First Contact

Chapter 531: Who is with Diamonds?

[you always] [were my] [favorite]

INITIATE communications protocol ESTABLISH primary signal frequency CONNECTION established

DAY ONE HUNDRED TEN

Personal Project Status: Ongoing

Corporate Project Status: Complicated

Station Status: Severe Damage

Let's start off with personnel.

We're down a few more from the scientific team. I could have warned them that even doing instrument examinations of a Hellspace breach is dangerous. Hellspace has some kind of malevolent purpose behind it. Many believe it is the 'souls' of those who were scorched away by the energies used to 'burn' a hyperatomic plane. I am of the belief that the energy creates some kind of corruption to the thought process, more than likely slowly eroding away the thin veneer of civility that mankind coats itself with to pretend we are not a few tens of thousands of years away from caves, rape, cannibalism, and incest.

Probes are one of the most intensely dangerous methods of examining Hellspace. The initial image may look like static to the unwary and ignorant, but if one has spent any time following the proper protocols for Hellspace research one will quickly become aware that the static contains such things as subliminal images and whispers, moving shadows, and biofeedback capable data.

I could have warned Mister McNugget. In hindsight I can see how some may have interpreted my knowledge of Hellspace and Deadspace as part of my Dimensional Matrix scientific discipline, but I have always found that when it comes to Hellspace, the burned hand teaches the best.

Of course, I attended the initial endevours to examine the pinpoint (as far as Hellspace breaches go) breach and the black primordial liquid.

I attempted to tell the scientific team that the liquid is a type of primordial liquid that exists merely to inhibit or encourage the expansion of life. That it is a product of Deadspace intruding on our reality. A way for our reality, one of the Nine Prime Material Planes, to understand the reality of Deadspace in a translation of matter and energy that may not make sense to some but makes perfect sense once you realize that Deadspace is a stillborn universe that still contains all of its potential.

But trying to explain Deadspace to the intellectually hampered and diminished members of the Materials Research Team is like attempting to explain what F-sharp tastes like to a tongue stunned by the glancing touch of Stringspace.

I ensured I had made mental preparations and fortified my internal protections, then joined the examination Team as they maneuvered the first probe into position. I was asked why I was not bothering to wear any protective gear, instead choosing to wear a strange outfit and told them that I was indeed wearing protective gear when it came to Hellspace and Deadspace.

They scoffed.

It did not matter.

True, I was dressed in Pre-Glassing clothing run off of a nanoforge. A light short sleeved white cotton undershirt with no patterns or designs. A long sleeve flannel shirt with a line induced checkerboard pattern of gray and white. A pair of trousers made of denim. Two strips of cotton cloth folded several times, one tied around my right thigh, the other tied around my left biceps. Black leather gloves with shiny chrome studs. Heavy boots known as 'combat boots'. A pair of mirrorshades. A 'bluetooth' earpiece. Finally, a black beret.

Copies of the clothing I was wearing when I woke after that fateful experiment.

I tried to remember it, but my brain shuddered away from the imagery and the remembered agony.

Medication is still in my system, the templates have not been burned from my mind.

NSO went through great expense to acquire my SUDS stack. They did, of course, put safeguards on it.

Mister McNugget raised his eyebrows at the sight of my protective gear. The secmen, of course, were alarmed at my additional close quarters protective gear.

A heavy bladed knife classified as a 'panga', a template copy (torn and ripped to bypass DRM) of a 12 gauge Remington pump action shotgun, and a venerable M1911A1 Colt .45 US Army Issue circa Second Global Conflict of the Industrial Era.

Mister McNugget placed two of the secmen, armed with modern weapons and armor, to stand overwatch on me. They both held no fear of anything on my person. I choose to believe they understood it was merely protective gear.

I watched as the probe entered the room. Initial data was exactly as contact they are attempting contact I knew it would be. A pattern of black and white static, with some blue pixel blocks. do we show them The research team moved the robot up to the Hellspace breach and attempted to extend the probe.

we do not care for them

The breach reacted exactly as I knew it would. There was a screeching sound over the station PA system. The sound of claws on metal. do not profane us with your unclean touch The robotic probe suddenly slammed backwards, the front of it crumpling and collapsing, lenses shattering. For a moment a face could be seen in the flames, screaming, before black shadowy taloned hands emerged from the fire and pulled it back in.

It screamed a single word.

"Lucy"

The robot sat immobile, black goo leaking out of do not touch us the broken seams and dripping from the broken cameras.

I could have told them that robotic probes do not work unless you move into Dark Sciences. Scientific theorems, proofs, and data contaminated by the ageless turning of the great gears and pistons of a multiverse we barely comprehend.

I suggested to the Materials Team that they used the databases we had to examine Pre-Glassing scientific inquiries into alternate dimensions as well as seeing what data we had from the Combine and Imperium Eras. I also recommended that they examine the Eighth Terran Hegemony and its collapse with the ignition of the Hienz-Strassenfeur X-Ray Burster.

I was reminded by the team leader that I was a Neural Mapping Team member, not a member of Energy Research Team or Particle Research Team.

I went back to work, still wearing protective gear.

On the Neural Mapping Team, I have begun examining the additional hardware added to the SUDS repeaters as well as the main I/O banks. The hardware is technically the province of the Materials Research Team as well as the Hardware Research Team, however, I have informed them that the Neural Mapping Team is the only team that can identify Neural Mapping hardware to a degree of certainty that NSO wishes.

I've begun by looking at the type of circuit design.

You can tell a lot by the way a circuit is designed if you know how to look. Like any good researcher, I spent time performing techno-archeology on Terran designed equipment. Materials is a good thing to examine, as well as circuit function.

Contrary to all of the media, if you take a tech level too high back in time, it will not help wars or jumpstart technology. The people of the previous era will be lucky if they do not destroy the equipment or kill themselves examining it.

Take a zero-point reactor. On the surface, it is a marcoplas tube with two metal ends, each with two prongs. In the middle is a swirling gas, mostly white, sometimes light blue streaks, with the occasional multicolor lightning in it. It feels cold to the touch when at its highest energy potential, and warm to the touch as the energy production falls off.

Now, it may look like an ancient florescent tube, just thicker than normal and roughly a foot long, and there is some similarities such as using the 'gas' within to help generate power.

The ends are a hyperalloy stronger than titanium/vanadium alloy. The glass has a higher tensile strength then pure titanium with the conductor properties of an inert substance due to electron valence band 'locking'.

Of course, they'd want to 'crack it open' but as soon as they do that, magnetic containment is released and the two 'clusters' of particles at either end evaporate. Leaving you with a tube of exotic gasses that immediately break down to the their component element gasses, with just molecular circuitry at either end that will break down into carbon powder within a few hours.

Impossible for them to research.

So what I am looking for is things that will pointpoint the era the hardware was added, keeping an eye out for apparent, possible, and unlikely purpose. I will also examine it for baseline reasoning that the circuitry or engineering was not updated to more modern standards.

When I was asked why I was doing this, and why it would correspond with Neural Mapping, I pointed out that a full 3/4 of the hardware was modified SUDS neural scanning technology related.

Personal Project is moving forward. I am still examining media and literature closely.

In a sidenote: the five Green Teams have allowed me to communicate with them via engineering cant texts. They are currently doing all right, but have sealed all access to their personal area and are awaiting extraction by corporate security. They have stated that after 90 days they will attempt to build a superluminal communications device to call for relief.

They were startled, but understanding once I explained the reasonings behind my stance, when I informed them that any attempt to build a superluminal communications device before the Hellspace breach is closed and the station stabilized will force me to flood their living area with chitin corrosive nerve gas UVX-281 series.

They concurred upon checking my forwarded data.

I believe I have determined why we are facing such difficulties understanding the SUDS as a whole.

Now I must convince the other scientific teams and Mister McNugget that I am right.

They will undoubtedly attempt to minimize my warnings by pointing out my mental aberrations.

I will remind them that at one time I was the only survivor of the research inquiry.

NSO went through great expense and trouble to acquire my SUDS stack and train me to be Darsh.

But before that I was Marco.

But... I think I may have been called something else.

I cannot remember.

Was I Lucy?

--Marco

do you remember us

we can still see you

we can still hear you

can you remember and hear us

DAY ONE HUNDRED FIFTEEN

PERSONAL PROJECT STATUS: Breakthrough

CORPORATE PROJECT STATUS: Continuing

STATION STATUS: Heavy to Severe Damage

DEATH TOLL: 38 out of 421

HELLSPACE BREACH STATUS: Open but dormant

My research into media, including written literature and music, has, to the uninitiated layman, resulted in little if any results.

However, as I have stated before, a careless censor leaves marks upon the edges of where he cut.

A clever censor puts in a new image to replace what they have cut out but careful examination will reveal places where the cut was made.

While many would say that it is impossible to know what was cut, what was censored, that is not exactly true. If I censor out an apple by removing it exactly down to the 64K resolution pixels, it leaves a shape that cannot be denied is an apple. If I have not removed the reflection on reflective surfaces or the color distortion from light reflection onto a nearby nonreflective surface, you can determine the coloration of the apple to deduce that it is a golden delicious apple.

We do not have a GalNet or SolNet link, so I am reduced to just the data I already have.

I am faced with two choices. Oddly enough, an ancient meme sticks in my mind like a mouse caught on a glue trap. It is a two horizontal layer meme. On the left is portrayed archeologists, on the right, small children holding models of primitive saurian creatures. On the top left the archeologist is stating that although all he has found is a rib and a tooth, he was fairly certain that the creature was a giant lizard covered in thick armor that wrestled its prey to death and finished them off with a suplex. The child is asking if it possibly breathed fire. The archeologist is stating that possibly, no, indeed it did, to which the child is happy. On the bottom right, the archeologist is stating that the toy is scientifically inaccurate and that the creature was covered in dull earth tone feathers, was a cowardly scavenger, and make mooing noises. The children are crying and asking if they can go home now.

Why is this meme burning in my mind?

Because, for once, it is the top archeologist who is the correct one.

My collegues are acting as if the inventors of the SUDS were barely literate primitives who had barely mastered fire. After all, there is more time between the invention of the SUDS and now then there is between the switch from hunter/gatherer into agricultural and the invention of the SUDS.

They are viewing ancient humanity through our current lenses.

I accused Doctor Kvengilism of viewing the scientists from those eras as if she was engaging in making a selection of a random partner for a sexual liaison through use of social media. She was, of course, insulted. She complained that I had engaged in sexism and misogyny.

I countered that it was not my issue that she had taken offense to a simple observation following her comment that the people back then were ugly and stupid and had not had the advantages of genetic engineering to improve their genome. That they could not invent something that modern science could not reverse-engineer due to the differences in median IQ between now and then, much less the ignorance of the schooling and the vast gaps in scientific knowledge.

That is the kind of thinking that leads to failure.

I was, of course, reprimanded by Mister McNugget.

I then proceeded to the Energy Research Team research area, approached Doctor Kvengilism, and dropped a bundle of branches, a sharp piece of flint, a sharpened piece of obsidian, and a chunk of iron ore on the floor.

I told her, her entire team, to build a fire. I then adjusted the controls on the wall to lower the temperature from 82F to 31F over the course of the next eight hours, to dim the lights to full darkness over the course of three hours, shut off the power and intercom, and locked the door behind me.

Security managed to rescue them before they suffered much more than mild hypothermia.

I was, of course, counseled then reprimanded by Mister McNugget, who reminded me that killing members of a research team was a poor method of imparting knowledge to them.

I simply informed him that a lot of the personnel aboard the station were going to die regardless of any action that he took.

As to my personal project, one thing I ended up doing was examining memes. While many historians point at them as simple entertainment through absurdity I have slowly come to realize something. They spoke to the people of the time. Which is allowing me to examine those people.

One stuck in my head.

I pointed it out to the team that Mister McNugget formed that then ejected me due to concerns about my mental state and stability. The team is dedicated to understanding why and how the Hellspace breach manifested.

They declined to have a Dimensional Matrix researcher on a team investigating a dimensional rift due to emotional and mental stability.

Let that sink in.

However, I showed them two pictures. One of a fierce looking alien creature, the other of a Terran Descent Humanity infant that was smiling. I asked what they had in common. None of them knew. The alien creature had massive eyes, a small nasal cavity, and two sets of teeth in a powerful jaw.

I showed them what they had in common was: the skull.

They didn't get it.

The fools.

It's so obvious, what the meaning was behind what I was showing them and how it relates to examining a Hellspace breach, but they did not understand.

I showed the same image to Professor Hermans and waited for the insects beneath his skin to mull it over with him. After a moment his eyes opened wide and he excused himself, quickly returning to his team.

How it that a hive of insects using a corpse as a shell can understand such a simple thing but a team of educated and accomplished scientists cannot?

--Marco

he's still asleep

not completely

lets wake him up

he may get close again may touch us again

let him he is not unscathed from last time

microdoses can lead to immunity ask dr klien

he is a fusion of who he was who he wanted to be who he became

only part of him has been exposed

we will wake him up

DAY ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEEN

PERSONAL PROJECT: SUCCESS

CORPORATE PROJECT: NO CHANGE

STATION STATUS: REPAIRS ONGOING (GREEN TEAM SOLO OPERATIONS)

DEATH TOLL: 43 out of 421

HELLSPACE BREACH STATUS: RETURN TO DORMANT STATUS

My personal project has yielded results I had not expected.

It is all so obvious, now, in hindsight.

I was viewing the 2.5D visual media called "LAST DAYS ON MERCURY", a dramadocumentary on the last week of fierce fighting between the Unionists and the Omnicorps on Mercury over the resources and pay compensation.

In it, the Unionists were using the natural landscaping and hazards to ensure that the Omnicorp troops were funneled into certain battlefields from a certain direction, launching their probing attack and falling back to pull in the Omnicorp troops during a microfine storm.

It was then that it dawned on me.

Nowadays a lot of military entrenchment and fortification involves ballistic plating, antispalling systems, battlescreens.

But in the beginning, before the Glassing, the Terrans of the time used what they had on hand.

No, let me clarify.

They used existing hazards as protection.

It was so obvious, in that crystal clear moment, what the problem was.

I approached Mister McNugget and informed him. He listened carefully, then had me take another psychological fitness test.

Number Two-Delta.

Satisfied, he dismissed me.

As for the Neural Mapping Team, I largely am working alone. The team is busy concentrating on the actual neural mapping hardware of the SUDS, ignoring the real issue.

The Materials Research Team, the Spooky Matter Research Team, and the Particle Research Team are making no progress in identifying the spooky particles.

I could tell them it is a waste of time.

Their own research shows exactly where it comes from.

You see, part of it is, they think of modern technology and try to apply it backwards, as if it was more crude.

It is, in essence, a different technology.

An explosion in the Spooky Matter Research Lab killed several team members.

We are down to less than 30 scientists.

One of the issues long plaguing the SUDS transmission system is one of common networking. All network traffic requires identification headers for the traffic to be routed properly. At first, it appears that the big problem is decoding the algorithm used by the system to encrypt traffic.

No, the real problem is figuring out how the particles, manufactured in a creation engine or nanoforge, are communicating with other particles.

The particle research team in particular has been overlooking an obvious system anomaly.

They are viewing it as paired subatomic particles, where one changes state and another particle changes state either in the inverse or to match. Paired particles is very well understood and easy to do.

However, as I pointed out, where are those spooky particles paired? What are they paired to? How is it changing its state read by other particles for the system?

Where's the network ID header?

The entire Communications Research Team and the Particle Research Team just stared at me.

I pointed out that the spooky particles were reduced to a single particle before it rapidly replaced them all. I pointed out that the question was threefold: where did they come from? how are they paired? where is the other half?

With the rapid state change which can only be represented in scientific notation at the picosecond level, what is it actually transmitting? You could transmit two hundred thousand digitized neural maps within less than a picosecond across state change that rapid.

So what was really being transmitted, to where, but most of all...

To who?

They had no answer.

I went to the women's bathroom and discussed it with Mister McNugget, who was applying blood to her lips to bring out the bright crimson color.

She agreed with my theorem and told me to keep pursuing it.

You see, Pre-Glassing, everything was locked up, defended. Especially thought.

A pre-Glassing Terran is flush with psychic power to defend their thought.

Doesn't it make sense that the SUDS itself would be defended? Everyone is looking for passwords and firewalls.

Deadspace and Hellspace make for very effective defenses.

Which means: Where exactly is the core SUDS hardware?

When I returned to my quarters I saw that someone is attempting a crude attempt at humor.

A Mark One Cutting Bar was laying on my bunk along with the crossed straps of the carrying harness.

It has been a long time since I held one in my hand.

Holding it brought up a surge of memories.

Tycho Base, under a reddish sky.

A man. In heavy Imperium armor. Three tattooed tears in chrome ink at the corner of one eye. A barcode on one cheek.

I knew him.

I think.

I held the cutting bar tight in my hand.

My name is Marco. I was Darsh Chasu Igwe before I came here. I have returned to being Marco.

But I was someone else. A long time ago.

I felt the old itch on my arm and looked at my arm.

My skin suddenly blistered and peeled. I reached for the medical cream and stopped. For several centuries I have used the cream, which instantly heals the burnt flesh, heals the blisters, restores my skin immediately. NSO has ensured I always have it.

Just like the medication in my drawer.

I scratched the wound, ignoring the pain.

Underneath my flesh, I found microwires.

I used the panga to dig at my arm.

In the middle of my forearm I found something.

A flatware motor.

I applied the salve.

The wound healed almost instantly.

Is it someone playing tricks on me?

Or is it the SUDS defensive system?

I do not know.

Perhaps it is Lucy?

One is just as likely as the other.

--Marco

your name is peter

[You Are] [Not Who] [We See You] [As]