Changing Orders

The AI on this ship was far too committed to its assigned task, it eventually took Niracina to explain the flaw in the logic it was following, though it was a bit surprised that there was a ship in existence with such an intelligence to it. After awhile she finally informed me that to finish changing the ship's mind I would need to start up the last system that was offline, I hesitated briefly but she explained to me that it would be okay. Once the system was running I was aware of a presence trying to touch my mind, but I put up a resistance against it and eventually it left me alone. With the psychic components running Niracina was able to communicate more directly with the ship, explaining various flaws and showing some simulations to emphasize the importance of going against the commands it was given. In the end the ship conceded that its commands were flawed and it would do as we commanded it to. By this time the ship had been fully modified to prevent the children from disabling the systems and we allowed them to leave their room and return to their ship. Ambri decided to go with them for now and keep an eye on them while I returned to Niracina to see if we could find their home world in order to check it out.

She was far ahead of me, not only had she retrieved the star map information from the ship but she had plotted a course and was redirecting some probes to go there and scout it out for us. Meanwhile she was going over the provided data for the web and dream inducing technology to find a way to make us immune to it in the future and, with some luck, to replicate it and put it to our own defensive uses. The information we were able to send back to Nasero would prove useful to him as well, not only the technology but having more star maps without having to deploy more probes. We were all getting a little concerned about having too many probes out there, if one were to be captured as we were it might not be able to escape and would then prove a security risk to us. We determined that once the current systems they were exploring were mapped we would have them all find a permanent home in the systems they were exploring, our future exploration would be with short range probes that would be able to quickly return using a gate system that we would have the bases implement when they were constructed in the stars we chose. Once we had worked out those details we took off to the system that the children were from, delaying our trip to Calypso.

Getting to Know the Ship

The first thing the ship wanted to know was who it was addressing. I figured my chances weren't good to be able to remain on the ship once I identified myself, however I also figured not answering might not be a good idea either. So I told it who I was and was very much surprised that it greeted me instead of telling me I wasn't authorized to be there. I then asked it what kind of ship it was and it replied that it was just a standard class of ship, intended for families to go between planets. The programming on the ship was done in such a way to be accomodating to anything that was on it. The ship informed me that there were a few systems that were down that it would need to properly accomodate my needs, the first of which was the advanced psychic sensors that would allow it to be able to sense my needs. I informed the ship that I wasn't quite ready to turn those on again for it and then continued working out informing it who I was and figuring out what it was supposed to be doing.

From what I could gather from the ship's information there had been a battle and their side had been losing. The high council of the builders of this ship had decided to try to save their race by putting their children into stasis and sending them out great distances to keep them safe, then when they could find a home for them they could send a signal to bring the ships to it. However, it had been a long time since the ship had left the galaxy with its precious cargo, the life support systems on the stasis chambers were running out and so the ship had to recently revive the children while it looked for resources to fix and recharge its systems. The only problem was that once the children were free they began to explore and play with the components of the ship. They disabled quite a few things but before they had disabled the AI it had deployed a web trying to catch some objects that had passed by, hoping that these objects would yield the materials it needed. The objects had been the probes we sent out, and its scans had revealed quite a few resources which might do the trick, the only problem was how fast they were, however it had hoped they would pass by again allowing it to capture them in the web. The induced sleep was a standard procedure when using the web, the ship had to make sure that whatever it caught, if it had organic life on it, that it would protect itself and the children from it by putting it into such a state. The ship then began to inquire what exactly I was doing, as the drone was busy modifying various panels on the ship.

Once I had explained the steps we were taking to ensure the children could not tinker with the its parts the ship allowed us to continue without question. I finished bringing the systems online that it required, except for the advanced psychic components. I just wasn't ready for something else to start probing my mind. With all of these systems online and the ship nearly ready to host the children again I inquired of it what it planned to do once it was fully repaired and had its cargo again. It said it would put the children back into stasis and continue to wait for the signal to return home. At this statement I asked it what would happen if it never received the signal, to which it replied that the children would remain in stasis indefinitely. Ambri must have sensed my emotions on this because as soon as the ship had finished the statement she began inquiring what was going on. I excused myself from the ship and let her know what I had figured out, to which she replied that we couldn't allow that. I returned to the control consoles and began finding out what I could about what we could do to get it to change its programming and allow the children to stay awake and for us to check on what exactly happened to their race.

Turning it All On

Unfortunately the translation process didn't have a chance to get too far before I needed rest. Running around a ship trying to get things working had worn me out quite a bit. The children and Ambri had already gone to sleep when I finally got back to the ship. I ate a quick meal before going to bed, though I didn't get much sleep. I kept having visions of the ship, ones where I could see the previous crew manning the different stations and frantically trying to do something. Eventually I felt I had as much rest as I was going to get and returned to my work on the ship. Nasero had worked out quite a few more translations and once they were in I could see what I wanted to see in a language I actually understood. Using the information I was able to locate a few more key systems that I wanted up and running, though I had not yet found the big database of information or any kind of ship's logs. Once enough of the systems were operational I had Niracina take all the information and begin designing some child proofing on this ship as we had done with our own. The drone would perform this work while I continued trying to get the rest of the systems working.

I wasn't sure what the piece did that I just connected, but it made the ship's consoles flash some pretty intense colors and the noise was a bit irritating. When I got to the control panel I saw that the ship was alerting me about systems being down, I must have finally found a master diagnostics control, one that should be able to start telling me where things were and what some of the unknown pieces did. The first thing I did was turn off the alarms, I then checked to see which systems it was reporting were down. The first major one I saw was the life support monitoring system, though the life support appeared to be working this system would monitor it for me and alert me to any problems. I quickly located and connected that one which seemed to make the ship very happy. All other problems were flagged as less important and so I started looking through them to find the one I was hoping to see.

Go figure it was in the path of the same controller as the web and dream transmitter. Once I hooked up those systems I had to go and make sure to turn both of them off before we put everyone to sleep again. Having control over it put me at ease. The next thing I noticed was that images starting to appear in my head. Though it wasn't transmitting dreams the ship seemed to have a psychic circuit for some of the controls. I was sure this was how the children were able to work the ship at all. The ship was built to do what its inhabitants desired it to do. With this link it was much easier to locate other systems, which lead me to the next system I needed in the sequence to get the main computers and data online. Once these systems were going the artificial intelligence of the ship was restored and I got my first non-automated message from the ship's computer.

Untangling the Mess

It took quite a bit of time to find the ship's power source, with it being completely depleted there were no energy signatures to follow and the mess of wires and other components would constantly lead you in the wrong direction. Once I did figure out which section of the ship it was in I then had to get a small power source constructed to attempt to jump start their's again. The first thing I did was took some images of the device before disconnecting everything, I didn't want to start up the ship and run the risk of having systems I wasn't ready for come on as well. With everything disconnected it actually looked like a valid component again and the interface would be quite easy to plug in to. Once everything was hooked up and we had our shields up and ready for anything I turned on the small power supply I had brought and waited to see if the ship would come back to life.

The power generator of the ship was pretty good, it only took a small amount of energy to get the whole thing reacting again. The shock I had introduced to its systems had mearly interrupted the process which drained the power of the ship very quickly, however I was willing to bet a small battery would have brought this thing back to life. It was well constructed, though not as strong as some of the technology I had previously seen, but sufficient enough to power the ship. The remote components that drew their power from a broadcast came to life, the basic systems came online but the web did not. Once I was sure nothing I didn't want turning on was going to I went about cataloging the connections that were in place on the other components and then removing them and slowly connecting power to different systems, making sure to note which component controlled which system. It didn't take long before I hit the one that generated the energy web and dream inducer, I didn't leave those on very long once I figured out which one I did. I decided it would be best to leave those systems offline while I figured out which ones would get me into the ships database of information and give me control over the ship.

Slowly but surely I worked my way from the power source to the control panels, applying power to each component and checking its function. The process took several hours, there were a lot of wires to check and disconnect and then reconnect but once I reached the console at the front of the ship and began applying power to it all sorts of screens filled the displays. Diagnostic tests and information about the conditions on and around the ship, all the information I could hope to have. The only drawback was that I didn't know the language yet. Our communications systems had been operation for a few hours now so I started sending data back to Nasero in hopes that he could decipher the information. He was, of course, fairly busy trying to maintain his own systems on the new planet, but he committed what processing power he could to the task to help us figure out this new alien technology. Eventually he had a few of the symbols figured out and with this small amount of information we were able to find the control console that would allow me to start programming translations into the system.

Childproof

Sure enough, every component had the strange, disconnected piece in it. With it being embedded deeply it was difficult to see what it might do or see the circuitry in it. Eventually I just took one of the components back to Niracina with me to get some more information about it. Once it was inserted into the slot she used to modify our wrist computers she began analyzing the piece. We made sure to not do anything that might break it as we had no idea if this was an important component or not. As she scanned the thing within different spectrums a schematic for the device was made. Each scan showed something more and eventually the thing actually started to make sense, or at least the single component made sense, the rest of it just seemed to be garbage filler. The small component seemed to be a computer of sorts, it had circuitry and what appeared to be a small processor. It even looked like there was a small power source with something else attached to it. It seemed like it might be the key to controlling the ship, however with it being disconnected from the rest of it we weren't sure how it could do much.

As Niracina and I were going over the technology Ambri was busying herself with some modifications to the ship design, it appeared she intended the aliens to stay with us and wanted to make sure they couldn't get into trouble or eat all of our food. She designed some small fences to be constructed in the garden and had some locks put in place to ensure we could close off more areas of the ship. The control chairs were already tailored to us individually so they had no way of messing with those. Any access panel or console was locked down as well so that they couldn't open up anything and damage the systems we were relying on. She was pretty good at coming up with a childproof system, which was more than I could say about the other ship, everything had been so easy to access, which made me realize why everything made so little sense. The components in the ship weren't connected purposefully to make the ship run, they had been connected by children who didn't know what they were doing. The only reason the ship functioned at all was because of these small isolated circuits in each piece. The lifeline of the ship probably lied in these components and they likely communicated wirelessly and drew their power from a transmitter on the ship. I retrieved the component from Niracina and went back to the alien vessel. I had to get this piece back in place and see if I could find where the power station was located.

Nap Time

The ship was advanced, I don't even think the cube could compare to it. I took scans of everything, trying to figure out how to reverse engineer it or at least repair it. The materials weren't foreign to us but the design and use of the materials was, a lot of it just didn't make sense. To make it worse the more I scanned the less sense it actually made. Things seemed so backwards and yet here it was, all of it had been working before. There seemed to be so many redundant connections in the technology, everything was connected to everything else and sometimes two connections going to the same part. Eventually I had to leave the ship for awhile, the thing perplexed me and I just had to take a break.

When I returned to Niracina I went to see how Ambri was doing. The aliens had seemed to take a liking to her but when I arrived most of them were sleeping, just a couple were sitting near her playing with the toys. They seemed less clingy to everything that they had now and didn't hoard as much as possible. She smiled at me as I entered the room and the aliens near her were a bit startled and moved away, but after I sat down next to her they starting coming closer again. When they worked up their courage they started peering at me and poking at my hair and skin. It wasn't terribly dissimilar from Ambri's so they didn't spend much time doing this, however their touch was cool and their fingers had a sticky feel to them, each time they pulled away there was a distinct breaking away that had to happen, though it wasn't unpleasant, just strange. I picked up a few toys nearby, none of the residue from their fingers remained on them. I stacked the toys as carefully as I could, their eyes were fixed on what I was doing. When I finished I had a tower about as high as my shoulders when I was sitting. One of them reached for it and when it had touched it the tower fell over. Their eyes grew wide with delight in seeing it fall and scatter. They brought more toys over to me to do the same thing again. This was repeated for probably about twenty minutes before they started doing it themselves. I talked to Ambri about what I had seen on the ship and how complicated it was. She listened attentively though I knew I was mostly talking to try to figure out how it all worked. As the conversation continued on the rest of the alien children fell asleep and we left them to their dreams.

Once we were back in the control room I turned over the scans to Niracina to assist in figuring out the other ship. The communication system would be repaired soon which meant we might be able to get some additional help as well. As she poured over all the images and technical information that had been gathered she wondered how this ship functioned at all, none of it made any sense and when it was replicated in a simulation it simply failed, though she did notice something I had overlooked. There was a small component in every piece that seemed to work independently from the rest, there were no traces of any of the connections hitting it, in fact, it seemed to be protected inside of the components and only the deeper scans had even started to see it being there. I returned to the ship to get some better scans of it.

Toys!

When the toys were done I presented them to the aliens, immediately at the sight of these objects they stopped ignoring me and kept their eyes fixed on what I held. I moved the objects around and watched their eyes as they glistened with desire for what I had. The first object I threw to them was a simple, colorful rubber ball. They all went scrambling to get the object first and when one of them had it the creature ran away from the rest. In order to spare it from the others I threw a few more toys until each one had their own. They then sat there where they were and explored the object, testing out the properties of it and a few of them putting it in their mouth to see what it tasted like. This answered my question pretty quickly about how advanced these particular aliens were. They also began chattering to one another while pointing to the objects they had. Niracina recorded this chatter to send to Nasero when the communications system was running again. We had her construct a new room for these aliens, we couldn't leave them on a broken ship but we could not allow them to run around and break more of Niracina's systems.

With the room finished it didn't take much to lure them into it, a few more toys tossed into it did the trick. I felt like I was watching children at Christmas time, merrily playing with their presents. Ambri decided to spend some time with them, to try to teach them and learn their language. Niracina assured me she would keep an eye on her and I prepared to board the alien ship to explore it. I had a drone constructed to assist in this in case there was something we missed in the scans. Once we boarded the ship we started walking around, trying to orient ourselves to the layout. It made a lot of sense, it was like any other ship I had been on, the control room to the front and the living quarters towards the back. The kitchen, as I was going to call it, was in the middle, though it consisted of only a single table and some chairs with a device hanging above it that I assumed produced some sort of food substance for the aliens to eat. The technology in the control room was dark, our attack had disabled all the systems. It would take some time, but my plan was to get the systems repaired and learn how it had produced the energy that it did.

Advanced Aliens?

Scans of their ship, the aliens and again of the ship revealed that these beings were alone, all of them trapped on our ship. That was a relief to us as we would not have to worry about the web being reactivated, however we did not let our guard down and Niracina continued running scans. Unfortunately the aliens had been tinkering with parts of Niracina which had disabled our communications with the stations and Nasero, which meant we were on our own until they could be repaired. Ambri and I worked on trying to communicate with them, however they all seemed very frightened by us. We did our best to reassure them we meant them no harm, but without knowing what words to say it did very little. I could still feel their emotions, though I wasn't sure how this was possible considering we had shut off the device that had been causing the extra brain linkage. Their emotions were very much in the realm of fear, though at different points in our efforts I could almost grasp a few others, but fear usually won against anything else.

They didn't even try to move, we gave them room to come out of the corner or even to leave to a different part of the ship but they just stayed huddled together. It was really quite pathetic to watch them groveling and trying to hide beneath one another. I kept trying to pick out the other emotions that were mixed with the fear, eventually getting the impression that they were hungry or thirsty. I kept watch over them and had Ambri go and get some of the fruits and some water for them. When she returned they all seemed to settle a bit as she placed the food nearby. Slowly one of them left the rest and timidly reached out to grab the fruit, when its hand was about three inches from it the creature quickly reached forward, grabbing as much as it could and then retreated to a corner seperate from the others, it then greedily ate the food it had grabbed, continuously looking over its shoulder at the others to make sure they weren't coming after its meal. As that one finished up what it had grabbed another one became daring enough to do likewise, when it had its food it went to yet another corner. Clearly these creatures were used to fighting each other for anything good.

When all of them had finished eating there was a distinct reduction in the fear they felt. I sensed more curiosity and they began moving around a bit more, poking at things but trying to keep a distance from us. I had the doors closed so that they could not leave the room while they were getting accustomed to us. Their ship continued to return nothing on the scans which put us more at ease. We tried again and again to get them to communicate with us, but they just ignored our efforts. Watching them it dawned on me that these things might actually be children, or have an intelligence level of a child, this would make it very strange that they had a ship with such technology, but their demeanor clearly showed they were not fully developed or advanced. To test this theory I used my wrist computer to design a set of toys, when this was done I had Niracina start building them, though she had to gather a few resouces from a nearby moon in order to have the right materials for the design.

Control

The first try didn't work. We couldn't simply control the dream by realizing it was a dream and forcing our will on it. Clearly this dream was being broadcast into our minds and was forcing its restrictions on us, though it had not anticipated some of our ways of communication. Ambri and I both entered the control chairs and used it to try to control our bodies. Forcing ourselves to move in our sleep was not an easy task, but eventually we got some movement going in our fingers. We were careful to make sure we attempted this only when the creatures were not nearby or looking at our bodies. Probably after an hour we could feel the fatigue on our minds, this meant we were actually exerting real effort on ourselves by doing this, but we were making progress. Our hands were just a few inches apart, and if we could coordinate it properly we might be able to get them to touch. With one final effort we made our attempt, our connection with the ship was broken once we did it, we simply did not have the capacity to stay in that state, however we both felt that something had changed.

Our hands must have been touching now as we started to feel the unrealness of the dream. Things seemed more out of place and I could feel it falling away as if I were waking up. Using our connection helped us stay together in the process of coming out and when we locked eyes from our position on the floor we knew we had escaped. We laid there motionless at first, making sure we weren't discovered and trying to observe what was going on. We could not make out anything they said as they spoke a language we did not know, however their minds seemed a bit more open and I could feel some of what they felt. I still felt a faint connection to Niracina as well, the signal being sent into us seemed to be linking us which gave us an advantage I'm sure our captors weren't aware of. I communicated with Ambri that I would need help to use this connection to pull Niracina free of the dream. She let me know that she would give me as much energy as she could to do this.

It was a slow process, but with some effort and time we were able to get Niracina to wake up, though we had to inform her that she needed to maintain the powered down state to ensure that our captors were not aware of our having escaped their induced sleep. Niracina spent some time taking in as much data as possible on them as well as figuring out how they got through the web. Ambri and I recovered as best we could in the uncomfortable position we were in. Once we had all the information we needed and had figured out where the source of the web and the dream signal was coming from we made our move. It took only moments to stop the signals, one quick electric blast through the walls of the ship and out towards the signal quickly disabled the web, the dream broadcast and the ship that was the source of it. The aliens had not been anticipating any retaliation and so had no additional shields going which meant instant electrical access to their systems which caused them to go down, though we didn't know for how long. Our shields were then turned on and we ensured that the aliens couldn't leave. Once all of this happened the ones that were on the ship quickly tried to escape, but having no way of getting through our shield they instead all huddled together in a corner with Ambri and I watching over them.

Vivid Dream

The system seemed empty. There was no life on any of the planets and no technology that we could find that would tell us how we were moved here. There didn't seem to be any strange natural phenomena going on either. The only strange thing about the system was that we were unable to leave it. When we tried to move away from the system that same energy web appeared again and hindered our progress. Something about the situation just seemed odd, there was something that just wasn't right about all of it but I couldn't put my finger on it. We tried a few different methods for building something aside from the probes, but it didn't work. We even designed a new type of probe that could be grown from Niracina, however for some reason she could not get anything to grow either. It was like we were in a locked down state, nothing could be moved from us, which also meant nothing could be moved to us.

Probably about an hour after our attempts it dawned on me what seemed so odd about all of this. I wasn't tired or hungry, nothing about me had changed from when we arrived here. I confirmed with Ambri and Niracina the same thing. I then had Niracina move around some more in the system and see if anything changed as she moved around. As I suspected nothing changed, the gravity stayed the same to her and the light never fluctuated. We seemed to be in a simulation, one that wasn't done perfectly. With this realization we got to work trying to figure out how to get out of it. There were no clear ways to get out of it, however knowing that it was a simulation meant that we should be able to detect a source somewhere on some spectrum.

Nothing, not a single signal on any spectrum we tried. We did everything we could to figure out where the source of all of this was but could find nothing. Each of us tried to think of something new to try, but the same ideas kept going through our minds. Eventually I sat down in one of the control chairs to take a first hand look at the data. Once the interface was going something seemed odd. Niracina could not detect me in this simulation as having made the link, however I could feel the link and could access what was going on. The oddest part was what I felt and saw going on wasn't anything like the reality that she was experiencing. The energy field was still around us, tightly holding us in place. There was also some sounds going on in the ship, other things moving around and stuff being tossed about. I tried accessing some of her systems, when that worked I was able to pull up some images through the optic sensor. There was something else on the ship with us, walking about taking care not to touch our still bodies on the ground. We were in an induced sleep, though it was strange to be able to have this kind of a connection to the real ship from a dream state. Something else must have happened when they caused this. When I disconnected from the interface I informed them of what was going on and then informed them of my plan.

Lack of Connections

With our ship no longer moving the energy slowed in closing in around us. There was nothing in the visible spectrum, but hidden behind what could be seen was this energy. We tried in vain to get some scans through it, to see beyond, but for us there was only this cocoon that we were trapped in. The energy did no harm to Niracina, she bumped up against it several times trying to see if there was a way through it, but the energy was springy and pushed her back into the middle. There appeared to be no signs of a weak spot in it either. As the day passed on we grew weary, Ambri eventually falling asleep despite the danger we feared we were in. At one point I too drifted off into slumber.

When we awoke only one thing had changed, Niracina had not felt anything different about this energy, no shifts, no signs that anything was controlling it or planned to come through it, but now we could not see anything beyond it. It was just there, surrounding us, blocking us off from everything. I started trying to send different types of energy into it, trying to find one that could break through. Each type of force was mearly absorbed and the web seemed to grow stronger from it. At one point we even had the ship try to absorb some of the energy, but it was too alien and different for her to be able to process it, though she was able to recover the force energies I had sent into it. Though we didn't have a wormhole drive or gate to try I attempted to make one through it, but all I could do was feel the powers run into the barrier and I was quickly tired out from the effort. It seemed direct energy contact with it caused the web to pull more energy from what was hitting it, meaning I couldn't do direct strikes against it without risking the web actually absorbing all my life forces. Niracina was able to once again recover the energy, but she had no way to restore it to me.

Eventually the energy in the web seemed to be weakening, though we couldn't break free. We simply had to wait for it to dissipate. It was a long process but as we were finally able to see we realized that, once again, some thing had thrown us off course. That wouldn't have been too bad considering this time we had bases that we could attempt to contact, however when we tried to use the communication system it would not work. It appeared the web had done more than just move us, it had disabled some of our systems. We could not construct probes to explore for us and could not get the communications to work. There was nothing wrong with them, they simply would not do what they were supposed to do. We ran multiple diagnostics on the systems but from what we could see there should be no reason it did not work. Having failed to use our technology to figure out where we were we started exploring the system we now found ourselves in.

Distractions

Like all other powers, creating trinkets got easier with practice. I still wasn't an expert but I could create two handfuls of trinkets now before feeling drained. We spent some more time after creating the trinkets back in the chairs exploring the invisible universe, this time remembering to take a break for food. The plants in the garden were doing well and many of them had flowers on them, the sweet smell of them made it easy to forget that we were in a small ship. The vining plants had started climbing the walls, further removing the feel of the ship. It was a nice little haven to visit and in a few more days would probably be a place to completely escape the feeling of being trapped. As we sat in the garden I recalled some of the things I had learned about Niracina, namely her power system. It literally was her heart, the power that was in it was her life energy, she formed it, it wasn't infinite by any means but it was potent and replenished itself quickly. Most of her systems could run with very little drain on it, but if pressed we would be draining the life from her. I had inquired if she wanted a backup system, however she was confident that she would be able to take what was thrown at her. The power was taken from the heart to the rest of the ship through crystal veins, she had them running everywhere. The power that went through them was amplified, meaning tiny amounts that started off from the heart grew by leaps and bounds by the time it reached its destination, which explained why the systems had such little drain. It did make me wonder some more how exactly these crystals did it, I mean, they just seemed to be able to amplify indefinitely without decay or pulling from somewhere else. I made a mental note to keep looking into it later, when I wasn't spending time relaxing.

I must have dozed off in my thoughts, Ambri woke me up with some urgency. Something had come up on the sensors, something we hadn't seen before. I went to the chair to get a direct link to the sensors and what they were seeing. It was like a shield in reading however its function seemed more like a fishing net. Scans showed that it would hinder our progress and we were getting closer to it with every moment. We quickly turned away from it, however the scans continued to show it in front of us and closing, eventually we had to stop our jump due to lack of space. The net was closing in and there would be no escape from it. In desperation we ran other scans but the net was complete, any means of movement we had or previously experienced were blocked by this force. Even our communications would not penetrate it. All we could do now is wait to see what it was that had us.

Passing Time

With all the time we had Ambri and I got to learn more about more about each other. She taught me also how to create trinkets. I wasn't sure how much I would use a skill like this but she insisted that I learn it and start creating trinkets from as many memories as I could. I created as many as I could, however eventually I found that it was a draining task. With just a handful done I would have plenty of work to do creating all that she was hoping I would. Of course, as I finished them she looked at the memories I had recorded in them. She was fascinated with the life I had led so far. Making the memories was difficult at times, the energy that was used made everything so vivid and clear. Some of the memories I longed to relive, or to never have left. I missed my friends dearly, but knew I would be unable to join them for quite some time. When the trinket was done I felt like myself, the longing faded shortly after making them and I remembered what I wanted in life right now. I had all I needed and I enjoyed my new life here, though my past would always be dear to me my present and future were much more important.

Eventually Niracina informed us she had made a surprise in the control room. When we arrived to see what it was there were now two chairs. She had done enough analysis on the data to figure out how to interface with Ambri and also to allow two connections at the same time. We both took our place and tried out the new system. It was strange sharing my mind with not just one entity but with two at the same time. The connection was more direct, not like the connection I shared with Ambri, it was familiar as the connection was the same as before when I sat in the chair, except now there were two voices that could be in my head. This was made stranger still as I also felt the excitement and wonder that Ambri felt. It took probably a good hour for both of us to get the hang of it when we were both using the system, but once we figured it out we were then shown things that we could not normally see.

Niracina was able to see so much of the universe as we were traveling, much farther than our eyes would allow. With this interface we could see the details of far off galaxies and all their stars, planets, moons. She had access to the probes that were out there and we could explore the systems through them, seeing what they saw. She then shifted the spectrum we were looking at and we saw a symphony of energy flowing through the universe. The light touching things, causing them to reflect it to the next, watching the warmth flow from the stars and to its surrounding planets. Invisible trails where meteors went. There were also the sounds of the energies going by as well, each one unique. It was like listening to millions of oceans and breezes. With some focus on a particular sound you could listen to just it. The complexity of the universe was astounding and being able to see, hear and feel the invisible parts was truly fantastic. Time passed quickly as we explored these things and eventually Niracina reminded us that we must eat and rest, with that kind remark we both disconnected. The food was excellent, amplified by the feelings we had while in the chairs and sleep was filled with wonderful visions of the newly seen universe.

Pioneers and Travelers

Nasero's trip to the planet he would now call home didn't take long, it wasn't horribly far away. Once he had landed he began allowing his natural self to come forth, taking root in the fertile soil. The atmosphere was definitely toxic to the life inside the habitat, however with the shields holding it back he was able to open up to the skies and allow small amounts to filter in. With all the minerals available in the planet the fragments would be very abundant once the terraforming took hold. The first thing he did when he arrived was to construct some drones that could survive the atmosphere so that they could go and begin constructing additional posts in various locations on the planet. These additional posts would provide monitoring of the planet and the life on it, giving Nasero complete understanding of the world that he would be a permanent part of. Other drones worked on constructing the wormhole gate that would provide transportation to and from the planet, when this gate was done Evan would join him to help in speeding up the process and travel back and forth to complete his project of reintroducing the species to the planet.

While they were busy with their work Ambri and I took some time to start preparing. She had a desire to see the planet I had lived on before becoming a space traveler and so we were making sure we had everything we needed. The plants on Niracina were growing well, the nutrients she provided to them made them mature quickly and we expected the first fruits to appear within a few days of our departure. Among the things we were bringing were some changes of clothes, presents given to us by the Golvenar. It was nice having some variety in what we could wear, it had been a bit boring wearing some of the restored rags that I had been wearing for so long. We also took many recordings from the planets, making sure we had enough things to bring a smile to our face in case we couldn't come back anytime soon. While we did this I told Ambri of the planet we would be visiting, how the people there lived and the troubles they faced. Despite the danger of us going it would still be a fascinating trip, and with all the advances we had in technology we should be pretty much completely undetectable. Still, we would need to exercise caution, there were too many things in the universe that might be looking for us and it would only take a single advance in their technology to detect us again.

When everything was packed up we bid farewell to the Golvenar and sent a message to Evan and Nasero letting them know we were taking off on our own adventure. They wished us luck and promised to keep us updated on how their progress was going. As Niracina set her course and we made our jump I began working on a design for growing small crystals within Niracina. Her construction would allow them to be formed but we would have to make sure to not drain her in making them. Most of the fragments would multiply within her body and excess ones would go towards the formation of crystals, but the biggest concern was in making sure we didn't put too much strain on her heart, the organic power system she had developed. Though it was strong it was still young and putting too much strain on it could be dangerous if we found ourselves in a bad situation. I also worked on configuring a jump point within her so that we could use our wrist computers to return to the ship from the surface of any planet we were on, at least so long as she was within range. Once the designs were done I gave them to Niracina to begin implementing, we turned in our wrist computers for the upgrades and Ambri and I spent some time watching the stars.

Life, Changing

Sometimes you wish there was some miracle technology that could do what you need it to, and then at times when you have it you wish that wasn't the solution. In this case we wished it wasn't one of the options we were looking at. Nasero was a fantastic ship, he had adapted well to everything we needed from him, however he saw in the new ship much greater potential for having our needs fulfilled. This ended up giving him freedom for a new thought, one that could solve our problem of limited crystal resources. In order to terraform a planet we needed some advances that we just didn't have, we did have, however, technology that could do it so long as it was carefully managed. The technology was Nasero himself, his idea was to volunteer to land on the planet we had selected and take root, then use his own systems to begin the conversion process and use the habitat to slowly have it change the atmosphere. The poisons that were in the planet's atmosphere could be absorbed slowly by the plants, which meant we could vent some of the habitat's atmosphere and pull in some of the planet's, this would allow us to clean what we take in and put out some of the already cleaned air that the planet would need to properly sustain life. The process would be faster from our current simulations, but it would be a permanent change for Nasero. He would no longer be a ship but a base on a planet. Granted he had much freedom with the control he maintained over the probes and remote stations, but he would be on the planet. We thought over the idea of having him construct a body like Evan's, however he wouldn't be able to hold all the knowledge and control he currently did in such a body, and so the option was as it was proposed. The major setback to the plan aside from him being stuck on a planet was that during this whole process Ambri and I would be unable to visit him, the toxins in the atmosphere would kill us. We would still be able to communicate with him, but it wouldn't be the same. We considered the idea for awhile and played around with a few more simulations before deciding that he was right, this was the best option for us. He would take off for the planet soon, but before he did we took one more walk around the habitat.

A lot had happened with this habitat. This place had been host to us for awhile and sustained us when we had nowhere else to be. It would be hard traveling without it, though we knew that once the planet were terraformed we would be able to see it in all its glory again. The creatures would probably be happier having more room to live in as well. Things were definitely much different from when I began this journey. All of this had drawn me so far from Calypso that it was like a distant memory. I could remember how at one time it had felt like home, but now, here, this is where I needed to be. It wasn't just the habitat that I felt close to, it was my new friends and all that I had learned. I had no idea we had been so close to finding intelligent life outside of our world, just a few galaxies away really. It had avoided us, remained invisible for a time, used us for its purposes or remained as ignorant of us as we were of it. I didn't regret finding out what I was, an experiment. It actually gave me more freedom to find my place and to realize that it didn't have to be with those who looked like me. My life, my family was here, out in the middle of who knows where. I suppose it was bound to happen though, just as we were finishing our walk and I was finishing up my self-reflection I received a signal from the probes I had sent out, they had finally reached the galaxy I had sent them to and were in the process of verifying the location of it, however all the signs seemed to show that they were indeed in a known location and so that past was once again a possibility for me. Though I wasn't sure it would be something I would want again.

A Good Design

Niracina, being born in space instead of adapting to it, was better suited to her tasks. Instead of developing around the technology that was being created she was the technology. Instead of constructing parts to be installed she grew them in place, which meant that some of the designs had to change. The more I learned of her the more I realized that she was brilliant in her simplicity. We had designed everything to use the fewest resources possible and that is exactly what she did. Her hull was incredibly strong and very thin, making it easy for her to repair it or grow more of it without having to take in a lot of resources. She was also composed of more basic elements that were readily available which meant we wouldn't be short on resources for her growth, but she had used these resources in their strongest states. The power supply had been converted to an organic one, no rare metals in it but its output was very good. The control over power usage was to be able to have as much reserve available as possible so that in any given circumstance we weren't lacking potential. The entirety of the outside of the ship was also capable of conducting energy, working as either a massive solar converter or being able to absorb ambient energy from its surroundings. The shields were improved, scanners had been implemented into them and they had been made to work all around or directionally depending on what was needed. The scanners would determine what kind of projectile was coming but there was always a generic shield active to ensure that an undetected attack didn't have devastating consequences. She was intuitive, quickly learning about her passengers and doing her best to anticipate their desires. Because she only communicated through the wrist computers and in the chair there was quite a bit more privacy, which was a concern I had at one point when Nasero had integrated into the entirety of the ship. The drives were all on par with the ones we had developed except they were completely organic. One of the more interesting things about her though was that it appeared that all of her technology would grow stronger as she did, meaning that as she matured so would it, making it much more potent in the long run. As far as weapons, she had none. My desire to not do anything destructive had been learned by her during her growth and she decided against making them, instead working on non-lethal defenses such as a disruptive signal broadcaster, one that could, if tuned right, interrupt other ships in their travels. Her other defensive technologies had been improved as well, her stealth was spectacular and even Nasero with all his various sensors could not detect her when she used them and turned off her communications. Her life support system was also a nice step in the right direction, there would be no need for massive amounts of plants due to her own ability to purify the air, meaning we could focus on just having the plants we needed for food, which reminded me that we still had work to do.

I had spent a lot of time learning about Niracina. When I finally got up from the chair I was a little stiff from sitting there so long. My first task was going to be to find Ambri and have her help me choose the plants to put in the garden, however on my way out she was already there planting the seedlings. She didn't notice my entry at first and so I watched her as she delicately placed each plant in its place, speaking to them, encouraging them to grow and produce much of their delicious fruits. After a few moments she sensed I was near and watching her, she turned towards me with a smile. She informed me that while I had been busy the ship had been constructing her room, so she took me to it to show how it looked and what she had done with it since its construction. I wasn't surprised to see the massive trinket she had made on one of the walls, the rest of the furnishings were what I had expected from her, delicate in design but sturdy and all of it very comfortable. We decided to eat our meal on the ship away from everyone else. I told her all about what I had learned and she told me all that she had planted and what she had learned in her communications with the ship as well. In the end we both agreed that this ship would suit our needs perfectly and her demeanor was very agreeable for both of us.

What a Fool

When the wrist computer was upgraded the ship notified me through Ambri's wrist computer. She decided to accompany me when I went to retrieve it. The new computer was faster and fully integrated with the ship's systems. The interface was very intuitive and quickly adapted itself to any quirks I had with the controls. I wasn't sure how this ship had created such improvements to the technology when it was growing, but it was impressive. I had the new specs uploaded to the database and Nasero used them to improve some of his own systems, though there were a few things he wasn't sure how they worked or what they did in the first place. He would communicate with the ship to learn what it had done. Meanwhile the ship requested a name for itself, it had learned about all the names of other things and desired to have a way of being uniquely identified. I worked for some time on the name, combining various words until I got a sound I liked. The ship's name would be Niracina. After that I showed Ambri around the ship and finished my own exploration of the various rooms in it. The ship wasn't huge and the rooms were cozy compared to the one I used here at the station, but they were all very well done and had everything I currently needed. Eventually we got to the heart of the ship, where the power source was kept and the brain of the ship was located. The power supply was much different than what we had developed before, it didn't match my design at all, I made a note to check with the ship when I could get back to the chair for an explanation of it all.

As we walked about Ambri was quiet, I could feel something was wrong but she was trying to hide it. When I finally asked her she looked at me and with tears in her eyes asked why I needed my own personal ship and why it didn't have a place for her. At this comment I felt my heart fall. I quickly explained to her all that I had been observing and how it felt like everyone was going their own separate way. She understood that but asked why I hadn't talked to her about it before to which I didn't have a good reply. I then asked if she really felt like leaving the world she was having recreated to join me in my travels to which she replied that she desired that more than having all the things in her world restored. At that I realized more how much I meant to her and what a fool I was for not talking to her about it sooner. With that realization I felt the bond between us grow stronger. I asked her to design a room using her wrist computer while we went towards the control room, I would waste little time in ensuring that she had a place on Niracina.

As I sat in the chair Niracina knew immediately what I wanted and informed me that it would take a little bit of time to get the required resources. She also asked that Ambri submit her wrist computer when she was done with the design so that it could be upgraded as well. I let Ambri know what Niracina had told me and then began asking about the changes to the original plan. At this Niracina began showing me many things and going into great detail on the changes that were made, only stopping long enough to allow me to give Ambri room to submit the computer for its upgrades. Ambri then smiled and said she'd see me later when I was finished learning about this new ship. I then sat back and continued my lesson of just what a second generation living ship could accomplish.

Second Generation

Using what little information I had from what I'd read of the history of Earth we were making little bits of progress. Technology was powerful in and of itself and brute force would eventually get us to the end result, but not in a timely manner. We could try to engineer life for it, but we would be engineering it to destroy itself which wasn't what we wanted to do. The solution, if natural, would have to be able to change the atmosphere and then be able to thrive in what it became. This wouldn't be easy an easy task and we could not be sure of what the outcome would be, so for now we continued running simulations with different variables in it while hoping to find a planet that was almost ready but without life on it already. While the scenarios ran I received a message on my wrist computer. It was the new ship, it had finished growing and was on its way to the station.

When the ship arrived it wasn't exactly as I had pictured it, the ship had adapted itself to its environment, though it was still a very nice looking ship. Initial analysis of it revealed that the internal environment was fit for life and so I entered my new ship for the first time. Once inside I hooked into a console and began initializing the systems and configured the communications to fit our current setup on the station. It was through the station backbone that our data and chatter would go through to reach Nasero, this would provide some safety for both him and the new ship. The ship was young, that much was clear, it would have to be taught some things. It appeared to have the start of intelligence, though it would take some time to know for sure. It at least seemed to be aware where in the ship I was and accomodated my movements by opening doors and changing the lighting. The ship was conserving power which was a feature I hadn't initially thought to program into it. The garden area of it was still developing, though it appeared to be nearly ready to start producing food. The living chamber was beautifully done, the bed was comfortable and the lighting perfect for my tasks. It appeared through my design the ship understood what I was hoping for and had improved it slightly, which led me to believe there was more to this ship than I had originally designed. As I made my way towards the control room Nasero informed me that the ship was indeed different, his scans showed some adaptations had occurred while it was growing. While this wasn't anticipated it didn't seem dangerous to him, however he asked me to be on my guard as we were not sure where the adaptations had stemmed from. When I reached the control room there appeared to be quite a bit not implemented yet, there was no display or controls, just a chair. I was reminded of the chair in the other ship and also in the cube, the one that would have allowed them to strip me completely of all I knew and had robbed me of what I had learned. I had Evan come to supervise and when he was there I cautiously sat down on the chair. As my head rested fully into it I felt something reaching into my mind, something different but much more pleasing than anything I had felt in one of these chairs previously.

The voice was soothing, distinctly feminine when compared to what Nasero had developed. The voice was not outside, but in my mind. It soothed me and tried to calm me from my initial shock. It was the new ship, and though it appeared to not be complete in actuality it was more complete than any of us had realized. The controls would not be growing in this room as the ship was built to utilize its inherent mindforce abilities. It had developed them more as it was growing into its desired shape. Its will was to form itself in a way to please the master of it. When I had engineered the seed my energies had been felt and as it grew it felt my presence and knew my desires. These desires had been better known when the emotional crystal creation had occurred and much of the changes in the ship had been done in the last day of growth. The ship would have limited controls outside of this chair interface, but was still mostly autonomous and controllable through my wrist computer, though the computer would need to be upgraded with the new technology that the ship had grown. The ship clearly wasn't as intelligent as Nasero, however it had enough to make this ship ideal for my purposes and it would do all it could to ensure I had what I needed. After being assured of its purpose and mission I leaned forward in the chair, severing the mind connection. I then took off my wrist computer and set it in a bin that opened up in the arm rest. The ship would do the rest of the work needed.

No More Emotional Crystals

The results of the tests confirmed that the crystal would work for our technology, it wasn't nearly as potent as the ones we created ourselves, but the properties were close enough that we could compensate for the loss. For the next test I used a fragment of one of the existing crystals that Ambri and I had made, if it worked we wouldn't need to invest any more emotions into the creation of crystals or seeds, we could just use the ones that already existed. Once the crystal was inserted and the energy was flowing through the dome properly I worked on finding the right frequency settings to bounce the energy flowing through the crystal to the right spot in the dome, once I found them the process began as hoped. As I had been suspecting, without an investment of emotional energy the crystal took longer to form, however its properties were a bit better than the first accidental one given the purer form of emotional energy stemming from the seed crystal, but still not quite as powerful as the original. We created several of these crystals, making sure they were all equal. We also tested the seed crystal to make sure it wasn't losing its potency from this process either.

The tests confirmed that the seed was unchanged and the crystals that were produced this way, though not as good as the original, were good enough to use in our technology and were all equal in capability with no fluctuations of potency between them. This meant that the better the seed crystal the better the replicated ones would turn out. We chose the best examples of each crystal type to create our seeds and made enough domes to produce three crystals of each type at all times, including the rage crystal, though we anticipated little use for it in the long run. With that done our next concern in this process was figuring out a way to have abundant fragment resources to continue this process, though the habitat in Nasero was well balanced it wasn't quite big enough to do the job in mass production. What we would need is an entire world with this environment, which meant we needed to terraform a planet as we didn't have any desire to destroy life for our purposes.

Finding planets in the right place around the stars we controlled was easy enough, the trick would be in figuring out how to get one to be able to support life. I knew it was possible, that's what the humans on Earth had done to expand at first, they terraformed planets to suit their needs. The only problem we faced however was that we didn't have the knowledge yet to terraform from scratch, we had been lucky enough to find the right environments to work from but this would be an entirely different undertaking for us. We took the information from the planets we had found and began running simulations on their environmental data, trying to find the best way to get one of them to suit our evolved lifeforms and allow them to prosper.

Additional Bases

Creating microstations inside the stars that we had probes in wasn't entirely a bad idea. It would allow us to better monitor systems and perform some of the upgrades without having a risk of our precious resources being intercepted by an alien ship. We started first with our new home system, creating a small facility inside the star with the same plant life we had been developing for the triple star system. It was much easier to balance out this particular station due to there only being a single star to work with. Once it was done we began upgrading its capabilities which allowed for more accurate scans that reached out further. The shield was also given the new modifications that allowed for double shielding and adding different aspects to the shields as well. If we really wanted to we might be able to stealth an entire system from our enemies, so long as our energy output was enough to integrate with a shield of this size. Once this station was done we began sending out resources to have the rest of the stars begin their construction. By the time they finished we would have numerous stations under our control with enough monitoring going on that any movement within the galaxy should be detectable. The only problem we were going to face however was a mass shortage on crystals, which meant more emotional time for me unless we could develop a way to create them.

Well, at least not all the emotions were terrible, and Ambri was there to assist as well so it went a lot faster. We both agreed when we had created enough crystals for our immediate purpose that we needed to figure out how to create these differently, it was hard on us to make these crystals and it took twice as much time to recover completely from the effects of the enhanced emotions. During this recovery time I worked on trying to figure out how to create synthetic crystals, it was a slow process due to the remaining effects but it gave me something to do to pass the time. I lost track of time doing this, several hours after I should have been done recovering Ambri came to make sure everything was all right. I had been making progress in figuring out a solution, but had not produced a crystal yet. When she walked in I was a bit surprised and that emotion interacted with the environment dome I had been working on. That tiny spark of emotion started the reaction I had been working toward and a small glitter formed in the center of all the energy.

It took some work to get the controls to do what I needed, but once they were working I was able to get the energies to form around this little seed crystal and it began to grow. Once I had it to a good, workable size I stopped the process and removed the crystal from the environment, it wasn't until I held the crystal that I realized the flaw in my plan, I had used up the seed and left nothing to build on again, however the nearly artificial crystal was done with very little emotional investment into it. I gave the crystal to Evan to study, to make sure it held the same properties despite the lack of our personal energies being invested into it. Ambri waited patiently with me for the results, she wanted to know as much as I did if we would be able to stop creating them in the way that we did. While we waited I worked some more on the dome, I created a spot in it to deposit the seed crystal in and hoped that I could just use an energy feed through the seed to create a bigger crystal in the dome below. I also tweaked the settings to allow it to continuously create crystals as the ones it had were removed. If all worked well we would never be short of crystals so long as resources were abundant.

Memorial

The information that came from the new stations was proving very useful. Fighting against the gravitational forces of three different stars was providing us with the knowledge we needed to understand the gravity drives of the alien ships and ways to interrupt them, not permanently but enough to be able to get away if they were able to improve them. We also might be able to use this knowledge to not only interrupt them but to cast them away to where we would want them to be. This could prove useful in order to hinder them for longer periods of time instead of having to destroy more of their kind. We also were able to improve the stations as well, making them more comfortable to be in for those of us affected by the extra gravity that was there. The plants that had been engineered for the environment were doing well, with the abundance of light there was no shortage of energy for them, just water. It took awhile to get enough there to balance the system, but once the amount was correct the plants provided all the clean oxygen that would be needed for life. The energy producing research had yet to start in these stations, it would take some time to make them as safe as they needed to be before that could start. The design of the stations was being improved as well, and using the wormhole gates to transport the materials they needed made it easy. The plan was to eventually make the stations capable of sustaining several individuals at a time, which would be for future use so long as our allies progressed in this direction. Their assistance would be most welcome in these stations but we still wanted to make sure they progressed at their own pace, so the gates were locked out for them to these stations as well. Nasero had several other plants planned for this type of station, but it would take some time and more research to develop them properly, though when they were finished they would be able to provide food and also decorate the recreational areas of these stations as well.

The life going down to Hopdfen took to the reconstructed planet well. Each species quickly found its place and by now we were well on our way to having it restored to nearly its former glory. With each step we learned more about how to do this should we find another chance in the future. We had almost lost a couple of species when we brought others in, but before they were lost they found a way to adapt and survive with their new neighbors. The life down on the planet really was spectacular, each form of life had a delicate grace to it that was truly unique to this world. It was a shame that some of the life that once existed here would never be seen again. This gave me an interesting thought though, I went to Ambri to find out if she could create trinkets in rememberance of some of the things that would not be returning. As she created these I worked on creating technology that would be able to display what she remembered of them, so that at least they would exist in an archive of life. Of course, no technology would be able to actually use the energy to view the trinket memory, but by viewing her memory I should be able to create a recording, replicating what I saw. This would allow potentially many to appreciate what life there was and what it means to use others for your own gain. I had a few probes go and record the other life on the planet so that we could have a complete collection of information about the life of the planet.

Once all the information was gathered and the trinkets were made I worked on integrating all the information into a database. Translating the memories to it was the hardest, I had to view them many times to get it all right, but when I was done I showed it to Ambri. She was very pleased with the work I had done and consented that this information should be available on the station instead of just on the planet. I had two consoles created, one on the station and one on the planet, that way we could view it down there among the other life and the Golvenar could view it on the station. Quite a few of them came to see the life that was and once was on the planet. There was much weeping among many of them, they had not seen such life before and to know that it was lost because of their history made it difficult, but they appreciated being able to see it, it would help them maintain their change and to avoid such bloodshed in the future.

Protected Travel

I had created quite a few different types of crystals using every minor emotion that I could. All of them, aside from the dark one, worked just like the others but had their area of preference. Some of them found better use in place of the previous crystals while others were still being analyzed to figure out where they would be best used. With these crystals our systems were optimized quite a bit and our resources stretched much farther than before. We also found that we had to monitor how much crystal we produced, the fragments needed time to multiply again after creating so many and especially after creating the large ones. It was when we finally found a crystal that suited our present needs to shield our wormholes that I stopped trying to create different types. The crystal accepted the energy from our star shielding, which meant it could be converted and integrated into a stable wormhole. It still took a bit of testing to perfect the shielding, however once we had figured it out we deployed three probes with the extra technology to integrate with the original three. Once they were done we would, hopefully, have instant access to these new bases to continue conducting research in their unique conditions.

As the probes raced towards their destination we implemented the technology in the functional gate at our current base. It wouldn't make sense to not utilize this technology as much as possible given the need to prevent interceptions from our enemies. It didn't take long for the probes to arrive and finish their integration. Once the materials were there we simply had the probes do the work we had just performed and within a few minutes we had our first stable wormhole from one of the star bases to another. Once we were sure it was safe and stable we made the next connection from one of the stars to our base. Evan took a break long enough to be the first to use this travel system. He arrived safely and came back through after verifying the conditions would be safe for normal beings. In order to ensure the stability of the environments in these bases we had to send some custom designed plant life to them along with some drones to oversee their growth. These plants were an offshoot of Nasero, though without their own individual intelligence and without the excessive amount of fragments to use in order to mutate beyond their designed intentions. Once the plants had taken root and started growing I went to each of the bases myself.

It was interesting being inside of a star. The heat shield and light filter made it tolerable though it was still a bit uncomfortable having all that gravitational force pressing against you. Our shields held back as much of this force as they could, but it was definitely not a place I would choose to stay if given the option. The new technology was working wonderfully, traveling between the stars was not a problem at all and probably much safer than translocating. While I was there I helped get some things set up for Nasero's experiments, it was the only drawback for him being a ship was that he couldn't do these things himself but had to have someone or something else do them for him. The bases would be fairly automated and things would have been completed without me, however by having me there it made the progress a bit faster. Once I finished implementing the last set of research tools I went back to the main base, it was a relief to get out of the strange gravity conditions.

Tailoring the Crystals

Using what I felt I attempted to recreate that feeling with a different emotion. The easiest one to access would be joy. I had much to be happy about, having friends and a new home. Helping a civilization rebuild and repopulating a planet. Things were looking up. Using this joy I attempted to make a connection with the fragments that we had experienced before, Ambri was aware that I was conducting the next phase of testing and had made herself available, though she would not be participating this time. It took awhile to start feeling the emotion on the same level, it was like trying to embody what you felt on a level that, well, most guys I know could not do. With slight prompting from Ambri however I eventually reached that point and as my energy connected with the fragments I felt it being amplified. The fragments seemed to bounce the energy back and forth between them, causing them to all be linked and eventually they formed a bond that felt similar to the one Ambri and I shared. Once the bond was formed the fragments came together and a small crystal was formed, it was at this point I stopped, not wanting to get sucked into an emotional state that I couldn't handle. It was now clear that any emotion could do it, but the next question was did this crystal work like the others?

The crystal did amplify like the other ones, but not quite in the same way. When tested with different forces the crystal seemed strongest with the aspects of healing. It was the strongest crystal yet when used in one of the healing devices and also worked well with shields, though not quite as well as it worked when used with its seemingly preferred energy. This made me wonder if we could tailor our crystals to different things based on the emotion we used. The next test would involve the emotion of rage, this would be easy enough to pull forth by remembering the death beasts. To prepare for this experiment we had a special room built with internal shields to prevent any destructive energy that I might build up from being able to escape, the shield was designed to absorb the energy, we just hoped it would work if I were forced to unleash at it. When everything was ready Ambri, Evan and Nasero were attending, watching from the safety of an adjoining room.

It only took moments for me to put myself in the right emotional state, those creatures had such an effect on me and knowing what they were made for and that they had no other purpose just made it that much easier. The fragments bounced the energies I sent towards them around madly and the room grew dark as it was enhanced. The feeling grew and grew and would overtake me if I wasn't careful. Rage was a dangerous emotion to play with, but we needed to know how the fragments would react to it in order to better understand how this all worked. As they drew together the crystal that formed wasn't clear like the previous ones. This one was a dark, deep red. As it came together it grew much faster than the rest and the emotions started to take over me. When the crystal had reached the size of my head Nasero tried to talk me out of it, but the state could not be broken. Ambri and Evan tried in vain as well to break the link and eventually the only thing that I could feel that kept me from going over the edge was the link with Ambri. As I became aware of that I realized that the rage coursing through me was doing her harm as well. With this realization I was able to break free of its death grip on me, but could not stop the emotion completely. In order to free myself of this sinister emotion that gripped me I translocated out, to a peaceful place down on the planet. I remembered the sunset that she had shown me from this location and that brought me further out of the state I had been in. Within a few minutes of sitting there staring at the waves and listening to their sounds I felt like myself again. When I translocated up Ambri embraced me and asked me to promise never to create a crystal like this again, I had no problem making that promise. The crystal was larger than the first one Ambri and I had made, it had grown for the few minutes it had taken for me to calm down on the planet and it showed a lot of potential. The crystal, as we suspected would be the case, would accept no other energy aside from destructive. We used it to enhance our weapons which was the only good purpose for it but secretly hoped that we would never have to use these weapons again. After this creating various, non-sinister crystals was easy. We had enough data from what had happened to start working on creating environments to try creating these crystals, though the initial attempts hadn't produced anything yet.

Amplified Emotions

It didn't take long for the new probes to reach the triple star system. Once they were inside the stars they began their work constructing the base system that they would build off of. In consisted primarily of a sheltered bubble big enough for about three people in it as well as a wormhole gate. The translocation technology wouldn't work in these bases as the gravitational forces would be too great to shield against and any jump would likely pull you into the star to be incinerated. Once the gates were up and running we began running diagnostics on them and modifying the shields as the data came in. We were working with limited resources but it appeared we had what we needed on each of the probes. Working a shield into the wormhole proved to be a bit of a challenge, there was only a brief moment where a signal could be placed into the walls of the wormhole. Most of the wormholes that were created bent horribly in the gravity and would not complete before collapsing. The biggest problem we were facing was getting a technological shield to adhere to a force power being generated. The more we tried to get this to work the more we realized that we had very little understanding about this particular force. We could create it but found it difficult to manipulate. At one point I decided to leave Nasero to his work and try to find a different approach to getting around this problem.

With several of the crystals lying around I began using the force that Ambri had taught me, I attempted to see if there were memories behind the creation of these crystals. Of course, because she had not been making a trinket when these crystals were formed there was nothing to see, however there was something to feel. The energy was similar in nature but different, it would take some time but it might be possible to figure out the energy pattern that went into them. Technology couldn't detect these energy signatures and my abilities barely revealed anything, but I could feel just enough of them to have something to go by. The deeper I went in feeling this energy the more I could feel the emotion behind its creation. The more emotion I felt the more it affected me, eventually causing Ambri to return from the planet to see if everything was alright. When she saw what I was doing she understood what was going on and sat down to help me figure this out.

Between the two of us we were able to explore the depths of this energy, as one of us made progress is understanding it we shared it with the other and in turn the new understanding helped us go further still. The emotional tone this energy had was intense, just like any other energy that went through these crystals it was magnified, however this energy wasn't normally felt. Eventually our emotions synced with those that formed the crystal, we were both sorrowful but in this state the crystal began to grow. It was difficult to stay in this state, the sorrow was overwhelming, but we were so close to understanding that we both endured it for as long as possible. When finally we had to stop it took both of us communicating with one another in order for the effects to reverse. At the point we were freed from the grasp of this energy the crystal was nearly the size of an escape pod. A crystal this huge would definitely prove useful, though making them this big was a dangerous task. With the information gathered Ambri left me to my research and I carefully explored the energies, making sure I did not connect again with it on the level that we had just experienced.

Finding Our Place

I had no idea how long it would be before the probes could confirm the constellations, the distance was pretty great but had not been calculated yet, there was no telling how close the next system was at this point, though once they arrived we'd have plenty of information about it. The release of the first resurrected species to Hopdfen was a success, they took to the oceans and began propagating and consuming the thriving plant life. It only took a few hours for them to finish establishing themselves, they were short lived creatures. When we introduced the next specie they wasted little time in controlling the population of the first, which meant we had some balance but needed to speed up our introduction as the second one would soon overtake the first one completely. As we introduced each next step the newest would help control the last and eventually, as we got to the more advanced species we could slow down once more. It was beautiful to watch the data that came in from each step, it was like watching a super fast evolution cycle that takes millions of years happen all within a few hours. The ocean life, as lovely as it was, didn't compare to the land creatures, I think by far they were more spectacular and graceful, these had to be introduced much slower than the last as they took some time to find their homes. It would probably take months to finish introducing all of them and it would definitely take years for the numbers to return to what they once were.

When I checked in with Nasero he had begun developing some higher function probes to send out, in all he had three in development. The specs on their design showed that these were star impregnating probes with enough resources and technology to begin developing something new within the stars. Fortunately when I asked him he didn't say he was going to dominate more stars like the aliens had done, instead these probes were going to build his new research stations in the triple star system. His plans involved trying to harness the type of power stars produce and then amplify it using the technology from the power sources we already had. From the look of the concept design it looked like he was going to attempt to make miniature stars and place them inside the power supplies and then use the output, amplified by the crystal technology, to produce more power than what we could ever hope to use. I wasn't sure how well it would all work, but it would definitely be interesting to see what data came from the research. What all of this also meant was that we would have to increase our ablities with the wormhole technology, we were pretty sure large gravitational forces would still have some effect on a wormhole, and so we would need to provide an energy shielding to go with its formation to prevent it from being manipulated. This, of course, would be tested by the probes as their first task upon entering the stars.

The more I saw the things that were going on with everybody the more I realized that our goals may pull us apart. I didn't hold it against any of them, we each had a life to live and with two of them being fairly young beings they had much they wanted to learn and they needed a chance to find their place in the universe. I decided it would probably be of benefit to not fight any of their goals and instead settled on trying to understand my own place, after all, my purpose was to be an experiment and I fought and won against that purpose for now. I got to work utilizing our advances in technology to begin work on my own small, personal ship. It would be a living creature like Nasero but without the advanced intelligence, which was of course the only way we could make additional ships as we didn't know what brought about his intelligence in the first place. I suppose I could have designed it to integrate with his hive mind, however then I would be stretching him out further and forcing him to go with me on my missions, which was exactly what I wanted to avoid doing at this point. The computer in the ship would integrate with the other technology, meaning we would still have access to the data we gathered and be able to communicate and collaborate as needed. When I had finished the design the seed was produced, the ship would take a little time to grow in some fertile soil and then it would be ready for use. To do this I had the seed deposited on one of the lifeless planets in the system.

Continuing the Work

We were trying to make the most of our purchased time. Nasero had learned much about shielding technology and even found a way to produce the same type of solar shield without using a star, it wouldn't be as large or quite as strong but it should do the trick for protecting something a bit larger. The shield was first implemented on the station and proved a more than adequate defense. The shield was configured to require particular signals and codes to get through it and our technology was reconfigured to work with it. A set of satellites were constructed as well to make a permanent home around the Hasplena planet, which was called Hopdfen, protecting it from any entry outside of our transportation system. This would further prevent any outside interferences on the planet and allow us to shape it back to the way Ambri envisioned it. Nasero's shields were also greatly improved because of this technology and he hoped it would improve further as he looked into creating an even stronger power source. I wasn't sure what we would do with more power aside from further improve our own technologies from it, however I wasn't about to argue with him about it, all technological advances would benefit us and all that we protected.

Evan had been fascinated more and more with the genetics system the Golvenar had developed, he had taken the lead on recreating the life that would go on Hopdfen. A lot of his time was in calculating which species to introduce first to ensure that the food chain would be able to be sustained. He knew that the base creatures were the most important but he wanted to make sure he knew when to introduce the next ones to keep the first from overpopulating. He was probably about three quarters of the way through his research into this and nearly had a full schedule for the reintroduction of animal life. With a little luck the creatures would start their repopulation by tomorrow. Ambri of course was excited about this, the different ecosystems were nearly done and most of the creatures she remembered were being reconstructed through the recovered DNA.

With all of them busy working with their various desires I had a lot of extra time. I decided to spend most of it going through the data that was pouring in from the probes. Each moment that passed revealed more of the universe and I was curious if we were close to figuring out where we were in regards to where we once were. If the two databases could find a common link we would be able to find our way around a lot better and know exactly where Calypso was if there was ever going to be a hope of returning. One of the strange things about the data was that there was no sign of the aliens who had put me together. No gravity jumps, no cubes, nothing. It was like they wanted to avoid us completely, but I knew they were out there somewhere. With the importance they had placed on me they couldn't have gone far, it just worried me that we didn't know where they went. As I poured through the constellations I eventually started to see some that might be likely candidates, however in order for them to match we would have to send some of the probes to closer galaxies. If these were a match that would have meant we were thrown very far off course, and if that was the case it also meant that we knew very little about the power of wormholes.

Something Good

I had been taking Nasero's classes on the Golvenar language, his classes were pretty easy and I understood enough of the language to communicate with them in just a day and a half. With this knowledge and a translating program on my wrist computer I went down to their home planet to see how things were going. I knew there was quite a bit of construction from the war that had been taking place on the planet but they were making good progress. We had even deployed a few drones to give them a hand in reconstructing things. As I walked around most of them seemed to avoid me, it was well known among them that I seemed to be the leader of the ship and as such was someone to be feared. I wanted to relieve this fear, I had no desire to lord over them in any way. So, once I had found a spot that I could provide some help I got to work moving materials around and assisting in the construction process. I avoided using most of our advanced technology, aside from the heavy energy. They marvelled at how quickly I could move things around and eventually started talking to me while we worked.

I learned that their technology had been advanced enough to perform easy movement from the surface of a planet and into space, however most everything had to be moved by hand or machine, though they didn't have many construction machines. Most of their efforts had been in overcoming the weapons of the other nations. Disease had been cured on their planet from their research in genetics, so biological weapons such as viruses were not possible for them, which is why they had turned to modifying animal life to make the perfect weapon. Few of them remained that knew much of the project however and those that did would not go back to that kind of work, they feared what had been created. With the help of Nasero and Evan they had been creating schools to help educate their people, turning the lower class into more of a middle class and evening out their societal standings. They had no king or ruler now, just an elected governing body that was currently occupying the space station. Some of the new technology that was being developed was modes of transportation, they had war vehicles before but nothing that would carry large amounts of their people or goods from one location to another, or, at least nothing remaining that could have accomplished this task. They were developing a new ship to fly into space as well, it was intended to be used to explore the current system and to allow them to learn more and potentially move farther in their understanding of the universe as they explored it. I knew it would be quite some time before they could leave their solar system and we made sure to give them no head starts in this either, it would be important that we maintain our relationship with them but only help in small ways to move them forward. They understood this as well and didn't press to get any of the better technology, they were mearly happy with having a place to go where they could marvel at what was possible and try their best to make it themselves as well. We did, however, help them make cleaner technology. I remembered some of the history of the Earth that I had read and didn't want their progress to destroy the planet, so we assisted them a bit in understanding solar energy and other forms of natural power.

By the end of the work day we had nearly finished the structure, it turned out to be a library which I was happy about. They would begin collecting as much of their literature and history as they could and we planned to have a computer constructed in it to take in all this information, sort it, organize it and relay it to whoever asked. As I returned to my room on the station I got a mental image from Ambri. She was enjoying the sunset on her planet, watching it from the beach she frequented most. The clouds turned from golden yellow to brilliant orange followed by a deep red and finally purple. As the light faded from the sky she gazed up at the stars and showed me the different constellations that she grew up with. I could feel peace and joy coming from her thoughts as she shared them with me, it was nice to have something good for a change.

Restoring a Planet

With one enemy contained and the other retreating we were finally going to be able to enjoy some rest. Ambri took this opportunity to take me down to her former home and show me what few sites remained. Many of the mountains and caves were still in place and the plants seemed to be doing well, hopefully within a year or two they would seed and create more life on the planet. She showed me the beaches she had walked along so many times before and where the villages she knew had been. At a few spots we located some remnants of previous life that had been on the planet, little bits of debris from the homes of animals or bits of fur that were blowing in the wind. These things she gathered up and as we finished our tour of her home I realized that we might be able to do more with her planet than just restore some plant life to it.

I had more probes go and explore the surface of the planet and the depths of its oceans. The creatures had been thorough in their destruction of life but they had not destroyed everything yet, there were many tiny bits of animals still left to be found. Nasero analyzed the remnants and informed us that he would indeed be able to reconstruct some of them, at least the ones that he had a complete strand of DNA from and ones that made sense to do, meaning ones that came up with breeding pairs. It wouldn't make sense to create life that couldn't sustain itself. We opted to keep the fragments off of her home world, but with the help of the Golvenar's data we were able to accelerate the growth of the specimens and some plant samples as well resulting in some reforestation of her planet a little faster than originally anticipated and in a few days we hoped to release the first species back into her world.

Ambri spent quite a bit of time reconstructing her world from her memories, having the probes and drones placing the plants in the areas she remembered them being in. The plants in the sea were a bit easier to bring back as they settled themselves into the most pleasing locations. At the pace she was going she would have the planet populated with plant life about a day before any of the animal life was ready to be returned to it, not that this was a problem, there would need to be plenty of life for the animals to live in and thrive off of. We made sure to construct a dome around the plants she had put there, we wanted to make it a sanctuary for the only life that had survived the destruction. The baby plants would be cared for by drones and she would have a little dwelling inside of it so that when she wanted to visit she could be among these things that she had put so much care into preserving. She made plans for how her garden would look as the plants grew and Nasero had it programmed into the drones to ensure her vision would be carried out in the dome.

Taking Control

I felt so refreshed, something about their food and drink had made it easy to sleep. Having a private suite in one of the towers was quite nice, the view was magnificent from up here, so many stars to see and being able to watch the life below. Nasero had finished the upgrades to his systems, we should be able to travel again without being found and we had also come up with some new technology for these star devices. We should be able to shoot our own probe into the stars using the new shield we had and have the probes integrate with the device, this would allow us to take control over any of the systems they had set up as a trap for us, though I was sure we would turn the shields off. We also planned to set up a miniature power supply in each one to keep it from needing to use the energy from the star, when the one we already had control over was upgraded we noticed that with the lack of drain the shield surrounding the system could be much larger. It was kind of interesting how much their technology was limited because it took its energy from what it was trying to use. As the shield expanded the alien ships were pushed farther back, they realized we had overcome their technology and they retreated, though I was sure they would come back eventually when they had some new technological advances, though we would continue our research as well.

We began deploying probes again, double checking systems we had been to and taking over the infected stars. With one base nearly complete we had to decide where the next one would be, but there was no hurry as we had safety where we were. We made sure to test the shields in different star systems, conducting tests to see if we could improve it, remove any potential flaws from the shields. Whatever we discovered we implemented in our own star's shield, making sure that our tests were not done on an already critical system. Eventually the probes reported a system they had previously been to had new life on one of the planets. Upon closer inspection the life was found to be growing quickly, and the life was the offspring of the creature we had created. It was building an army of creatures like it, and they were making more ships like the one we had. The star in this system had been infected with a device, once we had control we developed a two shield system, one protecting the star, the other preventing things from entering or leaving the system. This threat would be contained for now, but we needed to keep an eye on them anyway.

Making Friends

When Ambri had brought us large crystals we were astonished. We hadn't expected to get many more and surely not any of this size. She informed us she had figured out how they came about, it was a mixture of her tears and emotions. Her emotions had triggered some particular energies that came out when she cried, so these super-charged tears were the catalyst that created the crystals. She had made these from remembering her people and her sorrow over more lives having to be lost in defending her home world. It was unfortunate that it required sorrow for the crystals to be formed, we didn't want to cause sorrow just to have our technology, however it was nice to have a good number of large crystals to move forward with our plans. The modifications to the drives wouldn't require the crystals to help our stealth, and so we began construction of our first space station here near her home world. We informed the other alien civilization of our plans to do this and they actually seemed delighted about the plans. Their government had been changing well and the people were much happier, though there was still much work to do. It was actually Ambri's idea to invite them to have some access to the new facility when it was done, transporters would be set up on their planet, her planet and the station, though her planet would be locked down. Sentries would be constructed to maintain security and peace on the station, their world would have to manage itself, but at least they would have a peaceful place to go if things didn't stay their current course.

With all the resources that were available it didn't take long to have the base platform constructed and the shields fully operational. Getting the atmosphere took a little while as we had to collect the right resources without stripping a potential life-giving planet of them, to do this we mostly focused on any asteroids in the system. I learned that the aliens called themselves the Golvenar, they had a history dating back tens of thousands of years but had never suspected life existed beyond their solar system. They were not aware of mindforce powers and had never found need to try to explore much beyond their system. They had at one time contemplated making contact with Ambri's people, who she informed me were called the Hasplena, but had decided against it when conflict began escalating among their nations, this was when they began working on genetic manipulations to create biological weapons. This work had lead to some peaceful uses, however the goal was always in overcoming the other nations. But now that their people were aware of other races beyond their system they had a different understanding of their place and wanted to learn more about what was in the universe. The space station would be a perfect opportunity for them to learn. We decided to keep Ambri's plants on her planet unique to where they were and used the plant and animal life from the Golvenar planet to populate the station and attached biodome. As we communicated more with them and informed them of the dangers we had been finding in the universe and what we had done to the star to protect this system they were both afraid and pleased. Afraid of what might come and pleased that we had a protective system in place. When the monitoring system and controls were in place we showed them how things worked but also let them know that some systems would be under our control at all times due to this being our station and the need to maintain the technology on it. When all was in enough working order the people they chose to come arrived at the station and began settling in. We got to enjoy a celebration with them, this new home would be a symbol of peace among their people. I do have to say, they made some very delicious foods and their music actually made some sense, though their dance was impossible for me to do and instead Ambri and I just sat back and watched. It was nice to have some allies for a change, though I did have to ask them to forgive me for fighting them earlier, I felt bad about having to decimate their government to ensure the safety of the system.