Андреа Хёст - The Starfighter Invitation

Shrugging, I found a seat and checked my [Consumables] menu, which contained three thrilling entries: [Complete Meal: Animal Protein], [Complete Meal: No Animal Protein], and [Water]. I prodded the [Complete Meal: No Animal Protein] option to see if said meal would sci-magically appear on the table in front of me, but received an arrow instead. This led to an unobtrusive kiosk tucked among the plants, which, when I approached, popped up with an option to [Collect]. A hatch opened to reveal a flattish rectangular container of waxy cardboard shaped around its contents, a little like an airplane meal. I added [Water] to my order, and then returned to my nook to eat and browse.

[Complete Meal: No Animal Protein] was a nice mix of crunchy salad, a warm patty of some sort of legume, not-quite-hummus, and fruit segments.

I dissected the patty cautiously, wondering whether to risk it, and then found I could review an ingredients list for the pattern . While I ate, I browsed the reward menu briefly, then turned my attention to the [Players] menu, finding a [Search] command.

Search Results:

1 exact match

[Amelia Beerheart]

[29 Similar Matches]

Following the link to Amelia gave me her details.

Reputation Name:

Amelia Beerheart

[Noonan]

Rank: 0

Status: Online/Challenge

Accepting: [Email], [Messages] (delayed)

Location: [Vessa]

Amelia being in a Challenge apparently meant she wouldn’t immediately see a [Message], but I could email her, and so sent a brief note to let her know what game name I was using. Then I opened the [Location] menu.

[Quadrant]

[System]

[Planet]

[City]

[Ship]

[Search]

I started right at the top, to see how The Synergis mapped out the Milky Way. Or whatever Dio had called it. Helannan. A top-down diagram popped up, with the spiralling disk of the Milky Way divided evenly into four, which is how it’s done on Star Trek , although The Synergis' quadrant division didn’t seem to run through Earth’s system. Instead, a blinking dot was visible in the top-right quarter.

The quadrant was labelled "Carolun Quadrant, [Aldezageden]", and I followed the link to Aldezageden, wondering if that was the current name for Earth, or the Sol system.

Aldezageden

Quadrant Administrator

[Carolun Quadrant]

8684

Location: [Shimuna]

[Lineage]

Looking at [Lineage] took me down a rabbit-hole of what must be all the Cycogs that had combined, divided, and been absorbed to eventually become Aldezageden, who I guessed was one of the larger Cycogs. There was no picture.

A quick visit to [System] and [Planet] gave me the names I expected, along with the name of an administrator, [Arefiel], for both the system and the planet. I’d guess that Earth, drowned or not, was still the most populous planet in the Sol system, and the logical base for the System Administrator.

Earth’s ruler.

I wondered how Cycogs chose their names—the names Bios could pronounce. Arefiel sounded like the name of an angel, but the mouthful of Aldezageden would better suit a planet, or a drug.

It took a little while to figure out where to look myself up, and then follow the link to my handler .

Dio

Fledgling

1

Location: [Vessa]

Dio lacked a lineage, perhaps because te wasn’t important enough. I shrugged, then I tried out my [Directed Thought] option.

" Are you lurking, Dio, or off with your perversions? "

[[Perversions.]] Dio’s voice was as clearly present as it had been when te had been in the same room as me.

I was definitely having trouble remembering new sets of pronouns, though it helped that I couldn’t really pick male or female for the voice Dio used to talk to me.

" What counts as perverse to a Cybercognate? "

[[Not much, in truth. We have rules, but little in the way of taboos. There are certain things the majority of us are uncomfortable with, but those tend to be cruelties, rather than anything that would usually fall into the definition of perverse .]]

I’d gone back to [Locations] and opened up the [City] option, discovering that Vessa’s Administrator was [Fevelen], and that the city was south of the equator, at roughly the latitude of Brazil—though it was a little hard to judge with a map showing most of the world as water.

" Is it possible to overlay the undrowned Earth so I can match up the continents? "

[[Gain Rank Five.]]

"Bah," I said aloud, as I zoomed in to the blinking dot and discovered that I was in the northern section of a miles-long uneven oval: the rollercoaster of Vessa. There were dozens of islands studded along its length, the largest of which, Vessa Major , was a ten kilometre-wide crescent.

Following my [Ship] link showed it to be just a little south of my current location, and produced a handy direction arrow along with a bare bit of information.

Unnamed

[Leveret]

1

[Vessa]

"How do I name my snug?"

[[Gain Rank Five.]]

" Double-bah. Well, speaking of Rank, I’m ready to work on my lan skills. Are there rubbish bins, or some other appropriate thing to do with leftovers? "

[[Return to any vending point.]]

" Where it’ll be…what? Reduced to component atoms, and then reconstituted as someone’s breakfast? "

[That is one way to describe it. Not everything is returned to Soup, but most disposable objects are converted, not kept.]

Returning my tray to the hatch I’d collected it from, I tried to decide whether my fruit and veg had tasted off, or had been oddly textured due to being generated however The Synergis managed to create objects. Though it was all virtual, which made it rather a moot point.

Catching a platform up to the transport pods, I looked out over all the Challenge entrances. There were more people about than when I’d first arrived, almost all accompanied only by a glowing mote, talking animatedly to it as they stared, ate, or walked into the shimmer of one of the Challenge entrances. Doors and hatches,

" Dio. Are…are our modals dissolved when we put them in Soup? "

[[Occasionally, if there is a space issue. If you had a dozen modals, and had not obtained expanded storage, you would need to prioritise Core Units and Core Alternates over suppression modals.]]

" Core Alternates? "

[[Modals with cosmetic differences, but internal congruence. Bio Core Units are not simply familiar shapes wrapped around containers of memory and lan. You’re each a very individual synaptic and chemical environment. Virtual Challenges give only a partial experience of body transfer, since your memories and reactions are still driven by your Core environment. When you transfer to a non-Core modal unit, your memories are contained within a Link—which often gives a sharper recall of recent events, and either a loss or sharpening of older memories. Some Bios feel the difference very distinctly, particularly if the chemical mix is unfamiliar.]]

" All those hormones ," I mused. " So if you had Type One Diabetes, you could just transfer to a modal that could produce insulin? "

[[Most Bios have balance issues addressed before they’re mature enough to transfer modals.]]

" There’s an age limit? "

[[For Type Threes, fifteen of your planetary years. Virtual experiences are permitted much earlier, but we’ve determined that for a strong development of lan, a firm sense of self must first be established.]]

" Type Three is Earth human ?" But before Dio could answer, I bounced off on a tangent. " Did you see the details of that Challenge I played? "