Orphan [LitRPG Adventure] - Book One Complete!

From the memoirs of Dr. Leopold Tempes – Vitria, 286 A.T.S.

In retrospect, I should have seen the warning signs when it took two weeks to schedule an introduction with Praetor Twelve. Though in my defense, the sheer splendor of Null provided both a dizzying distraction and a significant change of perspective.

Like most Vitrians, my opinion of the Steelborn was… less than accurate. Centuries of Etrusian propaganda, first portraying their creations as mindless servants and later as an existential threat, had done much to malign the Steelborn among my people. Many Vitrians considered the machine men little more than metallic fiends, and while I believed myself fairly liberal, I had significant misconceptions about their true nature.

Misconceptions that were shattered after only a single night on the town.

Steelborn culture is like nothing I have ever seen. Their music ranges from intimate and deep to loud and chaotic, their art both classic and modern. I had the good fortune of obtaining tickets to Flight From Zephyr on my first full evening in the city, and I will admit without a shred of embarrassment that I left the theatre sobbing.

When I say that the city of Null is a city of wonders, I do not limit this to the architecture or the military might. The Steelborn excel in every field I could think to mention, and that sheer brilliance makes the city a place of near endless opportunity. Never once in the three years that I spent there did I lack for some new opportunity. At least, on the days that my mood permitted it.

Suffice to say, I had almost forgotten my task entirely by the time the summons arrived.

The facilities for Null Expedited Research and Development were on the north side of the city, tucked away in a scientific holon comparable to the VISIT campus, if it were dropped down in the middle of a residential neighbourhood. The primary building was a gorgeous, almost organic structure of curved ceramic pillars, as though the Steelborn had occupied the carcass of some great beast, its bones bleached white by the sun.

For once, I was not left to wait upon my arrival; in part I think, because Praetor Twelve was excited to meet me.

Praetor Twelve is best described as an anthropomorphic insect writ large. Standing fourteen feet tall on two impossibly slender limbs, Twelve was an ungainly machine. With an oversized head and a bulbous rump most akin to an insectile abdomen, he was not designed to move around with any haste, but he still greeted me at the entrance to his facility.

I will admit to being intimidated at the sight of him, particularly the bizarre structure of his lens-riddled face and the ever-moving, razor-sharp manipulators attached to his back. But he really is a wonderful being, once you get to know him.

We exchanged pleasantries as we slowly toured the facilities, but after less than a quarter hour it became clear to me that Praetor Twelve was dying to see what I had brought. An understandable reaction, given what I had brought him.

A new piece to his puzzle.

I was not, as it turned out, the first to approach Expedited Research and Development with a curious tome as Praetor Twelve informed me. I was the third. Two others had come to Null in search of answers, lured by the same tales of codebreaking expertise, if under very different circumstances.

The first was a Kel-Taran archivist, who had arrived some eight years prior bearing a most curious tome. It was, as Praetor Twelve relayed to me, the only book in their archives of which they were unfamiliar. It had been found during a renovation fifty years earlier and two different head archivists had come and gone without any success at determining either its contents or its origin.

The book was no prank or forgery, for it shone like the sun under Sympathetic inspection—much like my own collection—but despite their much-vaunted proficiency the monks were no more able to trace those connections than we had been. It was a book connected to everything, but the sheer breadth of those bonds worked against any attempt to unravel their source.

At the time, Praetor Twelve had found the book curious, but could not offer any meaningful assistance. Their copy was short, with only twelve pages filled with the distressing characters I had spent the last year studying. With the archivist unable to provide any context or clues toward its origin, there was simply not enough text for even the powerful thinking engines to scratch the surface. A large sample was needed for comparison and study.

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Praetor Twelve sent the unfortunate monk home empty handed, after making a copy for his own records, and thought nothing more of the matter. Until a second petitioner arrived.

This time it was a Godborn cleric who graced his doorstep, visiting to discuss one of her parishioners. Apparently, the once pious man had become withdrawn following a disastrous expedition to northern Nostrum. He sought spiritual guidance on several occasions, and was obsessed with some sort of plot, though the cleric could not speak to the nature of it, out of a sense of confidentiality.

She did, however, convey the nature of his untimely death. Suicide, along with the murder of his wife and three infant sons.

In the aftermath, several items of concern were discovered among his effects. Among them were hundreds of pages of disjointed rambling, a pencil rubbing of what the cleric described as an 'unholy figure', and a single coded tome. All were confiscated by the church, save for the book, which the cleric surreptitiously concealed, believing it responsible for the man's undoing.

The cleric reached out to scholar after scholar through the intervening years, all to no avail. The incident was quietly swept away and forgotten by the church, and she had forgotten about the book almost entirely when news of the code-breaking prowess of the Steelborn finally reached Throne.

Her more complete copy, and the compelling story behind it, at last ignited the interest of Praetor Twelve and his colleagues. The monk's copy was brought out of storage and compared against the cleric's, confirming that the two books, found two continents and decades apart, shared a common origin. The weight of the institute's machinery was brought to bear, and the first real attempts were made to unravel the code.

They failed.

For five years, the good people of Expedited Research and Development wielded every tool at their disposal against the dual dragons, but to no avail. Every simple combination proved fruitless, every dedicated technique at their disposal flaunted by the nature of the text.

There were too many unknowns. Was it a code, or a language? If the latter, did it hold any connection to any existing language, or was it cut from whole cloth? What syntax did it use, what numerical system, if any? The second book had provided them with enough characters that they would know when they had the correct key, a vital step in solving the puzzle, but it was only of marginal help beyond that.

That was not to say that all the time spent on the two texts was wasted. Necessity breeds innovation, and in his attempts to pry loose the secrets of his hated foe, Praetor Twelve developed techniques that I am told will be in use for centuries. Statistical sequential scoring, Praetor's Examination and the Index of Coincidence. The terms mean almost nothing to me, even after I have had them explained, but the sheer amount of experience Praetor Twelve earned by developing the ideas spoke to their value.

What they needed was a hint, some small nudge in the correct direction. Something to serve as a keystone or a foundation, a shining star to guide them safely to port. After hearing the tale of the monk I had thought my contribution would be in the sheer volume of text I could provide. But in the end, they needed only two words.

Kol Daua.

My peers had tried to find the name in the documents, during our original symposium, but they were mere babes groping blindly in the dark next to the Steelborn juggernaut. The task would not be solved by something so simple as looking for the name amidst the text, if it were that easy Twelve would have solved it years ago. It was not a key, but a touchstone, a single certainty to which they could always look for guidance.

Our mistake, one among many I will admit without shame, was trying to force the answer. We looked for the name amid the symbols, the A's in Daua especially. But that was the wrong path. Praetor Twelve aimed for solutions first, and tested them against his exemplar. By sheer volume, his machines often produced answers that sometimes resembled words or sentences by sheer random chance. These needed to be checked endlessly, with a thousand small tweaks to see if they were on the right track, but only a little off.

My insight simplified this task a thousandfold. Any possible solution that did not produce Kol or Daua, or some variation that could be further decrypted, was discarded. This alone narrowed the possibilities from the near infinite, to the terribly finite. They would have an answer, and soon.

If only I had pressed for more clarity at the time, or been more familiar with the Steelborn as I am now. None of the rest would have happened.

It was two weeks before I requested another meeting with Praetor Twelve, and two months before the machine granted me an audience. He was like a child in many ways, a secta youth so eager to show me the shiny new rock he'd found that it took me nearly half an hour before I was able to broach the subject of our meeting.

The Prince's White Sands would be departing in a matter of days, and I meant to be on it. Though I adored the magnificence of Null, I longed for the comfort of Vitria. But there was a problem. The orders given to the captain of The Prince's White Sands, orders to which I had not been privy, had been quite clear.

They were to ferry me back with the solution, or not at all, and it would be a year before their next call at port. I still remember the exact words of Twelve's reply, for the horror of my mistake etched it so firmly in my mind.

"This one told you that it would be soon; a mere seven years, at most."