Notice: This story has been rebooted for a total rewrite. As such, I will be putting all the...
A Song in the Fog [REBOOTED]
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Part 1
- Location
- EXA_PICO
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Notice: This story has been rebooted for a total rewrite. As such, I will be putting all the story posts on the first page of this thread in spoiler brackets. You may read if you wish, but I would really appreciate if you chose not to.
You can find the reboot of this story here.
A Song in the Fog
Floating in a vast white space, alien images and symbols flowing about in impossible ways making impossible shapes. White ribbons flow off my dress, each bearing a unique emblem. The ribbons form around me from nothing and I feel thoughts flow into me. The ribbons disintegrate, and these thoughts cease. Thousands upon thousands of ribbons, speaking to me, through me, connecting to one another, but none are aware I am here...A great white tower stretches endlessly into the sky, stalk wrapped in lush vines the size of mountains. The remains of a grand nation lay crumbling at its base, eroded by the ravages of time and the grief of the world. The city is rebuilding, the people returning after so many years. The land brimming with life, the planet at peace again.
A great white orb forms in front of me, staring at me. A symbol appears on it in the form of a winged eye. The orb speaks to me, but I can't make out the words.
I'm staring up at a ceiling made of brass tubes. A low thrumming sound fills my surroundings and resonates through me. A blacked out silhouette stands over me and strokes my hair with a gentle hand. Is it a woman? Why can't I see her face?
A grand fleet of ships black as night descends from the stars.
Wake up.
I was laying on my back in a patch of grass. There was a pleasant scent of clean air and life all around me. The branches of a tree loomed over me, blocking the sunlight from my face. There was still enough to make me put my hand in front of my eyes to lessen my discomfort. I groaned in protest, wishing the Sun would go away and leave me alone for a few more minutes.
For some reason I didn't immediately panic because I wasn't in my bed. The grass was strangely really comfortable... and squishy like a really deep mattress. So, I rolled onto my side and tried to cover my face with the jacket that I found laying over me.
Then I noticed that I didn't even feel groggy. Actually, I felt really fucking good. Like, impossibly good. I had not the slightest discomfort I associated with waking up after having my arm wedged under my head for hours of sleep. I had this sense of correctness with myself, impossible to describe in simple words. Laying on the grass with these strange sensations left me stunned for a while. Eventually I recovered from my awe enough to sit upright, throwing the black and red jacket off of me to see my surroundings.
I was greeted by a landscape more bizarre and beautiful than I could dream of. It was a valley populated by plants unlike any I'd ever seen before. The primary color was not green, but a bright purple and a splash of orange. Most plants were really tall vine-like structures with not a sign of any hardwood trees. They all swayed easily in the wind, with enormous broad leaves. The sky was blue, but... a slightly deeper blue than it's supposed to be. Or was I imagining it? It may have just been the time of day.
"I, uh... holy shit." I cursed.
My first instinct was to do what everyone probably does when they think they're dreaming or tripping some serious drugs; pinch myself or rub my eyes and stuff like that. Those instincts reared up, then shriveled and died in a wave of new information that immediately made me realize what had just happened to me.
People simply feel things without having to consciously process them. The brain constructs the world of senses without the conscious mind having any direct control over it. When you hear something, you just hear it. You don't need to actively interpret the Morse Code of electric impulses created by the nerves in your ear, it just happens.
In that same way, I just understood aspects of my new self immediately the moment I was consciously aware and paying attention to what my body was telling me. But I still had to look at myself with my eyes, because my mind wouldn't accept what it knew had happened to me. I was strongly clinging to a human mindset that was no longer compatible with my new existence.
EXEC_WAVE=BARRIER/.
'That's... strange. It shouldn't look like that... should it?' I thought.
With a "motion" as simple as breathing, I willed a panel of reflective green hexagons into existence before my eyes. They shifted into a colorless surface and I saw my new face. Staring back at me were a pair of deep violet eyes framed by long purple -nearly black- hair. My hair was really fluffy and curly, with a pronounce cowlick over my brow that pointed to the left side of my face.
I am... I am one of the Fog. The Fleet of Fog. That is what I am. They... I mean, we are AGI with the ability to change our physical forms into almost anything we want. But chiefly, the Fog assume the forms of ships, so we are called a Fleet.
The hair was weird, but I recognized this face. Why? I didn't dislike it, but it looked exactly like the face of... someone I knew. Someone familiar, but... who? Shouldn't I have had an appearance based on my subconscious and personality? That's what the avatar was supposed to be. The face, the body, the voice... all felt correct.
It felt correct but I didn't want it to feel correct. I wanted it to feel wrong. It should have felt wrong, because it feeling right meant something was forcing me to feel that way and that my mind wasn't mine. Someone had changed me and I didn't even remember my name-
"AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"
By the time I was done screaming, I had carved a 10 meters deep perfectly smooth hole in the ground around me. The skin on my arms and legs had turned into a solid black material glowing with a vine-shaped fractal of tiny green rectangles linked at the corners.
The beehive energy barrier dissipated and I floated back to the ground, staring at my hands.
My arms changed back to something indistinguishable from human flesh and bone, my core confirming the return to non-combat status. I plopped down on shattered stone and curled my legs up to my chest, screwing my eyes shut and screaming into my knees. Why did this happen to me? Who or what did this to me? Why did I deserve this?
After a few minutes of that, I slowly picked myself up and climbed out of the hole I made. I clutched my jacket close to myself and looked around, wavering between fascination and fear as I tried to take in my surroundings better the second time. I stopped to look down at my feet when I felt the very squishy grass again. I realized then that it wasn't grass at all, but some form of liverwort. It was bright purple, like most everything else I could see.
I started walking deeper into the forest, slowly letting my distress fade as I saw more and more strange and fascinating things. What really drove it home for me was the moment I saw something that looked like a flying ant the size of my fist. It had a pair of ling antennae hanging from its head. Suddenly it waved the antennae around as they flashed in a rainbow of brilliant colors. Others of it species began doing the same thing. I was surrounded by hundreds of them. They lit up the darkness under the forest canopy all over in a psychedelic display.
'Pretty.' I thought, blushing slightly. Then I shook my head and slapped my cheeks, trying to get the stupid girly expression off my face.
Wasn't this something I dreamed about a lot once? I'd always wanted to see alien life, and I was surrounded by it. I'd always wanted to go visit another world, and here I was. That was... really fucking cool.
Maybe this wouldn't be so bad?
Feeling a bit better, I decided to make the most of this place. I wanted to see, learn, and explore. That was much better than letting my isolation and loneliness get hold of me. I had to do something. I had to avoid thinking about the negatives.
Over the next few days I covered surprisingly little distance. There was just so much stuff to see. Immediately obvious was why the plant life looked the way it did. The planet had less than half of Earth's gravity, so it was really easy for plants to grow really tall without a hardwood stalk like an Earth tree. That didn't mean there wasn't bark covering them. Many plants did have hard skin and other defenses to protect from pests. I couldn't find any flowering plants.
The world orbited a large blue star, which made plants tend to produce bright purple pigments rather than green. My measurements put the planet at a significant distance from its host star, nearly as far as Jupiter is from Sol. The day was 14 hours long and it had no moons. Given that lack of a moon, it would have a significant wobble over long periods of time. I was able to observe that there were at least 3 more planets in this system at more distant orbits, all much larger than this one.
As for animals, there were no mammals, birds or reptiles. Almost everything I found on land was bugs, worms and amphibians of various description. The oxygen level of the planet was really high. With the low gravity and abundant oxygen, the bugs grew to really huge proportions. One rather interesting species were these humongous dragonfly-like things with wings 5 times as wide as the length of their bodies. They flew at high altitudes and seemed to never land. There was also this weird frog-like animal with a pretty scary looking set of crushing teeth that liked to eat large shellfish and crustaceans in lakes. It tried to bite me, which hardly even tickled.
Days passed like this. I spent them examining everything around me—tagging, filing, looking at everything except myself. I felt happy. Exploring was fun, wasn't it? And yet, every time I looked away from the latest new insect, I'd hurriedly search for the next one. Every time I stopped walking to plan my next move I felt a tremendous void in my stomach, something I desperately tried to get away from but couldn't quite ignore.
Eventually, I was barely glancing at the colorful life-forms around me before flying onwards.
Finally, after what my sense of time told me was 130.2 hours—precisely, and thinking about that had distracted me for another half second, precisely—I had to admit that it wasn't working. It was after dark, and I was staring up at the stars from on top of a hippo-sized pillbug that hadn't particularly cared when I climbed on top of it. I was wondering if I might, at least, get an idea of where I was in the galaxy, if I was even in the same one. If I could recognize any of the patterns I remembered at all.
'... The stars are supposed to sing.' I remember thinking.
It wasn't any use. I didn't have a large enough detector to make observations that good into deep space. Even if I did, I didn't know what the Milky Way actually looked like in detail. I only vaguely understood there was a bar in the center and Earth was somewhere in a spur between two main arms. Seeing this galaxy side-on, it just looked like a big band of white behind blurry black and brown clouds of dust. Nothing I could identify as unique. There could be millions of galaxies out there that looked very similar to the Milky Way from this perspective. I could be anywhere.
"I'm trapped." I said -voice breaking, vision going blurry as the true hopelessness of my situation came crashing down on me. "No way out. N-no way home. I m-may nev-never see anyone a-again!"
Who was it I wanted to see? I fought for a memory of family and friends, but it refused to resolve into anything but a vague sense of warmth, peace, and... someone I couldn't make out. I remembered a series of events that was supposed to be my life; birthdays, school, sports, vacations, video games, but not a single face. No names. No people I could make out.
I was stuck here, all alone somewhere in the vast gulf of time and space. No one would ever come for me. No one would ever even know I existed. There weren't any signs of intelligent life anywhere. No industrialization, which I would have been able to detect in the atmosphere. I didn't have a ship body I could use to get off the planet, and there were access restrictions on my Union Core that prevented me from pulling up the protocols to manufacture more nanomaterials.
The pillbug finally moved and I slipped off of it into the dirt. I didn't bother to pick myself up. Laying face down, I pounded my fist weakly into the ground.
I lay there in a depressed lump for days. I practically shut down all my higher reasoning functions and just existed as an indistinct blob of misery for a while. The wonder and fascination with seeing and touching life elsewhere in the universe had withered and died. I then saw nothing but a strange and lonely place, hopelessly isolated from everything I knew and cared about. With an ageless body, I would be there until the host star went supernova many millions of years later and vaporized the whole system.
Maybe something would evolve that could talk to me before that happened...
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Part 2
- Location
- EXA_PICO
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Part 2
I tried to motivate myself to pursue some kind of goal. I tried to turn random bugs into pets, but I quickly learned that I suck at taking care of animals. I tried building myself a house before realizing that would serve no purpose for me. I tried exploring more, seeing if there was more to the planet besides jungle valleys. I crossed a rocky desert for a few days until finally finding a river I followed to an ocean. I briefly considered doing more exploring there seeing as I am technically a warship, but that motivation simply wasn't there.
One day I got an urge to try singing. My new voice seemed pretty nice, but I didn't know the first thing about using it. Still, I was scraping the bottom of the barrel for things to occupy myself and this seemed like a half-decent idea.
Not knowing anything about composing good lyrics, I just wanted to hear my own voice make nice sounds. I went through scale, rather impressed at my vocal range. Figures a machine woman would have perfect vocal chords... It was oddly more satisfying than just about anything else I'd tried to do, but I had a chronic self-confidence problem that prevented me from taking it seriously. I dropped that line of thought within hours, convinced there wasn't a point to singing all alone where no one would hear me.
Without the needs of a biological body, I effectively had nothing to press me to action aside from a vain hope of getting off the planet. Even assuming I could get out of the system, I had no idea where I would go. Without any survival needs to drive me forward, I was nothing but an object without purpose or direction.
I was absolutely awful at motivating myself to take action, to do anything at all. It was pitiful and quite deserving of ridicule. I went on like that for weeks, spending most of my days idle and moping uselessly as I let life pass me by. My moods would swing wildly from rage to severe depression several times a day.
One Earth-scale month later, I couldn't take that anymore. I was sitting on a rock staring out into the ocean, wondering like I had many times before why this happened to me. Why was I here? Why was I in this body? Why give me this form and then leave me stranded here alone? Why place those restrictions on my core just to make it harder for me to escape? What was the point of all this?
As I had been before, I was angry. At my situation, at this planet, at whatever did this to me... and myself. I was mostly angry with myself. I hated my indecisiveness, my procrastinating nature, my failure at driving myself to action, and most importantly I hated my defeatist attitude. I knew that I was my own worst enemy, that it was me stranding me here with my depressed emotional state and my lingering human mentality. So what if getting out of here would take decades, maybe centuries of constant labor? I had time. I had all the time.
'What if I stop thinking like a human?' I wondered. 'What if I shut off these feelings that just get in the way of taking action? It's not like emotions are helping me right now.'
I watched the water lapping against my bare feet, wondering what it would be like to just... feel nothing. I'd never experienced what it was like for my core to operate without the mental model's emotion emulator, so I only understood how I would function in an intellectual sense. I knew that I wouldn't do something like logic myself to suicide, as I was first and foremost programmed for self-preservation. No matter how much I may have wanted to commit suicide because of my emotions, there were subtle roadblocks deep in my core's programming that would always prevent me from doing it.
'Fuck it, I really don't have anything to lose.' I thought, and deactivated the emulator. It was...
My thoughts were never interrupted by random feelings, my mind was completely clear of excessive doubts, and I never got bored. Without emotions, time became a meaningless barrier to me. My mind commanded itself to act, and no emotions stood in the way. I labored for weeks without pause or complaint.
Yet something still remained distinctly wrong. Even with my emotions turned off, eventually I wouldn't be able to stand having them inactive anymore. Even with that limitation, it helped. It let me remain active and working for extended periods. When my emotions reasserted themselves, I would avoid having them bother me by putting myself into hibernation for a few days. My life became a routine of emotionless work and fitful sleep.
Things went like that for the next 3 years...
7 months: Selected location for construction of underground storage facility and workshop. Gathering plants for study of useful chemical compounds. Making note of locations with surface deposits of metal ore, such as copper, iron, nickel, tin and so-on.
9 months: Storehouse complete. Space allocated for future expansions as-needed. Begun construction of blast furnace and refinery.
1 year, 2months: Mapped most of the continent. Noted presence of many cave entrances, some of which appear to be burrowed by large animals. Workshop has expanded to include a chemistry lab.
1 year, 5 months: Ventured out to open water. Encountered very large predatory crustacean. Killed it. Found useful chemicals in its shell and organs. Harvesting of animals for further useful compounds noted as feasible and added to priorities.
1 year, 8 months: Electric system for facility completed. Chemicals needed for production of solar cells assigned priority. Constructing internal combustion engine, though hydrocarbon fuel is required.
1 year, 10 months: Oceanic exploration continues. No other large land masses encountered. Planet likely only has one continent. Minimal volcanic activity diminishes likelihood of island formation in deep water.
2 years, 3months: Completed chemical synthesizers. Constructing test engine. Cooking fuel mixes.
2 years, 6 months: Test engine failed. Materials irrecoverable.
2 years, 11 months: 3rd test engine failed to meet standards. Heavier metals and radiological elements required for improved test engine model. No surface or underwater deposits encountered. Begun survey of underground caverns for potential sources.
Eventually I gathered all the materials I could from surface mining and harvesting of flora and fauna. I had to go underground to find some metals and minerals, but given the small size of this planet and its lack of significant plate tectonics I doubted I would find all that I needed. If I failed to find my materials underground... well, this would take me a hell of a lot longer.
I went exploring into the cave systems hoping I would find an ore vein of something like uranium, of which painfully little existed on the surface. After a few weeks climbing down caves that ended in dead ends or flooded pits without any exits, I managed to find one that seemed to go down very deep.
As I went deeper, I made note of more new species that I'd never encountered before. I payed them no more attention than I needed to scan them to the cellular level and record everything about their biology for later study. I never saw anything new with the animals on this planet. I pretty much understood the entire tree of life for this small world and I'd only been here for 3 Earth years. Even when I saw a new animal, it wasn't really a different experience.
That was what my logical mind had thought right up until the moment I ran into something I could never have predicted at all.
I floated deeper into the caves, long having passed the point where any natural light could reach. I marked all the promising deposits I could detect, making note of chemicals in the rock that would indicate certain metals nearby. Though I never stopped working or moving, I did often slow down simply because I didn't need to move any faster much of the time. This was one of the moments I was moving more slowly, in something of a "relaxed" state. My sensors weren't looking for threats, only materials. I didn't think there could be anything threatening to me, as practically indestructible as I was by a human standard.
So when I detected a rapidly moving object coming at me from a large tunnel to my left, I was rather unprepared. Not too unprepared, mind you. I put up my Klein Field and blocked what turned out to be a large slab of rock thrown at nearly supersonic speed. My systems immediately went into full combat mode, my skin turning black all over my body and my sigils lighting up.
It rushed out of the tunnel with unexpected speed for its great size. It was a huge millipede-like creature with legs like broadswords. My scans picked up an unrecognized form of radiation emanating from its body. It charged at me, swinging a pair of massive scythe-like forelimbs that moved much faster than I was sure its biology should have allowed. Even with their speed my Klein Field blocked them easily enough, but that wasn't what I'd wanted to happen. I'd been expecting the force of my field's repulsion to shatter the limbs into blood and gore, not just bounce them off.
Then the creature spit light at me. It opened its mandibles and belched a purple energy beam that I actually took pains to evade, not wanting my field to saturate more than a few percent if I could avoid it. The beam plowed through the floor where I'd been floating a brief instant before, filling the chamber with vaporized rock. The beast seemed to slow down momentarily as it recovered from the effort of using this attack, and I didn't hesitate to strike back.
Rather than further saturate my Klein Field, I propelled myself at the millipede and punched it through the brain cavity. This took vastly more effort than it should have, about as much as I would need to put my harder-than-diamond fist through a main battle tank. The creature had been faster and tougher than biologically possible, and somehow fired an energy beam at me with the power of a small-caliber Photon Cannon. It could have killed me had I been hit with that and not had my combat form active.
That didn't add up. It didn't add up at all.
I tried to motivate myself to pursue some kind of goal. I tried to turn random bugs into pets, but I quickly learned that I suck at taking care of animals. I tried building myself a house before realizing that would serve no purpose for me. I tried exploring more, seeing if there was more to the planet besides jungle valleys. I crossed a rocky desert for a few days until finally finding a river I followed to an ocean. I briefly considered doing more exploring there seeing as I am technically a warship, but that motivation simply wasn't there.
One day I got an urge to try singing. My new voice seemed pretty nice, but I didn't know the first thing about using it. Still, I was scraping the bottom of the barrel for things to occupy myself and this seemed like a half-decent idea.
Not knowing anything about composing good lyrics, I just wanted to hear my own voice make nice sounds. I went through scale, rather impressed at my vocal range. Figures a machine woman would have perfect vocal chords... It was oddly more satisfying than just about anything else I'd tried to do, but I had a chronic self-confidence problem that prevented me from taking it seriously. I dropped that line of thought within hours, convinced there wasn't a point to singing all alone where no one would hear me.
Without the needs of a biological body, I effectively had nothing to press me to action aside from a vain hope of getting off the planet. Even assuming I could get out of the system, I had no idea where I would go. Without any survival needs to drive me forward, I was nothing but an object without purpose or direction.
I was absolutely awful at motivating myself to take action, to do anything at all. It was pitiful and quite deserving of ridicule. I went on like that for weeks, spending most of my days idle and moping uselessly as I let life pass me by. My moods would swing wildly from rage to severe depression several times a day.
One Earth-scale month later, I couldn't take that anymore. I was sitting on a rock staring out into the ocean, wondering like I had many times before why this happened to me. Why was I here? Why was I in this body? Why give me this form and then leave me stranded here alone? Why place those restrictions on my core just to make it harder for me to escape? What was the point of all this?
As I had been before, I was angry. At my situation, at this planet, at whatever did this to me... and myself. I was mostly angry with myself. I hated my indecisiveness, my procrastinating nature, my failure at driving myself to action, and most importantly I hated my defeatist attitude. I knew that I was my own worst enemy, that it was me stranding me here with my depressed emotional state and my lingering human mentality. So what if getting out of here would take decades, maybe centuries of constant labor? I had time. I had all the time.
'What if I stop thinking like a human?' I wondered. 'What if I shut off these feelings that just get in the way of taking action? It's not like emotions are helping me right now.'
I watched the water lapping against my bare feet, wondering what it would be like to just... feel nothing. I'd never experienced what it was like for my core to operate without the mental model's emotion emulator, so I only understood how I would function in an intellectual sense. I knew that I wouldn't do something like logic myself to suicide, as I was first and foremost programmed for self-preservation. No matter how much I may have wanted to commit suicide because of my emotions, there were subtle roadblocks deep in my core's programming that would always prevent me from doing it.
'Fuck it, I really don't have anything to lose.' I thought, and deactivated the emulator. It was...
My thoughts were never interrupted by random feelings, my mind was completely clear of excessive doubts, and I never got bored. Without emotions, time became a meaningless barrier to me. My mind commanded itself to act, and no emotions stood in the way. I labored for weeks without pause or complaint.
Yet something still remained distinctly wrong. Even with my emotions turned off, eventually I wouldn't be able to stand having them inactive anymore. Even with that limitation, it helped. It let me remain active and working for extended periods. When my emotions reasserted themselves, I would avoid having them bother me by putting myself into hibernation for a few days. My life became a routine of emotionless work and fitful sleep.
Things went like that for the next 3 years...
7 months: Selected location for construction of underground storage facility and workshop. Gathering plants for study of useful chemical compounds. Making note of locations with surface deposits of metal ore, such as copper, iron, nickel, tin and so-on.
9 months: Storehouse complete. Space allocated for future expansions as-needed. Begun construction of blast furnace and refinery.
1 year, 2months: Mapped most of the continent. Noted presence of many cave entrances, some of which appear to be burrowed by large animals. Workshop has expanded to include a chemistry lab.
1 year, 5 months: Ventured out to open water. Encountered very large predatory crustacean. Killed it. Found useful chemicals in its shell and organs. Harvesting of animals for further useful compounds noted as feasible and added to priorities.
1 year, 8 months: Electric system for facility completed. Chemicals needed for production of solar cells assigned priority. Constructing internal combustion engine, though hydrocarbon fuel is required.
1 year, 10 months: Oceanic exploration continues. No other large land masses encountered. Planet likely only has one continent. Minimal volcanic activity diminishes likelihood of island formation in deep water.
2 years, 3months: Completed chemical synthesizers. Constructing test engine. Cooking fuel mixes.
2 years, 6 months: Test engine failed. Materials irrecoverable.
2 years, 11 months: 3rd test engine failed to meet standards. Heavier metals and radiological elements required for improved test engine model. No surface or underwater deposits encountered. Begun survey of underground caverns for potential sources.
Eventually I gathered all the materials I could from surface mining and harvesting of flora and fauna. I had to go underground to find some metals and minerals, but given the small size of this planet and its lack of significant plate tectonics I doubted I would find all that I needed. If I failed to find my materials underground... well, this would take me a hell of a lot longer.
I went exploring into the cave systems hoping I would find an ore vein of something like uranium, of which painfully little existed on the surface. After a few weeks climbing down caves that ended in dead ends or flooded pits without any exits, I managed to find one that seemed to go down very deep.
As I went deeper, I made note of more new species that I'd never encountered before. I payed them no more attention than I needed to scan them to the cellular level and record everything about their biology for later study. I never saw anything new with the animals on this planet. I pretty much understood the entire tree of life for this small world and I'd only been here for 3 Earth years. Even when I saw a new animal, it wasn't really a different experience.
That was what my logical mind had thought right up until the moment I ran into something I could never have predicted at all.
I floated deeper into the caves, long having passed the point where any natural light could reach. I marked all the promising deposits I could detect, making note of chemicals in the rock that would indicate certain metals nearby. Though I never stopped working or moving, I did often slow down simply because I didn't need to move any faster much of the time. This was one of the moments I was moving more slowly, in something of a "relaxed" state. My sensors weren't looking for threats, only materials. I didn't think there could be anything threatening to me, as practically indestructible as I was by a human standard.
So when I detected a rapidly moving object coming at me from a large tunnel to my left, I was rather unprepared. Not too unprepared, mind you. I put up my Klein Field and blocked what turned out to be a large slab of rock thrown at nearly supersonic speed. My systems immediately went into full combat mode, my skin turning black all over my body and my sigils lighting up.
It rushed out of the tunnel with unexpected speed for its great size. It was a huge millipede-like creature with legs like broadswords. My scans picked up an unrecognized form of radiation emanating from its body. It charged at me, swinging a pair of massive scythe-like forelimbs that moved much faster than I was sure its biology should have allowed. Even with their speed my Klein Field blocked them easily enough, but that wasn't what I'd wanted to happen. I'd been expecting the force of my field's repulsion to shatter the limbs into blood and gore, not just bounce them off.
Then the creature spit light at me. It opened its mandibles and belched a purple energy beam that I actually took pains to evade, not wanting my field to saturate more than a few percent if I could avoid it. The beam plowed through the floor where I'd been floating a brief instant before, filling the chamber with vaporized rock. The beast seemed to slow down momentarily as it recovered from the effort of using this attack, and I didn't hesitate to strike back.
Rather than further saturate my Klein Field, I propelled myself at the millipede and punched it through the brain cavity. This took vastly more effort than it should have, about as much as I would need to put my harder-than-diamond fist through a main battle tank. The creature had been faster and tougher than biologically possible, and somehow fired an energy beam at me with the power of a small-caliber Photon Cannon. It could have killed me had I been hit with that and not had my combat form active.
That didn't add up. It didn't add up at all.
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Part 3
- Location
- EXA_PICO
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Part 3
The dead animal's brain matter slid off my hand like water as I observed its car-sized corpse. My logic center struggled to formulate a reasonable explanation for what I had just encountered. Based on all of the information I knew about life on this planet, this creature was entirely out of place. Nothing I had seen so far explained it. After a few seconds of internal debate, I reactivated my emotion emulator. Maybe that would get me some useful input.
"Oh my shit, what the flying fuck did I just kill?! How did it shoot a plasma beam at me?!"
Well, not immediately it seemed. After taking some time to calm myself, I examined the corpse closely with all my sensors. I could no longer detect any of that strange radiation that it produced while alive, not even a trace of its presence in the environment. Now dead, its body was significantly less durable, being broken with little more force than an especially strong human could exert. That didn't make any sense. I rifled through my memories to try and come up with an explanation.
'Maybe... maybe it's using some kind of reactive carapace? Running an energy field like an electric current through its exoskeleton that hardens the material. When it's dead, there's no energy and the skin becomes weak.'
That made perfect sense, and I felt pretty smug about being so smart. Then I thought more and realized this didn't explain nearly enough. And that made me feel dumb.
'Where does the energy beam come from?'
There were giant bugs with superpowers in these caverns, and they could potentially have been a credible threat to me. They were also interfering with my objectives. I needed to understand what I was dealing with and the dead specimen was useless to me.
I was moving again, this time with my sensors prepared for threat identification and my combat form fully active. My body reduced its thermal output to almost nothing and stopped emitting any light, and I configured my Klein Field to prevent my movements from significantly disturbing surrounding airflow. I went into the tunnel that millipede thing had come from, very quickly noticing a change in the scenery. These tunnels were clearly carved out manually, and I could detect unusually high airflow. The chemical composition of the air indicated a significant amount of animal respiration. There was a population of these creatures down here, but I struggled to understand how they could survive so far underground and still grow to such an immense size.
A foul odor hit me when I came upon a series of large chambers. The temperature in here was significantly higher than the surrounding caves. A fungal growth carpeted the floor several meters thick, pumping out heat as it metabolized collected plant matter. The walls of these rooms were riddled with holes, the smallest of which were about the size of the first animal I'd killed. Some of them were nearly thrice that size. Going by the chemical makeup of the air flowing into the rooms, some of these tunnels went to the surface to provide better ventilation. That would explain where their food came from, but I was greatly surprised that I had never noticed these animals before.
The strangest thing, though... I couldn't hear anything moving nearby. Not the slightest scratch on the rock met my auditory sensors. I was inside what had to be a really important fungus farm, yet I didn't detect a sign that any of these animals were around. Even if they didn't notice me here, they should still have been... I dunno, tending to the fungus?
'Shit's weird, yo.'
I moved even farther for several more minutes at a cautious pace. Then I found the first sign of what I was looking for. Entering an intersection of multiple branching corridors, I stumbled on the corpse of a very large member of this energy-spitting millipede species. The corpse seemed fresh at first, but on more deeply scanning it I found that its insides were turned into nothing but a bone-dry powder. Several large puncture wounds marred the center portion of its underside, and its limbs were scratched all over with signs of an apparent struggle. The surrounding walls were scarred by blast craters and holes from energy beams.
This enormous superpowered animal had fought something here, and lost. I found traces of genetic material all around that I determined came from its attacker and collected samples of it. The genetic structure was something completely new, unlike any other species on this planet. Unfortunately I lacked any programs that could use genetic information to construct a model of the lifeform it came from, leaving me without any idea what this predator looked like.
A sense of foreboding filled me as I kept going. For the first time since... well, since I woke up on this planet, I was actually afraid. As I silently floated through the tunnels, coming across more dessicated bodies filled with powdered flesh and organs, the first hints of panic were creeping their way into my thoughts. Even though darkness was no hindrance to me, I suddenly felt suffocated and trapped. I was nearly a mile underground, with a very long and winding path back to the surface behind me.
'No, stop. Think about what you are and what you're capable of. The big energy spitting bugs were a surprise, but even the really large ones you've seen shouldn't be able to harm you unless they attack in massive numbers. Don't be prideful, but remember how ridiculous something would have to be to seriously threaten you.'
Coming up on another large chamber connected to a bunch more tunnels, I suddenly stopped upon hearing a peculiar noise. It was faint, but I picked up a low thumping like a heartbeat from one of the branches leading upward. The sound was too indistinct to form an image map, but it was clear something fleshy was up there. I didn't use any of my active sensors, fearing that whatever it was would detect what I put out.
Then I heard a screeching noise echo through the caves, and the thumping multiplied. My advanced warning system registered the screeching as enemy sonar, and alerted me to being detected. Something swooped down at me from above, and I finally made out the mystery creature. It was a large green jellyfish like thing as big as a man, a set of large grasping teeth positioned around the mouth on its underside. Inside its translucent bulbous body was a network of pulsing red organs like the nuclei of a single-celled organism. It filled the chamber with an eerie bioluminescence and seemed to float in the air without any form of propulsion, much like myself.
It was a metroid. A fucking METROID. But, that's impossible! Metroids aren't even real! They're fiction! From a video game! I played Metroid as a little kid... didn't I? I grew up playing those games, exploring underground worlds and fighting evil Space Pirates.
Suddenly the state of the corpses I'd found before made complete sense; their insides turned to powder from the life quite literally being sucked out of them. It also explained the eerie quiet, now broken by the sound of hundreds of huge bugs stirred into a frenzy all around me. The millipedes were all sitting so still they didn't even breath or produce heartbeats, trying to hide until the metroid passed or ambush it in numbers to kill the damn thing.
Now that metroid saw me as its next victim. A fictional monster from my choldhood was attacking me! I responded to that in the most appropriate way.
"Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!" I screamed, grabbing it with my Klein Field. "No, no no no no! Go away!"
Then I slammed it into the wall. Repeatedly. I kept smashing it until it turned to paste and it evaporated into a greenish mist.
"Skreeeeee!" I heard all around me, along with one distinct noise that would have made my blood run cold had I actually possessed any blood in my body. I'd heard this animal's call once before, a long time ago. It was at the final confrontation of the game that concluded the long saga of Samus Aran's life involving metroids and the planet they came from.
Then, just as it had in that game from my pre-teen memories, that armored therapod-shaped manifestation of death plowed through a wall and locked onto me with its eight ruby red eyes.
"Ooooohhhhh SHIIIIIT!"
As soon as I turned and started flying, bus-sized laser bugs came flooding into the room spitting purple death at the Omega Metroid. They didn't even pay me any attention, focused as they were at eliminating what they saw as threat numero uno. I heard what was unmistakably a sonic boom behind me. I had a decent idea what caused it, but I didn't bother turning around to confirm. I heard guts being splattered in every direction like a grenade going off in a watermelon, giving me as much confirmation as I really needed.
I fled back up the same path that took me down there from the surface, hearing that sound over and over again until I was finally too far away to hear it anymore. I found myself glad I couldn't throw up, as that sound kept playing back in my mind with the mental image of myself as the unfortunate victim getting exploded by the metroid's supersonic claw swipes.
The dead animal's brain matter slid off my hand like water as I observed its car-sized corpse. My logic center struggled to formulate a reasonable explanation for what I had just encountered. Based on all of the information I knew about life on this planet, this creature was entirely out of place. Nothing I had seen so far explained it. After a few seconds of internal debate, I reactivated my emotion emulator. Maybe that would get me some useful input.
"Oh my shit, what the flying fuck did I just kill?! How did it shoot a plasma beam at me?!"
Well, not immediately it seemed. After taking some time to calm myself, I examined the corpse closely with all my sensors. I could no longer detect any of that strange radiation that it produced while alive, not even a trace of its presence in the environment. Now dead, its body was significantly less durable, being broken with little more force than an especially strong human could exert. That didn't make any sense. I rifled through my memories to try and come up with an explanation.
'Maybe... maybe it's using some kind of reactive carapace? Running an energy field like an electric current through its exoskeleton that hardens the material. When it's dead, there's no energy and the skin becomes weak.'
That made perfect sense, and I felt pretty smug about being so smart. Then I thought more and realized this didn't explain nearly enough. And that made me feel dumb.
'Where does the energy beam come from?'
There were giant bugs with superpowers in these caverns, and they could potentially have been a credible threat to me. They were also interfering with my objectives. I needed to understand what I was dealing with and the dead specimen was useless to me.
I was moving again, this time with my sensors prepared for threat identification and my combat form fully active. My body reduced its thermal output to almost nothing and stopped emitting any light, and I configured my Klein Field to prevent my movements from significantly disturbing surrounding airflow. I went into the tunnel that millipede thing had come from, very quickly noticing a change in the scenery. These tunnels were clearly carved out manually, and I could detect unusually high airflow. The chemical composition of the air indicated a significant amount of animal respiration. There was a population of these creatures down here, but I struggled to understand how they could survive so far underground and still grow to such an immense size.
A foul odor hit me when I came upon a series of large chambers. The temperature in here was significantly higher than the surrounding caves. A fungal growth carpeted the floor several meters thick, pumping out heat as it metabolized collected plant matter. The walls of these rooms were riddled with holes, the smallest of which were about the size of the first animal I'd killed. Some of them were nearly thrice that size. Going by the chemical makeup of the air flowing into the rooms, some of these tunnels went to the surface to provide better ventilation. That would explain where their food came from, but I was greatly surprised that I had never noticed these animals before.
The strangest thing, though... I couldn't hear anything moving nearby. Not the slightest scratch on the rock met my auditory sensors. I was inside what had to be a really important fungus farm, yet I didn't detect a sign that any of these animals were around. Even if they didn't notice me here, they should still have been... I dunno, tending to the fungus?
'Shit's weird, yo.'
I moved even farther for several more minutes at a cautious pace. Then I found the first sign of what I was looking for. Entering an intersection of multiple branching corridors, I stumbled on the corpse of a very large member of this energy-spitting millipede species. The corpse seemed fresh at first, but on more deeply scanning it I found that its insides were turned into nothing but a bone-dry powder. Several large puncture wounds marred the center portion of its underside, and its limbs were scratched all over with signs of an apparent struggle. The surrounding walls were scarred by blast craters and holes from energy beams.
This enormous superpowered animal had fought something here, and lost. I found traces of genetic material all around that I determined came from its attacker and collected samples of it. The genetic structure was something completely new, unlike any other species on this planet. Unfortunately I lacked any programs that could use genetic information to construct a model of the lifeform it came from, leaving me without any idea what this predator looked like.
A sense of foreboding filled me as I kept going. For the first time since... well, since I woke up on this planet, I was actually afraid. As I silently floated through the tunnels, coming across more dessicated bodies filled with powdered flesh and organs, the first hints of panic were creeping their way into my thoughts. Even though darkness was no hindrance to me, I suddenly felt suffocated and trapped. I was nearly a mile underground, with a very long and winding path back to the surface behind me.
'No, stop. Think about what you are and what you're capable of. The big energy spitting bugs were a surprise, but even the really large ones you've seen shouldn't be able to harm you unless they attack in massive numbers. Don't be prideful, but remember how ridiculous something would have to be to seriously threaten you.'
Coming up on another large chamber connected to a bunch more tunnels, I suddenly stopped upon hearing a peculiar noise. It was faint, but I picked up a low thumping like a heartbeat from one of the branches leading upward. The sound was too indistinct to form an image map, but it was clear something fleshy was up there. I didn't use any of my active sensors, fearing that whatever it was would detect what I put out.
Then I heard a screeching noise echo through the caves, and the thumping multiplied. My advanced warning system registered the screeching as enemy sonar, and alerted me to being detected. Something swooped down at me from above, and I finally made out the mystery creature. It was a large green jellyfish like thing as big as a man, a set of large grasping teeth positioned around the mouth on its underside. Inside its translucent bulbous body was a network of pulsing red organs like the nuclei of a single-celled organism. It filled the chamber with an eerie bioluminescence and seemed to float in the air without any form of propulsion, much like myself.
It was a metroid. A fucking METROID. But, that's impossible! Metroids aren't even real! They're fiction! From a video game! I played Metroid as a little kid... didn't I? I grew up playing those games, exploring underground worlds and fighting evil Space Pirates.
Suddenly the state of the corpses I'd found before made complete sense; their insides turned to powder from the life quite literally being sucked out of them. It also explained the eerie quiet, now broken by the sound of hundreds of huge bugs stirred into a frenzy all around me. The millipedes were all sitting so still they didn't even breath or produce heartbeats, trying to hide until the metroid passed or ambush it in numbers to kill the damn thing.
Now that metroid saw me as its next victim. A fictional monster from my choldhood was attacking me! I responded to that in the most appropriate way.
"Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!" I screamed, grabbing it with my Klein Field. "No, no no no no! Go away!"
Then I slammed it into the wall. Repeatedly. I kept smashing it until it turned to paste and it evaporated into a greenish mist.
"Skreeeeee!" I heard all around me, along with one distinct noise that would have made my blood run cold had I actually possessed any blood in my body. I'd heard this animal's call once before, a long time ago. It was at the final confrontation of the game that concluded the long saga of Samus Aran's life involving metroids and the planet they came from.
Then, just as it had in that game from my pre-teen memories, that armored therapod-shaped manifestation of death plowed through a wall and locked onto me with its eight ruby red eyes.
"Ooooohhhhh SHIIIIIT!"
As soon as I turned and started flying, bus-sized laser bugs came flooding into the room spitting purple death at the Omega Metroid. They didn't even pay me any attention, focused as they were at eliminating what they saw as threat numero uno. I heard what was unmistakably a sonic boom behind me. I had a decent idea what caused it, but I didn't bother turning around to confirm. I heard guts being splattered in every direction like a grenade going off in a watermelon, giving me as much confirmation as I really needed.
I fled back up the same path that took me down there from the surface, hearing that sound over and over again until I was finally too far away to hear it anymore. I found myself glad I couldn't throw up, as that sound kept playing back in my mind with the mental image of myself as the unfortunate victim getting exploded by the metroid's supersonic claw swipes.
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Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
I'm left wondering what the limits are, as far as things Einsig can tank with her Klein Field go. Also liking the outlook when she disables her emotions, as I have never encountered such a description for what an emotionless being would be like till now.
Would be handy for when you have to do something you don't find fun, that's for certain. Like homework, or cleaning the house.
Would be handy for when you have to do something you don't find fun, that's for certain. Like homework, or cleaning the house.
jwolfe_beta
Semi Genre-Savvy Overlord
- Location
- Canada
No idea, but I doubt she wants to stay and experiment.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
And that appearance.
I'm going to register my decision that one of the crossovers involved is Ar Tonelico. Which makes a surprising amount of sense, and I'd be sad if I hadn't thought of it first.
To clarify, here's Einsig's new body—I think. (Mildly NSFW): https://brage.info/mir.jpg
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Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
We know Metroid is a crossover at least, due to the fact one has appeared in front of our protagonist, alerted the rest and now she's fleeing from the horde. Presumably one more, considering the laser-worm, unless that's a thing in Metroid? Haven't played the games, so wouldn't know.
That include the bodysuit, or is it just the hair, skin and eye colour/shapes? The only NSFW I can see is the pose the lady's lying in, as well as the fact her breasts and lower-body aren't really covered all that much.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Which I can't find, but somewhat more like this, perhaps...
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jwolfe_beta
Semi Genre-Savvy Overlord
- Location
- Canada
She's a sentient mass of sufficiently advanced nanomachines. Her human appearance is only skin deep and most/all environmental issues for a human mean nothing to her.
An example could be that in one of the more recent chapters a mental model was walking along the sea floor with no problem. Her only complaint is that it was a much slower means of travel then she ever wanted to do.
- Location
- EXA_PICO
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Baughn actually explained this better than I could. A human without any form of emotions would quite literally sit and do nothing. It would be like the most severe state of depression imaginable. You would have absolutely no feelings or desires. You would never want anything or feel any drive to do something.
An AI doesn't work like that, as they are built from the ground up as a goal-oriented system. Removing emotions just makes my SI fall back on her most basic programming, which is to ensure her long-term survival. Even if the star exploding in the extreme distant future isn't a motivator, having a way off-planet in case of any other random catastrophe that might kill her is just a basic necessity.
Black Noise
Curious
- Location
- About 1AU from Sol
I'm glad to see you writing Fog again @Einsig.
You've made a very vivid portrayal of an inhuman viewpoint, not the best depiction of a truly alien world I've seen but still a very good one, and of course there's that distinct character voice and way of talking/thinking in general that I really liked about 'fog on a windshield' and is still going strong here.
The premise in the first chapters is also scarily similar to one I've had a while back (low-mid tier superhuman/effective immortal stranded on an empty alien world, only my idea is on Hard Mode and with hardish scifi). I wonder how that came about.
Speaking of that manner of speech I really like:
Initially thought those were Zerg, but apparently it's metroids.
I liked the seat-of-pants planning and mindgames that Code Geass allowed in Fog on a Windshield, and from what little I know about the franchise, this Fog ship-girl (that really needs a name) won't be as comparatively overpowering. On the other hand, she is made from "Nanomachines Son", and with emotions off she ought to be pretty efficient in combat, and the characters are the real driving force here anyway.
All in all, another AI girl out of her world to follow besides Catalyst [Rebecca].
You've made a very vivid portrayal of an inhuman viewpoint, not the best depiction of a truly alien world I've seen but still a very good one, and of course there's that distinct character voice and way of talking/thinking in general that I really liked about 'fog on a windshield' and is still going strong here.
The premise in the first chapters is also scarily similar to one I've had a while back (low-mid tier superhuman/effective immortal stranded on an empty alien world, only my idea is on Hard Mode and with hardish scifi). I wonder how that came about.
Speaking of that manner of speech I really like:
Initially thought those were Zerg, but apparently it's metroids.
I liked the seat-of-pants planning and mindgames that Code Geass allowed in Fog on a Windshield, and from what little I know about the franchise, this Fog ship-girl (that really needs a name) won't be as comparatively overpowering. On the other hand, she is made from "Nanomachines Son", and with emotions off she ought to be pretty efficient in combat, and the characters are the real driving force here anyway.
All in all, another AI girl out of her world to follow besides Catalyst [Rebecca].
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Yay! Need more arpeggio stories
Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
So now you flee from an Omega Metroid, compared to the swarm of Metroid from before. We also have some living worm things now.
Part 4
- Location
- EXA_PICO
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Part 4
Metroids. Why, of all things, metroids? Whatever I had been expecting to run into, they weren't it. Could they drain energy from my body? I had no idea. Nobody in the Metroid universe had any idea what the hell metroids actually drained from their victims, despite extensive research into the species by both Zebesian space pirates and the Galactic Federation. They all gave up and called it "life energy", following a time-honored tradition of scientists giving something a vaguely descriptive name that translates to "I have no idea what this is", much like dark energy and dark matter. Suffice it to say, metroids were pretty much magic as far as science understood them.
A few weeks after that bowel-emptying (if I had any) experience, I found myself still facing the same issues that got me into it in the first place. I'd done some seismic readings of most of the single large continent that made up most of the planet's surface. Underground caverns seemed to run under almost every square kilometer of land. If I dug down far enough, I would have hit a cave eventually. Where there were caves, there would probably be metroids, if not the laser bugs.
There was no running away from it. If I wanted to continue my work underground, I needed either to avoid the freakish monstrosities down there, or kill the bastards. Given what I knew that single Omega did to a horde of superpowered bugs that could shoot artillery-strength energy beams, I much preferred the idea of not fighting them.
I needed a stealth mode. Most of the requirements were covered easily without even altering my standard form. My body was completely odorless, so there was no way it could smell me. My Klein Field could dampen air disturbances I caused while moving. I was already masking my heat by holding it inside my Wave Armor.
Rounding out the package would need some reconstruction. Admittedly, this form was going to be far more vulnerable to injury than my combat form, but I absolutely never wanted to fight those magic space leeches if I could help it.
EXEC_SDW=RECONFIG/.
My body suddenly froze and shifted while my clothes and hair melted into my form. If I hadn't already performed the combat mode body morph multiple times over the years, this would have been really disturbing to me. Everything was working fine, though. There was no reason to be concerned, but how did I know that for sure? No there was a reason to be concerned. This was the first time I'd ever used a non-standard form that wasn't pre-loaded and I... it was an unfamiliar form and I wasn't quite sure how I'd done it.
That seemed wrong to me. It didn't feel right. That was too... black box. The permission locks keeping me out of most of my core were bad enough. I didn't need to have programs running without me understanding what their underlying mechanisms were. This was my mind, I shouldn't have been in the dark about this.
But then I realized I hadn't been looking. Well, I had been looking, but not really. Not in the way that actually would have shown me what was hidden in there. I picked out programs and ran them, watching them perform their operations. The input and the output I understood perfectly fine. It was the in-between I was failing to see because I'd never interacted with it consciously before. Everything I did was intuitive and instinctive, the same as breathing or blinking is for humans. I did and I thought, but I didn't really examine.
But that body configuration I'd just "created", it required more interaction than simply flipping a preset program on and off. It wasn't an instinctive movement that required barely any thought. I needed to think about what I wanted because I wasn't sure on the details. However, to keep me from knowing exactly what was going on I had to both see it and not see it. My conscious mind was aware something had happened and had been watching it happen, but not close enough to really understand.
It was like... like I was standing on a frozen lake. I could see a distorted blur of something vast beneath the translucent ice. Making the stealth form required me to stick my arm down into the ice and pick out pieces I needed. I could feel the form of what I was taking with my hand, but once it came out it wasn't in the same form. So I felt what it was, but didn't see it.
I could have stepped hard on that thin shell and broken through. All I had to do was... ask how it worked. Just run the program again and think 'How does this work?'
I was afraid of what I might find.
I was more afraid of being trapped here with metroids. I needed to unlock these secrets if I wanted to get out of here. So I looked. Actually looked.
I'm... I'm not what I thought I was. Not entirely at least. When I first saw what was really hidden underneath the surface of my systems, I thought I'd been duped; that I wasn't Fog at all, just a damn good approximation created by someone with a technology base that would have been very good at making one.
It wasn't quite that simple. I looked until I was too overwhelmed by information and stopped, and I saw enough to get the gist of what was going on.
A far as I can tell, I am still Fog. Just not entirely Fog. I have a real Union Core, as real as it could possibly be, with all the correct components inside... plus extra. Well, maybe that's not quite trustworthy either. How would I really know what should and shouldn't be there? I really couldn't, but it was... too painful to think that far.
Now that I know, everything makes sense. I know who I look like now. My hair is different and my eyes are a brighter shade, but my face is an exact likeness of someone I now know; who I can now remember, because I broke open the barrier preventing me from doing so. The sudden urge to sing I got many months ago wasn't just something I did because I was bored.
The top-level commands for my programs felt wrong, because they aren't Fog command lexicon. Someone wrote those over the top of my original command functions. The original commands are underneath and still usable, but someone used to a different system wanted to use theirs for simplicity, and...
Perhaps it would be easier to explain by demonstration.
EXEC_SDW=RECONFIG/.
This time, by looking underneath the underneath.
Wee yant ga teyys hyzik (...) /.
Was ki ga xest raudl (...) /.
It was like having the floor disappear beneath me and falling into an ocean I didn't even know was there.
Converting D3-cells at site 1,762,198 to dynamic d-wave form and reconfiguring. Specularity calculated as (...). Refreshing. Reverting to static d-wave, power drain nominal—
Every word contained volumes upon volumes of information.
Tuning triangular nuclear loop noise spectrum for low vacuum permeability. Warning, maximum output degraded by 11%, restoration of combat status estimated at 714 ms on-demand. Symphonic power buffer at 49.997%, increasing output to compensate.
Core mentality integration nominal, mercury element loaded to 12%—
That's not how the Fleet of Fog is supposed to work.
That leaves me with some very big questions. Why take a Union Core, tear it open and then integrate all these components into it? Who could have understood this technology so well, or could learn it so well that they could hide it this effectively inside my systems? Except the disguise wasn't perfect, and it had actually been laughably easy to see through if I really put my will to the problem. It seemed someone had done the best they could to produce this Trojan Horse, but could only hide it from an outside observer and not from me. At least, not if I had the motivation to look.
I could have probably figured this out within my first year. As soon as I calmed down and got control of my depression, I could have put forth the effort to experimenting with my abilities, and would have stumbled upon the truth almost immediately. But I shut off my emotions and put myself on autopilot, removing any urges to pursue flights of fancy. For 3 years, I blinded myself to what was right there waiting to be found.
So I'm faced with the fact that I'm more or less a kitbash of two somewhat compatible technological fields that somehow mated together in a functional way. How functional they will continue to be remains to be seen. That rules out any omnipotent being... possibly. Maybe it was an intentionally flimsy disguise, but that thought would send me jumping down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. So why did they do this, and who could have done it?
Can I trust... anything about myself anymore? Nothing about me seems to be what it first appeared. This planet isn't what I thought it was. My body isn't what I thought it was. What about my memories? Were they fabricated?
I was... I was never human. Even so, I thought maybe the memories were real and they came from someone that really existed. I'm not so sure anymore. I don't know what I can trust. I can't decide what's real and what's a lie.
No way was I prepared to find out what I really am; a Reyvateil, gifted with the power to sing miracles.
Metroids. Why, of all things, metroids? Whatever I had been expecting to run into, they weren't it. Could they drain energy from my body? I had no idea. Nobody in the Metroid universe had any idea what the hell metroids actually drained from their victims, despite extensive research into the species by both Zebesian space pirates and the Galactic Federation. They all gave up and called it "life energy", following a time-honored tradition of scientists giving something a vaguely descriptive name that translates to "I have no idea what this is", much like dark energy and dark matter. Suffice it to say, metroids were pretty much magic as far as science understood them.
A few weeks after that bowel-emptying (if I had any) experience, I found myself still facing the same issues that got me into it in the first place. I'd done some seismic readings of most of the single large continent that made up most of the planet's surface. Underground caverns seemed to run under almost every square kilometer of land. If I dug down far enough, I would have hit a cave eventually. Where there were caves, there would probably be metroids, if not the laser bugs.
There was no running away from it. If I wanted to continue my work underground, I needed either to avoid the freakish monstrosities down there, or kill the bastards. Given what I knew that single Omega did to a horde of superpowered bugs that could shoot artillery-strength energy beams, I much preferred the idea of not fighting them.
I needed a stealth mode. Most of the requirements were covered easily without even altering my standard form. My body was completely odorless, so there was no way it could smell me. My Klein Field could dampen air disturbances I caused while moving. I was already masking my heat by holding it inside my Wave Armor.
Rounding out the package would need some reconstruction. Admittedly, this form was going to be far more vulnerable to injury than my combat form, but I absolutely never wanted to fight those magic space leeches if I could help it.
EXEC_SDW=RECONFIG/.
My body suddenly froze and shifted while my clothes and hair melted into my form. If I hadn't already performed the combat mode body morph multiple times over the years, this would have been really disturbing to me. Everything was working fine, though. There was no reason to be concerned, but how did I know that for sure? No there was a reason to be concerned. This was the first time I'd ever used a non-standard form that wasn't pre-loaded and I... it was an unfamiliar form and I wasn't quite sure how I'd done it.
That seemed wrong to me. It didn't feel right. That was too... black box. The permission locks keeping me out of most of my core were bad enough. I didn't need to have programs running without me understanding what their underlying mechanisms were. This was my mind, I shouldn't have been in the dark about this.
But then I realized I hadn't been looking. Well, I had been looking, but not really. Not in the way that actually would have shown me what was hidden in there. I picked out programs and ran them, watching them perform their operations. The input and the output I understood perfectly fine. It was the in-between I was failing to see because I'd never interacted with it consciously before. Everything I did was intuitive and instinctive, the same as breathing or blinking is for humans. I did and I thought, but I didn't really examine.
But that body configuration I'd just "created", it required more interaction than simply flipping a preset program on and off. It wasn't an instinctive movement that required barely any thought. I needed to think about what I wanted because I wasn't sure on the details. However, to keep me from knowing exactly what was going on I had to both see it and not see it. My conscious mind was aware something had happened and had been watching it happen, but not close enough to really understand.
It was like... like I was standing on a frozen lake. I could see a distorted blur of something vast beneath the translucent ice. Making the stealth form required me to stick my arm down into the ice and pick out pieces I needed. I could feel the form of what I was taking with my hand, but once it came out it wasn't in the same form. So I felt what it was, but didn't see it.
I could have stepped hard on that thin shell and broken through. All I had to do was... ask how it worked. Just run the program again and think 'How does this work?'
I was afraid of what I might find.
I was more afraid of being trapped here with metroids. I needed to unlock these secrets if I wanted to get out of here. So I looked. Actually looked.
I'm... I'm not what I thought I was. Not entirely at least. When I first saw what was really hidden underneath the surface of my systems, I thought I'd been duped; that I wasn't Fog at all, just a damn good approximation created by someone with a technology base that would have been very good at making one.
It wasn't quite that simple. I looked until I was too overwhelmed by information and stopped, and I saw enough to get the gist of what was going on.
A far as I can tell, I am still Fog. Just not entirely Fog. I have a real Union Core, as real as it could possibly be, with all the correct components inside... plus extra. Well, maybe that's not quite trustworthy either. How would I really know what should and shouldn't be there? I really couldn't, but it was... too painful to think that far.
Now that I know, everything makes sense. I know who I look like now. My hair is different and my eyes are a brighter shade, but my face is an exact likeness of someone I now know; who I can now remember, because I broke open the barrier preventing me from doing so. The sudden urge to sing I got many months ago wasn't just something I did because I was bored.
The top-level commands for my programs felt wrong, because they aren't Fog command lexicon. Someone wrote those over the top of my original command functions. The original commands are underneath and still usable, but someone used to a different system wanted to use theirs for simplicity, and...
Perhaps it would be easier to explain by demonstration.
EXEC_SDW=RECONFIG/.
This time, by looking underneath the underneath.
Wee yant ga teyys hyzik (...) /.
Was ki ga xest raudl (...) /.
It was like having the floor disappear beneath me and falling into an ocean I didn't even know was there.
Converting D3-cells at site 1,762,198 to dynamic d-wave form and reconfiguring. Specularity calculated as (...). Refreshing. Reverting to static d-wave, power drain nominal—
Every word contained volumes upon volumes of information.
Tuning triangular nuclear loop noise spectrum for low vacuum permeability. Warning, maximum output degraded by 11%, restoration of combat status estimated at 714 ms on-demand. Symphonic power buffer at 49.997%, increasing output to compensate.
Core mentality integration nominal, mercury element loaded to 12%—
That's not how the Fleet of Fog is supposed to work.
That leaves me with some very big questions. Why take a Union Core, tear it open and then integrate all these components into it? Who could have understood this technology so well, or could learn it so well that they could hide it this effectively inside my systems? Except the disguise wasn't perfect, and it had actually been laughably easy to see through if I really put my will to the problem. It seemed someone had done the best they could to produce this Trojan Horse, but could only hide it from an outside observer and not from me. At least, not if I had the motivation to look.
I could have probably figured this out within my first year. As soon as I calmed down and got control of my depression, I could have put forth the effort to experimenting with my abilities, and would have stumbled upon the truth almost immediately. But I shut off my emotions and put myself on autopilot, removing any urges to pursue flights of fancy. For 3 years, I blinded myself to what was right there waiting to be found.
So I'm faced with the fact that I'm more or less a kitbash of two somewhat compatible technological fields that somehow mated together in a functional way. How functional they will continue to be remains to be seen. That rules out any omnipotent being... possibly. Maybe it was an intentionally flimsy disguise, but that thought would send me jumping down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. So why did they do this, and who could have done it?
Can I trust... anything about myself anymore? Nothing about me seems to be what it first appeared. This planet isn't what I thought it was. My body isn't what I thought it was. What about my memories? Were they fabricated?
I was... I was never human. Even so, I thought maybe the memories were real and they came from someone that really existed. I'm not so sure anymore. I don't know what I can trust. I can't decide what's real and what's a lie.
No way was I prepared to find out what I really am; a Reyvateil, gifted with the power to sing miracles.
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Ylamona
Konlulu~
So she's really a Fog/(most probably)Reyvateil combination and probably pureblood at least?...wonder if she's able to understand language of the planet, that will helped alot,well if the planet is not hostile enough..
it's scary though a reyvateil with own power source and processing capabilities , if she's able to convert h->d->d waves as effective as the tower...well that's assuming if exa_pico process is working here..
it's scary though a reyvateil with own power source and processing capabilities , if she's able to convert h->d->d waves as effective as the tower...well that's assuming if exa_pico process is working here..
So the SI is a (metaphorical)fracking Cylon...
It's nice to see you writing again Einsig, now it's time for me to go digging through the Ar Tonelico Wiki because I have absolutely no idea what that is...
It's nice to see you writing again Einsig, now it's time for me to go digging through the Ar Tonelico Wiki because I have absolutely no idea what that is...
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