The
Adamant's main conference room was busier than normal, but that was only to be expected. Answers had been promised from Vega and Mary at this meeting, and the number of people who wanted to miss either of those was very short. Several research leads had managed to arrange time here too, unsurprising to be sure, but certainly something that made the conference chamber more crowded.
For yourself, watching as the last few attendees found their seats, you doubted that Mary was bringing anything truly comprehensive to the table today. You knew how your friend acted after managing something like that, and she wasn't doing so. A step on the path was your best guess, maybe a little more.
"That's the last," you murmured to the dark haired woman beside you. Nudging her gently out of her notes. Mary smiled, a flick of fingers clearing the various virtual windows around her away.
"Thanks, Mandy." She pushed herself up out of her chair, tapping a sequence on the air to manipulate the room's lighting. The lights dimmed except for a small circle around Mary, standard conference material to draw attention and focus.
"What are the Secrets?" she asked the quieted room. A spark of amusement kindled in her green eyes as no one answered. "That's the question you're all here hoping I can answer, isn't it?"
Silence reigned.
"Can you?" One of the researchers, you thought his name was Hallan, asked. "Answer that question, I mean, even if only a little more?"
"With that qualifier present, Halland?" Mary smiled at him. "Yes, I believe I can."
Underpinned: 60 + 36 (Mary Learning) + 20 (Lagless Computing Core) + 15 (Daughter of Secrets) = 131/120.
First stage development complete. +11 rollover banked.
"This is only an incremental improvement on our understanding, I'm sorry to say," she continued, falling into a steady lecturing tone. "But it's still an improvement, especially as it comes with several confirmations to what were previously only hypotheticals." A small gesture activated the room's projectors, filling the air between you with a representation of the galaxy.
"First is the most important one. I'd want to actually examine some of what's down on the Consolat homeworld to back this up, but I think it's reasonable to state that Secrets were created. However they did it, the Consolat injected alterations into the structure of reality in a way that would allow other races to utilise them, on a galactic scale."
Mary snapped her fingers and a network of interlinked lines spread out to cover the galaxy, enveloping every star.
"Needless to say, this explains a lot of what we considered strange about the Secrets." She wasn't wrong there, you thought. "Though it also raises a number of other questions. I'd have to take far longer than we have to list everything, however, so I'm going to simplify things to my abstract. If you want to read over the full details, there will be a copy on the
Adamant's network after this meeting."
"For all of us here who aren't scientists, I thank you," Jane said dryly. Mary's smile turned impish and sounds of amusement rippled across the room in a gentle wave, breaking a little of tight focus.
"I do try," your friend smiled. She took a breath to steady her expression as the laughter drained away, before continuing. "The Secrets, as best as I can tell, are not in themselves designed to break any law of physics as we understand them. They were made within the universe's structure, not to change them, and that's important.
"How so?" Vega asked, the Harmonial's lips pursed in confusion.
"For one thing, it implies that what we call a soul probably already existed." Mary shrugged. "The Consolat had to have something to connect the Secrets to, a way for life to access them. The scientific discovery of the soul commonly precedes access to the Secrets in the records we have access to. And, well, the Shiplords have souls."
"And they predate the Secrets," you said, nodding. Mary shot you a grateful look.
"Exactly," your friend nodded. "It's possible that the Consolat created the soul, created the whole structure, but that wouldn't really explain what the various Potentials aboard have been able to sense about this place. It's a possibility, certainly, but the data doesn't favour it. And, before anyone asks why this is important to the original point, I'm getting there.
"Since what we found at the Last Memory, I've gone back into my files and checked a few of my older theories." The imagery around her shifted, forming into various images, each one emblematic of the Secrets humanity had thus far discovered or were aware of. Mary pointed at the first one, an image of a ship flickering between two different stars.
"Of all the Secrets, the First is the only one that I imagine the Consolat weren't practically capable of. But they had to know the theory, a way to provide a structure that races to come could connect to with First Secret drives. I imagine that the Uninvolved might be able to give us a better answer, but they also might not. The last million cycles or so haven't exactly been kind to races who keep wanting to understand the universe, and that would pass over into those races that went Uninvolved instead of extinct."
There were a few unhappy murmurs at that, but none of it was disagreement. The path the Shiplords had taken after the War of the Sphere was exactly as Mary described. And the Uninvolved would be affected by that even after leaving the physical world behind.
"Now, it's clear that the Secrets provide a path of least resistance to achieving certain technological outcomes. They also possess a level of access control, though I've no idea how that functions." Mary sighed. "Our understanding of the soul is far from complete, and certainly not up to the task of anything more than informed guesswork. But, with that said, a few things seem obvious."
"First, however the Consolat did this, it had to require a truly enormous amount of energy. Even if how the Secrets work provides them some sort of mechanical advantage to everything they give us, building the structures to make that possible would be..." She trailed off, clearly grasping for words.
"It's hard to really quantify the scale of what they had to do, and that makes it even harder to describe how much energy it would've taken to do so. But something I've started to wonder over the last few days is if this is why the Consolat aren't here anymore."
That got a reaction out of you. Your blue eyes went very wide and spanned back into focus Mary, mouth opening to suck in an unsteady breath. None of that went unnoticed by the rest of the room, and sudden focus bore down on you as you stared at your oldest friend. She waited, ever-patient, as you worked through it.
"You're talking," you swallowed, "about something like how the Dragons gave us Practice."
"It fits," Mary said, spreading her hands. More murmurs filled the air around you, many of the voices uncertain. The details of what the Metaconcert event had discovered were relatively unclassified, but that didn't mean everyone had read them. "Something like what the Dragons did would be able to provide the energy density to act at this scale, and also support any ongoing maintenance costs pretty trivally."
"Unless the Consolat figured out where the energy supporting Practice actually comes from," another of the researchers pointed out. Her manner was that of one making a stubborn rebuttal.
"It's possible, Ella," Mary admitted. "But it wouldn't explain why the Consolat aren't here anymore. Why they died, vanished in fact, with their greatest work clearly incomplete."
"The Shiplords could've killed them," Ana suggested. "I know it's unlikely given the state of this system, but it's not impossible."
"Wait," Jane interrupted before the conversation could continue further. "Mary, you said you think that the Secrets are incomplete?"
Mary nodded
"Why?"
"Because too much of this feels well planned for the end result to be what we're looking at," Mary said bluntly. "Almost everything that the Secrets do had limits put on them by the Consolat when they created the system that supports them. The limiters to Fifth Secret drives are one example, but there are a lot of others. And that speaks of an intent to create a system that could be modified."
"Modified how?" Jane asked, eyes narrowing. "Controlling how the Secrets worked?"
"That and potentially more." Mary nodded. Her green eyes had turned very solemn. "Anyone as careful about what they were creating as the Consolat clearly were would have expected for modifications to be needed. Which means there should have been some way to control them after the fact. Modify what they could do, or even what Secrets a species could access.
"But if they did create something like that, I don't think it ever got finished. If it had been," she shook her head. "The Shiplords have had the run of this system for millions of years. They would have found it if it was there to be found. Which is why I think the Consolat never managed to finish everything. They got the core system working, and gave it a way to maintain all of its functions, but after that? It's just been running as they initially designed it."
"Of course, how it's maintaining itself raises some other unpleasant questions," Ella said darkly. Mary winced.
"Yes, it does." She snapped her fingers again and the various images around her vanished. "See, there are two main options that we've been able to come up with. One is that the Secrets were a one-and-done operation. They provide a mechanical advantage in support of the things they let us do.
"The other is that the structure simply abrogates the energy cost by paying it externally, which would…well there are two options for how it could be doing that. Either the Consolat created something like what the Dragons did in creating Practice, or the Secrets are fuelled in some way by the Uninvolved. If we were coming at this without the knowledge we already have, I'd be tempted to consider the last one as the truth, with the Shiplords being aware of it. It would explain some of the truly insane things the Shiplords have done, and why the Uninvolved appear to have a lifespan. But that isn't what we've seen from the Shiplords so far, or at least not all of them."
"It would require a conspiracy that not even Kicha was aware of," Gilsan spoke up. The intelligence officer's eyes were sharp as he considered the problem, before shaking his head. "Given everything else she was able to do for us, I don't see that as likely. The fact that she could tell us about what happened at the Fourth Battle of Sol, specifically the capture of a member of the Two Twenty Three…"
He shook his head again. "No. I see how it would be a convenient answer to many questions, but I think you're right in distrusting it. The rest of the picture we have doesn't fit."
"That doesn't remove the possibility that the reason for the Uninvolved's lifespan being limited is a result of energy needs, however," Jane pointed out. "Unless I'm missing something here?"
"You're not." Mary shook her head. "To be honest, that could be the case even if the structure is relatively static. Nothing comes free."
"Except that would suggest that any energy initially created by the Consolat's death wasn't a permanent thing," Vega noted quietly. "And that could have, well. Implications for us. Maybe not immediate ones, but if what the Dragons gave us might not be permanent? That's something we should be worried about."
"Also something we can't really do anything about until we know more," you replied, before Mary or anyone else could sink their teeth into that rabbit hole. "And I think we should try not to get too far afield here. You're right that we should think about this, but there are more immediate issues right now."
Vega sighed, her eyes troubled, but nodded. "Alright."
You nodded to her thankfully, returning your focus to Mary. "So, to summarise? I'm aware there's a lot more you could probably say, but there also seems to be a lot where we're not clear on what's actually happening."
"That's fair," Mary chuckled. "Summary, then. The Secrets provide a path of least resistance. They're not breaking anything about reality as we understand it, just making it easier to get there, and that's… not as insane as it might seem. How the Consolat made them, we've no clue as yet. It would've taken energy on a scale that makes your actions in battle defending Sol look like firecrackers.
"Finally, there's a question of how they've maintained themselves since then, with some rather disturbing possibilities. I've got a few options of where to go from here, if you want me to continue investigating. We can talk about it at the time."
"Thank you. I think that's everything we should be considering for now, and further questions are probably best kept for a different forum." Mary nodded in agreement, and you turned in your chair to the other reason for this meeting. "Vega, what about yourself? Any progress?"
The Harmonial blinked for a moment, then gave herself a little shake. "I'm sorry, I was processing everything Mary had to tell us," she said, mastering herself. "For myself, yes, I can report some progress."
Practised Restraint: 67 + 27 (Vega Practice) + 10 (Proven Miracle - Complex Harmony) = 104/100.
First stage development complete. +4 rollover banked.
Bonus to Miracle prevention. Full technique currently only available for Vega. Action unlocked to teach this to your Heartcircle as well as a partial version to the Harmonic Choir. Further study required to give the Choir the full benefits of this technique.
"It's been a little difficult going backwards compared to what I'm used to," the Harmonial admitted. "But I think I have something I can share with the rest of the Heartcircle. Teaching it to the Choir…that will take some more work to refine it, I think. I can cheat a little with them, but not to the same degree as with other Unisonbound."
"That was fast," you said, impressed. "You're confident it'll work?"
"As confident as I was that I'd be able to do something with Skylark." Vega flashed you a hesitant smile, and you found yourself laughing despite yourself. "It's a different type of harmony, but it's still harmony, and that's enough."
"You are the expert," you conceded, still smiling. "If there's nothing else, I leave this in your hands."
Vega shook her head. "Nothing more, no."
"Then I suppose we have a baseline for the coming days," you nodded, looking around the packed table. You saw Jane hide a smile, realising what you were about to do.
"So. What shall we do with it?"
You've made progress here at Origin Four-Fifteen, but the question now presents itself. Do you remain here, seeking out further answers in the outer system? Or do you dive deeper, to the Consolat homeworld itself?
[] Remain at Origin Four-Fifteen - You've made the first steps towards uncovering what's hidden on this ancient moon. Further direct investigation could be dangerous, but other avenues of investigation or research remain available to you here.
[] Move on to The Origin - The Consolat homeworld, and site of four out of five of the points of interest identified by Elil. There is a Shiplord research vessel, the Midnight Dreaming, in orbit of the planet as well as a single picket ship. The Midnight Dreaming is known to contain a team from Shiplord Central Intelligence. If picking the Origin, you must also pick a distance.
-[] High Orbit - Sharing orbital space with Shiplord craft whilst remaining hidden is exactly what you did at the Fifth Sorrow. This will provide immediate access to the sites on the planet below, and minimise time to extraction in the event of detection.
-[] Middle Distance - Take up position a few lightseconds out from the homeworld's orbital path. This option splits the difference of access and risk, favouring neither.
-[] Near Orbit Cluster - Much as the Adamant currently hides in the mass shadow of a comet, hide in the shadow of an asteroid that shares the orbital path of the Consolat homeworld. This will significantly increase the time required to reach the homeworld, but is the safest option if you want to take Elil and Vega with you to secure the landing party.
