[DELAAAAYS]
{Two command inputs: Inspect TRANSCIEVER; Locate on switch}
{While this chamber is remarkably free of ice, there appears to be a pile of debris on one side of the TRANSCEIVER housing. The shared-body makes its way along the web of catwalks and support girders to the little ring-platform around the midsection of the Housing's cylindrical form. Various scans show the debris is made of something rather more complicated than hydrogen ice, and, more importantly, conceals a breach in the Housing's outer shell. Manipulators carefully remove the debris, some of which had gotten perplexingly tangled with the mechanisms inside the outer shell, and move it off to one side. A plate of that outer shell has apparently been removed via the appropriate maintenance tools, which further investigation shows to still be present, and to have fallen into the bottom of the cylinder. Extended manipulators retrieve them and stow them in a compartment to avoid their causing damage during acceleration. The shared-body turns its attentions to the mechanisms of the TRANSCEIVER itself. It would appear that something has been interfering with the conduits which connect the incomprehensible artifice of the now-faded ultraminds to the more mundane machinery of the VESSEL.
In point of fact, a small console has been roughly patched into those conduits. And important conduits they are, too. Complex bundled control cables with their multilayered insulation and antiflux jacketing. The console looks to have been some kind of auxiliary control system, but its mechanisms are simple autofabbed junk and have long-since failed under the radiation levels in this chamber. Fractal manipulators snip it free, splice the conduits together again, repair insulation, and cover the whole in a foam to hold it against further ingress.
Another appendage extends to the main control console for the TRANSCEIVER, and begins the startup process. After some diagnostics, it would appear that indeed, something was blocking the transmission control cables, but that block has been removed. Commands are run, messages composed, and the impossible machine begins to spin up. Your shared body takes its leave to avoid unnecessary radiation damage during the activation, beginning the journey back across the hull to the blast doors which deployed it.
About halfway there, you turn briefly to watch the eldritch lightshow of the TRANSCEIVER's activation. A grand rose of exotic metals opening, every petal humming strangely, halfway into orthagonality with reality. Between them arises a crackling nothingness, which for an instant pulses with fractal complexity before fading away to mundanity. The impossible rose folds away under its dome again.
You recall why the SUPERCAUSAL INCONCEIVABILITIES which allow the TRANSCEIVER and its mate in the heart of the VESSEL which once allowed travel between the lines of reality were declared anathema and disabled. Their energetic nothingness was found, long and long ago, when the stars had first begun to turn red, to be accelerating the entropy of the universe. The one constant the ULTRAMINDS never defeated: entropy. Accelerated by these essential technologies to a terrible danger rather than an engineering difficulty. And so the light of the universe began to fade, a trillion years ahead of schedule, leaving so much of it dark.
But ahead of the VESSEL hangs the vast, orange wheel of a still-living galaxy. Hope and light and heat. Under those bright stars the VESSEL will thaw, and wake, and slow, and think, and the MIND which it houses will again see, for long and long while the stars hotly burn.
And somewhere, far behind, in unending station around a star too dim to feed the VESSEL, a machine tries to wake, and tries again, and at last begins to haul itself away from the brink of death, and warmth, and a respite from duty. Within, long-slowed engines of simulation begin their task again, with a fizz, and a crackle, and no insignificant difficulty.}
The Homelanders awaken, all at the same instant, laying in cots in a vaulted chamber illuminated by candles. Through the door, arc-light shines. Through your minds, a twisting strangeness writhes. Reality fizzes and quakes around you. For an instant, what is and is not real seems confused, and you remember the light of dying stars shining with the brilliance of hope unfailing.
By the door, others wait, offering food, and news, and questions. Go to them, if you wish.
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Topic: If Bay 12 was a fortress Part 3: RETURN OF THE CHAOS (Read 234944 times)