Ghost in the Machine

Quiet, it was a strange thing to behold. Even though the Ark was a highly advanced space station with all of the best technology of humanity shoved into it and the hyper futuristic level of development, they never completely ran a silent station. There was always this background hum that could be felt even if it wasn’t necessarily heard.

It was gone.

It felt like death hung over everything.

Eerie and haunting, Yumi walked through what should be called the ruins of the habitat, though it was also designated as the new home of humanity. Also the last city of their civilization, if put another way, though such dark thoughts tried not to occupy them at the moment. All of the work that they faced helped to make it easier to forge ahead.

To her surprise, she found more machines walking about than humans. They easily outnumbered them three to one from the quick glance that she could take. Construction and clearing debris looked to be their primary focus. Though the few humans she saw still helped out the best that they could trying to salvage technology. A lot of them looked like they were going to fall over with only determination holding them together.

“What about the rest?” Yumi inquired.

He threw up his arm, which had plated material like her own, towards the light that leaked into the area. “You can see over there.”

If she didn’t know better, it seemed as though the atmosphere of the planet leaked, but the likelihood of them landing on a perfectly habitable planet was next to impossible. At the same time, like she discussed with Yuki, this virtual world already made some things happen that should have been impossible. So maybe they did.

However, that didn’t appear to be the case when she finally reached the end, which had become a type of observatory and possibly a reminder that death loomed on the planet if they failed. The light that came through into the Ark was deceptively kind in appearance, holding a soft and warm hue close to that of yellow-green, certainly alien, but not necessarily unwelcoming.

Outside the shield of the Ark was a wasteland of lifeless rock as far as Yumi could see, which wasn’t even that far. A thick haze of gas hung in the air that was likely a lethal combination of commonly occurring elements that didn’t suit the fragile human body. There was no plant life, nothing had been lucky enough to evolve within this harsh environment or perhaps it was impossible. She didn’t even know if there was enough of an atmosphere to do that. Gravity did its job keeping gases trapped, but it might not have been thick enough to do anything.

“Guess that luck had to run out.”

“More than you know.”

Chapter 491 – Ghost in the Machine

Back deep within what remained of the Ark, Karen along with Bravado boy stood around organizing the movement of work in what Yuki referred to as their HQ. It certainly wasn’t their command room that was massive and well built for the needs of their work. Wires and pipes ran everywhere making any sort of walking a hazard. Everything looked stripped and welded together in the worst possible way.

“I finished giving her the tour,” Yuki reported to them.

“Yumi! You’re finally awake!” Karen rushed over to her stopping her work and picked up her hands with her own machine ones with relief painted thickly over her face. “We weren’t sure how well the parts were going to be accepted with the extensive damage to your body.”

She glanced around trying to take it all in as they talked. “Seems I was lucky.”

“Yes…”

It was a mess, but it looked functional. They could monitor things from here, even if they couldn’t control the systems themselves. That part itself was important based on what Yuki already explained. “But it would seem that we’re going to need some more?”

“Yuki explained to you the situation then?”

“A little, at a high level, the quantum reactor that’s powering the shield is failing. It was never built for that sort of load and you’re seeing spikes. The atmosphere is leaking isn’t it?”

A sharp change in her continence revealed her return to business. “Quick on the analysis, glad I don’t have to explain everything.” Karen directed her over to their cobbled together terminal to show the readings coming from the reactor. “It’s been running at one hundred percent capacity since the maintenance crew set it up.”

“That itself wouldn’t be enough as it is designed to manage that in the short term as the backup if the main reactor is off line. The shield is a huge drain, but that alone wouldn’t be causing it. It’s likely damaged isn’t it?”

“That’s our assessment, but all of our experienced crew are either dead or still recovering.”

“Leaving you to need my help.”

“Yes, you’ve already proven that you know our systems unnaturally well and have a wide range of knowledge and skills.”

“Fixing quantum reactors is not exactly in my range…” Yumi stared at the power reading coming from it. Everything that she saw made sense that it would be damaged, the crash that they had hardly made it all that surprising. Though the fact that it even survived given its location was a miracle, let alone still even able to function. “What’s the nearest controls for it?”

“There aren’t any.”

“How am I supposed to work on it? The chamber is flooded with lethal radiation. I can’t exactly walk in there and turn the bolts back into place.”

“We’ve got personal environmental shields—“

“They are meant for hazardous and toxic planetary environments, not the core of a quantum fusion reaction that creates so many exotic particles and radiation that I’d be fried before even taking one step. There’s a reason it’s shielded behind so many layers of protection. It was one of Sumiko’s brainchild inventions that we still don’t properly understand.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s the reality.”

Yumi ground her teeth at the impossible situation that they handed her. She looked around trying to see if there was anyone else in the room. It was only the two of them, hardly even enough to qualify as a skeleton crew for their needs. “She built the damn thing.”

“She’s unavailable.”

“Unavailable?!” Yumi nearly snapped Karen’s head off with her yelling, but pulled back seeing something else hiding behind her eyes. There was something that she wasn’t telling her. “The thing was built by a genius, I’m hardly that. So don’t expect the same level of work.”

“I know you can do it!” Accepting the mission seemed to give enough strength back to Karen that whatever she was hiding disappeared from sight. She flipped quickly back to the task, which was a life or death situation.

Sighing harshly, a heavy assignment got dropped on her. “Give me whatever notes you can dig up that she has on the reactor. I haven’t exactly studied it that much. Also I need three machines as well.”

“I’ll free up three from tasks for your use.”

“How long do we have before complete failure?”

“The computer estimates a complete reactor shutdown in two weeks, but we’ll be dead long before that.”

“Prepare containment rooms just in case, somewhere that can protect everyone from the planet’s environment.”

“Even with what we’ve salvaged, we don’t have enough for all of the survivors!”

Yumi smirked darkly back to Karen. “Then I guess we both have our impossible missions to complete.” She turned away and walked out of their HQ. It was going to take a bit for them to get what she needed to do the work that she agreed to complete. “I need to eat…”

Work on the quantum reactor went about as well as Yumi expected. She did not even understand it as deeply as she thought. It was not something that she specifically researched since it was unrelated, but she knew about all of Sumiko’s history in order to be able to do whatever it took. So it was no mystery to her, the existence, and the science behind it sort of had some logic to her. Some ended up being surprisingly small.

Three days of researching and analyzing, she didn’t find herself any closer to an answer. It was rather frustrating since the theory behind it wasn’t that far beyond her, if she had more time. But as Karen reminded her multiple times, that wasn’t something that she had on her side.

She threw the data pad across the room and banged her head against the wall of the private corner of the storage room that made their new medical ward. Hardly a place of privacy, but they had nothing else to offer her and she couldn’t make any more progress staring at the reactor. She needed a break from the annoying permanence of its warning.

Yuki noticed her annoyance and approached carefully picking up the pad. “Need a break?” he suggested holding onto the notes rather than turning the back over.

“Probably, how long has it been?”

“Since you slept or that you’ve been reading?”

“Whatever makes it sound less unhealthy.”

He extended a hand out to her to pick her up off the floor. “Come on, a different set of recycled air will do you good.”

“You really know how to treat a woman.”

“I’ve had a few years to brush up on my charm,” he grinned.

“Right…” She grabbed his hand and stood up. If she had real legs, she might have said that they would have been stiff or numb from all of her sitting, but they functioned normally without complication. Unnerving the same as always.

Yuki’s idea of a date left something to be desired, she thought, though given the options he had it was hardly much that she could complain about. The only options were staring out into the death void of the green-yellow soup that would kill them all in a few days or sitting on a pile of debris in a city of death that used to house hundreds of thousands of humans, most of whom remained buried or possibly even vaporized. A grim outlook from anywhere she looked. “You really know how to pick the spot.”

“I had to get a reservation a week in advance just to get in.”

“That booked up?”

“It is the premium location in the city.”

“You don’t get a view like this.” She lowered her head a little, resting it on the palms of her hands watching the machines steadily continuing their work without concern for the future. Their unflinching resolve to the work might have been inspirational had they been human.

“So what have you learned so far?”

“That I’m going to need another degree in fictional science just to understand this properly. That woman really is a genius. She thinks on a completely different level than everyone else. Nothing deters her or slows her down.”

“Such resolve is rare, if not isolating…”

“But she’s got so many that look up to her and follow her. She’s got it all. I can’t help but be a little envious. Nothing I do will ever be able to match her. I don't have that sort of gift.”

Yuki patted her on the back giving her a comforting rub. “Everyone is born with a gift, you’re no different.”

“I’m not that special, Yuki. I’ve only gotten here by putting in more effort than those better than me.”

“You just haven’t seen it yet. Don’t give up!”

“No, I haven’t given up. I don’t really have a choice in that matter. It’s just staring at her notes and looking at that reactor makes it clear how much of a gap there is between her and what I’ve taught myself. She really is beyond my reach.”

“She was born in this world, she’s going to have a clear advantage.”

Yumi stood up suddenly and turned around to look at Yuki directly. “No, you don’t know what I’ve found out. It goes beyond just her knowing more than me.”

“Yumi?”

“She’s the reason we’re still alive! Even in her seeming arrogance to defy all logic and use the engine to open a wormhole she foresaw the chance of failure and implemented a back up.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know how we were saying all of this was impossible, that we should be dead. It was her. She saved us. Though she’s also the reason that we’re dying now too ironically. But she probably planned on fixing it.”

“Yumi, what did you learn?”

“The reason that the quantum reactor is in poor shape is because she used the unique properties that it has as a side result of its fusion reaction. The quantum reactor exists in different states simply put and she funneled that into the Ark itself to alter its state so that it could survive the atmospheric entry and crash. It was in both a state of destruction and not.”

“That doesn't really make a lot of sense, that sounds like fantasy.”

“It’s made up science fiction, probably bad science since I don’t really know my science that well. But those are the laws here. The fact of the matter is that she’s the reason we’re alive, but also the reason I don’t know how to fix that damn thing. What she did fried and overspent parts of it that were never designed for such a thing. I have no idea if I’ll be able to fix it in time.”