“I won’t presume to know, to many theories and wishes, but I will tell you the main one. They think someone, or thing, assigned different beings, let’s say it was God, to each galaxy to develop as they wish. Each follows its own tune so to speak. Who? We don’t know, but something filled our galaxy with humanoid peoples and the MK’s galaxy is filled with roaches. Only two we know of so far, but there are billions of galaxies out there.
“They invade us now, kill us, eat us, and we fight back. They will be on this planet when the storm ends. They will come. Go to the locker by the door. Inside are six belts, take them all. Each has weapons and tools you can use. I see you wear the ancient earpieces as well; good. Replace them with those in the drawer by the dead pilot. When you are warm, leave. Use your linkpen to remove the snow, don’t walk through it. Water is water, it melts snow just fine.”
A few minutes later it said, “Sorry, the field is starting to collapse. The ship’s reactor is dying. Leave, I will give you an hour then I must destroy the ship and you better not be near.”
“Well, sounds final to me,” I told Loka.
“It is,” Lucy said. “You now have 58 minutes.”
We scrambled to gather the belts, six pouches with each. I found the earpieces, gave Loka hers, and I put on mine and pocketed the rest.
Lucy said, “Test, test.” I told her I heard just fine.
“One more thing please. Your memory sticks aren’t EMP or rad proof. Grab a dozen from the drawer under the table, install a blue one in the port to the right of the yellow light I have blinking.” I did and after a minute she said, “Good! When you get back, place it in your reader. Hurry, you now have 41 minutes.”
We did as she said and I stuffed things into our packs and we fought to get the hatch open and were back in the howling winds.
I took out the pen and held it out, depressing the green button. Sure enough, at a fast walk the snow to the front melted out of the way. Once I had my bearings again we headed straight to the door. As we arrived there, I told Lucy we made it.
“Good, turn away now.”
As I did I heard, “3,2,1,” and the sky became white as in the whitest of light. After it was gone I turned back as a huge mushroom cloud was forming where the ship had been. We stepped back through the door and I hit the red button.
“Red X goes on this door,” Loka said. I had to agree.
We were back to the core room. Loka took a red paper from the lab room and put a big X on it and set it by the door. We went back in the lab.
“Okay, should I do what that Lucy said?” Loka asked. We discussed the possible outcomes and decided it wouldn’t hurt. It seemed friendly and our door to where it came from was closed.
Loka turned on the reader and plugged the blue stick in and we waited. After a few minutes of something translucent spinning around like a ball floating in space, a message said, “Please wait, converting.” Then, “Damn this crap is old!” came over the earpieces. It was Lucy.
Loka asked the obvious. “Lucy? Is that you?”
Again, on the earpieces, “Yes, sorry, didn’t have a lot of time to explain things.” I heard a sort of laugh. “I did say this crap was old didn’t I?”
“Yes, you did mention that,” I told her.
“Like ancient, as in thousands of years old. This thing doesn’t even have enough memory to do a simple video rendering of me. Dang this crap is really old!”
Loka snickered.
“How many stick ports are on this? No visuals yet,” Lucy asked.
“Two on the right side and one on the other,” I told her.
“Well, that might help. You have more blue sticks?” she asked.
I handed the ones I grabbed to Loka, she took the ones from her pack. “Eight red, two yellow and one more blue,” Loka told her.
“Could have been better or worse. Okay, put a blue in the same side as the one already in, then a yellow in the other, and give me a couple hours to do some rearranging and conversions. I will tell you when I am done over the earpieces.”
“We will go get cleaned up and grab a nap. Been a while,” I told her.
“Fine, do that,” she said dismissively.
~~~
I guess we slept three or four hours. Lucy kept saying in my ear, “You awake?”
Finally, I said, “Yes.”
“Good, look, your name is far too long, can I just call you Alf instead?”
“I am usually called Eldon, if that is okay? Elf males place the middle name first, then the mother’s maiden name, then our first name last. Elf females place their first name first then their maiden name, then middle, then married name last.”
“Strange but fine, that will work. You two have been asleep more than nine hours. I was beginning to worry,” she said.
“Really? All our timepieces quit as we were coming up the mountain. Our team thought it was magnetic rock affecting them, but I think it is the yellow door, and the thin air gets us tired quicker than normal,”
“Well, the reactor and the magnetic warpfield generator are both behind it. Might be a small leak—did I tell you this place is very old?” She snickered, knowing she had, so I didn’t answer as I gently woke Loka.
After we ate we went back to the lab as Lucy now called it. On the reader floated a beautiful girl with blue eyes and blond hair and bronze skin, like we saw in the ship. “This is what I feel I would look like if I were real. We call them humans, Earth humans.” She slowly turned in a 360 degree circle.
“Very pretty,” Loka said.
“Well, I reworked the main chips in this thing and found ways of speeding up the data streams a little, and I am using the two additional sticks for swap space. Very slow, but it will work until we can find something better,” Lucy said. “I can’t even unpack a tenth of my data in here.
“What to tell, and what not. This is probably the last operational core there is in our galaxy. I hope anyway. At the same time, a possible link near their galaxy could be a boon and at 372 thousand light-years from earth you might be near the fringe for the jump to it. In a panic, we shut down all the reactors in defense, or had them overload and blow up. Too late for so many worlds, but it saved a few. I am sure it doomed a few still being developed as well. We tried to destroy all the warpfield generators at each site as well. The teams that did that were stuck on whatever planet the core was on.
“On the good side, we never knew what happened to this team so this core was never registered. Maybe that is why the MK haven’t jumped all over it by now. They may be bugs, but they are fairly smart ones,” she said. “They found our maps and routes and tried to get through as many as they could before they were shut down.”
Loka asked, “So are we going to shut this one down too?”
“No, at least not yet. If it is unregistered they would have to find one of the planets by ship, then find a door and figure out how to open it. That is something they are not good at. They use what they find of ours but they don’t seem to make any themselves. Look, I won’t lie, if they trace us here somehow, your planet will be dead in a few years unless we can kill the core. At the same time, if we keep the Honor Gates open we may be able to actually do something against them besides panic. My ship was running for weeks from seven ships they took from Relgial VI—they caught us and managed to force us down where you found us. We are trying to go on the offensive, but so far we have failed to do little more than spit at them. They will have seen the nuke go off and may or may not check the planet, but it was uninhabited and far too cold for them. Cold is the only thing they avoid. Once they see there is no food they will look someplace else.
“Loka, you had some training sticks you said you found? I need to see if there is a chance there is a bright green one in there someplace. Then I need to find some equipment, then I can put together a plan,” she said.
Loka and I spent more than several hours deciding what to do. I think we both wanted to go back down and get advice from our people but at the same time
we both had a fundamental flaw—curiosity unbounded. We had found strange new wonders, but some wonders were deadly.
The AI heard it through our new earpieces and finally said, “Look, give me a few months to gather what I can find, make a plan, and present it to you both. At that time you can make an informed decision, not a hasty one. If the MK come, regardless of how, they will devour you all, that I do know.”
We talked some more and Loka said we’d go along with her ideas for now.
Loka spent several days letting Lucy read various sticks she found but none were a bright green. Lucy told her they were mostly from the team’s Chief Scientist, Dr. Honor. Lucy again asked if we had any idea how old all this stuff was, teasing us. Her statement confirmed my earlier thought. She was our first queen—according to our legends she was the mother of us all.
“OK, found one item I need, well a picture of it. Have you seen anything like this?” She placed on the screen a box shaped thing with a lens on the front. It looked like a simple camera. She said yes, but it was a bit more than camera, it also was a spectral analyzer and field detector.
Well, I hadn’t, nor had Loka, but Lucy told us it probably was in a room with boxes of machine parts. If still in the original container it would be a silvery rippled top metal box with two handles and black writing. It was two foot square. She showed us the writing; I copied it.
She needed some other items, Loka had found a few of them in the Lab area. I went to the section where I’d seen all the boxes and pots and pans. Took two days of stacking and unstacking, but she was right, it was exactly as she said it was. Well, it was also heavy. I used a tray on wheels to haul it back.
I was sent on hunt after hunt, finding this and that. She made it clear the team was originally large and well stocked. Everything she asked for was there someplace, she was positive. I had pictures of items that looked small—were they? Not on your life, one was so heavy I had to get Loka to help load it on a cart and push it.
I had to ask, “What are you going to do with this stuff?”
“Oh, I told Loka, I thought you knew. We are going to build a couple new me’s, something I can use. I, umm, how to explain it. I have just moved into a one-room closet, I only have enough room to stand and I can’t move my arms or legs. That is me in here. I can’t even retain the memory stick info—I have to dump all but the minimum amounts. You are going to build a bigger, better, more powerful me. Well, within this arcane equipment’s abilities, a mobile one, I just need a power source and I think I know where they hid them.”
“Hid them?” I asked.
“Yes, that big yellow door? The death door you call it. It is the entrance to both the reactor and the warp core, or more commonly called the warpfield generator, but it should not be deadly, only a bit higher than normal, so something is wrong on the inside and only I can fix it. Any life form would be dead—instantly to a month—as was your friend. One step at a time though.
“Eldon, sorry, no printers yet, I need you to assemble those parts you both gathered to look like this.” She brought up a weird looking contraption with the camera thing as a head. It had wheels and four arms. “This is the work robot I need to get in the reactor room. I am hopeful that it is nothing more than one of your teams opened the inner door and left the outer opened. They would have died instantly and were unable to close it in time.”
It took two weeks of asking questions, figuring out parts, hooking up cables and plug-ins. At least we’re not totally ignorant as a people. Electrics and wires and batteries were in our current society, even radio and simple computers, just not at the sophistication level of these items.
Finally it was done and Loka had to find special sticks that Lucy said were protected. “I still will have less than an hour to finish the tasks, I just hope I can get it done. I doubt they have much more equipment that can be used. Listen closely, those silver suits I had you find. I know, they are very heavy, but you need to put them on when I do this tomorrow. You will both stand behind the yellow door and close it when I enter. Don’t worry, they will protect you for a little while. You will then leave them on the floor by the door and go shower immediately, touch nothing on the outside of them at all, understand?” Her instructions were long, but yes, quite simple as well.
“So you’re going to go in and die?” I asked.
“Yes and no. That stick will be a copy of me. If I succeed I will come out with what I need and then go back in and die as you call it. You found the special box with all those dials and plug-ins. If all else works, I will tell you where to go from there. Sleep, we do it in about six hours, I am still trying to compact my code small enough to fit what I need on that stick. What was that ancient saying? My kingdom for a horse? My kingdom for a bright green memory stick! Oh well, I should have told you to grab some, but there was no time.” Like that, she shut down and was gone.
Ten seconds later she was back. “WAIT! The belts, you took all the belts?”
“Yes,” Loka said, “six of them.”
“Maybe, maybe, maybe. I need you to check the second pouch on the right. It is the side with the release button on it—see if it has a green stick. If not close it. Don’t open the others yet, some have delicate things in them,” she said. “Check them all.”
We did, two had dark green ones, no bright green.
“Still, that is great! Think of each blue one as a closet, the dark green is like adding two big rooms and the bright green is like adding a whole house on. In this closet, I have to sort of open a door and walk to the next closet and open it. In a house you can run free. Understand?”
“We really are not that dumb, Lucy. You are saying your data storage is small, your transfer rate is very slow and the green sticks are a massive expansion. We use memory sticks, remember? Only they all ruined in here,” Loka told her.
“I forget, I can’t run all my programing in here. I did tell you this is all very old, didn’t I?” she asked.
“At least a dozen times,” I told her.
“Well, we can fix it now. Which one do I take out to put the green one in?” Loka asked.
“None. This reader is far too small, the architecture is different and, oh never mind, I told you it’s old. Leave them here until we complete tomorrow’s work, then we will see if I can do anything.” Gone, poof.
“Strange computer,” I told Loka.
“I talked to her a lot while you were on your scavenger hunts. She is actually a living being. She says she is a nano-bio organic chip, those special blue sticks all have inactivated chips. She can duplicate herself as needed through any one of them. She eats, breaths, and thinks inside that little stick—she meets our requirements of a sentient being yet she was made. She says there is a bit more to it, but that is all she would explain to me.” Probably the longest speech Loka gave since we started on this expedition.
“Well, can you maybe write down some of the happenings and I will try to make a plane or something and send it down? Let them know we found something important?” I asked her.
“Sure,” she said.
Lucy popped back up and said, “In the boxes area, was there one that looked like this?”
It was long and thin. “I saw several like that,” I told her.
“It will have these letters on it…’R.P.V. S. U.’,” she explained.
“Okay, I’ll go look.” It took me 40 minutes to find it, there were three the same. I took one back, it was fairly light.
“Yes, that’s it. It is a plane, already built and not affected by the leakage from the magnetic warpfield or radiation either.” She snickered.
Loka installed a red chip from one of the stacks on the table into the reader slot. A few minutes later Lucy had me take it, assemble the plane thing, and said, “At the ledge point it down and plug in the chip. When you hear a whirring noise drop it, don’t throw it. It will find any type of radio transmitter and lock onto it and land nearby, then set off a little siren. If all is well, your people will find it with no pr
oblem.”
When Loka was done writing to Lord Pitviper I took her letter and the box to the ledge. I opened it and it was a plane, not foam, but a light metal; not sure what it was. I took it out and the main wings folded out and snapped into place. I held it up and placed Loka’s letter in the little hatch and inserted the stick. I pulled the little red plastic thing out that activated the battery and I flipped on the switch like Lucy said, and waited for the propeller to spin up. Loka watched me launch it into the night.
We were asleep until Lucy woke us with soft beeps. “The chip for the robot is ready. I am ready, are you two ready?”
“Let us eat something and get awake, then we’ll be ready,” Loka said. We grabbed some coffee and I just had an energy bar. Too excited I think. Loka ate some dried fruit.
“Okay, ready I guess,” I told her.
“Take the suits and push the robot to the door of the room where your dead friend is. Get the suits on and have the stick ready. The power for the robot will only be forty minutes so I will need every second of it.”
When everything was ready she explained exactly what we were to do. When we were inside we were to stand behind the yellow door, open it, and when she goes in, close it, but don’t latch it. Exit to the main corridor then remove the suits and wait until she calls, or two hours, then put new suits back on and go check the room to see if the special box was out in the hall. She didn’t know for sure if we’d have any contact with the robot after it went in.
“Why exactly are we doing this?” I asked her.
“Two reasons. The reactor powers this station and the warpfield and there is something wrong with it that only I can fix. There are some cold fusion power supplies missing as well—I think they may be inside.”
She had us bring a second small reader to the room near the door as well. Each empty sleep-room had one in them. We were ready, we were suited, and I had carefully removed the dead body holding the door and put it with the rest. I inserted the stick into the port and hit the red button on the front panel of the robot. It said, “Good, open the door. Remember, stay behind it.”
A Planet's Search For History Page 4
