Ch 8 : Every Time a Bell Rings…

Everything was finally over, so we went home.

Uncle stationed Drone bees to fix the broken pylon tower. Drone bees were the 'fix it' bees. Their job was to repair and inspect broken equipment. they had their work cut out for them.

The whole tower computer had a fatal collapse, meaning they had to build the tower's computer system from scratch. In some ways that was a good thing, since they could modernize it. The software was pretty old.

Janus went to prison. I don't really know where that was, but Uncle said he'd get all the help he needed to survive losing part of his spirit there. All I could really do was wish him the best of luck.

Because of the major compromise in security, The Hive was put under a tentative 24-7 lockdown, so I was stuck in my room. I couldn't even go out to the flower field.

Uncle had to spend time investigating the issue that caused the Tower Control Computer to turn evil, and he also had to make sure no other computer AI were going rogue either. He said it was going to be a long, and grueling process.

He wanted to examine Anima for a little while too, so I gave him permission to check her out. He promised he wouldn’t decommission her, which was really my only worry. When he was done, he’d give her back to me for safe keeping.

In the meantime, I took some time to rest and take my mind off of things. Being in a life or death situation has a way of making you feel tired and sad.

You know something? I don’t think I fully disagreed with what Anima said when she was evil. Not the humans needing to be in darkness forever, but the part where she said I didn’t know humans very well. I’d only ever met about...

Gosh, I really haven't met many at all, have I? Most of my knowledge came from shows, books, and video games.

It really made me want to go to the surface world even more. Once I got there, I could meet all sorts of people, probably both good and bad. But I think it would be a while since the lockdown was in effect. And I needed to grow up more first.

Oh well. No sense in worrying about it now, I was tired.

~☆☆☆~

Some sleep did me wonders. The next day I felt refreshed, but still a little bit out of it. I decided to take my mind off of things and do something fun.

Unfortunately for me, everything was super boring for some reason. Maybe I didn't have a whole lot of motivation, but fun things weren't making me happy.

I tried video games, but that didn’t work. TV, but no dice. My books weren’t helping either.

This stinks.

Out of sheer boredom, I twisted my ear to pop up my head antenna. I twisted it back and it went back down. I did that a few times until I heard something weird…

“Danny, did you forget to clean your room again?”

“No mum, I swear!”

After that, all I heard was static.

“What was that?” I raised my brow.

I think that was a radio broadcast between a kid and his mom…but where was it from?

-…-

Oh, it looked like it was something from The Hive. But who was Danny? I’d never heard of him before, was he a bee?

No…you know what that must have been? That must have been a broadcast from the surface! I’d known The Hive would collect all sorts of data from the surface, but I think that was a real time broadcast being amplified down here.

I set up my antenna and started listening in. Sadly, all I heard was static.

With a little luck, I noticed that the single was being jammed now. Go figure. Uncle must have realized I could tap into it and wanted to stop me.

“I wanna’ listen in…” I pouted.

Things were looking hopeless, but then I remembered I could use my radio antenna to counter jam and tap into different broadcasts. And if I could incorporate my new hacking ability, I could discover a whole new level of excitement hidden in the air waves!

I started counter jamming, then I heard broadcasts again. It worked!

“How did you feel when you got back home?” One voice said.

“I felt empty. Seeing my comrades fall, hoping I’d make it home myself…I couldn't sleep for weeks. My dreams were haunted by…”

This was making me feel icky. Just being in my own life or death situation was really making this hard to listen to.

Luckily I was able to change the station by twisting my right ear.

Oh! I found music! It was poppy music, which made me want to dance.

Samael didn't like it though. He put his head into my hair trying to block out the sound.

"You don't like it, huh?" I pet him a little, then turned down the music. "Okay, we don't have to listen to it right now."

"Ssssss…" he hissed.

I kept playing with the radio until I just got bored with it. The rest of the stations I was getting were either music in another language or boring sports stuff.

Uncle came flying in the room in his bee form, then zapped me with his laser eyes. Then he disabled my radio antenna! It automatically went back into my head.

"Hey, what gives?!"

"This is a violation of safety protocol,” He said. “Please don't abuse your abilities, Young Mistress. It’s for your own good.” He flew out of the room.

No fun! I swear, I wasn't allowed any fun!

Oh well. I had dolls, maybe it was time to play with them for a little while.

Did I mention this was just the first day of lockdown? It felt like it'd been ages...but it was actually only a few hours. And to make it worse, it was just a day after my birthday!

I didn’t even get a present…or cake. Uncle was right, life could be unfair.

~☆☆☆~

Right when things were at their most boring, I started to think about the stardust ability I unlocked. It seemed like something that had a lot of potential to break my boredom, since it was so shiny and rainbowy.

I excitedly spawned some in my hands. It came out like glitter confetti.

For fun, I started tossing it around the room. The little pieces started to glow and light the place up like a disco ball. I turned off all the lights and shut the windows to get an even more pretty sight.

"Oh wow!"

The room was simply bathed in colour. I kept throwing out more and more until the whole floor was ripe with bits of crystal all over. It was a sparkly mess of wonder!

Lucky for me, they were dissipating into radiation, like back in the tower. So cleanup was easy.

I wanted to learn more about what Stardust was. Like, why did it make radio waves? So I went and talked with Uncle about it.

He was still busy working with other bees, but he pointed out a book I could look into. It was called, The Electromagnetic Spectrum: a guide of all the lights that brighten our day.

What a fancy title, am I right?

To find this book, I had to make my way to dad's personal library. That was a nice quiet place with thousands of books, nothing fun like comics or manga, but still very interesting stuff.

The book I wanted was on the very top of one of the shelves, I was too short to reach it.

I dragged over a wooden chair to get some reach. I was just barely tall enough to grab it and tug it down. Dust trailed along and got everywhere.

Cough cough!

This thing was really dusty. I almost couldn't see the cover until I cleaned it off.

After that, I started to read.

-...-

So this book was about the electromagnetic spectrum, and it explained that there were several different forms of radiation.

Radiation might sound dangerous, but that's probably just a stigma. Some of the things on the list are completely harmless.

Let me explain that a little; The spectrum starts at radio waves, which is what makes up radio signals and TV. Then goes to microwaves, which is what heats up food...that one can be dangerous, I guess. Then it goes to infrared, which is pretty much like a red heat. Then we get to visible light, which is what we see during a rainbow, or what lets us see anything at all.

Still with me? We're half-way done.

Then we get to ultraviolet, which is basically super purple. Then X-rays, which are used to see your bones...if you're organic. Then finally gamma rays, which is what we all think of when we talk about really dangerous radiation.

Pheew! That was a lot. Glad we got through it.

So imagine that the spectrum was like a ripple of water after you throw a rock in. The closer each ripple is, you'll get a different form of radiation. When ripples are far away, they're radio waves. When they’re close, they’re gamma rays. And of course there’s plenty of things in-between.

I know stars made visible light, but was it possible that they also made other types of radiation too? That would explain how the crystal was breaking down into other things on the spectrum.

You know something...we have a book that talks about the sun and stars. I ran around the library looking for it.

There it was! On top of a small stack of books I forgot to put back a while ago…opps…

I started skimming through to find some information on starlight. This book was mostly a picture book, but it had some good info.

I read out of the book, “Stars, including the Sun, emit all forms of light across the electromagnetic spectrum…”

Eureka!

That was exciting! I started to understand exactly what was going on then. So, stardust really was crystalized radiation from the sun. It wasn't just light, but radio waves and whatever else a big celestial ball of power could produce.

I bet if I tried, I'd be able to detect the whole spectrum radiating out of the crystal.

Well, that was too complicated to check right now…I was getting pretty hungry. Studying on an empty stomach was hard.

-...-

A nice smell brushed across my nose, it was sweet, like baked treats.

Oh, it was so lovely that my stomach put me on autopilot, forcing me to the kitchen.

I went in and saw Uncle baking something in his human form.

“Uncle, what are you making?” I sniffed the air, smelling all that goodness.

“I’m surprised you can’t figure it out on your own.” He smiled at me.

Oh? What was he…OH! It must have been cake!

I ran at him and hugged him, squeezing my arms as tight as I could.

“I wanted to surprise you, but it seems you got here a bit early.”

Remember when I said he couldn’t synthesize the Apple Honey flavour? Well, because of that, he had to literally make the cake by hand, and the only way to do that was in his human form.

Right now he just finished getting it in the oven, but it still looked like it was coming along really well. It looked like there were a few cake pans in there…why was he making so many?

When he finished setting a timer for an hour, he turned around and I saw his silly apron that had a cute pig on it saying, ‘Best Chef in Congrlin.’ I didn’t know where Congrlin was, but the apron was adorable.

Hey, you know what? Where did he get the Apple Honey anyways? My tree was still dead.

“Uncle, where did you get the ingredients for the cake?”

He answered by telling me that while I was reading in the library, which apparently lasted about six hours…he made a trip down to Elysium and met with the Talking Tree.

As a reward for helping stop the mana thieves, she gave him some of the berries we needed to make the cake, and also let him have a new sapling too.

One other thing the Talking Tree wanted us to try was water the dead Boni tree with spirit water. She hoped it would bring it back to life, but she wasn't sure.

All the Hobgoblins and the Talking Tree were pretty worried about me, asking specifically if I was okay. Uncle told them I was doing surprisingly well, considering everything. I guess I was, since I got my motivation back.

“Young mistress, I have another gift for you.” He folded up the apron and put it away in a drawer. “But we’ll need to go to the courtyard for it.”

“I thought we were in lockdown.”

“We are, but the threat level is low based on my inspections. You’ll be safe in the front yard.”

He must have been on break from checking things. If the coast was clear, I wasn’t going to be upset getting a little fresh air.

~☆☆☆~

The flowers in the field made the outdoors smell really nice today. I had to remember to open my window when I went back inside to catch the smell.

Uncle and I settled at the very center of the courtyard for training of some kind. I changed into some sweatpants and made Samael set up my pony tail behind my head. For fun, I put on a sweatband around my head too, even though I couldn't sweat. None of these clothes actually did anything for me, but they sure did look the part.

I don't know how training was part of my gift, but maybe I was going to learn some cool skills or something?

"Yalda, it's time you start learning about magic."

“Really?!” I squealed with excitement, bouncing in place and stepping toward him with a smile.

“Yes. It would be unwise to not focus on mastering your abilities.” In his bee form, he hovered down to be eye level with me. “Now, I have a very special ability to unlock in you. I know you will like this.”

Oh, what was this? I know I was full of surprises, but what would he unlock?

A message appeared in my vision, asking for permission to let Honey Bee 1 access security systems and my hard drive. I gave him access.

-New feature unlocked!-

-Wings can now be deployed on demand-

Oh my goodness, I HAVE WINGS!?

Fluffy white wings, covered in the most soft and weightless feathers, spread forth from my back. They parted the air as they stretched for the first time.

The two wings went out about a meter and a half each, and I had full control over their maneuverability. Since they were a new appendage, it took a few seconds for my mana to circulate through them and give them feeling.

As mana filled them, I had that prickly feeling you get when you’ve lost circulation in your arm. Then when it finally subsided, I had to give them a test drive.

“I can fly!”

“Wait…”

“YIPPIE!”

I leaped up into the air!

CRASH!

But then fell flat on my face.

“Ouch…” I cried. That was scary. I couldn’t fly yet I guess…

Uncle helped me stand and used some sort of tiny tornado wind magic to get the dust and dirt off of me.

“You may have wings, but that is only a small part of flying.”

“But, I wanna’ fly now.”

“Even fledgling birds take time learning to fly, Young Mistress.”

He was right. I probably jumped the gun a little bit there. But can you blame me? Just finding out you have wings has a way of exciting a person.

Oh well. I guess this was something that was going to take time. Practice does make perfect.

Uncle already knew how to fly, and he was up for teaching me. Our wings may have been very different, since his looked like blue glass, but he said the same principles applied.

There were about twenty books he wanted me to study in order to learn all about aerodynamics, weather, anatomy (of birds), gravity, space, gyroscopes (Whatever that was) and he also wanted me to study a bit about wind magic too.

Each of these books were thick as a brick, you could make a house out of them. He was going easy on me. Twenty books was like a leisurely afternoon of reading.

Well, maybe not that easy…but I could get through them eventually.

He wanted to start my training right away, but he had a very unusual first instruction.

I was supposed to open and close my wings, stretch them all around, and hold them in different poses. Then he wanted me to learn how to make them disappear, and reappear.

At first, it was really easy. You couldn’t pay me enough to stop dancing around and flapping my wings everywhere.

But then it hit me...they got super sore.

The exercising was taking a lot out of me. My wings were starting to feel weak, becoming very heavy on my back. We called it a day after about twenty minutes of practice.

"So, why did I have to get my wings all sore?"

"The more you stretch them now, the easier they'll be to move later."

I think I understood that. It's like working out. You need to start with small dumbbells and work your way up to bigger ones. After you'd use them, your arms would be tired. That's what I saw in the shows anyways. I never worked out.

I really felt like I put a lot of work into training my wings today. By the end of my stretching session, I felt like I’d literally become stronger for it.

-CONGRATULATIONS! Xp requirements met! You've Leveled Up!-

Huh…? Why did that message just appear in my field of view?

-...-

Level up? Did that mean…? No way…

"Hey, Uncle...I have another question."

"Yes?"

"Is my life a video game?"