Pain wakes me up first. Sharp pains in my neck and behind my eyes come to me first and then throbbing aches in my arms and legs plague me second. Muffled noises start pumping through my headsets, but I’ve got a pool of foam in my helmet. The pain in my eyes seems to be coming from light sensitivity and flashing colors in my HUD.
I definitely have a concussion. My vision is ass right now and the colors seem a bit wonky. Those flashing alerts are my O2 remaining? Shit, that’s supposed to be red if it’s less than ten percent. Oh, and that hull breach alarm should also be red. Hmm, crew vitals with low brain activity should be yellow, and my . . . I really shouldn’t have any green indicators if that is what is wrong.
My vision begins clearing and colors start coming in, and my air inventory says 5 minutes. Universe, you’re a shit head. Oh, there’s a message that isn’t moving, flashing or dismissible.
Greetings Sentient Life Form!
After a brief scan, you have been injected with small repair machines to give you emergency mobility!
I can hear the meaning in my head as well while I read.
Our directives are to find new life and preserve it until properly catalogued.
You are still in danger of dying!
Please accept assistance to remove you from danger.
“Small interface machines, I give you permission to help me and any of my crew to preserve life.”
Permission Confirmed!
Activating local swarm inside unidentified vessel.
You have not been identified to have authority over all your species present.
“Fuck, do whatever you need to do so I can get my team to breathable air in the next 4 minutes !!”
Pain Suppression Activated. Medical assistance Activated.
Port Airlock Identified as Pressurize-able and connected to emergency air.
The pain subsides enough that I can think and move without wanting to lay down and die. I hook MM2 and ET2’s tethers to me and tow them to the airlock. I connect and activate firefighting air for my fire team, and I drag the last two dial watchers to the port side and shove them all in the one-valve to space container and lock us in.
I hit the pressurize button and ensure to the best of my ability that the doors can only be opened by me. I then remember that I need to pop their face shields up or my team will suffocate anyway. Damned idiot.
You were identified as the intellectual and Aether leader of this group of your species,
was this in error?
“What? No, it’s not. I don’t know what Aether is, but the other one is fine. Now that I have another three hours to live, care to tell me what is going on?”
/Initializing Swarm AI . . . 37%/
Perfect. A Universe damned loading screen on the future. Can you at least tell me what happened before you greeted me? Maybe prove I’m not in a absolutely fucked fever dream?
Reporting Help action 6400012:
Unidentified technology vessel emerged from a mechanically induced Aether breach.
Uncommon nature of breach flagged for investigation by mobile sensor and swarm integration array.
New species detected and determined to be sentient with 87% confidence.
Assist and Catalogue mandate triggered and life saving measures attempted on 37 life forms.
It is customary to interface with organizational, intellectual, and spiritual leaders on first contact.
Estimated leaders injected with swarm to attempt integration and catalogue.
Identified leader accepted swarm host to assist in preserving life.
End new events.
“That’s great. Can you help repair the ship?”
/Initializing Swarm AI 83%/
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Alright, that’s pretty speedy. Maybe it’ll be done when I finish unwrapping my team. I take off their helmets and scrape the foam off them and their helmets. I ping ships comms and no one is able to reply yet.
“I was never out this long, what the hell is going on?”
/Initializing Swarm AI Complete/
Hello user. I am swarm host unknown species 1. How may I assist?
Oof. Yah, if you can convince me this isn’t a dream, we can fix your name. You know what? Never mind. I was in enough pain to start with that it’s real enough. So, swarm, walk me through Initialize and Catalogue and what you can do to help me get back from wherever we warped to.
Your answers are more readily answerable if I have permission to access user’s historical performance and observation data.
Yeah, sure. What else can you do?
You were moderately injured and repairs were made to prevent permanent injury, to include the plastic and metal lens that became embedded in your eye. The function was analyzed and a mechanism was attached to your optic nerve to mimic the effects without the risks of blindness. Additional recommendations will be available after detailed scan completed.
Guess there’s no better time to get the firefighters in this cozy airlock space. They should have at least 10 minutes of air left for me to get them there. I just wish I didn’t have to waste so much air and potentially suffocate these people to get back into Engineering.
Schematics show an air manifold just behind the emergency panel.
Okay! That is super helpful. Thanks again bot swarm. I find two attachment hoses a valve with a pressure regulator and 4 spare personal air bottles. Perfect. I swap out the personal bottles and refill the four empties. I helmet and charge my team’s suits and let the airlock reclaim the air instead of venting it. Then I make the tedious slog to the two firefighters with bulky attachments and tow them to my port-side life pod. Swap in two new personal bottles and set the big air packs to recharge.
“Can you tell me how many people are in the engineering space just forward of propulsion?”
For the duration of this help action, yes. After the help action has concluded, and the community leaders regain control, outside assistance will be denied. There are two personnel with larger air storage within 5m of the sealed pressure doors to your space. There is a smaller, air-lock style tube that would fit a larger version of your species without large air storage. There are otherwise a dozen people in that compartment. And nearly thirty more in the reactor spaces.
Crap. I’m pretty small, so it’s possible for me to bring an air pack and some tanks? Best case is that no one needed to use personal air. Worst case, everyone is dead, but bot swarm would have likely warned me about that. Oh! I can daisy chain people together! I hook up my last team-mates to eachothers’ air lines to feed of ship’s air. And start depressurizing the space. With me, extra bottles and the air pack.
I arrive at the device that looks suspiciously like a hyperbaric chamber that allows you to adjust gas mixtures. Seems legit. I check inside to see if there’s a screen. There isn’t, but the console on the outside allows me to interface and keep contact within the chamber. It would have been extremely difficult to turn around in here with the air pack if the doors were not electronically controlled. Minutes later I kick out the air pack and shimmy my butt out of yet another hatch. This is starting to feel like the worst version of Warehouse Shuffle. Stupid resource puzzles.
Luckily the passed out Sailors are not sucking fumes inside their suits, and are just floating on their tethers or belted in at their stations. I drag all of these suckers, over 15 more minutes into the reactor control spaces and lock the hatch behind me. I play one more game of crew O2 leapfrog with my team so that everyone I have touched so far is in a pressurized compartment and not on emergency air.
That series of unfortunate events later, I remember I can bring up the pressure conditions on the ship. To see that there is a slow leak in the engineering space I just left so I set to reclaim as much of that air as I can. I then see that parts of engineering that are coupled with the collider reinforcement have ruptured, same with engineering forward and the HAB structural reinforcement. I can’t tell how many people we lost, or how many more I could have saved, but now I’m going to be glad I’m alive, eat a smuggled pastry and drink victory Horchata.
“So, Human Swarm 1, how is the data collection coming?”
You don’t need to vocalize now. I have scanned your history and your sensory processes and am confident that I can adequately assist with your growth and survival. As such, I should note that your body is currently attempting to store Aether from your last ‘warp’ and is pulling in more from ambient than it can handle. You will likely undergo a mutation to accommodate this, but unguided Aether mutations are . . . unpredictable. As a swarm of miniscule devices, I do not have the capability to create something that can help without needing more time than you likely have. Another option is to adopt a biologic symbiote that can help direct Aether and work with my swarm to better integrate the changes.
Hold up, HS-1, did you just recommend putting an alien parasite inside me? I’ve seen those movies. I don’t want to die when it’s ready to “Mature”.
You are incorrectly labeling the life form a Parasite. They are symbiotic creatures that are incapable of surviving long-term outside incubation capsules or biologic hosts with appropriate minerals and the ability to manage Aether. You are currently the only life form onboard with adequate Aether management to adopt a symbiote.
I assume that’s because of my previous experiments and warps. OH! That means that the rest of the crew has the same sickness I had!
To a much worse degree. They’ve been administered compounds that will help them purge the Aether from their system before it kills or mutates them.
They way you’re flinging the term Aether, you make it sound important, but the fact that we all are at risk of being mutated by it . . . no way. No effing way. Aether is Wild Magic isn’t it?
A provincial simplification, but if the parable works for you.
And then it disturbingly shrugs in my mind. I shudder at the odd feeling.
Okay, swarm, I need to call you something besides a designator. Maybe a pronounceable acronym. OH! Like Tessa! TEchnology and Symbiote Amalgam. Do you mind if I call you Tessa? Oh, and last important things, can you take over my body or alter my memories?
Adaptation will be required if your thoughts are often this scattered. Tessa is fine, and thankfully fitting. Mechanically, it would take you purposefully growing in a way that I can assist in your movement for that to even be possible. Chemically, the symbiote and I could influence your behaviors, but again, that would take several advancement choices to allow us to mitigate or change a chemical response such as Fear.
Alright Tessa, you’ve convinced me. Hook me up with the symbiote. If I’m already likely to die out here, then lets give this alien assist a solid go. Tessa instructs me to make it to an airlock where one of the symbiote pods can be delivered to me by what looks like a surveillance drone from Star Wars. It also gives me another canister labeled “Swarm Supplement”. I get the gist of that package. I trek back to reactor control as advised by Tessa in that I will want to be unconscious after the injection and that being unconscious and alone in a vented space is a bad plan. I pull my suit down, expose my abdomen and press the only button the cannister has. The injection is the grossest feeling I could imagine. Like the fluid bubble from a big shot, but more squirmy.
Tessa’s sedatives give me just enough time to vomit and put my suit back together before I pass out.