Chapter 19

…[ MATIVO ]…

Coming up with a reply to the Union invite was proving to be more work than I had thought. I had asked Jacy to help, but she had refused outright. No reason was given, no matter how much I pleaded for one. I had been left to my own devices.

I had never written a business letter before. Surprising I know, but I had people to do that for all my companies. This one was different for several reasons. First, it wasn’t directly addressed to any one of my companies, just me. That meant I couldn’t forward it to one of them for a reply. I really needed an aide for tasks such as this.

So, I did what any sane human would. I copied an example from one of Robin’s many records. Edited it to match my situation and send it to the account that had send the invite. Which also happened to be a personal account. This person was taking too many liberties with me.

I started getting anxious about my reply immediately after I had sent it. What if they realize I had just copied something from the network? Had I used the proper wordings for a business letter? In fact, I started blaming Jacy for refusing to help me. If they received us with guns blazing for having somehow insulted them in the letter, it would be her fault.

I still hadn’t let go of the idea that they could have been behind my kidnapping, but the others opinions made me start asking what if it wasn’t them. That would leave me having absolutely no clue who had been behind it.

I switched to my family’s messages to get my mind of it. I hoped they would be able to uplift my mood. And didn’t disappoint.

First up was Katũnge, which also meant Ivy. The sole next generation in the Mũtindas family. And a sore reminder to our parents that none of us showed any interest in starting our own families any time soon. Ivy started off the message by showing off her lost tooth. I wasn’t sure if she was old enough to be losing her milk teeth yet, but her proclamation that she had lost it in a scraffle put that thought on the backburner. She followed that up with that the other kid had lost two teeth. Two for one, that wasn’t a bad trade. I was proud of her.

Her mother admonished her for being happy about it. But I didn’t think she was that angry, considering she had still sent the message. She spent most of the message talking about Ivy’s antics. At the last bit, she said that we still had a somewhat positive image. The Europa crisis, despite our more than accommodating response, had worked against us. But the footage from Titan had been positively received.

The rest of the messages were a collection of different degrees of more personal than work, and the other way around. They all seemed pretty happy with the success the expedition had achieved so far. But they were conscious enough to keep their platitudes to the bare minimum. The younger ones had trouble with that. But I knew they would have it down as they got older. Platitudes tended to make me feel angrier than any insult ever could. To me, it just felt like the person was making fun of me. Even when I knew they weren’t. I had tried getting used to it, but it hadn’t worked, so my family had been forced to start limiting how much platitudes they directed my way.

My parents were just the same old. My father still tried to control me even when I was billions of kilometers away from him. I didn’t think there was any place in the universe I could go that he wouldn’t still find a way to control me. My mother still treated me like I was the baby of the family, even with so many younger siblings. It was understandable though, I was considered the weakest in the family, in terms of body immunity. Mũtiso’s death had just made things worse. My step-mother treated me more like a brother than a son, even though she was ten years my senior. Wait, that wasn’t old enough for her to be my mother. I guess I could give her that.

I decided to send out my replies at another time. Probably after I was done with the day’s activities. As it was, I was getting close to being late for a test. I set a reminder for the replies and left for the lab. I had forgot on more than one occasion to send replies.

They were all there, ready for me. Maybe they did get a kick out of watching me suffer a little. The sadists. Or maybe I was being too oppressive and this was there way of expressing that fend up energy on me.

“What are you thinking?” Mbithe asked as she took several steps away from me. “It doesn’t look good for us.”

“You shouldn’t be asking that then.” Park reproached her.

“It is best he knows I’m already scared so that he doesn’t feel the need to go through with whatever he is planning.”

“I’m not planning anything.”

“See! It works.” We all laughed, even Mbithe.

“I guess it’s time.” I said as I moved to the test room.

“Wait, you are forgetting this.” I was hoping she had forgotten about it. Or at least, that I would be getting away before she realized. But nothing really gets past Jacy. Especially not when one of her projects is involved.

Her energy pack hadn’t changed much over the weeks since she first introduced it. It still felt weird attached to my body. And every time it pumped its energy juice in me, my body felt cold all over. Like I had suddenly got a chill. It had added more than ten minutes to my test time, but I still didn’t like it. I did not pretend otherwise.

“I still don’t like it. Have you changed anything this time?”

“Not much. I didn’t have enough time to work on it.” She replied as she attached it to my right side, near the liver. It would send miniscule tendrils directly to my superior vena cava, those would deliver the dose of energy whenever I needed it.

I went through the warm drills before starting up on the day’s tests. We worked on my effective range, which hadn’t changed much over the weeks. Maybe a couple centimeters, but that could easily have been me pushing my hands and legs further out.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

We moved on to what I had started calling the diamond attack, to the dismay of the group. But it was mine, and I would bloody call it what I wanted. I had managed to coalesce the cloud into powder, then to chunks. But it still crumbled with the smallest of disturbances. It was just plain unstable. Park had claimed the chunks had started to irritate his skin. Laboratory tests had shown nothing out of the ordinary, but he no longer touched anything I conjured with bare skin anymore. In fact, they had taken to walking in to the test room in non-carbon hazmat suits until it was declared safe for humans. Was I not a human anymore, I had asked them. But no one answered.

My first trial produced another chunk. But this one was different from the others. It had consumed a considerable amount of energy to conjure it; and it had a diamond feel to it. It was the smallest so far; being less than the size of the pinky finger nail. As far as I could tell it had two pointed ends with a sharp ridge along its center. It also had a dull shine to it. I didn’t dare touch it; if Park was right, I didn’t want to get hurt by my own attack.

I moved a few meters away from it and tried again. Even more energy was consumed, and the end product looked even more like a diamond. The reading really had helped. The blackness of the previous chunk was gone, and it looked more like a cloudy glass than a shiny diamond. It still had the same size as the other one, but had fallen even closer than the other one. I really couldn’t use them as bullets.

When I tried a third time, I got nothing. Not even a trickle of energy moved. I had run myself dry. Checking my status, the last trial had put me just below my cut off zone.

Shutdown.

I settled down on a seat inside the test room. Jacy had set it there for me to rest as they made the room safe for human presence. She came with the usual juice, while Park collected the chunks for lab work. Soon enough, they were done and I cleaned up and joined them in the observation room.

Dominic, Jacy and Mbithe were discussing among themselves, so I went to Andrew.

“There is still a flaw with safety module.” I said as I took the seat next to him.

“What? Where?” It bothered him too much, I could see.

“The last intention put me below the cutoff zone.”

“I don’t see why… I see.” He said as he brought up the data from the last intention. “Do you think we should make sure you can’t get below the cut off zone?”

“No. That wouldn’t be wise. Maybe we should establish a red zone below the current cut off zone. Making it the yellow zone.”

“That way if an attack puts you in the yellow zone but not in the red zone, it is allowed. But if it puts you in the red zone, it is stopped.”

“Yeah.”

“One problem. We never know how much energy will be consumed until the conjuration is done.”

“What about approximation?” Jacy asked as she joined us. “All these trials and tests should give us an idea of what consumes how much energy. With that in hand, the chip can approximate the amount of energy it would take to manifest an intent.”

I was glad for her opinion before a thought hit me. “That means—”

“You get to use more of my energy packs.”

I groaned, wondering if the improvement of the safety module would be worth what I would be put through.

“Have you thought of wide area attacks?” Dominic asked.

“A little. I did use a flash to momentarily blind those kidnappers.” I said, remembering how advantageous it had proved to be. Maybe I should concentrate on those rather than the diamond attack.

“No. I was thinking something more tangible.”

“Their blindness was very tangible.”

“Like an explosion?” Jacy asked.

“Yes! That, an explosion.” He exclaimed triumphally. But it had me confused, how would that even work.

“I think it would be too expensive.” Jacy noted. Yes, that was one of the issues with an explosion.

“He would also be at the center of the explosion. Most likely, he would die before he saw the fruits of his efforts.” Mbithe added another good point.

“The amount of energy required for such an event would utterly fry his nerves and the nanobots too.” It seemed everyone was pointing out issues from their area of expertise.

“Guys, it was only a suggestion. An idea to think about.” Dominic complained when it looked like everyone was against it.

“And we are not saying it’s a bad one.” Mbithe patted him on the shoulders as she continued, “We are merely stating the challenges we have to overcome to make it a possibility.”

“Make what a possibility?” Park asked as he returned from the lab.

“An explosion.”

“Who wants to explode?” he asked giddily.

“No one!!”

…

…[ ANDREW ]…

Even after making their way into Uranus orbit, the talk on the ship was all about the shuttle race back on Neptune. The race had been expected to be boring at best, with the only highlights being getting to see exactly what the Bridge saw as they raced through the Solar System at speeds near the speed of light. But it had proved much more interesting than anticipated.

First had foremost, the pilots had gone out of their way to offer one of the most tantalizing dog fight Andrew had ever seen. And he had watched a lot of them. If only they had been shooting at each other, then it would have been a picture perfect shuttle race.

The footage developed by Robin had created a thrilling and exciting videos to watch. There were videos from the views of the individual pilots, and those were exciting, but not as exciting as the one the AI had created based from the data the shuttles had returned from the race. It created an outside camera view that showed the shuttles as if an observer had been filming the race from start to finish. Andrew had watched and rewatched that one more times than he cared to admit. He vowed to qualify as a shuttle pilot for the next expedition.

But only speed was of import at the shuttle race, and they had more than delivered on that front. All of them had managed to travel faster than the ship had being travelling at. Jacy, of course, had delivered the highlight of the shuttle race, going fast enough to match the speed of light in vacuum. She had literally pulled ahead of the others at the back race as if they were standing still. The difference in points wasn’t that much, but the actual speed itself proved too much.

At Uranus, Sol appeared so small. It was hard to associate it with the warmth giver, sometimes scotching, it was known for back on Earth. So far away, Andrew could say without doubt that no life could possibly exist at Uranus’ vicinity. If it ever did, it would be an extremophile. Something no human could ever think of. Maybe he was wrong, but he didn’t think there was any point to looking for life that far out.

Uranus herself looked rather dull. There were known to be clouds, sometimes even something akin to a dark spot similar to the one found at Neptune. But after all the things they had already seen, it was truly unimpressive. The rings were barely there, her moons small icy things with little to no activity. At least compared to the kind activity found in the other moons. Even Triton on orbit around Neptune farther out had more activity than all of Uranus’ moons combined.

The exploration missions reflected that too. They were nothing more than data collection on anything they could land their shuttles on. The peculiarity of Uranus’ axial tilt and rotation were not of much interest to Mativo. And he didn’t bother trying to collect much data for research on them. Maybe later on some researchers would dedicate their times into understanding what was with Uranus. But sadly for Uranus, the expedition had none of those on board.

No one talked much about Uranus as they went through the motions for the exploration of the Uranian System. Would it be a tourist destination? Most probably. But not for long, Mativo had said. Most of the crew were already talking about what they would be doing once they returned into the Inner Solar System. Andrew was worried they might cut the trip short on Uranus, not spending the scheduled month on her orbit. But Mativo held on to the schedule, and the crew were back to doing more inside the ship than outside.