//------------------------------// // Chapter 23: What Now? // Story: Bailing Out // by PhillyCh3zSt3ak //------------------------------// Chapter 23: What Now? I looked at my phone’s notepad app. On it were pros and cons to my family being injected with the retrovirus. My sister would be able to hide it since her job required her to dress quite conservatively, so any physical changes could be hidden. The scientists aren’t quite convinced that she was going to have magic or wings at all. Jenny on the other hand is a different story since she was still young and was growing wings. Until this program comes to light she’ll never be able to go out in public at a pool party, or to the beach, or any other outdoor place without the currently growing wings being seen. The only upside of this right now is that they’re growing slowly, like an adult tooth coming in instead of my, and many of my fellow volunteer test subject comrades, quick and painful emergence when it comes to wings; and a burning inferno where the marks would appear signifying a mage. According to what I’m seeing this is what they want to happen for the first generation of gene manipulated humans, subsequent generations would develop in the womb. I looked up and saw a piping hot coffee mug filled to the brim being set down before a familiar set of hands started massaging my shoulders again. “You’re so stressed out, you know that?” Spits asked as she pressed a little harder on one spot. “Can you blame me?” I countered before sighing. “What you need to do right now is relax and let ‘future you’ worry about what will happen later and let ‘present you’ relax since you can’t really do anything about what’s happening now.” “I know, but I can’t help but worry. Will they be stuck here in these labs for the rest of their lives or be allowed to come and go as we have? If Jenny gets found out by others will she be labeled as a freak by her peers and isolated?” “We’ll find ways to help her get through it. After all isn’t there a saying that says ‘blood is thicker than water?’” “Yeah but the ‘water’ will drive her up the wall, I’m calling it now.” I closed my eyes and tried to rest for a bit. “Hey Andrew?” Spits said breaking the silence. “Hmm?” “If Twilight manages to get a way to get me back home and is able to make whatever she is going to do work long enough to get more than one person through, do you want to come with me?” I slowly opened my eyes and pondered what she was saying. Last time I checked a man stays with his wife until death. I would be leaving the rest of my extended family behind for forever most likely. I’d be pretty much leaving for parts unknown. From what Spits and Twilight have said it seems to be virtually a paradise on whatever rock Eqiuus is at in the universe. People have left their homes and countries before to head to ‘greener pastures.’ The colonists left Europe for the Americas. Men will eventually colonize the moon, then Mars, then the rest of the solar system. Who’s to say I can’t be the first? “What if she can only get one person back?” I asked. “Well then I’ll have her bring you there as fast as humanly possible,” she said with a smile. “Hello?” Emily groaned as she started to stir. I immediately stood up and went over to her bed. “Hey, welcome back,” I said. “Where’d I go to be back from?” she asked deliriously. I’d bet my next paycheck it was the sedatives. “Well you’re not in Vegas anymore.” “What do you mea- oh hey Sam, how long have you been there?” she said finally noticing Spits next to me. “I’ve been here the whole time,” she deadpanned. Yep, the meds are definitely messing with her. “So how are you feeling?” “Sleep deprived, hungry, and not much else.” “Do you feel any different at all?” I asked with a raised eyebrow. “No.” “Huh, I guess no changes were made.” “What do you mean ‘no changes were made’?” “You know how I volunteered for that program?” “Yeah,” she replied slowly. “Well… the same guys may have injected you and Jenny with a gene therapy cocktail,” I quickly finished up. Wincing at what would happen next. It seemed as though the sedative wore off instantly in that moment because Emily looked immediately at me. “WHAT?!?” Almost as if God were intervening, Steve walked in. “He did it!” I blurted out before sprinting out of the room. Rounding the corner I slipped on the freshly waxed floor landing on my shoulder. “Oww, mother fucker,” I groaned. Damn you worn soles Spits peeked out from the doorway. “Are you alright?” “If you’d get me an ice pack or a cold soda that’d be dandy.” I could see in the eyes of a guard that he was laughing on the inside. I may have discreetly flipped him the bird. I heard yelling from inside the room, Steve was getting ripped a new one. I heard an impact on the wall. I looked up and saw a silver food tray sticking out of the wall. Even that one guard took an interest in that. “Did that go through-?” I started. “A metal support beam? Yeah,” the guard finished. “Damn,” I said for both of us as we glanced at the tray. *** Meanwhile in the Crystal Empire… Twilight sat on her bed in her guest chamber examining the little men’s wallet-sized device. “What secrets do you hold?” she asked as she looked at it in every angle she could. She set the device next to the small ‘tablet,’ as it was called. There was a small chirp and on the screen it said, ‘Pair devices?’ She hit ‘yes’ and one screen it said ‘successful’ before saying ‘No memory chip detected.’ “Now where would I find something like that?” she muttered in frustration. To her this was another enigmatic puzzle. There was a knock on her door and she walked over to answer it. Before her was one of the Crystal Guard. “Yes?” “Princess Cadence would like to inform you that dinner has been served,” she said bowing. “Tell her I’ll be there in a moment,” Twilight said politely. “Of course, Princess,” the guard replied bowing again before leaving her. She still had trouble having people calling her ‘Princess’ regardless of the fact she was one. In fact it made her extremely uncomfortable when people bowed to her whenever she passed them. In fact she asked the citizens of Ponyville at a town meeting to treat her like all their other neighbors, mainly to keep her from going insane and beating her head against the wall in an attempt to forget about it. The only people she allowed to bow to her were the guards because technically it was part of their job, and those on official royal business. She placed the small wallet sized device in her jacket pocket and she made her way down to the dining room. Why was she wearing a jacket? Well crystal isn’t the best insulator for heat, maybe for power conduits for all the gadgets that the Crystalline make, but not for heating this far north. If Cadence and Shining weren’t the rulers Twilight would assume that the heating bills for the palace would be astronomical. She walked into the dining room and at once eight sets of eyes looked at her. “Twilight, thank you for joining us,” Cadence said as one of the attending guards pulled out a chair for Twilight. “Sorry I didn’t come down right away,” she replied as she took her seat. “I was just thinking about this thing and how to use it.” Twilight then took the little device out of her pocket, showing it to those present before replacing it back inside her pocket. “What is it?” Cadence asked. Twilight took a bite of her Istallion salad. “I’m not quite sure. But he said that it would be the key to solving my issue in getting Spitfire back home.” “May I take a look at it?” “Sure,” she replied as she wrapped the device in her aura and levitated it over to her sister-in-law. “What does it do?” Cadence said as she started examining the device herself. “It seems to be some sort of device that reads ‘memory chips,’ but I have no idea what they look like since there isn’t one left inside for reference purposes.” “Interesting,” she said before her finger ran along a slim depression. “What’s this?” “What’s what?” “This,” Cadence said showing the slim cut-out on the device. Twilight stared at it, “I feel as though I’ve seen this shape somewhere before… and recently too…” She ran though her memories trying to remember where she had seen something similar. When it came to her, she stood up suddenly and said, “I got it!” “What do you mean, Twilight?” Rainbow asked, with her cheeks stuffed full of pancakes. “Do you remember what he had with him in the recording?” “A shirt with a band name on it?” Rarity asked. “A glowing screen with a large amount of words that were too small to read?” Fluttershy added. “Oooh! Was it cereal box containing a double prizer?” Pinkie asked. “Ah dahble prizer?” Applejack asked with a raised eyebrow. “Yeah, when a cereal box contains more than one prize in it!” “Ok then, getting back on topic,” Twilight said. “He was holding necklace. One with a small. Clear. Square. Stone. Now where have we seen something like that before?” No one said anything. “Applejack would you mind showing us that family heirloom that you always wear?” “Uh, ok Twi,” Applejack replied. “But Ah have no idea what yer gettin’ at.” She pulled it out and dangled it from her hand. “Now does it look familiar?” she let the room stew for a moment. One by one they realized what she was getting at. “Wait. So yer sayin’ that-.” “The necklaces are the same,” Rarity finished. “Of course. The dimensions and clarity of the crystal is exactly the same as the one in that movie, albeit he was much larger than a normal man due to the projection.” “I’ll be right back,” Twilight said before teleporting back to her room, grabbing the tablet, and teleporting back all under a minute. She sat the reader next to the tablet and waited for them to connect. “Ok, Applejack. May I borrow your necklace?” The cowgirl handed over her family heirloom. “Thank you.” She aligned the crystal with the slot and pushed it in gently. When it was fully inside the crystal started to glow an electric blue and the words ‘Memory device detected’ appeared, as did some other choice words. “Encryption software active, please enter password,” Twilight read off as the group gathered around her, waiting to see what would happen next. “Where one mystery ends another begins,” she sighed before slouching in her chair. “Twilight you said so yourself that he wanted you to find this. I’m going to guess that the password locking the contents isn’t going to be some obscure thing, but something you’ve seen him with or something that you know,” Cadence said reassuringly to her sister-in-law. “Now think.” “Well he did say in the message that it was ‘a matter of time.’ So ‘time’ would be my first guess.” She typed it in using the touch screen and hit ‘enter.’ The tablet made a buzzing sound and the screen flashed red before displaying ‘Password is incorrect. Four attempts remaining.’ “Ok I guess that wasn’t it. What else is there?” “You could try the name of the band on his shirt,” Rainbow suggested. “Ok. ‘K-o-R-n.’ What a weird way to spell corn though,” Twilight said before pressing ‘enter’ again. Again it buzzed and flashed red before displaying the same message as before, but with only three attempts remaining this time. “Ok that didn’t work.” “What about his name?” Fluttershy said just loud enough to be heard. “Ok…” Twilight said entering it. Again the same happened. “Nope. Only two attempts remaining now.” “Ooo! ooo! I know!” Pinkie said jumping up and down. “It’s ‘password.’” “Pinkie, there is no way that-.” Twilight trailed as she typed it in deciding that it was easier to amuse her hyper friend rather than question her. The tablet chirped and the screen turned green with the words ‘access granted’ on the screen. “Pinkie, how did you-?” “What? It was either that or ‘guest,’” she said before backing up a bit. “Ok then.” Twilight then opened the only file on the device. It popped up on the screen, “What is this?” “Some sort of blueprints?” Shining commented. “It seems so. Wait there’s a note here, ‘needs to be made of…’” she paused as she did a double take of the material. “I don’t recognize this element.” “What does it say?” Cadence asked. “An alloy of Ti and Tr. I know that ‘Ti’ is titanium, but ‘Tr?’ I have no idea what that is,” Twilight replied as her finger slipped and tapped the ‘Tr’ text. At once an atom showed up on the screen. “Woah.” “What is it, Twilight?” Rarity asked, she was just as confused as everyone else in the room. “This element has more valence electrons than any known element on the periodic table. See, it has at least one hundred and twenty-two of them.” “Well this leaves us in a bit of a pickle,” Applejack commented. “Hold on, what’s this?” Shining trailed. “‘Property of the United States Air Force,’” he read off the bottom. “Wait, isn’t that Andrew’s country?” Fluttershy asked. “Yeah, and the branch of the military he’s in?” Rainbow added. “Now why would these plans be here?” Twilight asked. “Well we could always ask,” Pinkie said causing all eyes to land on her. *** Well Emily had enough time to cool down. Apparently she was strong enough to throw an aluminum food tray straight through a solid steel support beam. All we had to say was ‘damn.’ Just for shits and giggles we had her bend a piece of rebar. Ok, we may have had some money riding on it. I won. “So Em, how are you feeling?” I asked. She was still in bed with an IV drip still in her vein. “How did you deal with it?” Emily asked back. “Deal with what?” “You know what I mean. Having wings and having to hide them all the time.” “Well I personally go out and fly at least once every two days at night just to keep myself from getting twitchy.” “Ok then.” “I mean it’s pretty easy to hide, but sitting in chairs is a little uncomfortable. Besides, Sam has it worse off than I do though. I mean just her trying to be comfortable in a bra designed for people who don’t have wings looks uncomfortable.” “Yeah, back home they have clothing specialized for angels. Having to modify my current wardrobe isn’t all that pleasant; but it’s it comfortable since it’s all custom work,” Spitfire added. “Clothing aside, it seems as though you’ve gained the strength of an earthborn.” “Earthborn?” “Yeah they’re extremely strong and good with their hands. In fact it was an earthborn engineer that figured out our first car engine.” “That’s quite impressive.” “Hello~?” a familiar female voice said from nowhere. “Who was that?” “Twilight?” I asked the room, since her voice was sort of coming from nowhere. “Andrew, I need your help.” “Who is that?” Emily asked. “That’s Twilight. Twilight, my sister Emily. Emily, Twilight,” I answered. “It’s nice to meet you Emily, but Andrew I really need your help. I need to know what this element ‘Tr’ is. I can’t find it anywhere on our periodic table,” Twilight replied. “Hold on, I’ll look it up on my phone. Nope doesn’t exist.” “What do you mean it doesn’t exist!?! The blueprint that this metal is needed for has the stamp ‘Property of the United States Air Force’ on it.” “Wait, what? Is there a reference number or anything on it?” “No, there isn’t any number, but it has a heading of ‘Project: Aperture.’” “Well what does it do?” “In layman’s terms it can open rifts.” I sighed. “Well that’s enough to go off of but that sounds a lot like something that the physicist geeks would work on. No offence, Twilight.” “None taken, I think.” “Well ‘call’ back in a few hours, I should have something by then after I talk to the R&D guys.” “Will do,” she said as her voice started drifting off into the ether. Great, now I have to find a science type that knows what this element ‘Tr’ is. *** Spits elicited to stay with Emily for some girl talk, probably to help her through this ‘transition’ period. I also think she’s waiting on waiting on Jenny to wake up. She’s sure to have questions, that’s for sure. I opened the doors to the R&D wing and at once all the computer monitors were turned off, which last time I checked was standard procedure for someone who doesn’t have clearance to see something or another. “Hello ladies and gents! Who here knows what element Tr is?” I said loud enough for the entire room to hear. A lot of the people in the room just turned back slowly, disregarding me while one scientist rapidly turned back to his workstation. Bingo, that’s my guy. I walked over to his desk and sat right on it. “Hello there, I could see that you broke eye contact quite quickly with me. Care to tell me what ‘Tr’ is?” “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he answered quickly. “Oh I think you do,” I countered smugly. “You can’t lie to me, even if you tried your darndest. So tell me, buddy, what is element Tr.” He sat there in silence, a very uncomfortable silence. “Or I could talk to the base commander and have you talk, but that'll take time out of my day that could be used elsewhere doing something useful. Should you say something now we’ll just cut out the middle man.” He sighed. “It’s called Trinium,” he said almost inaudibly. “What? I didn’t quite hear you,” I said holding my hand to my ear. “It’s called Trinuim,” he said louder. “What is it?” “It’s an element which when added to another in an alloy, such as steel or titanium makes the alloy stronger and lighter than being made entirely out of the base metal.” “Where did it come from?” “Over the last few decades we’ve found deposits in meteorites that have landed. There was a large deposit in Tunguska, Russia that we managed to get a few tons of after the Soviet Union fell. Unfortunately with the whole power struggle and the incident with Putin and Crimea it’s been borderline impossible to get any more.” “So in other words it’s ‘not of this world’?” I asked with a raised eyebrow. “Since we haven’t found a natural deposit on Earth that would be a fair assessment.” I let out a breath. “So what does it look like?” “Well it’s like metallic chalk in an unrefined form, unsuitable for any building materials. However when refined and added to another metal the alloy becomes hundreds of times stronger and hundreds of times lighter as I’ve stated before. It would be perfect for building fighter jets, naval vessels-.” “Space ships?” I jokingly added. “Actually, yes.” That made me take a pause. “Wait, what?” “Well we’ll eventually have to leave this blue marble and venture into the galaxy, and we’ll need ships capable of interstellar travel that can last a long time and survive micrometeoroid impacts flying faster than a gunshot and be able so be able to survive faster than light travel speeds without disintegrating.” “Well good luck with that.” I hopped down from his desk. “Anywho have a good one.” And with that I walked back to the biology labs. As I walked back towards the rooms I saw something on one of the desks. “Hello~,” I said reaching for a vial. “Don’t touch that!” someone shouted making me recoil. “Ok. Jesus, man just calm down. What the hell is in that anyway?” “It’s a chemical that messes with the memory centers of the brain related to facial cognition. So in other words if you were exposed to it I could have said that that I was the Queen of England and you would have not only believed me but you would have replaced my face as the Queen’s and it would have stayed that way until the counter agent is administered.” “Ah, fun.” I said walking away cautiously. I knocked on the door to the observation room. “Do you have any sevens?” I heard a young girl ask. “Go fish,” Spits replied. I walked inside to see that Jenny had finally gotten up. Her back looked as though it was wrapped up, no surprise there. However she was up playing go fish with Spitfire while Emily was napping away, so that’s a good thing. “Hey you two, how are you doing?” I asked. “Well little miss sunshine woke up here shortly after you left and we’ve been playing go fish since, Emily went to sleep not to long ago. She’s quite the card shark,” Spits answered with a grin for Jenny. “So how did your search go?” “Good actually, I found out what ‘Tr’ is. It’s called Trinum, or at least that’s what the guys down at R&D are calling it for now. Anyway when it’s added to another metal in an alloy it strengthens it tenfold as well as making it lighter than other alloys.” “That sounds a lot like mithril,” Spits said after a pause which was used to set down a set of four cards. “You mean like the mythical metal as seen in Lord of the Rings?” “Yeah. Legends of the old lands tell of a metal that was brittle to the touch, but when added to steel made it almost unbreakable and would keep a razor sharp edge for years with heavy use without sharpening.” “Well I guess we have some news for,” I leaned in close. “Twilight,” I then leaned back. “When she tries to call us again.” “Who are you talking about?” Jenny asked. “No one, hey do you have any Jacks?” Spits asked in return in an attempt to steer the conversation elsewhere. Their game continued and I turned on the TV, yes they were kind enough to have a TV in the room for them. “Late breaking news! Tensions with Russia have escalated as Russian troops have gathered near the borders of Afghanistan. US troops stationed there have been put on high alert. In other news, North Korean leader Kim Jon Un issued another threat of war with the US and South Korea today if the US would not withdraw their support of the democratic nation.” “Well that’s pleasant,” I muttered before I turned the channel. Shortly after that Twilight decided to ‘call’ us back. I told her about the trinium as well. She echoed what Spits said about mithril, so apparently that mineral is abundant wherever they are. So getting it should be not THAT difficult for them. Apparently on their periodic table it was a different atomic weight or something, I wasn't paying attention. It was something that I sort of tuned out since I’m not that much into metallurgy. “Well we have the blueprint, next we’ll have to find a large enough deposit of ore to make it. I’m going to guess right away that since we’ll need a huge amount of power there will need to be an anchor on your side,” Twilight said. “An anchor?” I asked. The imagery of a ship's anchor landing out of a portal and Spits climbing it popped into my head. “Yes. It would be a powered ‘terminal’ if you will, it would stabilize the rift long enough for Spitfire to walk through.” “Would it be possible for more than one person to come through before it closes?” Spitfire asked hopefully. “Well theoretically it would be possible for more than one person to cross. Of course we’d need enough power to do it.” We said our goodbyes and Twilight’s voice dissipated. Luckily Jenny had already fallen asleep so she missed the entire conversation. I mean try explaining an ethereal sounding voice coming from nowhere, half of the people would claim that there was a ghost while others would swear that we were crazy. She said she would contact us as soon as possible to let us know where to place the anchor and when the window would open. There’s something to look forward to. In the meantime there was nothing else to do but wait. I looked over to my sleeping niece, she had no idea what was happening to her. On one side it was a great thing that would help shape the rest of humanity, while on the other it would be a bane for her in society until the rest either adapted or shunned it completely. Only time will tell. The worst of it was that I might or might not be around for it.