Solan studies the figure as he fails to interact with his point of view. This continues for hours as the space-suited being shifts position and falls over a few times. Then the woman starts cursing up a storm, and even Solan winces as he reads the stream of profanities that scrolls through the subtitle screen.
Then the thing fireballs her face off, smothering his entire office wall in blinding flame.
Solan re-watches the entire scene a dozen times before he concludes that he is watching something unknown to him. His ancient heart starts beating faster as he realises that new technology is being used. The way the water is sucked from the environment, the way the blue glow around the skeletal hand seems to transform it into a fire, it’s all completely new. No nanos show up on the filter, no spatial manipulations are detected, and no known forms of energy are used.
Solan sits there in a daze as the screen turns from white flames to black nothingness. He is unsure how much time passes before something new happens. The black section of the holographic display is wiped clean by a white and black glove held in a black, skeletal hand. A low-resolution video appears as the simplistic backup cameras are wiped clean. The resolution sharpens slightly as more external sensors are cleaned, but only slightly.
Solan’s attention is grabbed by the reflection in the helmet. A black skull is shown where perfectly carved female features used to be. The low resolution is just enough to confirm that the video’s host should indeed be dead but is somehow functioning.
“Food.”
A foreign accent thunders through the small office. Holding a hand to his racing heart, Solan lowers the video’s volume.
“Food. I want to taste more food.”
He then watches with open mouth as his perspective guides the spacesuited being to a transport hub. Solan is truly shocked when the spacesuited man manually removes his helmet and a naked skull is shown. Not a single modification is visible. Every single being gets at least one implant, no matter if they are born near the core or on a primitive rim world. Each being in this galaxy has a nervous implant at the minimum, but this skull has none. It only has a blue glow on its forehead and small flames in its eye sockets.
The thing then starts eating. Solan has had enough at this point. Now large amounts of food are disappearing into nothingness without any supporting structure, nanotech, or other trickery. This is new technology! New tech in a galaxy where nothing new has been developed for millennia!
“Get my private ship ready. Minimal crew.” He barely reads the confirmation popping up before hurrying out of his office. He strides through the narrow and barely lit corridors of his workplace, ignoring all the yells that follow him.
“SOLAN! Where is my glucose? Where have you been for the past few days?”
“Lark-shit, have you been hiding?”
“Hey, Suck-Man! It’s a shame, I thought you finally died!”
Solan stops before the elevator. Now that he thinks of it, his current treatment should be sufficient for a couple decennia, right? These humanising episodes are what keep him sane, but that doesn’t mean he can’t have a bit of fun at the end of them, right? His face now set in an inhuman grin, he speaks loudly and slowly for all to hear. “Butler, sanitise floor.”
The screams and coughing start even before he steps into the elevator. The last thing Solan sees before leaving this life behind is his coworkers and colleagues dying as gas seeps from the vents. Maybe ordering an entire floor of the building cleansed was a bit much, he thinks as he walks outside. Then again, this was one of the most effective normalising sessions he ever experienced, which speaks for the amount of abuse he was put through.
Solan walks through the busy traffic, ignoring the multitudes of yelling and cursing people. All the automated vehicles swerve to avoid him, and the streets clear as traffic control empties the entire street. A rather large ship then breaks all flight regulations as it descends towards his position. Protocols in place before this city was developed forcefully take control of all ships, vehicles, and buildings. The ship coasts through the cleared space while casually crushing some pieces of architecture in its way. The tumultuous streets fall silent for the first time in centuries as Solan is picked up by his personal ship, a slender vessel a kilometre long.
The familiar halls of his vessel calm him down even further as he commands the pilot to set course for the Histaff infected system that the woman woke up in only a short time before. He suppresses the urge to command a planet-bound jump. The destruction of a highly developed planet is not worth the shortcut. Solan Tomat can wait a few hours longer, after all. Only barely, though.
Chapter Ten – Overcoming Obstacles
Douglas stares at his feet. White bones wiggle as he examines the limits of his lower extremities. Once again, his limbs seem unbound by the limits that flesh would impose upon his skeletal structure. He folds his left foot into a pretzel while mashing his right into an accordion shape. Slender fingers rub against his misshapen foot, slowly feeling the smooth bone.
Douglas is surrounded by pieces of his spacesuit, the black and white parts of composite scattered in a circle around the duo. He took them off when his legs started to itch. The sensation was one that the skeleton hadn’t felt before, so he paused eating long enough to remove his apparel. He did not expect to see the largely intact legs that appeared. He then did some experiments.
Honestly, they were not true experiments. He just wanted to eat more and happened to notice that his bones regrew with speed whenever he was consuming large quantities of food, so Douglas kept eating happily, tasting every single item displayed on the wall. The platform goes on endlessly, and the number of different snacks also goes on endlessly. Then many hours after his feet had regrown, the glowing pictures of tasty looking items had flickered once and died. Now only a bare metal wall, Douglas loses interest and starts studying his newly regrown feet.
Looking up, Douglas stares at the lovely face of Katare. Like him, her physical form had regenerated rather quickly as she joined him in feasting on cheap snacks. Her eyebrows and lashes have already regrown, just like much of her hair. Douglas looks at her empty, fish-like eyes and feels like something is wrong with this picture.
Her face is as pretty as before if a bit pale. Her lips are now blue instead of the rosy pink, and her red, blushing cheeks are now a nearly translucent white. Her hair also changed as it grew back, the blonde curls that burned up replaced by sleek, black hair. All in all, it makes for a rather nice sight. Instead of the previous bombastic bombshell look, she’s a muted porcelain doll with a slightly creepy vibe.
This creepy vibe is greatly enhanced by the fact that only part of her flesh has regrown. A little bit above her slender eyebrows, her skin stops, the top of her head just a bare white skull. Douglas looks at her for a while longer, unsure what to think of the change in looks. Her eyes that used to hold a sparkle of life are now lifeless and dull, though. Her facial expressions haven’t moved once so far, her eyes staring directly forwards without moving. The fact that her hair is only covering the sides of her head, long dark waterfalls of glistening and sleek waves in the haircut of a monk, only serve to add to the confusing mix of cute and creepy.
Douglas gives a mental shrug and starts putting his spacesuit back on. The shoes take him a while to figure out because of his newly regrown feet. The fact that Katare is stopping him isn't helping either.
“What?” he asks after she stops him from donning the white and black suit for the tenth time. Instead of answering, she just takes his hand and shakes her head a single time. Then she starts weakly pulling his hand. Douglas just follows her directions, standing up and walking beside her as she slowly walks towards the closest green door.
Two doors later, the duo finds themselves in the mall again. Douglas didn't really pay any attention to where they were going, but it seems they got turned around in their snack crusade. Katare swivels her head around for a bit until she starts walking to the left. Douglas follows her, his bony hand still
loosely grasped in her fleshy limb.
Her shoes and his hard feet clack rhythmically against the floor as they meander through the broad thoroughfare. She leads him past meat slimes and sleeping beasts while swivelling her head from side to side. Douglas then walks into her back as she suddenly stops. She leads him into a shop, and he recognises it as one of the spacesuit vendors. The same four models are on display, the distinct spacesuits all sporting two arms and two legs.
A fleshy sounding slap shakes Douglas from his daze as he stops looking at the display models. Katare’s hand flashes once, and a holographic list of items springs into being above the counter. She then presses four options after studying the large list for a good few minutes.
Time passes slowly as both humanoids stare at each other. Four flames, two dull eyes, and two empty sockets are trained on each other for a long time. This staring contest without any willing participants is interrupted when a creaking and sloshing sound comes from behind the back wall. A rectangular section slides open, and a large quantity of goop, mulch, and rotting trash is squeezed out. This is then followed by a slow grinding which cumulates into a large, metal box falling from the hole. The resulting collision with the floor sends stinking muck across the entire store.
Covered in slime, Katare shuffles through the trash. She puts a hand to the box which causes both hand and box to flash once. The large, metal coffin then splits open, displaying four helmets laying side by side. She then stares at Douglas expectantly.
Douglas walks over and recognises the same four suits that are on display in front of the store. The helmets are arranged in a neat row, one bulky, one slimy, one black, and one gold. Douglas picks up the bulky one, which causes the neat package under the helmet to expand into a full suit. The entire thing’s hinges, pistons, and yellow, metal frames are moving to the side as the front splits and spreads open.
Douglas stares at the welcoming hollow of the suit and presses the helmet on his head. He then clumsily steps into the suit. Nothing happens. Katare makes a circling gesture. Douglas steps out, turns around, and steps back in, this time the right side forward. The suit closes with a myriad of mechanical clicks and pneumatic hisses the moment his helmet is above the open neck portion.
Douglas then tries to move and absolutely nothing happens. He tries to order the suit open and nothing happens again. Ten minutes of fumbling later, he still finds himself locked in an extremely sturdy, construction grade prison. Douglas starts getting bored a few hours of failing to escape later. Having not read the manual, he fails to even switch the computer on. Douglas does feel a continuous prodding of a small metal object as it rhythmically pokes him in the neck. Katare is doing nothing at all, just staring blankly ahead without moving a muscle.
He then makes the decision to read the manual before donning complex items like the 42nd edition Brickad Fekston heavy grade enviro suit he is now trapped in. This resolution firmly stuck in his empty head, he pours mana into a spell formation. The irritation at being stuck might have caused him to overcompensate with the spell slightly.
The phlogistonation process started by the spell forcefully rips oxygen and hydrogen atoms from the air, compacting them into water. The energy needed for this reaction is delivered through the mana, but the inefficient process also sucks any energy from its direct environment. The entire hall flashes red once again as automated sensors register a large pressure drop. The howling wind causes Katare to blink her eyes a bit.
A spike of ice forms in front of Douglas’ chest as it grows from a needle into a large chunk of frozen water. Douglas just wants to escape from the suit, the lack of a clear goal causing the spell to go wild. Douglas is blown back as the spell implodes, the suit’s insulation preventing him from receiving the frozen status and shattering as he smashes against the wall. The suit does shatter, the magically induced low temperatures damaging the otherwise nearly impervious spacesuit. The magical ice evaporates slowly into air as Douglas frees himself from the wreckage.
Finally free of his self-imposed prison, Douglas eyes the other three frost covered suits with wary eyes. Instead of trying out the slimy, black, or gaudy items, he walks over to the counter and pulls another nWear spacesuit from the emergency supplies. Katare stands there, unsure how to react to the skeleton donning one of the cheap emergency items again.
Douglas immerses himself in the complicated puzzle that is the manual mode of the spacesuit while Katare walks off. Douglas looks up occasionally and sees her sitting on a bench just outside the shop as she puts her head in her hands. Her face remains blank as she looks around for a bit. The next time Douglas looks over, she is gone. Happily continuing the hour-long process of manual operation, he fails to see Katare peeking at him from around a corner for a while.
More hours pass by, neither of the two really noticing the passing of time. The lighting in the mall stays the same at all hours. The only proof something actually happens as time flows by is a slowly growing pile of empty wrappers. Everything dropped on the station floor got taken away by cleaning bots. The slime covered and dirty state of the mall seems to indicate that something has gone wrong with its cleaning systems.
Wearing his black on white spacesuit, Douglas steps out of the store sometime later. He looks at Katare and the pile of trash at her feet. He then looks at where she is standing, next to a square box that contains the same items as he had been chowing down on just before. He touches his helmet, does some thinking, and decides that eating some more is not worth the effort at the moment. Instead, he sits down and starts thinking about what he wants to do now.
He fails to notice that the partial skin covering Katare’s skull is rapidly regrowing and covering her forehead. Long, black hair grows from newly formed follicles as the woman keeps stuffing her mouth methodically. Her movements freeze the moment the last bit of skin closes on the top of her partially bald head. The woman then shudders intensely and falls to the ground. She gingerly picks herself up from the floor and looks at her surroundings with wild, panicked eyes.
“WHAT THE FUUUUUCK! WHAT WAS THAT? I totally lost control. That thing fireballed my face, and then things went black. No, not that thing …”
Crazed eyes land on the sitting black and white figure. She takes a cautious step closer and sees her own slime covered, barely clad reflection in the round helmet.
“That skeleton. What tech is that … It ate. I ate … Oh gods, how much junk did I eat? I gotta puke. I know what’s in this shit.”
The woman falls to her knees just as Douglas notices that something is wrong. Katare continues babbling like a madwoman, her traumatised mind blindly grasping for something or someone to blame.
“Okay, you skeleton. I seem to remember you can talk. TALK, YOU PIECE OF OSSEOUS SPACEDUST! What did you do to me, what happened, why did I go blind, and why did my body slip from my control? This is my body, not someone else's. My body. My body …”
The woman has wrapped her hands around her knees and is rocking back and forth slowly. The mantra of “my body” is chanted continuously. Douglas stands up from his seating position. He is very much unsure about what is going on with the woman, but he knows what he wants to do next.
“What more?”
“My body … My bo– what? More?”
“What is there more?” asks Douglas while waving his hands around. Both hands, he suddenly realises. Douglas is complete again, and all it took was a binging session that lasted several hours. He wonders briefly why he took notice of his regrowing legs but not of his other arm before ending that train of thought.
“It’s just a standard ring station. Storage is over there, life support below, and homes above. What do you want?” Katare is so baffled by the weird question that she manages to escape from the pit of self-pity that she has found herself stuck in.
“What is there?” asks Douglas while pointing the opposite side of the storage area.
“Ship’s docking, greenhouses, algae tanks, who cares?” Katare is also too confused to wo
nder why his voice is audible from inside an otherwise completely isolated spacesuit. Those cheap pieces of shit don’t even have external speakers, after all, but she is nothing if not a spoiled child of comfort, heiress to a sizable fortune, and raised in the lap of luxury. So she ignores all the bad things and focuses on the most important thing ever, namely what she wants right this moment. “WHO CARES? GET ME OFF THIS SHIT STATION! I’VE HAD IT WITH–”
Douglas is buried under another tirade of cursing as the fully healed and regrown woman screams her lungs out. Douglas is better prepared this time, though, and he just started wearing this suit, damaging it with a fireball just to shut her up doesn't sit right with the skeleton. Douglas just mutes the audio speakers on his helmet as he fiddles with the suit’s manual computer.
He then starts walking towards the opposite side, moving through the mall, away from the storage. The very first locker he broke into netted him the woman following him and is a constant lesson to mind his own business that he is not likely to forget soon. He is not keen on exploring the storage area any further.
Douglas instead spares some mental power by studying the spell shapes again. He honestly wants to explore what classes are available to him as his scholar class has been ready to advance for a while now, but the blue screens are actively sabotaging him. He asked the system to show him the information about his suit while he was donning it. This resulted in a blank screen blocking his sight for half an hour before the data was displayed.
So Douglas studies the runes present in the spell shapes slowly. The meaning of the dots behind each rune sentence is known to him, the rest is still vague at best. The runes are made up of angular symbols, and there are quite a lot of them. He stumbles a few times but keeps his mental focus on the shapes as he makes his way through the mall.
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