Planet Ignis | Ch. 15 (Patreon)

... a tribute to friendship and courage.

Brodnir, the brave and beloved king, holds a special place in the hearts of the Ignian people. His selfless acts and unwavering bravery left an indelible mark on their history. As a tribute to our cherished friendship, I was honored with the task of designing his longevity chess Card. It captures the essence of his valor, offering players the ability to confine an opponent’s king in exchange for longevity stones.

Oh, how I wish this card existed during the time when Brodnir and Trother played together. That would have…

In “The History of longevity chess” by Eli, the Flarewalker

Faren replayed at once the recording sent in all frequencies from the satellites orbiting Ignis. The Council listened to it once again.

“Greetings, fellow survivors. I don’t have much time. My name is Hitori, and I am a member of the original crew of the spaceship that brought humans here, the Phoenix, our beginning here. The start of your history. Your genesis. I don’t have much time. Schneider, the Raptor, is getting stronger, and I can’t hold him off the satellite grid much longer. He will probably intercept this message. I have encrypted it, which should buy us some time. Here are the coordinates of my location. Hurry and bring me the Celer mutagen, which enables you to survive here. I have developed a solution that should turn it upside down, improve it, increase your lifespan, and make you stronger. This is the only way to turn this game around and stop Schneider. Do not delay. We must turn the tables on Schneider! We don’t have much time!”

“I would like now to hear the thoughts of the Council on this message. Is this a trap set up by the Raptor?”

Hingwid, Captain of the Golden Guard, was the first to comment. “That seems unlikely. As we can see from Faren’s failure in decoding it, this message seems to have been carefully written to prevent an AI intelligence from getting through to it.”

“Couldn’t the Raptor have forged this message?” one of the other lits asked.

“I doubt it. It seems the good doctor has gone through the trouble of adding a few more layers of humanity to the message. Firstly, he sent a voice message, and those would be considerably more difficult to forge for the Raptor than a written one. Even if we consider he has hacked and corrupted the AIs of the other tribes, this much processing power should be outside its reach for now.”

“I agree. There are too many subtle details that would have been beyond the Raptor’s capacity to fake. For instance, Hitori’s off-world accent. The fact that it is even Hitori sending it. It’s too far-fetched for an AI to have thought of this.”

The Council members nodded. Most had reached this conclusion. Brodnir proceeded.

“I think it is safe to act on the premise that this message is genuine and has not been counterfeited somehow. Let us look at its content, then. The first question I want to ask the Council is: why would Dr. Hitori only contact us now? Why did he do so only after these many decades? Any ideas?”

“Could it be that he took this long to work on this so-called solution he found for the downside of the mutation?” asked Faranee, Chief Bronze Smith.

“According to the records, he told the tribes never to use the satellites. We started actively using this in the times preceding the Great War. But it has been centuries. That couldn’t have been the trigger, could it?”

“I think the most important question is: how on Ignis is the man still alive? This is a name that we use in the History classes in the Collegiums. He should be dead after all this time! The only possibility I can think of is that a cryogenic capsule was salvaged from the Phoenix. But even so, where did he get the supplies to keep his body alive for so long?”

Different theories flew around the Throne Room. Brodnir remained silent and spared a glance at Trother. The old man hadn’t made his voice heard yet.

“Should we send an expedition to these coordinates? Who should go?”

“We should send Hingwid and the Golden Guard. They were drafted for such occasions and are better acquainted with surface traveling too.”

“Perhaps discretion would be best. One yellow alone should make the journey to the coordinates.”

As the Council went on, Trother remained silent. Brodnir knew he was carefully listening to all opinions and comparing them to his conclusions. After an hour of Council time, Brodnir finally prompted him.

“Trother, the Wise. What are your thoughts on this message?”

Everyone quieted down.

“My king. Members of the Council. I do agree with your assessment. This seems to be a genuine message sent by the good doctor Hitori, the savior himself.

Although sufficient consideration has been given to the message, we need to look at two other things that haven’t been discussed yet. First, what is not in the message. Second, the message within the message.”

Brodnir observed how everyone in the Council was staring at Trother, drinking in his words.

“First, let’s see what is not in the message. A voice message would indeed be harder to forge than a written one. But wouldn’t a video message be even harder to counterfeit? Why would the doctor send audio if he could have sent a video? If his goal was to assure us of the message’s authenticity, that would have been even better. We must assume he would have the equipment to do so. He seems to have found a way to extend human life beyond anything ever heard of but also hints at being busy with scientific research and thwarting cyber-attacks from the Raptor.”

Brodnir nodded. He had thought the same thing.

“We must assume that sending us audio wasn’t a decision made lightly or randomly. This brilliant man shows great insight into how he encrypted the message. The doctor chose basic human relationships and emotions that would have been, undoubtedly, something that Schneider discarded when he uploaded his consciousness into the military drone. He didn’t have the space to upload those. Therefore, without empathy or social intelligence, the Raptor won’t be able to answer them correctly.

Furthermore, look closely at what is not in the questions. No reference to reds, yellows, lits, blues, bursting or longevity. This shows us that Dr. Hitori doesn’t know much about us. He only knows four things. One is that we have enough technology to receive and send satellite signals, induce mutations, and survive in this barren place. Two, we are survivors and want to fight off the Raptor and, if possible, extend our life span. Three, we are smart because we survived this long. And finally, we have a very closely-knit society with strong family bonds.”

“How do you know he knows precisely only these four things?” asked Faranee.

“As for the first point, he knows we have technology because he sent us a message through the satellites and refers to bringing him the mutagen. He knows that probes and equipment were sent down to the planet during the Settling. He knows it would have been the only way for a settlement of stranded humans to survive this long.

As for being survivors, I think no explanation is required. We have survived against all odds.

Thirdly, He also knows we are smart because of the different layers of meaning within the message. Better said, he hopes we are smart. But if we weren’t bright, he would be doomed, so he just hoped for the best.

As for an estimate of how united and closely-knit we are, I have no idea. He knows we understand the fundamentals of relationships between parents and children, friends and couples since he used that as the basis for the encryption key. He also knows we have short lives because he refers to it in the message. Don’t forget this is the man who developed the mutation! He participated in the preliminary design of what was required to make a Settlement self-sufficient. It is possible he concluded that a high birth rate and a family-oriented society were intrinsic for a settlement like this to be possible. Hitori is a genius indeed.”

Faranee gulped. She had not studied under Trother, and this was her first Council. She was astounded at this man’s insight. Brodnir grunted in agreement. He had come to the same conclusions. One wasn’t king without a keen mind.

“Regarding why the doctor is only contacting us now… Faren, did the doctor use Ignian coding to transmit this message to us?”

“Negative. He used regular binary transmission,” answered Faren.

“That would explain why only now he is contacting us. We have always used Ignian in our satellite transmissions as a safety measure. This hid us from Hitori. This is an unknown language to him. We invented it. Perhaps he only now noticed the strange strings of data. If the Raptor has increased its computing power and is using it to hack the satellite grid, the doctor probably concluded that such an upgrade could only be explained if he had found the other probes and corrupted them. He must have pieced all of this together and discovered there were still survivors.”

“Trother, the wise, if I may ask, what did you mean by the message within the message?”

Trother and Eli exchanged looks. Trother then continued.

“Look at the message closely. Is there anything in it that seems out of place?” His eyes searched the Council. Suddenly, Brodnir felt that everyone in the Council looked like a child attending one of Trother’s lectures.

Kakawi, the Yellow Chemist, spoke. “It seems contradictory that he says so many times how little time he has and then seems to ramble on some parts of the message.”

“Precisely!” said Trother, as he would to a pupil in one of his classes. “Notice how he refers multiple times to the beginning, the start, the genesis. These are not essential to the message and wouldn’t be useful if he was short of time. Why waste precious seconds mentioning these things multiple times? Faren, please, get the first letter in the words of each question, assign them a binary number according to their place in the alphabet, and use that as an encryption key.”

Ch. 16