01: Sparks

Genesis Industries, Drone Repair Bay 3, Talich

The industrial garage hummed with the sound of automated production, the clanking of gears and the machinery of war. Small rings of metal on metal accompanied by the buzz of welds and sparks of electricity marked where human mechanics intermixed with the machines, repairing the damage caused by constant wear or faulty materials.

A bright shock of pink hair stood out through the bustle of the drone repair bay as Tygris walked in, and he redirected his route over to where she was working on what looked like a piston that had partially fused together from frictional heat. "Lucca!" he called, taking care not to drop any of the stack of folders he was carrying as he made his way over to her.

Lucca looked up and smiled. "Tygris, welcome!" she said, spinning on her workbench to face him. "What brings you all the way down here?" She extended her hand, then quickly realized that the architect's hands were full. Clearing out some space on her workbench, she took the folders from him before shaking his now free hand.

Tygris glanced at the piston Lucca was repairing. "I'll save you time by getting to the point. These folders contain my latest research on the Rifts and how they work. I've finally finished it," Tygris beamed, "and I thought you'd like to hear about it."

"Well yes, but I'm a little busy--"

"Thousands of datapoints from rifts all over Talich and the Untamed World, finally analyzed now that the Flame Dawn has slowed its assault. I think I've cracked the code, Lucca. At the very least, I've developed a classification system." Not bothering to sit down, Tygris grabbed a folder from the stack and began to excitedly flip through the pages before pulling out a chart and showing it to Lucca.

Sighing, Lucca turned back to her work and steeled herself for a lecture that, while sure to be interesting, would no doubt have more to do with scientific theory than any practical applications. "Sure," she mumbled as she ran her fingertips along the damaged machine in front of her, "what have you got?"

"Well, we can start by classifying rifts into three types and two size classes, discounting anomalies. The size of a rift seems to dictate its longevity--the larger it is, the more likely it is to be stable for longer."

"That makes sense," Lucca mumbled, not fully paying attention. She reached for one of her tools and began to extricate a damaged part from the piston. Too much strain, too little maintenance, she thought to herself.

"The larger class of rifts range from six to twenty meters tall, at least that we've observed so far, although we have some data of objects larger than twenty meters passing through rifts so it's theoretically possible that they can get bigger--"

"Or that the larger entities find a way to fit through smaller rifts, like bending over."

Tygris' voice betrayed a hint of annoyance at Lucca's interruption. "Naturally there are multiple possible explanations, but my point is that there isn't a theoretical maximum size for the larger class of stable rift. You are, of course, familiar with these as they're the main class of rift used for travel between worlds." Lucca nodded as Tygris continued to pace back and forth, periodically going through different folders for various charts to showcase the data he was using. She might have felt rude for not paying attention, but Tygris was so caught up in explaining his theory he wasn't paying attention to her either. It wasn't the first time the two of them had talked past each other.

"The smaller rifts, micro-rifts, range between one and five or so meters in height--six meters appears to be the stability threshold. All rifts of course have a dangerous plasma-like membrane around their edges that we've managed to develop shielding technology to contain and stabilize, but these micro-rifts are more damaging and dangerous than the larger, more stable variety. Often enough, they collapse before we can even assemble the shielding arrays."

"Nice work on those, by the way," Lucca commented as she began to install replacement parts into the piston. "Without that shielding we never could have risked traveling through the rifts."

"Now, the data for these micro-rifts is frustratingly thin. We have lots of reported or rumored sightings but very little direct observation due to how short-lived they are, and I hypothesize that they're actually far more common than the larger rifts even though we have less concrete data. Even with the Omnimind stepping in, drone reporting still hasn't made up for the human shortcomings in data collection."

"You're human too, Tygris," Lucca pointed out. "You said yourself that these micro-rifts collapse too quickly for us to properly study. That's not human error, that's a challenge inherent to the observed phenomena." She looked up to see Tygris glaring at her in annoyance. "You said those were the two size classes, but that there were also three types of rifts, right?"

"Right," Tygris nodded, grabbing another folder. "We've observed three different colors of rifts, and the color seems to indicate the kind of travel possible through the rifts. Blue rifts are the most common, the spacial rifts linking two locations in the same world together. They've been used for fast transport across distances, or for flanking and retreat in battle. I'm sure you understand why the military applications of these rifts make them the most interesting to us at this time."

Lucca nodded. "If we could control or create blue rifts, it would give us an unparalleled tactical advantage in battle and strategic advantage in a campaign."

"Precisely. Next, we have the more problematic ones." Tygris pulled out a picture of a large yellow rift showing a jungle on the other side. "This was the rift the Talich Expeditionary Force took to the Untamed World. These yellow dimensional rifts connect different worlds together in the multiverse. The implications of these different worlds are staggering, Lucca."

"Yellow rifts to travel between worlds and blue rifts to travel within them," Lucca commented, wiping her hands on her pants as she finished replacing another part. "I'm familiar with both of those, but you said there was a third type?"

"Those elusive red rifts," Tygris explained. "They don't seem to last very long at all. We've heard a few rumored sightings but have only had one fully confirmed case, and even that one was too short-lived to properly study. But if the blue and yellow rifts give off different colors of energy reflecting their different capabilities, it only stands to reason that the red rifts have a third means of transportation. We just don't know what that is yet."

 "Makes sense," Lucca said, glancing at the data Tygris was showing to her. "More rumor than fact on those."

"For now," Tygris replied, steel in his voice. "I’ve heard the biggest rumor is time travel. Regardless of how possible that even is, I'm going to find out how they work. All of the reports we've seen on them so far indicate that they're short-lived, burning out in a matter of hours, and they haven't been observed at anything larger than two and a half meters tall, making them small even for micro-rifts."

"So you've got your classification system," Lucca said. "As best as the data supports right now, anyway. Have you learned any applications?"

"Identification, study, and classification are the first steps of science, Lucca," Tygris commented, stung. "The applications will be coming soon, believe me. Right now I've been working on simulations of artificially closing rifts."

"We can do that?"

Tygris grimaced. "Theoretically, yes, but it requires so much energy that it just isn't practicable. The Talich-Untamed World rift used by the expeditionary force is the most studied and documented rift we know of. I used that information to run a simulation of how much energy it would take to force it closed, and it took hours of Neon's entire electrical output to potentially collapse it."

Lucca whistled. "That's a lot of power."

"Some of the other rifts we've documented would take less, of course." Tygris grabbed another folder and pulled out a series of graphs. "I've been charting the relationship between size class, color, and energy requirements and the data suggests a few correlations."

Lucca looked at the charts. "The more stable a rift is, the more energy it takes to close."

"Exactly, and you know that rifts become more stable as they get larger, requiring exponentially more energy to shut down."

"So right now we just don't have the capacity to feasibly shut down these rifts," Lucca said.

"Unfortunately, no," Tygris admitted. "I've been trying to identify a more efficient method than merely overloading the rift energies and forcing a collapse, but haven't had any breakthroughs yet."

They glanced at each other for a moment, the sounds of the repair bay filling the silence. Finally, Lucca spoke up. "You said something earlier, about the implications of the dimensional rifts?"

"Right, of course!" Tygris dropped the folder he was holding and grabbed the remaining ones from the workbench, taking a seat next to Lucca and excitedly flipping through the folders to find the one that he wanted. "See, there's something about the dimensional rifts that no one had realized or given much thought to until I started to analyze all of the data. They all link up to the Untamed World." He gestured at a series of maps of multiple worlds. "See? Here we have links between the Untamed World and Talich, but here and here are portals to Reisch and Avarrach. But no portals between Talich and Reisch, Talich and Avarrach, or reported portals between Avarrach and Reisch. And when you look at the maps..."

"The worlds themselves look identical."

"Geographically, yes," Tygris said, flipping through a few pages of the report to pull up a soil composition chart. "But when we look at soil samples, everything traces back towards a commonality as well. The similarities aren't just visible, Lucca, they're chemical. All of these differences are attributable to localized effects, but the base soil composition is the same. Magical pollution in Reisch, acid rain in Avarrach, our own remains of pollution in Talich, all diverging from the starting point, seemingly in… the Untamed World. In the exact same way that all of the rifts diverge from the Untamed World to the others, everything branches out from there. If my theory is right, It’s got to mean something."

"That's brilliant, Tygris."

"And there's more," he said, dropping a few folders and scattering pages as he found a mineral survey of the Untamed World. "Look at these deposits. I wouldn't have made all of the connections without the Omnimind's help, but not only do they match recorded mineral deposits here in Talich, but they also show evidence of mining hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago."

"That doesn't make any sense, though," Lucca pointed out. "The Warpath doesn't mine on an industrialized scale."

"Exactly. I thought the same thing, even when I realized that the Untamed World was the epicenter of the rifts. There's no way that the Warpath could have exploited these mineral deposits or created the rifts that link the worlds together, but what if there was an earlier civilization that was technologically advanced to do so? The data doesn't give us any conclusions, but it implies that someone else lived there long before the Warpath. The Omnimind gave me a prediction of... 46%."

"Do we know what happened to them?"

Tygris shook his head. "No. When the rifts first opened there were some unconfirmed reports of ruins in the Untamed World, but war broke out before we could deploy archaeologists for further study, and the drones the Omnimind dispatched haven't been able to find anything since the arrival of the Overseers. Right now, the pre-Warpath civilization is just a theory. My best guess? Something happened to wipe them out, some sort of calamity that removed all traces of the civilization and left the Warpath to grow in its place. And based off of the fertilization data in the soil, it would have had to have happened centuries ago, if not longer."

"But it's a dead end," Lucca said. "I'm sorry, Tygris."

"Not quite," he said, flipping a few more pages to reveal a picture of a woman. "There's one more thing. Do you know her?"

"That's Aleta, right? The tinkerer, Orion’s right hand for some time, and the, uhh… anomaly. I was in the field so much I didn't see much of her, but every now and then some invention she worked on would make it to the front lines. I'd always know because it was--"

"So much more advanced than anything else we were working on. Than even my work. Than even Orion's."

"Right. Her skill was unique."

Tygris flipped a page, revealing another picture, then another, all of women who looked eerily similar to Aleta. "Turns out her immortality isn’t as unique as we thought. Here's an Aleta on the Untamed World. She could barely talk. And here's one from Reisch. And this one," he said, pointing to two pictures of a woman whose body seemed taken over by parasitic mechanical augmentations, "was from Avarrach."

"So that's how you developed a cure for the Virus," Lucca breathed.

"Exactly. There's some sort of link between these women, all from different worlds, all with the same name, all seemingly immortal."

"All of them?" Lucca gasped.

Tygris nodded grimly. "I don't know what the connection between them is, or between them and the worlds or the lost civilization that must have existed on the Untamed World, but I'm going to find out."

Lucca looked at him, feeling a hint of unease forming in the pit of her stomach. "What do you mean?"

Tygris looked straight ahead. "I've requested permission from the Omnimind to run experiments on Aleta, along with her 'sisters.'"

Lucca gasped. "You can't do that, Tygris. There are laws against human experimentation, you know that! To protect Aleta's freedom, to protect all of us."

Tygris glanced at her with a mixture of respect and pity on his face. "Maybe so, but those laws were designed for humans. Aleta is immortal; she doesn't qualify. And think of the experiments we could run, the knowledge we could learn. Progress can be messy, but with three of the Aleta sisters in our custody think of all that we could discover. About them, about ourselves, about the worlds and the rifts. Our Aleta worked with Orion, but she hid things from him, information that could have saved his life, countless lives. Just think of what we could accomplish--"

"Hey!" a deep voice barked, interrupting them as a large, muscled man walked over, holding an arc cannon in one hand and a toolbox in the other. "Lucca, did you get that machine fixed?"

"Just about, Drason," she said, turning around to examine her work. "I'll need some lubricating oil to make sure it doesn't overheat and malfunction again."

"I've got some," he said, dropping the arc cannon with a heavy clang that shook the workbench and caused another few folders to fall to the floor. "Let me help you out." He glanced at Tygris. "Who's the pencil-pusher?"

"I'm sorry," Tygris huffed, "I was discussing important matters with my friend here. If I'd realized there was unthinking muscle about I wouldn't have mentioned anything classified."

"Why, because the unthinking muscle would object to human experiments?" Drason shot back. "You can't just discard laws that were designed to protect people because you might learn something."

Tygris shifted uncomfortably on the workbench, gathering up some of his folders protectively as he glanced around the room, avoiding Drason's imposing gaze. "Sorry, stranger," his confidence returning as he began to speak, "but science doesn't answer to small minds. I'm not surprised a muscle-bound thug like you wouldn't understand the greater good."

Drason turned his head away from helping Lucca and glared at the architect. "Immoral scientists like you are why those laws exist," he growled. "So obsessed with what you could learn that you don't even care what you force other people to sacrifice, hiding behind the 'greater good' when really all you care about is your own curiosity."

"Aleta is immortal, the law doesn't--"

"Oh, just because your experiments can't kill her? You think the law would let you bend her just because she can't break? You're sicker than I thought, and a coward to boot. Just because you can't kill her doesn't mean it's alright to torture her."

"Torture?" Lucca interjected. "Be reasonable, Drason, no one would ever stoop to--"

"Oh, they wouldn't call it that, sure, but what other word is there for dissecting someone who is alive the whole time. It'd be bad enough if you wanted to do this to one person, but now you have three of them? You're despicable." Drason spat.

"How much did you overhear?" Tygris demanded. "I'll have you charged with treason, espionage, and--"

"Tygris, calm down!" Lucca shouted, cutting him off even as Drason stiffened at the word 'treason.' "That's uncalled for." She put a hand on Drason's shoulder. "Maybe you two should be introduced, get to know each other before you get into a heated argument. Drason, this is Tygris. He's one of Genesis Industries' leading minds in experimental sciences and interdimensional physics. Tygris, this is Drason, one of our weapons specialists who is in charge of testing. He joined us from the Flame Dawn a few years ago."

"Oh, the fighter explosion guy. Of course he's from the Flame Dawn" Tygris muttered.

"Now what's that supposed to mean?" Lucca demanded.

"The Dawn is a nation of small-minded brutes who only think of ways to kill. I wouldn't expect them to understand scientific progress. If they had their way, we'd still be fighting with swords."

Drason rolled his eyes. "You disregard my opinion solely based on where I was born and you call me small-minded?"

"This doesn't affect you, weapons specialist," Tygris growled. "I'm applying directly to the Omnimind to sanction my experiments."

"Oh sure, let's ask a tin-can to weigh in on an ethical issue," Drason said. "What a joke."

"Hey!" Tygris snapped. "The Omnimind is our leader, built by Orion himself to lead us through this crisis and ensure the continued prosperity of our people."

"Sure, that's what people say, but that doesn't mean Orion actually designed the Omnimind to take the wheel. Even if he did, just because he trusted it doesn't mean that we should."

"You take that back! Orion was a visionary, the most brilliant mind of our generation and the most capable leader Genesis Industries has ever known. Don't you dare suggest that he was anything less!"

"He was," Drason shot back, "and the Omnimind can never replace him. Oh, sure, it's good for research and statistical analysis, good for grand strategic planning and logistical gymnastics, but the Omnimind can't lead people."

Lucca grabbed a tool from Drason's open toolbox as the two men continued to argue, focusing her attention back on the almost-repaired machine in front of her. "The Omnimind has improved our quality of life exponentially, Drason," Tygris was saying. "Increased automation in agriculture ensures resources for all citizen-employees of Genesis, freeing up their minds to tackle higher problems than their next meal. Not to mention its work in repelling the Sleepers and the Overseers. I'd say the Omnimind is more than capable of leading people."

"Your drone pilots did more to fight the Sleepers than the Omnimind did," Drason argued. "Before the rifts opened Aberion was on your doorstep. Talich was about to be consumed by the greatest war it had ever seen, and Orion was ready to lead you through it to victory on the other side."

"Of course," Tygris agreed. "Orion was a great leader. I already told you that."

"And the Omnimind would never have been able to take his place," Drason finished.

"Please," Tygris said, dismissing Drason with a wave of his hand. "the Omnimind is more than capable of handling the Flame Dawn. Or have you forgotten that's what it has been doing ever since Orion was killed? Aberion and his war dogs are well in hand"

"You really have no idea what you're up against, do you?" Drason asked. "I'll be you've never even been to the front lines, never even seen a battlefield that wasn't some sterile, post-action report delivered to you by a drone. If Aberion was truly trying, we'd all be living under red banners right now."

"He has a point," Lucca said, closing the last panel on the piston and signaling to an overseer that it was ready to resume work. "Aberion hasn't been the same since the Sleepers invaded and Bromich died."

"He lost his logistics expert, so what?" Tygris said.

"He lost his friend, Tygris," Lucca snapped. "Something I'd expect you to understand."

"It doesn't matter," the architect said, gathering his folders and standing up. "The Omnimind has defeated the Flame Dawn at every turn and will continue to do so, and no weapons specialist from the Flame Dawn could convince the people of Genesis Industries to replace it."

"If machines were so infallible, Tygris," Drason said, "then Lucca wouldn't have to repair them. The people of Genesis Industries deserve a competent, living, breathing leader, not some emotionless machine that can't actually lead. Everything you've said today has convinced me that you can't be trusted with the lives of others, Tygris, that you'd sacrifice anything for scientific gain, but even then, I'd vote for a heartless, pencil-pushing, ivory tower moron like you over a tin can."

Tygris scowled, then turned to Lucca. "Well, what do you think? You've been awfully quiet."

Lucca shrugged. "Honestly, and this might sound bad, but... I just don't care." She held up her hands for calm as the others bristled in surprise. "I know, I know, but... politics just gets in the way, you know? It seems pointless to argue about who's at the top when that doesn't change what's happening at the ground level. Machines still need fixed, no matter who's in charge. Arguing over whether or not an AI can lead us just distracts us--for instance, Tygris, the OLB project needs a new momentum gauge, and I'd bet that you would have been able to design one to the required specs in the time that you two have been arguing."

Tygris' face flashed between a smile and a frown. "Thanks, Lucca. Still, it does matter who leads us, and I support the Omnimind wholeheartedly. If Aberion losing his friend has really affected the Flame Dawn's war capabilities as much as you two claim, then it's a good thing that we have an impartial leader. After all you've been through, I honestly expected more patriotism from you, but at least you aren't engaging in treason..." he glared at Drason one last time, then walked away.

There was a crash and a plume of smoke from elsewhere in the drone repair bay and Lucca and Drason both looked up to see what had happened. "Come on," Drason said, grabbing his toolbox, "let's go see how we can help."

Lucca nodded in agreement, as they went to fix the next broken machine.

---

Story by JasonOCE, Benionin, Ladyvalour
Art by @SmarttCaitlin