Post by him on Jul 31, 2021 4:06:54 GMT
-----------------RUI’MA SYSTEM-----------------
NAH’HARTA
2:09 AM SGT, 2/34/3010
2:09 AM SGT, 2/34/3010
“What the fuck are we even building, anyways?”
A drone overseer saw fit to ponder aloud, staring at his screen. The feed of a construction drone stretched upon the display, various readouts and numbers indicating everything was in order. Indicated by some funny text on the bottom of the screen, the drone was busy ferrying a section of polyrite exterior.
It’s destination, along with a swarm of other worker drones coming to and fro, was the incomplete shell of some oblique, towering spire, resting upon a bed of massive cables while a single bone-white cap directed the light of the planet’s sun onto the camera feed. Surrounding them on all sides was a sea of factories and ship forges, with space elevators and skyhooks probably visible in the far distance through the smog. In comparison, the spire looked alien-the crater made to make room for it almost gave the impression of an alien spacecraft that had landed.
Inside a control tower, overseers like the one pondering the nature of this project coordinated the actions of the swarm when needed, but otherwise were just there to make sure one didn’t spontaneously achieve sentience and start going ham for no reason. Cheap labor had been largely phased out after the Clanholds became truly interstellar, having been lined up on a wall with a few other major industry workforces in favor of drones, UAVs and other automated what-have-yous.
Still, it wasn’t completely out of style, as a few workers could be seen on the superstructure as tiny dots. What they were doing was beyond the overseer; probably ironing out what the drones forgot to do, or doing general small scale work.
A tangent and a half later, a coworker sitting nearby saw fit to answer his question.
“A pylon. Something about being a part of a new project, from what I hear.”
“A new project? We always have new projects.”
“Well yeah, but apparently this one’s real big. Came straight from the top. Prolly why they got all the drone fleets out for this one.”
“What’s it for?”
“I… don’t really know. Something about energy, I know that. Supposed to be more of these things, too.”
“Energy? What, like, power generation?”
“No... well, maybe. I dunno. Half the shit I heard about it sounded like runtmark anyways.”
“Huh. Why didn’t they just tell you?”
“Hey, when I said this came from up top, I was talking the tippity top. You know how they like to muddle shit.”
“Ah, yeah. Fair. How many more of these we got to build?”
“Well, we don’t have to, but apparently they need 4 more after this one. They got other schmucks working on those, though.”
“Hm.”
He returned to observing the drone’s progress, as it and several other drones began welding the designated section to the superstructure. He had to wonder what his coworker meant by ‘energy’. Last he heard, there wasn’t much concern over power generation. His mind began to wander over the possibilities, as he spaced out to the sounds of small talk and welding sounds...
NAH’HARTA ORBIT
Silently, silver-yellow streaks of sunlight began to illuminate a meeting room upon a small space station. The twin suns of Nah’harta chased away those fleeting dark corners, as the upper echelons of On’gary Heavy Manufacturing debated over how to build what was, in all but name, a mad scientist’s project.
As they sat, talking about business stuff like stocks and investments and other monotonous stuff that blended together like an amorphous blob, an orange-red hologram displaying their project hovered over a large table, rotating slowly and flickering every once in a while.
It was some sort of space station, three prongs extending upwards ending in blunt edges, and given a mushroomy superstructure; a small hood with an underlying metal stem. Four spikes poked out from gaps in the hood, providing the ever-favoured aesthetic of needlessly exposed understructure.
The part which made it so high-priority, though, was also it’s most poorly understood ingredient-two oblong, ovular devices illustrated in bright white, implanted in the crux of the three spires and at the tail end of the stem area of the station. Connecting the hood and the stem was also a large machine, set to rotate at great speeds. The spikes jutting out from the hood also had traces of the devices inside them, tiny white lines in their interior connecting to the machine and the ovals.
Nobody was quite sure where to begin; all they had been given by the Council was that the location just had to be anywhere near the core worlds. With those strange spires they wanted them to construct, the board largely assumed it would all be connected-but how? They hadn’t been given much explanation beyond ‘a new form of energy previously undiscovered’, which would be really neat if there were any context provided beyond that. Maybe they’d loosen up once they actually started building it...
As they sat, talking about business stuff like stocks and investments and other monotonous stuff that blended together like an amorphous blob, an orange-red hologram displaying their project hovered over a large table, rotating slowly and flickering every once in a while.
It was some sort of space station, three prongs extending upwards ending in blunt edges, and given a mushroomy superstructure; a small hood with an underlying metal stem. Four spikes poked out from gaps in the hood, providing the ever-favoured aesthetic of needlessly exposed understructure.
The part which made it so high-priority, though, was also it’s most poorly understood ingredient-two oblong, ovular devices illustrated in bright white, implanted in the crux of the three spires and at the tail end of the stem area of the station. Connecting the hood and the stem was also a large machine, set to rotate at great speeds. The spikes jutting out from the hood also had traces of the devices inside them, tiny white lines in their interior connecting to the machine and the ovals.
Nobody was quite sure where to begin; all they had been given by the Council was that the location just had to be anywhere near the core worlds. With those strange spires they wanted them to construct, the board largely assumed it would all be connected-but how? They hadn’t been given much explanation beyond ‘a new form of energy previously undiscovered’, which would be really neat if there were any context provided beyond that. Maybe they’d loosen up once they actually started building it...
-----------------SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT-----------------
UNKNOWN, ORBIT
3:00 PM SGT, 2/38/3010
“All systems go, testing in five.”
The Voriarch of the Clanholds, Ki’nak Vol’nisa, watched from the comfort of a steel chair. Around him, a crowd of scientists, politicians and other such folk waited with anticipation, as a planet sat in the middle of a huge display.
He watched a counter up top slowly go down, from five minutes, to four, to three. There wasn’t much talking, so he only had himself.
He’d been called out here, in the middle of Fucking and Nowhere, to see the test of some revolutionary new technology. Some new form of energy, able to be manipulated as seen fit. He hadn’t catched the official term, but everyone called it… magic? Weird word for it, but it stuck.
They’d designed some kind of siphon, with the official explanation saying that it was able to ‘snatch’ magic from ‘leylines’ and somehow reverse the polarity of the snatched magic to a manipulatable variant, making an energy source which could be practically anywhere at any time. In his opinion, very far-fetched, even for the mad scientists in the Trash Heap. But, everyone who he talked to swore upon their dead ancestors it worked, so here he was.
“One minute to test.”
The room seemed to hushen up, as Ki’nak internally switched between wondering what would happen and wondering what he should have for lunch when he got back. Maybe some runt thigh would be good, or perhaps rind steak...
“Thirty seconds.”
He kept an eye on the planet-some boring temperate world, straight out of stock images on the AncNet-as the timer seemed to flash by.
“Ten seconds. Nine, eight, seven…”
UNKNOWN, PLANETSIDE
Three runts in open-air harnesses mulled about, picking flowers under a vermillion sunset. A strange device sat in a small crater nearby. They didn’t know what it did. Who cares? It looked stupid anyways.
“Me-me pick best flower!” one said, holding up a vibrant orange poppycock lookalike.
“How you-you know?? You-you not taste-eat! Mine-me taste-eat nicegood! It bester!” another said, chewing on an expanded selection of verdant yellows and subtle reds.
“G’agi right-right! That means me-me found besterester flowers!” one shouted triumphantly, holding up a bundle of large orange-red forests with shifting hues on their petals, stuffing some into its mouth with satisfaction.
“What?! No fair! Give me-me some! Me-me not see them!”
“Noh. Yewh-yewh fihnd-geht beshtereshtereshter flower firsht.”
“Awwwww…”
And then, a voice interrupted their argument, causing all three to jump a foot in the air.
“Exoteam, testing has commenced. Please activate the device.”
“Yes-yes!
“Aaah! Don’t yell-yell!”
“Eeep!”
With a scamper and a whimper, they ran over to the strange device. It looked like a flower itself, except 10x bigger and with a weird white center.
Panicking, they ran in circles around the device, before one of them finally found the big red button conveniently on the side and pressed it.
A few seconds passed, as the trio gathered back up a distance away. They heard noises, weird noises, but nothing much ye-
KATHOOM
What sounded like the biggest thunderbolt they had ever heard roared around them, as the air itself parted to make way for a cerulean blue line. They could only stare in frightened awe, then just awe as the noise and wind calmed down, and a stream of wondrous blue magic began to torrent into the metal flower. It was beautiful for a time, as the magic soon stretched across the sky in all directions, contrasting with the reddish hues of the planet. Then, things began to change drastically.
The landscape began to... wither around the flower. One yelped as the ground below them began to turn grey, and plants began to rot. The sky seemed to drain in color as well. In fact, the only things with hue after a good few seconds were the runts, the metal flower, and the blue stream that turned bright red as it flowed towards the flower.
Oh, and the mock facility in the distance, which now seemed to turn on with the force of a thousand suns. A large turret unfolded from a phantom slot, and aimed skyward.
One of the runts looked down disappointed at the ground, and picked up a now wilted flower.
“Awww. Metal flower make besterest flower poopy bad.”
“Don’t worry. We-we find better flowers somewhere else!”
“Yeah!”
The encouragement lightened up the disappointed runt, who cracked a smile. A 3-man TSTO pod fell from the sky nearby, it’s reentry stage crashing a fair distance away.
UNKNOWN, ORBIT
The planet had gone greyscale, and a torrent of blue now seemed to pour into it. From all directions, too-it nearly took up the whole horizon
Ki’nak couldn’t quite believe it. They were right-it did work, and it worked fast. It would almost be concerning if the station started going grey too.
He had little time for thought, though, as a scientist zet walked on stage. He’d been on earlier, talking about the technology and how great it supposedly was. Now he could guess thrice what he was gonna talk about now.
“This, gentlezets, is the power of Project Dreamweaver in its smallest form. Already, it’s pulling in enough power to light up several sections of To’oora without issue. And that’s not all it can do. In fact, it's only scratching the surface.”
He pulled out a remote. “The possibilities aren’t just limited to mere power generation. It’s output, harnessed correctly, can work as a weapon…”
He pressed a button. A bright red streak shot out from planetside, hitting a target-what looked like a cruiser shell-and engulfing it in bright red flames.
“As a propulsion method…”
He pressed another. A drone flew into view, surrounded in a field of red energy, before slowly falling into the scientist zet’s hands.
“Or, honestly, whatever we want it to be.”
Another press. A knife flew at him, and a trail of red energy shot out from above, disintegrating the knife.
He pressed a final button, and a miniscule pylon lowered itself from the ceiling, previously hidden from the crowd by clever usage of perspective.
“Now, with these pylon designs, we can get this energy wherever we want, as fast as we need it. Right now, I could send this stuff to Ka’liban, and it’d arrive in a minute. How?
You see, we’re directly next to a fountain of pure magic.” He pulled up a map of weird cosmic radiation stuff. A large outpouring near their sector of space showed that his words held merit. “Ten years ago, we thought this… was just abnormal background radiation. But now that we’ve looked into it? It is a wholly unique form of energy, able to be tossed and turned and molded into whatever shape is needed-provided, of course, you know how to harness it.
Think about it. An omnipresent, manipulatable field, able to be summoned and changed on a whim. This stuff changes whole societies merely by existing.
And now? Now, we’re on the cusp of manipulating this stuff on an industrial scale.
Dem’yot Laboratories and On’gary Heavy Manufacturing are fully mobilized and prepared to make Project Dreamweaver a full-scale reality. We’ve got massive pylons in construction on every major core world, minor ones planned for the majority of other worlds, and our crucible-” The hologram of their megastructure popped up above the crowd. “-is ready to be made, projected to be finished in roughly five months if the go-ahead is given.”
Suddenly, Ki’nak could feel a gaze on him. Then, several. Several more.
“Now, Mr. Vol’nisa. You’re our guest of honor here. Your word is law, and the second you say yes we’ll get started right away. That in mind, what do you think?”
He took a moment. Not to think, he already had his answer-it was just so much to take in. It’d change everything on a scale he could hardly comprehend, and it was practically being handed to them on a platinum platter.
He mustered a thumbs up and a nod, after a few seconds. The room erupted with ‘hell yeahs’, cheers, and other celebratory stuff. He just toned everything else beyond his thoughts out, as the scientist zet resumed talking.
He could only really wonder, as he stared at the husk of a planet; what would be the catch to all this?