Chapter 2 - Not dead, nor hurt, still kicking. - The Unforgettables: A ZeroYear litRPG
"They’re going to wake up before I can fix the nano-translators for them. It looks like they’ll have to use these mechanical translators from Ramirez for a while. At least I updated them to understand our language. You better stay a bit away, Arch..." Star broke the silence, finding Arch already prepared to sleep in a corner.
Frank, in fact, had one eye open, listening to his mechanical translator working, translating the conversation between the two. Wisely, he remained quiet, listening. A figure, reasonably human and feminine except for her slightly larger-than-normal size and the obvious devices and connectors scattered across her body, and a giant with what seemed to be bones and plates emerging from his body, emitting a draconian roar that would have awakened an entire city, but the translator insisted on interpreting it as a peaceful, metallic little voice. Somehow, Petra was still asleep, as evidenced by her heavy breathing. Finally, Frank convinced himself that there was no other way out.
"Ramirez thought you guys would only arrive tomorrow..." Frank speaks in a hoarse, calm voice, muffled by the fact that he is still lying down. He is a man in his mid-30s, thin and small, with abundant, untidy black hair, an uncut, black, curly beard, and wearing a thick fabric, uncomfortable dark-red jumpsuit provided by Ramirez. He remains in the shadows, clears his throat, and continues to speak, now sitting on his improvised bed. "Why did you bring us back? Sorry, thank you for that. Seriously, Ramirez told me that it was our friends who brought us back from the dead, and I immediately thought there was something strange about it. Maybe Petra's friends, but they're not. I never thought they were aliens..."
"My name is Silas Archon, and this is Liora Stardust. No aliens here. I'm glad you’re calm about all of this. We’re the ones who should apologize because we couldn’t get the resources to bring you back to life in a proper situation. The thing is, your world, which we call Seneca 1335, is in trouble. We couldn't fix the situation, but we managed to try and help someone, at least." Petra suddenly woke up at the sound of Silas's voice. She recognized Frank and still ignored the others.
"Now, where are we, Frank? What was that loud noise?" Slowly, getting up from her oversized, improvised bed, a tired, almost childish female voice, “It doesn’t look like the bar…” Petra puts her hand over her mouth when she locks eyes with Silas, and no more words come out. She is a mature woman with a robust physique, and she has dark brown hair and black eyes that express a mixture of surprise and nervousness as she realizes what awaits her now that she woke up. Petra is also wearing an even more uncomfortable dark-red jumpsuit, just the same size as Frank’s, and being taller than he does not help, a gift from Ramirez, which is just one more thing that contributed to Petra having another terrible night’s sleep.
"As we were saying, this is Silas, and I'm Liora. We were the ones who paid to have you brought back from the dead, as Frank was just saying. Let's talk, and we'll explain the situation. For now, don't worry. You're not in danger, and we'll protect you as best we can."
"So, to clarify," Silas continues to speak quickly and excitedly, failing to notice the humans' reaction growing tense. "the place where you came from, we call Seneca 1335, and you call it Earth. Here, it's a place where it's possible to bring back to life all rational beings who once lived in our entire universe. This place, we call Gate. There are many humans here in Gate, but not humans from Seneca 1335. The thing is, the place where you came from isn't exactly the original Earth. It's a replica created by a human named Seneca, based on a snapshot from the year 1335. It's currently against the law, but it was legal when it was done. To summarize the story, they only discovered the existence of Seneca 1335 very recently. But instead of bringing people back in an orderly fashion, they decided to permanently prevent any attempts to revive everyone, not asking for the people's consent if they want to come back to life or not. We were engineers collecting data from this version of Earth when the project was canceled and classified without any apparent reason. We opposed this arbitrary decision, which cost us our future. Even though we were protecting the rights of all rational beings, we were punished and banned from Metropolis, which was the city where we studied and had our lives."
"What? No..." Petra, uncomfortable with Silas's presence and too much information, put her hand to her head again. She continued, now with a more aggressive tone. "This is hell. And we might still be illegal, from what I understand. Why would I want to bring anyone back in this situation? I would never have chosen to come back to life to any place except for paradise!"
"Well then," Liora interrupted. "The idea behind canceling the project wasn't to let people in Seneca 1335 rest in peace but to prevent them from ever being revived. And the way they're going to do it, as far as we know, is to bring people back against their will and..."
"Against their will? You are the ones that did it? Not the others! I never chose this! The others who canceled the project may be doing the right thing. How am I supposed to know?"
"Because there's a law that guarantees choice, and it also guarantees that anyone who doesn't want to be bothered will never be," Silas said to Petra. "And when we took a stand on this, as professionals, we were punished without any explanation. We didn't try to revive any of you. We were going to revive two brothers who we knew wanted to come back, but they got to them before we did. And Ramirez ended up bringing you back. We apologize for that. As soon as we're sure we can secure your right, you can go back to rest with your loved ones forever if you wish."
"I won't! I want to stay alive, no matter where. But I understand that it should be each person's choice, certainly," Frank burst out, to Petra's obvious disapproval. "From what I understand, we have to act to ensure this right for our acquaintances and understand why the law was ignored in the case of our Earth, right?" This idea made Petra think.
"Silas and I were engineering students. Specifically, we organized the database of people based on a technique where we talked to a copy of the person before they were revived or left to rest. It's always been done this way. But Seneca 1335 had never been cataloged before, and without any justification, everything started to be done wrong. We had the complete data on these two people, but someone got to them first and took them; we don't know where. It's hard for you to understand, but try to grasp what's going on."
"And why are you helping us?" Petra asked. "You don't even know us. You're not even human, or not all of you, it seems..."
"I do this because I want to sleep peacefully," Silas said. "And because I want to stay alive for many more years..." He turned to the side, already tired of explaining after a long day.
"Everyone who was studying this had their activities suspended without any compensation," Liora continued, who never needed to rest. "This means that people without resources in Metropolis, like us two, had their life plans ruined and their future stalled. Those who had resources stayed silent out of fear. And the ones who caused all this mess are covering something up. We don't intend to ask anything of you two. What would you do in our place?"
"Well, I don't know if I can be useful in any way. I think in your place, I'd try to survive and stay out of trouble. But I'll join you, yes!" Frank affirmed.
"I'll join you, but with conditions. I need to understand what's going on here before forming my opinion. And I'll be with you only until I have autonomy. I'll let you know before I leave. And also, let it be clear that I won't be legally responsible for any of this." Petra stated, visibly distressed. She turned back to sleep but continued to listen as Frank and Liora continued their conversation.
"I just woke up and would like to ask a few more questions, Liora, before I go back to rest some more, but if you're tired, we can continue tomorrow," Frank asked politely, as it seemed the others were exhausted.
"I never sleep, Frank. You can continue." Liora said, and she continued. "The information I have is based on what we managed to understand about Seneca 1335 until the end of the project. I downloaded all the material and can give you access via communicator as soon as we have time to set up one for you. For now, we're going to modify what Ramirez fixed and replicate the nano-translators we have with us so we can share them with you. That way, you won't need external devices to understand different languages."
"Wait a minute. Are you some kind of robot?"
"Not the kind that existed where you came from. Humans only started to get close to autonomous intelligence, in fact, more than 50 years after you lived. Unfortunately, Seneca ceased to have any rational life a little before that..."
"What do you mean? The project was finished, and they destroyed Earth in the process?" Frank exclaimed while Petra opened her eyes in her corner and began to pay more attention to Liora.
"No, Frank. Our project only started more than 9 millennia after Seneca 1335 ceased to have any record of rational life. One hypothesis is that humans destroyed themselves in the first three decades of the 21st century, but I wouldn't be so sure. The fact is, according to the data we collected, there are no records of surviving humans in your world in the 22nd century. But we don't know if it was the wars between humans or something else that we don't understand. It happens that, approximately in the same period when Seneca's rational life was extinguished, here, in a similar way, the old Metropolis was also destroyed by still mysterious causes. We went through a catastrophe that wiped out more than 99% of Gate's lives, and that was 9,612 years ago, the official date of the fall of Metropolis. After these catastrophic events in both our worlds, your world doesn't seem to have housed any humans or anything rational that we've detected during our research project."
"Ah, so maybe that's why the powerful people in the New Metropolis classified the project and are reviving people from that time to understand what happened..." Frank concluded aloud.
"It wouldn't be necessary, nor would it be easier, to revive people to understand what happened. I hypothesize that they found something they don't want to be made public."
"So, it seems like it's just us two from Seneca. The rest died a long time ago and are still dead?"
"There are more people from Seneca out there without knowing it. It's not so simple to understand the differences. The creators of these simulated worlds generally controlled things in a way that paralleled the recorded history of the original Earth, at least to a certain extent. We would have to find Seneca, the person, and understand what happened."
"That sounds like a good plan. Is Seneca alive? Wouldn't he be a wanted criminal by now?"
"Precisely. But it's a bit more complicated. Seneca exiled himself after the fall of Metropolis, and we think it has nothing to do with his particular world. For some reason, the powerful people of Metropolis, to use your curiously precise term, weren't very interested in Seneca. One day, while I was working in a lab, one of my copies overheard a conversation where it seemed Seneca was only hired to create the dimensional space for the replica of Earth that now bears his name, but not the people from the 1335 snapshot. The one who took responsibility for the people was a human named Bassolis, who, along with a group called the Conimbrigenses, convinced Seneca to join their endeavor long before the fall of Metropolis. And it seems that all of this has nothing to do with any of the cataclysms. They were all caught by surprise. But that's as far as we've been able to find out."
"Well, if Seneca or these other people you mentioned are alive, maybe it's a plan to go after them, wouldn't you say?" Frank continued, now willing to elaborate on a plan.
"It would be hard, but yes. We only know that Seneca went North almost 10,000 Gates years ago, and we haven't heard from him since. Well, we're in the far North now..."
"Ah, so that's why we're here. But are you really sure no one else is looking for Seneca right now?"
"As far as we know, no one is after Seneca or us as long as we stay discreet. Millennia have passed since Seneca exiled himself; we bet that they already got what they wanted from Seneca. When they banned us from Metropolis, we were effectively discarded and abandoned to our fate; we were nothing else but students. The choices were to spend what we had trying to understand what was going on or try our luck surviving in one of the peripheral cities. But that's my point of view; Silas seems more concerned about the other people."
"Right. But you were telling Petra that you were looking for two British military brothers who had spoken to you somehow during your project. How was that done? Why the British military? I'm saying this because my parents were military and died in action in the Dominican Republic in 1965."
"Well, as I said, we're engineers. Some other friends of ours on the project can talk with the dead, and we just recorded the data in the base and then analyzed it with the team. In fact, we were beginners, and most of the team had been operating for a few years. When we chose the brothers, we thought it would be easier to get along because, as you can see, there aren't many humans living in this region, much less humans from Seneca. Also, we're now venturing to the edges of civilization. This region is inhospitable, and having people with a profile more prepared for adversity would be less impactful for them. In the conversation in the world of the dead, everything was already agreed upon in general terms. They agreed to be revived here in Gate, even knowing they would spend a few years away from comfort. But you're not them, and you didn't agree to any of this. Therefore, if you decide to opt-out, we understand. We just need to get to a minimally safe place, and it seems Rocatrista isn't a good one."
Stolen novel; please report.
"Hmm... No good. This means that more people knew part of your plan, your friend who speaks with the dead, and the brothers..." Frank thought. "Seeing it this way, I know I'll be pretty useless to you. Maybe it's a good idea for me to stay behind so I don't get in your way. From what I talked to Ramirez about, the place has its problems, but it's interesting..."
Petra got up and whispered so as not to wake Silas. "If you want to leave this useless guy behind, it's his problem." She looked at Frank with disdain. "I have some training. Now your plan makes more sense to me. I'm going to propose an interpretation of my contract with you. I'll help until I have autonomy, as I said, but autonomy includes training to survive in this place. Okay?"
"Contract, Petra? If you prefer to see things in those terms, that's fine."
"Exactly. Let's get things straight from the start. Now, I'm going to try to go back to sleep. We'll continue tomorrow."
"Good night, Petra," Frank said, somewhat perplexed by the unexpected aggression. In the silence of the response, he and Liora exchanged a more compliant look, but they didn't say anything else. Frank lay down, looking at the high, dark ceiling amidst the crates. He would let his mind drift in thoughts, in a waking dream.
Liora returned to work on the communicators and spoke internally to her replica after some time. "Everyone's asleep, and I keep working on this. Silas would know how to fix this mess. Can't you help me with this? No, you won't help, right? What bad luck for me. This will take just as long."
Meanwhile, in a distant past, Silas woke up to a rumbling sound, like a continuous thunder that never stopped. The volume increased, and Silas knew he was, once again, dreaming in the past. He left a wooden house in a makeshift village and, as always before, looked at the horizon of a dark red sky and a pale moon close to the skyline.
A giant Y-shaped structure silhouetted against the dawn. Silas remembered the dream and how it had ended badly when he returned to his cabin. This time, he decided to run toward the Y instead. And it worked! Without time to celebrate his morphetic freedom, he ran toward the silhouette. He was fast, after all, faster than he had ever imagined. And he realized now that the moon was actually falling, already eclipsing the dawn behind the Y and towards him, and he was going towards the moon. He hesitated, with the moon now growing so large on the horizon that it began to eclipse everything.
The noise was caused by the atmosphere of Gate rubbing against the atmosphere of the moon, and it lit in bright white. Silas stopped, panicked. Despite the slow fall, maybe there wouldn't be time. Reflexively, he started to run away from the moon. He passed by the village and saw shadows of people panicking. Everything started to become blurry and confusing again, but he ran like never before. It was useless. The moon slowly fell, and after minutes, or maybe hours, who knows, running in despair, almost out of strength, the impact wave arrived, and Silas woke up with a start. Awake, he looked to the side and saw Liora muttering and looking at him suddenly.
"Is everything okay? Are you dreaming again?" Liora carried with her the old communicators connected to a series of wires. I'm finishing training the language models for the fourth time. I think this time it will work, but we'll have a lot to do. Maybe you should go back to sleep." She whispered, "They just went to sleep a little while ago."
"I won't be able to get any sleep. What were you saying we need to do?"
"So, there's no ambient lighting here at all. I'm using the monitors as a light source. Also, for some reason, we're going at the aerolitos´ maximum speed. That means more than four times the usual limit, and it seems like this is normal here. And also, I haven't found any information to know where we're going, and the connection to any city has been down for a while now."
"It'll be more than 40 days of travel, according to what I saw on the Rocatrista terminal. The end is a spiral sinkhole very close to the surface. Programmatically, the aerolitos will descend and dump the cargo and windshield on the ground and then return empty. It will be important that there's nothing on its surface because, as I understand it, they will pass under other aerolitos on the return trip through the same path. In other words, it's a dead end, and the return trip will be very difficult. There's also no record of what we'll find at the destination, but there is information about the cargo. It's basic technology materials to keep some cities running. Nothing valuable or advanced. Therefore, I think we'll have company at our destination."
Silas began to help Liora with the wires, and he continued to speak. "It reminds me of our lab classes. We won't waste much time improvising what's almost broken and exhausted. The people from the city left the carriage half open. If the boxes haven't fallen and if the aerolito's speed is stable, I'll see if there's anything left, and we'll leave from there tomorrow. Let's focus on the language models and on the train itself. We'll wait for them to wake up because opening the door at the speed we're going could be a problem, and we need to prepare a plan B."
So, both of them worked on the scarce material available throughout the night. Frank listened, awake, but didn't say anything, processing the new information. Petra seemed still to need rest from the night at the bar and went back to sleep. Both engineers complemented each other in their tasks, and the result was evident. Now, almost everything was working in the carriage.
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Name: Silas "Archon" Cade Species: Ebex XP: 5 / 1 Powers Super-Life Magnitude 1 Super-Resistance (ebex) Magnitude 1 Super-Technique Magnitude 1 Unknowledge (ebex) Magnitude 1 Natural Combined Armor (ebex) - Know it all (party) - Skills Traditional Dancing (Dex) +2 Mathematics (Int) +4 Computer Engineering (Tech) +4 Kung fu (Res) +4 (fixed - know it all) Essence: Reality +4 Days: 9117 Equipment Superior safety clothes (AC 3) 2x Crude mafia knives (d6), melee, hit: Dex Other 3 credits on Paradiso account Survival kit (food cube, shelter cube)
Name: Liora “Stardust” Gorgath Species: Oioioi XP: 4 / 1 Powers Super-Life Magnitude 1 Super-Dexterity Magnitude 1 Shardify (oioioi) Magnitude 1 Superior Technology Network (oioioi) - Structural (oioioi) - Know it all (party) - Skills Video gaming (Dex) +4 Informatics (Wis) +3 Streetwise (Cha) +4 (refocus) Kung fu (Res) +4 (fixed - know it all) Essence: Reality +4 Days: 8562 Equipment Still empty hands :-) Other Secure private network nano-connector Mk1: enables connection with Mag1 safety 2 credits on Paradiso account Survival kit (fuel cube, shelter cube)
Name: Petra Somerson Species: Human XP: 3 / 1 Powers ??? Magnitude 1 ??? Magnitude 1 Skills Cycling (Res) +4 Shooting (Dex) +4 Military Discipline (Mor) +4 Essence: Reality +4 Days: 5231 Equipment Empty hands :-) Other Survival kit (food cube, shelter cube)
Name: Frank Summers Species: Human XP: 3 / 1 Powers ??? Magnitude 1 ??? Magnitude 1 Skills Snooker (Dex) +4 Bar Politics (Int) +4 Power drinking (Res) +4 Essence: Reality +4 Days: 4951 Equipment Empty hands :-) Other Survival kit (food cube, shelter cube)