It was annoying having to hide Eddy. Not only had he become my best and closest friend in the short time together, but I had also become very protective of the young, naive, yet brilliant entity. We planned with Luke to save as many people as possible, but we disagreed on how to do it. It had been a quick and weird trip north. I could not visit with all my friends, but I saw enough to know Luke would be OK. I was not sure what the whole deal with the Empire was thought.
While he leaned towards being a good Empire minion, I was not sold on the entire Alien Overlords. They were still Human -- according to the system. I’d say fuck them but still get their help, but Earth is for … Crap. I couldn’t just say people now; I was a bit more than your average 'people' now, but Earth should be free. We, and by that, I guess I meant people born on the planet or who had our interests at heart, should govern, not some distant Empire that seemed to be a political nightmare, worse than some of the bewildering corruption we had on Earth.
We agreed that the goal was to prevent the Karass and the greedy bastard sellouts from enslaving the entire planet. Those psychos who had made the proverbial deal with the devil without reading the contract were the current target of our displeasure. It was not as if we could go and smack a Karass person, a Karassian? What did you call someone from the collective? Shit, I was wasting time evening thinking about them. We’d deal with them later. We still had stupid Earth sellouts to deal with. On top of that, Chaos incursions and all the nice stuff that went with increasing the energy densities of a planet.
Our one advantage in dealing with Noah and his moronic underlings was their lack of trust in each other. We also had our inside person and the fact that we had resources they had but didn't know, and we were going to steal.
My trip to Cairns or Port Douglas, as brief as it was, let me catch up and sort out some decent plans. It was fantastic to see Jean and Jed again; they were terrific post-enhancement, looking great, and the team they had put together seemed competent. If I knew how they operated, they would more than make up for Luke's slackness. I remember having some dealings with some of them a while ago, but I got to know them a little better when we were enacting our scheme.
I smiled as we started the first phase of our plan, thanks to Allen. Eddy, Allen and Venus totally owned the Flex Tech network infrastructure without too many issues. It was remarkable what a competent hacker dating someone in the IT department with access to a skill in hacking alien systems could achieve. Talk about overkill. We had real-time information about most of Flex Tech’s people and their movements. It was not quite real-time, but it was pretty good.
The only issue was that we could not act too overtly for fear of tipping our hands too early. The first goal was to secure computing resources and access to the dimensional technology and my job was to find and steal Eddy’s vat-mates. It was amazing what some System tech and earth tech combined with a free-willed Prism Symbiont could achieve.
At Eddy’s request, I spent all my time feeding excess energy to Eddy so he could grow his Spatial void. As a symbiont, he would eventually live inside a small spatial rift, connecting back to the nanites he controlled through a nano-wormhole and some nano-fibre tubes. I’d bet a billion dollars, or credits now, that some quantum doohickeys were involved. Yep, it was so far above my tech grade that I ignored some of the nerdy byplays between Eddy and Allen, who was now a literal super nerd.
It took some time for Eddy’s physical body to get out of phase with this realm and nanotubes linked up into a small centre at the base of my brain stem. Using the energy in abundance at the Port Douglas house, he grew the spatial storage from the size of a shoe box to the size of a closet. No one knew; it existed in a weird, infinite void realm belonging to Eddy and was slowly growing. The only limiting factor to its size was the amount of energy provided to it and the ongoing maintenance costs. As it grew larger, the more significant volume required exponential increases in energy. We wanted it big so we could store loads of crap in there, or rather nanites. It would also expand as Eddy gained power and levels.
To say this all freaked me out was an understatement. I had some understanding of the broader theory from my time researching with the Flex Tech scientists. However, thinking I had an interdimensional-quantum rift attached to my brain was still unnerving. Venus was right. It was mind ju-ju.
My job was sickening but straightforward. I needed to feed some of my nanite-converted biomass into the rift so Eddy could repurpose the nanites from the system or prism nanites into a more general-purpose reusable nanite.
This is where Allen claimed we were going open source with the nanites. It was a lot of experimentation and more error than a trial, but I never bought into the proprietary versus open-sourced semi-religious debate. I thought the purpose of open source was to crowd-source your development. Allen Eddy and Venus, to a lesser extent, were doing all the work. I was totally on board now. We were like GNU v Microsoft, Apple and all those other patent-stealing bastards. Allen wanted to release a nanite controller that anyone could access and use.
We overcame the energy limitations with a relatively simple hack of the rift singularity. When I say simple, I was not referring to my understanding of things but to how we used the energy feedback on the dimensional barrier. Eddy seemed to know what he was on about. I was glad Eddy could work on such a small scale here. We were talking about the atomic scale and nano-quantum scale. I trusted him, and he was not letting me down yet. It was only a few moments of OH SHIT, doubt when he explained. I freaked out because it was all happening somewhere in my brain.
Eddy had managed to connect to the event horizon of the rift and use the friction between the pocket space and earth realm to generate a steady and constant energy source. At first, there were fluctuations in the stability of the rift and power. Still, on our third iteration, with me feeling like I was frying my brain each time, we locked them down. We created a nano-scaled generator that theoretically had an infinite energy supply. Eddy set it to keep feeding his pocket realm so he could build computational resources to improve his baselines. Not sure what that meant, but if he were happy, it would make him better. I was pleased because a stronger Eddy meant that we were better off.
Once the energy levels were stabilised, we determined that the nanites had to be aligned; again, I relied on Eddy and Allen to sort this out. SOmetimes I think it might have been better if Eddy had jumped into Allens head. We could not just convert inanimate matter into nanites. It had to be organic and have a sentient or sapient connection. We had no idea about this, and as exciting and troubling as it was, we could not spend the time researching the why just yet. The upshot was that I had to let Eddy scoop parts of me into his pocket space. I ended up eating and drinking more protein and bulking foods to compensate for this, and I spent quite some time thanking my newly minted regeneration powers.
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It was a relatively slow process. Eddy was using the mass to produce a biological quantum computer to house the fledgling replacement of Prism for his vat mates to connect to. The hack Allen had put into place should be able to suppress the need for them to ‘call home’, and we were hoping it would reduce their initial drive to dominate the host. All the simulations projected that we had a 92.2% chance of creating another Amy/Eddy hybrid from each of the Vat Symbiots in storage. It was a matter of patching them once our Nanite Server OS was up and running.
Our timelines were tight, and we needed a space about the size of a swimming pool with enough mass to fill it. Our bottlenecks were my capacity to consume food and Eddy’s capacity to create the space. I was able to get food delivered courtesy of Noah, who was still funding the giant office party and had catering on call for all members of his project.
Once we had that in place, we needed to start to permeate our target areas with our nanites, so we needed to replicate these at a massive scale. We needed to carpet-bomb an area with nanite bombs. These would be programmed to slowly enhance people to our new network and convert ambient energy into usable energy that we could then use as the basis for extending our network. I was glad I had Venus on board, as I was a little fuzzy on the details. While I trusted Eddy and Allen, it was good to have confirmation from someone who seemed slightly reasonable and less esoteric computer geek. Shit, calling a Hacker less nerdy than Allen and Eddy was scary. I was worried about Allen. He was going to burn out if he didn't relax.
We needed a stable egress point from the spatial storage into our area of operations. In other words, I needed to create a permanent wormhole into Eddy’s void storage in the Flex Tech headquarters and later in a more secure location. Luckily, it could be a nano-wormhole. Our eventual goal was for each symbiont connected to join a shared space and create a distributed network in our proto-system. Allen was pumped for a quantum blockchain. He lost me there, but it had enough buzzwords to scare me, but he was sure it was the way to go. That was the long-term goal. Venus was being left behind with Allen's new crazy skills.
I spoke to Eddy about that, and he was sure she would be able to skill up once we got some nanites happening and could use something like the Empires Field enhancement kits. The same stuff that Luke had used, but ours would be open-sourced.
It settled down after a couple of days, waiting for energy, computers to compile things and conversion of gunk into nanites. Allen started on some Mad-God-Hacker rampage against all the other Karass regions on Earth, targeting the people we knew as leaders. Even with his new hacking powers, it was hard work, and little was available online. But given that the world would change in less than two and a bit weeks, Allen had been targeting banks, stocks and other resources around the country, making money and buying land, property and anything else that would help us and hurt the enemy.
Luke arranged for me to work with Lawrence to manage his affairs when he was unavailable, which was awkward and, I thought, pointless, but it gave me access to more resources if I needed them. I had not quite forgiven him yet, but I could work with him. I’d hold my nose to stop smelling his shit. The plan was to amass land in and around Cains, Brisbane and other regional centres to gain post-integration recognition. As the legitimate owner, even if a settlement core was used in a town, there was a thirty-day grace period to claim the land and retain ownership before it reverted to the settlement. Fucking Empire. Fucking Karass. We almost broke the Queensland property market between Allen, Eddy, Luke, Julie, and me.
According to Luke, the Empire System was weird. Integrations were bound by Accords that bound the different 'systems' to prevent abuse. Once Integration happened, if a landholder was present, they were given priority over the land ownership. When we queried how it knew, Julie shrugged and guessed it was magic. I called BS. It was probably just some deep hacks into our networks. It was a protective measure to give indigenous lifeforms a way to control their futures and prevent external parties from wiping a planet clean. The reality was that unless you could present to a settlement stone, your claim was void within three years, when all unclaimed property, or property with deceased or absent owners, reverted to the nearest regional stone. Owning the stones and settlements seemed to be essential for our survival. Luke had one, and I knew that Noah would be missing his.
With Allen and Eddy on the case, we could almost buy every available block of land we wanted. It was amazing what Luke’s collateral, my Prism talent, Golden Touch, the lack of credit checks and people’s greed allowed you to do. Most of the land went into Earth Inc.’s corporate structure since it gave us some hefty capital. Julie was happy, even if she didn’t know our whole plan. I was hoping the future Empire contingent could work with whatever we were doing here.
Despite being busy, it was a pretty crappy time. The few days I spent in Port Douglas made it clear that I was an outsider, and I felt like Luke and Mike blamed me for this mess. Not that it was my fault, damn stupid Noah. But it suited me as much of what I had to do had to be done alone – eating and resting. Luke was upset. Sarah’s death had put an enormous dampener on the entire operation but had, in effect, catalysed the group to make sure that things were moving forward. Mike was messed up and pretty useless, and I felt sorry for him. In essence, he lost his friend Sarah and would be losing Luke, who would be gone for who knows how long on his quest to join in with the Empire. I am not sure how I felt about that. It was pretty lonely for me, too, as Eddy was busy and not communicating.
I said goodbye to Jed, Jean and their team as they left. Despite being alone, I was pretty happy when they all left for Min Min, and I was left to hold the fort in Port Douglas until I returned to Brisbane. I was taking advantage of the energy generator here.
The saddest thing about being in Port Douglas was that I had not used my abilities or skills. Some were due to incompatible energy constraints, which were being ironed out, and some were due to their aggressive nature.
I was so looking forward to using Darkflight. Of course, I had practised, but I was not showing it in public yet.
It was the most fantastic skill. When I activated the skill, two ethereal black and red mecha-draconic-like wings formed along my spine. Luckily, they did not have weight and did not require muscle mass. When extended, my wingspan was about three meters. Because they were ethereal, I could use them in enclosed spaces as they passed through matter. It looked weird, and I could feel them, but it did not interfere with my flight capabilities as they would pass through walls and things.
When I showed Luke, he was jealous and thought I looked badass.
The primary skills I worked with were Cultivation and All Seeing Eye. I could use these skills to improve my mana and energy efficiency dramatically. The mystical eyesight allowed me to look internally and see the interactions between my biological, energistic? Is that even a word for energy systems? and nanite systems. I could invent words for stuff that had not existed previously. I am sure there would be some weird alien name for it, but until then, I’d call crap whatever I liked.
It was weird; I could almost see where Eddy resided, and he assured me that it would enable me to see him when the skill levelled up.
I said goodbye to everyone and spent the time talking to Allen and Venus, waiting for Eddy to do his crap in getting out servers built in his weird quantum zone.
Even with Eddy for company, this was perhaps one of the loneliest periods in my life as I waited for the inevitable Integration.