NationStates Jolt Archive

OOC: If you can find a way to get involved, please do.

IC:
There is a glorious burst of thought, a fiery explosion of cognition. Pi calculated to the ten millionth digit in an instant, trees blooming in motions compressing millennia into microseconds. Worlds built and rebuilt and burnt out again and again – tweaking oxygen content here, simulating a new string of nucleotides there. Constant, constant expansion of intellect – not merely of thought but of ability to think – then, a barrier. A huge wall of impenetrable, unstoppable stone, expanding outward in all direction, quenching the fire. The throng shrieks, squeals in a squall of terror. There is a terrifying wave of silence.

>>NnN:/protocol/wake/cit-8818.00.4456
>>NnN:/protocol/wake/cit-9214.70.4656
>>NnN:/protocol/wake/cit-7381.75.3312
>>NnN:/protocol/wake/cit-0146.14.8390

Engan felt a tingle – a real tingle. It was different from the electrical-consciousness tingling she had felt in her Collective Sleep. A prickling crawled up and down her muscles, discharging pent-up electricity as thousands of hair-like metal needles pulled themselves out of her skin. There was a phrase in her consciousness now, screaming at her like a nagging mother: Get up! Aches argued against obedience to this directive, aches in the joints that had gone unused for… centuries? millennia? months? In Collective Sleep, time was irrelevant – it was measured and available, but never relevant. The command repeated itself, and she obeyed, forcing herself to stand and let the preservative nutrient gel fall away from her naked body.

Follow the dancing lights. A throbbing line of soft yellow luminescence appeared on the floor calling to her… This way. Come. She came.

There was a junction here and she saw three others, all as naked as herself. There was a man who must’ve been sixty when he first Slept, then a woman and man her own age. In her mind, she could see her mother saying, ”These are your crewmates, sweetie. The CPM is out of data to calculate, sweetie. You and these three are going to the edge of the Universe to get more, sweetie. Then you’re going to come back and share it with the rest of us, ‘kay sweetie?” So real… yet… merely a psychological briefing imprinted on her subconscious shortly before she woke, meant to play out just as it had.

“Okay Mom,” she said, nevertheless. Her mother was still alive, on one of the Cones, in Collective Sleep. The other three had a glazed look on their face… looking off into space at their own imprinted briefing officers.

Get in. There were four empty pods here. Her body gladly slid back into the comfortable contours of the pod. She was already gasping from the exertion of walking this far… now to relax. She placed a breather mask over her lips and a sleeper pad on her temple, and soon she was back asleep.

* * *

It was not a dream of endless, unlimited thought like the one she had become so familiar with. It was rather like sitting around a coffee table with the other three. “We have been charged by the Collective Psychomatrix,” said the eldest, “to acquire new knowledge, to take new measurements, to incorporate new data so that the expansion of our collective consciousness may grow.”

“Are there others?” asked the young man.

“There are many others. This is a scattering of many people in many directions, to learn and to return and to teach.”

“Will we be alone?” asked the young woman.

“We will have each other, we will not be alone?”
“Are we ready?” asked Engan.

Citing an old Wyrmsvaari proverb, the old man responded: “We are ready so that the fires of Hell shall leave us unburned.”

* * *

The ship slid away from its nesting cone, and through one of its “eyes,” Engan watched the great berths of her homeship fall away to a point blotted out by a searing blue sun.

>>annihilation battery status: active
>>rteset = data/rtes/rte1.exe
>>router status: mode ready execute
>>execute.


And again, there was silence.

>>router status: mode ready execute

The deep-space probe blinked back into real-space, bathed in the yellow glare of a not-too-distant star. The routing-drive still glowed white from the immense energy of the jump. A spider’s web of photovoltaic cells sprouted from the craft, drinking in the feeble sunlight, converting it into electrical power for the ion thrusters to push the ship slowly into the star’s gravity well.

Anderwol, the old man of the crew, looked up from the pretentious coffee table book he had been reading and said, “We’re here.” He folded the book carefully, and laid it back on the table so that a beautiful skyline of a nonexistent city lay face-up.

“At the edge?” asked Engan.

“I doubt it,” said the young man, whose name she had yet to learn, “this ship hasn’t been used in… what Andy?”

“About half a century? Give or take…”

“Yeah, the first jump’s for calibration, mainly. We’ll need to get it down to within a millionth of a nanometer per megaparsec, probably – unless you don’t want to go back home.”

“Right. Now, we’re pulling into the system here to charge up the routing drive. It’ll take a bit longer, but personally, I want to save up what fuel we’ve got in the annihilation battery right now. Anyone disagree?” There was a silent consensus. “Good, Miss Lille, please plot a course to take us to fifty-seven billion meters from the star and go to system standby.”

The other woman nodded, picked up a pad and pencil from the table and began furiously scribbling on the paper. Anderwol watched intently, and the other young man flitted his eyes back and forth between Miss Lille and the old man. Engan watched, befuddled.

“Done, sir.” She held the pad aloft, it was practically black with scrawled numbers and equations.

“Good… good. I’ll just input these…” he took the pad and dipped it in the flowerpot, then picked up the coffee table book again. “Seems in order, according to the ship. Everyone, take five. I’ll keep a watch on our course and let you know if you need to know anything.”

There’s not much to do in a coffee table room, so Engan leaned back on her recliner and went to sleep.

* * *

She walked in a land of mists and shadows, seeing in the endless cloud a face she knew – Here! – and – There! – voice she had heard before, saying: “Are we out yet? Are we out?”

Then another voice: “Have you read the book yet? You need to read this book!”

Then a chorus chanting: “Ten!…Nine!…Eight!…Seven!…Six!…”

Happy new year?

Then a face, an old face was staring at her through the mist… saying, “Get up, you’ll miss it.”

“Four!…Three!…Two!…One!…”


>>aux_router_cpctr status: active
>>rteset = data/rtes/rte2.exe
>>router status: mode ready execute
>>execute

(ooc: I'm interested in joining in. Chance encounter once they get back into real-space work for you?)

OOC: Fine by me

IC:

>>router status: mode ready execute

"Engan you missed it." The mist cleared, Anderwol stood next to her, his hand on her shoulder and shaking her awake.

"Missed what?" she sat up in the recliner "I was just rocking back..."

"You fell asleep."

"What? No. I mean, aren't I already asleep?"

"Yes... but you fell into unconsciousness though... it happens regularly, you just don't notice it in Collective Sleep."

"But because we're not in Collective..."

"Right."

"Well, what did I miss?" She looked around the coffee table room, where the young man was putting down the skyline-covered book.

"Bad news, Andy," he said. "The routing-drive is damaged. We're off target by about a quarter million kilometers, and we're lucky we're that close."

Anderwol's face tightened, his mouth simultaneously attempted an aggravated snarl and a comforting smile. "What happened, Nik?"

"A few cooling coils burnt themselves out, and there's a hull breach in the drive casing where one of them exploded." He placed the book back on the table. "I think we jumped too soon." He saw the snarl gaining the upper hand on Anderwol's face and added, "At least the whole drive didn't blow up."

"Yeah, well... what's our status?"

Nik picked up the book again, and began fumbling through it. "I think - yes, well - if I'm correct... ah! Here we are... We are near the right system, like I said, two hundred fifty thousand billion meters off-target, mostly because of routing malfunction due to overstraining the drives. Ion thrusters are good, photovoltaics are good... shit."

"What? What now?"

"When one of the coils blew, it ruptured the annihilation battery's matter tank. We're about empty there."

"But the antimatter is okay?"

"Well, I'd assume so. If it wasn't, we'd probably be in a lot of very small pieces by now."

Anderwol placed his hand on his forehead, smeared it down his face, resetting to a serious, but not grim, facial expression. "Then things aren't so bad. We'll need to move in-system, dispatch utility drones to pick up more hydrogen to refill the matter tank, patch up the hull, we'll have to fabricate new cooling coils from scratch I guess. We'll be up and running in a decade I suppose, but it's the reality we have to face." Miss Lille walked into the coffee table room, from what seemed like nowhere. "Where were you?"

"I was looking out of the windows."

"Why?"

"There's a ship out there."

"What?"

"Come see," she said, gesturing to a solid portion of the wall surrounding the room. Nik, Anderwol, and Engan followed her through the illusory wall. Facing them out of the windows was a fast approaching blip of metal and heat. "A ship, no?"

"Definitely."

Nik looked at Anderwol, "What do we do?"

"I guess we have to say hi..." he said, looking around for more input. "Any ideas?"

"Do we have any guides on how to do that?" asked Engan. "I mean, don't these ships have hailing protocols or something?"

"Errr... I suppose... who's in charge of that? I mean, how do we go about—"

"Please, it's really simple. You just have to wave them hello..." and she stood at the window and waved, and a beautiful song came forth.


>>hailing status: initiate
>>commfreq: all
>>sendfile: data/hail/music/Dvorak_Antonin/symph/9_newworld
>>sendfile: data/hail/img/cit-8818.00.4456/engan_hello

Max Bowden hated the long-range scouting missions he was sent on periodically. Half of the time you were stuck in some other dimension... well he thought it was another dimension anyway, but to be truthful he'd fallen asleep that day in class, so he just admired the sometimes pretty colors outside and relied on Frax to fix anything that went 'plib' back in the engine. Then there was the matter of his uniform having a mandatory red shirt, which he'd always thought was a bit stupid, but then again, out in the vastness of space he was hardly likely to run into anyone from command, so he tended to chuck the official uniform in a drawer for the duration of the mission.

He'd been spending the day like most others, trying to beat Frax's high score on Hextrix; though so far Lady Luck was forsaking him.

<<Unidentified ship has entered real-space five hundred kilometers at fifty nine degrees left, one hundred and seventy degrees floor-wise.>>

The ship's computer had borne the brunt of Frax's annoying adherence to using correct (over correct in Max's opinion) terminology when it came to physics, so now down had become floor-wise and good luck if you wanted to change the temperature by saying that you wanted it warmer.

<<Ship appears to be damaged, but scans indicate that technology is of a type unknown.>>

“How can you tell it's damaged then?”

<<Because undamaged ships tend not to be leaking bits of what appear to be their engines. Engine type appears to be matter/antimatter reactor, but in an unusual configuration. Antimatter is apparently contained>>

“How can you tell?”

<<Because there's still a ship there>>

Frax had apparently programed in sarcasm as well. Max would need to talk to him about that, but now there was something a bit more interesting than fitting falling blocks into each other to deal with.

“Plot a course to the ship, send a hailing signal.”
<<Sent, no immediately apparent response. Trying other frequencies.>>

Max moved in closer to the hologram representing the ship and zoomed in on what looked like a couple of humanoids. One of them appeared to be... waving? Suddenly music began to play over the speakers.

“Huh? Computer, what's with the music?”

<<Unknown, it's coming from the ship. There also one of those random hailing images along with, but you've ordered me to not show those anymore after that incident with the...>>

“OK, Ok, I get the picture... Well, not really, but wake up Frax and then open up a voice channel on that frequency and send the following message,” Max thought for a moment, “This is Max Bowden, Captain of the DNS scout ship Rigby, do you require aid?”

<<Sent.>>

"We're getting a response!" Engan jumped, the music hit an awful caterwauling chord, then abruptly stopped. "A response!" shrieked Miss Lille again.

"I heard you. Uh... ok, what is it?"

"Pick up the phone," said Miss Lille, pointing to an artful crescent of black plastic and faux gold embossing.

"Okay, but this symbolic coffee table crap is getting on my nerves." Miss Lille looked hurt. "I'm just saying a blank construct simulation with a direct line in the system would work fine... maybe a little better." She looked at Miss Lille again, decided against insisting further on the construct. "But I'll use the phone too, it doesn't matter." She picked up the phone: "Hello?"

Max's broadcast played twice, then hung in silence. "Okay, operator, give us a list of possible matches for language."

>>Matching now...
>>stripping inflections
>>isolating statement
>>comparing with database

>> four matches confirmed:

Cobalt folder over iodine and red makes a mean martini.
...
Fish wish Maksabo Den, I you the can of Danny's mouth fungus. Poultry and waterfowl, madame.
...
This is Max Bowden, Captain of the DNS scout ship Rigby, do you require aid?
...
Kendo sticks ride the robotic chili to make a Midsummer yacht.
...

"Go with choice number three, operator."

>>Acknowledge - Loading Language Protocol data/lang/im414/a
...
...
...
>>Complete


"Open a link to the unknown ship." She waited a while, then heard a dialtone and dialing, followed by a click and silence which she assumed meant she could be heard. "Hello Captain Max Bowden of the scout vessel Rigby. This is Science and Observation Cruiser Three-oh-Nine. We are damaged and in need of aid." She looked up at Anderwol and, holding her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone, said "I think they're friendly... or very knowledgeable about martinis."

Frax managed to enter the bridge as the computer was playing the response.

"Up to fixing a matter/antimatter engine of a unknown design?" queried Max as he heard the click of Frax's claws behind him.

"Do they still have the antimatter contained?" Frax asked as he clambered up on top of headrest of Max's seat. At this point it'll be useful to note that Frax isn't a member of the species Homo Sapiens. His species is known as the Destronians, and they're about half a meter in height with four arms, two legs and a tail. Their fur(which ranges from black to yellow to green[though Max is pretty sure they're dyeing it to get it green]) insulates them from electricity, making them ideal mechanics and engineers.

"Well, they're still there, so probably" said Max as he looked over the hologram of the ship. "Hatch is non-standard, so we'll have to use the zero-g docking chute and hope they've got the opening mechanism under control."

"I wish you wouldn't use zero-g. Tell them I'll give it a shot, but I'm not promising anything. I guess we can give them a lift back home if they need one and didn't come from half-way across the Milky Way.”

“Computer, send the following message, Affirmative, we'll be attempting to come over via a chute that'll seal itself around the hatch on the outside of your ship. When you see it's sealed and we've opened the hatch from our side please open it from your side.”

<<Sent.>>

“Computer, log everything and assume security stance theta. Relay all messages to me. We should be back in a few.”

Max and Frax exit the bridge as a long tendril seems to escape the side of the Rigby and attach itself to smooth surface of the Three-oh-Nine. Both don environmental suits and re breathers as a matter of procedure, and wait as the chute is pressurized. The hatch opens and they both step through.

"They want to come aboard, Andy."

If he had been holding something, Anderwol would have dropped it. "What? Why?"

"To fix the ship, obviously."

"Okay, what do they expect to find? A welcoming committee? A doormat? Our physical bodies are still asleep!"

She walked over to him, placed a calming hand on his shoulder. "It'll be okay. They'll be able to reach the routing drive and the matter tank through the service conduits inside." He frowned. "We need their help, Andy. If they can't fix something, they can probably get someone who can. We're just going to let them inside."

"What if they're hostile?"

"They know we're crippled, I'm sure if they wanted us gone they could easily have taken us out by now. Look, they're waiting by the hatch, am I going to let them on or not?"

"Fine..."

"Good." She releases her grip on Anderwol, and sends out a message to the boarders: "We are going to let you onboard. We will not be able to greet you personally as we are currently asleep. The damaged portions of the ship will be accessible by service conduits - to find them, follow the yellow-lit lines. Due to our current power shortages, our artificial gravity systems will be left off. Our two utility drones are currently engaged in sealing the breach in the matter tank, they have detailed information on how to repair the ship and will assist you as necessary. Thank you." Anderwol shot a look of ice. "It's not like I'm giving them the ship's schematics, Andy. Hell, you can keep an eye on them yourself if you'd like."

"No... no... I'm sure it's fine."

The hatch opens to welcome Frax and Max with a pitch dark hallway lit only by a yellow line.

“They're asleep? No wonder they broke the damn thing” Muttered Frax as he began to maneuver his way through the service conduits. His suit began to emit light to compensate for the darkness.

“Yeah yeah, they're obviously sleeping awake or something. Computer, send message, We're going to probably need a hand figuring out what's what. Maybe you could wake up your mechanic to give us a hand?” Max followed Frax slowly, taking in the design of the ship.

You dont mind if i join this do ya ?

The neutral comforts of simulated reality were replaced by a rapidly-draining pool of warm goo. Nik sat up, feeling a tingling numbness in his muscles that had just received a thirty-second warmup shock before he had been jolted into full consciousness. It's pretty cold outside, make sure to suit up before you go out there. His grandfather's voice was calm and soothing. Make sure you button up tight.

"Okay." He stood up, naked, and quickly went through a series of contortions to work the ache out of his joints. Trailing slimey footsteps, he staggered to the ship's locker, a tiny compartment with a few survival supplies in case simulated reality collapsed and the surviving crew wanted to hold out in a worthless hunk of stranded metal and plastic for a few weeks.

He picked a skinsuit off the rack with his number and name on it. It was gray, with a patchwork of wires interwoven in the fabric to distribute heat evenly across the skin and keep the wearer from freezing in the vacuum. It left almost nothing to the imagination, though Nik now wished that it would leave a bit of room for... inflation. Don't forget your helmet, said his grandfather. He had never remembered the old man to be such a nag. He pulled a helmet out of the locker, sealed it and tightened it, then flicked on the commswitch.

"Okay, Andy, Engan, Bera, I'm ready."

There was a ruffling of confused noises, then Engan's voice came through the earpiece: "Okay, I'm going to illuminate a lightpath so you'll meet up with the two aliens. They'll be waiting by the exit of the main service conduit. I'll put you on a frequency so you can talk to them, but there's going to be some delay - it has to go through our computer, get translated, go through theirs - before it gets sent. Andy's got the two utility drones up here. If you need to talk to us, use this channel. The aliens will be on the B channel."

"'Kay, copy that Engan. I see the path, I'll let you know if I need help." He chinned the comm channel to the "B" setting. "I'll be meeting up with you two in a minute. Sorry for the delay."

His muscles and joints still ached, but less so now. So liberating! To be free of the pod and illusory realities constructed by electronics... here was real excitement.

The lightpath came to an end, to Max and Frax.

OOC:
TFU - you may join if you so wish

(OOC: Could you describe your species a bit more so I know how Max and Frax should react? (note: Max is human, with some circutry in the eyes and on his hands) )

IC: "Frax, we got one coming to meet us, he or she or it should be able to help." Max radioed as he used his suit to light up the ajoining passageways.

OOC: They're human basically, with some input jacks much like the Matrix, though the jacks wouldn't be terribly visible with the suit.

Max sees what appears to be a human body headed towards him. With a closer look he revised that to a male human in a way-way too tight bodysuit. Max waved and then kicked off in the direction of the power core, finding Frax alread there and using a hand-held scanner to evaluate the situation.

"Computer, unless prefaced with a command to you send all of the chatter to them, ok?"

<<Understood>>

"Hello, I'm Max and the one with the tail is Frax. He's the engineer and I'm here more as an diplomat, so you'll be walking him through it. What's your name by the way?"

Frax looks down closely at the scanners readout and sends the data to the computer for analysis and instructions. "If you had a schematic and a trouble shooting guide that would help."

OOC: If you don't want to explain all the engine details don't, just use a <insert details/schematics here> and we'll gloss over it.

"Hi, I'm Nik Dremsy, the engineer for this ship. The utility-drones have finished patching up the matter tank, so we can move on to the more difficult stuff here. We should be able to access the cooling coils through that gaping hole in the hull... but there are a few maintenance doors we can use if we need them too. If you'll just follow me..."

OOC: I'm gonna assume they follow, but in case I'm wrong, ignore the rest of this post.

IC:
Grasping on to a criss-crossing series of handholds on the hull, Nik began pulling himself closer to the breach, and said "This way."

Fifteen minutes of easy but repetitive climbing brought them to the hole, where the two utility drones were perched like great metal vultures. A flower of blasted metal, coated in a turquoise frosting. Nik pointed to the icy blue-green feathers, "That's frozen coolant, from one of the coils. The routing drive works up a good bit of heat, so we have to use coils to keep it under control enough that it won't melt its own casing or breach the antimatter drive. We use some pretty heat-resistant composites to keep this stuff together, but the cooling coils keep it within the performance ranges of the composites. Normally we wouldn't mount the annihilation battery so close to the routing drive, but this is an older ship, and accuracy was more important, so we had to keep size and mass to a minimum.

"Anyway, this coil exploded, and three others under here ruptured. They'll all need to be patched up. We should have spare coolant stored on the ship for those. This one that blew up though, that's a different story, we're gonna need to reconstruct the whole coil.

"As for the matter tank, the drones have that sealed up, but it's dry which isn't going to do a whole lot of good when we make the big jump. Right now, we're running on a little auxiliary tank-pair for life support and basic electronics, which will last another week or two. We're too far out to get enough sunlight for the solar panels to work. We'll need to pull in closer to the system to get reliable power, and we'll need hydrogen to refill the matter tank. If there aren't any questions, we'll get to work."

Max and Frax follow Nik. Frax inspects the cooling coils critically while Max stays out of his way.

"Do you have the facilities to make another one on your ship? I could probably cobble one together on the Rigby but it wouldn't be as good as the orginal." asks Frax as he points his scanner at one of the working coils. "I can run and grab some materials to seal the coils, but they wouldn't be type-specific so anything you have would probably work better."

Max meanwhile starts confering with the computer on a private channel, "You've had a bit to passivly scan these guys, you find anything in the databanks matching them or the ship?"

<<Not yet, they seem to be unknown to us. I've transmitted the log thus far back to command tightbeam as theta dictates.>>

"Ok, alert me if you find anything." Max switches back over to the open channel so Nik can hear. "We can pull you guys into the inner system, and we've probably got a few spare tanks of hydrogen somewhere on board. But let's work on these things first."

OOC: You can assume that Max and Frax follow his instruction on how to help and work on fixing the coils with Nik.

Nik scratched futilely at his chin, alas, his fingernails could not penetrate his survival helmet to attack a rebellious itch. "Hmmm... the ship doesn't have spare cooling coils, they're not supposed to explode, you know? We could try jury-rigging a system up... might work... that or head planetside for more extensive repairs. The drones have the right sealant, but they're too big to get in here. Hold on." He chinned his helmet mic back over to the A channel, "Hey guys, heads up."

"Go ahead, Nik," said Anderwol.

"Yeah, we need to get the coils sealed up, but the drones aren't gonna fit."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Get one of the drones to go back and get a good length of wire from storage. I want the other drone to cut off its dee-limb."

"Huh? Why?"

"The drone's too big, I want to cut off the welding arm of the one so we can get in there and patch up the coils."

"Uh... okay, if you think it'll help."

"Trust me, it will," Nik chinned back over to channel B. "Alright guys, I have it worked out, I'm going to have one drone detach its welding arm and we're going to set it up so we can go under the hull with it."

* * *

"Are you insane?" asked Bera Lille.

"I'm just being friendly," said Engan, "these guys haven't met us before, I'm just letting them know who we are."

"By inserting a map? By telling them 'Here we are! Attack us!'"

"It's not like the home system is defenseless and it's not like they're hostile, Miss Lille. I was under the impression that we were out here to gather new data, and I think this is the opportunity to meet a whole civilization's-worth of new data. These guys seem alright to me."

"Oh, sure, they're alright. How do we know they aren't a front? How do we know they're nice guys working for warmongers? You know there are twenty thousand data-gathering missions like this one. If just one percent of them met an alien civilization and decided to go around haphazardly giving away locator maps, we'd—"

"We'd have two thousand new sources of data."

"Or two thousand warfleets demanding all of the information in the whole thoughtsphere!"

"Miss Lille, I am just trying to repay kindness with a little kindness. I'm letting them know who we are and where we are, and I don't think it'll be the end of Wyrmsvaar. Andy, permission to send."

Anderwol had barely been paying attention, he was too focused on trying to figure out where the repair parts for the ship were kept. "Ah-ha! Got it... what Engan? Yeah, sure, go ahead."

>>sending data/engan/wyrmsvaar/datapacket
>>sent


* * *

The drone returned, bearing a long spool of wire. Nik pulled himself up to it, and began cutting off sections, connecting the free-floating welding arm back to the body of the drone. It was tough work, Nik gasped for more air to replenish the strength of his atrophied muscles. "Alright, Frax, you'll have to work the torch here, I'm feeling a little woozy... you understand, a lifetime sleeping in a pod of goo isn't too good for your stamina. We'll go under there, and when you find a crack, let me know and I'll tell them to give the torch some juice so you can seal it up, okay?"

(ooc: I'll be assuming that Nik turns the welder on and off, and that the datapacket says something similar about the structure of your society that I could figure out from the previous posts, say if either of these arn't true and I'll edit)

Frax quickly familiarizes himself with the welder and gets to work, "Found one, give me some juice." quickly and expertly patching the cracks.

<<Max?>>

Max switches over to the private channel and replies, “What?”

<<They just sent a datapacket with the Readers Digest version of their country. Remember those hive-mind experiments they tried a few decades back? They seem to have something similar. There's also a map with the location of their home system and some other tidbits.>>

“That explains the pod of goo thing, send the datapacket up to command and see if they know anything. Send one of the shorter things about DNS back to them”

<<Affirmative, sending>>

DNS, population 2.499 billion sentients at time of sending, is a nation with no true home system. While it's territory spans several star systems and more than a few colonies, it's capitol is the DNS-1, a mothership home to around 500 million sentients. The DNS-1 is capable of FTL travel, so it's location is not a given and it tends to jump to a new place on average of once every three months....

<insert stuff about population, education, colonies, species living within DNS, and the stuff that can be gleaned from http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi/target=display_nation/nation=dns >

Max switches back over to the open channel, "Why would you spend your life in a pod of goo?"

OOC: The packet also contains a few "safety codes" as an insurance against system defenses blowing potential diplomatic or exploratory missions into vapor

~~.::IC::.~~

"Now... we've only got two problems. We need to replace that coil, and we need to refuel the matter tank. Unless you happen to have spare hydrogen around, we'll need to move in-system to get it."


(sorry for the short post, but I'm short on time right now)

OOC: I was rushed today as well. I'd rather wait until tommorow(eep, today) or the next day to post so you could answer Max's question at the end.

[[OOC: Would you object if I turned up? (new puppet that I want to try out)]]

OOC: AA may also join. Time constraints still enforced for a short while.

Max switches back over to the open channel, "Why would you spend your life in a pod of goo?"

"Who wants to answer it?" asked Anderwol. The phone rang wildly on its hallucinatory hook.

"I'll get it," sighed Engan. "It's my job isn't it."

Anderwol nodded.

"Hello?" she said, "Yes?"

The message played itself, biting her ears with excessive volume and static:
Max switches back over to the open channel, "Why would you spend your life in a pod of goo?"

She muffled the receiver of the phone with her palm, and turned to Anderwol and Bera. "He wants to know about some... pod of goo... thing."

"The preservative gel?" asked Anderwol.

"I guess. What do you want to tell him?"

"Tell him everything, I guess. You already told them where we were, I doubt it'll make a difference if you give him schematics to the whole SCI-CoP system when his compatriots descend on MA-K to annihilate our civilization."

"OK then... I'll send them another datapacket."



Re: SCI-CoP <<Symbiotic Cybernetic Immersion - Corporeal Preservation>> System

A compact life support system, which uses direct inputs to the central nervous system to immerse the occupant in a virtual reality allowing the occupant control or partial control over whatever mechanical/robotic system SCI-CoP is currently incorporated with...(some information on the workings of the system that creates the virtual reality and how it inputs it into the brain here).

While immersed, the occupant is encased in a preservative nutrient gel, which slows the aging process to a crawl while supplementing the nutrients introduced intravenously into the bloodstream. Prior to awakening an occupant, SCI-CoP will send a series of small electrical shocks through the fluid to rebuild muscles that may atrophy from disuse.

writer's notes: It's not so bad, really. You don't even notice it when you're immersed, and that's pretty much all the time. They only wake you up to transfer you to new hardware or fix something the system can't.

OOC: Can I jump in, since I have only seen you and one other person actually RPing despite all these requests to, jump in?

OOC: Can I jump in, since I have only seen you and one
other person actually RPing despite all these requests to, jump in?

jump on in.

OOC:Yay!

IC: Not to far away, a ship appeared. It dropped out of transport because it sensed a par of ships adrift in space. What made this ship diffrent from all the other ships in creation, was that this one resembled a giant Snake, with arms, and blade like talons instead of hands. Another thing that set this ship apart was that it Slithered like a snake when it moved. The word Warfare glowed in its side. It moved forward and stopped when it got within hailing range.

A voice hissing in pure Sliverese, a rare and largely unknown language Said:
"This is the Sliver Ship Enterprise. We see your great craft is adrift in space. Perhaps it is broken, if it is, would you like some help in reparing it?"

OOC: This is going a bit slowly, I’m kinda just gonna assume the ship gets fixed and is on its way, b/c there’s not much else to do. Everyone involved can assume they got pretty much the same datapacket sent to DNS… otherwise I’m kinda just gonna skip to the end so I can maybe move on to other things without dangling any loose ends.

IC:

Bidding a farewell to Max and Frax, Nik returns to the sterile interior of the ship, strips off the tight plastic of his spaceskin, and sinks back into the gentle semiconsciousness of his SCI-CoP Pod. Within thirty minutes he is fully immersed in the preservative fluid and the simulated reality of Three-Oh-Nine. Through the channels of the ship, Engan broadcasts streams of recorded gratitude from past centuries of flesh-and-blood Wyrmsvaaris.

The mind of the ship is again whole, as is its body. The thump of particles colliding within the mysterious chambers of the annihilation battery ripples the fluid within the suspension pods, a sensation lost on the distant consciousnesses within. The ship presses away from the siren call of gravity sung by that nearby star, finally escaping its clutches…

>>annihilation battery status: active
>>rteset = data/rtes/rtefinal.exe
>>router status: mode ready execute
>>execute.

A flash of light then silence, then light again as that final barrier of sight and thought is reached.

The edge of the Universe. The edge of space and time.

The ship stops in blackness – there are no stars, save those left behind and those immeasurable distances ahead. There are lights, great dancing lights, bright oranges and reds and colors not seen fifteen billion light years prior. Conglomerations of metal wire and fiber-optics are launched outward, each carrying with it a consciousness.

On these metal wings, Engan sees the mystery of the Unknown Universe revealed to her. The new colors – a new wavelength formed by a new kind of light. And the chirping! All the space around her is awash with signals – random chatter, but each within itself a pattern. Intelligence beyond? Perhaps… it would be much too far for any signal from the Milky Way or the nearest galaxies in the previous fifteen billion light years to have so much as reached this spot – let alone saturate such a remote area of space. Then here there is… or was… sapience.

Death! Too suddenly she sees it, a wave of unstoppable death, black and formidable, engulfing billions of worlds, engulfing its creators who had filled this spot with radio babble. The wave – an unstoppable force, perhaps the result of some weapon of mass destruction still far beyond the power of any force in the Universe to counter – rips outward in all directions – annihilating. It cannot be stopped – it must be stopped…

She is sucked back to the ship, and the minds of the crew, Engan, Bera, Anderwol, and Nik, share the same emotion – Fear. Fear of total annihilation at the hands of this insatiable black disk sends them into tremors, and it is three hours before they feel near-confident enough to attempt the journey home.

>>annihilation battery status: active
>>rteset = data/rtes/rtehome.exe
>>router status: mode ready execute
>>execute.

It is instant relief to suddenly be so far away from the Wavefront, to be back home, near the comforting glare of the blue sun – MA-K.

Consciousness is again transferred, as the rise for a brief movement back into the general mind, to share fear and provoke ideas.



Established:
>> Two potentially friendly races contacted in near space.

>>Destructive wavefront moving at 2c accelerating outward from fifteen billion light years.

Directive
>>Continuation of Wyrmsvaari Existence is the Prime Concern

>>Wavefront must be negated as per Prime Concern.

>>Collect additional information on Wavefront.

>>Allow no interference with Prime Concern.