“Absolutely not!” Elena yelled, jabbing her index finger just a hair's width from Aurelio’s eye. “Frankly we should be marshaling you for even engaging in a conversation with an unknown threat to begin with.”
The rest of the crew watched Elena chew him out as they surrounded the radar console and made their own quiet observations.
“If I didn’t respond, we might have lost the signal outright.” Aurelio defended himself.
Elena was affronted, “Were you even paying attention to the report of our last expedition?” She walked up to the console and slammed her hand down on the ancient metallic surface, “We don’t even know what that thing might be. Could be the mimic that Phineas tried to save. Could be a trap laid out by something else that lives in the Mire. Did you even consider that they could be tracing our point of contact right now and locating where the outpost might be?”
Aurelio motioned to argue but his words died on the vine. Those were worthy considerations. Just not one’s his perspective was capable of making when juxtaposed to the assurance that a catastrophic result like that could not possibly come from an event as innocuous as this one.
His uncertainty on that fact made him more uncomfortable than he wanted to be.
Kalani cut through the back and forth by looking at Aurelio, “Any reasonable idea who this scavvie might be?”
Aurelio responded honestly, “I don’t know who they are. I didn’t expect there to be survivors like us around to begin with considering…” he trailed off.
Considering the situation was so starkly different from the conditions he was familiar with.
Elena snapped her fingers in his personal space again, “Focus, rookie. The commander is looking to you for answers so fucking deliver.”
The antagonism she outwardly displayed against Aurelio was beginning to grate on his nerves.
“I was trying to recall something,” Aurelio lied, “Now, as I was saying, I don’t know who they are but I’m familiar with the title they provided. They identified themselves as a Sawbones and that alone is enough for me to be in favor of helping them out.”
He was familiar with one method of acquiring the role, a method that they were bound to take if they wanted more than the fundamental components of a space-faring vessel to contend with the far reaches of that void. But finding someone already familiar with the role was a boon that he didn’t want to pass up.
Having another body to man the outpost or provide their input on the tribulations to come was also not lost on him.
“They’re useful for healing injuries on and off the field.” Aurelio added. Momentarily locking eyes with the commander, he couldn’t help but relive the recent memory of her crumpled body on their first expedition and had to pull away.
It’d be stupid to leave an asset like a doctor out in those wastes.
“How long’s the distress signal been up? Could just be an A.I. housin’ the scavengers dead bits, trying to get scooped up and repurposed for one of us to use.” Phineas offered in a noncommittal fashion.
Cantwell split the crew apart and made way for the console. He inspected the controls with an informed eye and turned back to the rest of the crew with a shrug.
“Think we should talk to them.” Cantwell stated.
The rest of the crew remained silent, all eyes on Kalani and her final say on the matter.
The commander sighed, “This can of worms has already been opened. Gonna take point here and ask ‘em a couple of questions. By the book.”
Elena, a boiling inferno leaking from toe to tip, stormed out of the nest before she properly blew.
Despite getting his way here, Aurelio noted that his connection with Elena was already strained, and he didn’t want things getting worse between himself and the heaviest hitter on the squad.
Kalani approached the console and, after familiarizing herself with the controls, unmuted the connection between Doc and themselves.
“Hello, am I speaking to Doc?” Kalani asked.
The choppy signal caused them to wince for a moment, Doc’s voice on the other line a maelstrom of static interference, “Can hear you loud and clear on my end, doll. I’m guessing that Archivist sent you over to speak to me?”
Kalani’s eye twitched, “Yes… I was informed by my subordinate here that you were looking for an extraction team to be sent your way?”
“Yes ma’am. As soon as you can get a couple of grunts to fill in those suits, send ‘em my way for my immediate evacuation.” Doc replied enthusiastically.
She laughed, “Well hold up, Doc. I’ve got a couple of questions for you before I commit anyone towards this task. Chief among them being how long you’ve been on this rock and whether you’re even human.”
More interference spilled through the comms, “-long this heap of shit. This gen --- foreign interactions-” Doc’s feed was a bunch of garbled nonsense.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“Any chance we can adjust the connection? Stabilize it?” Kalani whispered to the crew.
Cantwell shrugged, “Dunno how.”
“Think we can push ‘em to a text based connection? It’ll probably save us both the bandwidth needed to interact with one another.” Phineas added.
Kalani nodded.
“Doc, any chance you can switch to text comms?” Kalani asked.
Their reply came a moment later. The output of the distress signal was shifted to a text channel and the terminal they were using shifted its interface to reflect the change.
Words materialized at the top of the text command line.
“As I was saying, I’m surprised your gen is still using the same handbook for handling foreign interactions as the last one.” Doc stated. His statement certainly raised eyebrows for the crew.
“I’ve been on this planet for an unbearably long time. Can’t say I’ve been keeping track of the passing cycles to be frank.” They added. Aurelio wasn’t above noticing that they’d sidestepped the human question entirely.
“If I’m not getting an answer to my second question, I’ve gotta ask, do you mean us harm?” Kalani sent back. She whispered something under her breath that Aurelio couldn’t catch.
“Well I guess it’d be strange to mean my rescuers harm but I get the caution, I do. No, I do not mean you harm. Frankly, I think human or not, I can provide your crew with worthwhile additions.” Doc went straight to bargaining for his rescue. He commended the stranger’s steadfastness in committing to their pitch, outlining the information they had on the going ons of their little corner of the Metal Mire, among other tidbits of useful knowledge.
Kalani nodded along at the paragraph length replies before sending a negotiation demand of her own.
“You’re gonna give us all you’ve got on what you know about the resets.”
“You’ve got yourself a deal. Commander.” Their response was lightning quick, the distress feed they were outputting disappearing from their rudimentary map altogether.
In the feeds place were coordinates to the Doc’s location. Here was an objective outside of the beaten path. One that could be used to experiment on bounded versus unbounded foes.
Only one more thing on his list to handle.
---
Kalani followed Aurelio through the Archives doors into the buildings center, the alien architecture floating above them providing a pleasant, calming chime to the space.
The commander’s shadow wasn’t trailing behind her either.
They walked past the pile of slabs that the commander had stacked onto the table towards the building’s inner doors. They were cast in the same cool obsidian as the slates were, the epitaph “Protect the future. Guide the stars” etched into the stone.
He placed his fingers on the wording and felt the runic grooves underneath the tips.
“So what is this role gonna make you capable of,” Kalani asked as he opened the door into the archives inner sanctum, “Are you gonna have perfect recall of all the tomes here? Deliver paper cuts to the enemy?” She chuckled.
He was consumed by an instinctual desire to descend into the bowels of their small cradle of knowledge. The crystalline sconces in the lower floor responded to Aurelio’s presence, matching his cerulean flame with their own dark blue hues.
Where dust had found purchase on the shelves above, the inner sanctum felt like it’d be hermetically sealed, with the few shelves available in the smaller room left in pristine condition.
And standing tall above the shelves, leaning over the ground in an outreaching and triumphant pose, was a smooth humanoid homunculus. Floating above the figure's hand was a thin strip of stone.
“The {Oath of the Scribes}...” Aurelio whispered. Wordlessly, he reached his arm out to grab the stone.
The strip responded to his desire and gently descended from its position down to his hand.
|?Do you wish to adopt the role of [ARCHIVIST]?|
Aurelio provided the scroll with a wordless confirmation and felt a confluence of power channel itself through him. The sensation was like having millions of jagged runescript weaved into the fiber of his being, not dissimilar to the boiling overflow he felt the first time his body was marked by the Monolith.
This was his first step towards carving his own path to salvation.
Finally he had the capacity to manipulate the odds.
He took a deep breath and opened his eyes to a new perspective. Whether a far reaching shift in his mental state or an added benefit of residing within his domain of power, Aurelio was capable of peering into the fundamental truths of the tomes and objects around him.
These truths felt fundamental in the way that puzzle pieces worked to form an abstract picture; certainly the pieces fit together but what he was looking at remained nebulous at its edges.
He looked to Kalani and felt his capacity to INSPECT her enhance, loose threads of information such as her complete name and her listed role rooted to her skin by ethereal strings.
It was all he could do to shut his eyes and avoid the deluge of information bombarding his vision.
Hopefully the whole world was not an overflow of data points like it was at that moment or he was going to require more effort adjusting to his new normal.
“You asked what sort of power an Archivist holds,” Aurelio spoke while keeping his eyes shut tight, “Well the answer here is that I’m now the only person in the outpost with complete access to the Archives records.”
At least he hoped.
“As for what I’m capable of out in the field, I’m now someone that provides advantages.” He announced.
He wasn’t sure how his REFERENCE ability was going to manifest in the field but any ability that gave him a chance to peer into a monster's attack pattern and adjust their actions was one they’d be in desperate need of, system or no system.
Aurelio blinked his eyes open and willed for the information to drain away from his vision. It was like holding the weight of a flowing river behind a dam; it alleviated the roaring headache that raked its way through his mind but there were still dribbles of connective threading on objects and people around him that tempted him to peer further into their trails.
Kalani jolted him with a pat on his shoulder, “Well if you’ve got all of these privileges, then I have a favor to ask of you.”
He did his best to listen to his commander.