by Aer-ki Jyr
This had been the key point in their discussions, because it seemed that forming a relationship allowed two people to share each other’s knowledge and strengths, which normally would have been an asset. The relationships between the trailblazers had never been anything but beneficial, and they were carefully examining the correlation between the two with some difficulty.
That difficulty lay in the fact that the trailblazers had developed a curious ability to bond with each other while maintaining their individuality, while the civilian population tended to bond in a constricting fashion, making solid bonds that linked two into a pair, in most cases, and that pair operated with a bit of a hive mind.
The Human hive mind, they knew, was a real thing. Wilson had taught them that much long ago, but it had never been a hindrance to the trailblazers. Their love of challenge seemed to bleed through it, enhancing the effect on each other. One person’s success or failure spurred the others on, and their combined energy level was always higher than it was when they were training solo, which was why they liked to pair up for workouts whenever they could…unless they were training solo specifically in an attempt to stress load themselves, where any outside ‘help’ would have been counterproductive.
Everything worked well between them. Efficient, purposeful, logical. The bonds of civilians, however, did not remotely match up. It was considered that maybe what they were seeing was the result of incorrect bond formation. After all, everyone out there was really a newb compared to the Archons, and they’d had the benefit of some of the best trainers on the planet to give them a solid foundation to work from. The people in the general populace didn’t have that. What they did have was other newbs to learn from, and if they were passing bad information along through the hive mind, it was no wonder why things were spiraling out of control.
On their trip down to Antarctica, Paul and the others in his Mantis held a prolonged conversation about the various types of ‘bad bonding,’ beginning with romantic attachment. All of them, it seemed, had suffered from it at some point in their early lives, with heartbreak being one of the stronger emotions they could remember. As they discussed it, they began to lay down some parameters for analysis and quickly came to several conclusions.
The most obvious of which was that romantic/sexual attraction was an idiot switch designed to spur reproduction. By ‘idiot switch’ they meant that it was something that didn’t happen due to excessive thought, it was purely incentive based. An overwhelming sense of pleasure would push all other thoughts aside and the act of reproduction would occur…often leaving one wondering what the hell had just happened afterwards.
There were other idiot switches inherent in Human biological programming. The urge to scratch, or flinch, which happened so quickly it was pure reaction. Touching something hot or cold and pulling back. Stubbing your toe and cussing up a storm…which was actually a distractionary tactic to keep your mind away from the pain as it bled off.
All of these things affected the weak minded person the most, and as such a person could train themselves to become mentally stronger and not respond to idiot switches. The more one was in control of their body the less need there was for preprogrammed responses. It was akin to removing the training wheels from a bike, and as such, the trailblazers’ predilection to respond to idiot switches had long since been burnt out of them. It was a newb susceptibility, they determined, and from that perspective they were able to make several other observations.
Newbs weren’t strong individuals, so a lot of the bad bonding that occurred tended to reinforce a weak area. Oftentimes people would date to achieve a sense of self worth or status elevation…which is why they fell to such emotional lows when that pillar of emotional stability was removed during a breakup. Had the person been a grounded individual beforehand, the heartbreak would never have occurred.
What did that person typically do after a heartbreak? Find someone else to take their former lover’s place, putting in another pillar to shore themselves up when the true problem was a lack of individuality.
Furthermore, the trailblazers discussed the problems that were inherently created in marriage, with the ‘two become one’ philosophy forming the crux of the quandary. Society was full of adages that no marriage is perfect or that fighting is just a normal and good part of the relationship…all of which dodged the real source of the problem.
Romantic relationships were biologically designed to be temporary.
The idiot switch elicited a brief period of intense passion…then it dissipated, perhaps to be rekindled again later, but it never lasted continuously. This was because the act of reproduction wasn’t a continuous one, all it took was a brief moment for conception to occur and the incentive was geared towards that end.
While one might have considered such a conversation to be societally dangerous or awkward it was quite the opposite for the trailblazers, who occupied the entire passenger hold of the Mantis, for amongst them there were no romantic relationships. No marriages, no children, no dating…nothing. And while a few of them had hooked up initially during the basic training, that tendency went by the wayside as if it were just a childhood idiosyncrasy. The more they developed, physically and mentally, the more the idiot switches got overridden. As such, none of the trailblazers had sexual tendencies whirling about their minds nonstop as they had as teenagers, and that gave them a sense of clarity to self-analyze.
They all retained the default sexual programming, but it didn’t assert itself anymore. This, they concluded, was one of the major reasons they had trouble thinking like the civies. With their reproductive programming running out of control and bleeding over into the rest of their thoughts, all logic would seem to disappear. The answer, they knew, was in those people becoming stronger minded and more knowledgeable about their own functions…something that took time and training, meaning that those who eschewed even the most basic of training were literally screwed.
After the trailblazers got through sorting out the various permutations of a bad sexual bond, they progressed into non-romantic areas, from friendships to mentors to parents. Paul especially was interested in discussing the parent angle, as he had gradually fell out of touch with his own family, finding them to be more and more unreachable as time progressed. Both his parents had died years ago, but he had never returned to Earth for their funerals, having been politely exiled from the family beforehand.
He had tried numerous times to pass on some of the things he’d learned from Star Force, but they either couldn’t or wouldn’t understand and continued their self destructive path without so much as lifting a finger to try to avoid it. That Paul couldn’t fathom, nor could he stand by and watch. After doing what he could to try and get them to do even the most basic training, and failing, he relinquished the pressure to maintain the family link and let them drift away to their own fates. A part of him still classified this as failure, because he instinctively didn’t give up on friends or family, but in truth those sitting around him now were his real family. Those he had been born to were just his entry point in a genetic lottery.
The genetic lottery theory had been popping up on the Archon message boards a bit, which was yet another reason why none of them were interested in reproducing, for they figured that their offspring would be just a random person inserted into the universe rather than being inherently linked to the biological parents. It might have been true that they would share some physical or mental characteristics at inception, but as for who they were on the inside, that was lottery, and if Paul had a son or daughter the chances that they would be Archons some day was no greater than anyone else on the planet, so what was the point in having children of his own?
In addition to that was the time spent caring for children. Paul and the others didn’t have time to spare, and they wondered about the logic of having parents raise their own offspring. In fact that discussion had been going through the ranks for some time and Project Canderous was taking a very different approach on the matter. Th
e biological parents of the children had no dealings with their offspring, who were being ‘raised’ by professional handlers in larger groups that would become their ‘family,’ much like what Paul and the other trailblazers had experienced when going through their basic training together.
Was there truly something to the parent-child relationship, or was it just another case of bad bonding? Some would say there definitely was, and point back to their own childhood as proof while others would point out the success of various orphans who didn’t have their biological parents around and perhaps were raised by adoptive parents or none at all. Normally, society saw such questions as taboo, but Star Force wasn’t society and the new colonies it was setting up gave them some leeway to try and correct some of the inherent flaws circulating throughout the hive mind. A few of the Archons had taken it upon themselves to help combat these societal flaws and had a heavy hand in the planning of several of Star Force’s civilization projects.
The rest of the discussion leading up to the Mantis quartet crossing over land covered other, less prevalent forms of bad bonding, and as a group the 0s, 1s, and 2s were able to hash out a lot of answers with the final conclusion being that while they could help others advance by forming bonds with them, and do so in miraculous terms given their skill level, such bonds would have an equally diminishing effect on the Archons, slowing them down as they helped to speed others along.
Because of that, they determined, they had to stand apart at the tip of the spear and push as far as they could go. If others followed them, great…but they couldn’t hold their hands. The trailblazers needed to be free to go and do whatever was required, improvising along the way…and non-individualistic bonding did not support improvisation. It was regimental and habit-based, which was why, in terms of growth, it often resulted in stagnation…and stagnation was the enemy of all training.
The way of the Jedi, Paul thought to himself, summing it all up as the Mantis came into visual range of their destination. On his datapad he could see the wide, rocky expanse covered in a nearly flat blanket of snow with a few small peaks off in the distance that broke up the otherwise totally white landscape. In the center of it, however, was a wide building built in typical Star Force grey aesthetic that most of their engineering projects resulted in. It appeared as a wide, thin horizontal line that gradually grew into a flat, 20-story high building stretching out to cover more than a square mile of acreage.
Once the Mantis flew over the roof Paul spotted a cluster of landing pads near the center of the foodstuff production facility. There were already two cargo-laden Mantises on the ground, with a third just taking off. The massive building below them was one of the initial pieces of Project Harvest, growing crops indoors on the otherwise infertile continent. With several floors that multiplied the available acreage, and a year-round growing season, the facility was producing grain nonstop, having staggered the harvest dates to allow for continual shipments that saw Mantis traffic coming in and out on a daily basis.
Running out the opposite side of the building was a long rail line that connected to a distant ocean port, giving Star Force the ability to ship grain out by sea if necessary. Right now that wasn’t an issue, but as more and more of these Harvest facilities came online the available Mantis fleet was going to quickly become insufficient, so plans for a more robust distribution network were already in the initial construction stages.
Paul stowed his datapad in a receptacle under his seat as the Mantis set down on the landing pad, then got up and walked out the back ramp as a blast of cold air hit him. He and the others weren’t wearing anything more than their standard uniforms, but fortunately they didn’t have far to walk.
As he followed Jason outside he stepped down into an inch of fresh snow and looked around, marveling at the rooftop landscape and the small peaks off on the horizon. He’d spent so many of his recent years on Venus that the snowy landscape seemed stark in contrast. On one hand it was unbearably cold, but clean and vibrant at the same time. Venus was inhospitable, but the air here was fresh and the sky was pure blue with a bright sun overhead that did little to fight back the cold. In some ways Paul felt like he was on another planet entirely, for this wasn’t the Earth that he remembered.
Then again, all his recent memories of the planet were from the tropical zone that Atlantis inhabited.
The other three Mantises landed beside theirs on identical pads and the rest of the trailblazers rushed out and over to the rooftop entrance to the facility. It was a box-like building that held two pairs of stairways along with a large cargo elevator for grain shipments up and cargo shipments coming back down. The visitors hit the stairs and flowed down them like a lithe and agile waterfall, forming into a large pool at the very bottom in some sort of welcome center.
“Excuse me,” Davis said, pushing his way through the group and up to the front desk that served the administrative area on the opposite side of the side wall. He had a brief chat with the receptionist then led the group out into the factory, showing them the large interior fields that were sectioned off into rectangular pods that held a carbon dioxide-rich and over-pressurized atmosphere, which caused the plants to grow to inordinate sizes. As they walked a circuitous route, Paul saw not only grain crops, but forests of fruit trees behind the glass walls bearing enormous apples and oranges the size of his head.
Further down he also spotted a harvesting cycle on a patch of carrots, with machine arms prying up individual plants out of the artificial soil. His eyes went wide when one of the tubers was removed and ended up being more than a meter long.
A few steps down and he passed the control booth, where an army of remote operators manipulated the arms so they could harvest the carrot crop without having to depressurize the growing pods. Paul nodded his appreciation to a pair of the workers when they glanced his way, then followed the hoard of Archons on to a less populated section of the facility.
In what looked like a maintenance area, Davis brought them to a pair of large doors, obviously designed for the transportation of cargo crates given their width. The Director input an access code into a wall mount and the overly thick doors retracted into the walls as a wave of hot air washed out onto Paul and the others.
Davis smiled widely and led them inside.
Paul was in the back third of the line so he couldn’t see much ahead of them, but the group was apparently headed down another level via a catwalk. When those in front of him stepped down the first of the stairs he got his first look at the green/black stone that comprised the southwest corner of the top of the V’kit’no’sat pyramid.
2
As he walked down the stairs Paul and several other trailblazers reached out their hands to touch the alien stone, finding it really was warm to their fingertips, as the research notes they’d studied at length had suggested. He let his hand slide all the way down the stone wall as they descended until the catwalk suddenly disappeared and they all found themselves standing on the second tier surface of the pyramid underneath an artificial ceiling that was the foundation of the building above them.
Not too far in the distance Paul could see a wall of dirt, meaning that this piece of the pyramid was all that had been dug out, but according to the schematics the footprint extended for many miles, with the top tier being the width of several football fields and perfectly square. The second tier was likewise flat and square, ringing the top tier on a lower level, with subsequent tiers extending down into the bedrock, making the pyramid larger the deeper you traveled.
Davis led the group across the flat-topped second tier to a catwalk stairway built over the edge that let them walk down to the third. It was here that they came to the uppermost entrance where they’d initially cut into the pyramid. Now the doors stood wide open, but Paul could see the damage marks as they approached.
This tier had also been cleared of dirt and debris for a wide perimeter, with additional tunnels having been dug as access corridors to other surface features. In addition, Star Force
had built small rail lines that ran across the surface of the pyramid to where they connected to lift shafts that went straight up the side of the 2nd tier. Paul knew they were for cargo transport, but he didn’t see any crates or cars lying around, which made him wonder where else the tracks led to further down the side of the pyramid.
“Jason, Paul, and Greg please wait here,” Davis said when they got to the entrance. “The rest of you, go explore,” he said, pointing them inside.
With unabashed smiles the trailblazers filed inside as if they were in line to an amusement park, more than eager to look around the alien pyramid that had been toying with their imagination for some 70 years.
Paul stepped out of line and joined Jason next to Davis and Greg as the others disappeared from view.
“There’s something I want you to see first before you go exploring,” Davis said, his merriment dissipating a bit. “I want a fresh set of eyes.”
“What is it?” Greg asked as the older man led them inside and through the egg-shaped hallways.
“I’d rather not say just yet, and it’ll take us a while to get there. We’ve yet to find anything similar to an elevator or cargo lift, so we’ll have to walk several miles.”
“Supplies?” Jason asked.
“By hand, as near as we can guess,” Davis said, turning them right at the first curvy T-junction. “I admit, that doesn’t make much sense, but the tier we walked in from functions as a type of landing pad for the Human section of the pyramid, and that door is the only way in up here.”
“What about the dead zones?” Paul asked, referring to the limited maps that had been passed on to them with large gaps missing.
“We drilled into one last year, but it turned out to be a double door and we haven’t gotten around to the second one yet. I don’t like punching holes that we can’t fix, and I’m hoping that we’ll eventually be able to get computer access to unlock them remotely.”
