Planet Ignis | Ch. 23 (Patreon)

When they told me they all wanted to go planetside and follow Hitori’s plan, I knew they had all lost their minds. I can’t die. I just can’t. Did they expect me to take it with a smile as they told me that I must settle with living a couple of decades at most? In that desert?! I have seen the AI reports. There is nothing down there! Nothing! There is no way on Earth they are going to make me turn into a cursed mutant. No! The solution is in the drones. You need to find them all and fuse all seven cores!

Files salvaged from the Raptor’s Ghost Drive. Recorded by Schneider, the Raptor

Hitori had always enjoyed Mount Fuji the most in Autumn. When he studied in Tokyo, sometimes he would come up here to hike on the weekend. Unfortunately, perhaps as a side effect of being encased on ice, he couldn’t get his subconscious to shake off the idea of winter. He had to settle with freezing wind and snow as he hiked up the mountain for today’s memory walk.

Today he was reminiscing about his scientific discoveries. He imagined that the sculptors of Mount Rushmore would have been proud of him if they could see what he had done here. He stopped next to the first sculpture carved in the mountain. Here he was, chiseled on the rock, looking under a microscope.

This was a monument to the time when he first studied Celeria. As Hitori observed this alien form, he realized these bacteria used polarized ignium instead of water in their cells. If he could find a way to gift this adaptation to humans, he would have found the path to survival.

Hitori kept hiking, and soon he spotted another carving on the mountain. Sculpted in the rock, he was portrayed with a delicate hummingbird resting on his finger.

When faced with the problem of where to find the energy to keep ignium constantly polarized, Hitori looked to nature for inspiration. Unlike many of his colleagues, Hitori had always believed in God. He marveled at the sophistication of complex systems he found on organisms and attributed it to very clever design. Whenever an insurmountable obstacle appeared, he would often turn to the best Scientist he knew in search of a design in one of His creations that could fit his needs.

In hummingbirds, he found an accelerated metabolism. A hummingbird’s heart beats almost 80 times faster than a human’s. Could the hummingbird’s metabolism be a clue to how humans could digest and metabolize ignium? It would require a colossal amount of energy and wear to give that metabolism to a human, but perhaps, here was the secret to their survival, reasoned Hitori.

He kept walking further up the mountain. As he climbed higher, mounds of snow started becoming more frequent. He had arrived at his next memory. The next sculpture carved in the mountain was of him studying an eel.

When they discovered what happened to ignium once it is polarized, Hitori had thought of electric eels and geobacters, organisms that could produce strong electrical currents. Fortunately, the ship’s library had been spared from the Flare. In preparation for this expedition, mission planning ensured they had a comprehensive library aboard. As the ship’s geneticist, Hitori knew that within that library were all the DNA sequences of all life on Earth. He immediately pulled the files with the DNAs of all creatures that could produce electricity. Could he find an efficient way to generate energy to keep ignium polarized here?

Hitori kept trekking up the mountain. The next carving portrayed him holding a vial up into the light. His Eureka moment. Inspired by the celeria, hummingbirds, and electric eels, Hitori produced a miracle of his own, the Celer mutagen.

When he found out he had been successful, he excitedly shared the good news with his crew. True, the damage the mutation would cause to their bodies would eat away at their lifespan, but it was better to live a few more decades in Ignis than starve to death in the Phoenix. Preliminary plans for Settlements were drafted, including blueprints of the Womb, the Hearth, and the Mines. Plans were underway to utilize the mutation and ignium to survive. Unfortunately, before many of these plans had been finalized, Schneider made his move.

Hitori arrived at a barren place in the mountain. All the trees were dead, and the ground was cracked and spent. Stinky pools of bubbly tar reflected how horrible these moments had been to him. On black obsidian rock lay Schneider wearing an evil grin, his face half human, the other half robot. He recalled the moment he had discovered Schneider’s aberrant plans. Before they could get to him and stop him, Schneider had ejected the Raptor module. Hitori and his companions were all frightened at what Schneider wanted to do. What if his aberration went crazy and tried to attack them? There was no other military equipment to defend them. They were all sitting ducks. The crew moved at once. Hitori administered the Celer mutagen to all of them. The Settlers had to run for their lives and take their chances planetside. The plans were unfinished, but they had no choice.

If only he had been able to contain the Raptor... Even though Hitori decided to stay behind alone to try to slow Schneider down or, if possible, contain him completely, he had failed. Hitori reasoned that Schneider would become a digital creature and, therefore, could perhaps be hacked. As the only programmer aboard good enough to try to face Schneider, Hitori urged his crew to flee and to work out the rest of their plan while on the planet. He also urged them never to use the Stellaris satellites until he signaled them. This could save them from being spotted and targeted by Schneider if Hitori failed to contain him. Leaving a few provisions aboard for Hitori, his crew fled in the lifeboats.

Sadly, Hitori was unable to stop Schneider from completing his transformation. The only thing Hitori could do while Schneider was at the most critical step of his upload was to capitalize on his distraction, sneakily enter the satellite AI through a backdoor, and lock Schneider out of the Stellaris Grid. He then surprised Schneider by activating the thrusters of one of the nearest satellites and ramming it into the ship. The module crashed on the planet. Hitori had hoped the Raptor drone wouldn’t be activated yet, and the impact would destroy it.

Shortly after the crash, Hitori realized that he had again failed. Someone had tried to hack the satellite grid. Schneider had died, but the Raptor lived. Hitori’s efforts had at least bore some fruit. No matter how hard the Raptor tried to hack into the satellite grid, it was still fighting at a disadvantage. Stellaris, Archimedes, and Hitori were three against one. Hitori wanted to warn the Settlers about the Raptor. He thought of sending a message to them. But he did not want to give away their position. So, he decided to wait. In time, despite Hitori’s efforts to ration the food, his scarce provisions started running out. Hitori didn’t want to die but couldn’t try to meet up with the Settlers either. That could lead the Raptor right at their door. No. He had to survive alone.

Hitori approached the top of the mountain and walked up to the last sculpture. He was thin and weak, feeding an acorn to a squirrel. On his shoulder was an iguana. Hitori smiled. In his darkest moment, he had found another path to survival. Iguanas and other reptiles utilize the temperature around them to regulate their own. Also, arctic squirrels could hibernate for months in temperatures below zero. They kept their brain chemistry intact despite the cold. Creation again inspired Hitori to work on a different mutagen. With the help of Archimedes, he was able to produce a second miracle. The Tardus mutagen. It was, in a sense, the opposite of the Celer mutation. Instead of speeding up metabolism, it slowed it while maintaining brain activity intact.

Hitori smiled at the irony. Here he was, reminiscing about his life on the snowy top of a mountain when his real body was in similar conditions. He recalled how a shriveled and hungry Hitori came down on the last lifeboat with all the remaining equipment of the Phoenix to the coldest place on Ignis. It was cold enough to make Tardus work, but unlike outer space, not so cold that it would kill him. With the scraps of the Phoenix and by repurposing the lifeboat, he built a freezer. By the time he was finished, ten days had passed since his last meal. He administered the mutagen on himself, activated the freezer, went to sleep, and hoped it would work.

It did during four hundred and sixty-three years.

It had been six years since the seventh thaw. He often wondered if the survivors he had contacted were resourceful enough to make it here. If his calculations were correct, everything would be decided in the next few days. He hoped he had one last miracle left in him, thought Hitori. That brought him to the task at hand. Where would he sculpt a memento for Statera? There was a cliff wall further ahead that might be a good spot for it.

Hitori caught something off the corner of his eye. He hurriedly turned and crouched. Under the snow, there was a blade of grass. He had never seen any natural green in all the centuries he’d been here. He put a hand on his forehead. Sweat. Heat. The sun was shining brightly. As Hitori looked for more signs of change, he realized the snow he was stepping on was becoming softer and wetter. The snow was starting to melt. What was this? This had never happened before.

Hitori closed his eyes. He opened them again. He was in his house. As he looked around the garden, he could see little spots of green appearing on the previously naked trees. He kept teleporting between places inside his mental world. Everywhere he looked, there were signs of the end of Winter and the coming of Summer. The sun shone brighter and hotter. In the middle of his mental replica of Tokyo, Hitori started laughing. It worked! The experiment had worked! They got the message! They had made it before the Raptor!

It was time to prepare to go back to Ignis.

Ch. 24