Private Random Access Memories; Read Only Soul

[Dreamless Realm]

As written by @Script, @Machina Somnium, and @Cowpoke Cale

In an attempt to pay more attention to reality, or what was supposed to be It, Ezra added his own thumbs up gesture towards their newest companion.

"Awww" Cooed Ezrael beside him. Ezra sighed and went to pat his head. But he remembered… technically, he couldn't. So he put both his hands on the Va'nyrian lance's haft. His head was starting to hurt. He felt like his brain and spirit were being pulled apart. Like… he was out of pace with reality and existing only halfway in it. The nausea was making a comeback as well. So he leaned against a wall and took a couple of deep breaths. Right. They were meant to ask Hemwy questions. To learn more about their environment. He looked at the group and then at… at what he had of his partner, with sadness. What the fuck was wrong with him? Jace looked like he was fine. Hadn't they spent more or less the same amount of time in the void?. Or maybe they hadn't at all.

Jace shot Ezra a brief glance. Between the antlers, the murmuring and the unusual gestures, he was pretty sure their unusual companion could use some time for recovery before they went anywhere requiring action, even if the questions proved fruitless. “Alright, sure,” he said, looking back to Kai and Hemwy. “Question time. At least from how I interpreted our countdown clock, an intel briefing isn’t going to be the difference between life or death.” He hoped so, at least. It wasn’t a given, with how abrupt some of their companions’ disappearances had been, but there was no planning for something like that either way.

“Sweet,” Kai slipped through into the room and slouched down into one of the sleekly curved office chairs that had been pushed to the side of the room, rolling it a few feet and spinning in place once before coming back around to face the others. “First of all, glad to see that spinny chairs have continued to stand the test of time and the spans of civilisations. Second of all…”

He pressed his hands together in front of his face. “Where are we, how did we get here, and why did Ezra see the time knife? That’s three questions all at once but I figure they’ve gotta be related.”

The room wasn't exactly what Ezra would call cozy. Its design was very… civilized, very pragmatic. He got up only to get inside along with the humans and then laid his deer half down again. He moved one of the chairs, making it spin slowly. Making Ezrael spin slowly. He had had a lot more time in spaces like these. Maybe even liked them. But Ezra hadn't been with him then. And so, the ghost was uncharacteristically silent. It was unsettling, but it gave Ezra de chance to focus on there here and now.

"I saw what?..." He asked, looking at Kai with a very confused expression. Was it young people slang again? Human slang?.

“Don’t worry about it,” Kai waved a hand. “Like, eight times out of ten if I say something that sounds like it doesn’t actually mean anything then just assume I’m making an obscure reference to something you don’t know about.”

“You’d think it would be because you’re from a different world, but most of the time I don’t get them either,” Jace murmured.

"Ah… it's happened to me before then." He shared a look with Ezrael. "My kids used to do that too, half the time we never knew what they were talking about." He spoke, with a fond smile on his face.

 

[Script]

As written by @Script, @Machina Somnium, and @Cowpoke Cale

Hemwy patiently endured their small talk, aperture whirring as he focused on random bits and bobs strewn about the room. A half finished mycelium weave gave off a faint glow from the top of a counter in the corner. Meanwhile, both his organic and inorganic processors struggled to make connections from the words being spoken.

His eye settled on Kai's drone, and a flash of color from the ocular unit signified that he had come up with an idea. Familiarity tugged at him. He gestured towards the drone excitedly, then turned back to the group.

"MAKE HELP UNDERSTAND. INTERFACE."

Two hands raised to point at the speaker from which his words came.

"FIX? POSSIBILITY. ATTEMPT."

Four thumbs up again.

“Oh, right… duh. Your language processor must’ve degraded.” Kai raised an eyebrow. “Guess it figures you probably weren’t meant to have to play charades to interface with the poor folks who rely on words instead of data. No problem. I’ll have you patched up and waxing lyrical before you know it.”

He wheeled his chair over towards Hemwy, cracking his knuckles. “This might feel invasive depending on whether you have a concept of that, so… brace yourself?”

With a by-now familiar shimmering, Kai vanished into a stream of data, leaping from his seat and directly into their robot companion.

It quickly became apparent that the ‘inside’ of Hemwy’s artificial mind was not anything like computer systems that Kai was used to. The first thing he usually did upon entering a computer or network was to expand his awareness outwards to ‘map out’ its structure, and while that was almost possible here, he realised that there were elements to Hemwy’s consciousness that just… kept going, and going, and going. He had to pull back away from the deepest recesses of the robot’s processes when he realised that they were starting to fracture off into infinitely recursive threads of borderline nonsense.

‘Damn. You are … not in tip-top shape, are you bud?’ Kai mused to himself. ‘Huh?’

As he took a moment to examine what he’d been able to take in of Hemwy’s functioning, it started to become apparent that it was like he was looking at not one, but three separate but interconnected systems. Or rather, like there were three different sets of behavioural programming that occasionally intersected and fed into one another. One of those sets he could recognise as correlating largely with the way the robot had acted so far - it was comparatively simplistic. A second one seemed not to be doing anything at all– it was more of a root where it seemed like another set of functionality could grow than an already branching tree. The third… was confusing.

It wasn’t as active as the core branch Kai reasoned must be the “primary” Hemwy, but there was definitely a lot of activity going on, and it was overlapping with the core of the robot’s behaviour with some regularity. What’s more, unlike the core branch – for which Kai could trace all of its activity and logic in a way that made sense – it seemed to stop and start, spread in fractions all over the place without any determinable continuity.

Reluctantly, though, Kai refrained from digging any deeper into what the hell was going on there. He had a job to do, after all, and that job wasn’t picking apart Hemwy’s weird-ass robot brain to see how it worked. Compared to trying to wrap his head around what was going on with the full extent of Hemwy’s functionality, just finding his language module within the central ‘branch’ of his processing was relatively easy.

What was more strange was that a quick examination of it determined that realistically, there was no way Hemwy ought to have been able to communicate with them at all. His language module wasn’t setup to be able to access the Va’nyrian language. That in and of itself was a bizarre concept for Kai to wrap his head around – he’d noticed it already when fiddling around with his own drone, that somehow the Va’nyrians had encrypted their language in a way that was simultaneously baffling and impressive – but at the core of it, their translators weren’t compatible with his software. Which meant he was somehow interpreting them through some other means.

Curious enough to pry, Kai went back through what he could find of the logs on Hemwy’s language inputs and outputs. As he’d expected, his translation program was hardly touching any of it – it couldn’t. Instead, it was around these moments of activity that the strange, difficult to track branch of his consciousness was most frequently intersecting with his primary functions. Or in simple terms: it was a different portion of Hemwy’s mind altogether that was helping his conscious one speak with them.

How? Kai had no idea. This robot-mind certainly didn’t work anything like any of the artificial intelligences he’d come across, not even the most sophisticated. Thankfully for him, he didn’t need to completely understand it to fix it – not when he had a point of reference to work from. It only took a thought to activate Hemwy’s remote linking capabilities and connect him with Maki, and once that bridge was formed, it was easy enough to transfer across and retrofit a version of Maki’s translation software to make it compatible with Hemwy.

The whole process took him a few minutes – after all, tweaking a piece of complex software to work on an entirely different piece of hardware from an entirely different universe required a little finesse – but before too long he was emerging back out into the physical world, depositing himself back in his chair with a triumphant stretch.

“Bam. Done and done. Probably. How’s that feeling for ya?”

Hemwy's response came in the form of a series of flickering lights from his ocular unit. A rhythmic pattern of light and color that effectively translated into a nod of approval.

“Ah, translation suite repaired. Profound gratitude. Effective linguistic interplay … restored, yes. Cooperation has been facilitated. Kai's assistance is valued! Perfect, perfect, perfect.”

His colors flashed happiness and pride, they danced and celebrated as the first barrier of communication between them dissolved.

“Peril I anticipate was minimal, venturing into cognitive domain. Space constrained now, size dwindling, boundaries expanding. Complexity entwined, hmm. No occasion currently, or rather, temporal vastness rendering time nonexistent. We -", he swung two arms to gesture at the group, “- exist nowhere in current juncture. Well, we exist, though intricacies are numerous. Easier to view this realm as fully detached from intricate complex recently abandoned. Recognize cognitive challenge, I make my empathy evident."”
The colors flashed appropriately.

"Regarding method, unsurprisingly intricate as well. Unobservable strata stacked, layered. Transit potential within, most simplified explanation that can be offered at this time. Attempted to communicate prior, precision important. In haste, almost certain damage. Kai is most fortunate."

“Your language pack might be fixed but…” Jace rubbed his temple. “Do you mind… dumbing it down a little for the guys in the room that never studied quantum mechanics, or whatever this is?”

“TL;DR, we’re outside of time and folded into space in a way that’s adjacent to not existing at all. I’m imagining it kinda like the not-even-a-split-second where you’re between point A and point B in a wormhole, except stretched out so we can actually experience it,” Kai chimed in. “There was some kind of gap in timespace that we had to jump through, but because we were in a hurry, we… I guess the best comparison would be that you caught your belt on the door handle, and Ezra straight up ran into the door-frame and wiped out.”

“... that sort of makes sense, I guess.” Jace muttered.

"I know you say you've dumbed it down. But maybe I am a bit stupider than most…how can we be outside of time?. I don't understand any of this." Said Ezra, who had been trying to listen, but he was so tired… he felt mentally exhausted and the robot's explanation and language were not helping. He was happy for it, him? Because he seemed very happy.

"I think I need a break, do we have time for that? If we are… outside of time." He added, rubbing his temple roughly with his fingers, and the bridge of his nose. His lower eyes were closed, and his ears lower ears were droopy. His upper eyes were open and staring at Hemwy, and his upper ears were pointed towards Kai.

Hemwy swiveled towards Ezra.

"There is no requirement for mental exertion, comprehension is nonessential for engagement. Simpler to consider it an act of divinity. Ample time for repose, yes, metaphorically speaking. I urge you for such. Fortunate existence, though apprehensive about potential harm inflicted. Concern expressed."

He flashed his colors, then Hemwy made his way around the table and found a suitable position opposite from the others. Instead of settling into a chair, he drew his legs up into his chest in a squat similar to the one he assumed when sleeping or trying to protect his softer internals.

“Accurate to assume your inquiries exceed this count? Able to address any arising, yet a narrative exists, possibly clarifying as much as it complicates."

Hemwy’s vestigial arms reached upwards in a little stretch as his main ones folded in.

“Suggestion: Pose inquiries now, while opportunity lasts. Subsequently, narrative will be shared during collective repose, understood? Afterward, a sacred site demands attention. Presented itinerary is agreeable? I display eagerness."

Colors. Always colors.

“Translation for the crowd– we don’t have to understand the ‘how’, just the ‘what,” Kai remarked, once again taking the robot’s still somewhat-unusual way of speaking and putting it in easier terms for the other two to get their head around. “Which in this case is: this place is safe, and we don’t have to worry about how long we’re here, ‘cause basically no time will have passed whenever we leave.”

He kicked at the floor to roll his chair back over to the table and leaned onto it. “Also, keep the questions coming, but once we’re done, he apparently has a story to tell. Or a big picture to give, or something to that effect, at least.”

“Sure,” Jace pulled another chair out and took a seat, chewing his lip. “There’s a couple of terms you used I don’t think we figured out. ‘Dan-O’ was the main one. What are they? Also, the thing you called ‘Senka-Inp’ka’, that Kai translated to ‘Reaper’. The one that apparently… learned how our powers worked and figured out exactly how to deal with them– I’m still not sure I’ve got any idea what the fuck that was, either.”

"I'm starting to miss the void…" grumbled Ezra under his breath. He laid down his deer half by the table so he could lean on it with his upper half. It was still uncomfortable. The surface was cold and hard. He pulled an empty chair closer to the table and then obviously didn't sit on it. He could see Ezrael, though, watching the rest of the people present. Reading the room, thinking.

The cerv put his arms on the table and then rested his head on them. He was bent a bit awkwardly. But it was better than the floor… wasn't it?.

"I'm listening, and don't touch me. I just need to rest my eyes." He closed them, all four of them, but his ears were perked up and pointed towards the rest of them.

 

[Cowpoke Cale]

As written by @Script, @Machina Somnium, and @Cowpoke Cale

Hemwy stared at them, colors flashing amusement.

“If that comprises your inquiries, it appears the tale encompasses the responses after all. Apologies, though no time truly squandered. Maki to provide assistance with narration. It is fine to just listen.”

They were bridged together now, and the drone moved into place over the center of the table as Hemwy internally prepared. He had no throat to clear nervously, but his colors flashed the equivalent. The room lights dimmed as Maki’s projection and Hemwy’s story started.

As with everything, it began with nothing.

The walls of the room around them dissolved into the void of the hologram. The group and the table they surrounded was all that seemed to remain in the room of infinite black being projected.

Before the Exhale, it was just him. He was perfect, and in his perfection he deigned to be lonely.

The silhouette of a man formed in the void, a figure of sheer white against the black.

It was then that he took his first breath, for love, and the first exhale breathed all of the cosmos into being.

Creation erupted from the maw of the silhouette. The primordial building blocks of matter and every frequency of every continuum swirled and spewed and filled the void of the room around them with a seemingly infinite amount of colors and pinpricks of light that were stars and galaxies and everything beyond and between.

She was flawed in her making, however, not by error but by design, so that she may triumph over trials and thereby achieve such perfection as he.

The scale shifts, it zooms in and rushes past nebulous clouds of gas and dust and into systems where planets are still in their infancy, rotating and growing in cosmic nurseries. The scale of time shifts too, and the seeds of life and their cycle are shown. Civilizations, ruin, and everything beyond and between. Millions and more of iterations in the blink of an eye.

Thus all came to be, and all that lives is the culmination of this cosmological growth so that he may have a mate and his equal. Dan-o and all are children of Starbreath and his lover.

The silhouette of the man returns, and the cosmos and stardust swirl about his head as if they were a halo. Then he is gone, and with him he takes the beauty of the cosmos that had surrounded them. They are in a central chamber now, with vaulted ceilings and architecture recognizable only to parts of Hemwy stored deep, deep away. The recognition surprises this buried piece of him, and it is through his connection with Maki alone that its access was even possible. The large shadow of a figure is illuminated against the far wall. Several more shadows form around it, in pose of reverence.

The Dan-o seek unity, through trial and the pursuit of enlightenment so that one day they may meet the gaze of the Starbreath and be deemed worthy of his creation. Dan-o believe that shadows are the divine proof of having received his light.

The shadows on the wall flicker and waver intensely, those surrounding the large figure disappear entirely while the figure itself seems diminished and fragmented.

The ṣenka-inp'ka snuff that out. No shadow, no Starbreath. No place on the cosmic tapestry, just an echo of an echo. The shell of a shell. Worse than death. Some Dan-o believe they are here to test us, others think they are here to punish us. Hemwy does not know.

The figure reaches a hand out into the void of the hologram in a desperate attempt to grasp what has been lost. Its anguish bears a gravity that becomes too personal for Hemwy to bear and so it is there that he draws the hologram to a close.

“Dan-o do not waver against them. Together, strong. Unity against the encroaching darkness.”

His colors flashed hopefulness.

“If no crucial questions linger, it's advisable we proceed once you're adequately rested. We ascend the tower persistently, as divinity remains absent.”

 

[Dreamless Realm]

As written by @Script, @Machina Somnium, and @Cowpoke Cale

“I’m not going to be adequately rested anytime... Ugh s-soon..” A shiver ran through Ezra’s body. Was it the sickness, or a ghostly caress?. He had watched and listened, tried to pay attention to the story and probably understood half, if barely. Somehow, resting was not helping him much. If anything, he was feeling worse. He scratched his sides a bit more, sending white hairs flying around the room. Like a shedding cats’.

Another wave of nausea hit him and he forced himself into his hooves. By pure luck, he didn't trip over his own shaky legs as he took a couple of steps away from the table, bent down and vomited a black, vile smelling liquid onto the floor. What the actual hell? Had he somehow SWALLOWED void, while he was stuck inside it?. As far-fetched and ridiculous as the idea sounded, it made him chuckle. He wiped some black residue from his mouth with his hand and cringed at the sight and the smell. When the imaginary dead looked at you with concern… was that better, or worse?.
Whatever was happening to him, was not over, though. He gagged once more and felt his entire body tremble. Again, he heaved even black viscous fluid onto the floor.

“...oh, ew, that’s– that’s probably not good,” Kai remarked, distracted from piecing together the facts of Hemwy’s story from amidst the mythos. He wrinkled his nose and wheeled his chair back a few paces away from the retching cervitaur. As he was doing so, he linked his mind to Maki again, prompting the drone to turn its sensors onto Ezra and scan both him and the unpleasant substance in an attempt at diagnostics.

Several alerts, too many, popped up in the HUD once the cervitaur was thoroughly scanned.

Ezra’s constitution was terrible. He was coming apart at the seams, broken like a ragged piece of cloth. Riddled with microscopic lacerations that tore straight through his armor and consequently, his body.

His radiation levels were not just high. They were astronomical. The black vile was a mix of blood, gastric fluids, mucosa and serosa, hair, stomach acids and what little they had eaten since their arrival.

Despite everything that was happening to his body, it was not the only concern. His armor was… wrong. Its integrity registered very low numbers and not just because of the damages caused by their fight outside. There were deep flaws in the piece, in the execution of its design, that made it less effective against some environmental threats.

“Uh…” Kai blinked, double checked his readings, then checked them again. “We– we might have a problem? I– oh.”

“What?” Jace snapped. “Spit it out, already?”

“Ezra’s– his suit is fucked. Wildly fucked. Like might as well have walked into a nuclear reactor in a tank top fucked. It’s– it’s almost worse than nothing. He’s massively irradiated, if he was a human he’d already be dead!” Kai blurted, horrified. “It doesn’t make any sense! Our suits are both fine, we’re completely protected, but his is… it’s like it was meant to fail.”

Jace stared at him, dismayed. “Meant to fail..? You mean it was sabotaged? But how– when? Did it get damaged, or did one of the things we’ve run into already do something to it?”

“No, it’s the whole design, it’s– fundamentally flawed. It’s not damaged as much as it was never even worth the materials it’s made out of,” Kai shook his head, still scouring through the readouts. “It has to have been like that since we got kitted out.”

“So… one of the people who geared us up did it,” Jace stated, eyes narrowing.

“I guess it’s possible that one of them sabotaged it? But there’s no way Nexus-Xil wouldn’t have picked up on that. And if she knew, then chances are they all knew.” Kai hissed. “But why? Why just him? Why at all?”

Ezra listened to them, hacking and coughing still but trying to be quiet. He took a few steps back from the puddle of vomit to lay his animal half down. His expression darkened considerably, and he could feel Ezrael’s hand fully petting through his fur. He could imagine the pity and the love in his expression.

His mind was racing, he felt breathless and tired… and heartbroken. Because it was not something he would have ever done as a commander, not like this. Because if you needed to be deceitful to your followers, in fear or doubt they would not follow you beyond the veil of death. Then you weren't as good of a leader as you’d like to be. But at the same time, if he was just meant to be the physical manifestation of a greater being’s will, it did not matter. It was likely they didn’t deem him worthy of the knowledge. And it made something clear to him. Kai and Jace were more important, or were at least meant to get further than himself in their journey.

“If we were not told, perhaps our minds are not meant to try and understand the reasoning behind this decision. It's not- I wish they had told me, I would’ve come regardless. But… It’s good to know that we are not failing. That this is still part of their plan.” He said, once again wiping part of the residue left around his mouth with his arm. Maybe it was because of the radiation, but he could swear he felt his heart physically break. It also grounded him after the isolation within the void.

“Fuck that,” Kai hissed. “I know we’re literally the Expendables slash Suicide Squad slash whatever else to these people, but there’s ‘not giving a shit if we die’, and then there’s actively ensuring that we do. I don’t care how big-brain cosmic god complex they are, that’s fucked and evil.”

Jace’s expression was dark, even if less outwardly furious than Kai’s. “They put on a friendly face, but did you really expect any different? We’re footnotes in a calculation to them. I can’t fathom how setting one of us up to die is supposed to help our odds out here, but if it did, I don’t for a second think they wouldn’t make that happen.”

“And I reiterate: that’s fucked and evil. Wow, maybe the reality where they got wiped out by their own corrupted mega-AI and the eldritch space worms is actually the better one after all.” Kai spat.

An intense wave of affection surged through Ezra as he watched them. Huh… so that was why he had liked them both so much since the beginning. Ezrael stopped petting him. He used the Va’nyrian lance as a crouch to stand.

“It doesn't matter, any of that. I will die soon, and you have your own parts to play. And since I will only get worse from here, we must go as soon as possible. Because I need… we need to get you as close to Alaxel as we can. Please? You can question him then if you like.” Ezra felt more determined now that he knew death was near. It was like a snake, constantly nipping at his heels. Keeping him alert, and the ghosts away. A fog had lifted, and he could see the way.

But could he keep going? If he was already struggling this much to even lift his own body?

 

[Script]

As written by @Script, @Machina Somnium, and @Cowpoke Cale

Nuance had overtaken the light spectrum within Hemwy’s ocular dome at the revelation of Ezra’s vital scans. Surprise, sadness, disappointment, blame, guilt, a portrait of poignant emotion spilt upon the canvas in recursive repetition. Some of the sentiment that the boys shared was echoed through Hemwy’s display from a deeper recess within, a portion of him agreeing while another grappled with what would blatantly be considered heresy by the Dan-o.

To speak against the Tapestry and your part in it was to go against Starbreath, to reject your grand design. An actor’s duty is to play their role on the stage, not defy direction entirely. Hemwy understood their reactions came from a position of misunderstanding and of hurt, so he deliberately chose not to be contrarian. It was no longer his place or obligation to spread the gospel.

As Ezra rose and made his declaration, Hemwy positioned himself so that he may provide a brace for the cervitaur so should he come to need it. His lower half was designed to be load bearing, afterall, and it would be the cause of little fatigue for him to support weight. He thought of saying something, attempting to provide a semblance of comfort. But the sudden clarity in the eyes of the dying person left him at a loss.

Lacking the proper tact for the situation, Hemwy defaulted back to the task at hand.

“HASTE ACKNOWLEDGED. WE PROCEED.”

Kai looked like he was about to protest again, but Jace put a hand on his arm. The two of them shared a brief moment of eye contact, and Jace shook his head with a look that was somehow at once firm and gentle. Kai’s shoulders sagged a little.

“... fine,” he said eventually. “But here, this thing’s medical tech should at least be able to dose you up with enough painkillers and nano-bots to keep you functioning and not suffering.” He flicked his hand, and the drone produced a small, innocuous looking synthetic patch from a slot that spontaneously formed in its front.

Kai took it and stepped over to Ezra, holding it up to him. “Just fix it onto yourself and it’ll apparently be able to transfer the meds into your body through your skin. Guess they’ve evolved past needles…”

Precious, aren't they? And it wasn't his own voice that said it. But he could not have thought it better. He gently patted Hemwy’s head again, infinitely thankful for his silent gesture of support. And Kai seemed so upset, even though they barely knew each other. And Jace… was strong, very much so. They all were, no?. But enough of his internal dialogue, he’d have time to get sappy later. Eh. Probably.

“I.. Thank you. You’re all lovely lads, really.” And he wasn't just thanking Kai for the high tech medicine. And he meant all of them, their robot guide included. He would take them all home if he could, to Rhonda. But at this point, he was above kidnapping kids. At least for now.

“I keep thinking about how much you remind me of my sons” He added, looking at what Kai had given him. It had been happening since they met. He wasn't so sure that using nano-robotic things was a good idea. But if it was the medicine of the future… he fixed onto himself. The relief as he felt his body find balance, was immense.

“You have kids?” Kai quirked an eyebrow. “Guess that’s not all that surprising. You kinda have dad energy,” he murmured with a small huff of laughter, tainted with an edge of bitterness.

“ Well, I had fifteen children. So what you say makes sense.” Said Ezra, testing his new strength by walking around them a bit.

“Whoa. That’s a lot of kids,” Kai’s other eyebrow shot up. “Jeez. I think my upper capacity for putting up with them is like, two or three. And that’s only if they’re not being little dicks.”

“Mine’s at about one, these days,” Jace murmured, giving Kai a pointed look.

“Hey, I’m like, barely three years younger than you!” Kai retorted. “Don’t ‘kid’ me, Parkerchu.”

Jace gave him a wry smile. “Maybe if you acted it, I wouldn’t.”

Ezra snorted before answering them.

“We didn't have them all at the same time, so I had a century or so before the war to focus on them.” They were bickering like children, and it was quite adorable.

“WE HAD THOUSANDS OF OUR ILK.”

It cut into their banter abruptly, and for the first time in all of their interaction, Hemwy’s colors ceased entirely for a moment of incredible poignancy. A voice not his own erupted from the speaker.

"My children, our children, now reside in the whispers of memory, adrift in the winds of time. Each one, a flame that once danced brightly in our tribe's fire, now flickers faintly in the depths of the past. In this newfound silence, I mourn. The embers of their existence flicker in the recesses of memory. Each one, a heartbeat in the stillness, a sigh in the silence. They were mine, and now they are gone.Yet, let not sadness drown the cosmos. For in the quiet, their essence lingers. A quiet echo in the spaces between stars, a gentle whisper in the rustle of ancient galaxies. May their absence be felt as a tender breeze, a reminder that even in the hush of eternity, the echoes of life persist. My children, lost to the folds of time, are but stardust now, scattered across the vast tapestry of existence. May the universe cradle their remnants, and may the silence be a tribute to the symphony they once were."

The colors returned, and Hemwy displayed zero indication of awareness of what had just occurred. He defaulted a second time.

“HASTE ACKNOWLEDGED. WE PROCEED?”

 

[Cowpoke Cale]

As written by @Script, @Machina Somnium, @Dashmiel, and @Cowpoke Cale

Kai gawped at him, exchanged a look with the others, then coughed. “Uh… that’s rough, buddy. Didn’t know robots could have… I guess maybe they weren’t literal– y’know what, I’m not gonna delve into that one too deeply. Yeah. Let’s proceed. I think we’re as ready as we’re ever gonna be.”

Jace blew out a breath. “The sooner we find the runaway king, the sooner we can leave this deathtrap of a planet behind.” He got to his feet. “We’ve been able to relax here, but the moment we step back out, don’t let your guard down for a second.” While he seemed to be speaking to the whole group, it was clear enough his words were largely meant for Kai, who shot him a quick thumbs up before he disappeared back into Maki.

“Roger that, soldier boy. Weapons and sensors primed.”

Hemwy’s words were as chilling as they were illuminating. How bizarre, how strange, how fascinating… thought Ezra. He wished for more time to get to know this creature, for a moment. But he wouldn't have the privilege.

“Let’s continue, yes…” he said, making no comments on the robot’s speech. He did however give him a few more head pats as they started moving.


The group left the safe confines of Hemwy’s ‘conference room’ refuge, and set off towards their “answers”. Led by Hemwy, the group left under the forlorn, lonely doorframe and onwards down the hall towards the large double doors. Their steps echoed in the silent hall, the only other noise besides their movements was that of the bits of detritus they kicked around on their path.

The plain and unadorned double doors were pristine, their dim and burnished elevator-gray metal surface softly reflected their mundanely twisted reflections upon its imperfectly reflective surface. The air was still save for a dull hum just above the threshold of their hearing.

Confidently, Hemwy led them towards the doors, which quietly evaporated into a gaseous stream that parted for them much the same way the doors at the Leaky Servo did.

Beyond they found themselves outdoors; a large industrial catwalk-bridge dominated an expansive abyss. Far beneath (and far above them for that matter) the rainbow hues of the jin’tranir crystals and their energetic reaction scintillated as the facility carried out its power generation. The catwalk appeared to be some 150 meters long over the gap.

The group confidently set upon the catwalk, on their way to the other side. They could see a grand archway’s opening and ethereal lights glinting off the inner edges, but the space within the archway was blurry with distance.

They walked onwards to the archway. First quietly and calmly, for 3 minutes. Then for another two minutes. Hemwy confidently still sat upon the lead as the clock hit seven minutes of their traversing the catwalk.

“Okay,” Kai’s voice was the first to pipe up from within his drone. “Something’s fucky here.”

“I am… not surprised. Or impressed.” Said Ezra with a heavy sigh. He was annoyed and impatient, with his ears pinned back. They didn't know how long the boost they’d given him would actually last. And there was too much to do.

“Hemwy! Do you know what’s going on??” He asked out loud since he was positioned last in their party.

“It’s like there’s an insane amount of space between us and the other side,” Kai chimed in again. “It’s just… folded on itself so it isn’t actual distance? It’s making my head hurt thinking about it too hard. There’s something weird going on with my EM readings as well, but I can’t figure out what it means…”

Jace frowned, pausing to take a mental step back from his visual senses and instead shifting his attention to consciously focus on what he could sense with his powers. In doing so, he realised that he had already been aware of the ‘weirdness’ that Kai had pointed out. He was going to have to get more used to paying attention to his newly enhanced sixth, seventh and however many other senses his training-montage-come-brain-hack had imparted on him.

“There’s… a path,” he murmured. “Like an afterimage of a trail.”

//Afterimage…preferred analogue intuited Cadet Parker//

A new “eye” opened within Jace’s mindscape, a wholly nascent perception arising from the point between where his crossed eyes would meet pulsing in-time with the representation of the derivative that mapped out to the graph that represented the electromagnetic reality before them.

For reality it was, for all that their eyes and instrumentation may disagree with the way natural law was followed.

As Abaddon further refined his merging of his analysis with Jace’s subconscious comfort, the ‘third eye’ shifted to a more comfortably mentally visualized ‘pulse’ outlining what was a path carved into the impossible mass of space before them.

The space itself was eerily further obscured now, as the ‘electrosight’ simply returned dark and opaque ‘walls’ in a dizzyingly intricate labyrinthine pattern where the EM-lined path started. It seemed that once they were within the space rather than fruitlessly toiling in front of it, that the sights may change unexpectedly.

Jace frowned, not entirely at ease with yet another plunge into the unknown. But as with each time before, it wasn’t as if they had much choice. He doubted it would be as simple as going around. “Stick close, and follow my path as exactly as you can manage,” he said, angling himself to begin moving along the path laid out before him. “Things might be about to get fuckier.”

“As they do with every step forward in this place,” Kai remarked dryly. “Alright, Sparky, let’s see if your pathway works out.”

“You’re welcome to continue strolling aimlessly into infinity if you’d prefer,” Jace murmured, shaking his head. “Maybe you’re stubborn enough to manage it.”