Megaversal Remix

Marrowlight · Last edited by Marrowlight on Sat Aug 01, 2009 3:38 pm; edited 1 time in total

I've decided to spend a brief amount of time in your home shadows. As such, I allow you to set your own initial scene. Once you've done so, I shall step in from there.

Eve, you're up fifth. Time, day, month, year, location, and whatever else you feel necessary to tell us about. What're you up to?

Valorian · Alpha Primitive Joined: 05 Apr 2009 Posts: 16

She was restless, and uncomfortable, and so she walked, meandering deep into the bowels of her ship. Her umbilical trailed behind her, a pale lattice cris-crossing her upper and lower torso, hundreds of nearly invisible strands that reached out to drag the walls, or whispered along the floor as it liked. Each connection seemed to scream at her through the ship's membrane; ordinarily, she simply filtered the thousands of minds flowing alongside hers. Lately, she felt indisposed, and unable to focus. Her discomfort made no difference to her umbilical, of course; the symbiote interfaced as it pleased, and she could no more disable it than command her heart to cease beating.

Even so far removed from her ship's core, she was not alone. Passers-by absorbed themselves in tasks, exercising or wandering as she did. Traveling over great distances, the ship did not require a great deal of attention. That would change when they arrived at the star cluster; there, they could work for aeons, exploring and mapping. She relished the thought. They all did. Her race had evolved much over a billion years, with lifespans a hundred thousand times that of humans that Once Were, but the thrills of exploration had not changed.

"Meridian Reciproca Sub One?" A tall man approached, calling her name formally, yet with a smile. His thoughts rippled at her through the membrane, but his familiar deep voice still boomed, moving his lips, vestigial functions from humans that Once Were. "Your calculations were excellent. We will arrive at seven point three, with no course corrections scheduled until at least seven. Very impressive."

She smiled back at him, with some effort. Her head hurt, but his presence was comforting. This close, their umbilicals twined together, braiding intricate patterns across their skin and against nearby surfaces. At least, he was something to focus on, and she tried to respond in kind. "Astronicas Arcsecond Prime. Your praise is acknowledged. I too am pleased."

His brow furrowed as they interfaced, and her pain expressed. "You are ... ill?"

She paused. Illness was not a familiar concept. "My concentration is deteriorating of late. I am certain it will pass."

"Very well. We will be calculating through the nebula soon. It is complex, Meridian Reciproca Sub One. Do you wish me... to draw the coordinates?"

Meridian Reciproca Sub One did not respond. Now the effort was too great, and the concept of needing a surrogate too much to bear. The interface communicated for her, instead. Please. I am our Cartographer; let me complete my task. I will not fail us.
_________________
Survival is no birthright, but a prize wrested from an uncaring galaxy by forgotten heroes.

Marrowlight · Posted: Fri Jul 17, 2009 1:54 pm Post subject:

((Ah-ha, welcome to the game. I know at what point I'll be moving my GM actions into your world, go ahead and keep playing out the scene until then. I'll text you when, just don't want to ruin it for others, as I know they're watching)).

Valorian · Alpha Primitive Joined: 05 Apr 2009 Posts: 16

(OOC: Pardon a brief world-building indulgence; I wanted to put some concepts into words, as much for myself as anyone else. -V)

The ships were ancient when we met them, a hundred million generations ago. Drifting across the only galaxy we knew in our meager metal craft, ponderous nomads coveting a successor to our failed cradle, we came upon them, or they us. We probed them. Like ants, we scrabbled onto their carapaces - and by some unseen force, our explorers went comatose, or died screaming. In fear and fancied vengeance we slaughtered their kind. Never once did they retaliate, or so in retrospect we understand; their very nature escaped us at first.

For aeons we hunted them, these beasts native to the infinite stars; and for aeons we died or went mad, until the brave and fortunate First Crew. A literal collision of fates, an epic accident: the crew of the doomed vessel Triton found its nine hundred souls taking refuge on the back of the First Ship. With the remains of the Triton they built a city atop the shell; and for ten generations they rode. Not one human died, or even seemed to age; and when at last the refugees encountered human-kind again, the Age of Enlightenment had begun.

The "great secret" amounted to simple numbers: alone, or small groups, our tiny minds were overwhelmed by the ships' immense psychic output. By the thousands, however, we would not only survive, but thrive. Spread among so many, a ship's energies regenerated and fed us, as ours in turn fed it. Living aboard, our lifespans increased exponentially, as did the ships' already vast psychokinesis, and now we could hold on tight as our hosts hurled themselves between galaxies.

One last feat stood between this relationship and true symbiosis. Gradually we began to creep into the ships' carapace itself, and their bodies developed in response: rooms and halls of rigid tissue, simulating gravity with telekinetic nodes. But our inability to communicate directly with the ships stagnated our progress; after the initial exhilaration, flinging among the stars at random served us little.

But we were not the only organisms aboard the ships. A species of mold evolving to take advantage of our presence, the umbilici were first a blight, then a blessing. Like spider-silk or ultrafine hairs, it grew on our skin and even inside us; where it contacted the ship's membrane, it networked our minds. Awkwardness giving way to awareness, crews rapidly became collectives; and, able to speak with our hosts at last, we directed our travels with a single will.
_________________
Survival is no birthright, but a prize wrested from an uncaring galaxy by forgotten heroes.

Valorian · Alpha Primitive Joined: 05 Apr 2009 Posts: 16

The tide was coming in. Wave after wave tumbled into her body, waist-deep in the sea, and broke against the rocky shore behind her. Somewhere back there, a voice was calling her name. She squeezed her eyes shut, curling her toes into the shifting sands beneath and let the waves come, body tensing and rocking with each crash. "Eve!" So far away. Familiar the voice, almost pleading to be recognized, but she shut her eyes and let the ocean swallow her in sound and fury.

Meridian Reciproca Sub One stood in her ship's core, its womb, with a thousand others of her kind. Their voices were silent now: for this task, they were hers. She steered their will as one mind, and with that mind she reached through the membrane, into the murk. Light-years ahead of them the nebula wore on, a billowing morass. Hurtling through space at speeds beyond imagining, their host fed them its consciousness; every pulse of the membrane was a blast of imagery, overloaded with sensation, and from it she crafted astrogation and telemetry via her metamind. They focused solely on her. Elsewhere in the corpus, other minds pulsed like remote organs, accelerating their flight, galvanizing their host's dexterity. But Meridian Reciproca Sub One occupied the womb, and showed them the way.

Eve stood in the surf, and the waves crashed, and someone called her name. It was an old memory, as old as Meridian Reciproca Sub One herself, and that was very old indeed. Linked to the metamind, she could play it back, as clearly as the original experience, and she did so often. She had many memories that she had chosen to keep, but this one she recalled when she required focus. Nearly ten million years old, as the humans that Once Were would have said, this was her final memory before being assigned to her ship. But right now, she would not let any part of it hold her; she did not know the voice calling her name, felt nothing but the ocean, knew each wave only as long as it enveloped her.

She had been bred a Cartographer. Before she departed her world, she had done her duty, bore and weaned one daughter, though her family were not destined for the ships. They stayed planetside, lived and died, and now were ten million years gone, forgotten - except to Meridian Reciproca Sub One and, presently, the Cartographer metamind gathered around her in the core. Eve appeared then much as now, a girl just beyond the flower of womanhood, forever one Generation of age; her form perfected by the ship's quickening, she glowed with a purified health that nature could never grant; a primordial avatar of humans that Once Were. Submerging, she curled her toes in the sand and let the calculations burn through her conduit of minds.

Yet her focus flickered. One moment, half a heartbeat she could not redeem. "Eve," she heard beside her, and she knew her mother's voice; for a fraction of a moment the memory took over. Edging from the roiling depths, just before their safe horizon, the remains of a system annihilated by supernova intersected the ship's course. A hail of black spears appeared in their path, and her forecast crumbled; even as the ship hurled itself free of the nebula, its dark blood stained the glittering fabric of space.
_________________
Survival is no birthright, but a prize wrested from an uncaring galaxy by forgotten heroes.

Marrowlight · Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2009 10:44 am Post subject:

((I'm still here, just watching you work. Nicely done so far.))

Valorian · Alpha Primitive Joined: 05 Apr 2009 Posts: 16

"There exist seven-hundred-nine surfaces within our immediate range, fourteen of them habitable," said Astronicas Arcsecond Prime, not unkindly. "The choice is yours."

After her failure, as expected, Meridian Reciproca Sub One was the first to advocate her own exile; as a whole, the ship was a precise, holistic machine, and would not suffer an unpredictable organ. Moreover, many had perished in the collision, and her presence now reminded the entire crew of their own mortality. With age, the degradation of focus would come for each of them. Though augmented, their physiques held limitations not unlike humans that Once Were; preternaturally robust, yet still temporary, albeit on an astronomical scale. The concepts were unpleasant, and she felt their discomfort at every touch.

"We are fortunate that the damage was not worse," said Codimension Transvect C, who was in the ship's ventral shell tending to wounded. "Some we could not save. But given the ship's injuries, more might have died, bringing us close to Suffocation." He shuddered, a ripple of horror through the interface. "I am pleased that Meridian Reciproca Sub One will be replaced. We cannot risk this happening again for many, many generations."

Meridian Reciproca Sub One did not need them to describe her fourteen choices; she was, after all, the Cartographer, and she had only to call upon her metamind to retrieve the images she needed. The surface descriptions flowed through her like dreams. With little effort she chose a planet, one with a warm sky, and deep oceans. "When you remember me," she told the ship, "remember me as Eve."

~ ~ ~

The tide was coming in. Eve stood waist-deep in the surf and let the waves roll, and the only voices that spoke to her were from memories. Her umbilical had died weeks ago. Her body, now mortal, would still flourish for a time, buoyed by ten million years of regeneration - yet in exile she would measure her lifetime in tides, rather than stars.

She walked along the rocky beach, and tried to remember what aging felt like.
_________________
Survival is no birthright, but a prize wrested from an uncaring galaxy by forgotten heroes.

Marrowlight · Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2009 8:59 pm Post subject:

Valorian · Alpha Primitive Joined: 05 Apr 2009 Posts: 16

Eve stopped short, a flush of excitement rippling across her skin. "And who might you be?" she said in her head.

A long moment passed before it occurred to her that there might be someone standing there. She spun around. "Wait, where - what did you say?"
_________________
Survival is no birthright, but a prize wrested from an uncaring galaxy by forgotten heroes.