This was the first time Maso had seen his home planet from orbit. As a part of his training, he'd reenacted thousands of scenarios in Immersives. Throughout experiencing hundreds of possible ship malfunctions, dozens of mutinies or sudden space battles, he'd never really thought to look too closely at the Origin. It was always a blip out of the corner of his eye, a random gray-white flash as he made his way between tasks.
Or it was night, or they were already out of the planet's system, or the external panels were turned off, or he was simply distracted by the endless barrage of information that accompanied a professional Immersive. His health, hunger and hydration levels, implant statuses: all things that were subconscious in life, made explicit in the simulations.
Maso was hungry, if he thought about it. But that information seemed so unimportant, so trivial in comparison to the sight in front of him.
The first thing that had grabbed him, the reason he was standing here slack-jawed instead of performing his pre-laucnch checks, was the sheer size of it. Images and video could distill the planet down into data that could be displayed on one's wrist, but in doing so, they inevitably lost a sense of scale. Merely knowing how large the planet was by rote memorization wasn't enough to grasp how vast it was. It was huge, big enough to fill his natural field of view. Menacing, as if it were an alien battleship a trillion times larger than his.
Once he had observed it for a minute, drank in the spectacle, he'd also realized just how still the planet was, like it was frozen in time. Down below, he knew, an entire species thrived. Millions of individuals trained and studied and worked to create new systems that he wouldn't be able to see for years. And yet, from up here, he could have been made to believe that the planet was dead, nothing moving below the thick clouds that covered the vast majority of its surface.
It was an illusion formed by distance, and the geosynchronous orbit that kept his ship moored perfectly in place, anchored by an invisible chain.
Task Update: [12] Integrated Engineers have been stored, came a cool voice from inside his head: Cybion, the networked intelligence that had organized this mission.
Maso sighed. He'd been interested in observing the process, but now it was too late. This ship was small, as a consequence for limited funding for missions like these, and there was barely room for the twelve engineers and him. It was his responsibility to take care of all the tasks that would usually require a full team - once they made it to their destination, he'd be a full protection force, providing tactics and force where necessary. If necessary.
On the ship, well. Despite all the preparatory work he'd done, there was only a limited number of things he'd thought necessary while on board. Mainly-
Task Update: Enter storage facility within five minutes. A fine of [5000]E will be applied per minute of delay.
A tight deadline. He'd mostly exhausted the mooring time, the precious minutes allocated to syncing with Cybion, down below the clouds. The kind of high-throughput data transfer that was used only supported connecting while directly above the network's terminal. It was a trade-off: the communication method wasn't particularly disruptive to other entities, but the network only being able to sync to a single object in orbit made that slot extremely valuable.
Fortunately, the networks were quite efficient at moving clients (and employees, like Maso) through their departure zones.
Please be advised that the second launch adjustments are underway. The third, and final, launch adjustments will occur when all individuals are in storage. Estimated time until departure: Four minutes, twenty-five seconds. Estimated time until arrival: two years, ninety-five days, three hours.
Perhaps taking in the sights hadn't been the best use of time. Maso was already on his way, glancing through status readouts that cascaded over his left eye while scanning for any defects in the ship's body with his right.
He felt naked moving without his suit, the still-pressurized air uncomfortably noticeable against his body as he made it to the ship's nose. Unlike the halls and storage areas, which only had a few transparency-capable panels, the ship's control room allowed for full visibility of the outside space. Maso realized he could see the moon, its surface covered in black-green biomechanical sprawl.
Task Update: Enter storage facility within two minutes. Fines may be applied starting in three minutes.
This room, at least, felt comfortable. A single pod sat in the middle, his home for the following flight. Around it were all of the utilities he might require upon waking: a basic oxygen suit, controls and diagnostic interfaces for the ship, a variety of tools and weapons that would be more than enough to solve any problem.
There was only one more thing he had to do before entering the pod.
Maso felt for the augment that connected Cybion, through the ship as a gateway, to his personal interface. Although some augments were implanted directly into the body, connections to networked interfaces were generally external. The augments and implants within one's body were meant to be a part of them, an extension of the being. A connection to something like Cybion was the antithesis of that: a data exchange, communication with an external mind.
Most felt uncomfortable without the ability to turn that off, to easily detach that connection.
Maso didn't. There was something safe, he felt, in having the constant guiding presence of a being who knows what must happen. Even if it didn't align with his interests, at least there was a confidence there. A certainty.
When he detached the augment, he wouldn't be able to hear the voice of the networked intelligence until he returned. Maso had trained, of course. He was competent with any of the weapons assigned to him, had a wealth of survival knowledge, and could likely repair the ship himself in orbit.
And yet, to throw away this connection?
It was like slicing off a part of his body, like removing a part of his brain.
Task Update: Enter storage facility within one minute. Fines will be applied startin-
Maso detached the augment, stared at it for a few seconds, and then entered the pod.
The last thing he saw, before the liquid poured over his eyes, was the Origin. The planet that was a mess of clouds and heat and gases that burned the skin if you stayed outside too long. The place where he'd lost his parents to the deep, unforgiving void of space. The haven of millions of living beings, individuals that fought day by day to bring a future where their children could live somewhere else.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
His home.
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Interstellar travel by precomputation had been mired in controversy for over a decade when, amidst its first trials, a respected school of mathematics had released a paper showing its vanishingly low risk.
The amount of data available to the networked intelligences, the paper argued, was enough to provably detect and predict the movement of all but the rarest cosmological entities. Within a safe operating range of some ten thousand SSU, the chances of collision with a large astronomical object (given sufficient precomputation) were estimated to be about as likely as contracting cancer from stepping outside. Smaller astronomical objects could be hidden, or created by collisions or other factors beyond the scope of prediction, but special principles of Tier 3 travel removed that as a concern.
Even the ever-expanding nature of the universe worked in favour of this theory, the fact that space was always becoming more sparse, more spread out. An axiom of sorts, grounded in physical rules that most learned by the age of ten, which quelled even the more committed doubters.
There was one danger to this form of travel, however. To predict the paths of celestial bodies, the networked intelligences used a combination of physical laws and a form of statistical intuition that even the most brilliant academics couldn't hope to grasp. But, something everyone agreed upon was that these algorithms would not be able to predict the effects of living beings. Other interstellar travelers were effectively a blind spot to the algorithm - along with their impact on the worlds they visited.
After all, the engineers that were sent on expeditions often had a disproportionate effect on the climates of the worlds they visited, which could easily spiral into a minuscule shift in orbit, eventually culminating in some gravitational factor being mispredicted, leading to the potential for an incorrect travel path, or worse.
Maso had memorized this information long ago, early on in his training. It wasn't something that he had been concerned about. This was precisely the reason that every expedition took off in a new direction, every voyage braving uncharted waters. If alien species hadn't been discovered at this point, the chances of an encounter during travel were slim to none - beyond that, the only other unknown were humans of a previous epoch. But that was a theory, nothing more.
At exit of Tier 2 travel, the ship's more complex systems turned back on. To shorten the journey, and preserve energy resources, this only happened at the last possible moment, when safety systems had to be reengaged.
Immediately, a set of sensors detected a problem. The target planet, QA-113, was not in the position that had been predicted. It wasn't off by much, at least not in the spatial sense of things, but the ship's computer was only prepared for a certain range of orbit locations, and QA-113 fell outside of those.
Or rather, fell inside.
Maso awoke to the sound of metal wailing as it bent, burned, deformed in contact with the planet's atmosphere. The bright light, noise, and violent trembling of the ship washed over him, threatened to drag him under.
He activated an implant, and all sensory information ceased.
None of the training had prepared him for the fog that felt like it had invaded his mind. It took him a moment to remember where he was, a minute to grasp even the slightest information about what was happening.
The ship was burning up.
I can't die here.
His suit was where it had been packed, and he slipped it on, letting it mold itself over his body.
This can't be it.
He'd activated a (stabilized) view that mimicked what he should have been seeing, and he could now see the planet far below, blues and greens and other colours mixed in what almost looked like a painting. He didn't waste a moment on enjoying the view.
I have to live.
His suit active, he hunted through the survival equipment stowed away. He couldn't take any of it with him. Food -
I'm so hungry.
- weapons, tools. All useless.
At last, he found what he was searching for. A parachute, the attachment connecting like another augment to the back of his suit.
He couldn't risk another moment. The readouts told him everything he needed to know: he had to go, now. Four high-energy blasts from the closest gun took out a panel - and then he was sucked out, his helmet colliding with a bang against the inside of the ship before he was free, and falling, and falling...
The planet had trees, he realized, when the suit's stabilizers kicked in and he enabled his external view again.
Not the kind they grew at home, the little greenish-brown things that sat in pots on ledges or the larger varieties that bore fruit in complex greenhouses. Big trees, taller than a building, clearly visible through his magnified view.
And so many. More than he would ever need, an unfathomable amount, enough to supply fruit for a thousand times the population of the Origin.
There was water, too - massive bodies of it off in the distance, stretching over the horizon. Deep blues only seen in books and displays at engineers' lectures.
When Maso hit the ground, he realized that he hadn't even noticed the parachute deploy.
The ground was green, too. It was covered in - little trees, but they were mostly green, but they were other colours too, blues and yellows and reds and other greens too, like a biologist had lost their mind and decided to create little things, for whatever reason.
Maso stood up, brushing some accumulated dirt from his suit. That, at least, was a familiar experience. He deactivated his external view, his helmet becoming transparent, and quickly scanned a set of diagnostics. The suit was fine - a relief. The air was breathable, apparently at a shockingly high quality. And he was uninjured, save for clusters of bruises where he'd collided with objects in the ship prior to donning the suit.
He took a deep breath, and retracted the suit's helmet.
A myriad of scents and feelings hit him immediately. The air smelled rich, and he could feel it on his face - not hot or burning like on the Origin, but warm and heavy, damp.
This was the planet they'd been sent to investigate? This was a paradise, the likes of which not a single person had seen before. And he'd discovered it, this was his. All he had to do was use the emergency guidebook to construct a signalling device, and he'd be able to contact home.
Maso smiled slowly, turning as he surveyed the area around him. The bright greens, the gigantic trees, the -
The creature that had approached from behind him, when he hadn't been paying attention. The lizard-thing, twice as tall as Maso and longer still, giant leathery wings on its back.
Maso froze.
The creature smiled at him, massive canines showing behind peeling lips.
Maso recognized a scent, finally: sulphur.
Then the creature roared, and with the sound came a wall of flame, cascading over Maso and burning his eyes and frying his exposed skin like the little pasta dishes he used to eat with his parents when he was little-
Maso saw light, for a moment, and then only blackness.
The pain disappeared after a moment, and the heat and the sound and that brief smell of flesh boiling. But the blackness remained.
Was this death? Or perhaps the moment before death, stretched out to fill that infinite temporal space where Maso was still alive, still capable of thinking. Perhaps this was his life flashing before his eyes, and he simply didn't have anything to remember, no valuable experiences, no friends, only a pointless mission that he'd failed before even starting it.
It was impossible for him to know how much time passed, like that. On the Origin, sensory deprivation had once been a form of torture: with crude implants, it was possible to remove one's perception of time, the basic feelings of body machinations that gave some sense of progression. Being stuck in a void, not knowing how long you'd been there or how long you had left, had broken too many people that the practice was outlawed, long before intercity peace had been established.
This was like that, Maso imagined. Not even the slightest indication of his existence remained. When he tried to blink, it was like nothing happened. His muscles didn't respond, or maybe they did, and he simply didn't feel anything. He tried to imagine that he felt blood pulsing in his ears, but even that was futile.
Beyond his mind, the fact that he could still think, only one thing existed, and it was unending darkness.
And then, some indeterminate period of time later, bright white text appeared in the darkness.
RuntimeError: Unrecognized player. This is likely a bug. Would you like to reregister?