[Blackbird] Dreams
Now Edited.
Warning: Long.
The sun was well up and the rest of the household already about their business when the need for sleep after two days of being awake won out over maddening computations. Notepads, bar napkins, scraps, and physics books, in a loose semi-circle, surrounded the bed. Equations, so advanced that parts of them were not even accepted theories by the Consensus yet, covered all the paper visible and a rushed sort of shorthand was scrawled in margins.
Collapsed on the bed lay Blackbird, having barely managed to take her shirt off before falling asleep. Pinprick scars dotted her back where soot and dust had imbedded beneath her skin and the faint scars of skin grafts hadn't faded yet. Other than the freckles on her arms and face the rest of her skin was deathly pale; she kept meaning to fix that. No time on ship to get Uv's that wouldn't kill you and since coming back no sense in getting a sunburn. It was possible that all the rebuilt tissues would do was burn then fade back to pale white. That was the catch to having a Progenitor use dead tissues to regrow pieces, never knew what they had screwed up or planned in.
Sighing in her sleep she moved restlessly into a new position. After the work to stop Those Beyond from damaging the Dimensional Barrier in Death Valley the nightmares had increased and darkened. Almost every night it seemed they started as soon as she settled into sleep. The comfort of knowing by daylight that the her sleep cycle put her into REM no earlier than 45 minutes after she went to sleep was scant. Sleep teaching had always been bothersome, with the lessened requirements she had for sleep, they had had to compress much of the sleep teaching into quicker, deeper level portions so they could allow some normal REM sleep. Terror Teachers, someone had called them on the COP. The scientists who performed the sleep teaching were responsible for so many that those with aberrant sleep patterns often ended up having REM cut short or interrupted or their sleep pattern otherwise forced to 'normalcy'. The depravations had caused some to hallucinate or sleep poorly when not induced.
Settling for a moment into almost peaceful sleep, she murmured to herself. Snippets of conversations from her Spacial Navigations courses and remembered details from the VC Janus' trip back from the Aurigii cluster. "if the Y axis pull is greater than the gravitational..." "Input coordinates Alpha 44 niner 4, Hotel Golf 8574." "Deep Space is littered with gravitational wells and so called wormholes that warp the structure and function of surrounding areas..."
~He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust.
Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.
He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.~
A hologram lit up a black room, partially illuminating the students sitting around it. The hologram was a complicated and seemingly infinite mass of lights and swirls. As it rotated small arrows pulsed within the hologram, some barely visible to the observers.
"This is the shape of the Universe at the Consensus knows it. As the density of the Universe is roughly equal to the critical density of the Universe, in accordance the Inflation Theory - The extension of the Big Bang theory put forth by Guth, Linde, Steinhardt, and Albrecht, the universe is flat like a greatly magnified sheet of paper or a thin brick." The image spun and shifted slightly, giving the perception of movement into the interior of the brick and focused on a pair of arrows. "This is the Sol System and here is the location of where you sit now."
A chair scrapping indicated someone leaving the lecture hall and softly someone tried to carry on a conversation with the pretty girl to his left. The image again spun and moved, this time back out and warping slightly, curving a bit like a saddle.
"However evidence shows that density of the universe is less than critical density, causing it to curve. This seeming inconsistency is explained by these points of weakness between the movements of spatial bodies and the gravitational wells. What mundane science does not take into account is the Inspired understanding of how the energy to matter to location equations function. As put forth by the knowledge of N-Space and the works of Adel and Wikmen it is clear that there are areas of space that do not conform to the laws of physics as put forth in the Consensus. N-Space strands account for areas where in the progression of Order has been changed or halted and that area instead conforms to the standards of an X universe rather than our own. These spaces account for the differences in density and measurement as they pollute the calculations with matter and energy and reactions from an X Universe.
"We will go into more detail on N-Space and X-Universes next live session and we shall continue now with that brief explanation in mind on how one maneuvers through Deep Space coordinates and the basic equations needed to take anomalies into account when plotting a course."
~Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day;
Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.
A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.
Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.~
Breath steamed slightly in the frigid air and snow crunched as personnel shifted in the snow. The woods were quiet, animal life startled away by the presence of the Border Corp Unit crouching by trees, rocks and vehicles. A hand full stood perimeter watch as the mechanics setup the machines that generated the FIDA field. Manipulating the strands of N-Space would make the area a bubble in the shell of the dimensional barrier, ensuring the understood applications of Inspired Science was the functional paradigm. Few openly grumbled about the timing of the Code FIDA and the short staffing of personnel. The Earth assigned members gave sidelong glances at the cold, distant survivors of the Aurigii Cluster. The ten survivors of that mission stood within close distance of each other, staring straight ahead at where the dimensional rift would appear, each holding their guns at the ready and barely moving, even in the cold of an Alaskan winter. After 15 years in space no one in the unit were sure why they had been sent dirt side or how they would handle combat in full grav.
"System clear. Begin FIDA Procedure. Initiating Dimensional Override."
The Mechanics’ stepped back and behind one of the vehicles, picking up their weapons. One of their number manipulated a datapad with an uplink to the FIDA Field Generator. The machine hummed softly in and there was the faint smell of ozone as the Override started. As time passed the other side of the clearing was only hazily visible through the bubble forming and spreading out around the unit’s location.
"Beginning Target Retrieval Procedure. ETA for Target arrival T-30 and counting."
And then there was chaos. Stepping out of the FIDA field, looking enraged, came a man dressed in furs similar to the Inuit style. Wild haired, he threw out his hand and a bone knife hit a marine in the throat. Beside him was a polar bear, but this creature had rents in its skin and brought the reek of rotting flesh and blood with it. Within seconds he had killed two more marines, this time with his harpoon and they screamed as they bleed from the eyes, nose and ears. Falling twitching to the snow they bled out and vomited blood and bile; causing the snow to hiss and steam.
Electricity arced from the Field generators and grounded in the APC. A marine to the left was crushed under a tree whose trunk rotted and fell on him in a matter of moments and the rotted polar bear tore out his throat. Bitter cold wind blew in, smelling of decay, and stirred up a near blizzard of snow and ice crystals. Gunfire echoed and lasers blasted hitting marines more than the elusive creature they had gathered to destroy. Shadows began to move at the edges of the clearing and there was someone screaming to the left, sounding more like an animal lead to slaughter than a human. Clips emptied and new ones jammed, coated in ice before they could be locked into place.
Still dripping blood from a missing throat, one of the first marines downed lurched upright, dropping his weapon. The blank look of horror frozen on his face, ice sticking to his beard and clothing, he reached up and out to the still living marine next to him and struggled to break her neck. While they struggled the electricity increased and the smell of ozone overpowered even the death smell and there was a blinding flash of light as the FIDA machinery short circuited and exploded. The bubble of controlled space within the dimensional barrier fell and searing pain and cold swept over the clearing. The explosion pushed on marine into a APC and over the top.. and there was only pain and falling.
~Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation;
There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.
For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.
They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.~
Jarring pain cleared her head for a moment. Blinking blood from her eyes, she struggled upwards pulling on the bulkhead to provide support. Acrid smoke filled the air with the tang of hot metal and scorched flesh. The comm-unit buzzed and crackled, a tinny computerized voice running down the systems going off line and decks being sealed from the spatial vacuum.
Moving slowly, she rounded a corner to see one of the things tearing apart a marine. Slick and black, like the organic ship/creatures they had come in, it was a creature the didn't conform to the laws of nature. One moment there would be only two arms, chitinous and clawed and the next there would be fluid tentacles that phased in and out of sight. The body phased and morphed continuously, parts so dark they seemed to absorb light and others slick and shiny like a beetle carapace. Finishing tearing the marine apart, force so great he was rent in half it threw the body away and sat there for a moment.
The red emergency lights lit the face of the body as it landed near by, it was a woman she knew, Captain of the VC Janus. A dozen puncture wounds indicated that it had taken her by suprise and then toyed with now dead captain. Whispers began in the back of her mind, suggesting plans and tactics and urging her onward. The ship shuddered and lurched, caught somehow by the living ship outside. Vision tunneled down, fixating on the dimensional anomaly.
Motion generates friction and friction slows a movement down. Change the friction, move in the spaces between atoms and speed increases. Flesh is no different from other matter. Deep inside, on a subconscious level something snapped. Her head pounded and ached but all that could be done was to latch onto the theorems running through it. And the world slowed down to a bare crawl, movement was effortless and faster. Silence crashed in oppressively as her body moved faster than the waves of sound around her.
Her mind screamed at her, reeling from the fighting and trying to accept and acclimate the impossible science. Theorems rose unbidden as the conscious mind of a member of the Masses fought to hold onto the here and now. The click of an empty clip was felt, not heard and the gun dropped. Subsumed and overwhelmed by the driving need to survive the conscious gave way. Seizing the options presented, epiphanies on science and it's applications, the preconscious pushed aside the ego.
Quantum mechanics states that all points are connected all at once and if you manipulate one particle you manipulate the rest. Manipulate the one atom correctly and it will build off the movements of those around it and greater and greater force will be released once the chain reaction is done. Achieve enough speed and matter converts to pure force energy. The conscious mind writhed as the subconscious pushed out, twisting time/space with the thrust and a bulkhead exploded as the reaction on a sub atomic level converted its dormant atoms to energy and added that to a reaction chain. Floor plates buckled and debris was consumed to feed the chain of compression and conversion. The smell of burning metal, the alloys having caught fire now, and superheated air reached her nose as the world went red and years of Inspired Science training came to the forefront. Somewhere, in her mind, she was screaming as her own form was buffeted and battered by the physics theory she unleashed around her. Then there was only silence and redness.
~Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.
Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.
He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him.
With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.~
Screaming, Blackbird sat up on her bed, her eyes wide open but blank. Soundproofing prevented the rest of the house from being disturbed as she screamed and screamed until her throat was hoarse; then like a puppet with it's strings cut she collapsed back on the bed as the REM cycle passed. Restlessly moving in her sleep she curled up into a fetal position, kicking a book off the bed in the process.
45 minutes pass between REM cycles once the cycle begins. Cold comfort in the light of day.
Warning: Long.
The sun was well up and the rest of the household already about their business when the need for sleep after two days of being awake won out over maddening computations. Notepads, bar napkins, scraps, and physics books, in a loose semi-circle, surrounded the bed. Equations, so advanced that parts of them were not even accepted theories by the Consensus yet, covered all the paper visible and a rushed sort of shorthand was scrawled in margins.
Collapsed on the bed lay Blackbird, having barely managed to take her shirt off before falling asleep. Pinprick scars dotted her back where soot and dust had imbedded beneath her skin and the faint scars of skin grafts hadn't faded yet. Other than the freckles on her arms and face the rest of her skin was deathly pale; she kept meaning to fix that. No time on ship to get Uv's that wouldn't kill you and since coming back no sense in getting a sunburn. It was possible that all the rebuilt tissues would do was burn then fade back to pale white. That was the catch to having a Progenitor use dead tissues to regrow pieces, never knew what they had screwed up or planned in.
Sighing in her sleep she moved restlessly into a new position. After the work to stop Those Beyond from damaging the Dimensional Barrier in Death Valley the nightmares had increased and darkened. Almost every night it seemed they started as soon as she settled into sleep. The comfort of knowing by daylight that the her sleep cycle put her into REM no earlier than 45 minutes after she went to sleep was scant. Sleep teaching had always been bothersome, with the lessened requirements she had for sleep, they had had to compress much of the sleep teaching into quicker, deeper level portions so they could allow some normal REM sleep. Terror Teachers, someone had called them on the COP. The scientists who performed the sleep teaching were responsible for so many that those with aberrant sleep patterns often ended up having REM cut short or interrupted or their sleep pattern otherwise forced to 'normalcy'. The depravations had caused some to hallucinate or sleep poorly when not induced.
Settling for a moment into almost peaceful sleep, she murmured to herself. Snippets of conversations from her Spacial Navigations courses and remembered details from the VC Janus' trip back from the Aurigii cluster. "if the Y axis pull is greater than the gravitational..." "Input coordinates Alpha 44 niner 4, Hotel Golf 8574." "Deep Space is littered with gravitational wells and so called wormholes that warp the structure and function of surrounding areas..."
~He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust.
Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.
He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.~
A hologram lit up a black room, partially illuminating the students sitting around it. The hologram was a complicated and seemingly infinite mass of lights and swirls. As it rotated small arrows pulsed within the hologram, some barely visible to the observers.
"This is the shape of the Universe at the Consensus knows it. As the density of the Universe is roughly equal to the critical density of the Universe, in accordance the Inflation Theory - The extension of the Big Bang theory put forth by Guth, Linde, Steinhardt, and Albrecht, the universe is flat like a greatly magnified sheet of paper or a thin brick." The image spun and shifted slightly, giving the perception of movement into the interior of the brick and focused on a pair of arrows. "This is the Sol System and here is the location of where you sit now."
A chair scrapping indicated someone leaving the lecture hall and softly someone tried to carry on a conversation with the pretty girl to his left. The image again spun and moved, this time back out and warping slightly, curving a bit like a saddle.
"However evidence shows that density of the universe is less than critical density, causing it to curve. This seeming inconsistency is explained by these points of weakness between the movements of spatial bodies and the gravitational wells. What mundane science does not take into account is the Inspired understanding of how the energy to matter to location equations function. As put forth by the knowledge of N-Space and the works of Adel and Wikmen it is clear that there are areas of space that do not conform to the laws of physics as put forth in the Consensus. N-Space strands account for areas where in the progression of Order has been changed or halted and that area instead conforms to the standards of an X universe rather than our own. These spaces account for the differences in density and measurement as they pollute the calculations with matter and energy and reactions from an X Universe.
"We will go into more detail on N-Space and X-Universes next live session and we shall continue now with that brief explanation in mind on how one maneuvers through Deep Space coordinates and the basic equations needed to take anomalies into account when plotting a course."
~Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day;
Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.
A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.
Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.~
Breath steamed slightly in the frigid air and snow crunched as personnel shifted in the snow. The woods were quiet, animal life startled away by the presence of the Border Corp Unit crouching by trees, rocks and vehicles. A hand full stood perimeter watch as the mechanics setup the machines that generated the FIDA field. Manipulating the strands of N-Space would make the area a bubble in the shell of the dimensional barrier, ensuring the understood applications of Inspired Science was the functional paradigm. Few openly grumbled about the timing of the Code FIDA and the short staffing of personnel. The Earth assigned members gave sidelong glances at the cold, distant survivors of the Aurigii Cluster. The ten survivors of that mission stood within close distance of each other, staring straight ahead at where the dimensional rift would appear, each holding their guns at the ready and barely moving, even in the cold of an Alaskan winter. After 15 years in space no one in the unit were sure why they had been sent dirt side or how they would handle combat in full grav.
"System clear. Begin FIDA Procedure. Initiating Dimensional Override."
The Mechanics’ stepped back and behind one of the vehicles, picking up their weapons. One of their number manipulated a datapad with an uplink to the FIDA Field Generator. The machine hummed softly in and there was the faint smell of ozone as the Override started. As time passed the other side of the clearing was only hazily visible through the bubble forming and spreading out around the unit’s location.
"Beginning Target Retrieval Procedure. ETA for Target arrival T-30 and counting."
And then there was chaos. Stepping out of the FIDA field, looking enraged, came a man dressed in furs similar to the Inuit style. Wild haired, he threw out his hand and a bone knife hit a marine in the throat. Beside him was a polar bear, but this creature had rents in its skin and brought the reek of rotting flesh and blood with it. Within seconds he had killed two more marines, this time with his harpoon and they screamed as they bleed from the eyes, nose and ears. Falling twitching to the snow they bled out and vomited blood and bile; causing the snow to hiss and steam.
Electricity arced from the Field generators and grounded in the APC. A marine to the left was crushed under a tree whose trunk rotted and fell on him in a matter of moments and the rotted polar bear tore out his throat. Bitter cold wind blew in, smelling of decay, and stirred up a near blizzard of snow and ice crystals. Gunfire echoed and lasers blasted hitting marines more than the elusive creature they had gathered to destroy. Shadows began to move at the edges of the clearing and there was someone screaming to the left, sounding more like an animal lead to slaughter than a human. Clips emptied and new ones jammed, coated in ice before they could be locked into place.
Still dripping blood from a missing throat, one of the first marines downed lurched upright, dropping his weapon. The blank look of horror frozen on his face, ice sticking to his beard and clothing, he reached up and out to the still living marine next to him and struggled to break her neck. While they struggled the electricity increased and the smell of ozone overpowered even the death smell and there was a blinding flash of light as the FIDA machinery short circuited and exploded. The bubble of controlled space within the dimensional barrier fell and searing pain and cold swept over the clearing. The explosion pushed on marine into a APC and over the top.. and there was only pain and falling.
~Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation;
There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.
For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.
They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.~
Jarring pain cleared her head for a moment. Blinking blood from her eyes, she struggled upwards pulling on the bulkhead to provide support. Acrid smoke filled the air with the tang of hot metal and scorched flesh. The comm-unit buzzed and crackled, a tinny computerized voice running down the systems going off line and decks being sealed from the spatial vacuum.
Moving slowly, she rounded a corner to see one of the things tearing apart a marine. Slick and black, like the organic ship/creatures they had come in, it was a creature the didn't conform to the laws of nature. One moment there would be only two arms, chitinous and clawed and the next there would be fluid tentacles that phased in and out of sight. The body phased and morphed continuously, parts so dark they seemed to absorb light and others slick and shiny like a beetle carapace. Finishing tearing the marine apart, force so great he was rent in half it threw the body away and sat there for a moment.
The red emergency lights lit the face of the body as it landed near by, it was a woman she knew, Captain of the VC Janus. A dozen puncture wounds indicated that it had taken her by suprise and then toyed with now dead captain. Whispers began in the back of her mind, suggesting plans and tactics and urging her onward. The ship shuddered and lurched, caught somehow by the living ship outside. Vision tunneled down, fixating on the dimensional anomaly.
Motion generates friction and friction slows a movement down. Change the friction, move in the spaces between atoms and speed increases. Flesh is no different from other matter. Deep inside, on a subconscious level something snapped. Her head pounded and ached but all that could be done was to latch onto the theorems running through it. And the world slowed down to a bare crawl, movement was effortless and faster. Silence crashed in oppressively as her body moved faster than the waves of sound around her.
Her mind screamed at her, reeling from the fighting and trying to accept and acclimate the impossible science. Theorems rose unbidden as the conscious mind of a member of the Masses fought to hold onto the here and now. The click of an empty clip was felt, not heard and the gun dropped. Subsumed and overwhelmed by the driving need to survive the conscious gave way. Seizing the options presented, epiphanies on science and it's applications, the preconscious pushed aside the ego.
Quantum mechanics states that all points are connected all at once and if you manipulate one particle you manipulate the rest. Manipulate the one atom correctly and it will build off the movements of those around it and greater and greater force will be released once the chain reaction is done. Achieve enough speed and matter converts to pure force energy. The conscious mind writhed as the subconscious pushed out, twisting time/space with the thrust and a bulkhead exploded as the reaction on a sub atomic level converted its dormant atoms to energy and added that to a reaction chain. Floor plates buckled and debris was consumed to feed the chain of compression and conversion. The smell of burning metal, the alloys having caught fire now, and superheated air reached her nose as the world went red and years of Inspired Science training came to the forefront. Somewhere, in her mind, she was screaming as her own form was buffeted and battered by the physics theory she unleashed around her. Then there was only silence and redness.
~Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.
Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.
He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him.
With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.~
Screaming, Blackbird sat up on her bed, her eyes wide open but blank. Soundproofing prevented the rest of the house from being disturbed as she screamed and screamed until her throat was hoarse; then like a puppet with it's strings cut she collapsed back on the bed as the REM cycle passed. Restlessly moving in her sleep she curled up into a fetal position, kicking a book off the bed in the process.
45 minutes pass between REM cycles once the cycle begins. Cold comfort in the light of day.