Scribble 27: Aurora Apocalypse

Humanity is pretty good at imagining how the world would end; "the world" being selfishly defined as the anthropocentric society they enjoy in the present day. We imagined great meteor, climate change, plagues of all kinds, grey goo and all its subcategories, catastrophic global warfare, total breakdown of known scientific principles, something messing up with memories and/or human thoughts, supernovae, hostile extraterrestrial entities, hostile sapient entities from Earth or otherwise...

Nihil sub sole novum

I'm sorry; that's reductionist. I painted broad strokes of categories to the point of near-meaningless—what does "total breakdown of known scientific principles" even mean? And don't let me get you started on "messing with human memories/thought."

And of course you can still make new things. At the very least you can always combine stuff. Take a great meteor sent by an extraterrestrial civilization that kickstarted a hostile xenoforming of Earth, and bam you have Tiberium. Or, it could be the virus from Guilty Crown. Or maybe it's the Borg. Maybe it would say "klaatu barada nikto" or maybe it would uplift a random primate population or maybe it would transform into great robot or maybe maybe maybe...

There are so many ways the world could end. There is only one Earth. She would have to pick one.

Maybe a trickster god would kill a god of light. Maybe a prophet would build an ark and the world would submerge for 40 days. Maybe a mist would descend upon Earth and kill only those with very specific set of faith. Maybe a monkey king would finally be freed of the mountain off his back and sought to fight the gods. Maybe a god would decide that humanity isn't worthy, or maybe an alien god would rise to dominance and decided that the universe should be filled with endless bloodshed.

Maybe a new sapient species would usurp us; or maybe they would transform us. Maybe we would transform to become them. Maybe an ancient mistake of long-dead alien would come to haunt us. Maybe Seerow would share his people's technology out of kindness. Maybe the children that we thought would stand beside us would betray us. Maybe we would detonate a weapon so powerful it scorched our atmosphere, or maybe it would send us to endless frozen hell. Maybe the Earth would become a tropical paradise! But with sentient plants that love human flesh as source of nutrition. Maybe the LHC would create a miniature black hole. Maybe we would forget everything. Maybe the very concept of language would be destroyed.

Or maybe we would be so lazy and lethargic that we willingly gave up breathing with a smile on our face.

:)

Scribble 26 Samsara Genesis (2)

Hello, Wanderers.

Well, it's been months since the last Scribble; I could neither confirm nor deny that I've been sitting on nigh-complete draft of this for a couple of months; but that's irrelevant. I finished part two! That's what important right? The isekai story nobody asked for but I wrote it anyway for some reason!

Who knows. I might even finish the next chapter before the pandemic blew over.

I don't think I could remember even if I want to.

Scribble 26 Samsara Genesis (2)

Scribble 25: Samsara Ignition (1)

Hello, Wanderers. I wish you all good day, merry belated Christmas, and happy New Year.

So, in this narrow period between Christmas and New Year, on the verge of a new decade, I’m doing an Isekai story. For some reason.

Okay, it’s been sitting on my draft for several months, so the timing is purely coincidental. The rest of my blog to some degree could be called “isekai” stories, but they aren’t technically one because one of the crucial aspect is missing: Reincarnation. A main character in an isekai story has two motivations, first is the one they had before their death, and one that they gains after their reincarnation in the new world.

Cross-universe information transfer is also a key element for an isekai story to qualify as one. Knowledge of original world has to shape the main character’s actions and—you know what? Let’s just get on with it.

I didn’t even have the time to let out a shriek.

Scribble 25 Samsara Ignition (1)

Scribble 24: Salvation and Darkness (2/2)

The flow of time resurged once more

Scribble 24: Salvation and Darkness(2/2)

I lazily groaned as the faint hum of machinery woke me up, my neck and arm grew numb from the awkward position I slept in. The screen before me displayed a half-finished design of a device I drew on my sleep-deprived delirium the preceding night. Andrew is nowhere to be seen, but if I have to guess he should be upstairs, sleeping within the warm confine of his couch.

That bastard.

Here I am slaving away to fix his mistakes, unpaid, I might add. And he just left me. Not even a blanket--scratch that. He did give me a blanket, it just fell to my feet. I picked it up and wrapped it around me.

I turned my sight back to the screen. A miniature muonium collider, designed to focus the particle stream from the collision into a single coordinate in space-time and forcibly harmonize them. Much of the technology included were black boxes, Covert blueprints I just incorporate with blind trust. They were so beyond me that I just stopped trying to understand the exact mechanism. I don't think Andrew even know how half of them work--an ignorance that led to the exact disaster we're in right now.

"What was I thinking?" I (gently) lowered my forehead to the desk. "Even if this thing works, it won't do anything. It's completely useless."

"Coffee?" Andrew's voice sent a jolt to my mind.

"For God's sake, Andrew. Must you scare me with your every steps?"

"It's not my fault you're so deep in your thought." Carrying two mugs, Andrew placed down one near the keyboard in front of me, while he sipped from the other. "Any new ideas? You worked on that blueprint for almost a full day, isn't it around time you tell me what it does?"

"I think I'm having short term memory loss." Deciding to partake in his generosity, I picked up the mug filled with dark liquid barely identifiable as coffee.

"You're shitting me."

"Why would I--" Andrew rushed to one of the tables, picking up a baton-shaped device with a row of glowing strip.

"Sit still." He proceeded to wave the device around my head, before sighing in apparent relief. "It's not the nanomachines. Not Lethe Spring, at the very least. Still, you worked on this for a full day, how don't you know what it does?"

"If you didn't realize, last night was the first time I slept in the last three days. My mind's on tatters. It's a miracle I didn't accidentally make an...atomic...bomb. Huh." I re-checked the components on the device. "Yeah, it's not an atomic bomb. That much I'm certain. But it's nothing we need either. I'll look back at my logs, try to reconstruct my train of thoughts. How are things on your side?"

"...Do you really want to know?"

"Well, yeah." An awkward silence filled the room, interrupted only by the hum of machinery. "...Did you expect me to fix this problem on my own?"

"Well I mean-- I thought--" His stammering only confirmed my worst suspicion.

"You're an idiot. A massive idiot. The universe broke down in an integer overflow when it tried to contain the idiocy within your brain. The sheer emptiness of your cranial cavity accelerated the proton decay supposedly only exist in the end of the universe. I am appalled that nervous signal managed to traverse the vast emptiness within your skull--"

"Stop it, I got your point, okay? It's not like I don't have any idea, it's just that.."

"It's just that?" I sighed. "Just... forget it. I'm done. I'm out."

"Wait! Wait. I have one idea. It's just...incredibly stupid."

"I could handle stupid. Pitch it."

Andrew pulled a diagram onto his terminal. "There's this special material manufactured on Jupiter orbit, called Strong-Distorted Proton Lattice. Crystallized hydrogen, basically. Now these crystals are room-temperature superconductor, but when it impacts normal matter in high speed, like if you accidentally drop it, two things could happen." Andrew swiped left on the screen.

"One, it could simply shatter into normal hydrogen gas, or two, it could transform the impacted material into further crystal. It's uncontrollable which could happen, quantum uncertainties and all, but if we tried a few times, it's almost guaranteed that it'll eventually do the latter."

"You know, that's not half bad. Except for the fact that the nanomachines are suspended in a ferrofluid. After the initial impact zone there's no guarantee--hmm, wait. That's not bad. Why haven't we tried it?"

"I thought you'd be less enthusiastic to introduce what's basically Tiberium to Earth environment?"

"Eh. I'm sure it'll be fine. It's a superconducting material, means it could be contained with magnetic field. It won't impact the containment chamber floor, I think we could at least count on that. It's a closer solution than whatever device I designed."

"...I'll go make some call."

---

"It's a railgun." It's morning the next day that an unmarked car, presumably from Covert, pulled over and handed several boxes to Andrew.

"Well normal gun would risk having the chamber converted when the hammer hits." Andrew assembled the overwhelmingly normal-looking railgun after we transported the boxes to his underground lair.

"That's not the point. You're loading tiberium into a railgun."

"It's for impact testing. Determining the precise condition for matter conversion. The shape is just for ergonomics." He loaded a round into the meter-long railgun, tipped with clear pink crystal. "Covert probably also developed it as a weapon, but that's not what we're using this for right now. Anyway, I'll just do some tests and install it on the containment system."

"What do you even need me for? You had the solution right on hand all this time." I picked up a black cartridge, presumably an energy pack for the railgun.

"Well, not all story have to end in Eureka moment. Sometimes it ends with a whimper. That, however, could end us all in a bang, so be careful not to short or drop it."

"What is this? Another exotic tech?"

"That's pretty normal hydrogen fuel cell, actually. It uses compressed hydrogen canister."

"..right, I don't want it to go kaboom, thank you very much." I paused, before a horrifying realization dawned upon me. "Andrew. What if the suspension liquid is shear thinning?!"

"Shear-- oh shit." The same horrified look appeared on Andrew's face "I never tested it. If it is shear thinning, the bullet would just pass through--huh." The horrified look suddenly disappeared from his face.

"What, why are you calm?!"

"The solution is simple, really. We could just suspend a metal target in the middle. The crystal bullet would slow down in the magnetic field anyway, in the off chance we did miss, it would float slowly to the bottom, losing all the kinetic energy on its descent. The gun is very precise, I assure you."

Andrew used his micro-fabricator to make a ball of copper-iron alloy, and dropped it into the containment chamber. With a few adjustment, it floated within the sphere of liquid containing Lethe Spring--which immediately started "consuming" the ball.

"You may fire when ready." Andrew smirked, but disappointment swept on his face when I shown him confusion. "Nevermind."

With a press of a button, the gun fired. A bubble of hydrogen gas rose within the containment chamber.

"Well, as you said, 50/50 chance. Let's fire it again."

Another rather disappointing bubble of helium popped from the ferrofluid sphere.

"Again, I guess."

The five-bullet clip emptied, all disappeared into bubbles of hydrogen.

"...do you still have more?"

"We still have two clips, don't worry."

"Is it really a 50/50 chance?"

"It's not like we've tried to crystallize a glob of nanomachines before. Let me up the power a bit." Andrew reloaded the gun, as well as replacing the power cartridge with visibly larger one. "Clear."

I pressed the button this time, and the crystalline bullet hit the metal ball with loud and clear sound.

"It's working! The ball is crystallizing!"

"Yes!" We laughed as we watched the entire sphere of green liquid crystallized into a massive pink orb.

And it suspended right there, a bit lower than it was, kept afloat by the eddy current.

---

"Cheers!" Cheap wine spilled from our glasses. "That's one end of the world averted."

It was hardly noon, but we're drunk--both in relief after averting potential global crisis, and from the wine.

"By the way, did you remember what that design for yet?"

"Not really. I'm not even halfway through the schematics yet." That was a lie--I'm way past halfway through the schematics, but he doesn't really have to know, now that the problem it's designed to solve was already nonexistent.

I suspected my original plan was to force the quantum network between the nanomachines to disperse--the space-time synchronizing part was more important than the muonium collider, as it would allow me to alter the four fundamental forces themselves to a certain extent.

"Huh. That's not like you. I'd think you'll build it anyway, just in case."

I did.

"There's no point anymore, right? The problem is solved already."

"Maybe you really did change more than I expected." Andrew poured another glass, and downed it in one go. "Well, no point in lamenting the past. Say, Ice, what do you think about joining Covert?"

"Why would I even think about that? ...wait."

"Yeah, you understand, don't you?" He pulled out a bizarre device, with both a revolver cylinder and a magazine, and aimed it at my face. "My mission wasn't to create a species-wide enlightenment nanomachine. Well, wasn't only. If we needed to eliminate Lethe Spring we could just chuck it at the sun. My primary mission was to recruit you."

"A railgun in pistol form. Neat. So they did weaponize it."

"Piezoelectric magazine, hydrogen crystal ammo. Come on, Ice. I have to either bring you to our side or kill you, and I really don't want to do the latter."

"Kill me? Andrew, you can't be seriously thinking that you could--"

"You're not the only one who have changed, Ice. What, you seriously thought I still haven't moved on from my highschool crush? It's been a decade, Ice."

I laughed, and a shade of confusion filled his face. "I don't mean mentally, you dolt." I raised my right hand at him. His fingers tensed. "I asked if you seriously thought you could physically harm me." And I snapped my fingers.

The sound echoes through the room, the change simple yet very noticeable: all six bullet on his rail-hand-gun-thing evaporated into hydrogen gas.

"...What the hell did you do?!"

"Magic." I grinned, and then sighed when the panic and confusion in his face only intensified. "Really? You don't remember? Chaos magic? Three basic combat spell?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about." He discarded the frankengun and pulled out a very normal, perfectly functional Glock smart handgun. I raised my hand at him.

"Shield." The space-time itself strained as intense gravity formed three shield in front of me, distorting all paths through space. Andrew fired a couple bullets, but none of them reached their destination, instead embedding themselves in the walls and ceiling.

"Blast." Following my spoken word, everything became awash with white light.

When my eyes finally adjusted back to the daylight, I saw Andrew slumped at the other side of the room, out of breath, blinded, deafened, and shivering.

"---" he tried to say something, but the blast also affected my hearing. I shook my head.

"Can't hear you."

"---!" I gave up trying to hear him, and tried to read his lips instead.

"What the hell was that?!"

I pulled out my phone, and opened one of the oldest text file within, before turning it screen at him.

"Three basic combat spell"
"-Shield, prevent launched attacks from reaching"
"-Disarmament, prevent attacks from being launched"
"-Hex, counter offensive"

"That is a Hex--a thunder blast. The plasma discharge wasn't caused by extreme voltage, but by the sudden drop in air resistance. It's non-lethal, well, mostly." I inhaled and popped my ears. "To me." A metallic Orb bolted from the basement, levitating just over my left shoulder.

"Is that...Is that the device? How..."

"Cute, isn't it? Output-wise it's nothing compared to the Photosphere, but with some tricks it could even create shield-shaped distortion in space-time. I'll be honest, there's something seriously wrong with how gravity works..." I trailed on for some time as Andrew recovered, his eyes wary of my every movement.

"Ice."

"What?"

He raised his gun again, and a shield unfurled in front of me.

"Covert will hunt you. They don't take kindly to thieves."

"I reckon they won't like you leaking tech to get me on your side either." He simply laughed.

"I'm disposable anyway. Without you I'm useless, and without me you're fugitive. We have to be together, Ice. The two of us must be on the same side, on Covert's side, to truly move humanity forward. To forge new future."

"You're indoctrinated, Andrew. Can you hear yourself? That's some cultist bullshit you're spewing there." I dismissed my shield, and placed two fingers from my right hand on the side of his head, securing his gun with my left. "You almost convinced me to join Covert on my own, and make them discard you. I was this close."

"They won't take you in, not after what you did to me, and what I did for them."

"What, you think making some nanomachines amounted to anything for them? And failing to control them afterwards, no less. You're a failed subject, Andrew. Less than trash to them. You were one of them, you'd know. The Photosphere weren't built through friendship and love, it's built with blood and tears of those who failed."

"I just have to kill you, then." His left hand darted inside his lab coat, and in single fluid motion launched a knife at my torso. I staggered back, and again his gun was pointed at my face. Learning from his mistake, he immediately fired two bullet at me before I could cast a shield. "That way I could redeem myself."

There's no surviving that. Blood and brain matter scattered on the ground.

"...oh shit, I failed my mission, I killed her, wait, no, they would understand. She is dangerous. They will forgive me. They know the truth. Shit. I killed her. I killed her. I killed her..."

---

Oh wow. He actually killed me.

Time slowed down to a crawl when the bullet from his gun touched the bridge of my nose. It's not some metaphor--it's a dead man's switch on the Orb designed to activate when all possible timeline lead to my death.

I honestly never thought he would get this far. For once, he's a step ahead from me.

All possible timeline lead to my death. There's no escape. The Orb could only accelerate my consciousness--even the signal delay between my nerves and my muscles worked against me.

If I have only one more day, no, six more hours. The secret of time travel and resurrection... If only...

I knew even I won't be able to do that. It was merely my delusion, blinded by the imminence of my death.

The bullet pierced through the bone in my nose. I'm running out of time.

If I could send one last command to the Orb, just one--

My time is out. Everything went black.

---

That instant extended to infinity.

But even that ended.

Time, time is a fickle thing. There's nothing to be rewound when a life ended, no choice to repick, no save files to reload. Yet when an explosion of infinite unknowable cosmic variable toppled the balance of entire universes, an immeasurable amount of possibilities expanded from a single point: another big bang, ripping through existing timelines.

It only has to happen in one timeline. The Orb needs only to be fully activated once within the multiverse.

Let's review our options.

---

To be continued?

Scribble 23: Memory Extinction Scenario

Good day, Wanderers.

It's the first Scribble of the year, yaaay. Also likely to be the only one--wait, hold off on the pitchfork, I'm splitting this into a couple parts, so there would be at least another one this year. I also had several draft that I would likely finish within the year. Hopefully.

But that's not why you're here, was it?

Scribble 23: Memory Extinction Scenario (1/2)

It's been a long time since I got an audio-only phone call on my private handheld. To begin with, hardly anyone have my phone contact anymore. The only ones that would have my number was my highschool friends, and even they would prefer a video call over audio-only. The days of conventional audio calls are numbered.

The fact that I got an audio-only call isn't really surprising though. Or at least, not really the most surprising part. These kind of things happen from time to time. No, the more pressing matter is the nostalgic sequence of numbers denoting the device that the call originated from, twelve digits of number I didn't even realize still stored within my phone contact book.

"Hello." I swiped on the green icon, transferring the call to my bone-conduction headset.

"Hey! Thank God I got the right number. Listen, I need you to take a look on something--"

"Andrew? Oh my God, it's really you, where have you been all this time? It's been a decade since I last heard of you, and now you sprang up a 'you need to look at this' cliche on me?"

"Yeah, I want a tearful reunion too, but this is really important. It would need to wait. Just come here."

"Why can't you just tell me? Video call me?"

"I can't trust anyone, other than you. You know me. Please, I really need you."

"Where are you anyway? Listen, Andrew, I can't just--"

"For the old times, Ice? I promise you, this is the first and the last I'd ever ask the impossible from you. Just this one time."

"You can't expect me to prioritize you after all this time. It's been a decade, Andrew, I can't revolve around you anymore. I can't afford to."

"When can we meet? An hour, tops, I won't take any more than that. Please. This is really important. You know I mean it. You know I really do need you."

I looked over at my calendar app, letting out a sigh. "Next Sunday. Is that cool with you?"

"Is that on the seventh or the fourteenth? Sorry, been working on calendar-free job."

"That's the sixth. I have a lot of questions, you better have a lot of answers."

"That...I'll try. Thanks"

A click ended the call, and silence once again filled my room.

---

"Pretty impressive house for a ghost." I stepped into Andrew's house, a single floor basic suite on the edge of the city.

"It's inconspicuous. In an uncaring neighborhood. No better place to keep a secret. Come." He led me to a trapdoor behind a carpet, hiding a set of stairs.

"Can't imagine it's within the lease contract."

"Well it's signed by someone who technically doesn't exist anyway. I doubt they cared."

"What's down there anyway? A dungeon? A body incinerator? Dissection chamber? I swear if you put even a finger on me..."

"No, of course not. If only it's that simple. It would be easier to convince you if it's just that kind of things."

"So what did you do in there, Andrew?" Ignoring me, he stepped into the stairs. "You've been gone for years, and you suddenly reappear, and this...I don't understand. What do you want from me? Where have you been? Why did you disappear?"

"The answer is down here, Ice. Come on, I'll show you." Only after his head disappeared under the trapdoor that I walked into it.

The underground space was larger that the house above it. It might be even larger than two of these buildings combined. And in the middle of the room, amidst strewn vials and terminals and paper, a sphere of clear green liquid is suspended in a cylindrical containment chamber, illuminated from below. The sphere was at least a meter in diameter, while the containment is at least two meter in diameter and spanning from the floor to the roof, with no visible method of suspending the liquid sphere.

"It's a ferrofluid, suspended with magnetic field. But I won't be calling you if that's all it is."

"You won't be calling me if you don't intend on telling me either."

"It's...a weapon, Ice. A nanomachine swarm, I called it Lethe Spring. It's completely inert for now, and the containment is airtight. But when it's activated, it's programmed to transform human central nervous structure. It would break neurology as we know it, and humanity would be changed forever."

"And? Why do you have this kind of weapon? Why would you show it to me, of all people?"

"You're the only one that would be able to understand--"

"Not if you don't start telling me what to understand! Cut the cloak and daggers, Andrew. This nanomachine would destroy humanity. Why do you have it? Why show me this?"

"Because I made it, Ice. I developed, well, tried to develop a machine to alter and reprogram the brain to become something...more." Andrew turned his back to me, staring at a table filled with colorfully stained vials. "Covert showed me technology and, scriptures beyond anything human could ever imagine, and they asked me to turn it from a myth to functional devices."

"But you're not enough."

"I made a couple step, but yes, I'm not enough. I don't think anyone would be enough. And now I can't stop it."

"Wait, what do you mean you can't stop it? You made it, right?"

"I miscalculated. I knew the individual nanomachine won't be enough to do the, enlightenment, process so I programmed them to work in paralel. Every dose would have to be isolated and separately activated, preventing interference. Each clump would be a nanomachine swarm acting as both a brain and a body, something called parallel node nano-neural network. But the program doesn't evolve as I expected. Or rather, I didn't expect it to evolve at all."

"It...evolved to activate in unison. Instead of clusters becoming individual entities, separate from the rest, they refused to disconnect from each others. They become a true swarm intelligence."

I'm surprised that I could follow his words, perhaps the hundreds of hours on sci-fi games weren't totally for naught. "It's something right out of Halo, or Starcraft. You created...a new life form."

"Each of them are part of the whole, a complete mega network of nanomachines. I could no longer divide them into separate clumps and networks. And they're still overwriting their system, continuously evolving beyond their protocol even now." He faced me once again. "Which is why I need you, Ice. You're the Batman to my Joker, the Tony Stark to my Mandarin, the Reed Richard to my von Doom. You're smarter than me, better than me, and the only one that could stop me. The only one that I could trust to even try."

"I'm...this isn't a highschool decathlon, Andrew. We're not competing for some trophy anymore, it's the fate of two intelligent lifeforms. I...I can't. I can't decide their life, our life just like that!"

"You're the only one that could, Ice. You must understand. I believed in you--"

"Really? Do you? Because I don't believe in you, Andrew. God. It's been an entire decade!" I stepped onto the platform around the containment system. "We thought you're dead. None of us heard from you the entire time."

"Working for Covert is always double time, even for those not researching humanity's extinction."

"That's not the point. I, we eventually moved on." A ripple moved across the glob of green liquid. "I have a life beyond you, Andrew. Beyond our competition of tricks and trinkets."

"I...I haven't. None in Covert ever did move on. That's why we could do the impossible, because of our obsession... I know it doesn't make any sense, but then again not a lot of emotion does. Maybe you're right. You can't do this, and it's unfair that I forced this responsibility, my responsibility to you. Maybe I'm just running away..."

Silence enveloped us.

"How much time?"

"Until what?"

"Until the worst case scenario. Until the end of humanity as we know it."

"I...don't know. The nanomachines are forcing their way through the safeties as we speak. We have, three weeks, tops."

"I... I don't know how I should feel, Andrew. Meeting you again doesn't feel real. But...if this is the last few weeks of humanity as we know it..."

"But this time we know what would happen and when it would happen. Our end isn't set in stone yet. I thought you..."

"You remember a very different me. And I found a very different you. This isn't science fair demonstration, Andrew. This is the intro to a sci-fi game. This is a glimpse of apocalypse, this is a goddamn extinction-level event--if not of our species, it's an end of our sapience."

A silence permeated the room, both of us suddenly found the metal-tiled floor to be very interesting, even more than the suspended nano weapon.

I sighed. "Do you smoke?"

"Yes, but not here, please. Expensive stuff."

---

We climbed the stairs back to the 'normal' part of the house, mostly untouched from I suspect the time he came to the house. Andrew opened the windows, before offering me a pack of cigarette and a lighter.

"Never thought I'd ever see you smoke, Ice."

"Well, perhaps I'm entitled for a drastic change or two after a decade."

"Look, I'm sorry. I can't exactly tell everyone that I work for Covert, clue's in the name. I could barely finish the project up to spec, as you could see. All of this took too much of my time."

"You could at least told me, Andrew. You told me that you could trust me. We could've done this together, I would've--" the unlit cigar stared at me. Andrew stared at me. "I would've followed you to the end of the world. Instead, you conveniently forgot about me, and suddenly remembered me when you needed me."

I clicked my tongue, before inserting the cigar between my lips. I sucked it greedily as I burned its tip, the poisonous smoke filled my lungs.

"The nanomachines. They're locked out, encrypted activation codes. Why can't it break out yet?"

"It's Covert encryption. Tough to crack if you're either a man or a machine, but if you have both it suddenly becomes super intuitive. Still needs some time to crack tho."

"So if, hypothetically, the nanomachines are injected to a human right now, what happens then?"

"It'll integrate with the brain. It would evolve to interface with it physically, but the safety protocol would prevent it from changing the brain. It's one-way communication, the nanomachines would only be able to read the neuron activity, not write."

"It would still gain the ability to crack the encryption."

"Hypothetically, yes."

I took a drag through the cigarette, its ember tip glowing intermittently.

"Hit me with it."

"Uh, what? I don't think I heard you--"

"Put the nanomachines in me. The world is ending anyway, what difference would it make if it's today or next week?"

"Ice, right now we still have a chance to try everything to stop the nanomachines. The end of the world is still a probability, not inevitability. Injecting the nanomachines into you would ensure the end of the world."

"And what if I want it to end, Andrew? What if I don't care about this world anymore?"

"I called you to stop the end of the world, not initiate it." Andrew stepped away from the table where I'd been sitting, looking out from the window. "You're right. You're not Ice that I remember anymore. Maybe she's never been there to begin with."

"In my defense, saving a world is quite an escalation from academic decathlon. Or a 9-5 deskjob." The cigarette barely went through halfway of its length, but I crushed it on the ashtray. "Hell. Fuck it. Show me your data and design. Between this and sitting around watching Evangelion, this gotta be the better option."

---

"...You know, these designs would be a major breakthrough in full-size quantum computing, and you fit it in nanometer scale. I'm honestly impressed."

"Most of it was Covert, honestly." With a simple swipe, Andrew passed fifteen nano-manufacturing and cluster programming manuals to my screen. "They have this facility on Ganymede, called "Photosphere". Massive accelerator rings, photon trap, beam shaping. All the cool stuff."

"Ganymede like, Jupiter's moon? You've been in space?!"

"Just once, yes. A simple resupply mission, and registration to the database. There's no real uplink facility on Earth, all terminals are read-only. These should be the last." Another stack of documents piled on the edge of my screen.

"You know, Andrew, I might be good at this kind of things, but I'm not a miracle worker. There's no way we're finding the way out in a couple weeks."

"No harm in trying, if only for my peace of mind."

"Right." I sighed. "Let's get on with it."

To be Continued.

Writing Prompt Response: A Demigod's Awakening

Hello, Wanderers.

I know neither of us care about excuses anymore. We're long past that, after only a post last year, which itself almost a year after the previous post. So I won't make any.

I don't even know if there are actual Wanderers out there I'm speaking to. There might only be webcrawlers and indexers reading through pages that I wrote, leaving me only with the illusion that there are human eyes beyond the screen. Is it too late to even care?

I really shouldn't be thinking about it. There are better things to care about.

[WP] You’ve just turned 18 years old and discover you have superpowers. One of your parents admits he/she is a fallen god/goddess punished for a major disagreement with fellow gods. You and your other parent were lied to your entire lives and you’re now speechless. by WolfeS93

I like to think that I'm an avid sci-fi genre reader, having read quite a few series of book more than my peers at school. Then again, most of my classmates don't read books outside the ones assigned by the teachers, the very act of reading a chore for them. I bask in my feeling of superiority, knowing that my peers won't be able to understand what 4th dimension looks like, or what a degenerate matter is, or what retrocausality means.

In reality, I'm just a massive nerd. And I'm wearing it like a badge, as I opened a copy of "Time Riders" in the middle of Math class. It was self-study anyway, the teachers were busy preparing for the Seniors' final exams, so I thought me reading is at least more productive than the other kids gossiping about make ups and sports. I still haven't decided if that was the wisest decision I could've done.

No amount of sci-fi book pages describing how 4th dimension looks like would ever prepare you to the real thing. Words won't be enough to describe the sensation when you saw every single surface, without or within everything, as they swim through both time and space. I screamed as I watched, all at once, the neurons firing and eyeballs turning and muscles contracting all around me. I don't remember vomiting--but I do remember blacking out.

---

When I woke up, a piece of cloth was covering my eyes, tied tight behind my head. The familiar feelings of my bed tells me that I'm back home, the faint chatter with my parents' voice confirmed my suspicion.

"Why have you never told me this? What else haven't you told me? What else is a lie? Was your love a lie?"

"Sweetheart, I did all of this to protect you. Not a single moment of my life spent without agony of keeping this secret from you, but I assure you, it is necessary--"

"Why should I trust you now? After lying to me all this time? You lied on our marriage! You swore an oath to a God you don't even believe!"

"I need you to listen to me. Yes, I lied to you. I lied on that altar. But for the sake of the child--"

"The child, yes. The Allfather would want him to be made an Einherjar." A third foreign voice entered the conversation, a voice without words yet filled with meanings, as if it's projecting images of letters through sound. "He must be killed immediately."

"You're NOT taking him. I swear to my bow and shield that as long as I walk this realm, no forces of Hel or Odin shall claim his soul."

I opened one of my eyes, alternating right and left. The sight of the cloth in 4D space was considerably less nauseating than the classroom full of people, but it still took me some moments to get used to it. A few minutes longer than I would admit, I learned to 'lock' my sight to a piece of 3D 'frame', allowing me to function normally to some extent.

I stood up and prepared myself, before opening the door and walking to the dining room.

"Hi mom, dad." I sat down on a chair, across from my parents. There's no sign for the owner of the third voice, though I honestly won't be surprised if they're just invisible.

"Listen, honey," my mother started to speak, but my father stopped her. Unspoken words are exchanged through their eyes, I'll handle this.

"How much could you see, sweetheart?"

"In three dimension? Not much different than normal, really. In four dimension, however, I think I could see two or three seconds forward and back. Though, the cloth helps a lot, I could barely see the fracture now."

"It's a very special cloth, indeed. Made with fibers collected from my homeland. Now, I know you have a lot of question--"

"You bet I do. Who are you, dad? Why am I suddenly seeing in 4D? How am I supposed to attend school now? Am I being hunted?"

"Your father is someone from a very, peculiar, ancestry. A very noble, and very powerful, ancestry that some of other clans in the older generations fear yet venerate enough to call gods.Though we mostly just call ourselves Vanirs." My dad stood up, turning his back on me.

"I was one of the leaders of the Vanirs. I even sat on their throne, as a king, though the title was more of a curse." He walked over to me, reaching behind me head. I closed my eyes. "Look at me now. Fallen. Humiliated. A foreign enemy sat on my throne, and I hid on faraway land, trembling on fear of even mentioning my own name."

I kept my eyes shut as he removed my blindfold. "It doesn't matter now. Odin saw us, and he heard my mention of his name. I killed one of his messenger, and soon his Valkyries would flock into this very land. Look at me, my son. Open your eyes."

Preparing for the impending nausea, I opened my eyes, only to find my dad clad in golden robes and crown--but otherwise normal in three dimension. My mother was as awestruck as I am at my dad's regal appearance, her mouth shamelessly open.

"I am Ullr, son of Sif. Exiled king of the nine realms, the rightful master of the all-seeing throne of Hlidskjalf." His visage stayed firm in the middle of chaotic four dimensional rendition of reality my brain still can't fully process. A golden quiver strapped on his waist, while a bow was slung over his right shoulder. "I once ruled the nine realms from atop the world tree, and to the silver abode I shall return, ever watchful and vigilant. Fear not, my son. The curses of Hlidskjalf was granted to you, but even before a king I was a hunter. We are hunters."

A dagger, glowing brighter than any gold or silver ever would, appeared in his hands. He knelt in front of me, offering the daggers.

"It's perhaps insolent of me, to ask this from you after lying all this time. After hiding who I am, after hiding who you are, and I would fully understand if I must return to my crusade on my own. But if you have anything beyond contempt, beyond disgust for this liar of a father, I implore you, to join my fight. To hunt those who desecrated your ancestors' palace. To reclaim what was rightfully mine."

I looked at his eyes, and then at my mom's.

"Does that mean I have to drop out of high school?"

"Not a chance."