Compatible Dream Format Recognized
Run As Memory? Y/N
Y
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Memory transcription subject: Valek, New Hidden Plains University Graduate.
Date [standardized human time]: Undefined
I donned my uniform and walked with my work-herd to the van. We got a 12-18 off of Eltavi and Rolem, and I needed to make a good impression on my first field assignment!
“Reckon it’s a Drake burrow?” I called out to my cohort, trying to be friendly, “We didn’t get those back in the Grove!”
“What the fuck is a Drake, Newbie? Nah it's one of the local pests, keeps making a problem for the farms.”
I had to jog to keep up with my trainer’s longer legs, “I’m so glad to finally do… something to better my community! Ever since I found out about the Facilities, I’ve been struggling to find a place in all this.”
We stepped out of the van, and he spoke again, a groan of spite in their voice, “That was certainly a shock, but good riddance! Glad we got some good people running them now.”
My silver suit felt uncomfortable along my back, like I couldn’t feel my tail anymore, “So, what's the plan? You wanna head around while I flush it out? Get it stuck between?”
I lifted the nozzle, keeping the pilot light off of the grass, my partner watched me through their visored helmet shaking along with their head inside it, “I don’t think that will be needed. C’mon, I think I heard it just past these trees.”
They moved tall grass aside and I saw a large wooly creature curled up in a trembling ball, its brown-striped coat failing to hide it. It sat there wall-eyed while I switched off the safety.
“I’m doing my part!”
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Memory transcription subject: Valek, New Hidden Plains University Graduate.
Date [standardized human time]: Sept 12th, 2136. End of 1st Claw
My eyes snapped open and I could feel my tail twitching madly behind me, my breath heaved short and fast against the dark.
My eyes fell on Alvi’s brown-striped coat, and her dream-self’s screams rattled in my ears while imagined fire chased my sanity through her wool and I felt panic grip my senses. I started to hiccup and cough in bubbling sobs, which woke Alvi as well. Her eyes looked for what woke her and found me trembling, tears starting to pool at the edges of my eyes.
“Valek? Valek?! What’s wrong?!” Her paws reached for me and her tail wound around my ankle, Maeve behind her slowly getting her own bearings.
With Alvi’s warmth as my root, my breathing leveled and I found my voice, “Bad dream. I was… It was really bad.”
Maeve reached out to comfort me, rubbing at my ear, while Alvi copied my efforts that calmed her own panic the paw before. We all laid together, enjoying the comfort and warmth of the bed and each other, their ministrations helping to bring peace to the storm in my mind.
We started our waking routine, cleaning and preparing for the day. I wouldn’t let a bad nightmare overshadow what should be a brilliant paw of fun with my two favorite women! The attentions they were paying me were already working wonders to clear the mire in my mind, the details of the dream long forgotten; I’d hardly remember it’d happened if not for the churning storm it left in my stomach as we passed the forum.
I watched the pair in front of me talking about their time in the Burrow as we passed by the Forum on our way to first meal; Alvi ranting about some engineering idiocy disguised as a ‘cost saving measure’. The two set to cackling, before Maeve put on an affect and voice, playing the part of some bureaucrat making an ill-advised decision, succeeding in bringing Alvi further into hysterics. Maeve looked out over the forum and waved at someone I could not identify through the herd; if I had to guess, I would bet it was the same ‘someone in the forum’ who helped Maeve come back to us. I would have to get them a bottle of Shadeberry as thanks!
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We had arrived at the Museum of Federation Technologies in good time, though it looked like this was one of their busier claws. Small chains of pups led by their Bellwether hurried past us, beeping and whistling among themselves in excited anticipation of the day! Maeve was staring up into the grand building, replicas of great machines suspended between massive archways. Alvi met my eye and my own amusement was reflected in her affect because we could tell, even through her cloak and veil, Maeve was smiling wide-eyed at everything around her.
Maeve seemed to float and spin as we crossed the threshold into the large main exhibit, taking in every detail of every angle of everything. The center of the room was dominated by a massive scale replica of Sovlin’s ship from when he led his mythical charge into the Arxur line, thwarting a raid on another world. Maeve hopped from display to display as we circumnavigated the centerpiece, reading off excerpts and descriptions of remnants from the battle.
A large twisted slug of hardened steel read, “This shot proved the superiority of Federation technology. This artifact was recovered embedded into the sturdy spine of the ship, recently outfitted with the finest Federation armor.”
A scale model of the isolated maneuvering thrusters read, “This novel technology developed by the brilliant Kholshians had been recently implemented on experimental battleships, of which the Protector’s Grace was one. This network of anti-matter-powered thrusters gave the Grace unprecedented maneuverability, helping it avoid most of the Arxur’s desperate attacks.”
Alvi followed Maeve around, constantly buzzing about what was on display and how it worked. Maeve matched her enthusiasm and my heart glowed to see the two so happy together, matched only by the similarly energetic pups among the throng! I watched the pair talk animatedly, comparing humanity’s advancements with what was on display; the whole conversation flew over my ears, but that didn’t stop me noticing Alvi’s tail curling around Maeve’s ankle every time they stood still for more than a moment.
I envisioned what I hoped would happen next, their same boisterous teaching and learning over a dinner table, as my mother added her pawful of ipsom about over-engineering a simple problem, and my father lamenting the same; a happy herd, all coming together. I felt a warm comfort fill me, as I hovered after them, letting the pair take the lead as we all but ran to the next exhibit.
We stepped from the stark white marble main exhibit to a room painted with purples and blues, mimicking the appearance of nebulae and the cosmos, passing under a large sign reading ‘Miracle of the Warp’ in Venlillian script. Inside felt to be a little lighter than the previous room, which Alvi posited may be because of the sheer amount of warp technology in this room; even just on display, they could still influence the space around them!
‘Discovered by the Kolshian people a mere decade before finding the Farsul, Warp plates attract or repel gravitons when a sufficient amount of energy is passed through them, influencing the gravity field surrounding them in the process.’
Alvi was brimming with excitement, her eyes wide and sparkling, almost as much as the wonder-crystals themselves! She eagerly listened as the audio continued, her tail finding its way back to Maeve’s ankle, ‘While this property alone helped revolutionize our ability to travel into space, allowing for it to become both cheap and easy for even the most massive of tonnage to enter orbit; it was the discovery of dual polarization that led to the development of the first FTL Drive, allowing for the founding of our noble Federation!’
She giggled in glee, her full attention on Maeve as her thoughts spilled over into words, excitedly bouncing on her paws as Maeve turned from the display, listening intently, “I read about this stuff so much when I was a pup! It has so many different applications depending on how and where they are used! Internally, externally, inertial diffusion, actual FTL in a warp drive; so many! Look! There’s models of a bunch of FTL Drives! There’s the first!”
It was almost comical how simultaneously simple and complex that first drive looked to be. The cross-section allowed us to observe the warp plates arranged into two internal spheres, with a ring surrounding them both also covered in the crystalline material.
“Say, Alvi,” I asked, stepping up to the pair as I did so, “You know a bit about this? Would you like to tell Maeve how this works?”
Her tail was whipping back and forth as she seemed to bubble with joy, “Oh, it is So Cool! Essentially, Warp Plates affect gravitons when a charge is run through them; but they also block gravitons when there is no charge!”
She pointed at the two spheres, one nested within the other, “The first thing a Drive needs to do is isolate you from the effects of Space, so you can go faster than light. Anything larger than a shuttle would need more Warp Plates than is necessary to encase it, so how Version One did that was to have one sphere, containing a vacuum, nested within another sphere, also containing a vacuum. An electric charge would run through these spheres, and they would be spun in opposite directions! Because of their equal charge and opposing spin, they would create a null field that would extend out past the hull of the ship! Do you guys follow me so far?”
Maeve nodded her head, muttering an enthusiastic “Mm-Hm!”. I forced my ears to be attentive, but I knew my tail gave away how confused I was getting.
Alvi gave a whistle and flapped her ears in amusement when she noticed. “I guess I should simplify a little. Basically, the spheres can’t agree on how to charge the gravitic particles around them, so they make a kind of noise or static in the surrounding space. This static separates the surrounding area from the effects of Space, allowing things within it to travel at Faster Than Light speeds!”
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I think I was starting to get it… if light was as fast as it was because ‘space’ itself was hindering it, then removing yourself from ‘space’ would remove this upper limit! I think.
“Of course, this only makes a field. Not really something that can be steered or even moved, you know? So thrusters were still needed. They, with the field, allowed the ship to basically cheat inertia, so they could go into FTL!” She exclaimed. “The Kholshians had to use chemical thrusters for their first flights. It became even more revolutionary when plasma thrusters were perfected, and finally proton-drives make acceleration instantaneous! Because of that, all modern warp drives move at the same speed: 18 lightyears every claw.” She paused in thought, “well, one of the reasons, anyway. The other are improvements on the design. Like in those!”
She gestured down the hall towards two other models; one added a horizontal bar, and the other replaced the spheres with a lateral disk. “The larger ships required larger thrusters generating more heat, and the need to carry fuel to feed all of it. So they tried to find alternatives that didn't require all that. They discovered that antimatter charged the Warp Plates by flowing across it, so they tried to use a cylinder to create forward movement. They filled the vacuum of the cylinder with antimatter gas, and spun the cylinder forward and backward to essentially pull the field along the fabric of Space!”
She then drew our attention to the Disk design, “But that was clunky, so the next iteration took advantage of the Torus! Instead of a sphere, there was a Warp Plate Torus suspended within a second, the space between them filled with antimatter gas. The center torus stayed stationary and the outer torus was spun around it. But! They used magnetic fields to also spin the antimatter gas in the opposite direction! This movement causes the charges of the Warp Plates to oscillate! So the internal now attracts gravitons while the external repels! Then the whole process reverses, over and over, with the warp plates changing their charge maybe thousands of times per second!! And that rapid change causes a Null field to form around the drive at a much larger size then the spheres ever did!”
By the sun, I could see the stars in her eyes…
Alvi was nearly hopping with excitement as she drew to her finale, “And what’s more! The spinning outer Torus dragged on the fabric of space just like the cylinder did in the earlier versions, so it pulled double duty! Now they could: isolate the vessel from space, create movement, and steer by turning the torus on its axis! It is just an astounding feat of engineering! I could only ever hope to make something anywhere on this level.”
“Oh, you will,” Maeve laughed, “I think with your enthusiasm, and a little bit of human AI, you will make something incredible.”
Alvi seemed to glow with pride as Maeve stood beside her, and my heart filled at the sight of them, though Maeve’s attention was pulled elsewhere, “Who did make these, by the way? These are all amazing! The creators of our warp drive are basically world famous!”
“Oh, that’s easy! The Kolshians were the first to develop these drives, and they gifted it to each species as they were uplifted!”
Maeve pulled out her pad to read the placards, “… That… But these drives were developed after the creation of the Federation? If I have my dates right, the Cylinder Drive was developed after the Venlil were… uplifted. Surely other species offered their ingenuity?”
“Well everyone knows the Kolshians have been at the forefront of technological advancement since most of the federation were still in coal power! Everyone has their strengths, and this is the Kolshians’.”
My tail curled at that. Maeve made a good point, and I couldn’t reconcile that the Kolshians have been responsible for all scientific advancement for so long…
… no names. That’s familiar…
But not today. Today is for Us, not for Them.
I walked up to Maeve’s side and laid a paw on her arm, drawing her attention, “Does it really matter who made it, when it’s what brought us together, right?”
“But it can’t be just the Kolshians; whoever they are. The Venlil are-”
“Maeve.” Her face snapped to me, and I spoke quietly, hoping not to interrupt Alvi’s boisterous glee, “I know better than most, the wrong question may dim a bright sky. Let it go.”
I could nearly see her winding thoughts through her veil, before she nodded and we followed Alvi into the next room.
The next room was a stark contrast: sleek white paneling and a black floor. Straight lines and curved corners, the whole room seemed to be only one or two pieces of some synthetic material. This was the ‘Meta-Materials’ exhibit, if the sign above the threshold were to be believed. Scattered around the room were plinths, shelves, display cabinets, and mounts displaying amorphous blobs or blocks of materials that see common use among federation planets. As Alvi suggested the waking before, It seems they encourage the touching or holding of many of these materials, though some were still locked under glass displays.
Working our way around the room, we first approached an open plinth with a solid black block atop it. Maeve reached out, but withdrew her hand before looking at it in detail. I caught her eye with my tail. “The signs say you can touch and hold anything uncovered, it's ok.”
Maeve nodded at me before removing her gloves, revealing her stark white skin colored only by blood red blushes on her palms, fingerpads, and knuckles. She reached out and held the mass, which became apparent to be a sample of the Soft Asphalt that pervaded federation roadways and walkways.
“Oh my god, this is so weird! Like… my brain sees it as a bit of road from back home, just a chunk of black asphalt kicked up from a pothole. It wants it to be hard, and sharp, and a little crumbly; but it is just so…” she gripped the sample with force, causing it to deform slightly between her fingers, “Bouncy. Does it say how they make it?”
Alvi and I look at the placard beneath the sample. ‘This patented SafeStreet material was pioneered by the Iftali and Sulean, the latter of which developed these soft roadways to reduce wear and discomfort on their hooves. The Federation saw its value as a safety measure against Stampedes, and made it standard practice across all member species, with the Kholshians perfecting the formula into what we mostly use today. There are many brands, each with their own properties brought out by specific mixes; but in general SafeStreet is produced by combining waste soil from colonies and construction with boiled Zullarid sap, though an artificial version is more commonly used now. The soil adds structure and grip, while the boiled sap gives it its remarkable malleability.’
“Honestly, that's not too different from how we make it! Though we use Petroleum waste along with grainy substrate, like sand. Makes something which is ‘soft’ but not nearly like this.”
An excited bleat behind us caught our attention, as a pup jogged up to a children’s display, containing a variety of touchable materials. The pup seemed especially interested in a translucent film, labeled ‘ReWeave’, immediately launching into a rant about its properties to her parents. Maeve was beside me watching the interaction, standing relaxed with what I knew was a warm smile and kind eyes beneath her veil.
Alvi stepped forward from beside me and approached the small family. “Hey there, little one, you sure know a lot about this!”
The pup wagged furiously and beamed, “Uh Huh!!”
The parents weren’t far behind, and flicked welcome to Alvi while they let their daughter be sociable. Alvi continued her conversation after acknowledging the parents, “Ya know, I have a friend who would like to learn more about this stuff; she’s never seen anything like it! Do you think you could teach her?”
The parents shifted their attention around the room, and when their ears and eyes fell on Maeve and I, I could see the pair stiffen. The child didn’t even think to ask or look, only excited for the chance to share, “Mom! Dad! Can I?!”
The mother’s ears fell back and her tail wrapped protectively around the now two pups clinging to the wool on her hips, though the father only looked worriedly at the excited daughter, “Sweetie I don’t think that’s a good idea…”
Alvi motioned calm and comfort, “Please? It would mean a lot to us. She’s completely harmless, and I think you’ll be surprised; for the better.”
The father watched the excited daughter continue pleading for the chance to meet and teach someone new, but his ears were split between his mate and Maeve. I could hear the mother whisper everything we had already heard so much, from the ever familiar: ‘what if it pounces’ and ‘we can’t let it near our children’ to the more outrageous ‘what if it steals her and runs off?’
The father looked between his mate and his daughter, then to Alvi, “Shia stays with me, but they can talk.”
Alvi wagged joyfully as she walked up to Maeve and pulled at her hand, bringing her to the children’s display. “Hello, Shia-”
“Voshia.” The mother sharply corrected, glaring at the father.
“Voshia, thank you. I’m Alvi, and this is my friend Maeve. What is this stuff called?”
I stepped back while Alvi brought Maeve forward; not wanting to crowd, and content to simply watch the interaction. The girl answered her with exuberance! “It’s called ReWeave! It’s a ‘sinsetic’ skin, and can repair itself! We use it a lot for signs and seats and even medicine!”
Alvi nudged Maeve to talk, though she was clearly nervous. She lowered herself to a sitting position, making her need to look up slightly to look at Voshia. Maeve spoke quieter than I had heard before, but in that same lilting tone she used for new faces and children. “That’s really interesting, Voshia! How does it repair itself?”
The pup held out the square of stretchy film; it was nearly clear, though a green tint could be seen when it was bunched or gathered, and it distorted light as it was stretched and contorted. “The stuff it’s made of likes to stick to itself, but not other things, so when it touches itself it's like it was always together!”
Maeve got more excited as she fell into the lesson, trying as she did to temper her enthusiasm for the parents’ benefit. “Oh, so it’s like vacuum welding? But how does it keep its shape when it wants to stick together? Why isn’t it a clump of itself?”
“Yeah, yeah! That's why, once they have the shape they want, they coat it in something rough that attaches itself to the skin! Here, touch it and feel it!”
Maeve slowly lifted her hand, and I stepped to the parents to support them while their wool flared. Though once her hand was out from under her white cloak, they relaxed when they saw she had no claws to speak of. Maeve kept her hand relaxed as she slowly brought it to the sample, and felt its grainy tacky texture.
“So the outsides don’t stick to each other, but the insides do! Very clever! Thank you for showing this to me, Voshia.”
The pup thrashed their tail in glee, before noticing something on the other end of the room and exclaiming, “Oh Oh you’re going to love this! This is MirrorPlate!” She bolted to another plinth and held out a thick plate of metal, “See how it’s so dense? Well when it feels pressure, it expands and gets really bouncy! Grey slugs just bounce right off!”
Maeve slowly rose to meet the girl at the next plinth, our tiny teacher barely breathing while she taught us everything she could! Alvi walked with me as we watched the parents follow the pair. To the father’s credit, he did a good job of keeping up, never leaving more than a tail’s length between him and his daughter. The mother slowly hovered after them, making sure her other pups stayed close holding on to wool or tail.
Alvi’s eye met mine as she stood beside me, and I saw joy swirling within it. In hushed tones, I told her, “Good choice, Raindrop. This has been a wonderful waking!”
She matched my tone, keeping our conversation from interrupting the whirlwind of lessons, “I have good ideas sometimes. I think my best one though, was staying in that sleeper cabin so many paws ago.” Alvi reached her snout up to mine as traced her tongue along my jaw, before resting her chin on my shoulder while I pulled her into a hug.
I rested my chin atop her crown, her closer ear folding underneath it, letting go of a contented hum, “My sun and stars, I thank the cosmos for bringing you both to me.”
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