Chapter 10

Daegnon was lying on his back underneath a metal table with a strange tool that looked like a fork, but with only two prongs. The prongs weren’t sharp either, but ended in an open circular swirl pattern. Small sparks would crackle within the swirl when he pushed the button along the shaft.

Hoshi had shown him what to do with the tool. He used one of the open ends to touch a broken wire and the other prong to touch the other broken end. The sparks would activate, and the wire would reconnect.

Of course, Daegnon had to learn what a ‘wire’ was and had asked Hoshi several other questions while he’d been doing the repairs.

“A wire is a small tube made of insulating material. Held within it are monofilaments which allow the flow of current, data, or radiation, depending on the type, from one point to another,” the AI had told him.

He didn’t understand the explanation at first, but as he continued to reattach these small tubules, his mind was piecing together the definitions. It felt like the words were gibberish when the metallic voice spoke them, but they slowly took shape and meaning within his mind as he continued his tedious work.

Not only did he have to make certain that the wires he was reattaching were the same color, but also that they were not so worn as to need replacement. Replacing an entire wire required another set of tools, ones that weren’t as user-friendly.

He had just finished the last of the re-attachments at this panel when a loud, sharp noise rang out through the room. The sound was so startling that he sat bolt upright and knocked his head on the underside of the table he was lying under. Pain shot through his skull as he groaned, disoriented.

The noise didn't stop with its initial blast; it blared repeatedly, changing from a low to a high pitch rapidly. The lights in the room suddenly shifted to a sinister red, casting eerie shadows and filling the space with a sense of impending danger.

“Hoshi, what's going on?!” Daegnon yelled to be heard over the siren, rubbing his head as he scrambled out from underneath the workstation.

The AI’s metallic voice echoed from all directions, amplifying the urgency. “Graviton storm detected. Prepare for impact.”

“What’s a—” His words were cut off as the ship lurched violently, throwing him sideways. His feet hit the chair attached to the floor next to the table, causing him to spin as he slid across the floor, careening into the opposing wall with a painful thud.

The AI's voice changed again; it was less surrounding, more focused, coming from a singular location rather than all over. This was how the AI normally sounded, although the tone now reflected anxiety and fear. “Daegnon, there is no time to explain what is happening, but I need you to do something for me right away, or we will all perish.”

Daegnon’s eyes were still refocusing, and he blinked repeatedly to clear his vision as well as his thoughts. “What do I do?” he asked, his curiosity temporarily suspended by the urgency in the AI’s voice.

Across the room, Daegnon saw a small door slide open. It was along the floor and looked barely big enough for him to fit through. He could see a faint glow shining through a mass of wires bundled together just inside the door. The light pulsed softly, yet there was a point of darkness within the pulsing.

“You need to override the safety relay. This will be difficult, but the quicker you can do this, the sooner we can move to safety. Luckily, the last attachment you created enabled the gravimetric detectors, which allowed me to detect the Graviton storm. Now we must find a way to break free and leave this area before the bulk of the storm arrives,” the metallic voice of Hoshi said. The face of Grubnash appeared above the small open door, and a mostly transparent green hand beckoned him forward urgently.

Glix had been working at a station that controlled the induction of dark-matter radiation into the sensor-input translators. Hoshi had shown her how to use her fingers to direct the images on the glassy tabletop.

She had just swapped the input variables from the Subspace Scanners to the Quantum Gravimeters when the screen she was working at blinked red, the images morphing from a calming green hue to an angry crimson. At the same moment, a siren began to blare, and the entire area’s lighting shifted to a similar urgent shade of red.

“Graviton storm detected. Prepare for impact,” the AI’s metallic voice rang out through the engineering bay, echoing off the metallic walls and equipment.

Before Glix could even ask what was happening, the voice shifted from the loud, encompassing sound to a singular speaker located at her workstation. “Hold on, Glix!” it yelled.

Glix reflexively grabbed onto the workstation as the entire ship tilted sideways momentarily. Her feet left the floor, and her entire body went sideways before the ship righted itself. She had held on, so she didn’t go flying, but the return to normal gravity made her lose her footing, and she landed hard, twisting her ankle as she did so.

“What was that?” Glix asked, panting from the pain in her ankle but needing to sate her curiosity at the same time.

“I am sorry, Glix, there is no time to explain. You need to get your companion out of the Dark-Matter Cyclotron Core before he is disintegrated,” the metallic voice said with an extreme sense of urgency.

“The what?” Glix asked, not yet familiar with this piece of technology. “And who?”

Instead of verbally responding, the image of Grubnash appeared, a holographic hand pointing to the large, spherical object with intricate machinery at the far end of the bay.

“Get moving!” the metallic voice said, not allowing for further discussion.

Gritting her teeth, Glix took the hint and began jogging as best she could toward the end of the engineering bay towards the Dark-Matter Cyclotron Core.

“Ahhh…” Raknak sighed as the warm yellow fluid exited his bladder. He leaned back and enjoyed the release. He hadn’t necessarily been holding it in for a long time, but the quantity of output was still satisfying.

“What was that?” he asked, his ears detecting a strange sound coming from somewhere outside the metal tube he was in. It wasn’t a sound he had heard before; it fluctuated and was definitely not natural.

He reached down to shake off the last few drops when the entire tube he was standing in suddenly turned sideways. Instead of the ground being below his feet, it now felt like the ground was to his left side, so that’s the direction his body went.

Raknak flew sideways, striking the wall with a loud thud, the entire contents of his now-drained bladder accompanying him, leaving the entire area extra slippery and producing a squelching noise as he moved. He rapidly began sliding along the slippery metallic wall.

Drenched in his own urine, Raknak slid along the tube, following its gentle curve with a mix of whooshing and splashing sounds. The tube, shaped like a half-torus, quickly funneled him to the far end where it narrowed and inclined. Then, with the sudden return of normal gravity, his world flipped once more, sending him hurtling back towards the center of the tube.

As he slid back towards the center, the slick coating of urine turned the journey into an unexpected thrill ride. He tumbled and spun, the smooth, metallic surface offering little friction. It turned into an impromptu water slide, with every twist and turn making it more entertaining. The smell and taste of Raknak’s urine were quickly forgotten in the bizarre excitement of the slippery journey.

His ride came to a sudden halt as he reached a dry section of the tube where his pee hadn’t spread, causing him to skid to a stop with a final, wet thud. He found himself lying on his back, his head pointing towards the center of the tunnel, soaked and disheveled, with his loincloth hanging off one foot, but a huge smile spread across his face.

“I don’t know what just happened, but that was fun!” he said and chuckled.

Cyrus sighed as he watched the timer reset to twenty. He had utterly failed his first attempt at navigating the course. Hoshi was still nowhere to be seen, but Cyrus suspected that was intentional. The way he had to learn to sense the differences in the clouds, and now to learn to use the ship almost like a second body, wasn’t something you could easily explain.

Even if the people who had built this ship—a question he still really wanted an answer to—had been able to explain how piloting worked to the AI, trying to relay feelings and sensations to someone like him would be difficult. Just like describing a taste to someone was almost impossible, trying to describe how to push forward to make the ship move wasn’t something Cyrus felt he could fully explain, even if they, too, were able to fly this ship.

No, this was something he had to learn on his own, and he was almost certain that was why Hoshi was not around.

Before attempting to make the run a second time, Cyrus brought the ship’s window back into focus, moving it and looking it over again, making sure he knew exactly where everything was. He had used his virtual hands to feel along the ship and activate the thrusters last time, but he knew that was not the most efficient way of doing things. He needed to feel the ship, make it a part of himself, become one so that with a thought he could activate the engines like a reflex.

Taking a virtual deep breath, Cyrus closed his eyes and tried to immerse himself in the ship's systems. He knew that the ship wasn’t actually functional right now, that what he was sensing was data prepared to simulate the ship in working conditions, but he knew he would have to sync with these sensations nonetheless.

He visualized the ship as an extension of his body, focusing on the connection between his mind and the vessel, its sensors, its body, and its power. Slowly, he began to feel the hum of the engines, the flow of electricity through the circuits, and the subtle vibrations of the space around the ship's structure.

When he reopened his eyes, he felt a newfound sense of unity with the ship. He minimized the ship window, brought the image of the course back into view, and mentally prepared for his second attempt.

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With a sensation resembling a shake to loosen up muscles, or its equivalent in this strange virtual space, Cyrus prepared himself before he began. This time, he didn't use his virtual hands; instead, he willed the ship forward with his thoughts, feeling the thrusters power up as if they were his own muscles responding to his commands.

It wasn’t as smooth as he would have liked, but he felt the ship lurch forward. He pressed for speed while at the same time adjusting the pitch, angling first up, then down to make sure he understood the response of the thrusters to those directions.

The timer ticked away the seconds, but Cyrus could see the end marker ahead. He wasn’t going fast enough, and there was a huge curve he would have to navigate in order to cross the finish line, but this attempt gave him the knowledge and the newfound sensations he needed to accomplish this part. He knew he wasn’t going to finish the course this time, but he felt fully confident that his next attempt would be successful.

Six, five, the timer ticked down as Cyrus pushed, angled, and felt the ship respond more and more easily to his mental commands.

With mere seconds remaining, Cyrus shifted sideways, turning the ship into a barrel roll, causing his sensations to go completely upside down.

“Graviton storm detected. Prepare for impact,” a metallic voice rang out, disrupting his simulation and focus, leaving him hanging in the awkward reversed position.

Then a disturbing sensation washed over him, causing Cyrus to feel both his physical body upend itself and his mental disembodied form lurch at the same time. The darkness of the simulation abruptly shattered, and a sharp pain seared through his head as the headset was violently ripped off.

Disoriented, he felt his body roll out of the chair he had been lying in, his limbs flailing uselessly as he flew sideways through the air. His muscles turned to jelly, leaving him as helpless as a wet noodle.

Before he could determine what had happened, he crashed into something solid with a bone-jarring thud. The impact knocked the wind out of him, leaving him gasping, but before he could even register the pain, the room spun violently before his eyes.

His mind struggled to acclimate to the sudden transition from the simulation to reality. The ground tilted again, sending him tumbling through the air. He landed hard against another unyielding surface, the force rattling his teeth and making stars explode behind his eyes. He lay there, dazed and breathless, his body sprawled awkwardly and his mind reeling from the abrupt return to his physical form.

“Cyrus!” Hoshi’s apparition materialized and yelled in fear and concern. “Are you alright?”

It took several moments for Cyrus to reorient himself enough to respond. “Uhh… no?” he said as he slowly pushed himself up from the floor, the pain and disorientation from the ordeal crashing violently into his consciousness.

The room he was in, the pilot’s chamber, was bathed in red light now. Sirens wailed, ringing in Cyrus’s ears causing them to hurt as well.

“What’s going on?” he managed to ask.

“Cyrus, I am sorry to delay the explanation, but you need to get us away from here as quickly as possible. Can you please re-enter the Exo-Pilot terminal? We are all in grave danger,” the once-again kimono-clad image of Hoshi said in a panicked tone, waving Cyrus toward the chair.

“Danger? What, but I still have to…” Cyrus trailed off as he stood, the entire room seeming to spin around him.

“I know the rapid exit from the mindscape can be extremely disorienting, but there is no time to waste. By returning to the virtual world, the disorientation will greatly diminish, for now,” Hoshi said, the last couple words almost in a whisper.

Cyrus, shakily and almost as if he had three too many drinks earlier, made his way back to the chair in the center of the room. He all but fell into it, but then righted himself on wobbly arms. The need to vomit accompanied his movements, but nothing ever came up. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or if maybe it would make him feel better, like it did when he had actually had too much to drink.

He wasn’t much of a drinker, but there had been a few times in his younger years, since he had his own place at an early age, when some ‘friends’ had come over and they had all partaken. He didn’t really care for the feeling of being intoxicated and found that the kids who were using him for his apartment weren’t really interested in actual friendship, just a place to party, so that time of his life had not lasted long.

Finally, Cyrus pulled the headset over his head once again, and the familiar sensation of being disembodied returned. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about this unusual state, but at the moment, the sensations in this mindscape were much preferable to the sick and dizzy feeling his physical body was enduring, let alone the pain from being thrown around the room like a ragdoll.

Hoshi’s image reappeared, clad in the same flight suit as before, but now with a new expression. Instead of the friendly and encouraging look the hologram had worn earlier, Hoshi’s face was now scrunched and tight, anxiety and concern clearly evident.

“You need to complete the integration as swiftly as possible. There is a comprehensive tutorial program you would normally have to go through before piloting the Cosmic Sentinel, but time is of the essence now, and we must bypass it due to the circumstances,” Hoshi explained.

Cyrus wasn’t sure what was happening or why the ship needed to move so quickly, but he could feel the tension through the AI’s explanation.

“The integration handshake is initiating now,” Hoshi said in an unusually mechanical tone. Just as Cyrus, who was still trying to synchronize his body with the ship, saw the twenty-second countdown timer appear in his vision.

‘Dzik!’ Cyrus heard himself mentally cuss as the countdown began. Half a second was lost as he briefly wondered why he couldn’t swear even in his own mindscape.

The timer moved to eighteen, and Cyrus re-focused. He pushed himself, his spaceship body, forward. He could feel the movement as his form lurched ahead.

“Faster!” he mentally yelled at himself, pushing harder and concentrating on his engines. He strained as his mind worked to merge the two separate identities—his own and that of the ship. He had almost achieved integration on his last attempt to win the race, but being thrown from the simulation and then having to retry it immediately after experiencing the abrupt disconnect, compounded by Hoshi's added stress, was making the combination of his two selves more difficult.

The ship moved forward slowly. Cyrus pushed with all his engines, the ship sliding through the path set by the lights, gaining speed and control even as the timer continually ticked down.

Ten seconds left. He could see the finish, just beyond the twisting curves.

Eight seconds. Cyrus felt his speed increase as his view upended and spun to match the path before him, his control and synchronization building.

Five seconds. The separation between his human body and that of the ship was lessening, becoming more than the sum of either. His consciousness realigning with that of the ship, orienting itself to its location within space.

Two seconds. The end was directly before him. He virtually leapt forward, feeling the boundary of the finish line pass by him, and at that same moment, the separation between himself and the ship vanished.

**Neuro-integration Complete!**

A sensation beyond anything Cyrus had ever felt overcame him. Not only had he accomplished his goal of passing the course and synchronizing his brain waves with the ship's, aligning his physical body with that of the Cosmic Sentinel, but he had become both.

The realization of what that meant slowly crept into his consciousness. He was no longer merely human, or at least not only human. He was now a being of dual bodies, dual identities, and dual minds. Cyrus had abandoned his beliefs the moment his parents had died, but they had raised him with the idea that there was an afterlife. He was taught that his 'spirit' would move on after death to a place filled with lush gardens, flowing rivers, and endless delights.

He no longer believed in all that, but as he transcended what it meant to be a mere human, it felt as though his soul was being transformed, changed into something more, and he couldn’t help associating the experience with something spiritual along the same lines.

The sensation only lasted a few seconds, but Cyrus knew it was something he would never forget or fully comprehend.

“Cyrus! You need to move us out of the Graviton storm!” Hoshi’s voice shattered the afterglow in which he was basking.

Cyrus opened his eyes but realized he was no longer perceiving through his physical senses. He was integrated. He saw his position relative to the ship. Surrounding him were colors, fields, and varying hues of electromagnetism, gravity, and substances beyond his current knowledge. Concepts and definitions materialized in his mind, their essence felt, seen, and almost touched by the ship, then translated into sensations his mind could interpret.

Before him, the Graviton storm manifested as a swirling vortex of intense gravitational waves, interlaced with pulsating streams of radiant energy. The storm's chaotic beauty was mesmerizing, with spirals of electromagnetic spectra weaving through gravitational distortions. Each pulse and ripple conveyed a sense of immense power and danger, as if the very fabric of space was being twisted and torn. Words and definitions flooded his consciousness, their meaning translated into tangible sensations—he could almost touch the gravitational currents, feel the electromagnetic fluctuations, and sense the unseen forces at play.

As the ship, he perceived the storm in its full terrifying splendor. The gravitational waves were not just visually captivating; they were dangerously close, threatening to tear the ship apart. The electromagnetic pulses surged with destructive potential, and the unseen forces pressed against the ship's hull, testing its limits.

“Cyrus, hold off as long as possible!” Hoshi's voice was urgent, cutting through the storm’s chaos.

Panic flooded through his mind but was quickly tamped down as he sensed the urgency of the situation. He could feel the ship's structural integrity being tested, the immense pressure from the storm threatening to crush him as well as the few others onboard. Every second counted. Cyrus knew that if he didn't act immediately, they would be caught in the storm's grasp, their chances of survival rapidly diminishing.

He engaged the engines in the same way he had just been doing within the simulation and felt them come to life. There was something different about this sensation compared to the simulation, where everything had felt as though it was in perfect working order. Now, in real life, Cyrus could feel the multiple systems within the ship still damaged. He could sense the dwindling power reserves, yet he also perceived something immensely powerful just beyond his reach.

Cyrus felt both useless and strained as he diverted all available power to the reverse thrusters. Sadly, only a mere trickle of energy coursed through the ship, completely insufficient to facilitate their escape. He knew he needed to do more, and his mind, now linked to the ship, told him what he needed to do to make it out: he needed to engage the JUMP engine.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option at the moment. Cyrus focused on the Cyclotron core and saw that there was someone inside.

As if to emphasize what needed to be done, the entire process of how the ship generated power for the JUMP system unfolded in Cyrus’s mind.

The ship was supplied with energy through a circulatory system known as the Dark-Matter Fusion Conduits. These small tubular structures acted like the arteries and veins of the ship. Instead of blood, as in a living being, or even some kind of ultra-tech super-fluid, the Cosmic Sentinel used this circulatory system to channel dark-matter particles. The dark openings at the front of the ship were called Quantum Collectors, and they scooped up and captured the dark-matter particles, focusing them into the conduits where their radiation was harvested throughout the ship. This process refilled the many battery-like storage devices and powered the multiple systems.

At the center of the circulatory system, where a heart would be in a living being, was the Dark-Matter Cyclotron Core.

The core trapped the circulating dark-matter particles and accelerated them in a controlled spiral, similar to a particle accelerator, creating a concentrated vortex of energy. Once fully repaired and supplied, the ship could regulate the circulation of this energy, maintaining a full power supply for vast amounts of time.

From this central core, the energy was easily distributed throughout the ship, but the most critical allocation of the Cyclotron’s energy was to the JUMP drive.

The JUMP drive harnessed the immense power generated by the Cyclotron Core, converting the dark-matter radiation into a stable, high-energy output. This output was then directed into the JUMP matrix, a highly complex network of quantum processors and anti-gravity field generators.

The JUMP matrix manipulated space-time itself, allowing the ship to create a temporary warp bubble. Within this bubble, the normal constraints of physics were altered, enabling the Cosmic Sentinel to traverse vast distances instantaneously by essentially eliminating the mass of anything within the created field. The process required precise control and an enormous amount of energy, which was why the integration with the core was so crucial.

Cyrus felt the vast amount of dark-matter swirling around, trapped within the Graviton storm, the Quantum Collectors filling rapidly. But with someone stuck within the Cyclotron Core, the particles had nowhere to go, unable to fully enter the Dark-Matter Fusion Conduits in order to feed the ship their enormous amounts of radiation.

“Yes, Cyrus, it’s Raknak in the core chamber, and Glix is on her way to remove him. And no, you cannot open the core while he is in there because the Dark-matter would instantly disintegrate him, not turn him into the Hulk,” Hoshi said in response to Cyrus’s train of thought.