Page 33 of Experimental Voyage
I would, too—assuming we found our way home.
We traveledfor well over thirty hours before the planet’s song faded away to silence. If we flew every hour without stopping, we wouldn’t reach the nearest shiftgem gate in our lifetime. It would take several lifetimes to reach one.
Our only hope for making our way home involved luck and an undiscovered gate. As the only ships to venture this way had been generational ships lacking the equipment to identify possible habitable planets from the distance they’d been from our discovery, we would have to do sector scans and hope for the best.
Even with a planet full of evolvulite, we couldn’t create a shiftgem gate.
Nobody knew what made them appear, why, and what made them vanish as though they’d been ghosts or some strange mirage in the first place. Fortunately for most, shiftgem gates tended to stick around, although there were known incidents of them disappearing without warning.
The voyage had turned from an experiment for my adaptability to an exploration of our resilience and determination to go back to the places we knew.
Perhaps one day, life would stop surprising me.
One unasked question loomed, and rather than stew in uncertainty, I asked, “What are our odds of finding our way back to known space?”
“Higher than you might think, lower than I like,” Waldren replied, and he gestured to the main monitor, which brought up a large-scale star map. A red dot appeared. “That is our current position.” After a moment, a pale yellow field covered most of the map. “That is known space, defined by having a shiftgem gate within three months of space travel.” A purple dot appeared on the far edge of the yellow zone. “That is your world.”
“We ended up on the exact opposite side of known space?” I asked, my eyes widening.
“That’s correct. We’re actually closer to Earth than your home right now.” A green dot appeared along the edge of known space. “Homo sapiensamuse most in the universe. Before the planet’s destruction,homo sapiensviewed themselves as the center of the universe. In reality, they’re along the edge of it. The other races did what they could to save our people, but Earth has never been easy to access. I think it’s like this world—there were no shiftgem gates because if there were gates nearby, the planet would be plundered. The first shiftgem gates to appear near Earth did so shortly before the planet’s demise. The other races barely had enough time to preparehomo sapiensfor departure—and many died.”
I considered the planet we’d just left behind. “It’s really like Earth?”
“Earth had many predators,homo sapiensamong them. I never heard any reports of Earth singing, either.” Waldren replaced the star map on the display with black space, and a red dot appeared. “This is our current location, and I’m zoomed in, so you can see what we have around us within a year of flight.”
I regarded the void, empty save for one tiny planet, with dismay. “We’re looking for a needle in a haystack.”
“We are.”
“How long do we have in terms of supplies?”
Waldren winced. “Six months. The best we can do is explore for two and a half months out and then return to Melody to attempt to resupply, assuming we can figure out what we can eat that won’t completely disrupt their environment. And I don’t know about you, but the last thing I want to do is teach Squeakers and her kin that we’re able to eat them. Perhaps the fish, assuming we can study their behavior and determine they have natural predators in the waters. The one that ate the bird implies they have a more usual ecosystem in the ocean.”
For a long time, I stared at the blank map, the red dot, and Squeaker’s home world, and wondered what the future might hold.
As I lackedany conditioning to help me cope with the reality of our situation, Waldren suggested the Veloc activate my link and start training me on coping with the ability to read data in my head with the help of the implant. As Herserael thought it to be a wise idea, he removed the caps covering the link behind each of my human ears and showed me. The device had a plug meant to hold hair to mask the presence of the link. He showed me how the plug worked, snapping the cap embedded with hair matching mine into place. When installed, most wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
The hair had been cultivated from my head, making use of the ship’s regenerative technology to create a wig. As I liked my hair, I requested it to be covered.
He then showed me the chips, handing me the entry-level set.
Much like the planet we’d left behind, the chips sang. My eyes widened. “They sing?”
The Veloc hooted his amusement, and then he cooed. “Most excellent. No, chips don’t sing for everyone, but those with an aptitude for it may hear such things. Each chip is made with tiny evolvulite crystals. The singing you’re hearing is resonance. Some have it, some don’t. Waldren’s chips sing, and it took him many months to adapt to it.”
The man in question snorted. “I needed a psychic to dampen that part of my brain. I’m overly receptive—but it’s also why I can manipulate the computer systems so well. I have latent psychic abilities, but they’re not accessible. They just make my ability to link stronger. It’s individualistic if the singing bothers you.”
“Will it be louder once it is installed?” I asked.
“Nobody knows. It simply varies too much. We won’t know how you’ll react until you try. Are you ready?”
I nodded, and I tilted my head to the side so he could access the chip ports installed behind my ears. “Does it hurt?”
“No, it doesn’t hurt. You’ll hear a click when the chip is inserted, and then it’ll activate when the cap is put into place. Starter chips won’t work without the caps in place, but advanced chips will operate as soon as they are inserted. The cap safeties are meant to give relief to new linkers. In a way, you’ll have an easier time of it. Waldren will reduce the number of interfaces you can access with your link until you’re used to filtering them out. Are your systems ready for it?”
“The ship is operating on minimal systems. Go ahead with the insert,” Waldren replied.
As promised, I felt nothing during the chip installation, but I did hear a faint click. The chips continued to sing. I tensed when aware of the Veloc replacing the cap to protect the delicate chip and equipment embedded in my skull.
