NOVEL NEXT Vol.0, 36.1 | Pars Ante Finem VI – Quis Est Illa? Né Ipsa Quidem Scivit
The foreigner sighed with rolling eyes, « Loques merdosë, glupe » she murmured; well, no shit, stupid: her trooper ‘ping’ was being stored inside of it.
She allowed the screen to screech its text while she carefully took off her masquerade half-mask, exposing her ignited eyes and face in full, and gently placed the mask to the side in the meantime; she was anticipating the coming…procedure.
The foreigner sighed…finally; she rapidly pressed at the keys, typing into the screen with rather the speed as if it were second nature, the contents typed obscured as dots. She inputted the key…yet the screen replied with a flashing red.
She tilted her head…
« Seríosë? » she blurted. Seriously?
She had opened this hexagon before to retrieve her rapier conduit; she could have sworn she had just entered the same code… although, standard protocols did…stipulate the resetting of the override initiation key after each…usage, which happened…automatically and… oh shit…
The foreigner rapidly tapped at the keypad again.
She tsked; now she was becoming irritated. She more aggressively tapped at the digitalized keys, only to be met with yet another red-flashing
« … » Fantastic…system lockdown and auditory pacification.
On one hand, she was rather surprised and…glad…that she had actually, at some point, configured the security countermeasures to such, since the last she remembered it had been set to…well…‘total self-annihilation’. Though, on the other hand, this was still…ugh.
A system lockdown…she wagered she could probably tinker with it and…undo that—she was no Teal-Coat, but she knew the…basics; though, in that event, she would have to be…careful as to not trigger the…hexagon’s cute little…defensive auto-cannon system…which she had…also configured in order to deter…exactly…that… fantastic.
The auditory pacification, likewise, entailed the emission of a truly…truly annoying noise—one that could stun and knock-out even. Effective against denizens, granted, but…she did not want to experience that herself, preferably.
The foreigner remained static…staring into the screen. Ugh…she had not even begun the actual…process yet...
She began to cogitate, recalling, searching the deepest facets of her recent memory. She cautiously, but decisively, tapped the keypad, inputting away; and with one final tap…the screen turned…
The foreigner exhaled in slight relief. « Finalidre…glupissime pheh » she blurted scornfully to the hexagon.
Though, such was only the beginning and, to be frank, more of a formality when compared to the full process. However, she was hardly concerned from this point forward.
A slot near the top of the hexagon’s front face suddenly slid open, revealing a reflective lens of sorts; one integrated within quite the scanning instrument.
This hexagon had a basic…but smart and adaptive…synthetic intelligence system; a very capable one, at that. It could differentiate nuances and critically contextualize details, even abstract ones—among a myriad of other capabilities. It would be able to tell if something dubious was about, suffice it to say.
Silence. Not even a flash of the screen nor screeching digitized text. It was absolutely silent.
The lens scanned, recorded, read, and analyzed the environment and space around in absolute detail. It assessed the visuals, the objects around, the individuals and living-things along with their exact circumstances; it even assessed the very atomic composition and distribution within this space, on the look-out for abnormalities and…exoticisms.
More importantly, it had to confirm within…acceptable certainty that everything it was even scanning was real and not the product of information hazards corrupting its systems and processing.
Whatever it found, whatever it concluded, it would remain silent about; the only thing that would be known were the procedures it decided to enact. This process was entirely dynamic.
The screen flashed yellow.
Immediately, the lens projected a strange array of very thin…analyzing cyanic lights which read and scanned her very existence, almost. An object implanted near and around the back of her neck…began to illuminate cyanically in response to the probes of the scanning beams.
Normally, if the hexagon decided to scan for an auxiliary implant right away, the procedure would have ended here upon detection and trooper recognition. However, for her specifically…no doubt due to a certain watching presence…there was going to be just one more…precautionary check.
Another slot of sorts slid open, revealing yet another, more specialized, scanning lens, this one next to the terminal screen.
The foreigner sighed and hunched herself down, opening her eyes as wide as able…as she leaned her head closer and closer until an outline of white activated around the lens; she held her head in place…as it scanned her eye, and, most especially, evaluated the ignited sigil engraved.
Moments passed before the outline flashed in approving cyan; she was free to withdraw, and thus she withdrew, returning her attention to the screen.
She exhaled…« finalidre… » That felt long enough; though, it could have taken much longer depending on what it decided.
The foreigner began to touch, tap, and press with rather the speed. Navigating this digitized hub, she unlocked the hexagon’s right-side vacuum-sealed containment section, the face of which slid wide open. Revealed…were additional specialized storage compartments; she opened the ones needing to be opened from the terminal screen before moving herself to retrieve what she needed.
She quickly retrieved two…Remnant liquid container ‘flasks’; angular and geometric, bland and featureless, and silver-white—the only remarkable detail being the small screen on each, which gave a temperature reading. They were small, portable, and had the capability to not only set and maintain a preset temperature, but also sterilize the contents within. Despite being smaller than that primitive waterskin she had been using prior, they were an upgrade in every other respect. These should allow her to…better maintain her…water intake needs.
Though, speaking of needs…
She looked…at the other opened compartment, one which stored…a specific sort of…consumable item. Ugh...indeed, it was time to finally address that other need…she had been so neglecting for quite the some time: food.
Food was perhaps the trickiest of her needs to address. Unlike water, she could not simply source it from the local environment; she was, in her present state, most likely incapable of digesting any…of the local foodstuffs—not without…complications, at least; ones she neither wanted to risk nor deal with.
Although, compared to her other needs, food could also be deferred the longest.
Her essence’s encoded automated commands…in combination with perhaps a few direct…alterations, allowed her body to derive sustenance energy—or ‘calories’— directly from her essence’s aura.
Of course, energy was only part of why living organisms needed to consume; food provided material compounds essential for continued biochemical functionality.
Her…perhaps altered-in-a-few-more-ways-than-not…biochemistry notwithstanding, her essence also had a myriad of automated functions which facilitated the auric synthesis of alternative compounds and equivalent enzymes—among other relevant complicated doings—mitigating the effects of malnutrition.
These—among others—in conjunction allowed her to operate for…extended…long periods of time…without food.
However, owing to the fundamental…quirks…of essence, these automated protocols were not without their own unique set of problems. Essence was prone to occasional errors in execution—mistakes, hiccups, and complacency—and could be…inconsistent. Also, even essence still needed actual…stuff…in its aura to actually synthesize from.
Ultimately, such were meant to substitute for deficiencies, and to extend things over a long…long time-interval—not supplant nor replace. In the end, even she still needed to eat from time to time.
She sighed and begrudgingly retrieved ten…Remnant ‘Standard Nutrient and Sustenance Bars’ or ‘SNSBs’ for short, which were sealed in a silver-white synthetic and exotic wrapping material of sorts. Small, yet thick, heavy, and extremely dense.
Despite their small size, they were absolutely stuffed full of calories and, more specifically, nutrients and material compounds; stuff to fuel her biochemistry and existence—decades…centuries worth, even.
Due to more encoded automated commands in her essence…and perhaps a few…alterations, she was capable of holding onto the sheer surplus of nutrients for…long-term usage. The surplus calories and energy could also be stored—and not in the form of the fat; usually, the sheer excess was shoved into her aura—over-excess nutrients as well; any excess above capacity would be ‘gobbled’ by her essence, really.
Additionally, any…waste materials…produced were also dissolved, synthesized, and assimilated by her essence and into her aura to be repurposed for…other relevant doings, hence why she or any Remnant trooper never needed to…expunge.
Indeed, she was designed for these bars as much as these bars were designed for her, almost as if she were powered by a ‘sustenance battery’ to which…these bars were the fuel. These bars were essentially the only thing she and other Remnant troopers could eat, and were beneficial to not only the body, but also essence too.
Perhaps paradoxically, overconsumption of these bars would not have too many negative consequences, unlike with water, for such only meant more…stuff for her essence and aura. Yet the problem with doing that was…these bars were…well…, to reiterate, ‘Standard Nutrient and Sustenance Bars’, and looked and tasted exactly as the name implied.
The foreigner remained frozen, sitting down practically. She stared at one of the bars in her hands…contemplating, questioning the nature of her existence—not really, but practically so. Even though she had no real defined frameworks for ‘good’ or ‘bad’ tasting things—these bars being all she knew—, a potent…primeval…hesitancy persisted, nevertheless.
…it was not…that long…since she had last…ate something; she…did not remember…really when that was, but…it could not have been…that long, surely? Ever since she started drinking water, she already felt significantly better; that was surely enough…
Compared to other Remnant troopers, in fact, she could go without sustenance for even longer; she could rely on her essence’s…substitutions far more than most troopers. Her aura was, even for Remnant standards, exceptionally pronounced and potent, due to her…rather peculiar arcanity which gave her additional methods to…‘feed’ it, so to speak—as witnessed with that…crystal thing all those months ago…
Yet…she sighed; she knew what had to be done. Even for the…skewed standards of the Remnant, she tended to be…neglectful of her operational needs.
Her aura, potent and…girthy it might be, she had exhausted her mandated cap during that ambush…and following battle. Even more than a year was not enough to restock…what had been used; her persistent neglect of her needs has not helped in this regard, either. And compared to simply eating this bar of super-condensed calories and stuff, relying on her arcanity was…energy inefficient—tending to use more than gain in return.
Though…such obvious reasons aside…
She looked around. Surrounded, she was, with her former associate’s…memorandums and things…in the space around; she could not help but…reflect, oddly enough.
Everything that had been done to her…these encoded essence commands and…alterations, they were not done to…overcome and replace these needs; they were meant to simply make existing with such…warped concepts and experiences of time…less maddening. Yet time…was slowing down and dragging out, everything was…moving slower.
And…she…Remnant troopers, everything they were, everything they were made to be…was centered around…modularity and flexibility; they were made to be able to operate from the most extreme environments in existence to the coldest emptiness; they were made to be dynamic and adaptive—never truly static, even if frozen in time.
All of these automated commands and protocols in her essence…operating in the background of her existence, all of these…quirks and alien effects, they all could change, adapt, and adjust…relative to the immediate environment, patterns of interactions, the contexts surrounding them, and…so on and so on…
Indeed, she was already changing. Sleep…once hardly a concern, was now something…she needed more often; no doubt, her sustenance needs…could eventually follow suite and adapt in kind.
Yet…it was not just that, she realized.
She turned her focus to that cabinet, unable to see the painting from her position, but she knew it was there; she knew what was on it; she knew what she had seen; it made her think.
It was clear to her…that the longer she was here, in this place…amongst all of these denizens, the more she and her essence’s automated doings…were inevitably going to adapt around it and change in reaction… and in ways she could not…predict; perhaps even in ways…she never thought could be…possible.
She sighed; thus, it was best to start getting back in the habit of…eating these things in advance, then. Besides…she absolutely did need to eat; it had been far too long, indeed.
Without further deliberation, she ripped off the synthetic packaging of one of these…things, the material dissolving into cyanic wispy-dusty radiance…falling into her aura’s shadow.
Left in her hand was that exposed SNSB… looking exactly as it looked. She hesitated, before…finally taking a large stiff bite. So…chewy, so…concentrated, so…goopy when in contact with saliva… tasting exactly as it tasted.
She did not at all linger on this experience for long, chewing and swallowing the bar as fast as fastest permissible…until its existence ceased to be.
She swallowed in finality…ugh…unpleasant, but necessary. She stood herself back up…and reassessed. Hmm…well with that all done, now she had to begin the rest of this…preparation process. She needed to rearm and pack the necessary munitions and supplies—the same setup from her prior adventuring, really, though with extras.
She returned to the terminal screen, tapping on the keypad, preparing to close it down and reset the override. Though…in the shadow of her mind, thoughts continued to fester…
She paused, ignited eyes staring at the screen…fingers motionless.
Her two water container flasks and Remnant SNSBs…that was all she needed to retrieve from the hexagon; that was…her object, initially.
Yet…she turned around, glancing at her former associate’s—at Gunslinger’s—adventurer attire; truly, the similarities were…not lost on her, even if still alien. Truly, in the end, her former associate could not…fully escape her Remnant origins; even in supposed ‘desertion’; even in…this game of pretend…
Yet…
“None of it is…completely a deceptive pretending, rather it is more… different shades of me” so abruptly…such words flashed into her mind.
“…‘different shades of me’…thus was said?” the foreigner repeated in murmur, her ignited eyes withdrawing down and away…her mind…contemplating…
‘Me’… « Sed…quid ețiam est ‘me’? » Yet who even…was she? She so suddenly…began to ponder…without any answers whatsoever.
« Mah… Neșcjo; omnja quae șcjo est quod j’eșom soldatù violettù de la Federația…aut…quidquid d’ex nobés remanat » She did not know; all she knew was that she was, and always would be, a Remnant trooper—a Violet-Coat at that.
Yet…such did beg the question, didn’t it?
What does it mean to be a ‘Remnant’ trooper?
You do not know
Even though there used to be an answer
All those eons ago
For the majority of her time being stranded here, she was playing this…game of parroting pretend. It was becoming so tiresome…to deny…to pretend otherwise, even if necessary. The denizens, the ones she was cooperating with at least, they were already starting to…pierce through her mask, seeing the alien she truly was. The point was becoming redundant.
She took yet another glance at Gunslinger’s attire…the similarities still so apparent…before returning her attention to the hexagon’s screen…
Hmm…a cloak…right, she was asked to…“…‘Try to…look the part’…thus was said?”
She stared at the screen…cogitating, hesitating, yet…the decision was both obvious and predetermined; in fact, it had already been made…she just needed to affirm it.
She tapped at the screen and opened the hexagon’s primary storage component. She needed to prepare in detail while ‘looking the part’… and truly, there was no other way in her mind. Though, she was going to have to…make a few adjustments and…compromises.
And so, without delay, the foreigner promptly began to prepare.