“Aaargh!!”
With a shock Dylan sits up in his bed. What?!? A Dream? But the pain was really extreme....
No, not a dream – this is not exactly my cabin.
It almost looks like his cabin on the Sunhawk, but where his bed was originally against the outer hull of the starship with a window to space above it, that wall now was a faceted blue crystal. Additionally there is a strange effect on the air, as if he were looking through a prism that breaks and shifts the light.
As he looks around this cabin he finds that it is almost a replica of his cabin, including most of his personal items. Only a few tools, gimmicks and an old notebook are missing, and of course the blue crystal wall where the hull and the window are supposed to be.
When he touches the blue crystal, a holographic screen suddenly appears before his face.
Activity 11:59/12:00 Hours Energy 1/1 Mana Do you wish to enter artificial sleep (Y/N)
“No, I don’t want to sleep – I want to know where my crew is and why I’m wearing this old spaceman uniform? And what happened to the Sunhawk?”
The holographic screen vanishes, but no other answer was given.
A quick check around the cabin shows that while the internal devices like the clock and the DVD player work, the external connections like the communicator or the control panel for the ship overview are dead.
He finds his laser pistol in the drawer where he last put it and it seems to be operational, but with the strange prismatic effect in the air he doesn’t want to test it without need. The laser beam might simply be refracted, or it might be turned toward the wrong target.
As prepared as he could be, he checks if he is a prisoner. The cabin door opens without problem.
Definitely no longer on the Sunhawk. I’m pretty sure my cabin there opened toward a corridor and not toward the fold drive – or what’s left of the fold drive, there are crystal growths going around and even through the machinery.
Looking to the right there is a small distance of about a foot between the cabin wall and the machinery. While watching this he suddenly hears a voice calling “Captain!”
Turning around he sees that in the other direction a similar corridor leads to another cabin door facing the fold drive, and there stands a member of his crew.
“Stephen, glad to see someone. Do you know what’s going on? Something seems to have rearranged parts of the Sunhawk here.”
“No, I just woke in something that looks like a stretched and enlarged version of the cabin I share with Mathew, but with only one bed. And trying to step out I only saw the fold drive here.”
“This small crawlspace between the fold drive and my cabin goes around a bent to my right, how does it continue on your side?”
“Dead end after a single meter, there is a crystal wall there.”
In the silence while Dylan ponders this info another voice is heard from somewhere.
“Hello, Engineer here, my cabin seems to be squeezed between a fabricator and the FTL Pulsor, and I can see two small tunnels I might crawl through but no one else.”
“Nice to hear of you, Cheyenne” the captain speaks out loudly. “Roll call – anyone else around here?”
“Omnuun here, I can see the FTL Pulsor as well and there seems to be the mess hall next to the bridge and the medbay if I guess correctly. I think that might give us some space to meet.”
“M’raan reporting – I can see the very disturbing remains of a cargo hold and can’t even guess what might be salvageable from there. I’ll try to find the mess hall in this mess.”
After a few minutes and more than a few curses about small ways and crystal walls the crew makes their ways to the mess hall, where they also find a sixth member, their astrophysicist and navigator Dr. George Davis.
“Hi captain, everyone, glad to see someone else in this strange building.”
“Hello George, good to see you – but this is only half of the crew. Has anyone seen anything of the other six?”
Everyone around shakes their heads. No one has seen or heard of anyone else.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“OK, in my cabin about half of the devices worked and the other half not. That there looks to be part of the bridge, although modified by those crystal outgrows like everything else here. It still has two control stations however, let’s check if they work.”
From a distance the bridge looked normal if incomplete, but when they go closer they see that all monitors were only black boards, and where the keyboards had been are now sheets of a blue crystal. Dylan and Cheyenne sit down despite that and Dylan mentions
“The same blue crystal is in my cabin and activated a holographic screen when I touched it.”
Advanced Control Structure Please select structure to control Advanced Crafter Shutdown Advanced Detection Standby Advanced Regenerator Standby Creature Control not built Drone Control not built Fold Storage Standby Mana Booster Standby Message System Busy: repairing data Pattern Archive Active Power Shrine Active [[System]] Pattern Shop Shutdown [[System]] Structure Shop Shutdown
The rest of the crew watches for a few minutes as their captain and engineer check through the options. In most cases selecting an option shows a hologram of a structure that is clearly taken from the Sunhawk, but modified by crystal growths going through - only that the hologram vanishes after a second with an error-beep showing that "Standby" and "Shutdown" are not selectable options. Only the two "active" and the "busy" options result in different holoscreens appearing.
Focusing on the two “active” options, Dylon selects the Power Shrine while Cheyenne checks the Pattern Archive and the Message System.
Power Shrine (unidentified) Power Name ??#?!$????%? Power Aspect
“This wasn’t on the Sunhawk like the rest of the structures we have seen so far. It looks like a crystal altar that would fit into almost any church I know of, if not for the completely unknown symbols scattered among it. And the data options are also either unidentified or talking about a core and core data that I never have heard of.” The captain muses. “What did you find, Cheyenne?”
"The Pattern Archive looks like a distorted computer core from the Sunhawk, while the Message System looks like a crystallized version of the FTL Pulsor - which makes sense in a certain way. The archive only allows me to list some patterns that seem to be based on entries in the Galactic Database we were carrying, but the Message System is more interesting:"
Pattern Archive Patterns available 27/40
Message System History Log
After seeing the screen, Dylan orders “Open those two messages, perhaps they will help us understand what happened.”
When Cheyenne triggers the display of the first message, it doesn’t appear on the holographic screen but is somehow projected into everyone’s mind.
[[Welcome to the Endless World, Ranger Sunhawk]]
[[Do not be afraid, your spirit has been summoned by the great ??#?!$????%? to be a Champion of
[[Your great quest will be explained to you when you call your Powers Name inside its shrine]]
[[Do not be lonely in the empty core you now reside in, soon you’ll learn your purpose and how to contact the outside]]
In the stunned silence after that message, Dr. Davis is the first to speak up. “Somehow I think the other side made a few mistakes – besides the obvious ones of us not being lonely and the rather less than empty area we are in…”
“You’re probably right with that guess, George.” answers Dylan. “Cheyenne, can you call up the other message?”
This time a strange symbol accompanies the message projected into their minds.
[[I am the System of the Endless World]]
[[I am to help you with any questions and changes from the System of your old world to the rules of your new world]]
[[If you have any questions about the System, concentrate on my symbol while asking it]]
[[Be aware that I’m neutral in all aspects and that there will be a price for using this option without real need]]
“OK, at least we now have some target for questions…”