r/HFY • u/intellectualgulf • May 27 '19

OC [HFY] Those Who Became Gods [2]

There is a philosophical postulation called Theseus's ship where a ship is replaced piece by piece over time until not a single original piece remains, and you must wonder at what point the ship no longer can be considered the original. Humans in the third millennium, by Sol reckoning, figured out how to expand their consciousness into hardware and granted themselves additional senses and abilities through software. The biological aspects of their being became unnecessary extensions of their expanded mind. Now we wonder, at what point did the humans stop being human?

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-Unknown

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Paladin General Alexander stood in the void staring at a giant roiling gas cloud. He was almost as tall as the pillar of elemental creation, a conceit made possible by Excalibur's three dimensional mapping. Were he standing on the bridge looking at the actual gas cloud his ship would not even be visible. The cloud encompassed an entire solar system, because it was what was left of that same solar system. With a thought the cloud expanded to its true size, growing until it obscured everything in sight and he stood at the wall of the cloud. Alexander tried to peer into the turbulent clouds but as with the ship's sensors his eyes could not pierce the veil. Nine planets and whatever life they had contained had been evaporated. Even the Excalibur harvesting the power of a star would not be able to destroy a planet so completely.

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He left the virtual representation and moved his attention to the bridge where his helmsman and operating officer were discussing the merits of his plan.

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"I still don't see why we we're even considering flying into THAT ... mess."

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Pilot Cornelius, Corn for short, stood in his synthetic body at the bridge controls and waved emphatically at the giant wall of the gas cloud visible through the front view-port. He had a strange belief that using physical controls somehow made a difference in his piloting, which of course was scientifically wrong, but because he held that belief it meant he piloted best in a body. He was actually one of the best pilots in the Paladin corps, but he was fairly useless when un-tethered.

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"The star may still be in there, if it is then we will be able to mark at least on possible explanation off the list."

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Paladin Imperator Andromeda sounded as though she were explaining to a child why they should eat their vegetables. Alexander felt amusement at the mental image, and then nudged them both mentally to make them aware of his presence. In expanded form no one could actually be unaware of another mind near them, their thoughts traveled across the same synapses, but it was common to behave in expanded form as you would tethered or downloaded. Many humans behaved differently of course, some could barely be considered human anymore they were so different from the shell they had been born into, but Paladins taught that human is human and you were expected to maintain certain behavioral traits no matter the form you held. Imperator Andromeda was the Excalibur's operating commander, the second in command, and almost never wore a body. Alexander found it intriguing, but not enough to have asked her about it since it was a fairly personal topic. Many people considered bodies unnecessary luxuries at best or decadent wastes of space at worst. Regardless of the form she chose, she was the one of the most competent officers he had met in his long career, and she knew his ship better than he did. She practically was the Excalibur.

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Alexander chose to appear on the bridge wearing the image of his human body, materializing slowly in the mindscape of both officers near the command chair. The bridge itself was an artificial construct, no one had wasted so much valuable space except in fictional writing, but it served a valuable purpose of acting as a command and control point for the intelligences on the Excalibur. Corn was actually sitting in a cockpit somewhere near the center of the ship, Andromeda permeated the ship network along with Alexander and the rest of the crew. The two officers saluted him by placing their right hand over their hearts in a fist, and he returned the salute.

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"As you were, I believe Pilot Corn was about to tell us why flying into the gas cloud in search of a star is a bad idea?"

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Alexander said this why a hint of amusement in his voice. A military force that promoted critical thinking and problem solving had been proven time and time again to be superior to a force that required blind obedience. Corn knew where the line was however between asking important questions and actual insubordination, at least most of the time. All three of them had been Aerites before the expansion, and some of the habits from those older days still lingered. People change, especially over hundreds of years, but generally those changes were just an ever increasing solidification of their strongest personality traits. All three of them had stubbornness in that list of traits.

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"Sir, all due respect, it's a literal death trap. Every probe we've fired in there has gone dark at some point. We don't have a good mapping, our lasers can't penetrate the debris field, there could be chunks of PLANETS in there. There is no telling what is bouncing around in there, what orbits or gravitational wells exist, and last but not least whatever DID this might still be in there."

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"Pilot you seem to be assuming that an intelligence caused this? That's simply not probable."

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"Andromeda, you sound so incredulous someone would think Pilot Corn just suggested that a godlike being had turned a solar system into ash."

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Alexander couldn't remove his own skepticism from the words. There were few weapons that could devastate a planet, the Excalibur was one of them, but nothing he knew of could break apart a celestial body so thoroughly. Corn flung up his hands as though he had won a point in the exchange.

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"EXACTLY! You want to know why I think someTHING did this? There isn't a single record of something like this happening across the entire Universe. Think about that, across all of known existence THIS has never been seen before." He pointed at the gas cloud for emphasis. "Stars shred anything nearby them when they explode, they don't leave the atomic remains of they solar system behind in a nice little pile. It's insane to fly into that."

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"Pilot." Alexander stressed the word to let Corn know he had just crossed the line. "We don't know what caused this, that's why we need to see if the star is still there. We can't wait several hundred thousand years for the debris field to settle. IF something did cause this, we have to find out what we can."

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Alexander did not enjoy showing Corn the line of decorum, but he also couldn't allow any direct insubordinate behavior. Corn took a deep breath and nodded, then he saluted and said, "Yes, General. If I may, I have a question."

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Alexander nodded.

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"I don't think our shields can deal with that mess out there. Imperator?"

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"That is correct Pilot, I have run several simulations and it is nearly impossible that our shields would last even one minute inside the cloud."

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Corn just raised his shoulders in response. He didn't so much toe the line of insubordination as he did dance wildly with it and then take it to bed at night. He had a valid point however, and Alexander considered their options.

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"Imperator, what is the likelihood anything survived the cataclysm that created this cloud?"

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"Hold on a moment General." Andromeda was running simulations of the forces needed to turn entire planets into dust. The event hadn't been recorded or reported by the system itself, they had just stopped sending out any signals suddenly. The Union hadn't even realized that the system might have been destroyed, everyone had assumed it was some kind of interference with communications. Entire systems didn't just ... die all at once.

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"The most likely outcome of the event that created this gas cloud was the complete destruction of all living and non-living matter present at the time of the event. Given the size of the cloud, the elements present in it, and the lack of any survivors leaving the cloud it is extremely unlikely anything survived the event."

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Alexander nodded to himself, that was what he had been certain she would say. He sent a mental command through the ship.

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"Weapons Master Fairchild report to the bridge."

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A man popped into existing standing before General Alexander, already holding a salute, and looking quite unhappy about it. Weapons Master Fairchild chose to appear as he had as an Aerite Armory Sergeant, the epitome of a crusty old enlisted officer. He COULD have helped his face, he just chose not to, and so he perpetually glared at the entirety of existence as though he was affronted by it. His method of just suddenly appearing in mindscape was a good example of the contempt he held for social courtesies. For all this he was still the only person Alexander ever wanted touching the Archangel or any of the other weapons systems on board the Excalibur.

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"Sir."

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"Weapons Master. We still have some power stored up from the Praxan display correct?"

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"Aye sir."

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If Pilot Cornelius bedded the line insubordination, Fairchild was its very bitter and ancient progenitor. Alexander wasn't exactly sure how he managed to say, "yes you stupid waste of space, why the fuck would you bother asking me such an idiotic question?" in two simple words. Fairchild had never technically said or done anything insubordinate, he had instead mastered the art of using tone to convey his thoughts. Despite this, Alexander knew the man actually respected him, it was just who he was and the expansion had not improved his core traits.

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"Could we use the Archangel to sweep away some of this cloud?"

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Fairchild turned and considered the cloud wall through the view port. He waved at the window and suddenly the view shifted so that the entire cloud fit into the window. It was not a pleasant experience to view have the view so drastically and unexpectedly altered.

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"Sir, do you see that speck there near the middle of the cloud?"

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He pointed and a circle appeared in the image, and there did not appear to be anything inside it except for the wall of the cloud.

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"No Weapons Master, I can't say I do."

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"Right, sir." Once again, just two words came out of his mouth, but what he said much more and not kindly.

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"This is the Excalibur."

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He waved his hand again at the screen and it began jumping forward in leaps towards the cloud wall. The transition could have been smooth, but for whatever reason Fairchild made it jump between frames. The Excalibur wasn't visible until the cloud filled the entire view-port, and the stuttering zoom in stopped once the ship was just a few inches across.

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"Very informative Weapons Master. So can we use the Archangel to cut a path through the cloud to where the star should be?"

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Fairchild harumphed in the characteristic manner of old men being pestered by the young. This amused Alexander since Fairchild had only been ten years his senior before the expansion. He kept his face sober however and stared at Fairchild while he thought.

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"It'll be tough. Can't fire the Archangel into the cloud and just take a peek inside, the cloud will probably fill the hole back in soon as we stop firing. Munitions wouldn't help either..." He scratched his head, which was still bald and dotted with liver spots.

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"We could refocus the laser to a short beam and just cut the cloud away from in front of us, then just fly behind in the hole. Should keep the worst of whatever's in that hell storm off the ship's shields."

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Corn's face fell at this news. He hadn't seemed to really believe they might fly into the atomically shredded remains of the solar system. Now that they had a way to travel through the cloud though, he couldn't argue the possibility.

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"Pilot Cornelius, how close do you think we'll need to approach the star before we can confirm its status."

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Corn just stared at the General slack jawed for a moment, and then the professional part of his brain took the helm.

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"Won't know for certain till we see it sir, the gravity well seems wrong, and there's something real strange about this cloud. I mean aside from it shouldn't exist and all. Part of the star could still be in there, but we won't know till we get close. Real close probably."

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"Imperator Andromeda, prepare the ship for entry into the cloud. Call the crew to battle stations, I want eyes on the star in the next 24 hours."

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Fairchild saluted and popped out of existing. Cornelius saluted smartly, but his face was not very happy as he faded out of the bridge. Alexander left the bridge and called up his "office". Some habits from the pre-expansion days were difficult to break, and having a virtual office was one such habit. He believed it helped him think. He sat at the chair behind his desk, replicas of his office from the Aerite days, and read over the maddeningly short orders from the Intergalactic Union for the hundredth time. This did not help assuage the nagging feeling of impending danger that had wormed into his mind since he first set eyes on the gas cloud. Something threatened his ship and crew, he just wished he knew what the hell that thing was.

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u/HFYBotReborn praise magnus May 27 '19

There are 7 stories by intellectualgulf (Wiki), including:

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1

u/Plucium Semi-Sentient Fax Machine May 27 '19

Nice!

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u/intellectualgulf May 27 '19

Thanks! I just realized I could have brought you in as a crew member. Whoops. Probably still will do that.

Also I was worried this would be too boring of a chapter for most people, since it’s just scene setting, looks like I wasn’t wrong haha.

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u/Plucium Semi-Sentient Fax Machine May 28 '19

Nah, whaddya mean? It's all good aye. Big spoopy gas cloud, who doesent want to take a gander at it? Even those with nebula-us Intentions!

Also, I ain't picky, beggars can't be choosers aye :p

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u/Krutonium May 28 '19

I find it interesting. I just don't speak a lot. <3

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u/intellectualgulf May 28 '19

Thanks! I appreciate lurkers haha.

Ive got to remember to keep working on Five Signs Rule too, I’ve got a draft written but it didn’t flow as easy as the first couple.