Ivan Kal - Sanctuary

Seo-yun entered the lab and sat at her holodesk, bringing up the data from the earlier scans.

“Have you found something in the earlier scans?” Seo-yun asked Luna.

“Not in the thousand times I have read through them.” Luna answered.

“I’m sorry, I’m just excited.”

“I know, I can monitor your vitals.”

“Are you sure that there isn’t anything in the data that jumped out at you?” Seo-yun asked.

She could hear Luna sigh. “Seo-yun, you have been in charge of our creation, you should now that the Ai’s that you created have been ‘growing up’ with you, we can’t know more than you do, we can only calculate faster, or process more data. When I see that data, I see the same things a human would.”

“I’m sorry, it’s just frustrating, I know that there is supposed to be something there, and yet we can’t find it.” Seo-yun apologized.

She closed the files pertaining to the translanes, and opened her queue, there was still a lot of work to be done.

“Anything out of the ordinary?” Seo-yun asked, they had arrived at the coordinates where the Union ship entered the system, and had been scanning for the past hour. First with the computers they built, but when that failed to produce anything, they hooked up the Union computer and were now analyzing the data.

“Not yet, I’m still getting used to the Union programing structure.” Luna said over the ship speakers. She was connected to the ship’s computers via Seo-yun’s implant. They were on the bridge, with Seo-yun’s assistant Mia, three more scientists and the Ship Master and his crew.

“Alright then.” Seo-yun said. She remained silent while Luna worked. She could analyze the data much faster than a human could.

“I found something.” Luna said 15 minutes later. “It was under a secondary protocol, so I didn’t see it immediately. It is detecting some particles, untranslatable to our language, or at least we don’t have a translation for that word.”

“Great!” Seo-yun said excitedly. “Alright people, I want a detailed analysis of the data. Get to work.” She said. Finally, Seo-yun thought, Another Union puzzle we solved.

Sanctuary orbit – Olympia station

Elias Bakas, head of the Olympus Army Corp, sat in his office. He was waiting for Seo-yun. The insight had arrived at the station just a few minutes earlier. She was on her way to Olympus city, but Elias had insisted that she meets with him before going down to the planet. He needed to talk with her about Tomas, they needed to do something about him. He had shut himself in his office, and his people were already starting to comment on the fact that no one has seen him in public in a while.

A few minutes later Seo-yun entered his office, he stood and walked up to her greeting her by kissing her cheek.

“You really need to visit me more often Seo-yun, I barely see you once every few months. And you were just going to pass without saying hello.” Elias said with a soft smile.

Seo-yun grimaced. “I’m sorry Elias, there is just too much work to be done.”

“That’s okay, I understand. I am busy as well, but that doesn’t mean that I forget my friends. A call from time to time won’t interrupt you too much.” Elias said, his smile growing. He guided Seo-yun to a couch and took a seat across.

“I’ll try.” She said.

“Do you want something to drink?”

“No thank you Elias.”

“Alright then, I hear that you are on a verge of another great discovery, even faster space travel?” Elias asked.

“Yes, well we are on the right path. But there is still a lot of work to be done. We have gathered all the data, now we need to make sense of it.”

“I know you will.” Elias said, and then grew silent and looked at Seo-yun, finally his expression grew serious and he spoke. “Well, the reason I asked you here, was to ask you about Tomas.”

“What about Tomas.” Seo-yun said, her expression guarded.

“You know that he had not been the same since we came here. Since the Cloud station.” Elias said.

“He was hit hard with what happened, we all were.” Seo-yun said.

“We were, but we moved on. He is stuck back there. He rarely goes home, he is closing himself off. I barely managed to convince him to meet me for lunch at his home 10 days ago. He surrounds himself with reports in his office, and he rarely leaves it.”

“I know, but what do you want me to do? I can’t order him out.”

Elias’s expression softened. “Seo-yun, we have known each other for a long time. You are one of my closest friends. You know, you must know.” Elias said, looking at her eyes.

Seo-yun averted her eyes, and remained silent.

“I tried to snap him out of it, but he won’t listen to me. He will listen to you.”

“I don’t know. He never did anything, in all these years.” Seo-yun said uncomfortably.

Elias laughed. “He is a man, we are all stupid like that.”

A corner of Seo-yun’s mouth lifted into a crooked smile. “That you are.” She said.

She looked at Elias for a moment before nodding. “Alright I’ll go see him.”

“So you are finally going to ‘talk’ to Tomas?” Luna said. Seo-yun was in a transport, going back to her home from Olympia.

“What do you mean finally?” Seo-yun said.

“C’mon, I might not be human, but I am not stupid.” Luna said.

“I hope not, if you were, then we would have failed, and I would’ve had to scrap you.” Seo-yun said.

“Funny.” Luna said sarcastically. “But I’m glad that you finally decided to take initiative.”

Seo-yun felt lighter than she had in years. Just the decision to talk to Tomas had already made her feel better. “So am I.”

She started reading the reports while she waited to arrive home. There were still things that needed to be done.

There were a few reports regarding the antimatter plants, they have been able to boost production by 2%. And requests from Fleet for help in building their new ships. They had already started building a shipyard in the orbit of Thanatos. They had brought the station that was in orbit of Gem, the one they used for building mining equipment and ships, and used it as a core for the new Fleet station and shipyard, as they didn’t have the need to expand their mining fleet in the close future. They were already well into construction, with a part of the shipyard already operational. They needed some of Seo-yun’s people to oversee all the tech that they wanted to put into the ships. Seo-yun sent an inquiry to her people for volunteers to go to the station. As she scrolled down, she came upon a report regarding a strange crystal formation on the southern continent, she saw a few pictures of the crystals and was struck with an idea.

She opened a channel via her implant to the transport pilot.

“Can you get me to Tomas Klein’s offices?”

“Of course ma’am.” The pilot said.

Seo-yun relaxed into her seat, and tried to think about the best way to tackle Tomas.

Olympus city

The morning started as it usually did for Tomas, he was reviewing the requests and reading various reports, until about midday when Seo-yun interrupted him. She entered his office without being announced, she was one of very few people that could do that. She glanced through the open door to the room adjacent to his office, she could see his unmade bed there.

“When was the last time you went home?” She asked.