Chapter 29: Song Medical
Location: Solar System; Earth; Former City of Brisbane; Small Yacht
Finding a teacher is going to be a thing for future me. I've got other things to do first. Namely taking a shower and sleeping a bit more. That’s exactly what I do. After taking a very long and very hot shower, I put on my sleeping clothes and say goodnight to Maja. Then I jump into my bed to sleep.
When I wake up, it’s the next morning and my stomach rumbles again. Ugh, a week without eating solid stuff is annoying. I feel like I could eat all our supplies. When I open the door, I’m pleasantly surprised. Maja has made breakfast! “Thanks, Maja, you’re the best!” I call out to her, and she sits on the couch with a smug smile.
“Glad you like it, now eat, we’ve got places to check out.” Right, the other four companies. I wonder what we’ll find there… Maja’s body set the bar very high. I sit down and devour my breakfast. Packed-up food is slowly getting annoying, but my current appetite doesn’t care.
When I’m finished, I clean the plate and we both walk to the bridge. Maja brings up a holographic image of the planet and highlights 5 locations. “Okay, currently we are here.” She points to a red dot on the east coast of a small continent near the bottom of the globe.
“As you know, the city was once called Brisbane and we’re on the continent called Australia.” She points to another dot a good bit above the first. “This is Shanghai, a city in the nation of China. There we have the planetary headquarters of Song Medical.”
She quickly continues and points at the last three dots. “This here is the base of Armortec SE in Munich, a city in Germany. Next is Axtendus Agriculture in St. Louis, and lastly, we have Valterion Heavy Industries in Chicago. Both of the last two are located in a nation called the United States of America.”
That’s a lot to take in. Four places to visit, spread out around the globe. And I now notice something I missed earlier. There is more than one nation on the planet! It’s something I can’t wrap my head around. Nations span across multiple star systems! How can four nations exist on a single planet? “Uh Maja, did you just call out four different nations? Are you sure that aren’t only regions or something?”
She dares to chuckle. Insolence! “Actually there were more than 190 nations on the planet before everyone left.”
What?? More than 190? How is this possible? They had to be at each other’s throats all the time! It’s just unbelievable. Hmm, I could have thought about that earlier… I had it right before my face. UNE, United Nations of Earth.
I close my mouth; it must have dropped open after Maja’s comment. I didn’t notice. “Okay, let’s pretend what you’re saying is true. It doesn’t matter now. Do we have enough fuel to check out all four places?”
Maja nods. “Yeah, we have. We’re still a bit over half-full. S-57’s course was good and with my improvements, we saved as much fuel as possible on our trip here to Earth.” She shrugs. “Even if we visit all four locations, we have enough fuel to fly back to the place we appeared at… Just so you have a reference. I can’t think of a reason to fly back there.”
Yeah true, why would we fly back to where we appeared after the collapsed wormhole? That’s the last place I can think of flying to as we already scanned that location. There are no wormholes close. Our best bet is probably trying out the other direction. But that too is for later. We’ve got companies to check out.
So where do we fly to first? The names are pretty clear… Song Medical has to be a pharma company, we have already seen Armortec products, so it’s clear what they are doing: Weapons. That leaves the other two, but they also have their products in their name. Agriculture and ships, I guess starships.
“Any suggestions on where to go first? I'm thinking of the closest one, but that’s only because I don’t want to wait.” I look at Maja, hoping she has an idea.
She shrugs. “It doesn’t matter… Personally, I’d leave the ship guys for last. Maybe we are lucky and find better scanners or something for our ship.”
Good idea. So it’s decided then. “Okay, then let’s check out Song Medical.”
As soon as the words leave my mouth, the engine spins up, and soon after we are flying again. I take one last look at the city and off we go. All I can see is the ocean and from time to time a few islands. Maja is taking it slow, and it takes way past noon till I can see land appearing on the horizon. As we get closer, I notice the city. It’s way bigger than the last, but just as ruined. 11,000 years sure leave their mark.
Location: Solar System; Earth; Former City of Shanghai; Small Yacht
Maja provides some facts while we are closing in on what looks like a combination of ruined skyscrapers and giant factory halls at the edge of the city. “China was the most populated nation on the planet and Shanghai here also was the biggest city. At the time of Project Exodus, they counted more than 100 million inhabitants. Almost a quarter of them were working for Song Medical or their suppliers.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Holy smokes, 100 million! The number is mind-blowing. I mean Acrodus 3 has 20 million inhabitants. And that’s a whole planet. Sure, it’s way smaller, but wow. And a quarter of them worked for Song Medical. Thinking of that, wasn’t the Magicon headquarters not a little small?
“Those are big numbers, Maja.” She nods. “But we both know that Magicon is and was the biggest company, so why was their facility so small?”
Maja goes still again. Meanwhile, we are getting closer and closer to the Song Medical buildings. Their number and sizes are insane, but I guess they have to be to accommodate 25 million people working. Finally, Maja comes back to me. “I don’t have anything concrete in the data I downloaded, but if I have to guess, I’d say Magicon did most of their things off-planet.”
“That makes sense actually.” Miss Baker said wormhole rings are Magitech and they are very big. Magicon as the Magitech company sure produces these things as well and doing that in space is way easier. “Oh, and by the way, you always stop moving when you access the downloaded data. You should work on your multitasking abilities if you want to blend in when we’re back in civilization.” I wink at her, and she cringes. Finally, a point for me!
All that aside, we are about to land. Maja smoothly navigates the ship through the ruins till we arrive before the central skyscraper. There she sets the ship down. Maja as the stronger one insists on carrying the backpack, so I only pack my two weapons. Unfortunately, the spacewalker suit was completely destroyed by the robots back at the Magicon headquarters, so I have to make do with my shipsuit, which should be more than enough. It’s not that I’ve already been without any protection here on the planet.
We disembark and start walking around. It looks way worse down here than from the air. The warehouses or factory halls only have a few concrete and metal pillars still standing. Everything else lies in a big heap on the ground. The skyscraper before us too is completely ruined. This time we aren’t as lucky to find a clear entrance lobby. Pieces of metal are piled up on the ground floor and there is no way to get inside.
I glance at Maja. “Uh, I think this place is a bust… I’m not going to climb through all that stuff and search for something underground. It’s way too dangerous.”
“I’m inclined to agree, but let’s walk a bit around. Maybe I can find an active data signal.”
I shrug, we’ve got the time. It’s only a bit past noon. “Sure, let’s give it a few hours.” With that, we continue walking across the company’s grounds. I notice a few buildings that are not that destroyed, but when we check them out everything inside is either dust or degraded beyond recognition.
Well, we can’t always be in luck… It still would have been cool to learn about the biggest pharmaceutical company of that time. Oh, and I guess still one of the greatest now.
“I’ve got something, I think!” Maja’s shout has me focusing my gaze on her. She hurries into the direction of a warehouse to our right and after a short delay, I start following her. She vanishes behind a pile of concrete blocks and when I come closer, I can hear her cursing. “Fucking shit, that’s useless. Damn…”
I round the concrete blocks with a frown. She’s worse than Shay sometimes. Why do they all have to curse? Okay, I did curse a lot too in the past months, but that was justified! I mean pirates are the worst and deserve nothing less.
“What is it? You said you had something.”
She does sound annoyed. “Yeah, I thought so, but look at this.” She points at a solar panel connected to a concrete block. It must have been part of the roof once. A miracle that it’s still intact… But why is she so annoyed?
“Isn’t that good? An intact panel means there is power. So we might have recordings of what happened, right?” Her expression morphs into a mix of happiness and annoyance. It looks quite creepy.
“I like the way you think…” That’s the happiness part. “But that’s not it! The damn signal is from the freakin’ solar panel. All that shitty thing does is tell me that it generates power. Completely useless!” Oh, that’s the annoyed part. She kicks the panel, and it moves a bit to the side including the connected concrete block.
“Well, we can’t be lucky all the time. Let’s head back and leave. We can check out Song Medical once we reach The Empire.”
Maja sighs. “Yeah, you’re right let's go. The trip here was completely useless.” She kicks the solar panel again for good measure and we turn around to walk back to the ship. “So where do you want to go next?”
I shrug. “Let’s just fly to the next one. Should be the weapons guys, right?” Maja confirms and we continue walking. When we finally arrive back at the ship, it’s starting to get dark and very cloudy.
With annoyed expressions, we both board the ship and Maja instantly powers it up, and off we go. Of course, that is when the weather decides to go bad. Just my luck! Within minutes, the clouds thicken up and get darker and darker. Giant lightning bolts cross the sky, and some get dangerously close. That doesn’t look normal. Something is still wrong with the planet. Looks like the climate is thoroughly messed up.
The lightning bolts look ginormous, almost the width of my torso. “Maja, get us out of here!” I shout while sitting down in the Captain’s grav chair.
“I’m doing my best here. We’re about to go straight up, so buckle up.” She sits down too and fastens her seatbelt. I quickly secure myself as well.
“You want to fly straight through those clouds?” I ask in mild panic. This is when the rain hits. All the floodgates open up and hit the yacht straight on the front-facing window. It’s so loud, I can’t hear a thing. Why is the weather so extreme? And holy smokes does it change fast. We were just walking with a few clouds and now this!
Maja moves her mouth, but I can't understand her. “What?!” I shout and she frowns. A second later her eyes light up and I hear a crackling in my ear.
“There we go. Quite handy my old AI chip.” She chuckles. “What I was saying is yes, we have to go through the clouds. While it’s a bit more dangerous flying up there, it’s only for a very short time. Meanwhile, if we stayed down here, the chances of getting hit by the lightning would be way higher. And I really don’t want to get hit by too many bolts. This ship was built for space and good weather landings, not for an electrical storm. I fear that our electric circuits might short out, so we’re taking the fastest way outta here.”
I shiver and give Maja a thumbs-up. Shorting the circuits does indeed sound bad. We can’t lose this ship, or we are dead! A bolt comes dangerously close, and I jump in my seat. Maja grimaces and steers the yacht straight up. Luckily, we don’t have to take care of the buildings on the ground. Maja ignites the main drive with a full burn and we shoot upwards. The Song Medical buildings receive our exhaust burn and crumble even more,
I get pressed into my seat, the gravity generators too weak to keep up with our acceleration and the gravity of the planet. Seconds later, we reach the cloud layer. That’s when the lightning bolt strikes. 30 centimeters in diameter, it hits us head-on. The lights flicker and I grit my teeth. Please don’t short out! Everything stabilizes again and we’re through. The black clouds are below us and we are greeted by the setting sun. I can’t help myself and start laughing. Soon after Maja joins in.
“That was close!” She shouts and I nod in agreement.
“Oh yes, it was. Now let's visit the next place and hope for better weather.”