Somewhere Else:
A signal, a message, broke through the deep silence. Decoding did nothing. Resources diverted and messages rerouted through other facilities and constructions.
The now unoccupied receptors adjusted and tuned themselves toward the origin of the signal.
If it came through again, they would be ready.
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Jack woke to a trickling brook of electricity flowing into him. It filled up and then split its charge with the cellular batteries next to it. The pain from the individual cells rapidly charging and discharging turned into a comforting swaying-lull as it spread to more and more parts of his body.
Jack pulled more and more electricity from the brook, turned it into a creek, then a stream, then metal blasted into the side of his face.
He gasped and sat up then passed out before his current had a chance to balance. Far above, there was a hole in the sky, glowing red.
“Are you awake?”
He flitted his eyes towards the voice, it was Jonah.
Jack sat up, “Uh yeah… I think I remember what happened but, this isn’t the Core.” His head turned on a swivel. He tried to stand but fell back, his feet were locked in chitin. He squinted, they looked melted in.
“Why’s it so dark? Where are we? Wait, are we still on the ship?”
Jonah pointed up towards the hole in the sky, “The Cryo-Core is up there.”
Jack interrupted, “Where are we now?”
Jonah was silent but Jack heard coughing, “Tule is that you?”
It finished up, “Yes, it’s me. I’m here.”
“Oh good, I thought you were dead.”
Tule laughed dryly, “Don’t count me out just yet.”
Jack pulled at his feet and got nowhere. He reached a hand to feel what was happening down there, nearly up to his ankles were completely encased by chitin. He pulled and started the effort of unsuccessfully extracting his feet.
“Shit, I’m stuck here. Either of you know how to get me out?”
A blade was passed to Jonah and then gingerly to Jack, “Use the Toothpick.”
Jack held the blade. It was comfortable. Now that he had a moment to get a feel for it; light, balanced well. The blade had a reddish-silver sheen, he held up his hand in front of his face. Then again, everything here had a reddish glow.
He gave it a few practice swings, it had a hitch to it. He swung it again, felt it again. A vibration, but his hand didn’t shake. As best he could guess it was a couple of levels beyond really what a vibration was. It split the air. He didn’t know how else to describe it. Well, he thought that was actually a pretty good way to describing it.
A memory of seeing ‘Horn’s Toothpick’ at the very first Terminal. Very carefully he started to carve himself free.
“Is this Horn’s Toothpick?”
He could hear the surprise in Tule’s voice, “How did you know the name of it?”
“I remember seeing it for 90 Chits at a Terminal.”
Tule started coughing at this, Jonah’s eyes reflected them both.
“90?? It cost me 1600!”
That didn’t make any sense to Jack, well that wasn’t quite true, there was one possibility. The Terminal AI Disk he was carrying around was discounting items for him. First Time Limb Replacement, all the other stuff. It hadn’t required any Magno-Tubes to regenerate his arm. He knew if he asked now, that answer would be very different.
“Yeah I didn’t choose it because ‘Toothpick’ sounded like a terrible things to fight crabs with. Plus, I wanted to stay far away from them.”
Tule chuckled, “I can’t fault your logic. Generally the stranger the name, the better the item. I’m not sure which surprises me more, the price difference or the fact that there is another one out there.”
“Where do they come from? The items. The names are bizarre.”
Jonah found this topic to be more in line with his interests, “It’s commonly hypothesized that they are alien artifacts and the Terminal’s attempt to translate the text is where the odd names come from."
“That, makes sense. Wait, you remember my Zappa?”
Blank looks met his.
“The shocker, the taser I had.”
Tule nodded and Jonah saw Tule’s action and copied it. Jack didn’t notice.
“So that had a sort-of, instruction manual or whatever you’d call it. But it was in English.”
“Like I said, the Terminal-”
“No. I’m saying that, inside the unopened box, there was a piece of paper that had Human writing on it. It said things like, ‘Detronian Death Judges’ and other stuff too, warnings, instructions and other stuff that just made no sense.”
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Jack freed his feet and found Tule as he tried to return the Toothpick. It was extremely dim but comfortably on the visible side of near-complete darkness. He found him and moved to hand it back.
“No, you hold onto it for now. You’ll have better use of it than me.”
Jack studied Tule as he listened to his words. He was in terrible shape. Jack reached out his Affinity and nearly sliced himself open as he clutched his head and dropped to his knees. A streak of fundamental pain shot through his head and down the rest of his cellular structure.
The Toothpick dropped to the floor and it sunk into the chitin, vibrating slowly as it sank deeper.
Tule asked knowingly, “Your Affinity right?”
“Yeah, I felt like Uller for a second.”
“It’ll pass, you’ve overtaxed it, it’s the same for me now.”
“How long does it take to come back?” Jack was a lot more comfortable with his Affinity running, especially considering his dim surroundings.
“Depends on how much you’ve taxed it.”
“What does that mean?” It was pretty obvious, whatever had hit him at the end was about a hundred straws too many.
Tule didn’t respond. Jack asked a different question, “What is Affinity?”
Tule shifted to look at him, “that’s a better question. It’s has to do with experience and understanding of fundamental forces as well a combination of natural affinity and your Nano’s development that boosts that affinity.”
That was a lot of words and this seemed like a conversation to have once they had a plan. Jack took the moment to look around, “Where are we?”
Jonah provided, “We’re floating on top of the giant crab now.”
“Oh ok… wait, you said floating?” Jack’s current movements and inner ear upgrades made the ground feel as solid as, well, the ground.
“Yes, I’ve been monitoring the level of the plane we are on and have noticed variations.”
“How do you even measure something like that?”
Jonah tapped his goggles before a spark lit off them. He hurriedly removed them and started fiddling.
Tule’s harsh breathing continued in the background.
“Is there anyone else down here besides us?”
Jonah shook his head, “Not sure, I was with Tule who I was able to shield with a deployable of mine. Then I brought him to where I saw you last. Then. I charging you before you,” he held up his missing finger, “overdrew and blew it up. Don’t expect any more electricity from me.” A frustrated glare punctuated the end of his report.
That wasn’t good. Jack had been relying on having easy access to electricity. He could faintly feel the charge build inside him. Glacial.
He looked around him. To the side was a mass of melted metal a few feet high.
“What’s that? Wait. Is that the SI?”
“What’s left of it.”
“Mind if I use the Toothpick on it?”
Tule smiled, it looked more to mask his pain than anything else. “If you can damage my Toothpick I’d be more impressed than angry.”
Jack started carving into the metal, almost losing his grip with the blade’s particular vibration. He experimented with cutting into the metal at different angles. It made a huge difference but he had trouble discerning exactly what he was doing differently each time.
“This blade is weird.”
“It’s unique.”
“Yeah sure, that too.”
Jack carved enough of the metal away to find what he was looking for. The AI disk was in a hollow pocket near the center.
Jack flipped it in his fingers. The normal green glow was deeper but more diffuse, in the middle of the disk was a blue square. Jack studied it hoping to gain some insight.
“What’s that?” Jack looked, that was Tule. He looked at Jonah, he already knew.
“It’s an AI disk.”
Jonah observed, “So that’s what you shoved into its mouth, or mouth-like section.”
Jack shrugged, uncomfortable revealing anything, he considered the two just a step lower than Yuma on the “forced to trust” scale so he decided to elaborate, “Yeah, I figured the AI was able to beat the SI wherever I used it in the Labs so why not jam it into the SI itself.”
Tule tried to say something but coughed instead, it sounded like jagged metal had met slightly more jagged metal.
Jack unzipped his pouch, “Let me see what’s going on with you.”
Tule waved him away, “There’s nothing you can do.”
Jack sat, “Why not? I did heart surgery on Yuma within minutes of meeting her and she turned out… alright.” He paused at the last word in his sentence as he reflected the current status of her heart.
Well, that wasn’t his fault she was impaled. He thought back to how he told her to go get Tule. Ok, so maybe it was, partially.
He missed the look from Tule, “So what’s the problem with you?”
“It’s nothing that’ll kill me soon. Tell me about how you met Yumata.”
“Are you really her brother?”
“Yes, I don’t have many memories from before, We went in Cryo together and our Pods were separated at some point. Her Pod wasn’t next to me when I was awoken.”
Jack nodded and started the story from when he first saw Yuma running down the hallways, through the surgery and the mutant hybrid Cryo-Bay they’d found. He continued his story through finding her family’s base. He skipped over a few grey areas including open brain surgery on her father. Was he her “Lab father” or “father-father?” He asked and Tule had no memories of their father. It could have been him, it could have been her “lab-father,” apparently it wasn’t an uncommon concept. Tule himself had essentially gone from Korl’s mentor, to his uncle, to his father in all but name.
Jack was drawn out of his reverie by another hacking cough from Tule.
“If it’s nothing then let me do something.” Jack would rather have Tule by his side than dead.
“Medjel won’t fix it, no matter how pure.”
That implied something, “There’s impure Medjel?”
Jonah hopped in on this question, “Most Medjel in the Labs is impure. Where did you get so much Pure?”
Jack glanced at his bags and undid the front of his belt. The bags closest to the front were Medjel. One was half-full and the other, perhaps 2/3rds. He pulled them off and dropped them on the ground. He nodded at Jonah who dove in.
“That’s one thing I don’t get, I’m falling over the stuff.”
Tule paused at that, “What do you mean, you ‘don’t get it?’”
Jack paused, he had been too relaxed.
Jonah popped in, “Who cares where you’re from, just tell us about the Medjel.”
Jack felt the headache press in against his head, he deflected, “I’m from the Labs, I just never met anyone before Yuma.”
Even in the dimness he could tell that Tule and Jonah were eyeing him, “Ok, so I put the AI disk into a Terminal and I can exchange Magno-Tubes full of Nano for either Levels or Chits. I didn't really have a lot of time to explore the Terminal system."
Jonah muttered something like, 'because you're not from the ship.' Jack didn't catch the whole thing, he powered onwards.
“How do you guys use the Terminals without an AI?”
Jonah held up his portable, “We use portables to create a SI-shell that emulates, what I assume, you’ve seen.”
Jack asked to use it but Jonah seemed very hesitant to let him get anywhere near his portable. He dismissed Jonah’s behavior, maybe he was still touchy about his finger. Yuma would know.
Jack, feeling relatively comfortable now that there were others around him, and no crabs, asked another question.
“What's the deal with the Toothpick?" He looked over the blade again.
Tule answer surprised him, but not too much. “When you cut something with it, you separate it, forever. If you lose a finger,” he held up his finger, “it’s like it had never existed there at all. One doesn’t ‘become two,’ when you cut it with the Toothpick. One has never been one, it has always been two.”
Well that was moderately terrifying, he didn’t want to test his electrical regeneration against something that permanently separated things. He’d lost enough fingers to last him the rest of his life.
Jack stood up and unsuccessfully tried to rub some dirt off of his thighs. Filthy.
“I’m going to check out the situation.” He gingerly picked up the Toothpick.