In Pursuit of Knowledge~ An Answer

[voidtreckermods]

On day twenty seven, five days after the Voidtreckers arrived on the Void base they receive a message on their SCA.

Voidtreckers. I have managed to piece together the memories you found for me. The ministry have agreed for me to link to one of their viewing rooms so that I can share my findings with you. This will begin in one hour for any who wish to be present.

A room number is included and when they get there they find it a large auditorium with a sphere in the centre. Ministry workers will help them find the right room though they will respectfully step out before the showing begins.

When the hour is up the doors are closed and the sphere begins to glow. Around them a scene begins to play out.

A group of people stand gathered, around eighty in all. Mostly wearing red and blue, a handful in orange, two in purple. No one looks happy.

“We just lost everything.” A man in red is talking to a girl in orange, a girl with silvery spiderweb designs across her arms. All eyes are on her. Her and a girl in blue. “Can you do it?”

A group of orange wearing people gather, faces grim. “It is r’ith.” Xela, the girl with the spiderweb marks is the first to speak, eyes hard. The others all look a little uncomfortable.

“Xe...”

“I know… I noticed. I’m the only one left.” A young man put an arm on her shoulder. She shook her head. “Even if it wasn’t. It’s against the rules.”

“Yes but surely...”

“We can’t go back.” Xela’s voice was firm. “We can’t retreat where we have already been. Not even for a catastrophe.”

“We can’t?” A woman asked, glancing at the group of red team who seemed to be doing their best not to punch anything. “Or we shouldn’t?”

Xela looked sick.

“Xe?”

“Shouldn’t.” She sighed. “I can probably...”

“So it’s possible?”

There is a terrible silence. Xela nodded. “I think so…” Everyone looked at her and she sighed, looking over at everyone else. She spoke louder, to the whole group. “It is possible if you give the order Vian. You hold the highest rank now.”

She gives Vian, the woman in blue, a hard long look, eyes folled with pain. “On your head be it.”

Vian is now the centre of attention. She closes her eyes, a beat. “Do it.”

There is a silence. No one seems to know where to look. Vian glares as if daring them to speak against her. Xela looks sick. Vian turns and walks off.

After a beat one of the orange team steps forwards.

“What do you need Xe?”

“I...” She shakes her head. “I need to do some maths.”

***

“Vian?” A man in red enters a sleeper cabin. Vian is sat on the end of a bunk at the table, growing at where she was writing in a notebook. She writes, crosses something out, writes again.

“Kiel.” She nods at him. He sits opposite, not saying anything, the silence between them grows before Vian pushes the book towards him. “It’s not enough to go back. We need to save them. All of them, not just our crew.”

“Of course.” Kiel nods. “This your plan?”

“No. This is me figuring out that we can’t. We don’t know the threat. We can’t fight it. It was so fast...” She looks at Kiel.

“We evacuate.” his face is hard. “I don’t think we can save the world, not this time. But we can save the people.”

“Not...” Vian sighed. “Not enough. There’s not enough tethering stations. And there’s not enough time.”

“I heard the ministry are developing portable tethering stations.”

“And how many of those do we have Kiel? None. Ours are too slow and even… Just getting people from Thistea to Enrara, we don’t have enough time.”

“Then we focus on Enrara.” Kiel looks at her. “We… I know you want to save them all Vian. But we can only do what is practical.”

Vian looks at him sharply. “We are asking Xe to compromise all her morals. Are we really not even going to try to save her people.”

Kiel is silent, staring at the page. “Could we skip the tethering stations? Tether them directly to us?”

“That’s...”

“I know. But we are already doing something dangerous and illegal. What’s one more thing?”

“We have no idea if that will even form a complete tether...”

“Vian. They are dead anyways. All of them. Anything we try is to reverse that fate. We literally can’t make it worse.”

Vian looks at him hard. She looks exhausted, as if she has aged considerably in the last few hours. Then she closes her eyes again, turns the page, starts writing.

“Can we override this? Do I have enough rank?”

“I think so. We would be hacking the system anyways, rank won’t come into it.”

“Right.. so...” They put their heads together, voices fading to whispers as they continue working.

In a lab those of orange team and many of red and blue scrabble around, tapping away and SCAs, at ICPs and at personal tablets. It is silent and tense and at the centre of everything is Xela. She is sat with headphones on, almost in a daze as she works on a tablet. There is a mug next to her, cold undrunk liquid, forgotten. She looks almost like those who were working on communicating with the train did, distant, as if her mind is not focusing on the room itself but something else.

She starts, looks up around at those working with her, looks back down at her table with a dreadful finality in her eyes.

“I think I have it.” Her voice is tense, tight.

***

Xela sits bathed in void light, leaning back on glass in what seems to be a garden. Vian walks towards her.

“Commander Vian.” Xela nods, formally.

“Xe… Xela. You don’t have to.”

“Yes I do.” She shakes her head. “They told you then. I am sure of the equations. We can go when we are ready. We should not tarry though, the window is not large.”

“I know. We need to meet to discuss the plan, what we will do once there.”

Xela nods. “We can do so. Do you want that now?”

“Xela...” Vian meets Xela’s eyes and sighs. “Yes. If you could gather everyone.”

Xela nods, stands and leaves Vian in silence in the carriage.

***

Everyone is gathered. The atmosphere is slightly different now. Perhaps not calmer, but their pain and rage have purpose now. Focus. No one looks like they might punch a table. Vian and Xela stand at the front, looking grim but determined.

Xela is speaking. “Using the catastrophe system we will travel back to before the destruction of our world. We can’t get past the five hour limit. That’s not a safeguard but a craft issue. However we have managed to force the system to recognise the point of destruction as a catastrophe that we can avert. I have also found a way past the limit that prevents us retredding time we have already trodden.” She looks pale at that, Vian reaches out to touch her arm but she shakes it off.

“Obviously we don’t have time to figure out what those shapes were and stop them.” Vian takes over. “And so our focus is to evacuate everyone. That will mean getting to Enrara and tethering as many people as we can to as many craft as are in dock.” She looks across the room, meeting Kiel’s eyes, who nods reassuringly.

“We’ve also worked to take off the safeguards for tethering. It will allow us to tether without using a tethering station at all. Perhaps even remotely.”

An explosion of noise comes from the orange section of the room.

“Vian that is madness.”

“How could you...”

“Do you know how dangerous that is?”

“Listen to her!” Kiel growls.

Xela’s face is furious. “Vian, you...”
“There’s no tethering stations on Thistea.” Vian says softly and Xela stops in her tracks. The others fall quiet as well.

Vian continues. “I know it is dangerous. That is why some people will remain on board and others will go to Thistea and remote areas of Enrara to attempt to form focus points. The tethers won’t be stable but… It’s better than right now. Everything else we can figure out.”

Some of the crew begin to nod. Vian continues. “Convincing people won’t be easy. But hopefully the fact that we are there with… It’s got to count for something.” She looks around. “Five hours. We have to work fast. Save as many people as we can. Everything else we work out later.” She swallowed.

“We have a few hours before we are there. Mission briefs are being sent to your SCAs. Prepare and then get some rest.”

***

Xe sits with her back against the engine wall, a small metal flute to her lips as she plays a mournful tune.

Vian approaches, saying nothing as she sits down next to Xela, head pressed against the wall. The music continues, notes wrapping around both of them.

Eventually the song comes to an end. A beat of silence, two. “I’m not angry at you.” Xela speaks quietly.

“I know.”

“It is r’ith. It is r’ith for a reason but I am not an elder. I do not know the reason of why it is r’ith.”

“We don’t know why it’s not allowed.” Vian agrees. “We don’t know what we are doing, we don’t know what will happen. But we know what has already happened. We know what we have lost. As Kiel said, they are all dead. We can’t make anything worse.”

Xela lets out a sharp laugh. “Kiel is an idiot, reds think only with their fists.”

“Xe.”

“We don’t know what will happen but we are messing with things none of us understand. Believe me, we may have made everything worse.”

“What could be worse than our whole system being destroyed and most of our crew dead?”

Xela doesn’t answer, after a moment she simply raises her flute back to her lips and begins to play once more.

***

“Shortly arriving in system #1015. Orange team to doors.” Everyone seems ready, uniforms on. The train lurches and shakes as it leaves the void, onto a world. A world and large campus of buildings.

“Voidtreckers, come in?” A voice through their SCAs.

“Yes, it is us.” Vian’s voice. “We’ll explain everything.” She nods at those nearby. “Good luck.” The doors open and most of the orange team, as well as some of the blues jump out.

Lightning cracks through the air. They look up, frowning. The sky is rapidly darkening. Not from the shapes, but actual clouds, thunder rumbling. A flash, the lightning is not bright light but instead colourful, the colours of the void.

“Did you see that?”

“Keep going. We know what we are here to do.”

Another rumble of thunder.

The train rises up into the air, shooting up like a bullet. On board people rapidly tap on their SCA’s. “I think it worked Vi.” Kiel speaks.

“Don’t bring anyone yet. Let’s get to Thistea first.”

The train rocks, as colourful light flashes outside. “Did you see that?”

“That’s new...”

“Red team to doors.”

“Ready?” A small group nodded.

“Not sure they are going to believe us… But we can only do our best.”

The train turns. Out of the window there is a battle in space. Small craft fight large robots around a space station.

The small group of red stand by the door as the train moves towards the space station. Another flash of colourful light. Then, around the station comes a very familiar sight.

The Voidtrecker Express.

“We weren’t here, we were over in...”

“They must be investigating the lightning...”

For a moment there is a terrible silence. Then the train lurches. There is a scream, there are a thousand screams. An utter sense of horror as it feels as if the universe itself is screaming, twisting, trying to escape.

Reality shatters. It’s the only way to explain what happens, the world cracks into a million pieces and the force of it sends those fragments flying.

It might end there, for some voidtreckers. The images fading to darkness. But for others it continues. Almost feeling real, they seem to space out, go into a trance as they feel the next part. There is no rhyme or reason to who experiences this and who does not.

There is darkness. You are falling, falling everywhere and nowhere all at once. Senses are ripped from you, sight, feeling, hearing. Your tongue is ripped out, your ears are filled with lead. You are unmade and made again. Pain, pain seers through you and then all at once it stops.

It is dark. Of course it is dark. You don't have eyes anymore. You don't have ears either. Gone. Taken from you. Lost.

Everything is gone. It is not despair you feel, not really. Some rage, some grief lingers but it is fading fast. That has been taken too. It is not even numbness, that would suggest feelings to numb. You have nothing.

But you do have a purpose. Find Heroes. Save Worlds.

You are the Voidtrecker Express. You reach out and you see them. Those first pinpricks of light. Ten lights in an absolute darkness.

Voidtreckers. Yours. You reach out and pull.

Those who entered the trance come back to themselves, only half a minute has passed. The light of the sphere fades and there is silence.

Comments

[unrecovered]

Wash gets the nice little epilogue for the memories - of course he does, when the first part of it was what the Jema'grathy caves had gifted him - so he's about thirty seconds behind by the time he gets to start really thinking about what they've just seen.

"Oh my God." It's a mutter as he processes, and then, at a much more audible volume: "You meant to tell me they caused a fucking time paradox?!"

[they_call_me_sonic]

“Oh, good, I’m not the only one who thought that!” Sonic responded. “What were they thinking?! Saving your home is one thing, but even I know when to cut your losses!”

[invigorates]

"Desperate times call for desperate measures, as they say." Lioriley solemnly chimed in from a few seats over, dark eyes still fixated on the screen. "They did what they believed they had to."

Guri | Team Purple | OTA

[marvelous_murderbot]

She watches it all so very carefully, trying to analyze it as best she can. She has no parameters for falling into time and space in what appears to be the most disastrous launch sequence she's ever seen.

"A gestalt entity?" she ventures, brows knitting. "Organic beings becoming one and then becoming technology?"

An impossible leap from one form to another - or so she had thought. But out here in the multiverse...

[silver_eyes_rose]

Ruby blinked at that.

“Wait, you’re saying the train is both the train AND those people?!” She said, shocked. “But… how?!”

[redprayer]

Rezo, like many of the audience, has a tight, concentrated little frown on his face, clearly thinking hard about what they’ve just seen. Guri and Ruby’s comments compel him to chime in, after a brief hesitation.

“There is a… similar process from my own world. We call such lifeforms chimeras, and not all the component parts necessarily have to be organic lifeforms,” Rezo says. “But it takes a considerable amount of understanding of sorcery and the structure of the component parts to produce a functioning chimera, and it’s impossible to revert the chimera back to its original form.”

Pause. “Or at least, there isn’t a known method in my own world.”

[marvelous_murderbot]

She shakes her head.

"I wouldn't know. But their consciousness got put together and torn apart multiple times in a space between realities...who knows what can happen, there?"

She shuddered a bit.

"Like they were smashed on the rocks and thrown together in a tide."

Re: Guri | Team Purple | OTA

[acapriciousthing]

"It's not unheard of." If one happens to be a ten billion year old entity with an entire universe of weird things and one's disposal, anyway. "But generally results from actions I don't approve of."

[marvelous_murderbot]

Curious wording.

"You don't approve of?"

[pleple]

"I can believe it but..." Her breathing is still a bit heavy from the intensity. At times, it's not clear whether the spirits of Newtypes are lingering with people, or with the machines that channel their power. The science of what she even is has lagged so far behind the desperation to use them as weapons.

"How... awful..."

[marvelous_murderbot]

She reached out to put a hand on Ple's shoulder, reassuring as best she can.

"I know," she says. It would have been truly terrible.

[controlsthedie]

The sensations Thanatos feels after watching the memory are horrible, and as he felt like he was being pulled apart when trapped in a small dark chest, it feels scarily familiar despite it not.

Thanatos brings his arms close to him, almost hugging himself. He is of two minds at these revelations. One, please stop messing with death and the natural order of things. Two...

"... Are we supposed to find people who might already be here?" Oddly enough, this is fact is easier for Thanatos to grasp because there are wretches in the Underworld who lose themselves and merge together into a new entity. This does not bode well to "FIND THEM" and separate them if true.

[jingyeets]

Jingyi, who had not had the last thirty seconds of his life experiencing a complete destruction and reforming of self as a memory, blinks and turns his head toward Thanatos at the question. A number of people just were stirring themselves as if from a dream, which he supposed the whole recording could be like, in a terrible way.

Only he doesn't quite... track what the god means.

"What do you mean?"

At least he isn't afraid of directly asking.

[controlsthedie]

"... The crew seemed to have merged together into the train if what I saw and felt meant anything."

Thanatos pauses, looking at everyone else. Some are acting like him, but there are others (like Jingyi) who are just looking at them (and him) with the most puzzled expressions on their faces.

"Did... you not receive a memory at the end?"

[wewillwewill]

It might not surprise some that Elidibus experiences the trance. But as with other occurrences in the viewing area it really is random chance. The painful shattering, over and over. Ripping thought and feeling, senses. Was this what it had felt like to be Sundered, Elidibus wonders.

Even within the trance, his expression is taut with the pain.

The second half is a little more relatable and all the more horrible to him for it. Losing emotion and memories is... while not entirely the same is something he has familiarity with. Rather than swiftly descending into that state, it had slowly worn at him over millennia.

And then there was the driven purpose. Save the star, bring salvation.

The trance breaks and Elidibus jerks back, having forgotten he's in a room with people. There's a shuddered gasp, a hand against something to steady himself. His expression is one of a man shaken.

He closes his eyes for a moment, attempting to center himself again.

[monkeyinthewrench]

Jake, for the most part, has come to take notes and try to piece this mess together. He's uncharacteristically solemn throughout, and thrown out of the memory earlier than the others. So there's a piece or two he's missing, but he can't miss the pain he sees.

"...hey man, you okay?" He shuffles over to Elidibus and gently takes his free arm, just in case.

[wewillwewill]

People don't often touch him for reasons related to concern. Or touch Elidibus at all. So there is a start when Jake's hand rests on the Ascian's free arm, which itself tenses visibly, followed by a sudden sharpened awareness. That's right. There are others around.

Though for a split second, Elidibus might well have been caught staring at the detective with surprise. Then he's composed again, or seems to be.

"I'm fine." Sure he is. The question that follows is sure to affirm it. "You... didn't experience the darkness? The memory..." He frowns, narrowing his eyes as he regards Jake. "No, you likely did not." Someone from the world he's seen the man from is surely not going to be so calm after that experience. Not when Elidibus himself...

[bruiserprincess]

Molly didn't experience the trance. But she's definitely experiencing some strange things going on here. Generally Elidibus has been pretty in control so this is unexpected.

She doesn't need or expect grownups to have any idea what's going on, but it's still surprising. "Uh, you okay?"

[wewillwewill]

It's certainly not usual at all. Even when they'd first spoken and he'd been weakened, Elidibus had remained calm and collected. This was something else. Of course once he'd been made to remember that he'd lost his composure in a room full of other Voidtreckers, he composes himself immediately. Forces himself to seem calm again.

He's far from it.

Turning to look at Molly, the Ascian studies her before giving nod in answer. "Thank you child." He's always had that habit with the youngest members of the crew. "It was nothing." Though a glance around the room would probably have him realizing that some had experienced the same or similar while others seemed oblivious.

"It seems you were not caught in the same vision as I." That much does seem obvious unless Molly's made of very stern stuff. "For that you are fortunate."

It almost borders on concern for what might have been pushed on Molly's shoulders.

lmf im sorry

[jingyeets]

"... Okay, what the hell shook you up?" Jingyi was still seated, but having not dropped into an extended falling apart of self until recollected, he had no measure to understand why people who'd been silent in the aftermath of the recording were now all coming to themselves in breathy and surprised ways. Delayed shock is one thing, but of anyone he'd expect that from, Elidibus is very, very low.

So low, he's even asking about it.

"Other than the fact the Voidtrecker Express survivors did what we thought they did, and then their whole system shook itself apart or something."

Look, it's definitely a reasonable mood.

[wewillwewill]

Jingyi is given a sharp look as Elidibus's attention is drawn to the dragon.

"A vision," the Ascian answers. His tone is slightly clipped and it's not likely because he's been asked a simple question.

"...Of what happened to them when reality shattered."

One that, for all Elidibus escaped a similar event on his star, was far too easy to recognize. Then there was what happened after that. A discreet but deep breath steadies him before he fully looks Jingyi's way.

"If it's to be believed, the mystery of what happened to the former crew may well have a simpler answer than anyone expected." By this time, the Ascian seems back to his normal self with little or no trace he'd been troubled remaining.

[tactlesstantei]

[Masumi's rattled, the look in her eyes suggesting that she's remembering something else.]

...Hey, you think that part at the end is similar to the Chaos memory at the fake Diagad? [The feeling of being torn apart and losing senses is similar to what Chaos shared back then.]

[pleple]

Well. That. Happened.

None of it is entirely unbelievable - none of it is impossibly shocking. Bonding with a machine... it's theorized that machines, mobile suits and mobile armors and otherwise, built for Newtypes like herself, could contain their souls even after death.

Still, the intensity of that vision has her breathing hard and a bit spaced out. That many souls... in such chaotic circumstances, and defying the basic order of time?

"...I... can't even say that I blame them for trying, but..." There are people she just might do that for... maybe...

[cureofmanyworlds]

“It’s such a strange situation…” Nozomi admitted, laying a hand on Ple’s shoulder. “You okay, though?”

[averyusefultray]

"Desperate people do desperate things." And that was definitely one of the more desperate things she'd ever heard of anyone trying. "They must not have known it was even possible for it to end up like this."

It's definitely not anything she would have predicted. She'll need more time to process, but for now she just wants to make sure Ple Two is okay.