Chương 256: Chapter Two Hundred and Fifty-Six

I shuffle over to a bookshelf and reach out to the Machine-Spirit hiding within. A series of codes are exchanged over vox. There is an almost undetectable whine as motors and gears power up and lift the bookshelf into the ceiling. No, I do not need a secret compartment in my office that can function as a panic room behind a stereotypical bookcase. Do I want one for the cool factor? Absolutely. That's at least half the fun of being a Magos.

I don't count this little hideaway as a serious defence, nor would a panic room, for its original purpose, be helpful for me. There isn't much in the room: a few emergency supplies, a spare set of armour, and weapons. A workbench runs along one wall with a couple of fabricators next to it, plugged into their own separate power supply. On the right is a Great Crusade Era Drop Pod, at least, that's what it looks like. It's really a sleeping pod that can eject from the top of the Navigator spire.

As well as the completely different shell, this sleeping pod is a bit more hardcore than the ones everyone else uses. Not only can it sustain a life near indefinitely via stasis, rather than two years like the normal ones, it can hover and teleport too. The 'sleeping pod' has small fabricators, a vast collection of STCs installed, and can survive an aggressive re-entry into the most hostile of atmospheres and even an unexpected jaunt through the Warp.

If I had to start civilization from a single, naked human on an airless rock, this pod is how I would do it. I built it as a tribute to my favourite games back when I was a mere mortal plumber. Despite its ludicrous list of features, I only use the uber sleeping pod for its full dive VR capabilities. Sure, I have a normal sleeping pod back in mine and Brigid's bedroom, but some days I just like to hide myself away. I need time to be Aldrich. Not Magos Issengrund, not Husband Aldrich, Uncle Aldrich, or Dad.

To float in near blackness with pounding music or soft tunes and let the stress float away. I step into the pod, the lights dim, and the armoured shell closes around me. Heavy thunks reverberate through the pod's frame as the electronic locks slam home. Despite the darkness, the world remains alive around me. I see the energy flowing through the walls, the signals in the air. Even plates of adamantium do not obscure my sight.

Since my multiple near brushes with death I've been cutting myself off from others more and more. Brigid is too busy to notice, Alpia is tucked away safely in another sleeping pod and my boys are on another voidship. I could let this go on untreated for these fears of mine, in time, will pass. I have skills and strength enough for that. Far more than I did when I woke up alone on the Federation Space Station. I have, at least, recovered enough from my latest brushes with death to recognise that is a terrible idea.

I am uncertain what path I should take, however. It's why I've been putting this conversation with my boys off for so long, to eke out every moment, a near eternity when I can turn every second into six minutes if I want to. Long enough to forget how to speak, how to smile, or even breathe. Long enough to forget how to be Human. I used to fear I wouldn't live long enough to make a difference. To have my second chance at life mean something. I still have those same fears.

I still fear violence and death, yet it is not the same. My mechanical body and warp twisted flesh will outlast the stars! My ailing organs are rejuvenated whenever I care to manipulate what little is left of my organic body with my mind alone. A short spell backed by millennia of knowledge to grant eternity of the flesh. The machine is already immortal. My mind? My mind shall know no respite.

Taking a deep breath, I trigger the full dive protocols and the Machine-Spirits whisk me away to a new world, or rather, an old, familiar one. One moment I am secured within a steel behemoth, the next I am standing at the bottom of a mountain. In front of me is a train station where a puffing, green locomotive churns white steam and black smoke into the air. A single red carriage with white highlights around the windows waits at the short platform, waiting for the locomotive to rack it up the mountain.

Leaning against the station sign are my three boys, Dareaca, Luan, and Fial. They are near identical, at two metres tall, close cut red hair, and a smattering of freckles across their noses and cheeks. Beneath their pale skin are the faint lines of circuits and runes, far too fine for a normal human eye to detect. A discrete titanium port is visible on the back of their necks, just above the collars of their shirts.

Their eyes are partially artificial, only detectable by the reflective glow when they catch the light of the simulated sun. They look well and happy. Fial keeps glancing at the locomotive, his fingers twitching as he interacts with a screen that only he can see. Dareaca gestures wildly as he complains about one of his teaching officers. Luan nods along in agreement. There is a hand embroidered handkerchief poking out of Luan's pocket.

Since Luan has never used a handkerchief in his life, I suspect that it is an old fashion mark of favour from his girlfriend, one that he's gone to the trouble of adding to his noosphere avatar.

"Ahoy there lads!"

"Dad!" says Fial. He runs over and gives me a hug.

"That train is so cool! When did you make a simulation for all of this? Where even are we?" Luan and Dareaca stop their conversation and wander over at a more sedate pace. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Dareaca points at the sign, "Snowdon Mountain Railway. How can you not know? We've been standing against it for five whole minutes."

"Yeah? Do you know where Snowdon is? I thought Dad was just making stuff up, then I saw the build date on the locomotive: Enid - 1895. He's pulled another piece of history out of the archives and recreated it, just so we could have fun together today. I bet he wouldn't have said anything and neither of you two even noticed."

"Alright Fial, that's enough," I say.

"Let's not turn today into an argument. Like you said, we're here to have fun." Dareaca chuckles awkwardly. Luan crosses his arms and sticks his tongue out at Fial. I continue, "Are you all on Corona's Edge, or did Thalk let you move some sleeping pods onto his flagship?"

"Nah, we're all on your spyship, Dad," says Luan.

"Don't trust those weird Tech-Priests not to mess with our stuff. Thalk's been rather lax with us lately."

"It's not a spyship," I say.

"It's your metaphorical, 'Get out of jail for free' card. They're there to keep you three safe now that I won't be there to do so." Dareaca frowns, "If it wasn't for our experience on Dying Light, I'd say you were being overbearing. Now I wish you could send more ships with us. Vice-Admiral Styrvold was right when he said his ships were creaking at the seams. Literally. They're really noisy."

"Fixing all those creaks and groans in the environmental sustainer has got you more invitations to prayer and poetry readings by the female officers than you know what to do with," says Luan.

"Why are you complaining?"

"Poetry and prayer is boring?" says Dareaca.

"Also none of those gold-eyed officers' smiles match their eyes. They all look like sociopaths in the making. Their expressions are too exaggerated. It's like they learned what people think is normal, then copied it, without ever understanding the underlying emotions." Fial tuts, "Then stop being so helpful."

"I don't do it for them, I do it for me! The Machine-Spirits now know I can talk to them properly and keep sneaking requests into my work orders, even when it's not my job. Also, I like being able to breathe clean air. We get odd looks if we walk around in our helmets all the time like we do at home, so I might as well fix stuff. It's like all these people have forgotten there's nothing but a thin shell between them and the void." I nod, "That can be troublesome.

Don't show off how many servitors you can control at once or the Machine-Spirits will never stop pestering you."

"Right? See! Dad gets it!" says Dareaca.

"Never mind all that. Shall we get going?" says Luan.

"We are going on the train Fial seems so enamoured with, right?"

"We are," I say, gesturing to my sons to get onto the carriage. They move along the platform and I follow. I continue, "Fial, to answer your earlier question. We are at the bottom of Mount Snowdon. A popular tourist destination of Wales, a part of Great Britain, or the English Isles. Imperial records remember this place as Albion on Old Earth."

"That's cool," says Fial. I grin, "Ironically, the name Albion comes from a time where the isles were almost unknown to the rest of the world and considered a place of myths and magic. Once again they are a mythical lost location and thus we remember their older name, rather than their later one.

"The rest of the world knew them as Angles, or Anglo-Saxons. They called themselves Brythoniaid, or Cymry among many other names. Later they were the British, though I am butchering the political nuance within the country. For example, the place where we are now, Wales, had their own language that they kept alive, even though they were part of Britain and one could walk from one country to another without being hassled for ID." Luan says, "That's interesting and all, but why go to all this trouble?

Why show us a dead world?" We enter the carriage and take our seats.

"Hold on a moment." There is a brief toot-toot, using the audiofile from my recordings of the last steam engine I rode upon within The Barber's Blades. Enid lurches into motion, chuffing and clacking as it slowly picks up speed, capping at a leisurely eight kilometres per hour. We all look out of the window at the green hills and the snowy mountain top, the sun passing through the clouds and illuminating the sparkling lakes and rivers with godrays.

"How is this fun?" says Dareaca.

"I should be bored out of my mind at this slow speed, yet somehow the sounds, sights, and breeze make me feel like I'm five years old and giddy with joy. It's all so simple."

"I'm happy to hear you say that," I say.

"We're here because this is part of your heritage. I was born on these isles and if I had my way, you would have grown up here, not on a slab of metal charging through hell with all the grace of an irate bear. Alas, this place is merely a memory. My memory. One lost to time and myth, for we are on Albion, a place of legend. Great Britain is no more." All three boys turn their heads from the view and stare at me.

"What?" says Dareaca.

"I'm old," I say.

"Really, really old. I used to think this was an important secret. Now I am under scrutiny anyway and my personal power has grown significantly, my history is less dangerous to you and I. I have much bigger secrets than this. I wanted you all to know, just in case we don't see each other again. I haven't even told your mother yet, let alone your sister. You deserve to know where you came from."

"Holy shit! You're from before the Dark Age of Technology?" say Luan.

"I was born in 1984, 89 years after the locomotive pushing us up the mountain was built. That's X192984M2 by the Imperial calendar. I was born before the Stellar Exodus, twelve and half millennia before the Dark Age of Technology."

"No wonder you always seem to know everything. You actually lived it," says Dareaca. I shake my head.

"Nope, no such luck. I was a frozen corpse for most of that. I died in 2027 and woke up about a century ago when the place I was stashed ran low on power. Over several months I fought through Demons, Orks, Tyranids, Cultists, and even a Traitor Marine with little more than a plasteel pipe, healing nanites, and some armour cobbled together from library shelving. Eventually, I extracted Distant Sun from the Space Hulk I was on and escaped. Not my favourite way to wake up in the morning." All three boys gape at me.