(As written by Fishman and Dashmiel)
Diarneus kept them floating stably just above the shifting masses of grey dust that churned the ground beneath them. It was next to impossible to perceive anything happening beneath them, visually speaking. At least where sight in the human-visible spectrum was concerned.
“It’s not that I see more with my ‘special eyes’, Ms. Vang,” explained Diarneus. “I don’t see more spectra than your equipment. I just see with a bit more resolution, and I can see it all at once.
“The advantage is in my brain,” he said. “My kind has been seeing the world like this for a very long time. Here, try this,” he added as he thrust his hand palm upwards towards Tatiana’s. A small black polymer oblong was rising through Diarneus’ palm, like a diminutive oily tadpole rising from a pond.
“Press it against your helmet.”
Tatiana stared it at for a long, flat moment before deciding she’d seen stranger things. As she took it up in her hand, the edges of her eyes crinkled. The lines reached her forehead as she pushed it against her helmet.
“Now what?”
As she spoke, the bundled nanites packaged within the small oblong set to work, melding into the helmet and modifying its structure.
“Now we’ll remain connected through my own internal network, free from any interference that might get thrown into this planet’s datasphere. I can also show you how I see things, and make sure the image is modulated for you to be able to interpret it.”
As he explained, Diarneus sent Tatiana copies of the musical notations he had seen within the yurt, and explained how he’d noticed them written in UV reflecting pigment. This was his first clue, and after the encounter with the child and how it ended it, it was where his attention was focused on.
“As best as I can tell without a labspace to study physical samples, whatever this grey stuff is, seems to react rather strongly to a very complex system of resonance. If you look here,” he said as a flurry of images from his point of view flooded Tatiana’s vision at a rapid pace.
Tatiana’s eyes grew wide. She had been so preoccupied with the tracks that she hadn’t been flipping through her visor to see something this obvious. “They don’t match up, though,” she told Diarneus. “The notes that we’ve been hearing, they’re not these notes but they have to be linked somehow. How many combinations can come out of these five notes? You- you don’t need to answer that, because I know the answer is a lot.”
So the grey matter was synergizing with the humming. “But we can hear it. Why aren’t we being affected? Because we’re not touching it?” Shaking her head, Tatiana urged them on. “We need to find our teammates. We can theorize while we make the search.”
There wasn’t much of a hint to push them forward, no clear indication of where to go. All seemed for naught until the hums started once again, and shadows in the ash appeared in the distance. They waved at them, beckoning them close.
“Diarneus! Tatiana!” the figures cried. “Over here!”
Diarneus kept them floating stably just above the shifting masses of grey dust that churned the ground beneath them. It was next to impossible to perceive anything happening beneath them, visually speaking. At least where sight in the human-visible spectrum was concerned.
“It’s not that I see more with my ‘special eyes’, Ms. Vang,” explained Diarneus. “I don’t see more spectra than your equipment. I just see with a bit more resolution, and I can see it all at once.
“The advantage is in my brain,” he said. “My kind has been seeing the world like this for a very long time. Here, try this,” he added as he thrust his hand palm upwards towards Tatiana’s. A small black polymer oblong was rising through Diarneus’ palm, like a diminutive oily tadpole rising from a pond.
“Press it against your helmet.”
Tatiana stared it at for a long, flat moment before deciding she’d seen stranger things. As she took it up in her hand, the edges of her eyes crinkled. The lines reached her forehead as she pushed it against her helmet.
“Now what?”
As she spoke, the bundled nanites packaged within the small oblong set to work, melding into the helmet and modifying its structure.
“Now we’ll remain connected through my own internal network, free from any interference that might get thrown into this planet’s datasphere. I can also show you how I see things, and make sure the image is modulated for you to be able to interpret it.”
As he explained, Diarneus sent Tatiana copies of the musical notations he had seen within the yurt, and explained how he’d noticed them written in UV reflecting pigment. This was his first clue, and after the encounter with the child and how it ended it, it was where his attention was focused on.
“As best as I can tell without a labspace to study physical samples, whatever this grey stuff is, seems to react rather strongly to a very complex system of resonance. If you look here,” he said as a flurry of images from his point of view flooded Tatiana’s vision at a rapid pace.
Tatiana’s eyes grew wide. She had been so preoccupied with the tracks that she hadn’t been flipping through her visor to see something this obvious. “They don’t match up, though,” she told Diarneus. “The notes that we’ve been hearing, they’re not these notes but they have to be linked somehow. How many combinations can come out of these five notes? You- you don’t need to answer that, because I know the answer is a lot.”
So the grey matter was synergizing with the humming. “But we can hear it. Why aren’t we being affected? Because we’re not touching it?” Shaking her head, Tatiana urged them on. “We need to find our teammates. We can theorize while we make the search.”
There wasn’t much of a hint to push them forward, no clear indication of where to go. All seemed for naught until the hums started once again, and shadows in the ash appeared in the distance. They waved at them, beckoning them close.
“Diarneus! Tatiana!” the figures cried. “Over here!”