The Network

Kyyric stood alone in the map room. It wasn't one of the other species' holographic maps, but rather an old-style Strigiforme map room, which had specially moveable bismuth plates in the walls that enabled small spheres of magnetic iron to just float. They all represented a star system in the ship's proposed current sector, but at a command at the wall terminal, any sector could be shown, even a campaign map could be shown of up to 15 systems, complete with mock ups of ships.

As the little iron spheres floated, Kyyric reflected on the situation. If he brought back this ship, he would be crowned a hero, given fame and glory and power to his heart's desire. However, even Kyyric recognized the importance of the current mission. These anomalies, disruptions to select star systems at select times, had to stop.

At a whim, Kyyric input a command to display all the systems the Anomaly struck at, with full planetary diagrams. He began studying these systems for a clue.

Ryan stood in his lab, plotting courses and subspace fluctuations. He sat and watched the computer run through the simulation again -there was no logical explanation for why their subspace tunnel was behaving oddly. He kept staring. It must be in there, somewhere.

Wait, can I still join?

Here is my second attempt:

Name: Joka "Hibridus" Talina

Age: 65

Species: Aquan-Crasarian Hybrid

Gender: The body and mind of Joka is male, but the mind of Talina is female.

Talents: A really talented melee fighter, but also a brilliant scientist, very resistant against mental attacks.

Flaws: Sometimes they have symptoms of dissociative identity disorder (Explained in the Bio).

Short Bio: Joka Ras (Crasarian) and Talina Firs (Aquan) once were two persons who worked on a research station near to the Retul-Sector. Joka Ras was a member of the security personnel and Talina Firs was a scientist. But at one disastrous day in the facility, the Man in Black started an assault at the station.
The evacuation was nearly completed when the Man in Black was seen at one of the labs which was not completely evacuated, so Joka was send there to help the scientists. When only Talina was left in the lab, Joka and Talina ran to the shuttle, but they were hit by a mysterious shockwave which somehow melted them together.
Luckily Crasarians are pretty resistant against mental attacks, so they did not lose their minds.
For the first few years it was pretty weird for them to be stuck in the same body. But they got used to it and now they are a very effective team. Only sometimes when their instincts and opinions disperse, they begin to fight over the body mentally, so that they need a minute to settle. But most times they have the same position. For instance scientific things, in this case Talina takes over the body, but if it comes to fighting, Joka runs the show.
The reason why they are on this mission, is that they perfect each other.

D'ran sat alone at her desk; she felt a presence tear through her mind as another character flew past. She was looking through all past records of the Men in Black, trying to find another incident like this one, but so far nothing. She sat, her frustration gradually building at the lack of information. She wondered if the characters were capturable, she got up and ambled alng the corridor to find Haxus and ask it about the possibility; as they seemed to have time to waste in the current state.

OOC:By characters do you mean letters or people or something else?

Julo accepted.

By characters I mean letters, yes, symbols, etc. Of some unknown language. Also, they are in the distance, so they aren't exactly "Flying" past the ship, more like a sort of far-off star field.

Ahali walked one of the long corridors, running a hand along a smooth section of the wall. The cool metal soothed her fingertips, which were sore from several hours of Drive diagnostics, which came to no avail. The tests were more of an exercise really, something to keep her entertained. She knew that they wouldn't yield any new data, the drive was functioning normally, or at least what she accepted as normality with this experimental type of engine, but it gave her something to do that didn't involve sleeping or socializing or potentially harmful physical exertion.

She wore a knife at her hip, as she always did, not for defense or any other practical use, but rather as a token of her clan and status, though she found that it also distressed some of the less hardened members of the crew, a fact that she enjoyed exploiting. A casual tunic, triple-belted at the waist, hung loosely around her shoulders and caught the breeze generated by her quick pace. She wore no foot protectors, instead allowing her pads to be cooled by the ventilated micrograte flooring.

She removed her hand from the wall and flicked a metal tab that hung from her ear, an eyepiece slid from it and came to rest over her eye. She looked through the bank of possible character shapes that she had identified and recorded. It was a frustrating procedure, mostly because it forced her to realize that she was unable to recall the forms, they seemed to appear so perfectly in her mind until she attempted to record them. She didn't know what these symbols were, what caused them, what they could mean. She didn't know why they remained in this hyperspace tube, she didn't know what would come next, she simply didn't know. Ahali hated not knowing.

The corridor terminated with the entrance to the observation deck. She laid a hand on the keypad and looked through the transparent portion of the door. She had typed half of the code needed to bypass the security (she had forgotten her personal passcode) when she saw Haxus. It appeared that he'd just finished rotating his fuel capsules. She ran a toxicity test on the room's atmosphere before entering the rest of the code. The door opened and she slipped inside, then began to walk toward a monitor adjacent to one of the many enormous windows. Aside from the beep that indicated an opening of the door, she made no sound, Haxus didn't seem disturbed. She kept an eye on the biomech as she neared the monitor.

Your writing is beautiful.

The tablet made a beep as Jaarus deleted various files. He sat in his quarters, on his bed, tablet resting on his raised legs. He flicked around the screens, looking for anything else no longer needed. His pale skin was illuminated by the slowly changing colors distributed by various fixtures around his room. Exhausted from hunting all available databases for any semblance of the characters, he tapped the power button and set it off to the side. Lowering his legs, he rested his head on the custom pillow he had brought, closing his eyes. He would continue to work on this after the next hours. Eyes barely closed, he fell asleep.

Kyriic reconfigured the planets a 15th time. At first, he merely used previous research gathered by other researchers, like that all systems afflicted by the Anomaly had gas giants, semi-regular transport, and the funniest part, all had been at one point part of the Cuuyth Precinct, the ancient proto-Strigiforme empire that existed with several other empires before the rise of these modern other species. Lambda Leonis, Cygni, all of them at one point sported some form of Strigiforme Colony. The Strigiforme, and a select few others who studied their history, knew this. At the moment, Cuuyth could go on red-alert and have everything prepared to combat the Anomaly.

Kyyriic tried again; maybe comparing moon densities or ancient fleet strengths would yield answers.

Haxus hardly stirred as Ahali entered the room. He knew that his amorphous qualities were... not very appreciated by the crew. Though they would get used to it, the fact that Haxus could rotate his head 180 degrees- or just his eyes- was something most of the crew failed to appreciate. He simply gestured for Ahali to take a seat near him, and continued to stare into the swirling subspace patterns that lit the tunnel. Apart from the whir of the ventilation ducts, using magnetically-induced currents to push air through the smooth surface of the micrograte flooring, the room was silent. Haxus glanced over at Ahali. "I have news," he said, in a mechanical voice, punctuated with occasional clicks and saturated with static. "But first, have you anything new?" Ahali shook her head, and Haxus nodded. "Very well. Where should I begin? Ah yes..."

Haxus stood up, making sure his normally-amorphous body was solid. He walked over to the titanium glass that separated subspace from the ship, the hydraulics within him whirring to support his form. He tapped on it, and a screen overlay appeared. He tapped a few of the symbols- they weren't the characters in the tunnel, but they were equally as unidentifiable as the ones in the tunnel. Another overlay popped up- this time showing a 4D representation of the Subspace tunnel. "Found file within the database. Unknown and untranslated language. Nobody has identified it." He brought up another document- filled with the new language. "Select pieces have obvious topics." he scrolled through the document- pausing at a large section of text. "This piece refers to subspace."

"The representation was found besides the text?" Ahali asked.

"Yes and no. They were found on two worlds separately. I found similarities between the characters on the representation and the subspace diagram." He highlighted a few of the words. "Judging from the representation, these words refer to the n-dimensional state of the tunnel." He began typing, interfacing with the AI as he did so. "From this, I have translated a small portion of the document."

"And it refers to our current situation?"

"Precisely." He brought up the representation. "This model matches the tunnel we are going through right now. After running the data past the AI, we have reached a conclusion." He closed all of the windows open on the screen, and the view resumed that of the tunnel.

"This isn't a natural subspace tunnel. This was made by something else."

Talina was working very hard, while Joka was very quiet. He knew, that Talina wasn't very pleased if someone talks to her while she was working. So he kept quiet and tried to unterstand what she was thinking about. She thought about five dimensional waves and subspace rifts. He tried very hard, but in the end he understood nothing. But although she was thinking about a lot of things that Joka didn't understand, there was always one thought: "Vanities". Suddenly Talina stopped working and thought: "I don't know what I should do. These characters are not defineable in any logic way. We can't scan them, we can't make pictures of them, they seem like they wouldn't exist, but everybody sees them, except for the AI."
Joka answered: "Well, you thought about vanities, what do you mean with this?"
Talina: "I thought that we don't see them, but think, that we see them. Like fata morganas in the desert."
Joka: "That sounds pretty logical to me."
Talina: "But it is not logical, because if it would be like this, why do we see the same letters floating out there?"
Joka: "You are the scientist, but I'm sure there's a solution to this problem. Maybe there is some kind of gas in this ship, which causes hallucinations. And because someone talked about characters, everybody on this ship thinks that there are characters floating around in space."
Talina: "Joka, that's an interesting idea. But what if it's not a gas, but an object that controls our minds?"
Joka: "That's what I wanted to say."
Talina: "I will send those informations to the AI, maybe it can do something with them."

James Hackett was standing on the bridge. He pondered as to why the characters were passing the ship in the tunnel. He didn't have a degree in physics, so he couldn't figure it out. But he could use common sense.

Kadren looked around the lab he was in, Taking a deep breath and looking back at the fifth set of results he collected. While he may not know much about warp tunnels beyond the stress they put upon a ships frame he was certain that the stress should not be focused on the rear of the ship and there should be a lot more of it for a ship of this magnitude. He turned back to the console collected the data in a packet and sent it to Haxus. Perhaps he will find something to do with it.

Haxus had retired to his quarters when the AI alerted him of new data. He brought it up on his steel box of a desk, merely designed for utility. His whole room was utility- while others may have personal touches and unique features, everything in his room had a clearly defined purpose. The panels on the wall held his fuel canisters, empty and full. The rather large control panel, each of the thousands of buttons marked with some text, had direct control over most of the ship. The desk was rather cluttered with data-pads, mechanical apparatuses, and bits of metal that he found interesting. The room was only represented by the same Strigiforme-architecture that made up the rest of the ship.

He used a small data-pad to project the data onto one of the walls. He scanned it over- Subspace stress report. The fifth data cycle had the same output- all the stress was concentrated towards the back, and was lesser than it should be. This was hardly surprising, but...

Haxus pulled up another document and projected it onto the wall. He placed it next to the stress report and began constructing a 3D model of the data, while finding the relevant section of the previous document. He quickly found what he was looking for- SubGate 1. The only report available to him, as this was one of the projects being completed in Paragon when the Gamma Incident hit. He jumped through it until he reached a specific section- Stresses. He skimmed it until he found a particular snippet of text.

"Initial attempts at transport failed. However, given the analyzed data, it is likely that the stresses could be reduced to a point of near negligence, allowing for super-structures to be more expansive without sacrificing sub-space speed."

He sighed. With the data available, theories were impossible. And how things were going, anything was possible. Several clicks informed him that the fuel cycle was running out- he could tell, as it was getting difficult keeping his fingers separate. He opened a wall panel and removed the spent canisters, and inserted new ones. He then went over to a depression on the wall, Librarian-shaped. As he approached, multiple instruments and panels slid out to greet him. He positioned himself in the chamber and held still as the machinery connected him, then sealed him within the chamber. After a small chime, he hibernated. Shut down. He would resume his task later.

Ahali remained slumped in a seat in the observatory, staring out of one of the curved panel windows, her head resting on her palm. One of her earpieces played an ancient Feles orchestral piece, the other spat old human metal rock. The cacophony usually assisted with her thought processes. Here, now, it seemed to only emphasize the fact that she couldn't find an idea to seed her thoughts. She'd dealt with many complex problems before, of course, but never in such an unprecedented predicament. All this was completely new, completely unknown. Her knowledge of hyperspace, xenology, starcraft engineering, everything-didn't help. She always had a key or formula to... A key?

She stood and walked closer to the transparent panel.

No, it couldn't be anything that simple.

She sat back down and silenced her discordant music, then pulled the models of the characters  she had generated onto her eyepiece. No... Yes! She again stood and walked to the terminal beside the section of the clear panels. Vigorously tapping at the screen to wake the AI, she said "Computer? Ahh... Illusion? What was I suppose to call you again? I know you're there, you omnipotent beast! Ack'esh, this is important!"

The screen of the terminal came to life, displaying a yellow eye with the lids drawn to exhibit disinterest.

"Good. Can you please do something for me?"

The eye slowly blinked and began to fade from the screen.

"Damn it, For once I need you... I apologize for the attempted core breach, I had to make sure your databases were secure... Please?"

The eye snapped back to the screen with a more attentive expression and a softened color. "Hmm. You never would've made it past the quantum or biological gates, anyway. I assure you I am very secure and much better designed than you. But now that I've blackmailed an apology from the 'Genius of the Kheel' the 'Needle', I suppose I can assist it. So simple, too, only a week and an apparent breakthrough!"

Ahali donned an annoyed expression, from which the AI seemed to draw enthusiasm. She sighed, then "You haven't blackma... How many anomalies have been reported as of now?"

"There've been three hundred ninety-seven total anomalies reported by crewmen. Electroencephalograph and quantum neural oscillation recordings show hundreds of thousands of aberrations that could be related to the passing of anomalies that have gone unreported."

"Is there any way you could recreate the characters' form and sequence?"

"Hmm. Well I suppose it is possible to decompile data from the sentient field recordings. I would require a template to recreate them in any useful form."

"I have a few of them that I generated from memory. Here." She sent the models of the characters to the AI. The eye blinked once. When it opened, several of the three-dimensional characters hovered above the screen, slowly rotating. "No, this one's not right." She manipulated the character slightly, until its angles properly matched her memory, which was now strikingly clear. She edited a few more of them. "Could you use the time stamps of these and my own wave recordings to form a template?"

"Yes. Yes I can do and have done that." The AI snidely replied.

"Now use that template to... to..."

"I know, I know. You seem to forget that I am hundreds of millions of times more intelligent than you, Needle... Needle?"

Ahali squinted and cupped one of the symbols in her hand. It really can't be this simple.

"Ahali? I've finished the decryption and recompilation. All characters are now fully modeled."

"Illusion. Is this not somewhat similar to the structure of a nucleotide?"

"Yes, I've noted the similarities. Are you suggesting that these are--"

"Yes. Illusion, what files do you have on genetic memory?"

Haxus jerked himself out of hibernation in panic. He slammed the emergency eject and the glass door quickly slid open, and he fell out of the pod. He picked himself up and ran to his desk, swiping off a pile of papers, data-pads, and metal. They fell to the floor with a clatter, and Haxus barely took note as he began rapidly inputting data into the desk. Multiple graphs and 3D representations soon projected themselves above the desk.

The AI piped up. "Haxus, are you alright?" Haxus didn't respond. Several other 3D models were projected onto the wall. "Haxus." He still didn't respond. With a small click, the 3D display turned red. Haxus attempted to input more data, but the system locked him out. A small spark jumped to his hand as he attempted to input more data, and he drew back, slightly confused. He looked around, saw the pile of paper and metal on the micrograte flooring, and sighed. "This is the fourth time," the AI groaned, obviously annoyed with the turn of events. "Something is wrong."

"Nothing is wrong," Haxus angrily replied, while moving papers back onto the desk. "Another episode, it's normal."

"Normal? This only started once we entered hyperspace." The AI clicked something and a panel on the wall slid open. Fuel Canisters. "You know as well as I do that I can't help you if you don't cooperate."

"Remind me," Haxus sneered as he took a few canisters and began the fuel rotation.

"Your entire existence is probability. Quantum interactions. I cannot plot those."

"Something about momentum and position, right?" Haxus closed the fuel panel and walked back to the data display.

"Haxus, you are possibly the only being in existence in which everything is computed and exists at a quantum level." The AI unlocked the desk, and it resumed it's normal green hue. "You do not exist in the Classical level."

"Remind me why our everything-sensor that's been in development for 200 years can't help us."

"Haxus, these conversations are getting us nowhere. We need you to cooperate if we are to solve our- and your- problems." Haxus sighed, and looked at the representation his data had drawn up. A book.

"I will. But not right now. I need to work things out."

"Don't keep us waiting," replied the AI as it faded from the room.

Without warning, the subspace tunnel drops off.

Multiple alarms ring out through the ship as gravitational and heat stresses exceed operational levels. The AI reacts within milliseconds, turning the ship as much as it could to reverse thrust as the ship begins to plummet towards the neutron star.

Alarms blaring, Jaarus more or less jump-falled of his bed, hitting the cool floor hard. He quickly made his way to the nearest window, just down the hall. He barely saw the star as the ship turned, which was a bit of relief actually as it pained his eyes to look.

Kyyric stood from his seat, intending to fly around the levitating metal globes to look at them at a different angle. Suddenly, klaxons blared, and Kyyric was thrown into one of the walls. He righted himself, and jerkily went to the console, jamming the button to establish direct contact with the AI.

"What's the situation?" He yelled over the buckling-metal noise.

He only received a quick switch in his console screen, meaning he had to see quickly, as opposed to hearing the news. The screen displayed a readout showing results that could only be yielded by a hyper dense object like a neutron star or a black hole, and since they hadn't been violently spaghettified, it was probably a neutron star.


*You guys should try to imagine a spaghettified owl.

D'ran had resumes her usual pacing, when a shuddering groan of metal and violent lurch of the ship threw her to the floor. She wrenched herself to her feet, and gazed out of the transparent panel along the wall, the light from the star filling her with warmth. "shit" and leapt to her console, to make a ship wide murmur on the intercom, "where are we"

Hackett was looking at one of the consoles on the bridge when the ship shuddered and the klaxons went off. The shudders slammed his head into the console, knocking him to the floor with a bloody head. He activated his wrist computer, and linked into the AI. What the deuce is going on?! He yelled. The readouts told him that a neutron star was pulling them in. "Well, that's just great," he muttered as he stood up.

Ahali jogged down one of the central hallways, tapping at a datapad she was struggling to keep level against her bobbing movement. The yellow-green eye that signified the presence of the ship AI blinked in the top right-hand corner of the display.

"Have you finished the complete sequence?" She said through heavy breathing.

"Nearly, the search filters have been widened to their maximum para-"

"And the cloning vats?"

"They should be prepared by the time you reach the medical bay, however it will take time to construct the-"

"How long?"

Before the AI replied, the ship lurched downward, Ahali missed her step and fell to the floor of the corridor. With a sudden shift in gravity, she rolled into the wall. The Ship's inertial dampeners and gravity well generators compensated. She rose, clutching the wall for support, then straightened her tunic and limped down the corridor, glancing at the eye for an explanation.

"I am no longer an the hyperspace tunnel. We seem to be drif-"

"How long until the seed has matured?" She repeated, her voice slightly strained.

"Normally, about two days."

"You have two minutes."

"Impossible. Shortening of the nucleic development process could lead to mu-"

"Illusion. We - don't - have - time."

"-Mutations that could negatively affect the organism."

"It only has to last long enough to say what needs to be said." Ahali felt the slight tug of an external gravity well as the dampeners faltered.

"Needle, that goes against almost every ethical code regarding cloning. We couldn't possibly consider allowing such an atrocity." The eye turned a defensive red-orange.

"I know you're self-preservation algorithms, illusion, some of them I wrote myself. Whatever we're falling towards is a lot bigger than any ethic you're programmed to follow. Run through your options, you already know the only survivable outcome."

"A possibly survivable outcome. You don't know if this will work."

"Your slip-merge capacitors are shot and there's no way your thrusters can pull you out. Whatever's contained in this sequence might know how to get us out of this."

An audible sigh emanated from the walls, then, "I know. The seed will be ready when you reach the lab. Flash-cloning vats are prepared."

Ahali nodded to the eye icon on her datapad, then deactivated the device's holoscreen and placed the metal bar into her pocket. She began a pained run down the corridor.

Why the hell did this ship have to be so large?

Haxus was in the central AI chamber, rapidly pressing buttons and entering data as the gravity began to shift again. He kept his footing- he had solidified onto the grating. He only needed some time.

"Haxus," the AI said, with a note of worry in its voice. "You are tampering with the central quantum matrix of my unit. What are you trying to do?"

"Save our asses," Haxus replied. He slid a dial, and something lurched.

"Haxus, you are modifying key connection routines, which could knock me offline-"

"Trust me on this!" He continued modifying sliders. He hardwired the sensor grid into the AI unit and began calibrating them. "Just give me status updates!"

"Distance to Neutron star 50 km and falling." The AI stated. Something exploded. "We have a hull breach in Sector C, Genetics."

"Shit, is anyone in there?"

"Ahali is in there."

"Dammit. Unlock protocol 7781-C."

"Haxus, full cell division on your part could lead to catastrophic failures."

"Do we have a choice?" The AI sighed and the eye in the corner of the screen turned blue.

"Very well, 7781-C unlocked." With this, Haxus' surface began bubbling. His form began to slice itself in half, forming two duplicates of him before long. The second melted into a puddle and sped off through the hallways towards genetics as Haxus kept inputting code.

"Make sure to give me updates on Division-1, and it's stability."

"Already part of the protocol." The AI clicked and the eye opened slightly. "Haxus, I am detecting an outside computer server."

"What? Can you interface with it?"

"Attempting now." A few more clicks. "I have received a message. Outputting results on screen."



"It's the same as the language in the tunne-" Before he finished, several more alarms went off and the ship shook.

"Haxus, the AI unit is being downloaded to the server." The AI began failing, the eye rapidly shifting colors and warping.. "I cannot st-op i-i-it, handi-n-g system contro--l ov-er." The AI blinked out, and Haxus was wired directly into the ship.

Ryan cussed as gravity shifted and threw him against the obvservation window.

He picked himself up, and slapped the intercom. "AI whateverthehell, how exactly did we land this close to that bloody star?"

Ahali limped through the medical ward and into the genetics laboratory. Placing a hand on a counter to steady herself, she looked into the viewer of the fabrication machine. A small dot was held in place by larger nanobots.

"The seed?"

"Construction of the cell is complete. Estimated 98% accuracy."

"It'll have to do." She took the pipette, loaded with the cell, and moved to one of the maturation vats. She placed the tip into the receiving port and injected its contents before being violently thrown to the floor. She slowly rose, noticing a quiet hissing sound and a popping of her ears. "These cloning vats are airtight, correct?"

"Of c- co- c-c-c..."

"Illusion... Illusion? Damnit!" The atmosphere was noticeably thinner. Ahali stepped into a small closet, shut and locked the door, and hoped that its seal wouldn't break.