Chapter Four Hundred and Twenty-Seven. Entering the flow. (Patreon)

Bob didn't bother to towel off, instead wiping the water out of his eyes as he tapped out a message on his wristband.

Eddi, Wayna, Erick, Bailli, Harv, Elli, and Jack were on Thayland, so they were a lost cause.  He addressed his message to Dave, Amanda, Jessica, and Mike.

'Just received a System request.  I have ten minutes to accept it, at which point the System is going to teleport me somewhere.  Meet up at my hotel room and I'll bring you along in my inventory, maybe you'll get the request as well.'

Sending the message, he equipped his armor, causing it to disappear from the display rack in a corner of his living room and reappear on his body.

He quickly reviewed his pantry, confirming it was full.

The vast majority of the five hundred storage totes he'd enchanted to become totes of holding had been filled and delivered to the Freedom, but he'd reserved fifty of them for his inventory, and they contained enough dry goods to last the crew a solid year, and with only five of them, it would be more like two and a bit more.

He was moving even as he mentally checked off the necessities.

Entering the main part of the suite, he burrowed an arm under Monroe and lifted him slightly to slide the feline of mass consumption into his inventory, specifically onto his bed.

Bob had practiced this maneuver often enough that Monroe didn't even open his eyes.

"Best kitty, check," Bob muttered, pausing to tap out a quick email to the President.  Or more likely, a staffer.

'System quest, won't be able to make it,' Bob typed.  'Not sure how long this will take, I'll let you know once I'm back.  Sorry about this, but when you get a Quest, you get a Quest.'

His wristband vibrated halfway through his email, and once he'd sent it, a message appeared.

'I'm with Dave and Amanda at their place, come pick us up - Jessica'

Bob began opening a portal, ignoring the vibration from his wristband halfway through it.

Through a combination of achievements, path bonuses, and threshold bonuses, he enjoyed a significant reduction to the cost of the his portal spells.  Normally, he mentally filed that away as saving mana crystals, but in this instance it was another resource that he was grateful to save: time.  Rather than requiring one hundred seconds, it required sixty-two.

He had no trouble imagining that a real, dedicated dimensionalist at tier nine would be able to open portals in just a few seconds, using only a few crystals.  In fact, he suspected that the governments of Earth had employed people like that toward their efforts to find habitable planets.

The portal appeared, and Bob stepped through it, arriving in Dave and Amanda's living room, where he found a jumble of suitcases.

Amanda rushed into the room, carrying another pair of suitcases.

"Store these in your inventory," Amanda directed.  "Dave has two more, and Jessica is going to have another, once she finishes pillaging my closet."

Bob nodded, moving over and touching each suitcase, pulling them into his inventory, before checking his wristband.

'I'm on my way back to the hotel, eta 4 minutes - Mike'

"Mike will be at the hotel in a few minutes," Bob said.

"I wish we had time to go get everyone else, but I know they scattered when they got there," Amanda shook her head.  "Show me the System notification?"

Bob projected the notification.

"A colony ship?" Amanda shook her head.  "That's neat.  I wonder what the System means by 'compatible.'"

"Probably means we can breathe the same atmosphere, exist in the same environmental conditions, etc," Dave said as he entered the room, passing off a pair of suitcases to Bob.

"Out of sheer idle curiosity," Bob began, "why do you have suitcases?  I cast the rituals for your inventory spaces, so I know you have them."

"Stuffed full of essentials," Amanda replied.

Bob noted that Dave rolled his eyes ever so slightly.

"They ordered a literal ton of chocolate," Dave said dryly.

"Not just choccy, we stocked up on biscuits, lollies, and coolies, yeah?" Jessica corrected as she entered the living room.

"I can handle grinding sixteen hours a day," Amanda continued, "but I'm not only happier but also easier to live with if I'm not being deprived of the simple pleasures in life."

"With or without, there is no one else I'd rather live with," Dave interjected, capturing her hand and raising it to his lips to brush a kiss across her fingers.

"Strewth, you lot are so sweet I could dump you in my tea instead of a cube," Jessica complained good-naturedly.  "Could you store this for me?"  She asked Bob, handing him a duffel bag.  "I couldn't find much in the closet, being shaped as different as we are, but I grabbed what I could squeeze into."

"Oh, you're just cursed with those large, perfectly perky breasts," Amanda grumbled, looking down at her own chest.

"I'm going to go get Mike," Bob said as he began casting another portal ritual.

He didn't really have an opinion when it came to breasts.  He knew what made a pair of them attractive, or at least what society had told him, but he hadn't ever spent time considering them.

He did, however, know that involving himself in a conversation where women were comparing the relative virtues of their breasts was not a good idea.

Dave, a veteran of a decade witnessing Amanda and Jessica having this exact conversation, was quick to extricate himself as well.

"I'll grab whatever we've got in the fridge and put it in a cooler so it doesn't go bad," he volunteered as he headed out of the room at a brisk pace.

"Poor Dave," Jessica laughed, before turning to Bob with a mischievous smile dancing across her lips.  "I think that mine are a little too big," she continued, "they might look nice, but they bounce around a bit more than I'd like, and they make it uncomfortable to run.  What do you think?"

She crossed her arms at her waist and did a sort of twist of her shoulders, causing the aforementioned assets to strain the fabric of her sundress.

Amanda saved him from having to respond as she reached up and flicked the tip of her nose.

"Oww," Jessica complained, raising a hand to protect her face.

"Bad Jessica," Amanda scolded.  "You know you're not allowed to torment Bob like that."

She turned to Bob and leveled a brilliant smile at him.  "At least not when he's casting a ritual dimension spell that could tear a hole in the side of the universe if he messes it up."

Bob shook his head as he continued to cast the ritual, interrupted only by a series of clunks and thuds coming from the kitchen.  As he finished and the portal appeared, Dave rushed back into the room, pulling a wheeled cooler with the lid hanging open, unable to close due to the amount of food and condiments piled into it.

Stepping through the portal and back into his hotel room, Bob checked the timer.

318 seconds.

"We've got five minutes," Bob said.

"Just enough time to send a few emails and set our accounts to reflect that we'll be out of reach for a while," Amanda said as she tapped her wristband, pulling up the projected screen.

"No dinner tonight," Jessica sighed as she stepped over and slid her arm through his before entwining their fingers together.

"I'm sure we'll have dinner," Bob replied, "it just won't be at a restaurant."  He paused.  "Unless they have those on the colony ship.  They might, depending on what sort of colony ship it is.  If it's one of those generational types, then it's likely that they'll have them."

He closed his eyes in thought as he considered the various types of colony ships he'd read about in science fiction novels.  It helped to distract him from looking down at Jessica's breasts, which wouldn't have been an issue, normally, but like some terrible memetic virus, the earlier discussion had steered his thoughts towards them.  It didn't help that the right-hand one was pressed up against his chest.

"Hopefully, they'll have a more palatable selection than Url," Jessica sighed.  "They're good people, but their food left a lot to be desired."

"Like a spice palate," Dave agreed.

"If they have built a colony ship, chances are good they're quite advanced, so hopefully they've explored their planet thoroughly, and have discovered everything available to make their meals delicious," Amanda offered.

Further discussion on the potential of new, truly alien foods to be delicious was derailed by a knock at the door.

Disentangling himself from Jessica, Bob moved to the door and opened it, revealing Mike.

"Let's see that quest," Mike barked as he strode into the room.

"Not quite a quest yet," Bob replied, sharing the System notification.

"I wonder what the numeric threshold is for the System to label them 'a large group of users,'" Mike muttered.

"We'll find out in about four minutes," Dave said, "which means we should probably pile into Bob's inventory."

Jessica opened her mouth, but was interrupted as Amanda put a hand over it.

"Nope, not going there," Amanda said firmly before removing her hand.

Jessica pouted.

Bob opened a portal to his inventory and gestured toward it.  "Head on in, you can check out the changes, which are almost all thanks to Jessica.  I'll accept once you're inside."

Mike lead the way, with Dave and Amanda right behind him.

Jessica lingered for a moment, stepping in front of him.

"Be careful," she admonished before raising herself on her toes and delivering a quick, gentle kiss, then swaying through the portal.

Bob let the portal close and took a deep breath, allowing himself to enjoy the vanilla scent of her shampoo.

Then, he mentally accepted the System request.

Bob found himself immersed in a sea of roiling energy.  It was rainbow-hued with vibrant, eye wrenching color combinations rushing past him.

He immediately recognized the tasteless and scentless nature of conjured air as his NASA provided collar covered him in a thin layer of gold woven carbon, and began providing him with air to breathe.

Whatever this environment was, it was hostile.

The colors had receded once the collar had kicked in, and he was better able to see, although all that seemed to change was that he could see more colors further away.

He definitely couldn't see a colony ship.

A System window had appeared in the corner of his vision and he brought it up.

New Quest!

A large group of users sought to escape their planet when a rogue black hole came close to their solar system, causing significant shifts in the tectonic plates, resulting in enough volcanic activity to render the planet uninhabitable.  Boarding a colony ship, they set out for a new home, but were unaware of the black hole, and were caught in it's periphery.

When the System was integrated into this universe, the radical change in the function of blackholes caused the ship to slip through a dimensional rift and into the energy stream that lies within the dimensional boundary surrounding each universe.

The System has brought you to the last known location of the ship, however it is unlikely to have remained in place.  The System will provide a directional indicator allowing you to locate the ship.

Quest Objectives -

Locate the ship 0/1

Relocate the users to a habitable planet  ?/?

Bonus objectives may become available.

This quest is mandatory and may not be rejected.

Failing to complete this quest will result in sanctions.

You have four other users and one familiar in your Inventory.  Would you like to share this quest?

Speak or mentally project Yes or No.

'Yes,' Bob mentally projected.  There wasn't any reason not to share the rewards, whatever they might be, from finishing the quest.

Of course, if he couldn't find the ship or everyone aboard was dead, would he be sanctioned?  If so, would everyone be sanctioned?

He shook his head.  First things first, he needed to not be floating around in a hostile environment.

Fortunately, he had a solution to that.

Special Skill 'Summoner's Redoubt' has evolved to 'Summoner's Retreat'. This skill allows the user to summon a fully furnished building with a number of rooms, each no larger than the summoner's tier² in square meters, equal to the summoner's tier².  These rooms may be adjusted to be spatially expanded up to a percentage equal to the summoner's tier².  This building's appearance will be consistent with the environment it occupies.  This building is environmentally sealed, and the interior environment is controlled by the summoner.  Activating this skill requires an empty space for the building to occupy.  The summoner must expend their tier³ in mana to activate the skill while reserving their tier² in mana to maintain it.

Taking a deep breath, Bob activated the skill, letting it out in a gasp as seven hundred and twenty nine of his nine hundred and forty one mana rushed out of his matrix.

He found himself standing on what looked, to the untrained eye, like the bridge of a starship, or at least what Lucas and Roddenberry had envisioned them to be.

There was a massive porthole that showed the chaotic sea of energy, while in front of it were three chairs in front of three panels, with another level behind it, theatre style, that offered another six stations, then another row above that, which provided for twelve.

Bob instantly knew that he was on the bridge of what could be considered a ship.  When the mana had finished flowing out of him, he'd felt a portion of it return and freeze, reserving it and preventing it from being used while the Summoner's Retreat was active, but also carrying without the knowledge of what the mana had become.

He knew where each room was, and what it's purpose was.

Of course, quite a few of the rooms were empty, their purpose clear, but lacking the devices needed.  The panels on the bridge didn't actually have engines, sensors, or weapons to control.

Interestingly enough, the panels that controlled the environment did work.

While he was interested in doing a deep dive into just exactly what his newly evolved skill had created, he held off for two reasons.  The first was that he'd rather do so with his friends, and the second was the directional indicator that had been added at the top right-hand corner of his vision.

The ship he was looking for was somewhere behind him.