Chương 70: Chapter 25: Epilogue

Marus Eln happily sorted through the small details of his world, tweaking a few options here and there and watching the changes flow outward though the mortals of the planet. That neatly resolved the latest minor crisis, and he nodded to himself as normal behavior resumed once again. Perfect.

He took a snapshot of the energy flow through his world and sent it to his father's address, pushing himself away from his desk and Interface to go find himself a small treat, one of the marvelous desserts that his world had started producing. One of the many rewards of being a competent administrator, alongside his slowly expanding library and the small sections of landscape he'd duplicated into his Estate. The better his world did, the more things he had in which to indulge.

Just as Marus finished spooning the last creamy-sweet bite of dessert into his mouth, the Interface lit up with a call. Marus returned his spoon and bowl to where they belonged with a thought, once again clean and dry, and then answered the call, putting it on the scry-view. The familiar face of his father appeared, pleasant and without the wrinkle of displeasure Marus had so often seen before.

"Excellent job, Marus," his father praised him, and Marus beamed.

"It only took some minor alterations to bring production back to targets," he replied, though it had taken a lot of feverish investigation to even figure out what was wrong, and long nights with books of theory to determine a solution. Even if the changes were, on the face of it, minor, the subtlety itself was a demonstration of his prowess.

"Nevertheless, your contribution is quite worthy," his father said, glancing to one side as he manipulated his own Interface.

"I am assigning another merit to your name."

"I am honored, father," Marus said, suppressing his glee. Life was so much better now, with his own world and recognition of his efforts, enough that Marus only remembered his former life in hazy contrast. He was vaguely aware that his father and the others were not entirely, in some ways, real, but it hardly mattered. Everything was as he had always hoped; with real work, appreciation for it, and the freedom to excel as he always knew he would.

He was content.

Solar panels fed energy into the Elysium chip where Marus resided, a tiny slice of computronium inside the Alcatraz cluster, orbiting an ice giant five astronomical units from the primary. The supernova of the System's destruction would take thousands of years to shine in the sky on Heimdall, but Marus was not likely to see it when it happened. He had not bothered to look outside his Elysium in years, and perhaps never would again.

***It was a dark night in a city that knew how to keep its secrets.

Shiel watched the target through the rain, neon signs flashing and casting sprays of color through the falling drops, while Ruyu ran the 'net, monitoring cameras and other 'runners. Shiel-Ruyu, the man with two minds and the best detective in New Frokyo City stalked along the sidewalk, past e-newspaper stands and tobaccanists broadcasting scratchy music from battered jukeboxes.

His cyber-eye zoomed in on the man he was tailing, a cyborg in a long black coat and a ridiculous tricorn hat, catching him looking around just before ducking into a media-chip rental. Ruyu hopped into the store's net, finding the defenses better than usual, the Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics standing sentinel like a knight of old. Shiel, meanwhile, casually strolled to the noodle shop opposite the rental place, poking the menu to order a bowl as hovercars zipped back and forth along the street between.

Ruyu crept past the watchers, tapping into the feeds and tracking their quarry as he went through the back of the rental place and down into a sub-basement that certainly wasn't part of the official schematics. Shiel slurped noodles as he watched the feed Ruyu was sending him. The man he had been hired to tail slipped down into the Undercity, heading somewhere that only existed for those in the know.

He only stopped when the man slipped past the bounds of the network Ruyu had compromised, into something far deeper and darker.

A tiny piece of the BlackNet blocked off the furthest reaches of the sub-basement, somewhere even Ruyu would hesitate to go, so Shiel upended the bowl into his mouth and hastily swallowed the remainder of his noodles. Then he hastened across the way, toggling his stealth cybernetics and ghosting through the rental store. Doors opened and closed of their own accord, Ruyu manually triggering them as the stealth cyberware prevented the sensors from noticing.

Shiel-Ruyu descended into the basement and then the sub-basement, passing stacks of ancient media-chips — The Devil That Ate New Gursery, or The Ultra-Beast-Man Cometh!

Then he ran out of boxes as he transitioned from dim and dingy to the suspicious cleanliness of a high-security area, one where cameras and sensors wove a web of detection that challenged even his skills. He slunk through halls lit by red emergency illumination, tracking his target more by scent and the occasional drop of shed rainwater than anything else, until he spotted a maintenance hatch inset at the side of a ventilation shaft.

His fingers split apart into tools, quickly popping the hatch off so he could slide into the tunnel beyond. He pulled it back into place behind him, taking off his hat so he could slither through the narrow passages, around hissing pipes and humming wires. Ruyu trod carefully around the nodes of the BlackNet, looking for something to suborn. This was a place that wasn't supposed to exist, and he was probably in over his head — but Shiel-Ruyu wasn't about to leave such a mystery uncovered.

Voices drifted from ahead, and Shiel-Ruyu slid closer, peering through a crack and looking down on an enormous room full of network equipment, plugs and cables creating a massive web. At the center was a single figure, suspended by the network connections and nearly covered by them, but Shiel-Ruyu instantly knew who it was. Madame Spider, the BlackNet's most notorious 'runner.

The Elysium paused as an alarm went off, and Shiel-Ruyu blinked, shook himself, and then exited back into his favorite physical body. The cover of the biopod lifted up and Shiel-Ruyu stepped out, stretching as Leyel exited the pod next to him. She gave him a smile and the two of them strolled out into the habitat where Goyle had set up a couch, snacks, and the glass ceiling showed the massive blue-green whorls of Asgard, the primary gas giant in Heimdall.

"This is gonna be great," Goyle said, waving at them as they arrived. The countdown at the top of the glass listed the time until the impactors the former Alum had identified would crash into the surface of Asgard, in what promised to be an astounding show.

"Can't wait!" Shiel-Ruyu said, dropping down on the couch. Leyel snuggled in next to him, and Goyle made the entire piece of furniture tilt as he took a seat next to Leyel.

"Let's see the fireworks."

"I brought booze!" Brewer – once known as Cato – added, arriving in the habitat from the other direction and hefting a case of the mead that he had made himself. The others cheered as he dropped the case down and extracted a few bottles, tossing one to each of the former Alums before taking the final one for himself.

That particular former Cato was from one of the fringe worlds that had barely any population. While Shiel-Ruyu didn't know what had brought Brewer to Heimdall, let alone caused him to fall into this particular crowd, he had to admit the man knew his alcohol. It was less exotic in some ways than the stuff Shiel-Ruyu had made in the System, but it was also more genuine and getting drunk was quite the different experience.

Brewer took the remaining seat on the couch, propping his feet up while Shiel-Ruyu sipped the mead and marveled at the unusual flavors. The four of them talked about what they were involved in – they all had hobbies aside from the Elysiums – but Shiel-Ruyu had a sneaking suspicion from a few hints dropped that Leyel was Madame Spider. Though that could wait until later; they had a show to watch.

Soon enough, a fragment of comet plunged into Asgard, sending a massive, multicolored fireball blooming from the surface. Shiel-Ruyu laughed and drank the mead, everyone else pointing and grinning. Everyone loved explosions.

Initik steered the tractor along the rows of rich, dark earth, listening to the whine of his own, hand-built hydraulics with satisfaction as he turned the wheel. Behind him, the harvesters cut the grain, separating it out into seed and chaff. It was a task that could have been done by remote, by drone, or in massive aeroponic farms in orbit, but he liked to get out and actually do the work himself. There was an incredible difference between knowing what the work was, even with the sims, and actually performing it.

Feeling the way the earth responded, smelling the scent of tilled soil and cut vegetation, and hearing the rattle of seeds pour into the hopper.

He squinted against the sun's light as the tractor finished the turn around the edge of the field, shading his eyes with a gripping claw as he peered at the long thin strand of the space elevator that rose from somewhere beyond the horizon and vanished into the skies above. Clouds were gathering there, promising a storm soon enough. The elevator seemed to spawn them, a side effect that Gardener – once known as Cato – hadn't yet been able to quash, but Initik didn't mind. The crops certainly didn't.

The warmth of the sun beat down on his back, a pleasant heat and a refreshing breeze as Initik finished the field, bringing the harvester and the grain back to the processing facility. Some places on the planet still threshed by hand, as many people still needed the tactile labor to feel truly connected to what was going on. It was obvious that it would take many generations for his people to adopt the level of technology that was theoretically possible. That was fine; Initik was nothing if not patient.

He had spent over a thousand years ruling his planet before, and he could easily spend another thousand, especially since there was far more that the Urivan people could accomplish.

Initik hopped off the tractor, flipping the controls over to automatic and letting the machines do their work while he walked into garden of the sprawling wooden manor that housed his family. Three of his kids ran over from where they'd been playing, and he rumbled as he scooped them up. His gripping claws stabilized them on his shoulders as two of his wives followed somewhat more demurely after.

Being welcomed home by his family was infinitely better than the lonely distance he'd been forced to maintain before, making him once again glad that Gardener had offered some adjustments after Initik had left the System. He was a guardian, yes, but he wanted to live among his people rather than above them. Gardener had offered him a number of options, but Initik had gone with a secondary mind that countered some of the impulses of a defensive cornerstone.

For the first time in a long time, he had actually been able to connect with people. For the first time he wasn't simply a god, but also a person, living for himself and not just for others.

"Uksin Colony called," Kestlie said, snuggling on one side and reaching up to keep little Millek from toppling off Initik's shoulder, claw or not.

"The two factions there are practically at war. Again."

"I'll take care of it," Initik rumbled, activating his implant and dispatching a version of himself. While he didn't have Yaniss' legendary capability to reconcile any amount of himself, he could manage a few that let him multi-task.

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"Gardener sent down another set of plans from The Island," Mishke added, bending down to scoop up the latecoming Kriplik, the little one toddling in from who knew where. Initik could have received all these communications through his implant, but he preferred to have some distance. The implant replicated many of the functions of his Interface – which was now running much of the infrastructure on Uriva – but most of the time he didn't want or need them.

"I'll take a look," Initik said. The Island was the same habitat that Gardener had used years ago to bring the first Urivans out of the System, and now acted as Initik's brain trust in orbit. A way to filter out the more advanced offerings, figuring out the small wrinkles that made technologies compatible with the Urivan way of life. The Sydean sisters were still up there, too, spiritual grandmothers to half the Urivan matriarchs on the planet.

"Come on, kids, let's take a look at the big screen."

"Woo!" Little Tikkel cheered, the kid far more a fan of things like movies than most. He jumped down from Initik's shoulder, grabbing onto Mishke to break his fall, and ran ahead into the house. Initik rumbled softly and followed after.

Mii-Es flew through the heady air of the habitat, rich floral scents wafting from the vine-wound columns that stretched all the way from the floor to the central axis. In the lower gravity, the bright flowering plants ballooned into enormous springy bundles, providing soft obstacles for the younger ones as they followed her lead in a ragged line. She circled around and down toward the landing platform, spotting a familiar aircraft parked neatly in the corner.

"Right, everyone," Mii-Es said, flashing her feathers to get attention as her kids all landed with varying degrees of grace.

"Go get washed up for lunch while I talk with Smith."

The young ones ran into the house, led by Kuu-Sed, as Smith – once known as Cato – emerged from the aircraft with a wave, accompanied by his cousin. Mii-Es knew that whatever they were there for wasn't an emergency, else one of them would have used the communicator, but Smith and the other associated postbiologicals were generally only indirectly involved in her things. Mostly when it came to decisions that required knowledge that Mii-Es just didn't have; which was a lot, in the end.

"What brings you by, darlings?" Mii-Es said, reaching out to clasp Smith's hand in her talons, then nodding to Kiersten. She knew that many of the System expatriates weren't fond of either of the humans, but Cato had a special place in her heart for what he'd done. Kiersten was less familiar to her, but did work closely with Yaniss.

"Well, first," Smith said, clearly amused, and gestured at Kiersten.

"A group of Ikent asked me to ask you to run the place instead of Yaniss," Kiersten said with a sigh.

"That's not going to happen," Mii-Es trilled a laugh, opening the door to her Eyrie and beckoning for them to follow her in.

"Sure I can split myself in two, but I have my own people now!" She'd long reconciled her two selves, and while she could multitask that way she rarely did.

"Doesn't matter if Yaniss doesn't want to do it, she asked for it with her out-of-System work."

"That's what I thought you'd say," Kiersten said, pausing as there was a crash from an inner room. Mii-Es sighed, trying to ignore the guilty silence of children who had just managed to break something, while Smith chuckled.

"The other thing was, we can start moving habitats to the inner system now, if you like," Smith offered.

"We could put you in the Lagrange points or something, and you'd have more light and less comms lag."

"I'd still like a planet of my own," Mii-Es said, waving her hand toward the windows.

"The habitat is nice, but I'm still not used to the horizon. And besides, I feel like my race needs more than just habitats."

"It is possible to build one, here or in an adjacent star system," Smith said thoughtfully. Kierstan snorted and rolled her eyes.

"What?" Smith asked her.

"I think you've lost perspective," Kiersten said, not unkindly.

"An entire planet?"

"It does seem a bit excessive," Mii-Es added, as she was very aware of how large planets were.

"Sure, it'd take a few centuries," Smith said defensively.

"But it'd be a lot easier than trying to find and terraform one. Low gravity doesn't play well with natural planets; even your original world was almost certainly heavier than this. Besides which, if you build it right you don't have to worry about earthquakes and volcanoes or even weather you don't want. I think it'd be a fun project."

A few centuries was a longer timeline than most mortals could plan for, but Mii-Es wasn't mortal, and neither were either Smith or Kiersten. If something was going to take that long, it would take that long, and she would simply look forward to it. Besides, she agreed with Smith. Creating a planet from scratch did sound like a fun project.

Raine Talis, Captain of the Trailblazer, practically plastered herself against the glass as she eagerly watched the newest exoplanet grow in the window. Even if she'd seen hundreds of planets, she still loved every new one they came across. Of course, there was more going on than just her enjoying the view; the Trailblazer's name wasn't just an aesthetic choice.

Further in-system, advance scout drones were already setting up an industrial base, while a stellaser beamed light at the Trailblazer to help slow it down. Behind them, more automated drones were working on a deep-space telecommunications away, to link up with the others that they'd left behind them. They were building a highway ahead and behind them, something to link worlds together.

"Every time, I'm amazed by the way these planets look," Kirk – once known as Cato – said, reclining in the pilot's seat. He'd been far more relaxed ever since the entire problem of the System had been taken off his hands, and had become part of the core four. It was odd for her to technically outrank Kirk, but at this point she knew the ship better than he did.

Technically he was once Cato-Uriv, the Cato closest to the one they had originally met, and while originally he'd still been distant and awkward, Lorraine had pulled him in quickly enough. They were immortals, after all, and many of the passengers they carried weren't. Even postbiologicals rarely could last beyond a century or two, so the four of them were really the only ones who could sustain the full journey.

The nominal bridge of the Trailblazer was located in its habitat ring, a chrome and cream room with rounded edges and tactile controls. Above them, the rest of the Trailblazer seemed to spin as the habitat section rotated for gravity. They had slowed down enough from interstellar speeds that it was safe to retract the armor, as otherwise they would have had to watch the vibrant orange-and-white gas giant through sensors.

"Are we gonna actually stop at this one?" Lorraine asked, kicking her heels from where she lounged sideways on her own chair, despite all the work that had gone into making the seat comfortable.

"Or are we pushing on through."

"We'll stop and resupply," Leese said, as Raine flicked a finger in her direction. While Raine was the Captain, Leese was the quartermaster and in charge of the good health of the ship.

"And fix some of the armor damage."

"Great!" Lorraine said, popping to her feet.

"I really wanna go windsurfing there," she said, waving at the jovian. Raine chuckled; she hadn't thought of that kind of extreme sport before, but between Kirk's archives and Lorraine's desire to dive headfirst into anything that took her fancy, the crew of the Trailblazer had learned all kinds of new things over the past few hundred objective years.

Beyond the core four, there were another few dozen humans and Urivans who had decided to join the long voyage between the stars — the six thousand year journey to Sydea. Some had joined when the Trailblazer left, others had been beamed in along the communications relays they were leaving in their wake, forging a communication network between Uriv and Sydea — and eventually, Earth.

They weren't the only ones who were doing so. In the expanding bubble of communication, extending outward from Uriva, there were others voyaging out in their own ships, building highways between the stars. There were even new schematics and technologies from some of these far-flung colonies, as people began to move forward from the database of Earth's technology. After all, these voyages took centuries.

Of course, most people hadn't experienced the centuries in real time. There wasn't that much outside the ship to do on the long journey between stars, and while they could have built Elysiums to while away the years, underclocking was a better solution. That way most of their subjective time could be spent in reality, examining the new star systems and doing things like Lorraine's wind-surfing or Kirk's resource surveys.

Leese had a hobby of seeding at the very least void-life, if not full terraforming suites when the rare potential world appeared.

Temek and Meshka Uriv, grandchildren of one of the other Lineages – which was strange for Raine to consider – regularly held movie nights, both reviewing new media beamed in from colonies and older stuff from Kirk's archive. Some of their passengers were just gestalts held in stasis – some of the humans wanting a ride back to Earth – but most of them participated to some extent or another.

None were quite as active as the core four who made up the official crew, but all of them save the cargo types woke up as they came into the new star system.

Over the next few months the Trailblazer slowed into an orbit around the star, then back out to the gas giant as they surveyed the entire system. The inner system was just debris; two asteroid belts and a gas torus from a close-in superjovian, useful for mining but not much else. The large outer jovian, on the other hand, had a swarm of fascinating moons in a variety of vibrant colors from ices and metallic deposits.

A few had enough of an atmosphere to create striking wind-carved landscapes of frozen methane and elemental sulfur, resulting in towering arches and immense canyons that promised interesting sledding in the low gravity.

Crew and passengers alike scattered out to enjoy their stopover while automated equipment pulled raw materials from asteroids and the gas torus. Raine took her own personal fusion darter out, flitting among the as-yet-unnamed moons and reveling in the feel of acceleration as she skipped the tiny craft off atmospheres and banked around cyrovolcanoes. She was still playing around when the Trailblazer pinged her; the communications array had finished, and they had an incoming transmission.

When she saw who it was from, she broadcast a recall to everyone. They certainly would want to see this, as the point of origin wasn't Uriva, some sixty light-years back. It was from Sydea, five hundred something light years ahead. By the time she got back to the ship, the rest of the crew had arrived, and while they could have all simply networked virtually, they had spent enough time in simulated space on the long stretches between stars.

"All right," Kirk said, settling down in his armchair in front of the big screen in the entertainment room.

"Let's see what this is all about." Raine loaded up the feed, ignoring the accompanying text and database information for the moment, and just played the WatchMe file. It blinked onto the screen, showing a version of Cato and a Sydean that none of them had seen for a very long time — Karsa, one of the Platinums that they'd left behind hundreds of years ago.

"Hello everyone!" Cato-Sydea said, waving at the pickup.

"We just heard from Uriva, telling us all about what happened. I suppose we won't know the final disposition of the System for ages yet, but I'm glad everything worked out for you."

"And you're coming back!" Karsa broke in, wrapping an arm around Cato, who took it with the good grace of someone long used to her antics.

"It's going to be great! You are going to be in for such a surprise; we have all kinds of things going on here! Even broadcasting at Sol, but who knows if they're even going to be listening."

"Speaking of, I put the transceiver in the hands of a Winter Civilization here," Cato said.

"If you want to transmit here instead of continuing the slow way, it's still going to be an extra six hundred years and who knows what'll happen in that time. Twelve hundred, for verification, and even then we still won't have heard back from Earth. Unless one of us cracks the System's FTL, and that doesn't sound likely."

"I'd say Sol might," Leese muttered.

"But it's been so long."

"Anyway, if you are going to keep on the slow way and set up a highway — which we really need, by the way, and now that we know where you are we'll start our own — we might send some people your way by broadcast, if you're amenable. The six hundred year comms lag is, well, it's a thing. By the time we hear back and transmit you'll be halfway here already, but that's just how it goes without portals."

"Besides, the great thing about being immortal is we can wait," Karsa said.

"I've included all the history you missed, plus a bunch of personal messages, and we'll keep transmitting along your path of travel," Cato said.

"Look forward to hearing from you in six hundred years or so!" The WatchMe file ended, and Raine looked around at the others.

"What do you think? You feel like transmitting out?"

"I dunno," Lorraine said with a shrug.

"Feels like it's maybe the easy way out? I mean, some of the passengers might want to, but I'd almost rather stick it out unless there's something urgent. If you can even call multiple centuries urgent."

"I agree," Leese said.

"I do want to see Sydea again, but I also want to see what's out here. Maybe there will be people, ones we can help, or strange planets we've never imagined. Whatever it might be, I don't want to miss it."

"Also, the further we get, the more tech updates we'll have and the faster we'll close the communications loop with Sydea," Kirk said.

"It might be worth transmitting the last hundred light years or something, but not just yet."

"Then we'll continue exploring," Raine said, looking out over the vastness of space, the stars and galaxies of the universe.

"After well, we have all the time in the world."

END OF SYSTEMA DELENDA EST