CHAPTER 10: OUTBASE

The chair under Hiro shuddered and she woke with a start. Flailing she discovered she was strapped to a chair. In a panic, she summoned a bit of electricity to her skin trying to fry whatever had her. She regretted it instantly. Her insides hurt and was still strapped to the flight chair. "Ow," she groaned as she became aware of what was happening. Everyone was looking at her, "Sorry" she told them as she looked around. Everyone was strapped in for the landing. Hiro did notice at some point one of her companions had put the blanket over her while she slept.

Bellator was watching her warily across from her but Ghram watched her in confusion. She didn't think about either of them too much. Closing her eyes, the pain from her use of electricity ran through her in a wave. "Does anyone have any water?" She asked looking over to Moria who sat a seat away. Moria was watching her with some concern. She held up a hand and summoned water from the thin air. Hiro squinted at it and asked, "Is that safe to drink?"

After the beat it took to translate, Moria shrugged and nodded. "I think I'll wait until we finish landing." She said. Moria just shrugged again and dismissed the water back into the air. Hiro watched eyes narrowing. Something ticked in the back of her head as she used her magic. "Could you do that again?" She asked Moria. "Sumon the water and dismiss it?"

Moria nodded and did it again. She seemed to do the whole process slower this time. Not seemed, Hiro had slowed time to watch. Just a bit, she would have to see if her time ability still works a bit later. Hiro watched carefully. She felt it. The air around her got dryer as Moria formed the water in her hand. Then like an internal barometer, it told her the air around her was damp again. Like all of her powers, she didn't feel it as keenly as before but she could feel changes in the air around her. At least when she focused on it.

She gave Moria a smile, "Thanks, I just had to test something. I can sense what you're doing when I pay attention." It was more than she thought she would have. Shifting moisture levels didn't seem super important, but it was something. She would need to figure out if she could still fly. That would be as soon as she could. But she had a feeling the people around her weren't done with her yet.

The ramp started lowering as the humming of the ship started quieting. Naita walked back to join them as the others began to unstrap their webbing. Hiro looked down and got a few of the straps undone. She hadn't really been paying attention when Moria helped her stap in. Too focused on the food. Checking with her internal clock it had been four hours forty-nine minutes since she had fallen asleep. Not a bad nap.

She finally gave up and looked around Moria had been standing watching her with her half smile. She stepped forward to show her what to do. She reached out and touched Hiro and made a small yelp pulling back. Some of her electric charge was hanging about on her skin. Hiro's eyes went wide. "Sorry! Let me, um" She focused for a moment and then winced as she pulled the charge back inside herself. Noting she could keep the electricity on the outside of herself. Moria just gave her a stern look and showed her how to undo the last couple of parts of the webbing. Hiro felt a bit stupid, but it wasn't like a seatbelt at all.

The others were waiting for them at the bottom of the ramp. They stood on a stage surface. It looked like a mixture of plastic and metal. Everything was in hexagons. Maybe it was modular? Hiro tucked the blanket that had slid to the floor under her arm and walked out to see what this headquarters looked like. It was probably a huge grand building. Or maybe it was a campus like a college or something. She proceeded Moria out of the ship to take a look.

She was disappointed. Three buildings, one a three-story affair and the other two single levels. They were all made of the strange composite plastic and metal that the ground under the ship was made of. One other ship was in the yard next to the dragonfly. It looked like a puffer fish with many propellers instead of spines. everything was sleek lines with hexagons everywhere. The panels below her feet were at least two meters per side, but the buildings had smaller panels.

"Is this the headquarters Button was always talking about?" Ghram shook his head while Naita mouthed the word Button as her green gemstone flashed. A new person was exiting the big building holding something in their hands. It was hard for Hiro to read whether the person was male or female. Their features were androgynous, and the loose uniform they wore did not help enlighten her. Their hair was short curly and black. Their skin was so dark black it had tones of blue within it. The new person tapped a few things on the collar like device. A blue gemstone in the center flickered on and a grill next to it spoke.

"Hello, I am your personal translator device. I can translate each of the common languages and have been installed with the subdialect known as English as my primary language." It spoke out loud and the person offered it to her saying something in their language which the device promptly translated in its cool and automated voice.

"Hello, I'm Duffy I run this outbase. I have programmed a translator for you until we can get a new personal AI installed." Their voice a mellow middle tone also held no clues to their gender and Hiro resolved to ask in private. They held out the collar-like device. Hiro took it from their hands and examined it for a second before putting it on.

"Hi Duffy, I'm Hiro. Is this headquarters?" The device remained silent when she talked. The others had their gemstones, they must've programmed it not to translate English into anything else.

"No, this is an Outbase. The closest one to the caverns we retrieved you from." The device translated for her. "We would normally have teleported you to headquarters, but with your gemstone broken, we didn't want to risk it. You will be staying with us for a day or two until we can get a new PGA."

Hiro nodded, "So you don't have my dog here?" She asked with a twist to her lips.

"What is a dog?" Bellator asked his deep voice contrasting with the bright voice of the translator.

"You know, 4-legged, furry, man's best friend? Do you not have dogs here?" He still looked confused and about to ask another question when he was cut off.

"Bellator is young," Naita cut in, "This is his first posting. It's probably a pet animal from her world big guy. Use your context clues." She told him. "Duffy, Ghram, you got her? Flying that thing always makes my brain buzz. I'm going to have some tea to help."

Hiro was getting used to hearing everything they said a few beats after they said it. She was just happy to understand the conversation.

Ghram raised an eyebrow at her, "Yeah we're fine, but no more than one glass You remember last time." She just waved him off walking to one of the one-story buildings. He looked between Bellator and Moria, "If you two want to go, we should be fine. We will run some tests and get a requisition for a new PGA in."

At that Hiro jumped in, "Umm, as much as I miss Button, I don't appreciate waking up with a gemstone crammed into my head without my permission. Haven't y'all heard of consent?"

They all looked at her in confusion. Duffy broke in, "All Sparks are required to have one. It's conditional on being allowed to go to the caverns. Did they not explain this to you before you went in? After the change, some systems can help you navigate your powers and communicate to others in the multiverse."

She did a slow blink as the translated words washed over her and a lump formed in her stomach. "No, I woke up in there with it. Button told me something about them not wanting to influence my decisions or something like that. Also, I figured I was on a different planet, with flesh-eating bugs, but did you just say multiverse?" All of them looked taken aback.

Duffy had anger brewing on their face now. "Yes, Multiverse, but more importantly, the standard procedure is to bring in new Sparks and tell them about what's going to happen before installing the PGA. If they deviate from procedures, I will lodge a complaint on your behalf if that's all right with you. You would be able to do it once you have a new PGA, but this will get the processing moving faster."

Hiro nodded, she was not going to leave the multiverse comment alone, but she could circle back. Magic was real and she could fly, or at least she had. The multiverse being real and traversable didn't seem crazy next to that. "Yes, though, I don't know if I want a new one installed. I just want the broken one taken out."

Stolen novel; please report.

Duffy's face went from angry to apologetic, "It is against the law to have your spark activated and to not have one. You would need to talk to someone higher up than me to get a waiver. Now let's go categorize your abilities and run some tests. The last transmission from your AI was worrying, to say the least."

Hiro was still buzzing inside from her electrical charge earlier. She was all for some tests to figure out what was wrong, but there was so much she wanted to know. "I have a lot of questions. My AI was rather buttoned up about telling me more than what I needed to choose powers." She paused, but she didn't think her pun translated. "Also, Can I have some water I can drink?"

"We can do the tests while we talk." Ghram told her, "And there is potable water inside." He beckoned her to follow and she fell into step behind him. Moria and Bellator waved farewell as Duffy followed her.

She debated what to ask first and settled on a small one to start. Maybe not the most important question, but one she was very confused about, "So the red cross, plus sign, whatever it's called," She stumbled through the thought, "That's a thing we have where I come from for a medical organization. What does it mean here?"

"It's a medic symbol here too. The Sparks community tries to get it to catch on in all universes and worlds we have access to. That way if we show up somewhere to help hopefully the person we're trying to help recognizes the symbol. A spark probably set up your medical organization when they went to reinforce the symbol's meaning." Ghram told her as they entered the three-story building. Her questions paused for a moment as she took in her surroundings on the short walk.

The inside followed the sleek design from the outside. Hexagons made up most of the design. Unlike the grey metals of the outside, the inside was painted with a soft green. Blue stripes suggesting hexagon fragments in spiraling fractals were on the walls between doorways. Bright warm lights inset on the top of the wall pannel's connecting beams lit up as they entered. It illuminated a small entryway leading to a wide hall with doors on either side and a double door at the end. A set of stairs led off to the left. On the right side, a door mirroring the hexagon of its frame had a matching sign. There was a symbol on the door and it looked suspiciously like the toilet from the dragonfly ship on it. She used her context clues to guess it was a bathroom.

Ghram led her straight down the hallway. They passed several of the hexagonal doors. Each one had a sign with strange straight-lined symbols spiraling like the wall decoration accompanied just as baffling pictograms. They reached a door with a shorter spiral of dashed lines and a big red cross.

"Medical room!" She said pointing at the symbol excitedly. With all the strangeness it was nice to know one thing going on.

Ghram smiled at her enthusiasm at recognizing something and nodded, "And that reaction is why we send Sparks out to establish medical groups using that symbol. Even though you just learned about it, it's ingrained in your culture's consciousness."

"Yeah I guess it is," She agreed, jumping back into her information gathering, "So multiverses are real? Not just a theory? You can bring red crosses to us but not the mysteries of the multiverse?" She asked as he opened the door. He slid his fingers into a groove and pulled to the side. It slid into the wall leaving just one of the corners of the hexagon poking out of the channel of the wall. The groove was still accessible. Presumably, so the door could close again.

"Spoken like a true new Sparkline," Ghram replied before Duffy broke across him.

"That's not our mandate. Our rules say we cannot bring any technology higher than that of the native species to any world or multiverse we travel to." Duffy had slid the door closed behind them. The lights flicked on automatically. There was a metal table just below hip height dominating the middle of the room. It could easily hold someone twice Hiro's width and a good meter taller than her. It stood out because it was rectangular rather than the hexagons on everything else. It rested on a wide metallic pillar with wires connecting it to the floor. A weird faceted orb-like structure sat above the metal table. Two chairs made of curved butt-hugging plastic sat above large round balls.

"What is your mandate then?" Hiro probed as Ghram sat on one of the weird chairs before rolling the whole contraption over to a counter along the left wall. A helmet sat on it and he put it over his head as they talked.

Duffy gestured and guided her to sit on the metal table. She did so, setting the blanket under her arm next to her. Talking while her collar translated a few beats later. "Our mandate is first to preserve the integrity of the multiverse and reality." They said this like it was the most obvious thing. They went to a cabinet in the wall and poked a few buttons next to a panel. Behind a whirling noise sounded before the panel slid open and they walked back with a cup of water and handed it to Hiro. "We defeat and destroy anomalies as well as maintain the natural order through our use of concepts paired with our spark." With that, they sat on the other chair ball and rolled away to grab another helmet. Hiro watched as their short curly head of curls got flattened by the helmet. The smooth metal contraption completely covered both of their faces.

Ghram interrupted before she could ask any follow-up questions. His real voice came out slightly muffled from the helmet in his strange language before a speaker kicked on above her in English bypassing the collar. "This room has a universal translator installed in the Triacontahedron above you. If you could hand the translator back to Duffy while we do our scans I'd appreciate it. It will interfere with the procedures."

Hiro gave the man a look. She couldn't see what he was doing under the helm. The lump in her stomach decided to start sending shivers up her spine. "Ok, that sounded ominous, what are these tests, and will they hurt?" She took a sip of the water and some of the tension inside her settled. Both the lingering burning of her earlier use of electricity but also some of the uncomfortable feeling in her stomach.

"Hurt?" The confusion came from the word uttered by the man in the mask and surprisingly the voice from the faceted orb thing above her. She had instantly forgotten the name of the thing, but it was better than the emotionless AI voice coming from the necklace translator. She idly thought of the proccing power differences between the two. "We won't need to touch you unless you have internal damage from something physical. If it's metaphysical we will have to talk to a specialist to address it. I can only scan for it here. My healer's spark didn't pick any injuries up until you woke up. It's fading now. I assume that's the water. You mentioned it healing you." Ghram's hands were twitching in his lap sometimes swiping and sometimes tapping his leg.

Duffy rolled over and held a hand out for the necklace and she unclasped it from her neck. "We just need you to lay back and let the Triacontahedron do its work. The platform will adjust once you lay down." She handed it to them and they rolled away to set the translator on the counter. "We can keep talking though." They added before their hands also did some air tapping of their own.

She scooted to the middle of the table and lay back using the blanket as a pillow. If they didn't need her to undress, she assumed a blanket would make much difference. "What are anomalies?" Hiro settled in a bit uncomfortably on the hard metal surface. It wasn't cold but rather pleasantly warm. It seemed weird. Like she was lying where someone else had just gotten up. She yelped as the metal under her moved. Like a non-Newtonian fluid, it slowly rippled under her and formed a comfortable well-supporting surface before hardening again. It allowed her bones to lie in perfect alignment. Her back, spine, and hips were all in a comfortable position. It even cradled the blanket to make a soft spot for her head to rest while keeping her neck aligned with the rest of her spine. That was the thing that felt the weirdest. Her head was pulled back further than what a pillow would normally allow.

"I guess that's what you mean by adjusting to me?" Her eyes were wide in surprise, "I thought it would raise or lower!"

"Yes, I should've been more explicit. I do not have access to your full file, so when it says your planet's technology level is in upper copper I made assumptions that you recognized the slab like the red cross. I apologize and will explain better in the future." Duffy told her.

"The scans just make a hum. We will inform you and gain your consent if we need to do anything else and inform you of the results." Ghram said with a note of apology in his voice.

"Thanks, and apology accepted." A hum started above her and lights danced around the orb.

"Now anomalies." Duffy got around to answering her question, "They are when the concepts of our reality, our multiverse, get too thin or damaged and begin to break down. This results in an anomaly that can be manifested in many ways, from living beings to entire structures or pockets outside of reality. Sometimes this is a natural occurrence and sometimes it is caused by others both within and without our reality. The first generation of sparks were given the mandate and ability to command concepts by a group called "the Ascended.' This is so that we can stabilize the reality around us and prevent anomalies from growing. The spark gives us the ability to touch the things that make up reality. This is how we get to absorb the powers within the concept cavern. Our main goal here is to monitor this world for anomalies. The secondary objective is to keep an eye on the cavern. Due to the nature of the cavern, this world is one of the most stable in this universe. A great place for rookies like Bellator to learn the ropes for their first cycle on duty. I've been posted here as the Base Captain and head researcher for ten cycles and in that time the alarms have gone off once."

Hiro's mind was spinning. The Ascended? Thin spots in reality? She got into this for great cosmic powers in a dream. Did she have to join a reality police force? Her mouth opened and closed a few times as she debated what she wanted to ask next digesting the information when The lights began slowly strobing and a blaring alarm ripped through the complex.

"Is that what I think it is?" Hiro asked lifting her head to look at Duffy and Ghram. They were already in motion. Both pulled their helmets off in tandem and left them in the ball chairs. Ghram looked back over his shoulder and said something to her but without the helmet, the machine did not translate. He sighed and slowly and thickly said, "We will be back." Before hurrying after Duffy. Hiro was left alone in the room to the blaring alarm and slowly strobing lights.