//------------------------------// // 1 Reluctently Eager for Adventure // Story: Lyra-7% // by Meep the Changeling //------------------------------// Lyra Heartstrings - August 5th 2199 - Afternoon Multiverse Location: Earth #7 You know what’s good? Pets. Might seem like a ‘No shit!’ sort of thing, but seriously, right now the only bit of normalcy I have is my pet. Yesterday I had a kick ass career. Today, I had nothing. All my friends were work friends. My job had not given me enough time to work on my hobbies. Work was all I had, except for Bonbon II. The two in her name always made people think that I’d had another snake before Bonbon II. Ha! As if I’d lived long enough for that! My cutie’s got another two decades of living left to do, at least! There was a couple other Bonbons though, hence the need for a two. The first Bonbon was the nickname of a childhood friend of mine. She vanished without a trace one day. Amber alert and all that. The second Bonbon was my jet, Bonbon I. I’d named her for my old friend cuz she was peppy and upbeat for a Pegasus IV, just like the original Bonbon had been. I have no idea why I decided to name my not at all little green anaconda after her too, but I did. It was either Bonbon or Nagini, and frankly while the Harry Potter reference was amusing, it would mean I named a snake ‘Snake’. That didn’t seem okay. It also didn’t seem okay to just call her Bonbon, that was her name, because screw calling a female Bonbon Junior. So I’d added the two to my snake’s name and generally called her Bon. I guess I just suck at naming things. Most people tell me owning a four meter long snake isn't okay to begin with. In my defense, I had no idea that green anacondas got that big. And besides, Bon’s the kindest not-at-all-little thing ever. I think it’s because I bought her from a restaurant that apparently served snake like lobster, where they kill it fresh. What? It was an exotic sounding dish, and I was in Brazil! I couldn’t eat the adorable little girl. No one told me that non-fangy-bitey snakes kinda look like scaled kittens in person. You can’t eat that. When I first got her, she fit in my hand. Well, around and in my hand. You know, typical snake size. I thought she was all grown and I’d have some neat exotic pet to take back to the States with me and keep for five years or so. Ha! Nope! I’d gotten her at like, just about a year old. Bonbon was itty bitty by comparison, now she was like the stereotypical big green snake seen on old fantasy novel covers. You know, from back when printed media was a thing. She was still cute though. Also awesome for use as a prop when going to cons while cosplaying as a sorceress. Oh and for scaring away Jehovah's Witnesses. At the moment, I was getting a rabbit out for her so it could thaw. I’d had to lock the chest freezer in the kitchen. Bonbon was a smart girl, she worked out how to unlatch the freezer and open it. She was also a stupid little derp because she ate three frozen solid rabbits after getting it open. That was a fun vet trip! Well no, actually, the waiting room was fun. So um, sarcasm retracted. Ever want to have real fun? Borrow a large snake and sit in a vet waiting room across from the lady with her obviously prized cat. Heh. The fear, I was able to taste it. It was delicious! Of course there had been the inevitable ‘Don’t you know that thing could kill you?’ from the lady who thought her cat was sick because of a hairball. Yes, I am aware that my pet could crush me like an egg if she wanted. But she doesn't. Bonbon’s an affectionate girl. She likes to snuggle, and is super gentle. If she wanted me dead, I’d already be snake poo, ‘cuz when she gets cold and or lonely she’ll slither into my bed at night. This happens more often than not. She unlocks her room’s door, opens it, and then opens my room’s door in search of snuggles. Like I said, she’s smart. I used to mind that, but I decided to get used to it. Because with a snake her size, you’re not going to be able to make her move at oh-dark-thirty following a sudden wake up. Besides, I’m single now. I’ll take pet snuggles. Speaking of pet snuggles, as I stood in my way-to-small kitchen, the little derp slid in, pushing her head up to counter height, doing that cute little tongue flick in the general direction of thawing rabbit. “Oi! Wait till it’s not made of death,” I chastised, giving her head a little skritch. Bon leaned into my skritches and swished her tail tip along the floor. She does that a lot. I swear she think’s she’s an extra long dog half the time. “Well, at least I’ll get to spend plenty of time with you for a while,” I mused, giving her a bump with my foot. I’d trained her to climb up me with a foot tap. It was easier than picking her up to make sure she stayed out of things she shouldn’t get into. Besides, I couldn’t lift her up easily anymore. One might assume that carrying her would be a problem if I couldn’t lift her. But they would be wrong. My former job required I be used to carrying about four times my bodyweight for hours at a time, and up to nine times for brief periods. Carrying Bonbon was par for the course. But the lifting was a problem. Mostly due to her length, and the fact that snakes are kinda floppy. Sure, carrying her ached a little, but loosing my job and my best friend in one swoop hurt more. I loved flying. Getting to sit in some of the most complex machines ever devised by man and pushing it to it’s absolute limits was my entire world for eight years. Yeah, yeah. Eight years isn’t too long to hold a job. But in my defense, I wasn’t discharged or drummed out, or even quit. No, I’d been decommissioned. I loved machines. Robots especially. Even after everything, I was fully on board with robots doing all the work for humans but… God damnit, the robots were supposed to do the boring jobs! Not fly fighter jets! What made it the absolute worst is I couldn’t refute the brass’s reasons. Yeah, AI had gotten absolutely insanely good over the last half decade. Yes, it was more moral to not risk a human’s life by making them fly air combat missions. Yes, AIs now almost always outflew human pilots and could take way more Gs. Yes, AIs didn’t need life support for High Altitude Low Orbit operations, meaning the craft could carry less payload and thus stay spaceborn longer. But… That’s all I had. She was all I had... I’d put up with 12 hour days almost every day, mountains of paperwork, and more stress than reasonable. I’d stayed in despite the fact that I’d gotten my wings just a few months before the Second Korean war went hot again. I’d flown actual combat missions, risked my life in that one month before North Korea became a thing of history, all to get to do the one job that struck my fancy. All the cool jobs are dangerous. So they all get robots to do them now. Astronauts, firefighters, patrol cops, all video gamers today. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good game, but I’d always wanted to be an adventurer growing up. Danger, actually doing real things, thrills... Without any evil overlords present in the real world, the next best thing was fighter pilot, because people still actually had flown planes at the time. So I’d based my whole life around that. That’s why I’d turned down the offered position of ‘Drone Overseer’. Fuck that! I’d joined to actually fucking fly! At least Uncle Sam had decided to give the pilots he was phasing out full retirement benefits… Unlike our jets. Bastards… Older generations have no sense of decency when it comes to machines. She was half of what made me a good pilot. Shouldn’t scrap her just because the cockpit’s unnecessary now. It wasn’t right. I carefully sat down on my couch with a sigh. At least I hadn’t lived on base. At least I still had my home. “Maybe I can get that antique working finally. What do you think? Should I give it a try?” I asked Bon, giving her head a scritch as I looked at the ancient curved screen set up on a small table across from my couch. It had been a project of mine for a while, and I needed the distraction. My grandpa always said that watching things on a physical screen was an entirely different experience from ARGs. I’d always been curious about that, but no one even manufactured display panels anymore. Even just finding one of those old 84 inch, curved for some reason, things was an actual quest! Which made it something fun! Sorta... I’d spent a few days worth of time over the last few years trying to get a signal from my home media server to even work with it. Fortunately for me, a few people I knew had done similar things, so I’d had instructions. But even with them there were a ton of old parts to track down. Like a QEC to fiber optic conversion box. I was good with tools and liked working on electronics… But I didn’t even own HALF the equipment to make one of those. I’d expected getting the thing to work would be hard. These things weren't ever designed to work with the direct net after all. Hell, they weren't even meant to work with the internet. A little box thing you plugged into it let them work with the old net. What were they called? Consoles I think. Gramps would know. Why not give him a call? I closed my eyes for a moment and instructed myself to ring gramps phone. I’d always hated calling him, he’d refused bio mods like most older people, so everything he used was ancient technology. If I wanted to talk to my mom or a friend, boom, instant neural interface! Unless they were running silent. Wetware for the win! Not gramps though. Every. Single. Time. Sitting there. For at least a minute. With that fucking ringing sound echoing through my brain! There’s a reason no one uses audio cues for their Augmented Reality alerts, gramps! After a mini-eternity, and actual microphone pop-click zipped through my brain before FINALLY the old guy’s voice asked, “Hello? Who's there?” “It’s Lyra, Gramps. How’s everything?” I asked back. “Oh hey kiddo! I… Heard the news. Sorry about your job. But that’s how things are going. Pretty soon there won’t be anything at all left for us to do. I remember loosing my own job back in the fifties, you know when paperwork stopped being a human job. No need for accountants and all that. So, I feel you,” he said comfortingly. The cockpit was cramped, unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and my new linkage implant was itchy. I had figured the seat would at least be as comfortable as the flight simulator’s. The real deal didn’t even have a window. Like a coffin. First thing was first. I didn’t understand why the hardware was necessary. Yeah, you linked to the jet’s systems directly. I could do that to my car without the need for an a chunk of silicap. Why the fuck wasn’t wetware good enough here? Awkwardly reaching back to the base of my skull, I grabbed the connector at the back of my flight helmet, and instantly winced. It felt so weird to feel that like a body part… At least the cable wasn’t the permanent addition, I could deal with the little gold bars on my neck. I slotted the cable into the jack at the back of the seat with a loud cl- Holy shit! I was the jet! I had ailerons! I could feel my engines! No… I could feel our engines. There was another here with me. Who- she said in her happy, eager, loving voice. The fuck he did! No non-pilot ever could ‘feel me’. “Thanks gramps,” I said reluctantly with a nod, before remembering that with his obsolete POS tech, he could only hear me, not see me. How did people live before Twenty one oh six?! “Anyways,” I continued, “since I got time now, I thought I would see about getting this TV working. Try out the movie watching experience your so nostalgic for. Any idea where I can get a QEC to fiber-optic converter?” “Yeah, Norman’s Antiques on Avenue A, fourth level,” he answered instantly. I blinked. “Uh, that was quick.” “I’m his best customer. It takes six separate things just to get me old iPad hooked into your Neural Net thing and they were not built to last… Early twenty first century manufacturing was the literal worst,” he grumbled. “Uh, your what?” I asked with a confused frown. “iPad.” He replied. “It’s a microcomputer built into the back of a large touch panel. Sort of like a tiny TV you can manipulate by touching it.” “So it’s a two-dimensional screen? How do you even experience the news on that thing?” I asked, completely confused. “Well… I can’t view the memories of the event, but they still make text summaries of events for old farts like me. I read those on it,” he explained with a sigh, knowing what I was about to say. “You should get augmented gramps. It’s been forty years. The end of the world didn’t happen because of it. You’d live longer, have all your tech built in as natural extensions of your brain, get to use all of the cool stuff-” “I know, but to us old timers, our bodies are sacred temples. Hell some of my friends don't even consider you young folks to be the same species, and not in the normal ‘get off me lawn!’ way. I mean, literally. I know people who don’t call people your age humans. It’s…hard for us to adjust to the new age,” he griped. “I’m just glad you still own a phone so we can talk.” “Actually, I’m talking to you over the Net. No hardware, just me. I got an app to let me transmit to phones,” I said slowly, not wanting to piss him off. “Damn… Cool as that is… I still can’t go through with it. I hope you understand,” he said sadly. I didn’t, but it would have been rude to say it. “Thanks for letting me know about Norman’s.” “Yeah, no prob- Oh! Right. It’s a physical only store. No drone delivery, no virtual storefront. You’ll have to actually go there,” Gramps warned. “No problem, I’ve got plenty of free time, and well… I’m not exactly used to staying inside,” I chuckled bitterly. “So uh, what’s the protocol for stop-talking over the phone again?” Gramps chuckled. “One thing I think I would like, the fact that I’d never truly be away from anyone I knew. Do you even say goodbye to anyone?” “No,” I replied honestly. “I mean, we leave the same physical space, but a quick thought and I can have a full 3d projection of them walking with me back to my livingroom. It’s seriously something I can’t imagine living without. The world must have seemed so much bigger and more, well, there to explore back in your day.” “Nah, you didn’t miss much. Poor girl, you would have been at home in the days of wooden sailing ships and America foundings… Assuming some gender flipped world where women got to do things back then,” Gramps mused. I frowned, not really understanding what he meant. “Gender flipped?” “Uh, yeah,” Gramps said flatly. “Don’t tell me they don't teach history anymore! Equal rights movements? Women basically property before the twentieth century?” “Oh! Yeah, that! Sorry, that’s another thing that’s hard to understand,” I said as evenly as possible. When sex education includes a download of a member of the opposite gender’s memories, it’s pretty damn hard to not see the sexes as equal but different. But no need to freak out the old person with that little tidbit. “Whelp, I’ll just hang up so you don’t have to think too hard,” Gramps joked. “Bye Lyra, call again soon. We’re both unemployed, you like stories about the old days, I got plenty.” I smiled and stood up, giving Bonbon II a shake, signaling her to get off me. “Bye Gramps. Get augmented so we can play chess without one of us having to fly across the Atlantic,” I said, exaggerating the distance as was apparently the old tradition. “But you like flying,” he teased. Like flying?! Bitch I AM flight incarnate! No, calm down Lyra, he didn’t mean it like that... “Um, didn’t we just terminate this conversation?” I asked. “... Right… Um, old person thing. There are at least three goodbyes. We’re inefficient like that,” Gramps chuckled. “Bye for real this time!” The mic clicked again, and the call was over. I took a short breath, bringing up a projection to check the store’s hours and how traffic was at the moment. Everything seemed to be good, no major congestion, store had twentyfour hour service and- The loudest possible pop exploded behind me like a flashbang, sending a shower of purple sparks across the room in a fern-shaped wave! I dove for the floor, ears ringing, rolling for the coffee table, and sliding under it’s concealed ballistic shielding! Minutes passed. Nothing else exploded. No gunfire. No sounds of footsteps. “Clear!” I called to no one in particular, instantly blushing at the reflexive action. A small red icon started to blink in the corner of my vision. A hazard warning? What? A bit late for that wasn’t it? I checked the warning, flinching immediately. My house’s sensors were detecting a high concentration of radon in the room. Good thing I was on the floor! Then a second light came on indicating a- “Smith-Purcell radiation? What the fuck even is that?” I demanded reflexively. Fortunately, unlike Gramps, I had VI assistance for learning things. My integrated teaching program, Chere.ly, happily informed me. “Thanks,” I grunted. There wasn’t much point in thanking a VI, I mean it’s basically just thanking an old school search engine. Still, my copy of Chere.ly did sort of teach me everything I wanted to know litteraly since the hopital downloaded it into me at birth. So she kind of felt like a person to me. As I ordered my home to vent the gas and scrub the air, a small window opened in my vision. A younger black haired man in a police uniform looked at me with a concerned expression. “Ms. Heartstrings, central detected an explosion in your vicinity, are you alright?” “Yeah, I’m fine,” I answered rolling out from under the table and looking around. “I can’t see anything that would have exploded… Maybe a powersurge? Static discharge?” “That’s possible Ma’am,” the officer reported. “Power grid upgrades are being performed in many places across the city today. Are you sure you can’t see anything?” “Nothing. Oh! My house did pick up a high level of radon after the explosion! Hope that helps you out,” I informed quickly. “Thank you Ma’am. Report any damaged property as soon as possible, we’ll get to the bottom of this and give you a full report as soon as we are able,” the officer said as the window closed. I sat down with a sigh and started looking over my surprisingly undamaged livingroom. Hell, if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear that explosion actually cleaned the place up a bit! That’s when I noticed that the dust underneath the couch had completely vanished. That explosion actually HAD made everything cleaner! Fuck going to an antique store! We had the Mystery of the Disappearing Explosive Maid to figure out. I started to crawl around on the floor, looking for scorch marks, fragments of metal, or anything else which might have been a bomb casing, or an origin point. Nothing. I sat up and checked the walls for holes, discolored spots, scorching, any sign that something in them had exploded. Nothing. I turned my head upwards to check the ceiling to see if a light panel had decided to explode, or any other possible sign of- “Okay, what the fuck even exploded?” I demanded. Bon slithered up behind me, gently resting her head on my left shoulder. “Did you see what exploded, hon?” I asked turning my head to give her a little pet. My hand stopped halfway to her head, in her mouth, held like she would a ball while playing fetch, was a wide leather cuff, slightly scorched, with a raised portion covered by a flap of more also slightly scratched leather. “Good girl! Give it to Mommie,” I said gently, holding the surprise and eagerness back so it wouldn’t creep into my voice. The last thing I wanted was for her to run off with this whatever-the-fuck thinking we were playing fetch! Thankfully, Bon decided to stretch out and push the leather cuff into my hand. Unfortunately she plopped her head into my lap, expecting me to throw the cuff for her to go get. I quickly searched around the area for anything I might be able to use to distract her with, eyes landing on a stuffed rabbit. Reaching out with my free hand, I grabbed the plush and tossed it down the hall. “Go get it, hon!” I called happily. Bon turned towards the distant plop, tongue flicking cutely before slithering off to go and get it. At least she wasn’t as fast as a dog. I’d have a minute to inspect this…thing. Now that I had it in my hands, the cuff was definitely not just a leather cuff. First of all, it was expertly sewn by hand if the varied stitch length was any indication. The dark brown thread matched leather expertly, and not only was there a pair of brass buckles to hold it on, but also brass snaps holding a second layer of leather over the lump to make a pressure-molded cover. Together, these facts indicated a lot of care being put into making this…case? It looked like a case meant to hold something to your wrist. Which probably meant it was an electronic device. Maybe a long range Net transceiver for people who wanted to leave a city for a bit and not be offline? In any case, I’d never bought something like this. This was new. I glanced up quickly to check on Bon’s progress. My slithery friend had just about reached the plush at the end of the hallway. Still some time… Picking a side at random, I unsnapped two of the four snaps, and pulled back the cover. Yup, this was an electronic of some kind. The device contained inside was a gunmetal gray ovalish thing, about a finger thick. It was held to the cuff with a lip of molded leather, and a strap across the thin side running down the middle of the device. It’s face had a directional pad centered on one end, three oval shaped buttons on the top, what looked like a brass speaker grill, a small square microphone next to the d-pad at the bottom, and a single blue LED centered on the face and poking through strap. To my surprise, the LED was glowing a warm blue. This was surprising due to the fact that the smell of scorched electronics filled the air the second I’d opened the cover up. Anything that smelled like that should not be on. At least, not anything civilian in design. The flying fuck was this thing? My thoughts were interrupted by Bon slithering back and pushing the plush into my groin, in that inappropriate way pets tend to do. “I swear, Bon,” I muttered as I tossed the plush for her again, “I never taught you to be such a dog.” With Bon re-distracted, I turned my attention to getting the device out of it’s case. There had to be some sort of markings on it, and since nothing on the front was labeled, it stood to reason that there would be information on the back. And if not, there would be something on the inside. It took me another three plush tosses to work out how exactly to get the device out of the cuff. I hadn’t ever held real leather before, I didn’t know where or why anyone would buy it these days. Although, it did feel great in the hands for a non-nanomaterial. It seemed a shame to cut the stitching, someone had put a lot of work into what was probably a unique wrist-mount for this thing. Fortunately, after fiddling with it, I was able to bend the leather enough to let the device pop free of the molded case. It happened easily enough, but took some doing and pressure, indicating this was how one was meant to remove it. With the device free of it’s case, and another plush throw for Bon, I at last learned where the smell of dead electronics was coming from. The back plate was discolored, a rainbow pattern spreading out in a ring, centered on one spot under the d-pad. This thing had gotten hot enough to discolor the metal the case was made from. So how the fuck was that LED still on? The case didn’t seem to have any screws or clasps, and so out of curiosity, I attempted to pull it apart, assuming it was pressure fit. The two halves of the case popped open cleanly and with almost no force, leaving me with one half in each hand. And revealing the thing was held together magnetically. “Huh… Why magnets?” I wondered out loud. One look at the inside was all I needed to understand the magnets. The device’s guts were clearly those of a prototype. This thing had been opened many times before, as the various obviously-not-planned-out and not-designed-as-one-cohesive-unit micro components attested. The parts might have been randomly put together, but each circuit that I could see was expertly made. This was someone's baby. Somewhere, a science nut, electronics geek, or hardware hacker was grieving the loss of their technological child. It was only right that I fix it, see if I couldn’t pull data off of it, and see if it could be mailed back. Bon slithered up, booping my side with the plush again. Reaching over, I gave her head a gentle rub and stood up. “Later, cutie. Mommie needs to do some work now,” I said gently. Lyra Heartstrings - Augest 5th 2199 - Night Multiverse Location: Earth #7 Seven hours in my workshop was all I needed to answer one of the great questions of humanity. There was no other possible conclusion to the mystery this device contained. I’d checked three times just to be damn sure. The device’s guts were carefully pulled out of the case and arranged on my workbench’s anti-static mat, each layer unfolded like a deck of cards with opposite ends taped together so the deck could be a stack, or one long string. I’d never seen anything designed like that, and the amount of tech it allowed to be crammed into that little palm sized case was insane! That fact wouldn’t have forced the conclusion. This was a design someone could easily just work out. What there was no chance in hell of working out was the battery, if you could even call it a battery. The power source of this thing was a flat slice of red quartz. This initially confused me for many reasons. I was able to cross ‘but quartz doesn't come in this color of red’ off by checking it under a microscope. The crystal was synthetic, and if my Net search had accurate info to give me, was grown into shape so it would form around the unknown alloy wires embedded within it. Also based on a quick look through my microscope, the crystal was made in atom thick layers, laminated together… Somehow. It was like a graphene battery, only made from red quartz. And putting off so much energy that my multimeter couldn’t read it. My meter could easily handle reading the power going to my jet from its micro fusion plant. I’d appropriated it along with a few other things upon my ‘retirement’. It wasn’t a shitty meter. The battery wasn’t dead either, it was still powering the LED, and it was able to power the gizmos I’d tried temporarily connecting to it’s power leads. It didn’t even blow them up from over voltage! The thing had a built in voltage regulator! This battery had more juice in it than a High Altitude Low Orbit fighter with a seven day operational time. It was as thick as three sheets of paper, and fit in my hand, and was cool to the touch! Humans did not have the technology to make a battery this fucking good. Humans did not have the technology to even dream about ever seeing a battery this good. If I decided to have a kid, their great grandkids would never see a battery this fucking good. This battery was alien in origin. Period. No way around it. Except… The main circuit board had English text laser etched into it. At that point, I had issued all three dozen ping commands to test and see if I was playing an Augmented Reality Game. It wouldn’t be the first game I’d played that prevented you from remembering you were in a game until it was over. But no. This wasn’t a game. The Central Authority had pushed down hard on the game dev scene, their AIs auto-deleted any game from the net which didn’t include safety programming and the ability for the player to check and see if it was a game. I had also completely disconnected my brain from the Neural Net to double check. The device was real. It was on my workbench. It had an alien battery. And English text. SkyTech Ind. Personal Teleportation Unit Prototype Codenamed: ‘Vortex Manipulator’ (Oye, Time Turner, put it back! I invented it fair and square!) ... (Dammit Sai, turn off the laser etcher!) English text that clearly was done via text to speech… Or via their world’s dumbest transcriber. I’d called bullshit again. Teleportation might be a thing, but when it uses terawatts per mol of mass and requires a massive pod… Science cries at the thought of a wrist mounted teleportation device! But then, I’d noticed that only half of the components in the ‘Vortex Manipulator’ were electronic. The rest of them were shaped crystals, just like the battery. Including what appeared to be the central processor, and the last bit at the end of the strung out device, which was the biggest piece by far. With fully half of this thing made with that impossible alien battery technology, who knew what it could do? How else could I explain it suddenly showing up in my house? It had to have teleported in here. Especially because the big, probably the teleporty thingie, component was blackened and cracked. And at the time I’d checked, it had the same residual radiation around it which had flooded my house when the explosion had happened. Because it emitted low levels of the stuff all the time. Or it did until the crystal had cracked further when I pressed a button, and then died. At least everything else seemed fine… On my workbench, sat an alien made wrist mounted teleportation device, with a company name and model name written in plain English. I, Lyra Heartstrings, had proof of life elsewhere in the universe. Mankind was not alone, philosophy could finally stop asking that question. I sat staring at the electronic guts for a long time. Most people would have turned the device over to Central once they realized it wasn’t theirs. A few would have taken it apart like I had, but then realizing its origins, turned it over to central. I knew I should do that second part, this was huge. But… What were those aliens like? They clearly had advanced civilization. The devices buttons were large and spaced apart more than a human hand would like, so they probably had clumsy fingers… But the innards were so precisely built that observation didn’t quite hold up. What sort of civilization needs to make a personal teleporter you can bring anywhere? This was a prototype, sure… But maybe this was a smaller, more compact model. This could be the alien version of a car! I would never know any of this if I just gave the device over to Central. They would spend centuries studying it, and probably not say a word about it the whole time. I wasn’t some conspiracy nut, I was in the Navy long enough to know that plenty of projects are kept out of the public eye. Hell… I’d had to sign about 900 pages of legal documents before getting to see Bonbon, let alone get into her cockpit. The public at large had no idea about sapient AIs, that was totally hush-hush. Central was already suppressing knowledge of one non-human lifeform, another would follow if I gave them this. But what could I do with it myself? I was just a hobbyist electronics nerd. Central could turn this thing into a trillion different new technologies. I could… I could try to fix it! I smiled to myself as I entertained that crazy idea. Oh sure Lyra, you could totally fix the alien device made from crystal! Easy as pie! No biggie! What would I even do if I did fix it? Well, return it to it’s owner of course. Same plan as before I learned about it’s origins, only I’d get to shake hands, or equivalent appendages, with an alien! That would kick ass. I would be the human who made first contact! I could upload my memory engrams of the whole thing to the public net and boom! All of humanity would know about it next time they woke up. Lyra Heartstrings, first human to leave the Sol System, first human to greet another intelligent species. I smiled and leaned back in my chair, chuckling to myself happily. That was a nice fantasy. Too bad there was no way anyone could build something as complex as that battery. Besides, how the hell would I even know what to do to make it go back where it came from? “Well, as a lab prototype, it showing up here had to have been an accident. It would have had coordinates pre-programed in for testing,” I mused out loud, pursing my lips in thought. Well, that made sense. If I turned it on it would probably auto-teleport to it’s intended destination. I felt my face suddenly twist into a child-like grin of glee as I realized that assuming the battery and the teleport bit would be built exactly the same was simply stupid. We didn’t build nanoprocessors the same way we built batteries, why would aliens? Maybe. Just maybe… I gently grabbed the blackened and cracked crystal and carefully slid it under my microscope, settling it in place under the scanner as best I could. With a few quick thoughts, an AR display window opened up in my vision, displaying the microscope’s scan as the device went about scanning the crystal into a high res 3d model. I was inspecting the scan before it even finished. If there was absolutely any chance of being able to replace this part… The microscope finished its scan. I quickly zoomed in on the image, exploding it’s intricate details, thinning as hard as I could on just how you might go about constructing a copy of… Of a complicated 3d network of little tunnels with prisms for redirecting what I assumed were laser pulses. That’s all this thing did. Take light from what looked like six fiber optic strands, and made it move and interact in a specific way. It was really simple, crude even. I’m sure the science behind the device was genius and elegant, but the hardware was engineer friendly. “... You can cut quartz with a laser…” I muttered, leaning over the crystal, to overlay the scan on top of it. “I could extrapolate how the broken bits are supposed to connect… Make the thing in thin layers… Stack them, seal it up with some nanobondo… Chere.ly, how fine can quartz be cut via laser?” She replied immediately. Fifty nanometers… Not all that much bigger than a large molecule. I could probably replicate this thing well enough! Sure, it would take a week or five, or even longer. But in theory, I could build a new uh… Teleportation Matrix Crystal. I bit my lip worriedly. This was a bad idea… I’d probably get myself killed messing with an alien device like this. I should just turn it in, and be done with it. But why should I worry about dieing? I had no job, no purpose, and would live a life free of adventure. Sitting on my ass unfulfilled until age finally took me. All the while remembering the fact that my best friend had been decommissioned, formatted, and taken apart long long ago because I was useless to the military in the modern age. Die horribly, or become a legend... “Fuck it! Chear.ly, where can I buy a CNC laser cutter capable of cutting quartz crystals?” I asked my VI as I prepared for a night of home shopping for industrial equipment. Lyra Heartstrings - September 12th 2199 - Morning Multiverse Location: Earth #7 Thirty eight days. It took thirty eight days, six thousand dollars, and fifteen attempts to get the manipulator working again, probably. I had spent most of my time on it. The tiny network of light channels in the quartz took me days to work out a means of replicating. The slice and stack method worked, but I’d had to angle each cut to sort of bevel each layer before the replacement chip did more then make light spew everywhere and I had it kinda working. That was the fifth version. It didn't’ let the light go everywhere… But it didn’t do anything either. The next ten painstakingly planned, cut, and assembled versions were all tiny adjustments to try and fill in the damaged portion of the crystal. The cracks and burn marks looked not all that bad from the outside, but on the inside, entire little channels had melted shut. It was like an old school puzzle game. One of the ones from the 1990s they made you play in college as examples of the idiotic logic of 20th century humans. No obvious hint’s, logic two steps removed from reality, really challenging… And fun! I’d loved those old puzzles. I felt like the academics missed the point of those things. They weren't for logic training, they were for that sense of accomplishment you got when you worked one out. A feeling of pure ‘I am a genius!’ that getting the Vortex Manipulator working again replicated ten times over! I knew it was working because my latest version of the crystal matrix had done something no other version had. I’d plugged it in, and a hologram projected interface appeared over the little blue LED. It was a real hologram too, not just a wetware inserted AR display. If you covered the projector, the hologram vanished. It was actual light projected to an actual point in space. Another technology humans didn’t have… At least, not in portable size. That’s why we had bio-engineered integrated augmented reality capabilities. So much more power efficient. I had sat on the stool in my workshop staring at the projected interface for a long time. It was a simple thing. Two colors. Black background, a few shades of green for the readout. Just a rectangle. Space filled as efficiently as possible. All utility, no fluff. And also in English. At this point, I was wondering if the device somehow translated written text for you. Like a hardware version of any AR translator app. But if that were the case, how had the aliens learned English to program it into a translator? Was this an X-Com type situation? I hoped not… I’d spent over a month working towards this day. The manipulator was repaired, all folded back up, and carefully put back into it’s case. Good to go. I could use it at any time. But should I? Yeah, I’d spent a lot of time working on it. But… Would it be safe? If they were aware of Earth enough to know English, they could be hostile. Or have Earth on a no visit list for some reason. Using it could be dangerous even if I had repaired it correctly. Bonnie and I twisted in the air, our wings catching a thermal strong enough to jolt us upwards. Rolling over to our left I hit the afterburners, pulling a 12G horizontal Immelmann. The EC fighter flew past us, but rolled and pulled a similar turn before I could roll completely around to get onto his tail instead. “Fuck! We aren't going to be able to take another hit from those pulse lasers!” I cursed. Bonnie announced. Should I put my life into the hands of a machine? An alarm rang in my head as Bonnie reported a target lock on us. There wasn’t time to decide. There was only time for a leap of faith. “Do it, Bonnie. I trust you,” I said, giving her control for the first time. I blinked the flashback out of my head. Point to you brain. Machines generally didn’t let me down in the past. Organics, on the other hand… Well, actually, organics are easy to deal with if you remain polite and are armed. I leaned down to rest my fingers on my workbench and steeped my fingers in thought. I’d ‘stolen’ a lot of equipment when they retired me. At first, I’d only wanted to keep my helmet. I’d hoped that maybe having it would let me remember Bonnie better. It was the part of my kit that was half me, half her. The symbol of our sisterly bond. I’d found a quartermaster who was sympathetic enough to ‘lose’ the helmet via paperwork, but he had told me it would be easier to keep all of my kit. Everything a pilot used was tailor made for us, it couldn’t be reused and so it was incinerated. Usually in one batch. So paperwork wise, it would look weird if one part of my kit was destroyed one way, but others another. So I'd’ kept all of it. Helmet, flight suit, boots, survival kit, maser pistol. If I used the Manipulator, and there were hostiles on the other side, a good pulse of high energy microwaves would do wonders for keeping them at bay. On the other hand, showing up armed to a first contact didn’t seem like the best way to do things… But on the other other hand, wouldn’t an enlightened alien culture understand why an explorer would carry a weapon? As long as I didn’t draw it I should be fine. It was just a pistol, nothing big. A personal defensive weapon seemed reasonable to take with you when going to an unknown world. I nodded to myself and stood up. That settled it. I could make the trip safer, and I really honestly had to know who built this thing and why. If I turned the VM in, I would never know. Picking up the alien device I left my workshop and headed into my bedroom. There wasn’t much real furniture in the room. Most of the decorations were simple AR projections. I’d never spent much time in my home. It wasn’t a place I was attached to very much. Maybe that’s why I felt like I could leave it without much in the way of problems. This wasn’t home. This was just a big locker for my stuff. Bonnie’s cockpit had been home. I walked over to my foot locker and popped the lid open. My kit was neatly folded, filling up the entire locker. The flight suit was fairly bulky, it didn’t really like being folded to fit into the locker, and the titanium breastplate made it a bitch to really compact down. To be fair though, that thing was designed to keep you alive if your cockpit ruptured while in space. A sealed pressure suit that was stiff enough to not get all puffy-marshmallowy when pressurized couldn’t ever be easy to fold. At least it didn’t hinder much in terms of movement. As I wrestled the suit out of the locker to get my gun from the bottom, a thought occurred to me. I was considering going to an alien planet. Was there air? I didn’t know! Actually, no! I did know! When the device had first appeared there had been a huge surge of radon gas. The air on the other side was most definitely not human friendly. I lifted the suit up to look at it. The ribbed pressure tubules beneath the fabric gave it a sort of body builder look, and the dark green chest plate made it look like a reptilian alien who was half way through putting on a suit of armor. Not exactly my favorite thing to wear, but the life support equipment built into the chest piece could support one person for a week before the filter needed cleaning and tanks needed refilling and emptying. This olive green camo patterned jumpsuit had just become vital to me once again. “Thanks Sarge. I’d never have thought I’d need this thing again,” I said to myself as I opened the plating to slip into the suit. I slipped my legs into the suit, and then immediately taken it off again. The suit had been created using a 3d scan of me. It fit me perfectly. Literally perfectly. Second skin perfectly. I’d made the rookie mistake of trying to put it on with clothes on under it… Had a month of being grounded really made me that stupid already? Shaking my head I quickly stripped, slipped into the jumpsuit, zipped it up, locked the plating back into place, slipped my boots on over the built in booties, and then lifted my helmet. Only to pause and look at it longingly for several minutes. It looked like an overbuilt motocross helmet. Thick bar section welded to the back to protect the electronics. The two large datajacks for linking to a fighter. The twin visors behind the armored faceplate, one smoky black for normal use, one reflective gold for keeping space radiation out of the eyes. It was almost like holding the severed head of a loved one… With a sigh, I slipped the helmet on. It sealed to the collar of my suit with a hiss, followed immediately by a low hum as the suit pressurized itself. My AR tossed up a simple HUD, displaying life support information in unobstructive spots of my field of view. “Damn it’s been a while…” I muttered as I reached down, picked up the survival kit and belted it on before slipping my pistol onto my right hip. This was it. My last chance to back out. I could take everything off, put it away, and turn the device in. Fuck that! We’re doing this. I grabbed the Manipulator and buckled it tightly onto my left wrist. Fortunately, it fit well enough. A tad loose, as if made for something with thicker limbs, but it wasn’t coming off without a buckle snapping. I flipped back the flap covering the device, the hologram popping back up instantly. I couldn’t make out any of the coordinates, or really understand any of the information being displayed other than a flashing warning reading ‘unknown date!’ and a second bit that read ‘Power Remaining - 7%’. But I could tell that the ovals in the center of the HUD were definitely buttons… “Alright, Lyra,” I said to myself. “Do or die…” My finger hovered over the row of buttons. “Eenie... meenie... miney... mo…” I mused, debating which one to press. “Fuck it, first button!” The HUD flickered. A patch of air in front of me rippled, shimmered, and distorted, purple sparks of energy dancing around the rim of the anomaly, only to flare brightly and form a rotating disk of purple-ish blue energy. A portal. “Huh… Okay, maybe I didn’t quite fix you,” I mused looking at the manipulator and noticing that it’s power now read ‘3%’. Or maybe, the aliens had a looser definition of a ‘teleport’. I stepped forward, gently touched the floating gateway, and felt myself pulled forwards! It was like a giant hand grabbed me around my everything and pulled me through the portal to the other side. An other side that was pristine! The sky overhead was the deep blue I’d only seen in pictures, clouds were fluffy and white, only dotting the sky, not covering it completely. I stood in a field of bright red flowers that stretched everywhere I could see, over rolling hills covered in tiny trees with pink flowers covering them like blankets. Plant life outside of a city’s dome that wasn’t a super hardy scrub brush… A rare thing for me. The sea stretched out to the horizon after the edge of a cliff, deep dark blue water as far as you could see. Birds chirping came over my helmet’s audio system. The climate detection system showed it was only twenty-four Celsius out, the humidity well, existed, and the UV levels were so low as to not be a thing. This wasn’t Earth. Not unless I had gone back in time to before we fucked the environment over trying to unfuck it from the first fucking it over… The portal shimmered and rippled behind me. Still there. The Manipulator didn’t have the power to make another portal, and I was in the middle of fucking nowhere. I should probably go back, find a way to charge it and- The portal sparked and hissed as Bon slithered through it, immediately closing after she had passed through. “No!” I shouted, dropping down to one knee. “Why did you follow Mommie? The air here is poison! Oh no no no, um… Maybe I can get the emergency oxygen mask over your nose!” Yeah, sure Lyra, the mask made for a human mouth and nose will fit your snake... Bon just flicked her tongue at me and happily climbed up onto my shoulders. My suit reported the atmosphere was definitely toxic. With a radon concentration of about twenty percent. “Chere.ly, how long can you survive radon exposure at twenty percent concentration?” I asked quickly. The portal had closed, but Radon rose up right? Maybe if I got her low to the ground- Chere.ly reported. “Fuck!” I cursed, doing my best to choke back tears. I’d hold her till she died. That’s the best thing to do. The only thing to do. I sat down and gently pulled Bon’s head into my lap, stroking her gently and hoping that it wouldn’t be painful. Minutes passed. Then an hour. Then two. Bon got restless and slipped off of me to look at one of the nearby tiny pink flower trees. If the atmosphere was toxic, she somehow didn’t give a fuck. Maybe I could take off the suit? Or maybe snakes weren't bothered by the gas. I wasn’t a biologist, but I did know that biology is weird and complicated. No, my helmet was staying the fuck on. As I stood up to go and pick her up to start looking for a place to go and see about finding civilization, the Manipulator beeped. I opened the flap curiously, the HUD springing back to life as I did so. A small flashing icon in the lower right read, ‘radio signal received.’ Curiously, I tapped the icon, jaw immediately dropping in pure confusion as a half dozen Japanese speaking voices began talking in the panicked tactical manner of people in combat! “The fuck!?” I cursed. “Chere.ly, switch my language to Japanese please!” Sound went flat as Chere.ly swapped my brain’s audio centers around, the conversation resolving into an intelligible one within a few seconds. Chere.ly reported. I only barely heard her. I was too distracted by the female voice ordering, “Tategami, flank left and cover Momo. Momo, distract it as best you can. I’m going to drive this naginata as deep as I can into the wound on it’s back.” “Hai, anata no igen,” a male voice said, translator not working it out properly. “Mysuki-heika, are you sure your unit can survive that maneuver? It’s breath melted Iroh!” another female voice warned. “It doesn't matter,” the first female insisted, “We need to stop it before it reaches the Imperial Palace. I’m coming around now!” Something roared through the air overhead! Glancing up I caught a glimpse of what I could only describe as a bipedal Japanese Mecha, stylized in the form of an anthropomorphic horse. “Awesome!” I exclaimed turning to follow it’s path across the sky. It was racing towards the opposite side of the island I was on, headed right for- A mother fucking 300 foot tall alligator-turtle kaiju with a white hot flaming shell working it’s way out of the god damn sea at most ten miles away from where I was standing! “Shiiiiit!” I lamented in terror, eyes almost popping out my my skull!