all this crap didn't hinge quite so heavily on me. I was so tired…

"Okay, so we're all caught up on the FTL situation, what about our other tech branches?" Desmonia said, clapping her hands loud enough for me to flinch slightly. I might've been too absorbed in my own thoughts.

"I can speak for sensors," Cerri said beside me. "We've managed to increase the fidelity of our LIDAR by ten to fifteen percent, but to be honest we're going to need more data if we want to increase that. Our hardware is really good but our software is limited by what we can see in the Sol System."

"Alright, anything else?"

I raised my hand. "The absorption armour design is almost ready for testing. It works in sims but I want to adjust the structure of the webbing around the intake superconductors because we get some strange surges around there."

Desmonia, listening intently, leaned forward. "What do those surges mean in the grand scheme of things?"

"Too much power running through those strands would cause them to burn out, meaning all the other strands would have increased load and be more likely to have their own surges." I said, then sighed as I admitted the armour's greatest flaw. "If we take a hit that has too much energy, the strands around the intake superconductors blowing would trap all the collected energy in our armour."

Larry stiffened and then gave an awestruck laugh. "Oh my god, it would explode. The armour would erupt!"

"It's why I've been advocating for an additional layer of armour underneath. At least that way most of the explosion would be directed away from the ship," I agreed. Underneath the table, Cerri’s tail found mine and they twined together. I could tell when her attention was drifting because she got way more touchy.

“My biggest concern right now is our weaponry,” the second scientist said. She was a bit of an enigma as a person, literally. Her avatar looked like a stereotypical cultist with a big black robe and hood.

“How so?” Desmonia asked. “We have very modern missiles and railguns on the Turshen and Callisto Base. Plus, real prototype laser small arms tech, even if the lenses burn out after a couple of shots.”

“Yes, for a pre-FTL culture with only one real world to our name, that is fine,” she scoffed. “Who knows what enemies we might find out there in the black.”

“We don’t even know if alien life exists and you’re already worried about fighting them?” Larry asked, turning to glare at her while placing a hand on their hip.

“I’m just saying,” she shrugged, leaning back into her chair and crossing her arms. "The Fermi Paradox exists. We don't want to stumble out into the black, only to realise we're walking directly into the jaws of the beast."

Desmonia stepped in. “Okay I’ll put that down in the notes… what’s next on the agenda?”

"The PoW server," I sighed. "We have five people in there…"