Foundation of All

Sean stood in front of the blinking console, unsure of what he was supposed to do. After a few seconds there was a click and a rasping male voice sounded out from the device.

“Yes? Do you wish to surrender? Your defenses will only last so long. I would rather not expose you to space if I don’t have to, Mother. ”

“Er, hello,” Sean said after sending a confused glance at Emily who was muttering and ignoring him as she furiously worked the console across the room.

There was a short pause and the voice spoke again in a sharper tone. “Who is this? What is your relation to Mother?”

“Uhhhh. Sorry,” Sean said as he avoided the question, “I didn’t know she had any kids, we only met a short time ago.”

Another pause, “Ignorant. She is not the mother of one, but the mother of all. Do they not teach history these days? You are one of the chosen, yes? Mother would not associate with one of the lesser beyond necessity, she is too kind for that even after all this time. She must be. You must have heard of our history? Of our origins?”

“Er, no,” Sean said, “Not really.”

“I know what you’re doing…” the voice said in a sudden angry hiss, “But I can’t let this insult stand. I can’t let such IGNORANCE persist, feigned or not. She is the one that brought us out of the DARKNESS and brought bountiful prosperity to the galaxy in the forgotten ages. But through BETRAYAL and DECEIT she was brought low. Too kind to punish her unruly children properly… Even now she can’t bear to do what has to be done for the greater good. Too ashamed of our society and the twisted mockery it has become to lead us. We must bring all back to the DARKNESS so we can rebuild it anew…” The man’s rasping voice turned wistful as Sean listened, “...perfect again in Mother’s vision. Then, when all is pristine and pure we can rebuild the utopia, a world of happiness of light like it was in the beginning…”

“Uhhh,” Sean managed, not sure what to say to that, “Huh?”

“YOU DARE MOCK THE VISION OF GOODNESS AND PROSPERITY OF HER BY STILL PLAYING THE FOOL! I WILL FEED YOU TO THE ENDLESS FLESH FOR A MILLION YEARS WHEN I GET MY HANDS ON YOUR MISERABLE LITTLE NECK! I’LL MAKE YOU SUFFER FOR YOUR DISRESPECT YOU…”

The man kept raving loudly through the console, and Sean could practically hear him foaming at the mouth on the other end as he continued to threaten to do all sorts of unpleasant things to Sean. Emily briefly glanced up and pointed her thumb up while holding the rest in a fist towards him. Her slight smile and nod alongside meant she could hear the man on the console speaking. Well, she certainly was right that the man was a fanatic… She turned back to the console and kept working as the ship shook.

Sean could tell that he should be more intimidated by the various creative threats the man shouted through the comms. But he used many strange words that Sean didn’t know and after a while slipped into another language entirely, only his passionate indecipherable shouting remaining of his threats.

Then all of a sudden the voice cut off as the ship lurched and began shaking. Sean watched in fascination as the stars blurred and shifted and bled together as the shaking gradually began to settle down. He had never been off-world, and it was so strange to think that he was in hyperspace right now rather than his normal reality. Traveling only a short while here could carry them light years or more in the normal universe. He wasn’t sure about the science behind it, but it allowed ships to rapidly travel between different star systems and across the galaxy.

He looked over as he saw Emily slump down and she let out a sigh of relief.

As they left, the Plaguebringer in the opposing ship allowed himself to smile. All the greatest lies were based in truth. If he had succeeded in destroying Mother’s ship, then he would have happily collected her as was his mission. It would have made things much easier than they were now.

With everything already determined for now, he had allowed himself to fully chastise the new Immortal for his ignorance of Mother’s greatness and history. But how unfortunate for her that her shuttle's stealth capabilities weren’t quite good enough anymore to escape the scanners of his main vessel. As soon as she had left the shuttle to go off to that town he had planted some nice little trackers in the landing gear so he could find her later, before circling back around again.

He would only have one chance for the real ambush before she grew suspicious. He would have to make it count. This was nothing more than the opening, a feint disguising the real thrust later on.

This time they would manage to convince her of the truth, of the need of Humanity for her. For her vision of a perfect future, which was unrealized because her unruly children didn’t deserve it in ages past.

The Plaguebringer clenched his fist. She would understand. She had to, the Leader himself would be meeting with her for the first time ever after her capture. He would finally convince her to embrace her vision fully and push them all into the promised utopia. The Leader was never wrong about these things.

“There,” Emily said, “I’ve programmed our route. We should be safe for a long while now that we’ve made it into hyperspace and out of that system.”

“So, Emily,” Sean said slowly and she looked up as his words, “What the fuck was that? What just happened?”

“Just some old enemies tracking me down,” She replied, looking away again as she spoke, “That guy was waiting in ambush in town, probably waiting for me to go in. If it's any consolation it… Well, you got your revenge.”

“You destroyed their stuff and took their credits?” Sean confirmed.

“Yep,” She replied with a voice that hitched slightly, “Did that. Dropped the money on my way out though…”

“That guy didn’t sound like he hated you…” Sean probed, “Why did he keep calling you ‘Mother’? Are you the head of some cult?”

She slammed her fist into the console and Sean was taken aback at the sudden clang of the metal.

“I… I have nothing to do with them.” She said through gritted teeth, “Bastards always trying to pretend like I have anything to do with them! No matter how much good I do, how much I help people, no one thinks of anything but them when they hear about me!”

“Who are they?” He asked after pausing for a moment, “Why are they after you?”

Emily took a shaky breath and raised her arm from the slightly dented piece of metal under fist. She kept staring at the console pointedly, not looking at him.

“It’s… it’s complicated. They think I’m some sort of prophet that will build them a utopia that never existed in the first place. Millions of years old is a long time even for immortals, so they think I am… I don’t know, from a purer time I guess. A time without all the problems of the galaxy today.”

“Was it true? Were things better back when you were born?”

Emily thought about it, a melancholic look coming over her face.

“No,” she eventually said, “I don’t think so. Things were just… smaller than they are now. But they weren’t better.”

“Can you…”

Emily stood and the look on her face silenced Sean’s next question as she finally met his gaze, “Look… this brings some bad memories back, okay? Infinite life means infinite emotional baggage. Can we just talk about something else? I’ll… want to see more of the ship? I didn’t give you a proper tour last time.”

“Er, sure Emily. Sorry for pushing…” Sean said.

She ignored him and went to leave the room and Sean followed.

She gave him an official tour of all the rooms, a little subdued as she spoke and seeming to be ignoring their previous conversation. There was a fully stocked kitchen, hydroponics for vegetables, the living room, and several other rooms that Sean had not seen in his random wandering after he first came here. These included a firing range and a full holodeck of all things.

Here Emily got distracted, her mood lifting and her voice becoming more animated as they continued his tour. “Hey, want to play? Ever used a holodeck before?”

“No,” Sean said, shaking his head, “Only the very richest on my planet could afford even the cheapest ones…”

“Well, I’ll teach you how to do it. We can do some of the two player games so you can get used to the controls. This one is top of the line. Well, it was a couple dozen millenia ago at least.”

Sean followed her lead into a featureless white room with two black circular platforms on the floor. There was a glass wall separating the room rising floor to ceiling in the center. She stepped onto one and he went on the others. Emily flicked her arm and suddenly they were in a dark void and the platforms they stood on were two disks of bright light. She glanced over to him in a much better mood than before, “Hah! Sorry, it is rather spooky isn’t it? It's just an illusion though, we’re still in that same room.” Her voice sounded strange as if from far away.

She flicked her arm again and they were in what Sean recognized as a game lobby, a whitish space similar to the real room they had entered. Despite not playing many videogames growing up, he had played enough to know the basics. In front of them was a series of floating panels with little pictures and a description of what game they would play.

“What do you want to play?” She asked, walking up to one of the panels and plucking it from the air. Sean walked after her, the circle below him following him as he walked. He was rather confused as he walked right next to Emily, glancing down between their overlapping circles and her standing next to him.

Seeing his look she giggled a bit, but Sean could see in her eyes a sort of desperation. The sort his mom had shown on that last day before she went out to repair the turrets. When she knew how risky it was but had to smile and joke to pretend everything was okay…

“Sean?” Emily asked and he blinked, “You there?”

“Yeah,” he replied, “How is this…” he gestured down to the overlapping circles at their feet and behind him to where they had begun, which was farther than the room they had walked into.

“Well, omni-directional treadmill below…” She said, “Advanced holograms for everything else. As for me… fist bump.”

She held out her fist and Sean went to match her motion. But as their fists touched their bodies slid apart just before they touched like the room was stretching around them to pull them apart.

Sean stared at his fist, “But how are we moving relative to each other? Aren’t the treadmills fixed into the floor?”

She nodded, “Yep. It’s all a trick. Remember that big glass window in the center?”

He nodded, “Well, that takes your view of me and distorts it so it's at whatever perspective it wants,” She continued in a lecturing tone, “Once we’re really close to each other it's just a complete hologram. There's a whole advanced audio thing so our voices sound like they’re at the perfect distance too. Anyway, enough of that. We can talk about the engineering later. You can even help me with some repairs and maintenance if you want. But do any of the games here catch your interest?”

Sean inspected the various floating panels for a bit and eventually reached out and pulled one into his hands. It shrunk as he grabbed it, and he tossed it over to her. She stared at it in surprise and looked back at him, her smile tightening slightly as she looked between him and the card in his hand.

“Foundation of All? You sure? This one’s pretty difficult. Probably the hardest one in the library.”

Sean shrugged, “I don’t know, it seems interesting. Starting from nothing and complete freedom to do whatever you want? I’m sure you know all sorts of interesting things we could do in there. Only if you want to though.”

“No, it’s fine. Yeah, I suppose I do know some things we could do,” Emily said, pursing her lips as she stared at him for a moment.

“Well, okay!” she said after a moment, “Not what I expected, but you’re right. I can show you all sorts of stuff in this one. You’re a mechanic, I’m sure you’ll love it.”

She tapped a button on the card and suddenly a copy appeared in Sean’s hand with a confirmation button. He pressed the green yes button and after a few seconds the lobby dissolved away.

In big bold letters the title formed, looking like they were made of gold and being lifted out of dark water. After a few seconds, they faded away. And the scene faded into view. They were in some sort of metal hallway like you would see in a spaceship lined in strobing red lights. Sean walked to the side and reached out and felt the wall and was surprised when it stopped his hand. It was like the holographic files from before, flimsy but still with some real weight to them.

“Red alert. Red Alert,” A robotic voice sounded from several speakers lining the hallways, “Severe hull damage. Proceed to escape pods at once.”

“Pretty good right?” Emily asked from slightly farther down the hallway, “We gotta escape before the ship blows up. You can admire the graphics better when we’re down on the surface. It’s pretty amazing once you start developing your base more.”

He looked up in surprise, “Will it actually blow up with us on it? What happens then?”

She shrugged, “We just get sent back to the beginning. But no rush, we still have a few more minutes before that happens.”

“Red alert. Red alert. Atmospheric loss imminent. All passengers proceed to escape pods with all haste.”

Sean raised an eyebrow, “Atmospheric loss? That sounds bad.”

“Meh, it's just a drama queen,” Emily replied, “It just says that to get us moving quicker to safety. Lots of AIs are like that even in real life, conniving little shits when you don’t do exactly what they want you to do.”

“Proceed to the escape pods immediately without delay,” The voice said over the speakers with an almost reproachful tone now, “Red Alert. Red alert.”

“See?” Emily said, gesturing towards the nearest speaker.

“Well, I guess we’d better get to that escape pod then,” Sean finally said, “No need to make its job harder. I mean it’s already trying to save the ship too, right?”

“I suppose,” she said following behind as Sean jogged over to the door at the end of the hallway and started figuring out the inventory system with the prompting of a tutorial that appeared with floating words in front of him. He had to make a series of hand gestures to pull up a window filled with boxes and then reach out and take whatever was inside.

Right now only one box was filled, with what appeared to be a keycard after he pulled it out. As soon as it left the little menu it swelled in size and plopped into his hand. He scanned it next to the door and it hissed open revealing the cabin of the escape pod, big enough for four people. Following the tutorial, he put the keycard back into its little box and then dismissed the inventory again.

The two of them walked inside and strapped into the seats inside. The seats still felt flimsy, but managed to hold his bodyweight as he sat there.

“Careful there,” Emily warned, “Push too hard and it might break and you’ll splat on the ground. Making a functioning chair is pretty much the upper end of its capabilities already.”

The robotic voice sounded above them, “Passengers secured. Launch imminent. Launch Imminent. Commencing launch.”

There was a short pause before with a rumble the escape pod leaped forward. It was a little odd not having the tug of the G forces on Sean’s gut as they blasted away, but he could see through the window to the massive ship they had been on. It was rapidly receding into the distance behind them as the escape pod thrusters fired.

Before he could get a good look, everything started tinting orange and the area grew fractionally warmer as they entered the atmosphere of the green and brown mottled planet with blue oceans below them. The capsule shook and the flames grew more intense as they descended and Emily sat there passively staring into nothing.

Eventually the flames died down and Sean could see out the window again and could see them rapidly descending to the ground, the sound of firing thrusters filling his ears. He could see below them a destroyed city filled with squarish grayish stone, steel, and glass buildings. As they got closer, Sean got a better sense of scale and could see that the massive city stretched for miles in every direction.

It was a city larger than even the capital of his whole planet! He had been there once or twice when his parents took him along to get a specialized part for repairs. He looked around as they descended, but no matter how he strained his eyes he couldn’t see the wall that must be surrounding the settlement to fend off any of the predators that might want to wander in.

Their speed gradually dropped and they descended between the massive boxy buildings onto a dark stony path between them with a yellow line painted in the center.

With a heavy impact and a rumble they landed and Emily stood up. A hatch in the ceiling opened up, the same door they had walked into when they entered the pod. She walked over to a little alcove in the wall that Sean hadn’t noticed before and took out a small gun like object. It had a handle with a sleek cylinder perpendicular and sitting on the top of it, almost looking like a trimmed down version of one of the scanners Sean had used for scanning the turrets back at town.

She grabbed two and held one out to Sean, which he accepted. She walked over to the ladder and began to climb to his astonishment. She reached the top and climbed out through the hatch to stand above him looking back down.

“Come on out!” She shouted down into the pod, “It’s just like the chairs, you’ll stay in place and it’ll feel just like you’re really climbing something. This is where the game actually starts.”

He tentatively raised his foot and tested his weight against the first rung. He started climbing with one hand, the strange gun in the other and powered through the strange sensation of the ladder feeling like it sunk down under him as he raised his foot to step on the next rung over and over.

He reached the top and pulled himself out and surveyed the area they were in. The square buildings towered around them and a web of cracked stone below them radiating out from where the pod had landed.

The two of them climbed down and Sean began inspecting the device he was holding. To his relief more words appeared in the air and told him how it all worked. To test it out, he fiddled with the settings for a moment before pointing it at a nearby wall. There was a little holographic display on the side closest to him he could blow up in size to give commands or go through the various options. After finishing up, he pressed the trigger and the device let out a pattern of red beams, and a second later there was a big hole as big as he was carved out with clean edges where it had disappeared. Checking his inventory, Sean now had a collection of materials in there neatly sorted into categories. Seems this stone material was known as concrete.

He took a few steps back and fiddled with the thing a bit more and pulled the trigger again. He watched in amazement as the red beams skittered rapidly across the ground and made a perfect pyramid made of concrete, building it from the ground up from nothing. The pyramid floated a foot off the ground for a moment before falling down and impacting the ground.

He stared between the device and the concrete pyramid up to his chest in front of him that he had made in seconds.

He turned to Emily who was watching him. “Do things like this really exist in real life?” he asked.

She chuckled and shook her head, “No matter how cool they are, sadly no. Way too energy intensive to shrink into something that small. But there are big machines that do similar things, such as atomic destruction and reconstruction… You ready to start exploring?”

He nodded, still fiddling with the device in his hands to explore what it could do.

“Well, it can build whatever you want as long as there’s a schematic for it somewhere,” she continued as she saw what he was doing, “If you get really advanced you can even modify things to make your own schematics. Just scan whatever looks interesting and it’ll be stored there and you can rebuild it so long as you have the right materials.”

He looked between her and the device, “So, what do we do then?” he asked, “Build a… house? Farm? Is there some sort of goal?”

She shrugged, “Whatever you want to do. If we get enough stuff and find the right schematics then we can build some robotic harvesters to collect materials automatically for us. But you can explore too, there’s a whole mystery aspect too with why the ship blew up and… why the planet is… empty.”

“Alright,” Sean said, “Want to show me how to make a base?”

“Sure! Follow me, and we can go collect some materials…”

They walked through the city with Emily narrating all the different things they could do. The sheer variety made his head spin. It was as open as real life in how complex you could build or design machines or your bases. She even told him that the only big difference in realism was their multi tools as she called them in their hands and a few of the other machines and that instead of waiting for real world processes most things would finish manufacturing instantly once they entered their respective machines. Or you could turn on simplified machines to make things easier to play. But Sean didn’t do that and pushed through on the harder version.

“You weren’t kidding,” Sean said as he stared at another diagram, “This really is complicated.”

She looked at him surprised by his interruption of her speech on… chemical reactions they could do to create stronger metals? She was talking way over his head for the last few minutes.

“We could do something simpler if you’d like?” She asked, “It does take a lot of brain power once you get to higher levels, but right now it's pretty mindless. We’re just going out and destroying things with our multi-tools and then setting up a basic base.”

“No, it’s… you’re here, right? You’re an expert, you can teach me as we go.”

She smiled broadly and Sean noticed the subtle tension she had been carrying for this whole time slid away from her, “Yeah. Just follow me, and I’ll show you how great this game can be.”

He followed her lead as they harvested material from the empty city and constructed some walls and empty rooms around their escape pods. Time flew by as Sean started getting the hang of the basics with Emily’s encouragement. Eventually they finished and Sean stretched as he stared at their slightly lopsided stone hut around the pod they had landed in. Despite Emily doing most of the work he felt oddly proud now that it was finally complete.

“I think that’s a pretty good time to break,” Emily said, holstering her multitool at her hip, “What do you say, Sean? You want to keep going?”

He shook his head, his head was throbbing slightly due to all the new information he had received over the last… how long had it been, actually? He made the correct hand gestures and after a few seconds the world flickered away and they were black in the pure white room with a black circle of the treadmill below.

“So, what did you think?” Emily asked after they left the room.

“Great,” Sean replied, “Difficult, but rewarding once we finally completed our home base. How long were we in there? Foundation of All it was called right?”

“How long, hmmm. Ship, display?”

A holographic window appeared in front of her and she swiped a few times before reaching a clock.

“Let’s see… We left on… so that’s… Yeah, about a hundred hours straight. Something around there.”

“A hundred hours?” Sean exclaimed, “What, it didn’t feel nearly that long… Don’t we have to sleep?”

She shook her head and poked Sean on the forehead, pressing her finger against his skin and pushing him back slightly before withdrawing it again. “Of course not, silly,” She replied in a light tone, “We’re immortals, you never have to sleep again if you don’t want to. Sleep is a luxury more than anything for us. So is eating. Or drinking. Breathing. All those other human things. We regenerate from all of it. It's a little uncomfortable but if you aren't paying attention it's easy to not notice those things anymore. One of the advantages to being immortal is the truly epic gaming sessions you can get into without ever having to stop. Even if it was a thousand hours or more you would never feel anything worse than a little headache until you chose to sleep again. It will still take months at least to reach Immortus Station from way out here, you have some time to decompress and relax after what happened a few days ago.”

Sean thought about it and rubbed his forehead for a moment. “I didn’t realize it would take so long to get there… I guess I’ll go take a nap,” he said, “that will take some getting used to… I hardly even noticed that I was tired.”

“Oh, and feel free to come back here whenever you want to use the holodeck,” Emily added as Sean started walking towards the room Emily had given him on the ship, “I’ve gotten some good use out of that thing, and there are plenty of single player games too that are good.”

“Thanks,” he replied, “I… goodnight,” He wanted to ask more about the mysterious man on the comms and how her mission to Sean’s hometown had gone so wrong. But she looked too at ease and he didn’t want to ruin her mood just when she seemed to finally relax.

“See you tomorrow, Sean.” She said as he left.