//------------------------------//
// Chapter 39 REVISED 
// Story: A Journey Unthought Of 
// by Hustlin Tom 
//------------------------------//

"So how is it you can use Lyra's magic," I asked as we finally came to a stop deep below ground.  

The Maiden turned Lyra's head to look at me, "Magic?  It would seem like that, wouldn't it?  No, it is most definitely science; a natural expression of the Tessaract's unique energies."  

"When did you first notice it," the Doctor asked before he quickly corrected himself, "the Tessaract I mean."  

"The archives I have access to state that it was discovered around the middle of the twenty-third century in the Canadian-American sector."  

The Doctor nodded that he understood, but he caught out of the corner of his eye how incredibly confused I looked.  It wasn't lost on the Maiden either.  "Oh, sorry," he said, "He's from the twenty-first: they haven't gotten there yet."  

"Oh," she said simply, and I was surprised to see her blink Lyra's eyes in shock.  She then seemed to look at me in a whole different light, "I figured you weren't quite as advanced, but I didn't realize by how much I'd overestimated you."  

I glowered deeply at her, "Look, I get I'm not all that smart, especially considering I'm the guy who didn't even get his GED, but I at least know where the hell Canada is in my world.  Can we get moving and stop making back-handed remarks about me?  You're hurting the caveman's feelings!"  There was a tight lipped silence between the two as they looked at me and then glanced at each other before I finally gestured with my hand towards the now opening passageway beyond the platform we'd come down on.  "Now," I snapped.  

The Maiden's voice cleared before she said, "Very well."  

The three of us made our way down through a myriad of passages, some with blastdoors and bulwark that sealed off behind us.  It was becoming difficult to keep track of where we were in this place.  

"How does this place still even have power," Lyra said suddenly as she looked all around at the floor level lights brightening our path through the behemoth of a ship, "Hasn't it been like billions of years like you said Doctor?  I doubt there were that many spare batteries lying around here."  

"Weeeell I'm certain that theory died as soon as we got down here," he said with a slightly embarrassed hiss, "Care to explain, Maiden?  Just the highlights, please?  Plausible time-traveling deniability and all that?"  

"As you wish," Maiden's voice said as Lyra looked down at her own chest fluff where she heard the voice coming from, "Before the discovery of the Tessaract humanity was embroiled in a competition for resources.  By the early twenty-third century the world's population was nearing eighteen billion.  War ultimately broke out when an agreement could not be made on the colonization and terraforming of Antarctica.  The Corporate Alliance chose to brazenly take the neutral ground and establish their own puppet state, and when radical citizens of the Eurasian Union sabotaged their production they declared war on them.  The United American Continent as well as the South American Coalition declared the Alliance's brutal retaliation as war crimes, leading them to declare war against them.  Poly-stralia, Africa, and Indo-China were initially bought by the Alliance and unwitting used as cannon fodder while they began the production of an android army, the scale of which had not been seen in all of history.  Some disillusioned national unaffiliates chose to begin a project to expand to the stars, terraforming and colonizing other planets, but the war continued out there for no better reason than the continued claim to resources and reprisals."  

None us of dared speak a word as she continued her story.  What she was saying certainly made sense.  There had been a giant mass near what was now most certainly Jupiter which had to be space station of some kind.  The other blips in the Doctor's projector must have been hundreds upon hundreds of dead or abandoned ships drifting out there in the cold backdrop of the universe.  

"It was in the middle of our infighting that the world abruptly came to an end," she said in a incredibly nonchalant tone.  

"That's not exactly something that typically sneaks up on people," the Doctor said incredulously.  

"One would think," the Maiden said dryly, "but it certainly caught humanity by surprise.  On the 17th of September, 2268, multiple sensor arrays across the globe began detecting that the Sun had instantaneously become several billion tons heavier.  There were no meteors scheduled to impact, nothing it wouldn't burn to cinder.  Seemingly out of nowhere a mass appeared near the Sun's core, and impacted with it.  While it certainly was an oddity, we didn't think much of it until several days later when energy readings began to show the star was burning through it's fuel at an alarmingly unnatural rate.  We were able to deduce a zero hour at which the star would finally burn out, but there was nothing we could do to save it.  With what time we had left we negotiated a world wide cessation of hostilities and created a plan to slowly find a means to retake the planet's surface once the Sun had died.  Those unlucky enough to be out in space when the wavefront hit were left stranded, while we down below did our best to survive off of the remnants of our world, our ships damaged, our civilization leveled, whole continents ripped from their foundations and slammed against each other.  We should have been wiped out, but somehow we survived the rapid expansion of the Sun.  Instead of focusing on why, we kept to the plan, and we worked ahead with each of our portions.  The Vanguard's project was the creation of intelligent helper species to maintain the new world where terraforming would be imprecise.  During the studies of the Tessaract it had been noted that one of the anomalous effects of being exposed to its radiation was the accelerated mutation of living things.  After generations of gene and viral therapy to root out the negative mutations and encourage positives, one of our scientists around 2297 was alarmed to discover that the species being tested were actually becoming so intelligent as to be declared self-aware."  

"I saw her," Lyra declared numbly.  

"I saw that in your memories," the Maiden replied, "but I am confused as to how it could be there at all."  

"A being called Discord showed it to me," she said quietly.  

The Maiden was silent for several seconds, but her voice eventually returned, full of disgust, "How do you know of that snake?  My daughters sealed that thing away forever."  

We all stopped in our tracks at that statement, and we looked at Lyra, and she to her chest where the Maiden's voice came from.  

"Celestia and Luna are your 'daughters,'" I asked with audible quotations.  

"Are-" Lyra tried to ask, but her voice was a mix of uneasiness and, oddly enough, reverence, "Are you the Primeval Matriarch?"  

"How is it you know of Discord," the Doctor asked.  

"I will tell you soon," the Maiden said, now calm from her momentary venomous speech, "but first I want to show that I mean well to you, by taking care of your arm, Adam."  

I reflexively looked down at my stump before looking back to Lyra's body, "There's not exactly a lot you can do I'd think, not after the whole "Post-amputation" phase of things."  

"Perhaps that was the case in your time," she said as she moved Lyra's body near a hatch I hadn't noticed on our walk until now, but which slid open with a high, feminine voice saying, 'Med-bay-14', "but medicine has advanced quite a bit since the time you knew."  

As we walked in I saw empty reclined beds lining the cramped suite on both sides.  At the back was what looked to be some sort of open air booth that had two obvious plates to place one's feet.  

"Organ repair was incredibly extensive in my time, but the substitute tissue on board Vanguard is long gone," she said as she approached a panel on the side of the booth and turned Lyra's head to look at me, "I can only offer you a mechanical one for replacement."  

While I certainly didn't doubt that the technology would work, I wasn't so sure about the Maiden's intentions.  What was she getting out of this?  I had to admit though, ulterior motives or not, the thought of being stuck a one handed man forever didn't seem appealing, and let's be honest, what kind of person turns down the chance at a robot arm?  

"I don't know if that's entirely necessary," the Doctor said nonchalantly, "I mean after this is over I can just get him a flesh and blood one.  You wouldn't even be able to tell the difference!"  

"Doctor," I said, "I think I'm going to take her up on her offer."  

"I'm just saying it doesn't make blending in very easy," the Doctor said with a sigh.  

"It's not like I blend in anyway," I shot back, and then pointed my stub at her, "Alright, Maiden, let's get this over with."  

She gestured for me to stand in the booth, and I warily stepped inside.  A harness of some kind came down from the booth's ceiling and gently came to rest on my shoulders.  Segments of the harness extended down my back and wrapped around my chest to brace me in place.  Another blue light scanned the area I took up, and eventually a panel of some kind opened in front of me, and out of it extended a socket that came to a stop within easy reach of my stub.  

"I'm not so sure this should be the one," I heard her mutter from outside, "but he'll make better use of it than I can."  

I looked over my left shoulder and spoke with a raised voice out to her, "Hey, uh, what exactly are you talking about?"  

"The prosthetic has some special features," she said simply before she spoke in a more clinical fashion, "You will feel some pain when the anchor is first mounted, and there will be prolonged Phantom Limb Syndrome for some time until the nerves fully reconnect, but you will be able to functionally use your new arm moments after it's installed.  Whenever you're ready place your arm into the hole and the procedure will take care of the rest."  

"Here goes nothing," I muttered, and slotted my stump into the socket.  Almost immediately after I'd placed it inside the hole snapped shut around my arm.  Instinctively I flinched and tried to draw it back with a shout of pain, but the socket slid further up my arm, holding it in place.  

"Adam," I heard Lyra yell from behind me, but I heard the Maiden say in reply, "Don't try to stop it: you'll do more harm than good."  

I felt something at the base of my stump, what seemed like things wriggling underneath my skin, and a fiery sensation started building around the join between me and the machine.  I took in sharp breaths and blew them out in rapid succession, "It's alright!  I'm fine!"  Finally I felt something give behind the mechanism and the clamps came off my arm.  The procedure done, the harness rose off my shoulders.  Having braced against the machine while it worked I stumbled backward out of the booth and fell right on my backside, and then my back.