Chapter 1
The surface
"The planet is called Alpha honey 3, main sources of Interest are high-density aluminum and high-density hydrogen crystals, your job is to terraform the planet's surface and harvest the crystals please be aware that you aren't the only ones who have been brought to this planet, the ones before you had died because of their incompetence I hope you're not the same when terraforming is complete you can pick out your name for the planet by a vote."
The government official said with sternness which was like a bull being taped to a taser if Bulls even existed anymore but to be honest, that didn't matter anymore right now I only need to do my job so I l get off this planet and go back home I never wanted to be on this planet, to begin with, but the fucking space Corps and their programs and drafting just strangles the life out of everything and everyone that happened to be a labor of some sort welders like me, mechanics programmers, Terraformers, scavengers, and even plumbers have to deal with them once in their lives.
They were the universe's official slave drivers only caring about quota profit and the death margin which death margin might sound like a good thing until you realized that it only makes them force you to a certain point over and over again before they knock you out with drugs, but to be honest, maybe I'm going a little too hard on them maybe I'm not I'm just a little bit worried about going to a dead planet, Adam would get up as the government idiot would go on reaching into his bag to pull out a small box and a bunch of tapes cassette tapes as they were the only thing that could be reasonably protected from Electric magnetic waves and gravitational fields and other random things that can erase any personal, record, information or music even with a homemade Faraday cage the device had to come out sooner or later and who knows what could happen during that time, but the box was blue and had buttons to play stop record and Rewind.
Not only that but a little talk to eject and replace tapes to listen to and the series series of tapes he had were dirty scratched and scruff but the tape itself was clean, and they would be on a hundred other subjects that weren't welding, vehicles energy weapons big weapons recordings cults chemistry you name a topic he probably had it a bunch of useless junk for someone like him but it was his only vice, collecting useless information listening learning expanding his only way to escape his very meaningless job of connecting one thing to another thing that he seem to be good at he wanted to create something to build something from the ground up, or at least make it viable to use a certain heavy piece of machinery for one person even though it would be impossible for someone to use by themselves under normal circumstance even though he did love music that could live on in his head all of this he kept close to his heart, then someone would grab his shoulder making sure he was okay because he was zoning out listening to his information but to be honest at the moment they didn't care they just wanted to know if his welds with a hold and they would hold.
Then Adam would start to slowly move it to his welder, he would pick you up and put it onto his back testing the connections and a cage as no one was comfortable putting a giant laser gun that welded Metals in between other metals to create a Bond that was tougher than Nuts and Bolts and could hold up against heat in space the name of the Beast was called the Mark 3 Maiman's link, which was raided to weld titanium, aluminum, tungsten, steel, and carbon steel not just that if you were to remove the feeder's arm and you would have yourself a pretty decent defense weapon in a tight situation provided that you would remove the safety features which everyone going to a death Planet had and this has been his fourth which he was already getting odd looks for.
[Tom] "A Maiman you don't see those a lot these days I guess one thing is many of them blowing up scared a few people, the name is Tom I've been at least on one death planet I heard you went through four and I know that sometimes they're quite easy if you're safe, which if knowledge serves they've mostly been safe for you now if you had 10 or 20 and suffered severe casualties maybe I might have been over there with them but I don't see that happening now."
[Adam]" they were mostly safe but that's not the reason why they're so scared of me there were a couple of idiots that didn't make it safe, and when I was put in a position where it was them or me, well I'm still here and they're not it'd be best not to talk to me unless they make the same decision for you."
Adam says after putting on his space suit and clamping the bowl over his head, walking away from Tom who had a dumbfounded look at the moment like he didn't know if he should have been impressed, insulted, or scared that he was going to die and as Adam left the spaceship he was pleased right now he was quite pleased as he didn't have to work on the buildings as nothing was put up yet but the ship has sustained some injury during a good Landing as the planet they were on had enormous mountains that look like claws or strands of hair with of hydrogen Crystal and aluminum and he wondered why a planet like this should be terraformed especially since the light reflecting off the crystals in the aluminum odd tint to the sky which made it look like if it were an older black and white film and he would look down at some of the aluminum that polished during landed looking at him.
It was weird seeing himself again especially like this he hadn't looked in a mirror all this time he forgot to have his haircut and it was currently all a mess inside of the space suits Bowl Brown and unkept, his red eyes completely tired which might have been a problem for him if he didn't always use some sort of eye protection currently it was the space suits Bowl that stop sun rays from making you go blind but it also did give him a an advantage and dark areas as if there was any sort of like he would pick up on it, his skin pale as a vampire from one of those terrible romance movies that seemed how still populated vampire fiction as inside of a spaceship you didn't really get to see the sun all whole life especially in a cryo freezer, but then he would shake his head and get back to work repairing the ship sing odd colors of light in the distance when he would check for noise or some sort of animal bright greens and purples nothing that an animal can make even in space but he would ignore it thinking that his eyes were playing tricks on him.
Then a storm would begin to grow on that section of the planet where the light came from and he would reach down and press a button on the space suit Com-link and he would begin to describe it to the others who told him it was just a normal storm on this planet and not to be worried about anything just keep welding, as they kept building I'm so he would ignore the piece of his gray matter telling him that there might be something wrong coming but they were right it would disappear as his welder would begin to run out of charge so he wouldn't back away and sit down most of the ship already patched up the best I could without being at a workshop, and he would grab something out of the pack besides his feet which was that a decently sized solar panel with the magenta reflective glass sectioned off in pentagons connected by carbon steel to make sure that they wouldn't go anywhere and as the light would touch it, the glass would slowly and dimly glow magenta.
Taking in his surroundings slowly before everything would become dark hours later the mechanic Tom walked by and waved him inside gesturing the signal for superstorm as these are some of the dangers of working on a dead planet then he would pick himself up and do his solar panel looking at it and how much energy it had left inside of it which was a full battery and his welder had been charged up as well, he would pick up both of them putting get the soul solar panel back in its pack and the welder back on his back before slowly trudging his way to the spaceship the airlock making a pop sound as a are rushed into the chamber and he would take off his ball and walk into the loading Bay seeing that someone was freaking out talking in rushed murmurs and as he got closer it would become louder and clearer.
[???] "I'm telling you I was up there I saw these guys grouped in a circle chanting some weird mumbo-jumbo before this shit happened and the sky turned dark, and now come to find out it's a fucking superstorm do you know how long we're going to be stuck down here because of this shit, I'm telling you it's those goddamn hackers out there they're fiddling with our sensors and equipment and making us see things."
Adam would just ignore him knowing that it wasn't hackers as the only reason why hackers would do anything was to frame someone most of them were controlled by the government or they were hired individually to keep track of people, as most guns are very restricted they had their hands busy trying to rewrite the tracking code inside of the weapons to either completely delete it or make it look like the person was never at the scene of the crime once again more useless information that he picked up from his tapes but in this setting, it at least let him spot a conspiracy theorist and let him know what he was going to do next as conspiracy Joe pointed his finger at Adam with this look of bitter hate towards him.
[Conspiracy Joe]
"And that one's an assassin come here to kill us all he's afraid of the truth in what I might tell all of you it's the fact that this planet's cursed with Mana, dear innocent blue Mana that the rich don't want us to have and keep for themselves as it's the one thing they're not able to control."
That's when everyone would ignore conspiracy Joe not just because it was me so-called the Assassin who called in the storm but also because no one believed in Mana no one believed in Miracles here, as we were on a dead planet currently trapped in it by a storm that seems to have no end and the government agent would run up to conspiracy Joe and shoo him out before coughing loudly his signal that we need to come back as he needed to announce something probably the fact that they were going to lock conspiracy Joe in the break and then throw away the key which would mean the welders were going to be short-handed they were always shorthanded, but also about the storm and that we were still going to need to meet or quota for today so we were going to have to get in for a rough time but that was If today was normal at all.
[Bartholomew.]
"Okay, folks yes he is right there have been unknown people that have currently made their presence semi know and they might have a device that is causing the current predicament we're in that's why we're all going to have to stay in the ship even if it goes against quota, I also suggest that you lock your doors and don't come out no matter what you hear and bring all of your weapons that you might have two containers that I have the key for and let's hope for the best and that we can convince these people to stop and let us continue."
Giving up their weapons and almost immediately locking it in a bin and any weapon on the ship they would all be in separate bins with different names but they were typically powdered based weapons nothing really exotic like arc pistols plasma squirters or laser rifles as normally something repelling another object moving very fast, and still works in space sometimes better than anything else because you don't have to worry about Metal debris or air or heat from your light beam burning something a little too hot causing your planet to explode, but weapons were still very expensive to transport that's why Adam only carried his laser cutter and welder even though you can make it into a weapon it's still just treated as a tool so there's no extra expense and they can't take it away from you without paying, then the government agent Bartholomew would walk around writing everyone's name on their case and a couple of the other workers would exchange odd looks as he didn't ask for and Adam went back to his room with it.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
The room would be very small with the only one bed that acted as your cryopod for the travel to and from your home world if the warp core malfunctioned during the way back or the way to the planet that you were supposed to be working on not only that but it had an event for detainment purposes as the only white the vent could be activated was by the arrest procedure which would lock your door completely and vent a paralytic agent so they could safely force you into your cryopod and 'readjust' you back to normal society standards, which is just a fancy pants term for brainwashing but it happens to a person too much they can suffer severe brain damage to turn a normal person into a slight sociopath especially if it's abused as most of them are especially on a death Planet as people have the tendency to freak out and to stop this freak out they request to be 'readjusted' or they had no say in the matter to begin with, and then with one entire metal case with slight electromagnetism protection for valuables and anything inside the case is Judge by weight for the price to transport 10 lb equals to 500 USC tools are disregarded as you need tools to do work and did anything under 10 is completely free and his is under 10 as it's only a tape player and a box of tape with decent electromagnet protection.
He didn't want to listen to anything at the moment all he wanted to do was go to sleep and pray to God that this would all be over and he wouldn't have to hurt anybody as normally people got very nervous when he started to hurt people he didn't know why he was just making sure that they didn't hurt him again, but he may have gone a little too far time to time it was hard to tell anymore it just felt like he was surviving more than living now like he had to fight for every little breath of air he got, he was just so tired from it all he'd forgot to put his suit and ball back in its spot and was still wearing it in the more he worried the more his eyes became a heavier and heavier until he passed out on the floor his dreams not being much more than brilliant light that warmed him until they became a campfire in the front of a cave the cave was quiet and cold but the warmth of the fire gave him a feeling like there was Harmony within him.
Then Adam would begin to wake up to huge alarms being just sounded as his room was being pumped with the paralytic agent which was obvious, as beforehand he had an attached a string attached to it that was over the vent blowing, and he would reach for his bowl and immediately put it on hoping that he wouldn't start to go numb and he never did and then he would hear the sound of the other doors opening and the RS crank up and he would immediately go to his window opening up the screen, sing that there were several groups of people that were surrounding the spacecraft and conspiracy Joe was among them and he had fresh burn marks from where the Readjustment at took in place but it didn't look or sound like they had anyone else at the moment before loud shots could be heard echoing through the Halls that's when Adam would grab his cutter and begin to go to work on the lock cutting through it took him about 15 minutes but once it was done he opened up the door.
The door was open and he was breathing heavily the paralytic agent was rushing past him into the face all that a bunch of like individuals that weren't expecting it as with two deep breath they would begin to reach for him as they fell to the ground, just that as Adam began to smile as this has been the first time in a long time he had felt his heart go up and not not worried about if he was going to have enough money to feed himself so he would remove the safety lens from his cutter and welder letting off a blast into both of their heads cutting through them and charing the floor underneath their heads the smell of burnt flesh obvious to anyone that wasn't wearing a suit or mask, and Bartholomew with turn around wearing a government-issued mask in total shock and completely happy that someone else beside himself was awake but that happiness was short-lived as bolts of electricity would come dancing behind the corner that Bartholomew was covering himself with and would immediately return fire with one of the weapons that he had confiscated it was odd for a government man to know how to use a weapon as most of them were pen pushers.
But at the moment that didn't matter as Adam rush to Bartholomew's side melting a couple of the coldest that we're rushing get them from the other hallway praying to God that he could keep them off enough for them to push into the hallway and after countless bodies they would begin their push into the control room, wires being ripped out to make sure they had no control panel to lock the doors behind them or to cut off energy to what a part of the ship but that mattered very little to a government agent who could use it any control panel with a simple 8-digit code and they would begin to clear them out and then when Bartholomew got to a terminal he would type out the code and curse as he had got it wrong, but there was no reason to get that code wrong unless it was meant for another ship as each each code was hardwired into them and deleted once they had no use for them but at the moment that didn't matter to Adam as of course some of them are going to be corrupt, and he was in a very tense situation so his nerves must be getting to him but they shouldn't be getting to him as he had had one too many rejustments done to him, to say the least at the moment he was suspicious.
That train of thought wasn't complete as he immediately felt his thoughts become distorted as every muscle seized up and screamed at him and then everything would go black except for brief flashes of consciousness there was some sort of explosion, and everything would go dark again before waking back up in the cargo bay watching Bartholomew blocking the entrances and looking at his space suit beside him and how damaged it was what looked like lightning, and if he wasn't wearing it he might have died before blacking get out again wondering if this was going to be the last time, if it wasn't enough in the Amps was too great.
Adam had to feel like those thoughts were hogwash though as he was still thinking Consciousness was still within his grasp but then again even the times he'd almost worked himself to death Consciousness was never a thing that left him she wondered why I stayed everything was black and voidness, at least it was a peaceful place but then he would find himself back at that fireplace with a mirrored version of himself two versions of himself one of them would look like the cultist he was surrounded by several Vines of Unknown Origin and there was passion behind those eyes of this Adam and the slight smile, the other Adam was wearing a suit and had cybernetic implants and his eyes completely Focus and he wore no smile giving a cold appearance.
[A.M corporate.]
"Come on let's get this over with I don't have enough time here I need him to choose the decisions that will lead him to me, I was in the middle of a very important meeting before everything went black I was talking to Rolanx and we were making to a very interesting deal with each other."
[A.F cultist.]"I told you it was hi-s choice, and let's be honest with ourselves both of our paths ended up right here in the end, what matters is which one he's happiest with but up to him, and please don't overload him sss sometimes it hurts when too much information is given to you."
Adam would look at the both of them noticing that they look like they were him but not only that that they were like an old story of a Wandering spirit made of dust smoke and fog, it was something that you never hope that you would see as it would indicate signs of going mad but, to be honest, the world went mad long ago who is he to judge but the one thing right now he was noticing above all else was, everything felt like it was there were no more copies than anything I didn't feel like he was doing something that you was told to do it felt like, for the first time he could do what he wanted.
[Adam]
"Forgive me for asking but why am I talking to myself at the moment there's no logical way for us to be here at this moment right now because forgive me for guessing here but it feels like we're in a Schrodinger's cat incident but there's no possible way of that because we're observing it, and once it's observed only one or two outcomes happened, so why are you saying anything."
The corporate Adam without a lot of pulling on his sleeves gave them a smirk that looks like an old man looking down at a young kid, as the cultists to him would shy away from this question a little bit looking over before it finally hit him, that this wasn't just a life-or-death scenario which is so commonly used with that experiment, they were here to make sure another one of them doesn't pop up again which would make things even more complicated for them.
[A.M corporate.]
"Oh look he finally understands the gist of things well at least you were quicker than the sheep over here, I had to tell him about 3 times before it clicked don't stay on the planet just get off I swear if I have to deal with another shy boy I might go insane."
The cultist Adam would just sit there and take it as the corporate Adam would begin to poke and prod at him, like a sibling that was bullying his brother before Adam picked up a stick and hit them with it a bruise forming quickly on their face, and then he would drop the stick Into the fire wondering if there was any way to possibly change this to make them go away, because at the moment he didn't want to be any of them but it didn't look like there was any other way, and he would just sit there and breathe in and out looking up at the stars and contemplating how beautiful they look inside of his head if this was even his head at all.
[A.M corporate.]
"WHO THE FUCK, are you to hit me you're nothing but some rat orphan on a star that no one gives a damn about, do you know how many people I have made go bankrupt how many people I've killed, I've known a like you would without me yo-"
There was a deafening crack as the cultist looked on in horror as Adam picked up a stone this time and cracked the other Adam upside the head and as his arm, he noticed that he overthrust as his hand was hanging in the air again, and it just hanging there as the corporate him looked on with terror before he felt the slight tightness around his lips and everything just felt so funny this angry before, even with the people that he had just lit die back then but he had always felt cold about it but this was the first time he had wanted to do it, and his hands slung again colliding with their skull is blood splattered across the ground and his arms sped up until he felt tired and the shadow of the rich prick was no more.
[A.F cultist.]
"Why do I feel like that you just pick none of our answers as your own even if we were to give it to you, but you know what I'm kind of happy about that at least you might be able to apologize to them and you don't have to worry about feeding me I'll just go, and please don't be too harsh on them they're only scared."
The cultist him would disappear and he would just be left there before slowly feeling something like warm light covering him before he would wake back up still in the cargo bay looking all around him noticing that a long chain was attached to his neck and a bolted down the table, and he was a little curious about everything, especially about the fact why he was currently out of the space suit and in different clothing at the moment, and the Word was of the cultist version of him would begin to ring through his head which would make him grind his teeth that has they could have been a little more specific.
It still didn't help the fact that he wanted to shout at the top of his lungs cursing Bartholomae for doing this but that still didn't mean that they weren't going to pay eventually sooner or later, as for right now that cultist words were the only thing sticking inside of his head and he would begin to understand why, they were treating him the way that they were treating him at the moment so they kept quiet until he thought all of the cultists he and a line of information slammed inside of his head about the cult only vague details nothing that would give too much away, but they were still enough to give him an ideal and then he would hear the words of the other him.
Play. Along. With. Their. Fear.
"You know that isn't going to stop us, we're going to keep coming and coming until you let us end, and tell us why to do all of this when you could just be with us it would just be more simple everything could return like it used to."
Bartholomew would come out of the corner and he would be a little pissed his face look like he knew something but there was doubt behind those eyes, and then they would grab Adam by the jaw and look into his eyes and Adam would look into theirs a deep red that would shatter you to your very core if you hadn't seen something like it before, and their blond hair was messy and wet from sweat as even though he was supposed to be a government agent he particularly well built and he would grunt grinding his teeth before shoving Adam's head aside.
[Bartholomew]
"You know I don't have to tell any of you, just because I say you are the ones in dominion over this planet, so just shut up before I gag you unless you want to help me whenever what they did wears off."
Adam would lean back knowing that he was probably going to have to play this for a while but there was one thing that you know he'd been playing like he was alive for a while most was the only time that he actually enjoyed it even though he was like this, so it didn't matter how long it took even if he had to be chained to this table for months he was going to do it, but right now he would just wait and watch until they gave him something today.