Tim, Di, and Jacob stood in Sanctuary’s clinic observing Greg as he stared blankly, occasionally reacting to something that they couldn’t observe with a smile, or laughter, or fear, or some other emotion. “Any idea what is happening to him?” Asked Di as she stared at him with a look of concern.
“As far as I can tell, his soul is losing its connection to his body then reestablishing it. The period between dropped connections is slowly increasing, so he appears to be stabilizing, but I don’t know how this could happen. I’ll have to go through the documentation to figure that out.”
“Are we sure that it is Greg’s soul, and not another?” asked Jacob.
“Eighty percent.” responded Tim. “Some of the connections are fluctuating too rapidly, so I can’t get a clear copy of their signature to verify, but the ones I can verify match Greg’s signature.”
Jacob nodded. “I’d like to try something then, if you’ll let me. If I can touch a person, I can detect the presence of a soul, it’s level of corruption, and relative strength. If you would let me, I would like to do that to him.”
“Strange ability for a priest.” said Di.
“Well, it also lets me tell if he’s possessed, if that makes more sense, though I doubt he is.” Di nodded, and Jacob walked over to Greg, who was currently staring in horror at some unknown thing. “I’m not going to hurt you.” said Jacob, before reaching out to touch Greg. After a minute or so, in which Jacob seemed to struggle, he returned to the others. “Well, he isn’t possessed. His soul is just very weak, like a newborn, but a newborn’s is stable. His seems to have waves where it is moderately strong, but they quickly go away. Interestingly, he also seems to be a pretty virtuous person, though not a saint. A newborn would be neutral. So it definitely isn’t a new soul trying to adapt to the body.”
“That doesn’t tell us much, but it’s a start.” said Tim. “I’ll look through the library to see if there is any record of such a phenomenon.”
Di paused for a few seconds before speaking. “I think I know someone else that can help in this situation. Jacob, you won’t like it, but I recently met an old friend that has a lot more experience in dealing with souls.”
“Some sort of holy woman? A nun?”
“A Witch.”
Jacob was a bit surprised. “Don’t tell me she’s the same one that controlled Greg back in December.”
Di shrugged. “I don’t know who else to ask for help at this point.”
Jacob nodded. “I could ask the Vatican to send in an expert, but I don’t know if they would help us. Very well, if you think think she can help, I won’t object.”
Di nodded, and sent Brenda a message. An hour later, Brenda appeared on Sanctuary’s teleporter, and was shown to the clinic by Di. Once in the room Brenda walked over to Greg, touched her hands to him, and started muttering something. After about five minutes she seemed to finish and came back over to the group. “Well, I figured out what’s wrong with him. His soul’s damaged. I’ve just never seen this kind of damage before.”
“How many damaged souls have you seen?” asked Jacob.
“Over a dozen. It’s fairly common when you’re dealing with soul effecting magic. I’ve seen souls that were damaged by spells, souls that were damaged by resisting spells poorly, souls that were damaged by botching spell casting, and souls that were damage by poorly conducted exorcisms, either because the demon or ghost tried to latch on and was ripped off or because it tried to take down its host before it was driven out.”
“And which one was this?” asked Di.
“None of those. It’s kind of like a mixture of the demon one and a poorly resisted spell. If I had to guess I’d say someone or some thing tried to grab his soul and he forced himself out of its grip. It is healing slowly, though.”
After a bit of discussion, which Vera join in on, via Tim, it was decided that they should monitor him and let him recover on his own. After all, none of them had the ability to repair a soul. Tim poured over the literature on the subject while they waited and, two days later his soul stabilized enough that it fully reconnected to the body, if weakly.
Now that the soul was fully connected to the body, Greg was able to focus enough to carry on conversations. He seemed to have almost complete amnesia, though, so Vera was forced to start restoring his memories starting with early childhood, making him rapidly develop mentally.
Eventually he was up to the level of a teenager and they decided to take him to meet other people. Di went by his apartment and, after knocking several times he eventually opened the door. “What?” he asked annoyed. He was wearing dirty clothes and tactile response gloves, something that was common among those that used the System to play old video games and wanted the feel of a controller in their hands. He then noticed that he was talking to an attractive woman and started looking her over. “I mean, hey. How are you doing? You, uh, want to come in?”
“I was actually thinking of taking you out. Tony and Tom are throwing a party, so I thought we could go to it.”
“Uh, sure, sure.” Greg said, then smelled his shirt. “Uh, just let me get changed and I’ll be right out.” He went back inside. Di heard a bit of shuffling, after which Greg said “clean surface” several times, then after a few minutes he came outside. “So, where are we going?” Greg asked.
A few minutes later they had taken the teleporter back to AR. The whole city looked like they were having a festival. Several tables had been set up to sell things, and Tony was feeding massive amounts of grilled meet into a food service station while Tom and another guy were grilling more. There was also a lot of red, white, and blue decorations around. “Wait, is it July 4th?” Greg asked, and Di nodded.
“Yeah, they decided to host a festival, and are apparently making some sort of announcement.”
“Right.” Greg said.
A few minutes later, noon arrived and Tony stepped up on the steps of city hall, Tom finishing grilling and stepping up behind him. “Hey, everybody. Good to see you out here, celebrating freedom. I know a lot of shit’s happened recently, but we just need to remember that as long as we work together, we can overcome it. Uh, I’m not good at speeches, though, so I guess I’ll just go ahead and announce why Tom and I set up this festival. Tom and I just launched our own company. I’m making the hard drinks, and Tom’s making the soft drinks.” He reached into a cooler beside him and pulled out a bottle of beer and a bottle of soda, both with “Tony and Tom’s” written on the label in a stylized font. “We had twenty thousand bottles of each made so we could hand them out, so everyone be sure to grab yourself a drink with your meal. Take as many as you want.” The people cheered and started lining up to get some barbecue.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
They had set the Food Service Station to provide the food and drinks for free to everyone before the festival had started, so many people, including Greg, simply opened their Market screen and queued up their order. Greg ended up getting a beer with his food, and just as he started to drink Di pulled it out of his hand. “Nope, too young.” she said, drinking it herself.
“But I’m sixt…. I mean twenty, uh, six?”
“Twenty eight, but mentally you aren’t old enough yet. Once you’ve recovered I’ll take you to the bar if you want, but for now, you don’t need to drink.”
“Come on. You sound like my mom.”
“Interestingly, she’s old enough to be.” said Tom, stepping behind Greg. “I mean, come on Greg.” he said, slightly slurring his words. “I didn’t say anything before, but don’t you think she’s a little old for you?”
Di gave him a nasty look. “I think you’ve had enough to drink too.” she said.
“Come on. I was just joking. Since you got the System you’ve gotten a lot hotter. Almost like your first thought after getting access to advanced alien technology was to make yourself hot again so you could land yourself a...” The next thing Tom knew Greg had landed a right hook and caused him to stumble into a nearby table, dropping his beer.
By the time Simon and a deputy pulled them apart Greg had blood pouring out of his nose and had to spit out a tooth, and Tom had several bruises on his face, including a black eye. As they were already in front of city hall, Simon had them both hauled downstairs to the jail. Di told him what happened, and they both spent the next few hours in a cell until Tom sobered up enough to properly talk it over.
“Sorry I insulted your woman, man.” said Tom. “I didn’t realize it bothered you that much.”
“It was obviously bothering her, so of course it bothered me.”
“Yeah, sorry. I’m kind of an idiot when I drink.”
Eventually, they forgave each other and were allowed to leave. By that time the festival was finishing up and Tony had started cleaning. Apparently, their company had gotten a mostly positive rating over all, with most of the negatives being that it wasn’t the name brands they were used to, most of which were no longer operating or only produced small quantities of products.
The next day ‘Tony and Tom’s Drinks’ were officially launched to Earth’s Market, and they saw sales skyrocket. There had been a shortage of alcoholic and carbonated drinks across the globe, and they were one of the first companies to try and fill the gap. Even various alien settlements had started buying them, with the notable exception of GCA settlements. They tended to be one hundred percent self sufficient.
On the tenth of July Vera had finally gotten to the point in uploading Greg’s memories where Greg had set off for Mars, so she sent out a message and everyone met up at the clinic to talk about what he remembered happening. This even included Brenda, though she mostly just wanted to know how his soul was damaged.
He told them about how he had detected refined metal and, while the settlement set itself up, he decided to go and see what it was. He remembered flying towards the canyon, setting down beside the metal, stepping outside, then waking up in the clinic without any ability to hold onto a thought. Vera verified the story, then told them that she had tried to get his attention, but that he had ignored her, and when he had touched the metal he suddenly collapsed. His brain activity became erratic, starting with the soul connection points, and he soon died. With no other option, she used the quantum entangled device in his head to slowly transfer the memories which differed from her backup to Shackleton, where she could be transmitted back to his new body.
“It sounds to me like that alien device he found tried to steal his soul.” said Brenda. “The fact that he ignored you and walked right for it is pretty much a common Control spell, but used to lure in victims.”
“Are you saying you don’t use it like that?” asked Jacob.
“I’m Wiccan. ‘And harm ye none’ is kind of a core tenant of my faith, and luring in victims counts. I only used it on him because he was a threat and I needed to defend myself and my friends.”
“Fine.” said Jacob. “So how are we going to handle this? If there’s a device stealing souls we need to shut it down.”
“We should probably study it afterwords.” said Brenda. “Whoever built it probably had a reason for doing so, and we should figure out what.”
“Are you volunteering to investigate it?” Greg asked, and Brenda shrugged.
“Someone has to, and I’m probably the most qualified person in the area.”
“I would prefer if the Vatican sent a team.” said Jacob.
“If you think you can get them to, by all means.” said Greg. “We need to figure out what’s going on there. And because Olympus isn’t exactly ready for people to live there, I will give you a ship to live in.”
“Wait, you’re just giving me a spaceship?” Asked Brenda in surprise.
“I need to buy another one to get back there anyway, since there isn’t a portal to Olympus.” Then Greg remembered something. “Ah, crap. I had an interview that I missed.”
“Yes, you’ve been getting messages about that, but I’ve had to just tell them that you are still recovering.” said Vera.
“And you didn’t tell me about it?”
“You weren’t in a position to talk to them.”
Soon, Greg had arranged for a team lead by Brenda to fly to Mars with him on a stock Settler’s Ship, which cost him ten million zerka, and to give them the ship once they landed, in exchange for the group studying the ruins. Once he was back in his ship, he would set up an Outpost Core and a Builder so that they could build a research base. As they weren’t too familiar with the System tech involved, Di would be training them on how to use it.
Once the research base and Olympus were up and running, others could come to the base to research the artifact, and at that time the Vatican and other religious groups would be allowed to study it. So far the only thing that was known about it was that it could affect souls, so religious groups were the only ones considered so far.
After that, Greg got in contact with the news assistant, explaining once again that he had run into something dangerous on Mars and had been injured, so he had to take time off.
Three days later, Greg set off for Mars. This time the trip would take about a day and a half, so he had to sleep in the floor, as everyone else was using the bunks. This included Brenda, four of her ‘sisters’, and an Alf man named Varga. Apparently he was Brenda’s man, though Greg didn’t ask about the particulars of the relationship. As near as Greg could tell, Varga was brought along as support staff, as he kept the ship clean and prepared the best Vegan food Greg had ever tried. Apparently he was from a group of River Alfs that rarely hunted and were too far from the rivers to fish, so they rarely ate meat or animal products.
After a day and a half in a ship with about as much living space as a large RV, they reached orbit and Greg took them in to land in the trench beside his old ship. Not wanting to risk getting sucked in again by stepping outside, he teleported over to his old ship and promised to send them an Outpost Core and Builder.
Greg’s Perspective:
Finally I was off that ship. There was something weird about being on there, like I was a fifth wheel. Also, I’m pretty sure the Alf was brought along as entertainment as well, and not just for Brenda. Not that I’m going to judge them. They all seemed to be consenting adults.
Back at Olympus I verified the progress of the city and bought an Outpost Core, Generator, and Builder. I then teleported both of those to Brenda’s ship. Brenda had been made the manager for the outpost, even though it was technically owned by the city. I owed her a lot, so if she wanted to manage a research outpost I would let her.
Two days ago:
“How am I not there for her?” I asked Brenda. Apparently Di had asked her for relationship advise after I left for Mars the first time, and it had lead to Brenda lecturing me. “I’ve brought her in on every major project I have.”
“Exactly, your major projects. She helped Your friend at the soup kitchen, joined Your city, and supported Your other projects. But you and Di want to be equals in this relationship, not master and servant. That means that her goals and projects are important too. Have you ever asked her what she wanted?”
“I, I guess not.” I responded. “What do you want, Di? Just tell me, and I’ll help make it happen.”
Di nodded. “I want to educate people.” I started to say something and she held up her hand. “Not just the people in town. Being in charge of the education programs in town is fine and all, but I want to do more. I got a degree in Education and a minor in Psychology so I could teach. I only got an MBA five years later when I realized how little that paid. All of this new knowledge has been brought to us, and I want to spread it to everyone. Who knows how many issues we can solve by just teaching people new science or about new cultures.”
“So, you want to be a teacher again?”
“Not exactly. I want to build a way for everyone to to learn freely. A place where classes are free and people can come to learn or just watch online.”
“You want to be a college dean?”
She thought for a few seconds. “Yeah, that could work. The education would have to be free, but no one is going to want to work for free, so we’ll have to figure something out.”
And so, the next day I set off for the Antarctic mountains, a place where, by treaty, no government could lay claim. There I dropped off a World System Core which began digging into the mountain. Di and I had worked together to arrange for it to build a place that, hopefully, would serve as an almost self sufficient college town. It would house up to a million people as first, providing basic food, water, and housing to everyone that lived there. The place would bring in educational professionals from across the world, and even other worlds if they could attract them, and pay them to teach classes, participate in research, or just post educational classes on the school’s System Website where anyone could watch them for free. All of this would be paid for initially by mining, but eventually by buying up minerals and using them to make objects for sell to the people of the city. They would also have services like Dungeons which charged for entrance and cloning facilities for keeping their people alive.
Thus Antarctic University was born.