“Of course. This city has much commerce. The air isn’t very good though, so you may want to wear masks.”
Drake places his helmet back in place and activates the life support, “Can you still hear and understand me?”
I realize these aliens haven’t gotten our names yet.
“I can Drake, we should probably tell our guide our names though. I’m Myco and he’s Drake.”
“I see,” says Gom. “It’s a bustling area, so I would also advise some small weapons for personal defense; filthy ratmen may try to panhandle.”
“Well what sort of money does your civilization use?” I ask Gom.
“Batteries, and radioactive ore, mostly.” He thinks a moment “...As well as Niodes.”
I’m starting to notice a theme I think here Drake.
“I do hope Gom that all these notes we are taking do not offend you.”
There is a strange gurgling noise. It takes a few moments to realize this is how Gom laughs.
“No, not at all. I was assuming you were writing to each other, since our languages are different. The machines Zeteg and I gave you only work for spoken languages, not written ones.”
“Oh I did not know that.” Drake lies smoothly, “I just find your civilization so interesting. I need to keep a lot of notes. Quanta can you replay the last notes I wrote?” Hoping that the AI could convincingly lie as well.
“Certainly master Drake. These ‘people’ are very different from us but their level of technology seems about equal to ours in most respects.”
Albeit with more of a brown footprint than a green one.
“The Ratmen have translators too but I would not trust them. They are… beneath us, best suited for garbage collecting and crude labor services, some do junk peddling.”
“Any of the junk useful?” casual question.
“Perhaps Drake, but I would be hesitant to interact with them. If you really would like to though, I can show you and Myco the merchant center… you can install a chip on your translator to understand the different merchants. Antis, we come in a great variety of shapes and do not all speak the same language… which is why the translator is so useful.”
“I can see that. But truthfully I was wondering what you knew of your enemies. Their diet and physiology. My scans noticed quite a difference in them and I was wondering how many you had managed to dissect.”
“Oh, well, there will be some information about them in the museum, but I can tell you that our founders, the NoRunners bred both us Antihumans and the Ratmen. Our empire, they are… it is tricky. We rely on ratlings for some forms of work and they in return get to live for the most part peacefully. Those ones attacking you before were a savage dissident group. I have the scalps of six as trophies.”
“I claimed a trophy myself.” Drake smiles
At the Norunner city
“Sir a large force of mechs have arrived through the gate. Your orders?”
“Send a burrower mech with high pheromone secretion to deal with them. They’ll fall into fighting each other then we can send a recovery team to salvage the remains.”
Drake and Myco travel towards the museum, Drake notices the ratmen slaving away on trash pick up. Drake scans their bio readings as they pass. hmmm interesting their DNA is degrading too but not as much. He compares the reading to the ones from the group they fought, small traces of radiation but no degradation at all, they have something protecting them. I wonder what.
Gom explains something by means of an introduction when they enter the main annex to the museum “Drake, Myco,... you may get some strange stares… I have assuaged that high levels of symmetry are the norm amongst your people but ours have an aesthetic favoring asymmetry. Perhaps you would be treated with less bias from one of our elders. In the antechamber at the end of this hall is one of our elder historians.”
This “historian” is the docent and caretaker of the Antihuman’s cultural museum. His body has been largely replaced by cybernetics: one leg is an obvious prosthetic, he has several small arms which all appear to be mechanical and instead of a proper face his brain is housed in a clear container, floating in some type of essential nutrient bath. Instead of eyes and ears he possesses electronic visual and auditory sensors. His mouth is natural and he has a beard which he gently tugs at with one of his limbs, slightly nervously.
“I am Yithson. Apparently the rumors some outsiders had came through the gate were true… Gom accompanying you here verifies it.”
Gom nods then has to excuse himself for awhile; he has been called back by Zeteg and has some business to attend to on the Station. Something about renewed activity at the Negaverse Gate and a need to observe it.
Yithson glances at Myco and Drake, his camera eyes adjusting focus and electronic ears position towards the visitors with a tiny whir.
“I will try to answer any questions you may have about our founders and the NoRunners which they worshiped.”
This historian is from a much earlier generation than Gom and Zeteg and though he did not personally know Kellek, apparently in his dimmest memories recalls having possibly seen a NoRunner once, he thinks. Yithson has spent several decades collecting different stories from various tribes and groups about their founders and the NoRunners and these are featured as one of the collections in the museum (the stories, not the actual tribes people… with the exception of a few carefully reassembled skeletal specimens held on display in the “unnatural history” section).
Drake took little interest in the museum this section seemed more like a library, a digital copy could be perused at Drake’s leisure at a later time.
Myco picked up on this somewhat and decides to ask Yithson a question “Yithson, we couldn’t help but notice there appears to be a large social division between the ratpeople and you mutants… what’s the story there?”
The aged caretaker’s brain-bucket lights up first red then green as he begins to formulate a response, then stops and thinks a little bit. There is a pause in Yithson’s lecture and some bubbles rise. He decides to scrap his original reply and instead goes at things from a different angle. “Oh, well if that interests you, we should go to the Unnatural History section.” His electronic eyes scan shifting first right, then left and back again. It becomes evident as he retrieves an access key from a lanyard around his neck that the area Yithson would like to take Drake and Myco to is a restricted section.
Yithson again checks to be sure that no one else is watching. Not even his assistants who tend the museum?
“You two are outsiders, it doesn’t matter so much if I tell you but for the dwellers in this city, they would rather pretend this isn’t so. The mutants which you refer to as Antihumans and those you call ratlings were at one point the same.”
Drake wanted to see if these people were totally ignorant to their eventual fate or were preparing to subdue and extract their DNA. “Interesting. Your genetic modifications made your DNA more susceptible to degradation than the ratmen, but even they are starting to degrade living in this environment, you did know that correct?”
Yithson’s brain-bucket lights up and bubbles again some more in response. “Our chief scientists… have been aware of this for awhile, but for the time being there is not a whole lot we can do about it. You see, the majority of our core technologies came from the wreckage of a ship Kellek had sent out… so our way of offsetting the problem is through replacing as much living tissue with cybernetics and synthetics as we can.” He gestures with one of his many robotic appendages, calling up a floating screen with some captioned figures taking up the body of it and charts about projections predicting continued degradation off to the side.
“It isn’t fully correct to say these were all our modifications. As I’d said before, originally both we and the ratmen were the same. Our founders, the NoRunners made our ancestors this way for fun, for conquest and to appease their curiosity.” He makes a sweeping dismissive motion with another arm, switching off the screen. “What they did large scale to colonize our worlds we do on a much smaller, more individual level. To truly understand these things though you would have to understand the nature of the religions here.”
Yithson calls up another screen to illustrate his newest point. “Ours are mainly variations on technotheocratic singularitarianism and the like.” The images on the screen split down the middle and sort to show the Antihumans’ main transfiguration cults on one side and the beliefs of the ratmen on the other. “The ratlings, they have a more holistic relationship to their environment, despite it being a tainted and polluted one. We’d go so far as to suspect they were a second experiment by our founders, in an attempt to deal with problems generated by us, their first experiment.”
He concludes as follows:
“Basically, we cannot reverse the original series of strong genetic changes our NoRunners did to us, so the next best thing we can do is to embrace further changes.”
Drake shakes his head, he was fairly certain that the biology of the ratmen made them more resistant but it had to be some sort of technology the barbarian ratmen possessed that kept them from degrading from the radiation and other pollutants in the environment. Maybe a shielded underground ship, city, bunker yes some sort of environmental bunker or… lab. Maybe he should contact the Antithesis’s AI with this information, let Drake investigate. Where was Patrick? no contact from him yet bothered Drake; unknown variables.
Myco fiddles with an artifact on one of the tables.
Yithson scolds him: “Don’t touch that!”
It was the remains to a cybernetic implant on a skull.
Drake takes interest; he sidles closer to the artifact. remote scan and download if possible.
Yithson takes it from him, inspecting the fragile piece for damage. After seeing that there is no damage he calms down and sets it back on the table.
“After a member of our kind dies, we check the logs of any computerized bits to see if the data will be useful later.” Several of the small mechanical limbs pry a chip from the housing of the implant. “This is the important part.”
Despite admonishing myco not to touch the skull, Yithson proceeds to manhandle several more components out of the cybernetic implant on it. One he seems to handle more delicately than the others though is a small orb with a matte finish that distinctly glows around the edges despite being opaque. “This is the most important part.” He holds it out for Drake to be able to look at if he chooses to. “A link to the NoRunners… sort of.”
Drake takes as close a look as he is allowed, his eyes dancing in excitement. This technology mirrored the ones found in his first lab. Meaning he could copy all data there without touching it. Drake types a message for Myco, You know I could reverse most of the degradation. I have their creators research mastered and improved.
Myco looks down at his wrist panel while trying to act discreetly about the whole thing and idly types out a response. You think so? Eh, maybe. I feel like their founder was something of a madman though.. and perhaps this society shares some of that ‘madness’? Probably keep it on the table as a possible bargaining chip.
Myco asks the keeper a question “I’d assume that it has great importance to your people?”
Yithson seems to light up about it… literally “Yes, this is the first piece to the implant, we embed them in newborns as part of a ceremony, before any other grafts or tech they may receive at later ages. If you were wondering where my translator is… I don’t have one. I’m from the generation where it was not small enough yet, so this entire museum houses one within part of its network.”
Meaning the extent of Yithson’s power is limited to in and around the nearby grounds to the museum.
“So you’re literally married to the job”, Drake laughs.
“Yes. I have my assistants bring me relics they find from outside, then I classify them and help them to interpret things. When I was younger I used to travel but these days I prefer my collections here. That translator is ubiquitous though, even ratlings have them though they generally tend to eschew most other body modifications.” He takes another look at Drake and Myco. “From your stature and means of carrying yourselves, I’d say you two are men of study from your homeplace too? Reminds me of when I was younger and had less replacement parts.”
“Yes men of learning and exploration.”
“Adventurers and inventors, right right.”
One may notice amongst the other details of this area is what appears to be an antique rail cannon. Smaller than the type used on mecha but larger than the tiny hand type. It probably went on a vehicle. It isn’t armed but has been humorously aimed to face pointing out the window. If you were to look out this window you’d see the courtyard below where a young ratman is making a toy out of some components he’d salvaged from a dumpster while his parents are collecting garbage, and if you looked even closer you’d see that on breaks they take swigs from bright green containers they keep on their person at all times and that they drink only from these, not any of the sludgy water from the external environment.
“Myco, Drake, there is a side to this city which probably hasn’t been revealed to you yet. One fanatical cult hopes to revive the remains of the brain of one of our founders. The rest of us are content to emulate the NoRunners with our own interpretation but these zealots … I fear, would use, if they could, however you two got here as a means to do something drastic.” Yithson has notes in his private cloister within this section suggesting the negaverse and our universe could have some ties and that if the fanatic cult figures these out, they may end up immolating both universes.
“I should hope neither of you were foolish enough to leave the gate you came through unguarded.”
“No, it’s pretty safe.” Drake sounds confident, before he moves farther into the museum. Drake looks idly about when he notices the bones of a living mech, he walks up and notices familiar scarring on the bones. He types into the data pad. Myco, I just came to the conclusion that our DNA wouldn’t be of any use to these people but a living mech’s… He glances to see Myco’s reaction before typing, You may want to make it back to the gate. And tell Drake to look for where the ratmen live, it’s either a shielded bunker, or lab of their creator… I’m certain of it. I’ll give you guys as much time as I can. Transferring my consciousness back to the Antithesis to be recorded as a new AI for Drake. "Good work Alpha. My nickname for you, which I hope you approve of. As far as clones go, you were pretty alright. If that’s the course of action you feel is most advantageous, I will go with it 100%."
“Yithson, I thank you for being a hospitable host to Drake and I. Your concerns about the Gate are valid. We did not know at the time the identity of the looming threat but assumed there would be one, so yes, we do have some guards posted at its edge. If your assistants could direct us to the quickest way out of the city back to the space island, that would be helpful. That way we could best coordinate our forces with those of Gom and Zeteg.”
“I understand completely.” Yithson pushes a button on his desk which opens a large trapdoor in the empty part of the floor, revealing an express tunnel beneath the museum his archaeological and anthropologist Antihuman mutant teams use for ferrying finds to the museum and artifact recovery equipment from it out to excavation sites. “At the end of this tunnel lies a hangar on the edge of the city which has some ships you may use to get back there. I’d suggest moving quickly. The fanatics no doubt have by this time detected fluctuations from the energy signatures which were emitted when you first arrived and are likely planning their first moves.”
“I would like to stay and see if I can help your people deal with the degradation, no need to ruin perfectly fine DNA. Well have you tried to reactivate dormant genes from your ancestors? I know of a variety of methods and am sure I can help your people repair the damage, but you should also stop using all those radioactive rocks and polluting your air and water.” Drake sidles over to a terminal.
Yithson scratches his chin with one of his many mechanical arms… “We have, but most records existing before the time of Kellek were either lost or destroyed. That is to say, our people’s genomes when we do find databases of them, they tend to be in “batches” based on a particular mutant generation. The original form from before we were experimented on… it seems all record of that was lost. However,... working backwards, I suppose one could build a sort of a reverse engineered incomplete/partial map based on those…”
“Ah but genetics is my expertise. The base is in there and with the right equipment I can find and activate the genes to restore the subject to what I like to call baseline, of course the subject would suffer insurmountable amounts of pain as their DNA is rewritten back to baseline. Chances of survival of subject I would say 40% but the process would, one give you the correct genomes needed to enact the change in embryos and two…”
“Hmm, I can call over some of our own geneticists and they could confer with you, probably get the survival rate up about another 10%” Yithson speculates “My colleagues would also be happy to loan you their sequencing equipment what’s more, I’m sure.” He shakes his head and laughs dejectedly on the second issue, making it obvious he feels an outsider would not understand “The matter of the radiation is a bit of a tougher nut to crack. You see, I’m afraid there is just too much social and bureaucratic inertia; It provides cheap, strong power. Our nuclear scientists have been arguing back and forth about the merits of fission versus fusion for some decades now in the capital’s chamber of commerce. You could try setting an appointment with the fusion lobby but their opposition in the fission lobby is much larger.”
Drake’s voice fades as Myco exits the facility.
The tunnel is long and other than the motorized hum of an overhead fan from its ventilation system there isn’t much else in the way of noise. Every small object dropped or knocked into seems to clang inordinately but that could just be in the travelers heads due to the urgency of their mission.
Submitted by Mycobacter & Drake Novum Scientist #712744,706289