Hair still drying from the barbershop just a few hundred feet away, Axy joined C-crew congregating on the elevator platform edges harnessing into seats and rails that now protruded from the platform floor. Very little luggage was present - personal effects were usually limited to sentimental items and specialized implant-related tech. The ship had 3D printers that would produce food, clothing, exo-suits, even vehicles and spacecraft needed for roving on unexplored worlds, all designed by soft AI and produced on-demand. Everything except her specific shade of Starlight Silver quick-dye, which Axy carried with her to hold her over until they got to Nuric.
Joining them on the platform at the last minute were two Novoids. Nearly identical to the ones she saw flying the day before, their robotic bodies were very close in proportion to humans, plated in a matt-finish grey-tan color, and extremely refined in design. Their gently white-blue glowing eyes were calmingly circular, almost curious in static expression. They were identical twins, except one wore metallic blue wrist wraps, and the other had a few extra sensors on his head.
"Able! Seraph! Glad you could finally join us!" shouted Jym, speech slurred slightly.
"I'm amazed your still standing, Jym." piped back Able. His voice was obviously synthesized, but extremely natural in intonation, but layered under effects that clearly differentiated a Novoid's voice from a human's, like a speaker played through a unique metallic resonator of sorts.
Seraph said nothing.
As soon as they were on the platform, they all harnessed in - some seated and some standing - then held their grips. Axy selected a standing spot next to Seraph. Despite being a Novoid, Axy could spot another introvert when she saw one. A transparent dome canopy descended from the ceiling and locked into place over them.
This elevator descended right through the floor and through the outer hull of the station, into a spindown ring that wrapped around the entire outside of the habitat. This ring gently decelerated the crew - which felt like acceleration - to a standstill, at which point they were no longer spinning with the cylinder, and were stationary in zero-G.
Ugh, the nausea again.
Then the elevator then indexed to a telescoping shaft that projected away from the cylinder for miles and miles all the way to the Cinder cargoliner below.
As they descended, Axy took in her surroundings... surrounded by what looked like infinite webbing of cables and tethers and docks and miles-long robotic arms... small spacecraft of all different sizes were docked, entering, or departing. The tether they themselves were riding down was a "tube" of 6 parallel cables the platform descended down, and two metal arms that held them straight. It, and dozens of others, all tentacled-out from the spindown rings of the habitat they just left. Everything was coldly illuminated against the black backdrop of space; a faint cold glow of the star Stoic, their distant sun, shone through the tinted canopy that protected them from the void.
Taking in the awe of her surroundings, she remembered her earlier contemplations...
"It's... really kind of beautiful down here" she offered. She was hoping to maybe begin a conversation with Seraph about concepts like beauty and meaning, to probe her Novoid shipmates... but also play it cool.
"It is" Seraph responded, with a voice just a little lower and grittier than Able's.
Seraph said nothing further.
Well, that was... unsatisfying, to say the least. Despite getting an answer to her deepest question, it proved only to open up ten more. Was Seraph just "programmed" to say this as part of a conversation program, or was there actual emotion inside? Or, maybe THIS Novoid simply didn't consider public transportation noteworthy enough for conversation? Axy figured she herself didn't find those white transport pods noteworthy.
"It speaks!" said Jym, looking over the back of his seat.
"*He* speaks" Seraph corrected.
"It's just an expression, Seraph" countered Able.
Seraph gave what could only be described as a side-eye to Able, then stared back off into space.
"Don't mind him, Axy, he's just not very... social." said Able.
"Oh, it's okay, neither am I" she chuckled nervously.
"Surprised you were the first one to talk on this trip."
"Oh, I... haha thanks"
"For the record", Able tilted his head and looked at her, "I think it's ugly as cepht out here"
Axy laughed.
"Well, I dunno... when you spend your whole life in a virtual world, seeing the real thing for once seems kinda nice."
"It's no more real out there than it is on a virdeck" piped up Kai-Val.
"Dang, you got the whole squad of the quiet kids talking, Axy!" Jym was beginning to form a persona of the type who says a lot without adding much to a conversation.
"Why do you say that?" Axy asked Kai-Val.
"Your brain's perception of reality is derived entirely from sensory inputs. Reality can be reduced to quantum data, no different than bits that drive computer sims."
"You suggesting we all live in a simulation?" asked Able.
Axy was intrigued by a Novoid's take on philosophy, even if it was hard to see under the snarky attitude.
"You can't prove otherwise" said Kai-Val.
So, Able is sarcastic, Seraph takes everything too seriously, Kai-Val is a conspiracy theorist, Jym is... well, still drunk, for starters. Axy's mental catalog of personalities was starting to come together.
The conversation didn't seem to want to go anywhere further, but Axy's curiosity pushed past her introversion once again:
"What do you think IS real, then, Kai-Val?"
"The mind itself. It's the only thing you can trust to be real."
"What about other people's minds?"
"There are ways you can judge that."
She wasn't quite sure what he meant by that. She figured asking a third question in a row probably wouldn't illicit a response question, as she expected in a normal conversation. Not that she, of all people, could be accused of knowing what a "normal conversation" flows like. But, at least she tried.
By now, their speedy descent had brought them much closer to the ship. A few other tethers converged to a docking port in the center of the ship. Eventually, the platform's brakes hit. They felt the sharp deceleration as they zoomed in toward the port.
Suddenly, the cargo containers that looked like rows of handle-able cells suddenly turned into skyscrapers above their heads as they descended toward the core. Massive robotic arms that could stretch the length of a cylinder city stood by, folded to only skyscraper high, and tucked away for future deployment. By now, all four tethers had converged to an array of ports in what felt like the deep heart of the ship.
The platforms slowed to a stop just beneath the surface; a bright sheet of plasma suddenly arced over their heads, sealing off their bay from space outside, making a perfect seal around the six cables and arms that comprised the tether. The rush of air could be heard quickly filling the space, then the canopy lifted up. Cold air - that smelled a little metallic - gave them goosebumps. Well, it gave the humans goosebumps. A set of handrails extended out from the wall, leading them to an opening airlock door with a white glowing hall inside. Their safety straps seamlessly transferred from their seats and attachment points to that handrail, and guided them into the ship. Still in zero-G, they pushed along with their arms. With so much of transportation being automated and so cleverly sealed in civilized stations, this embarking felt so rugged and mechanical, as though they were brave sailors embracing the raw dangers of the elements.
The halls inside were hexagonal; railings and grips lined all 6 walls. The symmetry and weightlessness was very disorienting, except for the two blue and two orange light strips that ran the lengths of four of the corners of every hall, giving a vague sense of "up" and "down" - in the case of this ship, blue was the exterior of the ship, or "up", and orange was on the interior side, or "down", so no matter where you were on the ship, as long as you oriented yourself with your head in the blue and feet in the orange, your head would point to the outside of the ship, and your feet toward its center.
The crew carefully made their way through the simple maze of hallways to a bank of more familiar individual transport pods, like Axy was more used to. With these, they descended even further into the bowels of the vessel, until they reached a small room that opened up to a very large meeting room. This room was similarly hexagonal, but abnormally large, and instead of white plastic walls, the walls were visual screens; the entire room was essentially a huge living pod! On each of the six walls were rows of seats, currently being filled in with other crewmembers already on the ship. A few familiar welcomes greeted C-Crew as they entered and took their seats.
"Welcome to the Coreyard!" said Jym to Axy. It may have been a grander entrance if his breath didn't still have a whiff of alcohol stowing away on it.
A few quiet mutters and casual greetings exchanged as four full crews buckled in. All the seats were facing the far end of the room they had come in from; with people upside-down above your head, it felt a little as though they were all looking "up", but without the neck strain. Still taking a little getting used to, even for a girl raised in a cylinder.
A door in that far wall opened up. Out of it gracefully floated the massive hulking form of an Augment, much like the one Axy had encountered on Anaxon. The mechanical humanoid's face was simple, imposing, with complex but emotive eyes illuminated in a pale purple glow. The torso had many metallic adornments, what seemed like generic augment equipment that had been engraved and a select few even rimmed with gold. The arms were long; the forearms disproportionately large, likely full of various tools and actuators; the legs were short and stocky, so as to not be a burden navigating the internals of a ship in zero-G; despite this, if standing, this creature would stand immensely tall over any human or Novoid present.
[Astellia Astrodata - AUGMENT]
[MAT5]
Occupation and Rank: Captain of the cargoliner Cinder (registry F-110-301-03); Lexum Firm Shipping General Supervisor; (...see more)
Skillset: Omniship certified; Nav-eye complete diagnostics and operation certified; General Mineship onload/offload certified; (...see more)
Axy felt a strange mixture of awe and, admittedly, disappointment. An Omniship certification meant Astellia was trained in operation of EVERY maintenance role of the ship, like directing VirDecks, regulating the magnetosphere generators, maintaining the factory printers, etc. It takes decades of education, practice, and mental programming to achieve this! Astellia was undoubtedly in training longer than Axy had even been alive. Her qualifications were as imposing as her mechanical body.
Which... brings us to the disappointing part.
"She"...
Axy had been hoping for a little more girl company on this voyage. But when a woman's body has been stripped of the estrogen and hormones and biological componants that typically define womanhood, how can somebody who's entire identity is based on those attributes identify with her? Surely Astellia, with a completely robotic body, couldn't feel the discomfort of being visually objectified by crass men, or feel the physical urging to be held by a companion, or the pains and struggles of female fertility and birth and... well, maybe this was all actually extremely prejudice for Axy to think. Maybe it was some learning experience Axy was destined to encounter some day. But whether it was right or wrong to feel this way, this is the way Axy felt. Versette's motherly wisdom from her adolescent years still guided her:
"There are nearly five quadrillion living people in this system alone, Axy. That's more people than you have brain cells to count them with. So don't expect to get along with every single one of them you meet. But - you have to be sure you NEVER close the door on someone just because they're different than you. Eventually, you'll find yourself on the outside of it."
"Welcome to the Cinder", announced Astellia, in a deep, commanding, synthesized voice.
"C-Crew, glad you could finally make it. Jym, please don't come to my briefings drunk again, understood?"
"Yes ma'am!" said Jym, between hiccups.
"For those of you who haven't met me yet, I'm Captain Astellia Astrodata. I've been flying for Lexum Firm Shipping for three decades now; prior to taking command of the Cinder, I was a a freighter pilot for a few foundaries around Yaroryn. Prior to that, I was a Unisource Mining private sector navy captain, during the Driver Conflict of Yaroryn. And, yes, I was there to witness Yaroryn's Transition Wars. A lot of Flyers and Rockers complain about the last few holdouts of planetside Conservationists, but trust me when I say they are nothing compared to what they used to be 600 years ago. So, I don't want to hear ANY complaining from you.
"This year's mission is going to be another routine run to Yaroryn. We will be dropping very close to the inner system, so we should make this a speedy trip, seven months, tops, which will be roughly a year back here in Stoic. Out first stop is the Yaroryn L2 Crucible just outside of orbit, where we will be bulking stage-1 refined iron, copper, cobalt, raw bauxite, and sundry minerals. We've got a surprisingly good rate on bauxite this season, so even though we've got a lot of it, we should make a pretty good haul. Also means we'll be traveling light, which will help our return speed.
"Once we've tackled residual ambulaspores, our Switchback Students and Novoids will take a shuttle to Yaroryn to help survey crews install some neutrino relays for a new subterranean dig site. You are scheduled to return about a week before loading is finished."
By now, Axy's HUD had interfaced with Cinder.
[Define: AMBULASPORE]
[Macrobiome spores that spread typically through bipedal or quadrupedal adaptations.]
An image flashed of a green plant-like feature hanging from a branch of its parent tree; it had four long and thick leaves, each curled up into semi-flaccid tube structures, very thick and scaly like a lizard's skin almost, with a reddish-orange bulb at the base where it connected to the host branch. With squinted eyes, it could vaguely pass for an animaloid creature at this angle. The scale was not immediately obvious, but Axy guessed it was maybe the size of a hand.
"A few notes: Our aft magnetocore did NOT get the refit we were promised; apparently Anaxon prioritized their own magnetocores instead. So, C and D crews, you'll be running on the backup cores for the duration of the trip; that means you need to make absolutely sure your tertiary cores are in running order. This will mean periodically switching over, which I've already created a schedule for; be sure to communicate to your respective crews, as we don't want any reversions this run. This also should drive home how important that copper will be; Stoic needs more habitats, and those habitats need magnetocores... and magnetocores need copper!"
Axy attempted a quick investigation in Cinder's database:
[Search terms: REVERSION; TERTIARY MAGNETOCORE; INCIDENT]
[Results: CLASSIFIED]
[Please consult the Cinder Ship Operations Safety Guidelines (SOSC) for protocols regarding VirDeck Brain maintenance and safety during Magnetocore maintenance]
Obviously there was something more to this, but a deeper probe would have to wait. Captain Astellia was now addressing her group:
"Switchback Students: You are all expected to be on your best behavior. Please have your introductory studies completed by our jumpoint. If you want group zero-G simulation time, Cinder has three Coreyards - one fore, one aft, and this one midship. They are available on REQUEST BASIS ONLY - "
The captain stared at Bedrun and Yangy with fierce condemnation.
"...and will be kept CLEAN at all times. If so much as one hair follicle betrays the cleanliness of my Coreyard, and leaves DNA for me to clean up, you WILL find yourself jettisoned out the nearest airlock. Am I understood??"
"Yes, ma'am!" replied Bedrun and Yangy in sheepish synchrony.
"If anybody else has questions, Cinder mainframe received a firmware update to a new flight host. She's a proper novasapien and is going to make my job a hell of a lot easier. Now we are behind schedule, so you all have two hours to get to your pods and settle in before we disembark. Dismissed."
With that, the 40-something humans and Novoids dispersed and made their way to the transport pods.
The nearly 50-mile journey down the spine of the ship to the aft crew module was relatively fast and uneventful, accelerating up to hyperfast speeds, and just as quickly decelerating. A sharp turn upwards lead to a currently stationary spindown ring and delivered Axy to a hallway just adjacent to her living pod. She was now in the crew module ring. A much more ceremonious metallic capsule door roughly in the shape of a pentagon opened to a far more spacious spherical living pod, in luxurious contrast to the one she spent most of her life in back on Illumount. Inside, the sphere was divided into twelve sections - a dodecahedron, like a tiny version of Anaxon station. The walls were covered in screens, as expected, but displaying an incredible resolution, framerate, and brightness contrast. Currently it glowed a clean, plain white. Each of the twelve cells of the wall, she realized, was itself a door. This was because the entire spherical pod would change orientation periodically while Cinder was in motion. While drifting through interstellar space or in orbit near some ore, the habitat ring would spin to generate gravity, and the pod would orient you so your feet were toward the outside of the ring. But during multi-G acceleration, it would tilt back, giving a gravity-reducing effect to alleviate the G-forces instead.
Her chair was much like what she was used to, but with some added features for securement and safety during transit. She sat in it - much more comfortable, as it automatically adjusted to her exact body proportions.
"This isn't so bad", she thought to herself. She has at least seen all four crews, got a great introduction to the captain, and now has a superbly cozy living pod to enjoy for the next several months while they embark toward Nuric on Axy's first ever space voyage. There are definitely red flags... Yangy and Bedrun, obviously perverts... Dread, foul-mouthed and likely just as perverted... Jym, who's just a little too care-free... Astellia seems strict and well-organized, which Axy adored, but definitely could see the the harda** in her that everybody loathed. There was also the war Astellia mentioned... Axy had learned about the centuries-old conflict on Yaroryn during her educational years, which chronicled the descent of the world from a relatively habitable planet into a caustic wasteland by Industrialists mining operations. The view was always dressed up as a necessary evil... sure, a few billion people lived on the world, but deconstructing a planet would yield MILLIONS of times more living space in the form of cylinder habitats, like Illumount, that she owed her very existence to. Weigh the homes of a few billion against the homes of hundreds of trillions, and the choice is obvious. And with the stars Stoic and Nuric orbiting so close to one another, most planets and rocky bodies had been ejected from the system eons ago, so there were few other options to harvest to turn into habitats; Yaroryn was the closest resource for metals and ore.
However, something still felt uneasy about how Astellia had mentioned Conservationists. The Conservationists she served on Illumount were by no means militant, but in fact some of the most peaceful people she had met. And, also, they were the side of the political spectrum she tended to identify with more. It didn't seem right to group them up with the militant, terroristic splinter groups of hundreds of years ago a fraction of a lightyear away.
There was also remaining some curiosity about whatever incident must have happened that would cause "reversion" to be mentioned... reversion, as far as she knew, was pretty rare, but harrowingly scary when it did happen. She had watched some scary VR movies and crime documentaries that recounted cases of criminal hackers embedding viritic codes into virtual world AIs, bypassing the safeguards that protect human psychology... programs turn malicious, finding feedback loops in a human's consciousness, leaving them trapped inside their own mind, with brain reprogrammed into an embryonic state of devolved intelligence. It is believed that their very sentience is erased from their body...
...but crime documentary speculations would have to wait. It was time to jack into Cinder's own virtual reality world, and get acquainted with this novasapient host! Maybe they would provide good company.
The room went dark; text appeared:
[Welcome Galaxy Stormforge]
"I'll have to update my name in their system..." she though to herself.
It finished loading in no time. Suddenly, horror of horrors, a familiar face and voice exploded onto the screen before her! Could it be? No... ANYTHING but this cruelty to an introvert!
"Hi! I'm Turry, your in-flight host!"
"You've GOT to be kidding me..."
