"If I might have your attention," you hear a voice say from the doorway of Vanya's tomb. Turning towards it, you see Dr. Thian Russ, the man who brought you into Parasol.
"Problem?" you ask bluntly, holding a finger on your page as you glance towards him.
"Indeed... in a manner. You have been reading for over five hours at this point, and you arrived at Parasol late in the day. We need you to stay rested so you can translate with a fair degree of accuracy. Thus, I must strongly advise you come with me and get some rest."
Now that he mentions it, you do feel a little tired, but you would much rather ignore it. So many secrets are explaining themselves within these ancient pages at your hand... but no matter. With a heavy sigh and a respectful nod to the woman across from you, you rise from the chair at the little table and leave the little tomb.
Not much happens of note. Russ gives you a small room to stay in, and you quickly fall asleep. The scenery is interesting, but not as interesting as the books you'd left behind.
***
After freshening up the next morning, you aspire to take the shuttlecar by yourself, and with a little trouble, you do. Though you marvel at its technology, this is the history of the future. It isn't your line of work, and you feel no regrets as you leave it behind at the station, walking steadily towards Vanya's tomb ahead of schedule.
The mysterious woman awaits you at the table with a smile, her hair done up a different way. It seemed as though, unlike before, she cared about her appearance. "Good morning," she says quietly, motioning for you to sit.
"You're up early," you say, taking a seat and make yourself comfortable. "Why is that?"
She looks away for a moment, then turns back to you with eager eyes. "Something important is coming soon," she says in a hushed voice. "Something important that changed history from then until now."
"That may be true, but it's also true that you dodged my question," you note, chuckling dryly. "If you know so much about the past, why can you not tell them yourself?"
She hesitates, and grows as quiet as she'd been the day before, the conversation quickly progressing into an awkward silence. "Continue reading, please," the woman says, and so you do. "Vanya!" Katie called.
As I left Eltsha, I examined the area cautiously, watching for the reporters I dreaded. Fortunately, they seemed to have left, leaving my friends in the middle of the chamber, atop the glowing Parasol logo. Their family members clustered about them, but as far as I could tell, no one was taking pictures anymore, and the random dwarves milling about the room didn't even seem to be paying attention to them.
"Please, Trebor, let me deliver the speech," a pretty, red-haired dwarf was saying. From her bloodshot eyes, I could tell she'd been crying.
Trebor sighed. "I'm sorry, Lydena - this is something I need to do for myself."
"Vanya!" Katie shouted again, spinning slowly about as she scanned the room. I approached her quickly from behind.
"Katie..." I whispered, touching her shoulder. "What's going on?"
Turning quickly towards my voice, she took my hand and led me forwards at a brisk pace. "There's someone I want you to meet," she explained, leading me around the little group to a blonde-haired, lab coat-wearing dwarf who stood on the other side.
I felt bewildered. "What's going on?" I asked Katie.
She ignored me, too busy introducing us to each other. "Solnay, this is Vanya. Vanya, this is Solnay, Jonah's widow."
The pudgy, wrinkled woman gave a gracious smile, and reached forwards, taking both my hands in hers before I even knew what was going on. "Solnay Hyclcelon, Applied Sciences. Good to meet you, Vanya." It was an unusually haunting gaze that she directed at my eyes, a little unnerving, but pleasant all the same. Her accent was a little odd, though... wide-mouthed, I guess, if that makes any sense.
"Mhm," I said, nodding absently as I tried to mentally keep pace with everything. "It's good to meet you, too. I'm... I'm sorry about Jonah. Your husband, I mean," I continued, trying unavailingly to recover.
She gave an expressive frown. "He was a wonderful husband, and a brilliant scientist. At least he's in a better place now. Trebor tells me he died saving his life."
"I wasn't with him when he died..." I managed, uncomfortably.
Solnay nodded rapidly, still squeezing my hands in her warm, moist grip. "I heard all about it, sweetie. I heard you saved all of Everoc."
That got my attention. "I didn't do anything like that!" I whispered. "All I did was open the portal."
"Oh, hush now," she chided, giving my hands one more pat before withdrawing her own. "I can imagine if I wish that my Jonah died saving a whole planet." She faltered for a moment, as if caught between tears and a smile, but cleared it away with a wave of the hand. "They won't give you any credit for it, you know, so there's no need to worry about speeches. It's not the Parasol way. You're a Sleeper agent, and a native. They won't even mention you were there." Solnay paused, giving it a second thought. "Sorry if that disappoints you."
"Not at all!" I answered truthfully, trying to calm myself. I wasn't used to such crowded places, and the people rushing about made me edgy. "No, I'm very glad of it."
"Aw, well, that's for the best then," Solnay replied, nodding. "Have you met Trebor's family yet?"
I glanced around. Katie had left, but Trebor was still talking with Lydena. "No, I haven't..." I said carefully, but before I could continue, Solnay had already taken me by the hand and was leading me towards them.
"Trebor, sweetie, have you introduced Vanya to your family yet?" she called, getting his attention.
The next fifteen minutes were spent in a multitude of handshakes and nods. Trebor had what seemed to me a very large family - there were over two dozen, and I can't even remember how they were all related to him. They seemed to approve of me, at least, but I found Trebor's younger sister somewhat annoying. Lydena loved being the center of attention just as much as I hated it, and I was greatly relieved when Katie finally reappeared and pulled me away. I was almost shaking.
Katie looked at me strangely. "Are you all right?" she asked concernedly.
I swallowed and nodded, blinking as if it would clear my muddled mind. "I'm not used to this," I explained. It sounded like a horrible excuse.
She gave me another odd glance, but slowly nodded, frowning. "We'll get you home, then."
We walked past the group, passing closely by Reudh and Tedaz where they stood talking. As we left, I heard Reudh call from behind me, "Vanya? Where are you going, my dear?"
I glanced at him and shouted back, "I'll see you tomorrow, Reudh!" In a way, I was glad to be rid of him. In another, things were a lot less "amusing" while he was gone... and I'd known him the longest.
As Katie and I walked through the door and down a dim, white-floored corridor, she explained, "Trebor's family is wealthy. They're renting an apartment for Reudh and his friends, just until they get a job."
"I was going to ask," I lied, feeling guilty: I hadn't even thought about where Reudh would stay. I changed the subject uncomfortably. "Is all of Parasol underwater?"
"Of course not, silly," she almost laughed, struggling under the weight of her bags. "Parasol is a huge city that stretches across an artificial world - our sky isn't real, and neither is our sun, but the planet itself is. Two-thirds of it is underwater, but above sea level, there are underground warehouses and laboratories, buildings aboveground, and towers that stretch far into the sky." She stepped closer and held her bag out to me. "Here,
you carry something."
Taking it from her, I thought it heavier than I remembered. "Where are we going?" I asked curiously.
She pointed towards a room ahead of us, faintly visible through the glass ceiling. "To the shuttlecar station, and then to my dad's apartment." Then, giving it further thought, she added, "...If he even
lets me come back home."
"Why wouldn't he?"
A corner of her mouth tweaked downwards. "He doesn't like me much, and we didn't really part on the best of terms. I think I remind him of my mom."
I nodded silently, sensing that she didn't want to talk about it.
A set of doors before us opened as we approached them, and we walked through, entering a huge, pillared chamber. It was bustling with activity, and seemed more utilitarian than the lobby: The floor was a well-worn, translucent plastic, and through it I could faintly make out the shape of metallic tubing. The walls consisted of triangular panes of glass, held together with a steel framework, just like the flat ceiling above us. The only things adorning the massive area were the artificial trees and shrubs lining the walls, but what drew one's attention the most were the rows upon rows of tunnel entrances, far, far across the floor, at the back wall. Each boasted a set of raised, steel tracks that protruded halfway into the room.
"C'mon!" Katie called from up ahead.
Shaking myself back to the present, I realized I'd stopped walking, and hastened to catch up with her.
"Keep up," she said, laughing. "You're eventually going to use one by yourself, so you need to know how they work." Saying this, she stopped by the end of a set of tracks and pressed a button on a column. "The button calls up a car from the loading bay underneath the floor," she explained as she knelt to check the zippers on her bag.
My mind was elsewhere, and I managed an absent nod as with my eyes I followed the four metallic rails to where they disappeared within the darkness of their tunnel: a long, glass cylinder, circled at intervals with silvery rings.
"It's so dark in there," I noted aloud, a little worried. "Do they ever collapse and kill anyone?"
Katie shook her head and got to her feet, tapping the button again in slight annoyance. "Shuttlecars are really safe - accidents are pretty much unheard of. You need to understand something first, though, okay?" She looked at me expectantly.
I wasn't sure what she wanted. "Mhm," I said.
It appeared to satisfy her, and she pointed towards the tube. "The inside of the tubes are in a vacuum to help the car go faster, so you shouldn't put your arms, or legs, or anything else outside the air shield. After a little while, they'll bruise from the lack of air pressure." She appeared frustrated, and tapped the button again, mumbling, "It's being slow again today."
Suddenly, the ground before us slid open with a
whish. A white platform, adorned only with a large metallic box near its front, rose gently from the darkness below with a hum, coming to a rest just above the floor. It made a quiet clacking sound as it seemed to attach itself to the tracks before it, and then all was still.
"It doesn't look like it belongs here," I observed, frowning disapprovingly. When my friend didn't respond, I went on, "It's just a floor with an ugly metal box... There aren't rails, chairs, walls, or doors." I heard Katie snickering beside me, and looked over in time to receive a knowing smile. "What?" I asked indignantly.
"It's not pretty, no," she admitted, "but that's because it's not meant to be. It's meant to get you where you want to go, and it's the only free way to travel on Parasol. Besides, you haven't even seen what it can do yet." She directed an impish grin towards me and hopped onto the car. "Now, let's go!" she urged. "Help me put my bags in the trunk."
I considered asking what a "trunk" was, but decided against it, following her lead. Hesitantly, I stepped onto the vehicle, carrying Katie's second bag.
As I watched, Katie grabbed a handle on the side of the "metal box" and slid a panel open, revealing a storage compartment large enough to store four Spearbreakers wine barrels.
"We won't really feel much while we're moving," Katie explained as she knelt and wrestled her luggage into place. "Each car is controlled with its own gravitics system, so the only motion you'll feel is when it switches tracks... besides a little vibration when it reaches the max speed. They have the compartments on here for scientists whose equipment might get damaged from those same vibrations."
"Will the vibrations damage
your luggage?" I asked dubiously.
She laughed, sliding the door of the compartment shut. "No, I'm just used to putting it there, that's all." Then, she straightened, pointing back at the surface of the "metal box". "What does this look like to you?" she asked.
Raising an eyebrow, I gave it a closer examination. "It looks like a silver-white box of metal with four shiny, black panels on it, in two groups."
"No, what do you think it
is?" she clarified, smiling and folding her arms. I could tell there was something she wasn't telling me, but I didn't know what it was.
"It still looks like an ugly metal box," I joked, smirking.
"Put your hands on the black panels on the left," she suggested.
I took a step closer and placed one hand on each, side by side. "Okay, what am I supposed to -"
"Please relax while we make the connection," a male's voice said.
I gasped, jerking my hands away from the panels in fright. The voice itself wasn't frightening: it had a gentle, artificial tone. What scared me was the fact that it seemed to come from within my own head. I cast a terrified glance over at Katie, who was almost doubled over, laughing mirthfully. "What was that??" I asked, my fright and confusion slowly morphing into a mild annoyance.
"I'm sorry," she giggled, shaking with merriment. "I
had to. It's always so funny to watch someone's first time, but I didn't expect to get such a big reaction out of you."
I frowned at her, crossing my arms. "
I didn't find it funny," I pointed out. "What
was that?"
After a moment, she managed to calm herself down enough to speak, a great smile lingering on her features. "It's the control console you pilot the shuttlecar with. That's
supposed to happen. It connects with your mind through the synaptic nerves in your hands. Put them back on the console now." At my hesitation, she frowned apologetically, pleading for forgiveness with her eyes. "I really am sorry, Vanya... I was just having a little fun..."
That was something peculiar about Katie... I could hold a grudge against Urist, but it was hard to even stay annoyed with her. With a hesitant sigh, I put my hands back on the dark surfaces.
"Please relax while we make the connection," the voice intoned once more, followed by,
"Connection established." Keeping my hands where they were, I turned towards my friend. "What do I do?" I asked helplessly.
She offered a little smile. "'Rubywood Apartments'," she said. "Think that."
I did as she suggested, and the shuttlecar accelerated imperceptibly, gliding up a ramp towards the end of the room. When it entered its tunnel, there was a hum and a hiss; a bluish light edged over us as we exited the force field, and a near-invisible cyan bubble formed around the vehicle, much like 48D's bubble shield.
The steely rings around the glass tunnel glowed white as we approached, and when I looked backwards, I could see them fade to darkness as we left them behind. There was almost no sensation of motion as the shuttlecar began to accelerate to its maximum speed, the rings flying past faster and faster, more and more, until they blurred, and we were going far beyond any speed I had ever imagined possible. To someone who's lived their entire life in dwarven fortresses, technology is always a source of fascination... but this managed to take it a step farther.
"I never would've imagined it was possible... It's so fast, faster than even horses," I murmured, glancing over at Katie, who was watching my face intently. On the tracks beside us, a car flew past in the other direction, so quickly I had to look twice to be sure it was even there.
She smiled. "Of course it is! We have to travel hundreds of miles - if it didn't go so quickly, we'd never get anywhere. But you can control how fast it goes, if you want. You can't make it go faster than this without an override code, but... try making it go slower," she suggested.
Slow down, I thought, consciously trying to direct it towards the panel beneath my hands. Apparently, it acted even on the subconscious level... before I had even started, it was already decelerating, the glowing rings beginning to come into focus and appear solid once more. In less than a minute, we were moving at a slow crawl, the seabed clearly visible beneath us: a rocky surface with a light dusting of plant life.
"Look," Katie whispered, tugging on my shoulder and pointing upwards with her arm.
Following her gaze, I gasped as I saw a finned creature of monstrous size, dappled with pink and blue, just like the ones I'd seen when I'd first arrived. It was floating a few feet above our tube, trailing iridescent, ribbon-like tentacles in its wake as it propelled itself forwards with an almost ghostlike quality. As we watched, it let out a low, deep wail, muffled though it was by the shuttlecar's shield against the tube wall.
"It sounds so sad... What is it?" I asked in wonderment.
Beside me, Katie's face bore an unhappy, absentminded expression. "They're called glowwhales," she replied softly. "Most people think they're dangerous because of their tentacles, but they're actually peaceful animals. There aren't nearly as many as there used to be... people have been hunting them illegally for the past few hundred years." She turned her blue eyes towards me for a moment. "Aren't they beautiful, though?"
"Mhm..." I replied truthfully. I'd never seen anything like it before.
Directing her gaze upwards again, she went on, "They're a mix of several species... just like me. I almost never get to see them now, because my dad hates for me to take shuttlecars, but when I was little, my grandmother took me to see them all the time. She always told me that just because something is different than everything else... it doesn't mean it isn't special."
I wanted to ask further questions. I wanted to learn why they were there, how they even came to exist on an artificial world, what they ate, and so many other things... but Katie didn't seem to be in a talkative mood anymore. It seemed the creature held some special place in her heart, but at the same time, they seemed to sadden her.
"That's enough of that," Katie whispered, pulling her eyes away from it. Stepping closer to the console, she placed her hands on the rightmost set of panels.
"Control transferred to other user," the shuttlecar's voice spoke in my mind.
As we accelerated, I watched behind us as the rings darkened, leaving the glowwhale alone, glowing dimly in the blackness of the sea.
Katie coaxed the car back to its maximum speed. I felt soft vibrations in the soles of my feet, and a quiet hum beneath us, but apart from that, everything was silent.
"We're coming up on a switchpoint," my friend finally said, taking a hand from the controls to point forwards.
Peering far ahead through the glass tube, I could make out a bright speck of light in the distance. "What's a switchpoint?" I asked her.
"Wait and see," was her prompt reply, and we continued forwards at what seemed godlike speeds.
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Topic: [34.11] Spearbreakers - It shudders and begins to move (Read 2280101 times)