Robin followed the corridor where the drone came from and it didn’t take him long to find a man in a researcher’s coat running around in panic.
“Ah! You found it!” The man exclaimed while he leaned against a wall to catch his breath. He was old - like really old. When Robin saw his scarce white hair and the long beard, he was reminded of one of the old fantasy books he had once read.
‘Only his staff is missing and he could start shouting: You shall not pass!’ He thought with a grin, but kept a serious face.
“This is yours, I assume?” Robin motioned towards the drone, “Honestly, how could one lose a bad tempered killer bot just like that? It wanted to shoot me!”
The researcher looked between Robin and the drone that followed him back and forth.
“It isn’t able to shoot anyone, don’t you know the laws?” He asked as if Robin was stupid, “Don’t answer that - much more interesting to know would be why it is following you now!”
“What do you think, shouldn’t we get this guy out of the hallway first of all?”
“Yeah, right, come... come!” The old geezer turned and dragged his feet down the long corridor.
Robin shrugged and followed him together with the black drone. After a few turns they stepped into a big laboratory. Dozens of different drones were neatly lined up in the room that reminded him of a workshop. The other thing that stood out was how clean everything was. After the places from Jim, Slice and even the Drel outpost, this one looked like they just bought everything and didn’t start to do actual work yet .
The researcher looked very focused at the black drone and after a few moments it hovered to one of the free spots in the row and settled down.
“How peculiar… I cannot find any reason it would have followed you. Did you give it any commands?” He looked at Robin and despite his fragile appearance, his eyes gleamed with a lively glint.
“I could have done that?” Robin questioned in confusion. That shouldn’t be possible, right? If just any random person could give orders to a drone, the idea to let CPDs patrol all over the city would quickly backfire.
The man observed him a bit longer, before he gave up as the technocrafter really seemed to be clueless.
“This unit is operated based on BWT, there is no need for a direct connection or voice commands.”
“BWT… wait, you mean it’s thought-controlled?” Robin gasped. That was unexpected. He never heard of any other use case than with the Interfaces.
“Yes and no, BWT, or brain wave technology, is what you use to interact with your Interface. Thought-controlled is an exaggerated description. Your Interface and Neuro-Chip are connected to your brain, the BWT taps into the strongest neurons and can read out the most basic commands like ‘On’, ‘Off’, ‘Left’, ‘Right’,... The operator of this drone establishes a wireless connection and sends his commands directly over the Interface, which in turn reads it from his neuronal activities.”
“So basically, instead of controlling only my Interface with my thoughts, I can also let it relay commands to the drone via encrypted broadcast?” Robin said, thought about it for a moment and immediately saw the downsides.
“That’s an interesting approach to get more use out of the BWT, but the commands must be very, I mean very, basic to be able to get a reliable read, right? How would you be able to use that on a combat drone? Something like ‘attack’ may still be possible, but selecting a target or naming formations should already be impossible…”
‘That’s probably also how ROMAS took control of it, it just hijacked the wireless connection…’ He added in his mind, after having solved that riddle too.
The old man enthusiastically nodded.
“Yes, exactly. We hoped to be able to get a wireless, hands- and voice-free method of controlling UAVs. With how silent the drone itself is, it would be a great asset for stealth missions. However, the range of possible commands is too small, just as you guessed. We are about to drop the project. I just wanted to test some last things, but as you’ve seen, it didn’t quite work out. By the way…”
He turned around and looked at Robin once more, “Who are you?”
Robin laughed and took a step forward to shake his hand.
“Hi, I’m Robin Tulward! Technocrafter, drone-hunter and guest of this facility for a week or two.”
“Prof. Aurelius, my pleasure. You haven't finished your introduction yet, right?”
“Nope, just arrived today.”
“Great, better not talk about this with anyone. The BWT research is kind of a top secret project…”
“No worries, but if it’s okay for you, I’ll pass by after I have my test completed. Seems to be fun here!”
Prof. Aurelius raised an eyebrow and then began to laugh.
“You’re always welcome! It’s great to work with someone who is also interested in this field.”
Robin waved his goodbyes and left to get back to his room. On the way, he slipped the ship’s keycard under Fengo’s door and went to bed. The last thing he did was to plug in the cable into the small connector that was hidden under his hair to reanimate ROMAS who had already gone offline while they were still in the laboratory.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
For the following days Robin mostly stayed in his room, discarding his plans of sightseeing on Gaunus. He wanted to get the clearance as soon as possible to be able to learn a bit more from the old man.
ROMAS was predestined for this tech. While everyone else would have to fight with the limited commands they could generate with the BWT, ROMAS could directly control the drone and give it a huge range of actions, including monitoring the video-feed to get audio-visual feedback.
Sure, if he would allow ROMAS to take control of such a weaponized drone, he would probably violate §3.2 c) of the UAS Law About AI Implementation, but… ahh, that was a problem for later.
Instead he only diligently trained with his mutation over these days and finally could see some small progress with filtering and tuning down his passive sense. The only other thing he did was call Happy to let her know of his arrival on Gaunus. However, she hadn't responded yet, as she was probably in the middle of her intergalactic pilot license exam.
Robin’s own exam, the one about the UAS introduction, was pretty anticlimactic. With ROMAS he had the ultimate cheat to find all answers to their questions in an instant. He even had to play it slow to not appear too suspicious.
So it came to be that Robin was sitting together with Keran in a conference room three days later already. On a big screen he could see the rest of Keran’s team. They joined in per video comm to meet the fabled technocrafter with the strange mutation and also wanted to hear the briefing.
“Okay, let’s dive in for what we are here!” Keran started after a short introduction round. “Story-time, listen closely, that’s not something you’ll be able to read anywhere!”
Robin nodded diligently and had to suppress a grin when a message flashed in his vision.
* Recording started…
“We are talking about the Keeper, a very old race - older than most other races we know. They were already around at the time of the Endless Empire, the empire of the Starborn. We can date the first mentions back more than 4.000 years and they also vanished shortly after the Starborn went missing, between the years 129 and 135.
They were a race of information brokers. The Keeper collected, traded and sold information about everything that happened in the inhabited parts of the universe and beyond. Myths and legends tell tales of them shifting the tides in wars, influencing the direction in which empires and even entire races developed and it’s said that they had the biggest collection of technology-knowledge that was ever put together.”
Keran explained with awe in his voice, as if he read a bedtime story to a little kid. When he saw Robin enthusiastically nodding, he continued.
“There are two facts that make this race one of the hottest topics in the upper echelons. One is the reason you are here, Robin. They use a very special kind of energy, something no one else can use like them, but later more.
The other thing that stirs the prominent races right now is that there are rumors in the outer rims of some remote galaxies. Rumors about newly found Keeper Info Stations. You can find them all over the universe, each system has one or two at least. But those are old relic sites, dead and mostly without any value. Now however, there are sightings of mobile info points, ships where lucky people can trade information. It’s said they vanish immediately after an exchange is concluded.
This makes it difficult to verify the rumors, but after working with the other races, we have concluded that it is most likely true... the Keeper are still out there, beyond our reach, but they begin to wander our borders. The Ommih believe this is the first sign of their return, the Mohait even fear this to be the beginning of a new era in which the Keeper reemerge and with them the Starborn itself.
I cannot tell what is true. But personally I think… there are too many rumors going around for them all to be false. They are out there and they have all the knowledge mankind has ever longed for!”
Robin hung on Keran's lips, he heard some bits and pieces from Hutton and Guard, but this was mostly new to him. New and exciting! The Keeper are still alive? If they were around when the Starborn vanished, they probably knew what happened to them!
Sure, there are some other races left from that time. The Drel, for example, but they weren't part of the Endless Empire and were caught up in a big internal war at that time. They claim to have only realized that the Starborn vanished, after they were already gone. From the Drel the modern races learned that the Starborn vanished not over years or months, but within days at most.
This was his first solid lead on the fate of the Starborn, even if mankind was not strongly invested in looking deeper into this, he for sure was! Robin fought hard to suppress his excitement. Keran wasn’t done yet, there was more to learn.
“You see,” The team leader just concluded, “there is much movement on this topic. Many races began to actively search for the Keeper in hope to be able to forge bonds with them or at least have them establish new Info Stations, fixed locations where everyone can go to trade information. Humans, too, are sending out teams and even small fleets into the border regions. But let’s take a closer look at their other specialty for now.
Humans, and every other known race, are working mostly with electricity. That’s the type of energy you and all other energy-related G-Anomalies can sense. There are many more kinds of energy, like kinetic, chemical and so on. However all these types are interchangeable as explained in the energy conservation law. You can change from one type to another without any loss.
The Keeper on the other hand are using a completely different kind of energy. It’s called Æther and as far as we understand it, this energy is based on waves while ours is based on particles.
The Keeper are powering all their technologies with Æther. That makes it close to impossible for the other races to steal anything or use Keeper tech for themselves.
Now that you are here, we finally get a chance to close the gap to the other races in the field of Keeper-research!”
Keran explained with sparkling eyes and Robin could see, the man was really on fire for all this. But there was something he didn’t get.
“Close the gap? What gap? I thought no one could work with Æther…?”
“Yes and no. We are certain no one else can use their machines or anything. However, while setting up the contracts for the founding of the UAS, all other races insisted on excluding the clause to share gathered knowledge on Æther. That’s why we are certain that they all have - to a limited degree - means to at least read out some data storage.” He said and a frown formed on his face that quickly vanished again.
“But now we do have you! Our secret weapon! With you, we will be able to make huge steps in our Æther-studies.”
“Huh, great! So let’s hear, what’s the job?” Robin asked with a grin to support the man. His mind however was racing as he was thinking back to what Guard had mentioned in his last message and ROMAS just confirmed once more.
* His assumption is wrong.
* No other race has any means at all to interact with Æther (99,75%)
‘That at least explains why the UAS didn’t take more security measures when getting me here to Gaunus… they totally underestimate the value of my mutation!’