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-'Integration' Public Service Announcement, 248 years before Earth’s destruction.
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UNKNOWN SPACE
(5 years after Earth's destruction)
"Morning, Doom." I groaned as I leaned over to ratchet up my steelfoam bed into its chair form, disconnecting the channel that ran from my core to the power drive of the capsule in the process.
The familiar hum of the engines shifted down from night-warp to day-cruise and the already slow motion of distant stars beyond the porthole slowed almost to a halt.
I felt entirely depleted and my voice creaked scratchily. With practiced habit I snagged the bottle from the reclaimer and swigged a big gulp. “Anything new for me today?”
Daily update, new quest available:
Collect 39 fresh Anseil stalks.
“This again? I’ve told you, even if I knew what Anseil looked like, there wouldn’t be any of it here, yeah?” I gestured around at the cramped interior of the personal transport, containing only the bare minimum required to support human life indefinitely, then to the blackness of space surrounding us. “Whatever planet it grows on, we won’t be reaching it today.”
Are you sure you want to refuse this quest?
"Insistent today, are we?" I waved the prompt away and it vanished in a puff of translucent grey light.
Quest rejected. :(
“Don’t frowny face me. You know full well that there’s nothing either of us can do, and I’m not going to waste my last quest slot on a pointless fetch daily.”
Ongoing quest ‘Final Contact’ updated. Day 2043: Despite reaching snark level 199, Devon has made no progress.
“And on the other hand, Doom has made how much progress? Getting closer to unlocking abilities, are you?”
...
“You know, you still haven’t told me what you want for your birthday. It’s coming right up.”
39 fresh anseil stalks?
“Try again when we find an actual planet.”
Doom didn’t reply immediately, so I sipped the last of the reclaimed water and returned the bottle to its slot.
The holding brackets on either side had once been painted vibrant orange, but now their color had faded to a few patchy brown streaks on a dull grey appendage. The capsule was looking as worse for wear as I felt.
Two thousand forty three days. It didn’t feel like that long… it felt like longer. Months. Eternities. Days blending together into one long sequence of sleep, tinker, exercise, eat, repeat, repeat, repeat.
Nothing changed. Nothing would ever change. Space was too big. The galaxy was littered with gates networking the inhabited worlds, but any maps of their locations had been lost with Earth.
It had been a miracle we even managed to cobble together a functional capsule, forget having any idea where we were going with it. I had to believe that sooner or later we’d run into a working gate, but it’s not something that could be put down on a calendar.
I leaned over to activate the fabricator, hoping we’d run into some particularly rich space dust lately. Otherwise breakfast would be more dull tasteless mass, enough to sustain life and little else.
Gravity fluctuations detected. Planetfall imminent.
I sat bolt upright, nearly slamming my head into the overhead cabinet in shock. “You smug bastard. You weren’t going to tell me until the last minute? You know I haven’t done the laundry yet!”
Daily quest is available for retry. ;)
*Rewards will be reduced.
“Of course they will. Give it here.” I swiped the notification up into the quest log, where it settled among all the others. Next, I crawled out of my chair and started searching through the lockers set into the floor for something moderately decent looking. “How long?”
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Soon.
I snorted as I tossed the three nicest shirts I could find and the least worn pair of trousers into the cleaning cube shoved beneath my bed. “Very forthcoming, thank you.”
:)
Then, before I could start the cycle or say another word, the capsule shook violently and the view outside the window shifted with all the abruptness of instantaneous teleportation.
"Wow." I stared down at the new world spread out below me through the tiny porthole window. After years of searching, we’d suddenly found our quarry.
But as I looked deeper beyond the clouds, hope curdled in my chest. Instead of the blasted wasteland I expected, instead of a handful of desperate survivors who could help, it looked… normal. Untouched and untroubled by cataclysm.
Silver and green blanketing the landmasses, deep blue oceans. Apart from the shape of the continents it could have been Earth. At least, the Earth as I remembered it from childhood. Before we were betrayed, when we’d still had the System. A utopia where we’d been able to fight back, where we’d had allies and power and value. Not the Earth as it was now, a blackened husk, burned out ruin, its every speck of life exterminated and every scrap of valuable minerals scavenged by the invading dragon hordes.
The similarity brought tears of rage and frustration to my eyes, the stark reminder that these people had lived while we had died.
While every single other human had been slaughtered and burned, this people, the aelixi, our so-called allies, had simply stood back and watched, allowing it to happen without so much as lifting a finger or offering a word of warning.
My years-long efforts to build a facade of acceptance and peace shattered in an instant. This clear prosperity made their perfidy undeniable.
If they’d lost the System too, if they’d been scrambling for survival, if they’d become a shadow of their former glory, I might have been able to forgive them for abandoning us. I could understand the need to protect your own over all others.
But this? Cities alight with gleaming power, distant glinting specks of ships flying in and out.
These weren’t potential allies and comrades in survival. These people hadn’t lost anything meaningful. They’d withdrawn and left us to die for no good reason.
All my hopes of making a good impression and banding together to build a new future dissipated like a banished quest alert. Simply having taken all they wanted from us, they discarded us the moment their cursed System had what it wanted from us.
Heightened emotional state detected. Do you require
–ERROR–
The notification dissolved into pixelated data as I clenched a fist around it. All the calm and equanimity I’d built up over the past two thousand days of silence was gone.
Doom got the hint and shifted tactics, pulling down the top quest from the list.
Quest updated: Final Contact
-New objectives added.
Aelixi outpost discovered! 1/??
Aelixi holdings destroyed: 0/?? (1+)
System destroyed: 0/1
“Status,” I growled, the word barely audible, but Doom answered promptly.
Name: Devon Enthane
System: Doomhack_v0.42x
Level: Unknown
Abilities: Unknown
Body-
Strength: 12
Flexibility: -3
Core-
Strength: 22
Flexibility: 24
No change, then. The twisted mass of metal and plastic replacing my lower spine and back may be enough to allow me basic mobility, but it would be a massive hindrance in a fight. Even now the reminder of its presence was enough to send phantom dragon claws through the old injuries, making me stiffen until I could get a handle on the ghost pain.
Aside from occasional debilitating pain, the split-second lag between moving my natural limbs and bionic ones would be devastating in close combat. Years of exercises and our best efforts at physical therapy still wouldn't allow me to survive long in direct physical conflict.
My core stats, on the other hand, had increased steadily every few months with the constant exercise of running the ship and everything else. I’d have to base my build on core abilities, rather than physical ones. As much as I wanted to personally shove a dagger into the back of whoever had made the decision to abandon Earth without a word, there was something poetic about simply destroying them from a distance. Never even acknowledging their face.
I stared out at the planet below, growing closer and closer as we spoke.
Any lightness had drained from my heart, leaving me cold and empty. All that remained was a simmering fury that I now knew had never been quenched, only concealed.
Any naive notions of peaceful negotiation, of discussion and rational intercourse, had vanished completely. I no longer cared how they saw me. I was not here as an emissary of Earth, but as its avenger.
The capsule shuddered and jolted as something impacted us, and it took me a moment to realise it was the sudden resistance of entering the planet’s atmosphere.
“How long until we can unlock the abilities and level?”
Quests completed: 4/10
“Bypass it.”
Error. Command cannot be completed.
I kicked the nearest wall, denting it with a resounding clang. “Just give me the power! I know you can. I remember downloading abilities from the old System. Why can’t you even do that much?!”
Quests completed: 4/10
“I heard you the first time, damn it!”
Quests began highlighting themselves, dropping from the full log into my view as Doom queued them up.
Please collect the following items:
39 fresh Anseil stalks,
4 chunks of Melurium,
19 ounces of dried Shamanleaf,
11 Morrowcat tails,
1 vial of Gleamveil sap,
15 copper sawblades.
I took a deep breath, then another, trying to let go of the irrationally intense fury that gripped me.
I couldn’t do anything now. Without a powerset, avenging Earth would be impossible.
So I’d start at the bottom. Infiltrate instead of annihilate. And if Doom was this insistent about doing fetch quests… maybe that’s what was missing in his ability to unlock greater powers.
We could figure it out. At the very least, by making planetfall there was the potential we could get a map of the gate network.
It would be fine. We could make this work.
With one last slow exhale, I waved the collection of quests back up into the quest log, then leaned down to start the wash cycle on the laundry and collect my bowl of tasteless sustenance.
“Alright. Mission accepted. Let’s go do some fetch quests.”
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