Ravens of Eternity

Chapter 67

67 Deep Entanglements

Mack sat in front of his PC and stared at the monitor before him. Its cold blue glow etched hard lines on his face.

It was late at night, and his eyes were bloodshot. His pupils looked flat and dead, even more so after he took a swig of his now-warm beer.

On the monitor was raw footage that Eva and Miko had sent him. Just the two streams instead of the normal five.

There really wasn’t much that he could work with, and that gnawed at him. On top of that, neither of the girls had given him much direction as to where to go with any of it. Previously, they knew what they were going to get into. It usually involved a great deal of violence and excitement.

But even after a few days had passed by, all they had given him was rather mundane. It was usually them traveling, or talking, or sightseeing, or sitting in their cores, or recovering in darkness. Hours and hours of it.

What really ate at him was the fact that Eva hadn’t talked to him very much in all that time. Usually, they chatted a bit for about an hour every day or so. It wasn’t much, but he enjoyed his time with her greatly.

The two of them had always vibed well with each other. They had faced similar obstacles and problems when they were children, and it shaped them into social outcasts. On top of that, they were their family’s black sheep.

Eva’s parents wanted absolutely nothing to do with her, and pawned her off to her grandparents instead. Similarly, Mack’s parents were so hands-off that they simply hired people to raise him – they were certainly affluent enough to do so.

Not having strong parental figures had pretty much wrecked them throughout their lives. Both had grown into horrible misanthropes, and avoided most people most of the time. Although she was the worse of the two.

.....

Eva was basically a modern-day hermit.

Now that she had started up her new life, she had changed dramatically. She became much more proactive and a little more social. Her life was headed upwards and forwards.

But since she began this contract, she barely said anything at all. Usually just a perfunctory greeting.

And that ate away at him.

He took another swig of his beer, but found that it was already empty. He got up with a slight groan and headed towards the kitchen.

Why hasn’t she said anything? Is she ignoring me? Or is she mad? Is it because I told her I wanted to try again?

Truth was, the attention she gave him pumped him full of endorphins. And now that she had gone rather quiet, he felt starved for attention both emotionally and physically. He needed a fix, badly.

He put his empty bottle on the counter, where it joined a number of others – about a half dozen. Then he grabbed a fresh one from the fridge.

Why do I feel like this? he thought. Why do I still want to be with her? I know it’s impossible. We’re in two separate universes.

He wanted to have the one person he could never have again. And he honestly felt a little stupid for feeling that way.

The very idea that he deserved another chance after all he had done, on top of them being literally divided across realities... But his desire overrode any logic.

The combination of his thoughts, emotions, and alcohol spun him round and round. He became incredibly frustrated by the civil war that raged in him. It slowly tore him apart.

He popped open his new beer, and downed it in one go. Then he added the empty bottle to the rest.

~

Back in the lab, Eva was making a couple of simple adjustments and repairs to her core. Sort of.

She had gotten a feel for her core, and became more familiar with it. She began to see it as an extension of herself. And not just the core itself, but of the installed modules and systems as well.

While in the midst of her 23rd Promethean Merge, she ended up detecting a couple of potential problems. She had noticed a few slight power fluctuations with a couple of her installed modules.

For example, control translation module three ‘flickered’ in regards to its maximum power. All others sat at exactly what she wanted them to be, but this one kept going slightly over or slightly under.

It felt restless, like something had bugged it.

There were a few other modules that behaved similarly. None of them had caused any warnings of any kind and operated normally. But they felt a little off.

It was as though the modules were irritated and itchy.

So after she had spent a couple more hours in the core and another one to rest, she came back with the intent to scratch those itches.

Using some of the tools that were strewn about, she opened up a number of outer access panels, then dove into it.

But she didn’t know exactly what she was looking at. Although she had gotten a sense for the core’s systems, it didn’t mean she suddenly understood everything.

At the sight of all those nuts and bolts and wires and circuits, she became immediately lost. So she quickly turned to the other pilots and asked them for their help.

“Hey, uh,” she began, “anyone know how to do core maintenance?”

“Ugh,” exclaimed Redstar. “Fixing the core is for the rest of the team.

“Yes, well, you don’t exactly have your team of mechanics here, do you?” provoked Merlin.

“I have some knowledge,” said Miko, “and would like to know more. It is probably to our benefit if we learn how to fix our own cores.”

Redstar huffed at that statement.

“I didn’t come all the way out here to become a mechanic,” she said. “I’m a fuckin’ pilot.”

“It does mention in our contracts,” Merlin retorted, “that we-”

“That we get to test a prototype, not learn to fix it.”

“I consider maintenance a part of flying. If you’re in a long hauler on a job, and something breaks down, you’re stuck unless you can manage the issue.”

“And if you can’t, you call someone to show up and help you.”

“Calm down, everyone,” the Admiral interjected. “I suppose we could have some techs in here to assist you with your repairs. But I certainly recommend that you fully understand your cores first.”

The Admiral had taken note of how Merlin and Redstar became more heated with each other over time. When they first started, the two were rather genial towards each other.

But now, their very presence began to irritate the other.

Admiral Chase wasn’t sure if that was the after-effects of the Prometheus core, or if it was cabin fever due to being in a sunless asteroid all the time, or if they just didn’t like each other very much.

Could have been a mixture of all three. Regardless, she needed to know if there were mental ramifications to merging with the cores. So she surreptitiously messaged her brother to keep an eye out for their mental health as well.

If they changed, she wanted to know the details about it.

“Okay, fine,” groaned Redstar. “Guess I’ve got no choice, then.”

“Er, what were we doing again? Repairs?” asked Merlin.

“Ah, I just have a couple of small replacements to make, but don’t know where to start. Figured I’d ask one of you.”

Eva then pointed out her open panels, and listed out the modules and systems that needed to be looked at.

“Those are easy,” said Merlin.

He then picked up a few tools and showed her how to pry apart the casing to get to the parts. Miko and Redstar also peeked over his shoulder as he worked.

He was a rather adequate teacher, all told. Explanations often came as he dismantled things, about why they needed to come off in the order they did.

The core pieces he had taken out were also laid out in a somewhat organized manner, where similar or exact pieces were grouped with each other.

He then pulled out the offending piece – it was a length of woven silver wire. However, a portion of it had burnt from overuse. Although it still behaved well within parameters, it was a potential danger.

“Ah, interesting,” he said. “It’s good that you wanted to remove this. If it burned out completely while out in the field, it might have been disastrous.”

It didn’t take him long to cut off an equal length of fresh silver wire, then put it in place of the old one. Putting it all back together also didn’t take much time, and he made sure to walk them through every step.

Although it was a very simple repair with very little moving parts, Eva found it incredibly enlightening. The more she understood about her core, the easier it was for her to merge with it.

“Anyone else’s cores need fixing or adjustments or whatever?” she asked. “I wanna see more of this.”

“Adjustments? Fixes?” asked Redstar. “Nah, my core reported all systems green.”

“Mine too,” said Miko.

“My core also reported green,” Eva said. “It passed basic diags. I only figured out these issues when I looked at the modules a little closer. When I did, some of them felt a bit – don’t make fun of me for saying this – they felt annoyed.”

“Annoyed?” queried the Admiral.

“Yeah, like when you’ve got an itch you can’t reach,” replied Eva. “It felt as though those modules expressed that level of annoyance.”

The Admiral’s eyes went wide with shock as the implications suddenly hit her. If Prometheus was affecting the pilots’ minds, it was possible that their minds also affected their cores.

It was possible that the cores were developing emergent intelligences.

She wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing. Not that she cared either way. She wanted to see a core develop independent thought.

“I think I’m going to check my own core,” said the Admiral. “And everyone else should, too.”

“Great, more work,” moaned Redstar. “Less vroom.”

~

Commander Chase was in his assigned medbay unit when his sister’s message came in his DI. It asked for him to take a better look at everyone’s mental state.

“Didn’t need to ask me that,” he muttered aloud.

The bags under his eyes were also puffy and dark. He rubbed the strain out of his reddened eyes, then turned back towards his terminal.

On it were a number of strands of DNA, which she scrolled up and down. As though he was searching for something. He stopped at a portion, rotated around it, then copied it over to a tray to the side.

The tray had a number of portions of DNA in it, perhaps a dozen or so.

He then zoomed out until he hit the cellular level, and did the same thing. Looked for a few specific cells and saved them off to the side.

Another zoom level later, and he copied over neurons and synapses.

.....

Afterwards, he zoomed out all the way until Eva’s naked form appeared on his screen. Commander Chase sat there for some time, and simply stared at her.

His thoughts, emotions, and libido were all in disarray at the very sight of her.