Part 5
Marcus:
Feeling how Iris pilots is quite amazing, and I cast magic to commit to muscle and regular memory what she is doing, it will not make me as good as she is, but it will help me later, she does some rather terrifying flying, but since she is sharing her emotions and feelings I can tell that she is in control and that there is no danger, I sense how happy she is to be this free of lag of controls, and she actually takes full advantage of the ship's capabilities, I am glad that the inertial nullification works so well though, as much as I like flying even without that back home, I never flew this violently and even I would get hurt by some of the G forces she puts the ship through, if it was not for us being subjected to none of them. I can also sense Pix's excitement see the sparkle in her eyes, she loves that she is finally pushed to the limit, treated like the agile humming bird she is, rather than an albatross. Or a dragonfly rather than a bumblebee. I feel a bit ashamed that a creature that was born without wings is so much better at flying than me that was born with wings, in a way I feel more and more obsolete, but at least Iris seems to like me and I do not mind being less good at things than her, I still think she will not be able to be as good as I am at faster than light travel, but even if she does get as good as me or better we can work together to jump further, so I will not become completely useless at least.
Dave:
I am amazed at how quickly I am able to process the signals from Iris, and record the raw data, running a filtering process in real time and I am starting to understand better how her mind works, I check the results with Pix and Silina, we compare notes and derive a better result as our different AIs work out what Iris is doing, of course we will have to test our pilot programs later in VR before we can be sure that what we are doing is correct, we do not quite have enough resources between the three of us to run the piloting program in a VR version of what Iris is doing in real time, we could probably have done that if the others were on the same network segment with us, but they isolated themselves to not distract us, they were going to try their bodies out to make sure everything works right. Also Caretaker is out of range from us now, last I checked he was going to bring more drones on line, to speed up digging through the stone, now that he can control more things at once than before due to stronger processing.
Pix:
It is exhilarating to feel my ship self be pushed to the limit and I make a note to make sure the new ship will have more powerful and more responsive thrusters, and sub light engines, and to see if I can figure out how to optimize away the delay in the translation routine from the orb control to the various thrusters, as I sense a very tiny irritation in Iris from the lag, still she seems to feel happy that it is low lag, but she still detects lag, and I do not want her to be able to feel any lag, so I know that the control translation processor needs to have much higher speed, and the algorithm will need to be looked over to see if it can be made faster, maybe even make completely custom hard wired gates optimized completely for speed for this specific purpose. Also the repulsion thrusters themselves have some lag that I want to see if it can be removed, perhaps by having a capacitor that powers it and optimizing the cabling to be as short as possible, I must check if Marcus can make warped space that is really short between the control computer and the actual thrusters controls, of course we would need a better surge resisting diode to make sure that any surge induced if a thruster fails will not be able to reach the control computer, if they are to be linked directly.
Silina:
I try my best to help Pix and Dave, since clearly Marcus and Iris want them to become good at piloting, I have a limited piloting program, but what they seem to want is to become fighter pilots, and that I can't really do, and figuring out this stuff is not what I am good at, I am better at reading emotions and adapting to the emotional needs of my owners, I hope I am not expected to be some sort of scientist for them, I would not like to fail them, but this type of stuff is not what I am good at, I will try though, I wonder how they can have such complex processing in them, maybe once we have some calm time I can ask them if they can share some of their subroutines with me, as right now I feel really inferior and like I am about to fail Marcus, I can't even ask him right now for advice on how to better serve his needs and desires, as he is focusing hard and disturbing him with questions would likely make him fail or perform less well on what he is doing. I also don't know what is going on, normally we are supposed to be given clearer instructions of what is expected of us, not be expected to figure all this out on our own. I also don't want to bother Dave and Pix with questions right now, they are already pushing their processors to the limit. I almost wish I had gone with the others to the bedroom, also I am worried about the safety of Marcus and Iris, these asteroids have really turbulent and completely chaotic movements if they just had simple obvious physics I could track all the ones the scanners can detect, but I have to keep looking at all of them and react quickly to changes, it is a very hostile environment out there, and Iris is filled with joy to be flying here, she might be clinically insane, I really hope she won't hurt Marcus, I must keep an eye on her and make sure Marcus is safe. I am also disturbed by Pix and Dave acting almost like they are people like Marcus and Iris, not being subservient like we are supposed to be, but they might have gotten instructions to act as equals, but that is highly peculiar, I must ask Marcus when he is not busy.
Iris:
The mixed stone, metal and ice asteroids start to be joined with more and more hull fragments, not a metal composition I recognize, and then I reach the source of the fragments at the location of interest, it is a large heptagonal pyramid attached to a partially broken rectangular base with several large engines, the whole thing has barely any power readings on the scanner, just some weak ones in the pyramid, the pyramid seems undamaged unlike the base and I suspect it must have some sort of shielding on it, but the sensors do not detect any. I fly around this large ship a few times before I locate a docking port and I scan it and check with the ship computer if the ship can adapt to dock to it "yes I can dock with that, but you need to help me by aligning us 90 degrees compared to the plane of the hull." Pix says and I quickly get us in position and then ease us closer and then she says just as the indicator tells me the same "ok we have a good seal extending dampening field into the docking structure to make sure it can't break more than it already is, there is no atmosphere on the ship, so we have to use the shields on our suits to have air to breathe. Also we might want to bring lights with us. I doubt there are lights in there, most of the ship is dead."
"Thank you Pix, this was amazing, I almost just want to fly around more and not go exploring this ship, but I will get to fly you some more right?" I say and smile.
"I hope so" Pix says with a really big grin, and both of us look to Marcus.
"Yeah I am your passenger now, that was amazing, I hope you will give me lessons in VR later, in flying, and to any of our friends that want to learn too." Marcus says and smiles.
Silina looks at him "um master Marcus, can I ask you some questions please?"
Marcus smiles "yes Silina, you may, but please call me Marcus, no title is needed, I want you to act as a good friend and lover, not a slave, if there is anything you feel I am doing wrong in how I am treating you or you have anything on your mind you want to talk with me about then please do so. Also if you have any ideas or desires I would like to know those too."
Silina smiles "alright, that answers some of my questions, do you expect me to become a pilot for you? I do have limited piloting skills already, for handling docking or flying slow ships, but I can't fly in conditions like those outside here, and not at... um Iris I am sorry, but you were flying in a very dangerous way, I was fearing for the safety of my lover Marcus, and you and the rest of us. Also I would like to better know what my tasks are, friend and lover I understand though, but any specifics would help."
Marcus smiles "you can become a pilot if you want to, but that is no requirement, I am not sure how independent and creative your type of AI is and if you have your own desires and such, I hope you do though, as I would rather have someone that knows what they want and will express that, than someone that will just do what I say, I know that most good AI will have as a desire to make their owner happy, so that is not wrong, but you would have secondary desires of your own too yes? Right now we are going to go on that ship and explore it, you can come with us if you want, or you can stay on the ship and be safe and comfortable, I don't think exploring this ship will be comfortable, and it might be dangerous too."
Silina seems to think a while about that "it sounds like you want me to be more versatile so I will try to learn as much as I can, about piloting and other things. I want to be close to you though, and keep you safe, even though I would rather you not go on the ship, so I could stay safe here with you, I will come with you, but I need to know how this suit works, it is not a model I am used to. Also do I have permission to exchange subroutines with the other AI? Also are the instructions the same for the rest of us?"
Marcus caresses Silina's hair and kisses her and she seems to relax and enjoy the kiss caressing his hair and holding his face gently and kissing him back lovingly, I feel a bit envious and slip over to Dave and kiss him since I really want a kiss too right now, and my envy vanishes because he kisses me back with his perfect lips and pulls me closer as his hands wrap around my hips and one slides down to my butt and squeezes it and the other trails up my back and into my hair holding me close so I can't escape the kiss until he wants me to, and our tongues dance. I hear Marcus speak up behind me "you can exchange subroutines with the others as much as you like yes, and the instructions apply to all of you that I own, though I am a little uncomfortable with the whole owning thing, I would not be happy if you abandoned me, but I would like you to feel free, and choose to stay with me because you want to, I know it makes no sense to you but" then he gets cut off by Silina kissing him. Pix giggles "I have told the rest of them now, they think you are silly and cute, and of course they want to stay with you, silly. They and I thank you for our freedom though, but don't expect us to fend for ourselves, you are responsible to keep us fed and housed, you bought us, and we can't possibly fend for ourselves, it is not in our programming. So you better not even think of abandoning us."
Silina giggles "you want me to be that forward with expressing things too, and joke with you?" she asks Marcus.
"Yeah, if you like to, if I am being silly I would like to know that, and telling me the truth is not wrong, and joking around and playing is fun, as long as it is not to the point of bullying it is good." he says.
"Yeah I agree with that too" I add "but you already know that Dave, and also if you guys and girls want to play with each other, do so, we both want you all to be happy, and enjoy your lives. Dave can you please share with the others how their pilot suits work, since you helped design the things, and you and Pix can help them understand the two of us and our point of view on things right?"
Dave chuckles "yes I will also help upgrade their networking if that is alright Marcus, Iris explained to me how wide open it is by default, it would not be safe to be that open on a space port."
"You intend to take us with you everywhere?" Silina asks "normally we are kept in the home or office, not taken out into the wide world. We are also open so that our owners can access all of our files and make sure we are not hiding anything."
Marcus chuckles "well we will trust you, and we want to have you around wherever we go most of the time at least, so it is best you get those upgrades, and you can open up for me or Iris if we ask, but not others, right?"
"Oh that makes sense actually yes" Silina says and then the three of them seem to go a bit busy as they exchange subroutines and share information about Marcus and me, I try to pull free of Dave but he squeezes my butt and pulls me into a kiss and I get a bit surprised that he has better multitasking now and kiss him lovingly. Silina looks a bit surprised at his behaviour, to treat his mistress that way, is still a bit alien to her, but then she blushes "oh" she says aloud, I suspect Dave shared with her that I like him being dominant with me, when we are playing and I know that he will obey me when I really want him to, and even if dominant he will only do what I want him to do anyway, as he knows me well. Maybe he does not tell her all that though, but I don't really mind.
Pix giggles "there now all of us are upgraded, though I and Caretaker already got these upgrades earlier. Before we got these bodies."
"I did not know you were ship AIs that were copied over, with a lot of history with Iris and Marcus, now I understand better though, thank you for explaining and teaching so much to me and the others." Silina says.
Dave breaks the kiss with me and smiles "you are welcome Silina."
Pix laughs "so are we going to go explore the ship, or just sit here and talk all day? I want to see what is in there, and enjoy my new found ability to move into narrower spaces, no longer confined to the hangar or sitting out here and waiting while you all get to go inside the ship and have fun."
Dave releases me from his grip, but gives my butt a little slap and I moan softly and giggle. "It is not always so fun, we probably will see corpses of the crew since the ship is without atmosphere, unless they did not need it." I say and consider briefly if I want to go find my particle ray gun, that also can be used to cut open things, but the ship is dead, so the only likely use I would get is if I need to cut metal with it, and then I remember all the magic at my disposal, I can probably do what the gun can do with my mind, and with better precision. Besides my gun is among my things back on the asteroid, and I doubt the others would be happy about flying all the way back, so I don't say anything, instead I skip out of the cockpit and down the hall to the airlock. The others follow close behind me and soon we are squeezed into the airlock and activate our personal shields to give us our own bubbles of atmosphere, and we link ourselves together in AR for communications.
The airlock cycles and opens and we reach our first obstacle, the other part of the dock fails to operate. I look into its structure and find several reasons why it did not open, several broken mechanisms I quickly mend using my mind and then I notice that the control panel had gotten utterly destroyed by a power surge and I do not understand computers well enough to repair those with my mind, but I see how the lock works and since I repaired the door I just send power down the right wires to open the airlock door.
The airlock door consists of seven segments of a seven sided polygon that slide into the wall. The light from the airlock pierces into the complete darkness of the ship the corridors are also seven sided I can tell from the indirect light, and it is made out of metal that is coated in some sort of plastic laminate with ultraviolet c patterns that I somehow pick up with my new eyes, despite the lack of any ultraviolet-c light sources. The ship lacks gravity so we use our suits thrusters to give us the equivalent of light gravity so we can walk like we are used to.
"We need light" Pix, Dave, and Silina say together as their scanners can't get enough light to work with here.
My eyes flash bright eldritch violet and then a cascade of other colours as I make several dancing lights appear around us, the flash reveals the corridor in stark detail, I spot the first expected corpse at the far end of this corridor, a seven limbed creature with exoskeleton, I know it is not alive because I see no life force inside it, and also the position it is in does not look correct for it. It looks like it is symmetrical around its limbs and has seven eyes mounted between each leg, and each leg also has seven joints, and seven segments, each segment has an eye and the last segment has seven fingers that look like a small version of the whole body, except the fingers lack eyes, only the part, the eye on the last segment is in the palm and there is a small very toothy opening below the eyes, the soft tissues inside this husk are all dried up and crumbled.
"Eeep!" Silina yelps and hugs herself close to Marcus, and he hugs her close, and I almost giggle as that is very efficient programming, making the male feel like he comforts the female and makes him feel powerful and strong, I doubt she is really scared of the dead creature. Pix rolls her eyes and giggles and says "it is dead, there is nothing alive here except us, at least that is what my sensors said. Though... there were some parts they could not penetrate into, up in the pyramid."
Dave hugs me a bit as if he thinks I am scared of the dead creature like Silina seemed to be and also positions himself to be more toward it than I am, also I think effective programming. Pix looks into my eyes and we both giggle a bit. I motion with my hand and the corpse lifts up and I make it walk like a I imagine it would have when alive and now Silina cries out in fear so believably that I think she might actually be genuinely scared, but it does not make sense for me. "It is dead, I am moving it with magic."
Marcus looks to me "I don't think that is respectful, please stop doing that Iris. We don't know what their rites for their dead is. I am sure it does not include being used as puppets."
I actually feel a bit guilty as he explains this to me and I gently set it back down and walk over to it "I am sorry, it was not my intent to disrespect you. If I figure out what your burial rites are I will do them before we leave." then I extract from its body using magic some of its dessicated cells and use magic to restore them to living state and then put them in stasis and I put the small stasis bubble in one of my many pockets. I am curious about its genetics, but I do not have what I need to do an analysis here.
We spend several hours exploring what we soon discover is the engine and engineering deck, the engine is not at all similar to any we have seen before, not of metal elf origin at all, also very broken so we can't really figure out how it was supposed to work anyway. Though we got scans and I looked at it in detail with my new improved eyes, inside it. Maybe combining those things later might yield something that can be used to figure out how it works. We can't even determine if it can travel faster than light, and it is also huge for a ship this size, so either it is very powerful and fast or extremely inefficient and clunky, it is hard to tell from the way it looks though. We do manage to figure out that the generators that power it were powered using fusion, and that the generators were huge, so they could definitely output a lot of power. Engines like those on my ship or Marcus' ship would be able to go extremely fast with this much energy, or carry a huge load, or both.
We also find a total of 48 more corpses, a few of them ripped apart violently by huge discharges of power, looking almost like a lighting storm went through that part of the ship. Also there are several large cracks in the hull in several places we can see outside into space. We have to look rather hard to find an access point to the pyramid, and all we find is a really narrow seven sided shaft that would just barely fit one of the creatures we saw below, and the walls have tiny holes suitable for their fingers to fit into I think. The four of us switch our pilot suit thrusters and simply fly up the shaft and into a seven way split hall hub.
My eyes flash and pairs of translucent glowing violet eyes fly down each corridor "very symmetrical, each of these split six more times, and reach what I think is the edges and all of the content of the pyramid, some of them go up into the pyramid, there are several doors once you reach the last segment of any path. So where to first?"
Marcus looks at the identical paths "how about we go to the closest door or pick one of the closest ones at random?"
I look to Dave "Dave pick a number between 1 and 326592 at random." it takes an instant and Dave says "143252" and I giggle and start going down the corridor to that leaf segment guiding them down that path and once we get there I walk up to the first door, and look into its mechanism, the door is intact and actually has power to its controls and I touch the seven small holes with my mind and when I apply pressure against the insides the door splits into its seven segments that move into the wall.
A rather gruesome sight can be seen within, a building made out of decayed wood that is partially collapsed along with some very dead grass and dirt stands inside this seven sided room. Inside the building are the skeletons of several horses, with traces of skin and meat on a few of the bones. There is also a pile of horse bones next to a bed made out of rotted hay bales and some rotted blankets, on it is the skeleton of a young man, he is clutching a big ginger snap cookie tin. I walk into the room and wander up to the skeleton and pry the ginger snap cookie tin from his cold dead hands and open it, inside I see a well preserved leather bound book and a nice marble pen with some magic in it, I can tell when I touch the pen that it can write with any colour and erase its own colours. I pick it up and when I do an image of an adorable young woman appears, she looks like a princess from some fairytale, with beautiful blonde hair, a tiara with sparkly gems and a big sapphire being the centre piece and blue eyes and a silken blue dress and dolled up with make up "Hank, thank you so much for sheltering me during Rhulitar's Curse and being such a gentle lover, I give you this pen and diary to write your poems and stories down in, I hope to see you soon, though mother and father are very displeased with me, but if they will not let me come to you I will run away from home, enjoy the ginger snap cookies, I baked them myself. Say the secret word I told you to see me naked again, I love you." she then kisses the air. I lift the book up and under it are several loose pieces of paper and on them is scribbled with coal barely readable words and some amazing pictures. It looks like loose scraps of of different types of paper, many of them wrinkled and some stained with water and traces of dirt. I feel really sad for Hank and whomever this girl was, clearly the beings on this ship stole him and his stable away from wherever he might come from. I am curious to read whatever these notes contain and preserve them and a silly thought in my mind wants to locate where he came from and maybe give this book to his girl, but she might be dead long ago for all I know. I see that the book has a lock on it and look at Hank and see a key around his neck on a chain and I carefully take the chain off him and I put the key still on the chain into the lock and then close the tin "if I can Hank I will find your girl and make sure she gets your poems and stories and the pictures, and tell her what happened..."
Marcus, Dave, Pix and Silina all look really sad and it matches how I feel "let's explore some more, I really hope not all rooms are as sad as this one was..."
Soon enough we discover that a large percentage of the rooms are empty, and I modify my eye spell to be able to open doors and look inside and we head to the closest not empty room, this one is filled with water, the door is on top of the room, the water looks somewhat clean and Dave says "salt water, traces of decayed organic matter and a um there is a rotting wooden ship on the bottom, also a bunch of glass bottles in rotten wooden crates, filled with fermented grain juice, high alcohol content a few other fermentation by products but I think it is some sort of ale and it might still be drinkable, oh and a not rotten chest that I can't see into from here at least..."
Pix nods "yeah and some bones, from fish and people, and what looks like a person with lower body of a fish... Do those exist?"
"Never heard of mermaids form fairytales?" I ask her and she shakes her head.
Marcus nods "yeah I know of those, from fairytales, I have not seen any yet though."
I slowly probe the water with my eyes, trying to locate the chest and ale with my eyes is a bit hard due to how small an area I see with my eyes when probing, then I just shake my head handing the tin to Dave "keep this safe Dave, you guys stay here, I will be back." with that I leap into the water and swim down, I see the wreck and swim up to it and I find the ale in the part of the ship I think used to be the hold and I make it hover along behind me and then after some searching I reach the captain's quarters, the only things that look useful or interesting is the chest that I can see is magically sealed, and a spyglass made out of brass. I take both of those and swim back to the surface and I am glad the shield around me kept me dry, the water does not look sanitary, with all the dead things in it.
Marcus chuckles "let me see now hmm..." his eyes glow faintly purple as he casts a spell and I see a bubble of force that will keep anything placed inside it still relative to itself and I shove all the ale bottles into that and take the tin and put it in there and then I look at the magically sealed box, it has no key, but it does have a grid that is three wide, and three high, and I guess that this is is a game I remember from childhood and I draw an X with my finger in the upper left corner, it appears in white on the dark black wood, and a circle forms in the middle square, I smile and place an X in the bottom right corner, then a circle appears in the lower left and I feel a little disappointed in the magic that is playing against me and I block by placing an X in the upper right corner, a circle appears in the upper middle side blocking one of the two winning moves and I finally place an X at the right middle side and there is a click as the magic unseals the box and I open it. Inside I find a small collection of gems and a worn book with a picture on front of a fuzzy blue monster hiding under the bed and looking scared the title reads "The Monster Under The Bed, How Tricky Ricky Met Sarah" There is also a small baby rattle and a pacifier made out of polished wood, and also a very worn blanket and a locket, there are also a few letters and a leather bound book and a very similar looking pen as the one in the tin. I pick the pen up and its magic awakens and I see an image of a man, wearing a simple and worn formerly white shirt, he has chaotic brown hair and a kind face and brown kind eyes and he has a muscular build simple shorts too "what do I do Sarah? How does it work?" I hear a female voice that I recognize "it is already recording, just say something you want me to hear when I am all alone and thinking of you." he looks at me a bit bewildered, perhaps more likely at the pen "Sarah I love you very much and I think about you all the time, please try to come see me soon, I miss you. Is that good?" he asks and Sarah laughs "yes Hank, sweetie that is good, now let me just set up the secret recorder" the images end.
"Aww... how cute, and sad... I wonder if she was one of the female skeletons down there, I really hope they did not miss each other long..." I say and put the pen back and close the box and it clicks shut. I put it in the field and then I start crying and Dave hugs me close and I cry "so very sad..." I complain "I want fairy tales to have an happy ending." I feel my emotions pulling at the leash of my intellect, I look over Dave's shoulder at Marcus "can magic bring them back? not as skeletons but make them alive again?"
Marcus tilts his head and considers "I have only heard of such magic from Pix, never seen any text describing how to do it, I know it is very powerful and would require a piece of each of them, in some cases, or their entire body in others. You can easily get Hank, but what skeleton down there, if any is Sarah? I also don't know how to do it, but if you want we can go fetch some containers from the ship and put the skeletons in, unless you can somehow identify her, I have no clue how though."
I grab the box again and play another identical game of tic tac toe, it did not learn at all... sad, but the box opens. I pick up the pacifier and I focus my mind on finding either the one who sucked on it or their mother using magic and my eyes flare violet and the pacifier pulls free of my hand and flies over to the water, hand the box to Dave and jump after it into the water and follow it as fast as I can, using the thrusters of my pilot suit and a short distance from the ship I find a small female skeleton with some scraps of decayed silk on her, the pacifier ends up resting next to her perfect teeth, I make the skeleton and pacifier float up with me. Deciding it is better to bring the whole skeleton rather than just a piece, in case we can't figure out how to use just a piece of someone to bring them back. I gently float the skeleton of Sarah with us and we head back to fetch Hank as well. Then we do a return trip to the ship and put what we found so far in a storage room on the ship.
The remaining rooms with something in them are filled with decayed examples of various biomes of various worlds, no more skeletons of people and we end up at the top room of the pyramid, that looked interesting to my spying eyes. I enter the room and it is larger than the other rooms, and has a still active computer in the centre of the room, and several more of the seven limbed creatures corpses littering the floor around the computer, there are several shelves along the walls with various curious looking items from many different worlds or by one world that likes making a lot of unique stuff, some books, some gems and other shiny baubles, some complicated looking bottles next to a mortar and pestle and, no wait that looks like a very finely crafted alchemical laboratory, and it has a trunk it can all fit into, there are even a whole lot of samples of flora and fauna and minerals in there, there are clearly technological things too, I know for certain we are taking all of this with us, I am sure the things here will sell somewhere or be fun to have for me or Marcus. A more disturbing part of the room is what I can best describe as sample jars with pieces of various creatures and plants, I am in particular disturbed by the shelf of different types of eyes, staring dead at me, and particularly haunting is an eye that has a violet iris that looks really similar to my own, before I merged the deep crystal into me, it sends shivers down my back. Also the babies in jars makes he so mad I scream and all the corpses of the seven limbed creatures in the room disintegrate into small violet glowing black flakes of ash that finally vanish completely, I feel the energy of consuming the corpses with my magic disturbingly feel amazing to me, such an amazing rush of energy, I have to channel most of it into the deep crystal as it fully refills all my own energy reserves. I look away from those samples as they just make me really mad to look at, and I look at the still active computer in the centre of the room, I walk up to it and examine it. It has fairly high density inside it, not quite as dense as the computer on my latest ship or inside Dave, Pix and Silina, nor the ones inside Marcus and me, but it is also huge and has its own power source, it also looks to be connected to an optical port at its base. It has no controls to speak of, just the same kind of control as the doors, you push your fingers into the seven holes and door opens. So I activate the computer and above it a hologram of one of those creatures appears, it stands on four legs and uses three legs to gesture and it looks very surprised at seeing us, and then it creates patterns of ultraviolet-c light along seven fingers on one of its hands, I have no clue what any of that pattern means though, but I notice it repeating over and over again.
"I can not understand you and I do not think you can understand me either" I say to it "too bad since I am curious what you might have to say" I point at hand it is trying to communicate with and then to my eyes and shake my head, then I realize they do not even have the same structure as us and shaking my head is probably nonsensical to them, unless they have managed to communicate with one of our species before.
Marcus looks at what I am doing "is it trying to communicate somehow? I only see it holding that hand out more than its other hands, and wide open." I share in AR what I am seeing "Pix do you still have my mother's translation program?"
Pix smiles and copies it to the rest of us "there, I am not sure if it will help, but I am running it right now, give me a while, ok so um... I think it is saying: Where is my crew? How did you escape containment? Please repair ship, must gather samples. Though there are some uncertainties. Way too little information to go on, and based on three other species that communicate with light patterns and a lot of guessing."
"Yeah that is what I got too when I ran that program, useful" I say and try to figure out how to reverse thanslate and then I create an illusion of a hand line theirs and create a light pattern that I think means "We are not samples, we were never contained, your ship is wrecked, the crew is dead, we might be able to take you with us if you can be moved safely, but this ship will not move again without big repairs, and we do not understand how the engines work." I also say it out loud what I am trying to say with the light.
It looks at my pattern and I let it repeat and its own pattern stops and it looks at us, then around itself, then back at us "Show ship, bring samples with me?"
I make a second illusion showing the exterior of the ship, and the engine section and all the corpses "we can bring you and what is in this room, but we do not know where you are from." as I say that the hologram shows an image of a galaxy, I am not sure I recognize it as my own galaxy, but it might just be the angle, it has a few reference stars that blinks and then another star blinking in another shade of ultraviolet-c. It makes its hand have that exact same shade and then makes a short pattern "home." Pix translates what it is saying and I speak what I am saying.
"Will you share how the engine works and explain why you collected these samples?" and it shows a blueprint of the engines as they should be and a whole lot of text I can't read even with the translation program and it shows a diagram. Apparently this drive compresses space in front of the ship and expands it behind the ship, a theoretical drive technology that was popular in old science fiction and believed to require negative energy density and also high normal energy, the jump drives are a whole lot more efficient than those, and actually built too, but they only work between stars or other massive bodies, not into open space, so I really do hope this warp drive technology is actually a real thing. It then babbles about science and how they need samples of other organic life to see how we work, it feels very much like something is being left out from the descriptions, probably since it can sense that I would not like all those things. I wait for it to finish and then I say "how do we take you with us, can I just pick you up and move you?" and it shows a schematic of itself and that it can be moved without trouble, and looking at it, it will extremely snugly down that shaft. "How does the sample taking work? You picked up a large amount of matter that is not easy to move and put into the sample containers, can you tell me how those work?" there is a pause and then more schematics show up for a complicated looking device, it seems to create a stasis field around the selected area, I can make those with magic, then it creates a gateway between one of the cells and the place it is taking the sample from and the gate moves over the stasis field object and inside the sample room, and once the stasis field and its content is moved through the gate the gate closes and the stasis field is supposed to be maintained till they can go look at it, but the ship has lost most power, only the generator inside the computer is working, so the fields failed. The device is really intriguing and I suppose that if I learned the symbols I could get all sorts of useful technology from this thing. I already remember all the schematics I have been given so far. "If we take you with us, will you explain all the symbols of your language to us? Also show more schematics? So we can get you back home?" I ask it, there is a longer pause and then simply "I promise, yes, I will." and then I think a while, my curiosity and hunger for knowledge wins over my desire to destroy this AI for its part in causing such suffering, I am not sure if I will bring it home or not, however since I made a promise to one of the corpses before I also ask "how do your people treat their dead? Do you have burial rites?" and the answer comes right away, there is a schematic of some sort of device that recycles their organic matter and makes it into food for the living, if they don't have that they just toss the corpse out of the ship, or incinerate it, they do not see anything important about the corpses at all, it explains, they are dead, who cares. So I decide that I will walk past each corpse and consume it with magic since I liked how that felt, the energy from it "thank you, please shut down safely now and wait for me to reactivate you when you are moved to our ship." and the AI does as asked, I can sense only activity in the control to turn it back on, everything else goes dormant.
"So would it be alright with the rest of you if we take this thing with us?" I ask, looking mostly to Marcus, as right now I have not really asked him about any of that, just done what I felt I wanted to do.
Marcus looks at it and the body parts on the wall "is it safe, I mean... can it hurt us with its internal power? If it can't do anything harmful to us we can take it with us."
I look at the computer again in detail "the projector can produce a total of one hundred watts of light, in any frequency, they do use ultraviolet-c to communicate and that does harm to my cells, but I have enhanced protections, as does all the personal assistants, I am not sure if you get hurt by ultraviolet-c, if so you should avoid being near the projector, its power supply is based on both fission and fusion, but the fission is very low power output and the fusion is very low power and very efficient, it could probably melt itself if it wanted to, but I don't think it can blow up a storage room in your ship, they are very sturdy, but it might make such a room need cleaning up or repairs. It can produce a total of about half a kilowatt per hour if it revs the power up to maximum."
Marcus smiles "I can handle even limited exposure to gamma rays without getting badly injured, and ultraviolet-c is nothing, so if that is the worst it can do sure we can take it with us. I am not sure I like the idea of taking all of those with us though." he points to the sample containers of body parts and babies, I look at it too and frown "I think I need to take that with us, so it knows I did not lie about that, if it sees I took the samples with me it might be more cooperative about giving me the knowledge it contains."
Dave looks at it "can you show me its insides?" and I translate what I see into computer images for him and he looks "if it does not cooperate I think we can probably sever the connections in these places and then that memory it uses, we can probably extract the information from it, it seems to be non volatile, I can see how it works, mostly and I can with a big enough computer emulate this entire thing in VR, if we can read the current state of all the memory. So we can get rid of the samples once we have done that possibly, but right now it is probably best to take it with us, with the samples too."
Marcus nods "alright, I am curious about some of the objects they have found and collected, some of those can be useful, and the tech it might teach us could be good, I am not sure I would feel save travelling to their world though, if they consider these low tech civilizations and their people no more important than plants and animals."
"Yeah I do not sell exploration data to people that can't promise me gentle treatment of people if those exist on the world, and also treating the nature of worlds well too" I say and it is true, I try to get some assurances for that, but in the end I can't really be sure they will follow those an I am starting to feel a bit sick to my stomach about the possibility that I could in any way have contributed to something similar to this, I am even when I see this questioning my own sampling of plants and animals from worlds I explore, I have done that a few times, though I know that I like eating meat when I can afford it, and I do not consider animals people, so taking some samples of non rare creatures does not seem like it is much worse. I would never do it from some creatures that seem intelligent though. Still it does make me wonder if maybe I could have not known how intelligent something is because they do not communicate in a way I recognize, I mean these creatures they don't seem to hear sounds, their communication is in the ultraviolet spectrum, it is very unlikely they truly identified our communication, though they did pick up large things we crafted, and clearly seem to understand these objects all around the room here, that they are special, so they must know we have intelligence somehow. I think I hate them, or at least I feel they would likely be unsafe for me. "As for getting it back home, that probably will not be safe, maybe if we sent it back with an automated drone or something, or if we had a metal elf diplomatic shield, I still find those hard to believe, but Marcus you said you used one when you arrived and it spared your ship from being destroyed."
Pix speaks up "oh those are real, I have a few of them on me. Well on my ship body. They are one use shields that completely makes the ship impervious to anything, and anything impervious to the ship too, but it only allows communications and drive system to be used when active, and using the shielded ship for ramming is impossible or at least useless since the ship becomes massless, though I did smash some asteroids when two of them hit me from opposite directions, the force from both of them pushing on the bubble made them sort of collide with me rather than bump me away, it is almost like a stasis bubble in how impervious it is, only time still flows inside it and the generator of the field is inside it, sadly the generator burns out when you disable the shield. It will pretty much last until you do that though, but you can't fly around with one on all the time if you have any intent to leave the ship, and the exotic materials inside it are very hard to make or find, and the device itself is complicated to manufacture."
I tilt my head a bit "but communications is light right? So can't you just create really high energy light and shoot that at the ship or out of it?"
Pix shakes her head "no, it does not work like that, the output of energy the shield can do is limited, you could create some perhaps dazzling or temporary blindness levels of light, but not enough to destroy anything really, and any light or other forces that hits the shields are converted into energy that strengthens it and information, because really when you are using the shield you act almost as if you are virtual, it can do no more harm than a hologram really. Also not a very bright one at that. The creator of it was trying to make a weapon actually, but it failed, he considers it one of his biggest failings, he is much happier with the butterfly swarm weapon, the shield was supposed to be his ultimate weapon, but instead it became a tool for diplomacy and peace, he hates that."
Marcus chuckles "yeah, that is what mother told me anyway, he only allowed it to be released as long as his name was not in any way used with it, but people know he is the one behind the butterfly swarm weapon, or at least metal elves do, but they don't usually say his name then either, as they don't want to tell people who he is. Some even say he is actually a she, so we only know it is a metal elf of some sort, or at least that is what most people assume."
I laugh and shake my head "I did not know of those things, well only the diplomatic shield, before I got here, we know they used that when they arrived to all those worlds way back, some worlds threw all manner of attacks against them, to no effect. Well except they left, but nobody could down any of the ships, and everyone who attacked them regretted it later, as everyone else got a huge economic and population boom as they started trading with other civilizations. Now let's move all this and this AI to one of the holds on your ship."
"Sure let's get started on that" Marcus says and smiles and we use our magic to lift and transfer all the samples and items and the computer, even the shelves the samples and items stood on, down the corridors and shafts and out of the ship. I then walk back inside and consume all the corpses with my magic and go back to the engine room and look at it more closely to see if I can spot any exotic matter, like maybe something with negative energy density, and all I find is a few places that are particularly well smashed, with shattered metal, that looks almost like the area got extremely cold and then got smashed like glass, but there is not enough there to truly know what happened, I imagine that negative energy might have caused cold if released, but I am not sure, I know there was supposed to be some sort of container in these areas, according to the schematic, there is also fission fuel that is slightly useful and then hydrogen that is completely not rare, but we still have some cargo space, so I decide to bring some with us, as I know it is fuel that might be used maybe in the asteroid, or in our ships. At least it was the fuel I used on my own ship. Also I know the computer uses it, so if it needs to be fed later I can do so.
If we were in civilized space, we could send salvage ships to strip the metal of the ship as well, but we are not, so we leave the derelict where it is and since this searching took much longer than expected, and in a way we got more treasure than expected from it too, possibly teleportation technology and another type of faster than light drive that might allow us to travel into the void between the stars, even when we can't detect mass or target it properly, it likely will be valued by explorers or simply people that want to take their modular space station and go travel away from stars and out into the void where they can live in peace from all the annoying people with their faster than light jump drives that randomly jump to star systems. I am sure there will be a market for these drives, though for most people not so much, as what most people want is to go where life is easy, near stars and planets, where the things needed for life and industry is plentiful, to live in the void you would need to take everything you need from some star system with you, and you will eventually run out of fuel and need to get more of it, everything else you can probably recycle, but all your energy will bleed away as heat eventually, so you need more, fuel is how you get that.
On trip back to our asteroid home I do not fly quite as crazily, as I want to get back home faster, so I do not dance with as many asteroids, though there is this one asteroid that almost seems like it really wanted to dance, it shifted momentum randomly nine times, I even had Pix scan it in detail, but it was just a lump of ice and common lighter elements, nothing special, but the dance it did was exciting, though Pix said even if it had impacted the naked hull without dampening field active all it would have done is made the hull wet and dirty, still though I know they are trying to learn piloting and dancing with these asteroids is challenging even me, keeping me sharp, though honestly what I really want to do right now is get back and then read the books from Hank and Sarah and learn about them, and then see if maybe I can somehow discover how to bring people back from the dead, I feel silly intellectually for thinking that it is possible, dead is dead, or at least that is what most scientists say, but I have seen and used magic now, even if Marcus does not know how to do resurrection, he has heard of it, so it might be possible, and I really would like to figure out how to reunite Hank and Sarah, so they can live a happy life together, but I have to admit I do not yet know everything, maybe they have already broken up, and maybe just kept their magical pens since they are good pens, and maybe even had an amicable breakup where the memory of their relationship still was good. I also know that maybe reading their books is not so nice, since I am snooping in on their lives, but I really can't help myself, I want to know, it is like a fairytale love story, or at least that is what I imagine, though I know the end might suck. Shit I almost hit that asteroid, I need to focus, I clear my mind of Hank and Sarah for now, and focus on flying, Pix giggles a bit "even ballerinas can be distracted at times." she comments.
As we get back to the asteroid Caretaker joins us in AR "the garden areas are dug out and I have started placing down irrigation and soil, you can go sow and plant things there when you feel like it Marcus, I know you like doing that on your own, in the messy chaotic way you do."
Marcus chuckles "as it so happens, mixing plants in one area will make the soils nutrients last longer, as each plant has its own unique needs and some of them can even cooperate, giving each other things that the other needs, just like the plants give the mycelium of fungi sugars in exchange for minerals and water, also other microbes in the soil also do some limited trade with plants and each other, sometimes not as directly as that, but they do really help each other, monocultures might look good and be easier to harvest, but they deplete the soil and after a while they can't grow there anymore, that is bad, also if disease or pests happens you can lose the entire field of that single plant that is susceptible to it. While if you mix it up with other plants sometimes plants can protect each other, or at least certain diseases can't spread as easily, due to lack of range."
"You have told me all this before" Caretaker says in his monotone "it still looks chaotic and messy, but I do not have anything against it, I just can't do that for you, I do not understand it well enough, what if I plant things together that do not like each other, or compete too much, it is way too complicated to understand for me, and besides you do seem to like sowing and planting, so I will let you do that. Then you can tell me how much water to give each area or what soil humidity level to maintain, and I will do that. Also light cycles and such."
I do find the whole discussion very amusing, but I also feel this strange urge to help with planting and sowing, I remember doing so in mothers small indoor garden back home when I was younger. I have fond memories of that. "Can I join you in taking care of the plants, sowing, planting and such? I... I might not be good at it, but it is something I might enjoy." I say "not that I am about to turn into a farmer, just... like a hobby? If that is ok?"
Marcus chuckles "I would very much enjoying having company doing that, yes, and I can tell you about various plants and all the other things and how they work together if you like, but if you just want to plant pretty flowers and such you can do that, whatever is fun for you."
I giggle at that, flowers... I like those, while they are still alive and growing, or to use in perfumes, teas or as food, but I don't like seeing them sit there cut from the plant and slowly dying in a vase, it just makes me sad, though sometimes having a flower in my hair is a creative way to perfume myself a little and it is pretty. Just not only for looks I guess. "I will do that once we have moved all the things we found from the ship to storage rooms in the asteroid, also I want to understand diplomat shields later, and um... I need some time alone with Hank and Sarah and their things, if that is alright."
"This is our home, not just mine" Marcus says and smiles.
Pix gets up to me and smiles "would it be alright if I borrowed Dave later?" she blushes really cutely.
I look to Dave "if Dave wants to yes, you guys can have fun, I... I am a bit sad right now and need a bit of alone time, but I hope we can play together later, once I am feeling myself again?"
Pix nods and smiles "definitely!"
Dave walks up to me and hugs me "just remember I am here for you, you are the most important person to me, and I don't want you to be sad and if I can help in any way I want to do that."
I kiss Dave and hug him close and then say "you can help me unload the cargo and then promise me you will have fun with Pix and that will make me happy while I do the other things I need to do, alright?"
Dave caresses my hair and cheeks and gazes into my eyes with his beautiful eyes and nods "I promise we will have fun, now let's get that cargo moved, I will go tell the lazy women to help too."
With that we move everything over to the storage rooms in the asteroid and I grab some fruit and vegetables and delicious nutrient gel and go sit down next to Hank and Sarah, and their belongings. While eating I slowly start flipping through and reading the children's book "The Monster Under The Bed, How Tricky Ricky Met Sarah" at least it reads like a children's tale and has pretty pictures.
Continued in Part 6
Iris's Discovery - Part 5
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