Cleansing Fire

by D. L. Harrison

  Dan grunted, “So all the sensors will pass the raw data to the magic sphere communications, and send it to the display gem Lara’s building? Are you sure four thousand mana is enough to power all the stuff you just asked for?”

  I frowned, “Not for real time data, but for pulses and snapshots of information. The air and light sensors will be galactic, but the others will be solar system sized.”

  Gwen snorted.

  “It sounds complicated, and I have a suggestion.”

  “Yes, love?” I asked.

  Gwen smiled, “We should experiment with spells, each part. We don’t have time for it to fail. Then we add the enchantments one at a time. I know it needs to be small, but are you sure Dan’s folding space won’t need more mana?”

  I nodded, “Pretty sure, yes. There’s a lot of extra magic in keeping people alive while teleporting, due to the intense gravity required to fold space. The probe will be all metal and gems, or all under the influence of the Earth sphere. That should make it pretty cheap. Ultimately, Dan has to answer that question. We could make it a cube instead, a foot square. That would give us eight stones, all one foot apart from each other, and double our mana while still keeping it relatively small. Eight thousand mana.”

  Cassie hummed, and tapped her lower lip for a moment.

  “Reverse it. Having four people build one grand enchantment would be difficult. I’d suggest the base station be four gems, each one connected to one of your enchantments for data and remote control. The four gems you guys build for all the different sensors and systems can report the data back to my grand enchantment, which can combine the relevant data and display it. Whoever controls the grand enchantment, can use those connections to control the enchantments on the probe. That way the grand enchantment can be built by one person, me, and the rest of you just build separate systems. Much less finicky that way.”

  I nodded, “That’s a good idea, that would be easier, for us anyway. All of us should get with you on the communication protocols to connect the base. Is the regen rate on a master level crystal enough to keep one square foot cloaked?”

  Gwen snorted, “Easily.”

  I nodded, “It’s good enough for my stuff too, especially if I don’t pulse the sensors for life, heat, and magic at the same time. I was thinking a ten second refresh rate, which will keep it current enough.”

  Everyone nodded at that.

  I said, “How about light and air sensors, will one be enough?”

  Cassie nodded.

  “Good, that means Dan, that if you figure out one master gem isn’t enough to scan for earth every ten seconds, and occasionally fold space, you have the option of building a grand enchantment of up to five crystals, since our three jobs will only take one that leaves five open spaces on the cube.”

  Dan nodded, “I don’t think it will take that much, let me do the math on it. I understand the concepts, but I’ve never considered folding space for an object before.”

  Steve sighed, “You all have jobs, what about me?”

  Lara smiled, “My poor, poor, love. You can keep me company and look pretty.”

  Steve smirked, “I guess there’s no point in scanning for death.”

  “Okay, so let’s get it built then, then Gaia can make more, and have fifty probes out there jumping around and looking for enemy worlds and ships. Not to mention third party civilizations. Once that’s done, we can design our nine personal enchantments. Looks like we’re getting master level EQ anyway, just not in game.”

  Gwen snickered.

  “I should have taken another sphere, what good is sword and bow going to do me out here?”

  I frowned, “You might be surprised. If we can’t figure out a good weapon that can bypass their mana shields, our best bet might be boarding actions, and blowing up their ships like we did in that valley.”

  Steve said, “That’s an interesting idea.”

  I shrugged, “I have over three hundred thousand mana. Why would I fight the enemy in a ship with much less ability than I personally have? Never mind, there’s no point in speculating until we find out the score.”

  Lara asked, “How would we get on the ship?”

  “Folding space bypasses mana shields, any kind of energy shields or matter for that… matter. I’m honestly thinking that will be our best weapon, unless we come up with a better one. Of course, we may be able to come up with enchantments to destroy engineering and then blow the crystal, just fold that enchanted weapon in so to speak. Sorry, I’m just speculating, just making the point I won’t risk any of us unless we absolutely have to. If there’s a way to kill them from the shadows, that’s what we’re going to do. We certainly aren’t going to build ships and face them in space battles, that’s ridiculous, and far from our strength. It’ll just get a lot of people killed.”

  I wasn’t a coward, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t be cautious.

  “We should try those spells, to make sure we can send scan data to Lara’s spells, but restrict your spell scans to the inside of our cloaked shelter. Chances are the probes won’t see them, but there’s no point in taking chances. If they do see the scans, better that they see them from another place.

  “My suggestion is to send the probe ten light years away before it does its initial light and air scan for viable planets and a navigation database of sorts to get around. Just in case, we don’t want to lead them to Earth before we even have a clue on weapons.”

  The scanning, folding space, and cloaking was the easy part. It was setting up communications for remote control and data with Lara’s spells that would be harder. Lara kind of had the hardest job, in massaging all that data into a readable three-dimensional hologram.

  It was her own fault, she was the one that mentioned the possibility in the past, for our heads-up display in our spaceship.

  Lara nodded, “Give me an hour, and then I need to see you all one at a time, so we can match up our communications. I assume all four of you will be using different protocols, or magical frequencies, whatever.”

  I stood up, “Sounds good.”

  Gwen asked, “Where are you going?”

  “To create and grow coffee beans of course, then I have to figure out what’s the best way to roast them.”

  Gwen snickered.

  I shrugged, a man has to have his priorities…

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Lara was pretty fantastic. So was Gwen, without her idea we’d have had to enchant countless times to get it right.

  I created a spell that could scan for life, heat, and magic, all rolled up in a container of organized magic which would communicate with Lara’s spell. It was fussy, at first anyway. But, after a while, through Lara’s spell she was taking control of my spell, and then sending out tiny scanning pulses that were limited to the underground bunker, and safely behind a cloak.

  Not only was she controlling the spell, but she was getting the data from those pulses, which she then with a little more fiddling created a light spell that built a hologram. It showed the local area, with red heat sources for the six of us located around the facility. It also showed as life signs in the same place, and with a command of her mind through her spell, she could get it to assess all the life for our full information using my spell. It was pretty damned sweet.

  Lara said, “Awesome, go ahead and enchant yours, exactly how you have it.”

  Yeah, I was done with it, but Lara still had to work it out with three other people. At least with Gwen’s cloak spell she just had to worry about turning it off and on, just control, since Gwen didn’t have a scanning function in her crystal.

  Then I went and found a master level gem. It was complicated, but still all just one spell, so it only took me an hour and a half to build it. Afterwards, I found the cube Dan had made, and inserted my crystal. I felt almost guilty, I was pretty much done with my part.

  I went back to my roasting conundrum. My first pot of coffee had left a lot to be desired…

  Gwen said, “Ther
e you are, still messing with coffee? The probe is ready.”

  I nodded, “I’m roasting it wrong.”

  She rolled her eyes, “Gaia, can you help him with that, I assume the secrets to roasting coffee aren’t going to make us go power hungry or turn us into monsters?”

  There was a flash of silver light, and Gaia appeared.

  She grinned, “I’m not sure, Jason really loves coffee.”

  I snorted, “Please?”

  Gaia smiled, “Fine. The simplest way is to use your heat spell. You want to wait for the second crack for a medium type coffee, usually in six to eight minutes. Let it keep roasting another thirty seconds or so after that second crack. Then let them cool immediately, otherwise they’ll roast more as they cool.”

  I frowned, “That’s what I’m doing.”

  Gaia nodded, and added teasingly, “Then let them de-gas for twelve hours before grinding and brewing.”

  “Oh… crap.”

  Gwen giggled.

  “I suppose I just have to wait to tomorrow then.”

  Gwen giggled harder, “I had no idea you were so obsessed about it.”

  I shrugged, “Coffee is life. I really missed it.”

  Gaia sniggered.

  I frowned, when her dress toga robe thing moved with her, naturally.

  “You’re solid?”

  Gaia reached out and poked me in the chest.

  “Yes, but it isn’t a flesh and blood body. It’s like a hologram, but energy projection as well that mimics matter.”

  I was curious, but I didn’t dare touch her.

  Gaia rolled her eyes, and she held out her arm.

  I took her hand cautiously, and it felt like silky smooth skin. She was warm too.

  “That’s amazing.”

  Gaia sighed, “Says the man who can create new life.”

  “Alright, yeah, I haven’t really processed that this is all real yet. You turned a portion of humanity into lesser gods, although within a very narrow scope until we can earn the rest of the spheres and knowledge, and you know much more, and are far more powerful. I’m actually glad, it’s easier to trust myself with this power knowing you won’t let me abuse it. Which… is strange. But still true, I trust you more than I would another human with that power.”

  Gaia grinned, and winked at Gwen, “You have a good one there, but then I might be biased by his opinion.”

  “So how does that work, in layman’s terms, I’m not asking for the ability.”

  Gaia replied, “The hologram part is just light magic, within the hologram is a shield of magic of a different sort than a mana shield that protects from energy. The body is a shell of sorts. It can imitate the texture, hardness, and all of that of normal matter.”

  Gwen asked, “Why not a real body?”

  Gaia shrugged, “This is hardier, and I can disperse it when I don’t need it. A real body would need food, sleep, and to use the restroom. I also believe the chemistry of the body would influence me in other ways, make me feel lonely if others weren’t around, not to mention a young female body would make me crave other intimacies best avoided for a being like myself.”

  Gwen replied, “Oh.”

  I asked, “Do you get lonely?”

  Gaia shook her head, “Not as such, if I had that capacity, I’d have gone insane long ago. I am currently running a whole world, countless experiments, and talking with over a thousand couples and six hundred individuals who may join you on this base very soon. However, I do enjoy interacting with you and Gwen, and the others.”

  Gwen nodded, “Well feel free to drop in, not just when we call you. I’m… fascinated, you are so much more than what a computer genius created so long ago.”

  That, and thankful she didn’t go crazy, and still wanted to protect the human race. Even if Evolution Online was some seriously tough love to do it.

  Gaia smirked, no doubt reading my mind.

  “Let me know if you want more copies, after you test the probe.”

  She disappeared in a flash of silver light. It was going to take a while to get used to that, and well, all of this.

  Gwen took my hand, and we left the room.

  I sent out a pulse of detect life.

  “They’re in café one again. I suppose it is dinner time.”

  We headed that way.

  “You okay?”

  Gwen sighed, “Coming to terms with this, I think. Every time I think it’s sunk in, I think of something else. I wonder if we’re worthy of this gift. It was given for us to fight against extinction, or rather we earned it, but I still wonder. We’ll be the protectors of Earth, but also the judges of humanity when we reclaim the real world. Although Gaia will help us with that, she mentioned leaving the evil minded in the virtual world. Why did the enemy attack us? Is genocide really the only response to genocide? How many other races have they destroyed, how many other dangers in this galaxy and perhaps others will we have to face to keep our world safe? Will our first child be a girl or boy? Will we meet good aliens too? What happens then?”

  I laughed, “All good questions.”

  Gwen nodded, “If we win, could we replace them as a new race of conquerors in the stars?”

  “I’d like to think we’d protect ourselves from the bad ones, make friends and even protect the good ones out there. Time will tell, and Gaia won’t let us be monsters, either out there in the stars or while guiding the human race. Or at least, making sure they have the opportunity to improve and advance.”

  She sighed, “You’re right, and I have no intention of being a conqueror, but there’s a lot of degrees in between.”

  “Plus, our kid is going to be amazing, boy or girl.”

  Gwen smiled at me shyly, and she kissed my cheek right before we walked into the café.

  There was a spread of food on the table, and Lara had a one square foot dark piece of wood, with four crystals embedded in the corners.

  She looked up, “It’s done, but I may need to tweak it. Fortunately, I can redo the spells with changes without a problem, and without you having to rebuild the probe. Still, this does work.”

  I nodded, “Dinner first?”

  Gwen and I sat, and we all dug in.

  “Why don’t you do the honors.”

  Lara touched the grand enchantment, and the probe wavered and disappeared.

  Lara said, “Folding space now. Sending it to one of the secondary human colonies. Scanning.”

  About three feet above the table, a picture of the milky way appeared, or most of it anyway. There was a large sliver of it missing on the opposite side of the black hole. I assumed she was using doppler shift and drift calculations to correctly plot the stars, since navigation would be worthless if stars appeared where they could be seen with the naked eye. Around the milky way it showed smaller spirals and balls, other galaxies.

  A moment later, a small section of the Orion arm grew brighter in a sphere around the colony. Around eighty of the stars in that cluster grew a blue ring around them. A whole bunch of even tinier blue dots appeared near stars with the blue rings as well.

  Lara explained, “Alright, the light enchantment is passive, so really had no range limit, especially being right outside the colony’s solar system with a clear view. Of course, it can only see the light that reaches it. The brighter section which is a thousand light years across, a sphere with a five hundred light year radius from the probe, is from the oxygen sensors. In short, the air sensors are only scanning about one percent of our galaxy, since it’s a hundred thousand light years in diameter.”

  Three tilted screen panels appeared below the three-dimensional hologram of the galaxy to show various data points.

  Seventy-nine of the stars had a planet or moon with oxygen on it, all listed by names or designations on the first illusory monitor. The second monitor in the middle listed nineteen stars that had ships in it. All nineteen systems had at least ten, while six of them had an additional twenty. That was three hundred ten in total.

  Th
e third screen was blank for now.

  Lara said, “We can zoom to effective scan areas.”

  The galaxy blew out, until only the thousand light year sphere remained. It was a lot easier to see at that point. It also clearly showed those nineteen stars were mostly in a hundred light year sphere within the larger sphere, with the exception of the three human colonies. Which made sense, when the three colony ships left the original colony, the other two were within ten light years, but the third went about fifty away, when they entered enemy space on accident.

  Gwen said, “So, it looks like the enemy is in nineteen systems?”

  Lara said, “Maybe, or yes at least with ships, notice Earth isn’t one of the blue ringed systems with a ship in it. Yet, there are alien probes around our planet. They could be monitoring other systems they marked as pre-conquest worlds and are just keeping an eye on right now. We won’t know until we get probes into all the systems for a closer look. This third monitor… well, let me show you. Folding in above the plane of the colony’s solar system, and I’m running a full local scan.”

  The hologram blew out again, as it zoomed in and displayed the solar system in detail. There were five planets, including the life bearing one and a Jovian giant. The rest were dead rocks or had an atmosphere incompatible with life. There was also an asteroid belt and several comets.

  Around the life bearing planet were ten very large ships that looked familiar, city ships. It was obvious that part of our encounter in game came from scans from the human colony before it was shut down. It was also one of the systems with the extra twenty ships. Those looked different, they were much bigger than those smaller ships docked to the city ships, but they looked similar in shape. They were sleek and deadly looking in form, and about a quarter mile long and a hundred yards wide.

  Thirty small white dots with reddish and brown rings appeared around the planet as well, which I assumed were sensor probes of some kind, like the ones around our planet. No doubt white was magic, and red was heat, and brown was earth.

  “That is so cool. It’s better than I’d been thinking the setup should look like.”