Chapter 518: Resurgence - Deep Magic (1/2)

approximately two-hundred and thirty humans in Rigellian Saurian Compact Space, not including LARP worlds, primitive therapy worlds, and those who are, for lack of a better word, anarcho-primitivists.

Those worlds seem to be arming after suffering a casualty rate of 45-80%, but when you're talking about hundreds of millions or even billions of humans, or those crazy bastards from the therapy worlds, you're talking about a whole galaxy of hurt.

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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

Any word on The Bag?

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

It's a serious problem.

See, the whole thing is maintained by a set of artificially generated singularities in a complex interwoven orbit around each other.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

Right.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Now, to prevent them from being accessed by an enemy, they are then, well, gravitationally 'inverted' so to speak, so they exist in a second extra-dimensional non-euclidean space. The space fills up with 'white matter' protomatter, and the singularities orbit through that, as the white matter isn't effected by gravity force.

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TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS

Wait. What?

How does that work?

That's not how it works. That's not how singularities work! How do you 'invert gravity'? That's not how gravity works! And that's not how white matter, which has never been proven to exist, works!

That's not how any of it works!

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>Rigel snickers

MANTID FREE WORLDS

It's pretty simple.

The Terrans figured out how to make it work like that, so it works like that.

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AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS

That's not how physics works!

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>Rigel snickers louder

>Pubvia hides a smile

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Well, according to scientific research done by Terran Descent Humanity, you can make it work like that.

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HESSTLA CYBERBURROW

That's not right! You can't just TELL the universe how fundamental laws work because you decided they work that way!

Reality doesn't work that way!

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

BEHOLD! HUMANITY!

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ALL>Laugh

>Hesstla grumbles

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Anyway, the system is designed so that it can't be opened from the outside without certain steps being taken. It's also designed so that the system can't be just dropped from the inside by a stray EM pulse or by enemy troops gaining access to a few critical systems.

Terran Descent Humanity paranoia in action.

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

But now it's turned back around and bitten them on the ass.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Not necessarily.

Observational data suggests that some kind of temporal energy cascade, the same one that seems to have strengthened the evolutionary reversion attack, is currently washing over the TerraSol System's space.

But, the chronotron energy, once it enters the bag, is exposed to white matter filled space, which means the chronotrons begin to vibrate at a different frequency and begin to get expelled from the 'Drawstring' in a geometrically increased rate.

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HESSTLA CYBERBURROW

OK... I'm lost.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

Do you know what an orange is? Not the color, the Terran fruit.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Man, I could go for some orange creme ice cream.

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PUBVIAN DOMINION

That sounds good.

Ooh, I hear an ice cream truck.

Be right back, gonna get the puffies some orange creme sticks.

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HESSTLA CYBERBURROW

Yes. We were growing a hybrid here before the

CASE OMAHA CASE OMAHA CASE OMAHA

attack upon our system.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

OK, picture a flat piece of black silk. Now, picture the TerraSol system in the middle. Now, pick up the silk that the edges, so now you have the TerraSol system in a bag. Take an orange and put it in the 'mouth' of the 'bag' you've made.

Now, put a string around the orange, tying the bag to it.

Now, invert the orange peel so the string is on the inside of the orange.

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AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS

Screw this. I'm going to get ice cream.

PUBVIA! WAIT FOR ME!

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:SYSTEM ALERT: NINE URGENT MESSAGE THREADS TO BE PROCESSED :SYSTEM ALERT:

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

BAH!

Dammit, those alerts scare the crap out of me every time.

I mean, it's not like the messages are for us. It just yells at us like some psychopath getting a cellphone and screaming at the other passengers on the bus that he's going to be talking on the phone.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

No, the pulp of the orange is the white matter. Moving slowly through the white matter pulp are some artificially generated singularities, generated by the string you used to close the bag, moving in a Klemperer rosette orbiting the outside of the orange according to gravitational effects.

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TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS

What?

I mean, I understand those are words, and you put them in some kind of order, but I have no idea what you just said!

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Ice cream?

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TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS

Thanks.

Ooh, root beer vanilla creme.

Thanks.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Trust me, kid. When you're dealing with human 'super-science', ice cream is about all that makes it bearable.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

Anyway. Now you can see how it can only be opened from the inside, but that means it can only be opened from the outside.

With the chronotron cascade coming from Lanaktallan Space, thanks to Task Force Reaper, and the chrono-reversion attack on Terran Descent Humanity, the system won't drop the bag because technically TerraSol is still under heavy extinction level assault.

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HESSTLA CYBERBURROW

OK, I understand.

I think.

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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Lemur people broke space and fell in the hole.

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HESSTLA CYBERBURROW

OK, see, that I understand.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Trust us, kid, after a while, this becomes just a normal thing when dealing with

FIRST CONTACT ALERT

XENOSPECIES: POSITIVE

TERRAN: NEGATIVE

SPECIES INITIAL DESIGNATION: H'KEK'NTH

FIRST CONTACT ALERT ON [TIME/DATE ERROR]

FIRST CONTACT ALERT

Terrans and...

Wait, what?

QUERY>LOCATION OF FIRST CONTACT

SYSTEM REPLY> COVERTHIC CLUSTER

Uh, does anyone know where the coverthic cluster is?

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

No clue.

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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Nope.

That looks like a saurian name though.

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PUBVIAN DOMINION