by Ivan Kal
“I’m sorry, I’m just excited.”
“I know, I can monitor your vitals.”
“Are you sure that there isn’t anything in the data that jumped out at you?” Seo-yun asked.
She could hear Luna sigh. “Seo-yun, you have been in charge of our creation, you should now that the Ai’s that you created have been ‘growing up’ with you, we can’t know more than you do, we can only calculate faster, or process more data. When I see that data, I see the same things a human would.”
“I’m sorry, it’s just frustrating, I know that there is supposed to be something there, and yet we can’t find it.” Seo-yun apologized.
She closed the files pertaining to the translanes, and opened her queue, there was still a lot of work to be done.
***
“Anything out of the ordinary?” Seo-yun asked, they had arrived at the coordinates where the Union ship entered the system, and had been scanning for the past hour. First with the computers they built, but when that failed to produce anything, they hooked up the Union computer and were now analyzing the data.
“Not yet, I’m still getting used to the Union programing structure.” Luna said over the ship speakers. She was connected to the ship's computers via Seo-yun’s implant. They were on the bridge, with Seo-yun’s assistant Mia, three more scientists and the Ship Master and his crew.
“Alright then.” Seo-yun said. She remained silent while Luna worked. She could analyze the data much faster than a human could.
“I found something.” Luna said 15 minutes later. “It was under a secondary protocol, so I didn’t see it immediately. It is detecting some particles, untranslatable to our language, or at least we don’t have a translation for that word.”
“Great!” Seo-yun said excitedly. “Alright people, I want a detailed analysis of the data. Get to work.” She said. Finally, Seo-yun thought, Another Union puzzle we solved.
Chapter Six
Sanctuary orbit – Olympia station
Elias Bakas, head of the Olympus Army Corp, sat in his office. He was waiting for Seo-yun. The insight had arrived at the station just a few minutes earlier. She was on her way to Olympus city, but Elias had insisted that she meets with him before going down to the planet. He needed to talk with her about Tomas, they needed to do something about him. He had shut himself in his office, and his people were already starting to comment on the fact that no one has seen him in public in a while.
A few minutes later Seo-yun entered his office, he stood and walked up to her greeting her by kissing her cheek.
“You really need to visit me more often Seo-yun, I barely see you once every few months. And you were just going to pass without saying hello.” Elias said with a soft smile.
Seo-yun grimaced. “I’m sorry Elias, there is just too much work to be done.”
“That’s okay, I understand. I am busy as well, but that doesn’t mean that I forget my friends. A call from time to time won't interrupt you too much.” Elias said, his smile growing. He guided Seo-yun to a couch and took a seat across.
“I’ll try.” She said.
“Do you want something to drink?”
“No thank you Elias.”
“Alright then, I hear that you are on a verge of another great discovery, even faster space travel?” Elias asked.
“Yes, well we are on the right path. But there is still a lot of work to be done. We have gathered all the data, now we need to make sense of it.”
“I know you will.” Elias said, and then grew silent and looked at Seo-yun, finally his expression grew serious and he spoke. “Well, the reason I asked you here, was to ask you about Tomas.”
“What about Tomas.” Seo-yun said, her expression guarded.
“You know that he had not been the same since we came here. Since the Cloud station.” Elias said.
“He was hit hard with what happened, we all were.” Seo-yun said.
“We were, but we moved on. He is stuck back there. He rarely goes home, he is closing himself off. I barely managed to convince him to meet me for lunch at his home 10 days ago. He surrounds himself with reports in his office, and he rarely leaves it.”
“I know, but what do you want me to do? I can’t order him out.”
Elias’s expression softened. “Seo-yun, we have known each other for a long time. You are one of my closest friends. You know, you must know.” Elias said, looking at her eyes.
Seo-yun averted her eyes, and remained silent.
“I tried to snap him out of it, but he won’t listen to me. He will listen to you.”
“I don’t know. He never did anything, in all these years.” Seo-yun said uncomfortably.
Elias laughed. “He is a man, we are all stupid like that.”
A corner of Seo-yun’s mouth lifted into a crooked smile. “That you are.” She said.
She looked at Elias for a moment before nodding. “Alright I’ll go see him.”
***
“So you are finally going to ‘talk’ to Tomas?” Luna said. Seo-yun was in a transport, going back to her home from Olympia.
“What do you mean finally?” Seo-yun said.
“C’mon, I might not be human, but I am not stupid.” Luna said.
“I hope not, if you were, then we would have failed, and I would’ve had to scrap you.” Seo-yun said.
“Funny.” Luna said sarcastically. “But I’m glad that you finally decided to take initiative.”
Seo-yun felt lighter than she had in years. Just the decision to talk to Tomas had already made her feel better. “So am I.”
She started reading the reports while she waited to arrive home. There were still things that needed to be done.
There were a few reports regarding the antimatter plants, they have been able to boost production by 2%. And requests from Fleet for help in building their new ships. They had already started building a shipyard in the orbit of Thanatos. They had brought the station that was in orbit of Gem, the one they used for building mining equipment and ships, and used it as a core for the new Fleet station and shipyard, as they didn’t have the need to expand their mining fleet in the close future. They were already well into construction, with a part of the shipyard already operational. They needed some of Seo-yun’s people to oversee all the tech that they wanted to put into the ships. Seo-yun sent an inquiry to her people for volunteers to go to the station. As she scrolled down, she came upon a report regarding a strange crystal formation on the southern continent, she saw a few pictures of the crystals and was struck with an idea.
She opened a channel via her implant to the transport pilot.
“Can you get me to Tomas Klein’s offices?”
“Of course ma’am.” The pilot said.
Seo-yun relaxed into her seat, and tried to think about the best way to tackle Tomas.
Chapter Seven
Olympus city
The morning started as it usually did for Tomas, he was reviewing the requests and reading various reports, until about midday when Seo-yun interrupted him. She entered his office without being announced, she was one of very few people that could do that. She glanced through the open door to the room adjacent to his office, she could see his unmade bed there.
“When was the last time you went home?” She asked.
“Hmm… Two days ago I believe, I had lunch with Elias.” Tomas said.
“That was a week and half ago.” She said glaring at him.
“Really? I guess I lost track of time.”
“Have you looked in a mirror lately? You are tired Tomas, you are awake too much.” She said softly.
Tomas sighed. “There is much work to be done.”
“You are going to burn yourself out. You don’t age anymore, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need rest.” Seo-yun said.
“I know, but I still need to work.”
She approached his desk, and shut it down.
“What are you…” Tomas started.
“That’s it, you are taking a br
eak.”
“I can’t just take a break.”
“You have good people working for you, they can manage for a day. Come, we are going out.” Seo-yun said, grabbing his hand, pulling him out of the chair and guiding him towards the door.
“Where are we going?” Tomas asked, he knew better than to resist, when Seo-yun set her mind it was impossible to change it.
“One of the exploratory teams found something, and we are going to take a look.” She said smiling. They exited his office, and Seo-yun turned to Tomas’s assistant.
“We are going out for a day, tell Nadia that she is in charge.” She said. Marie, Tomas’s assistant just nodded cheerfully.
Seo-yun took him out of the government building, and had him in a shuttle so fast his eyes barely had a moment to adjust to the light of the day, he spent too much time inside.
“So where exactly are we going?” Tomas asked once they were seated inside.
“The southern continent, a team found an interesting cave.” Seo-yun said.
“What’s so important that we need to be there to see it?” Tomas asked.
Seo-yun looked at him. “It’s not that it’s important, it’s that you need a break, a walk through the forest will do you good.”
“Alright then.” Tomas said, surrendering to this field trip, he found that he had trouble saying no to her. And that scared him, he had never felt that way towards anyone. He looked out of the window, they were rising out of the city, and he could see its entirety spread out over the plateau. The city had no skyscrapers, they had more than enough room, the plateau spread for 100 kilometers in every direction. It didn’t resemble the cities of Earth, it was spread out, buildings were large, but none had more than four floors, all but one. The building was set in the middle of the city, surrounded by walls, it had one great blue tower in the middle and various adjacent buildings around it, all connected by elaborate bridges, there were gardens, populated by flora brought from earth, it was a palace. Tomas grimaced as he gazed at it. Seo-yun caught his expression.
“You need to spend more time there. It is your home.” She said.
“I don’t feel comfortable there. It’s too big, I have no need for so much room.” Tomas said.
“It isn’t only for you, it’s for the people, they built it for you, and you are insulting them by avoiding it.”
“How am I insulting them? I am working for them every day!” Tomas said angrily.
“This isn’t like the past when we were Olympus. You are now our ruler, and your people need to see you accept it, living in the palace is the first step. You can’t keep leading from behind the desk, seen only by those closest to you. You need to lead from your throne, and the palace is its symbol.” She said softly. Tomas looked back at the palace, it was disappearing in the distance, he knew that what Seo-yun said was true, but he was still uncomfortable.
Soon even the palace tower disappeared, and all that could be seen were the teal colored forests of Sanctuary. Here the trees had a teal tint to them, unlike the green of Earth, though other plants came in a variety of colors just like on earth, the tree stumps were darker here, closer to black, and the trees reached higher. Sanctuary looked much like Earth, or as close as one could get on an alien world. There were two big continents, and a lot of islands, the amount of water on the planet was only a little bit smaller than on Earth, so the climate was mostly the same. The days were a bit longer, with a 25 hours per day, and a year was a bit longer, it took Sanctuary around 370 days to make a full circle around its sun - Apollo. The other sun in the system was sufficiently away to have little influence over Sanctuary. Though Sanctuary’s thick atmosphere aided that as well. The red dwarf was named Bhanu – meaning the sun in Indian. One could rarely see Bhanu from Sanctuary, as it was mostly in orbit behind Apollo and eclipsed by it most of the time. The fauna of Sanctuary was diverse, the same as it was on Earth. There were no insects here, or insect like creatures, most looked like furry mammals, though genetically they weren’t even close. Every animal that they catalogued was covered in fur that was also a part of their senses, the ‘hairs’ were receptors that detected miniature changes in their environment and alerted the animal about it. Most every animal evolved with this ‘sixth sense’ alongside other five that humans shared as well. Their eyes tended to be poorer than those that the Earth’s animals had, even humans, but their ‘fur’ senses made up for it. There was only one predator species, the theory behind that was that the ‘prey’ animal’s fur senses made them much harder to catch, and so with the lack of food, the predators died out. The predator species that their scientists found, seemed to be able to sneak on the prey without them noticing. It baffled the scientists, because it was very hard for them to sneak upon any animal, and this predator did it easily. The predator was big, about the size of a large Lion, and had a vague resemblance to a cat only in their body shape, they were wider in the shoulders and had tougher legs, their fur was a bit longer, and they had two pairs of eyes on their elongated head, one set above the other. The head looked a little bit like that of a wolf, though fatter and wider like that of a cat, with the nostrils higher on the snout, their teeth were more like a cats than those of a wolf. The scientist had named them some Latin name of course, but most of the people call them wolions, a name they came up with because they looked as a Wolf and a Lion hybrid. They haven’t managed to capture one to run tests, so they knew their appearance only, and they managed to estimate their weight based on the imprints they found in dirt. By their calculation the animals weighed about 650 kg, making them about a third heavier than Lions from Earth, though not that much bigger, which indicated that they had heavier bones. Their fur was of a soft blue color. The wolions rarely came near humans, and they have never attacked them. Early in the colonization, they could often be seen looking at them from the outskirts of the settlement, or hunting in the vicinity, but always they ran away when humans tried to approach. Hunting of the wildlife was forbidden by their laws. And when requests came to Tomas, for a wolion to be caught for tests, he denied it. They have never bothered humans, so he decided that they weren’t going to bother them.
Soon they were no longer flying above the land, they had reached the ocean. When looking down on the blue ocean, Tomas could sometimes forget that he was on another planet. The oceans looked exactly like those on Earth did. At least on the surface, below it was another story. As the land evolved almost void of any predators, the oceans were completely opposite. The water was filled with predators, so much that they have yet to find a species that didn’t evolve to kill something. The ‘fish’ were all large, on the scale of dinosaurs on Earth that lived in the waters. They had large snouts and great jaws. They were fast and merciless, they fed on anything moving. One of the deaths early on, was from an attack by these fish. A man tried swimming in the ocean, when a fish the size of a great white shark jumped out and swallowed him whole. Since then it was forbidden for anyone to swim in the Ocean. Though there was no need for them to forbid it, no one sane would go into those waters. They made pools for those wanting to swim, but the Oceans of Sanctuary were not a hospitable place. The animals even attacked their submarines, so Tomas was forced to abandon the explorations of the Oceans, not willing to endanger anyone else. If the animals that lived close to land were that savage, he didn’t want to imagine what those deeper and further away would be like.
So, they focused their exploration on land, they had already mapped most of the Northern continent, the one where they settled, and were in the process of mapping the Southern. The two continents covered one third of their respective hemispheres, and were separated by one big Ocean, and islands in between. They have yet to settle anyone on the islands or the Southern continent. They have however made a few settlements on the Northern continent beside the Capitol, they were small, a few families at the most. Those that wanted to live in the wilderness. They usually contributed by growing food, since everyone had a place in Olympus, their population too small to have
people without a purpose. Though if they wanted to come back and do something else in the city, they were allowed to. Anyone could do anything they wanted in Olympus. With Olympus providing what they needed if it was possible. If not, then they worked on something else until what they needed was available.
An hour later he noticed them lowering down in a clearing surrounded by tall trees. When the shuttle landed, he and Seo-yun exited and were met by three men in army uniforms, they were providing security for the exploration teams. Much of Sanctuary was still unknown, and Tomas didn’t want to risk his people going out without protection.
“Mister Klein, Minister Hyeon, welcome to the Southern continent.” The man in the lead said, no one called him Emperor in his presence, they all knew his unease with the title. He addressed Seo-yun by her title of Minister of Science. Tomas’s implant immediately supplied the man’s name and rank, Commander Johan Riggs, the name and rank appeared above his head, and after reading it, Tomas cleared his HUD with a mental command.
“Thank you.” Tomas said. And nodded to the other two soldiers, their names also coming up.
“Lead the way Commander.” Seo-yun said.
Commander nodded and gestured for them to follow him to the hover car nearby, it was a model designed for use in tough terrain, and was a bit bulkier than the models used for transportation in the city. Seo-yun and Tomas sat in the back of the vehicle, it had an open top, so they could look around freely. The forest was thick all around them, with barely any sunlight coming through, but from time to time Tomas could catch a glimpse of the yellow sunrays shining through, like on Earth the entrance of the light into the atmosphere made the sun look yellow, though its light was in fact white, just like the Sun back home.
Fifteen minutes later they arrived at the entrance of a cave. There was equipment placed in front of the cave, with a few people working on it. Three more army members stood guard over the perimeter. Seo-yun led him inside the cave, as they passed everyone who noticed them stopped what they were doing and stared at them, whispering amongst themselves. Inside the cave they were met with the man in charge of the exploration team.
