Extracted - Part 2

[Sthurmovik]

Part 2:

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"Welcome to the Yale-New Haven Interstellar Spaceport Colonel, you're connecting transportation is located at pad 12. Any of the yellow scootabouts are available for your convenience."

Serena had flown out of New Haven once before and it had only gone downhill since then. The terminal was mostly filled with portal commuters paying the premium fare to get to New York City in a fraction of a second or to more distant locations where some hedge fund might have an investment opportunity. Still, with increasing VR use travel was way down and the scores of shuttered storefronts and kiosks in and around the gate area attested to the challenging economics of people physically moving from place to place. Throwing her bag into one of the small autonomous vehicles that had dutifully queued up for connecting travelers she was relieved when it pulled away without making her share the journey with some civie tourist or businessman. The doors clicking shut for both safety and security purposes, the scoot shot out onto the apron at high speed, negotiating a safe path through the various intra and extra atmospheric craft that puttered around the terminal area. The airport was still busy enough with private craft, charters and cargo operations and in the distance the gleaming towers of both the city and the University rose up into the sky as jumpers buzzed about picking up and delivering loads from various rooftops. Looking to pass the time Serena pulled up some Yelp reviews to see how well they matched up to her current observations of the airport. By the time she reached the pad her mood was much improved buoyed by the humor of crowds and eager to meet old friends.

The pad was one of the older ones surrounded on three sides by large concrete blast deflectors of the type that were common before force fields were available. Although obsolete, pad 12 and those like it enjoyed continued use for those flights needing special handling or security arrangements. Sitting in the middle of the pad with plenty of room to spare was an old Orion II class scout ship of 2,500 tonnes standard displacement. The rear loading ramp was down to provide access to the multi-mission cargo hold which occupied the rear half of the central part of the hull with engineering amidships and crew quarters forward. The ship design incorporated limited aerodynamics with two large main engines set just outside of the hull at the root of two stub wings which had a span about one half the length of the ship. The navigation cockpit was set up high on the front of the ship with a docking bay set up for boarding hostile or derelict ships below it in the bow. Twin tail fins extended upward from either side of the cargo bay with a faded civilian registration sharing space with freshly applied military insignia representing the university and nation state. Written on the rear hull just above the cargo door was "WS SLEEPING GIANT - New Haven, CT :: 537". The scoot pulled right up to the rear of the ship and as Serena opened the door to get out a rather high pitched voice called out to her.

"Wait! Hold the door!"

Serena held the door to the scoot open as a 7 foot tall Neogryphon hustled out of the cargo bay, the holographic patterns embedded in his smooth shiny metallic hide casting rainbow reflections in the sunlight.

"Skie! What the hell are you still doing here? L'orn's already in the transport terminal and you still have to swap into a combat body and kit up. I'm going to chalk this up to the new scheduling system, but I can't have one of my officers strolling in late for a mission."

The anthro gryphon tossed his bag into the scoot so that it wouldn't leave on its own and turned to face his CO.

"I'm sorry Colonel, but they didn't give me enough time to wrap up my training session and prep work. Would have thrown the mission down the tubes if I hadn't. I was thinking I could just portal direct from here to meet L'orn at the operating base," said Skie, his falcon pattern eyes locked on Serena.

"Go back and get changed first. I heard how many credits you dropped on that new hide of yours and its bad luck for you to go take that on a mission."

"Since when do Sisters believe in luck?"

"Since when do I speak for my people anymore? Just go use #5, that's got the least amount of wear and tear on it. By the way Skie, you look absolutely phenomenal. Is that a custom pattern or what?" asked Serena as she slowly circled the Neogryphon, admiring the zebra stripes running along his back and wings interspersed with blue and white.

"It's a Hudson's Hawk. Discovered just a few years ago on Earth 53,045. You know I never really liked my leopard spots so I just dumped them and went with a complete avian pattern. Why should the Phoenixes have all the fun?"

"Well aren't you a special snowflake. By the way there are still spots on your tail."

"Ah…well you know what I mean. Listen like you said I have to get going," said Skie as he began to cram himself into the scoot causing the suspension to visibly sag.

"Good luck Lieutenant and watch yourself. You Neos are expensive to fix."

Skie waved goodbye as the scoot returned to the terminal leaving Serena to carry her gear up into the ship.

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Two young humans, a man and a woman, stood in the cargo bay taking turns to pass up various hard shell cases to an older woman standing on a rolling stairway unit. All three were wearing shore activity jumpsuits and back support braces and were in a lively mood as they prepared for their voyage despite the physical drudgery .

"So what happened next professor?" asked the girl with short cut black hair.

"Well the whole room started glowing and the floor started shaking. It turns out it wasn't a temple at all, but a sentient scout ship that had crash landed 8,000 years before and just sort of got covered up by the jungle. So we try the usual methods of communication, but for all we like to think of ourselves this ancient living ship probably perceived us as little more than insects. Anyway it's becoming increasingly clear that nap time is over and the ship has places to go and people to see. So we just start running as fast as we can for the exit and we get out just…I mean just in time because 10 seconds after we had cleared the hatch this HUGE structure starts lifting up out of the jungle with trees and vines and all sorts of stuff still on it. The sound is just deafening, even in the EV suits it was just pounding through our bodies, but the sight of that thing lifting up was just mesmerizing. We just sat there watching in awe as this, had to be kilometer long ship just lazily turned in mid air. Next thing we know the rear engines start glowing and, pfst, its gone and the only evidence it was ever there was the huge hole it left in the ground."

"Are you kidding me?" the girl exclaimed, "I can't believe that sort of thing happened to you. It must have been incredible."

"Wait, wait, that's not the end of the story. So anyway we're all standing there and Lars, that was you Lars right?"

The guy with the crew cut light hair and round face smiled. "Yeah, that was me."

"So Lars was like…"Where're the Tents?" and I'm sitting there like "oh fuck" because we had built the base camp on top of the ship so when it took off it took our entire camp with it. I mean our tents, our gear, almost all the data we had collected, everything. To this day I always get a chuckle thinking about how somewhere out in the multiverse there's this hyper intelligent ship flying around with all of our stuff on its hull."

"How'd you get home?" the girl asked.

"Fortunately we had remembered our emergency beacons and were able to make an I-Dim call to the nearest lifesaving station, so if you're wondering why I'm always on you about safety that's the reason."

"Why don't you tell them the one about the Golem we ran into on Honza V," chimed in Serena.

The older woman looked over at Serena, her dark grey pony tail flying around from the swiftness of the movement just before her conventionally attractive face broke out in ebullient smile.

"Serena! By the ancestors what brings you here!" the woman exclaimed, jumping down from the top of the rolling stairway and running over to the android girl, embracing her with unrestrained enthusiasm.

"Woah woah, easy now. Come on, do you think I would let the great Doctor Lupa Whitepaw's latest expedition get cancelled due to a stupid bureaucratic mix up?"

Lupa stepped back, still smiling. "Well Major Serena Hanford I am honored that you would be so caring as to handle my problem in such a personal manner."

"Actually that Colonel Hanford now, they've uh, pushed me upstairs a little."

"Oh, you're a Colonel, very impressive. Well I will have you know that you are looking at the David H. Koch Professor of Extraterrestrial Archeology."

"I see we've both done well for ourselves. I'm sorry I didn't stay in closer contact, but as you can guess I've been pretty busy."

"Likewise, here, I want you to meet my latest crop of graduate students. This is Sarah Hong and Lars Ulfberht. Sarah is in her second year and Lars plans to defend next May."

"Pleased to meet you," said Serena, shaking both their hands in turn. "So which Earth are you two from?"

"Right here," said Lars, "537."

"No shit. Lupa, how did you get these two "Class V kiddies" out of their VR tubes? You did tell them they might get dirty right?"

"Not everyone on the core worlds is a VR addict Serena," Lupa interjected. "In fact they are both in the ROTC program. I actually insist on that for all of my graduate students. You won't believe how many times I have had the security detachment fuck things up on a sensitive expedition. As reserve officers my students will be able to command the security forces directly."

"How do you want to handle things on the mission?" asked Serena, looking at Lupa, but glancing towards her students.

"I was hoping that you would help them get some training hours in by securing the area and related duties, but I will need them for the survey work."

Serena nodded. "Alright you two, when you're done here I want a full briefing on everything you've done so far. How about once we get through the portal and underway to our destination?"

"Yes sir," both responded in unison before saluting and going off get the rest of the gear loaded.

Serena turned and smiled back at her old friend. "Well here we are again. Do you know how much of a pain in the ass you were for me? I had the University provide me with a clone if your e-mail inbox just so I could keep up with you!"

"You what?!" gasped Lupa, her eyes going wide.

"After the Atlantis incident the Fed wanted to shut you down for being a loose cannon, but I got them to back down with a personal promise to monitor your activities."

"So that's why you kept showing up on all my expeditions! I should have known you were up to something sneaky, but I never could read you very well back in the day, at least not like I can't now."

"Oh great, another downside of being an Elder. I can't lie as effectively as I used to."

"Oh Serena! Don't talk like you're some old racehorse. "Less able to be a sociopath" is a positive life development. Come on, let me show you around the ship. This is the cargo bay where we do most of the actual research. The old Orion II's were multi-mission ships so everything slides in and out on rails. If, let's say, exobiology comes back from a mission we can get things turned around in under 24 hours."

"So all this junk is yours?" said Serena looking around at the various cargo pods stacked around the bay.

"Yeah, we just had to spend a lot of leftover grant money before the end of the fiscal year and I'm hoping the other departments won't care that I just left some of it on the ship," said Lupa, crossing her fingers. "The engineering spaces are those those large hatches there and there. All the major power components can be slid out through the cargo bay without having to cut the ship apart. We're just going to head up that tunnel between them to the main deck which has the galley and other common living areas. Oh I also want to introduce you to my new exchange student."

Lupa lead Serena through the tunnel and into the multi purpose compartment on the main desk that served as meeting room and mess. One of the tables had been unfolded and a single female felinoid sat there performing a functions check on a pile of com units, scanners and personal data terminals. For a moment Serena figured she was just some strange species of alien due to the mix of leopard head, tiger stripes and jaguar spots set on a pelt that was orange on her back, yellow on the arms and white on the legs. However Serena soon noticed the exact way the girl was interacting with the pile of technology.

"Is she a synth?" whispered Serena running an ID request which returned a strange string of numbers that she couldn't make sense of.

"Yup," replied Lupa.

"Her body is flawless. Where did you find her?"

"Why don't you just ask?" Lupa raised her voice. "Fiona, why don't you come over here and meet our new security assignee?"

The feline girl got up and glided over to Serena and Lupa with a quality of movement in the same league as the techno-biologic Neos.

"Hello Serena, pleased to make your acquaintance. You already saw my real name, but I generally go by Fiona for convenience."

"Real name…" mumbled Serena, confused for a moment before she let out a little gasp. "You're….you're from the Link!"

"I'm surprised the commander of the SLIRT would have never met one of my people before."

"Oh well I mean I have, but, informally, at conferences and the like. The Link never really caused us any problems so one might say that my lack of familiarity actually says good things about your people."

"Very diplomatic Serena, but if you'd like to talk about the Interlink some time feel free to drop by my room. Unfortunately right now I have to deal with this pile of troublesome tech."

"That sounds like a plan," said Serena. I'll catch you later."

"Colonel, would you mind joining me in my quarters? I have some administrative tasks that need to be attended to," Lupa said with a bit of a wink.

"It would be my pleasure professor."

The quarters were about the size of a small bedroom with the bed, desk and storage cabinets set up against the walls and a pair of chairs left to roll about the remaining space. All six sides of the room were bare metal, just like everything else inside the ship with the appointments being constructed from lightweight composites. A plush area rug covered the diamond hash patterned floor.

"I saw your name on the door Lupa, I thought you were just bumming a ride?"

"My department owns half the annual at-space days associated with the contract and I'm the department chair. The Captain was nice enough to throw in a permanent space so I wouldn't have to always be packing my stuff on and off."

"All you need to do now is find a way to get this out of that nasty spaceport and you're all set."

"Yale does need a new interstellar spaceport. Care to make a donation?"

"Sorry, I'm already spoken for. My university needs more RAM."

Lupa chuckled while Serena quietly sank into a chair. Lupa proceeded to open one of the lockers and produced a bottle of scotch and another entirely metal bottle with a blue radiation symbol on the side. Dropping a few chilled whisky stones into a glass she poured in a double shot of the 15 year old single barrel before uncapping the other bottle and pouring a similar amount of a glowing electric blue liquid into another. She handed the glowing glass off to Serena before raising her own.

"Here's to old friendships," said Lupa.

"Cheers," replied Serena before taking a long sip of the liquid, coughing a bit as it went down. "Damn, that's…strong stuff, interesting profile. So you really keep a bottle of glow on hand just in case I show up?"

"You know my luck on expeditions. I figured I'd run into you again sooner or later."

"Glow only has a half life of 18 months, how did you keep it so strong?" said Serena, taking a lighter sip.

"I found a place to stick the bottle inside the shielding near one of the main plasma ducts. I freshen it up every time I go out in the Giant."

"Well explains why it tastes like such a complex blend. So anyway, who's the captain on this tub?"

There was suddenly a strange shimmering in the middle of the room as a scantily clad woman appeared out of thin air. Serena thought she recognized the image from a recent swimsuit catalogue.

"Oh so I'm a tub now am I?"

Serena rolled her eyes and took another drink. "Oh no, now I've done it! Looks like I've gone and insulted the ship. You'd better protect me Lupa before I get sucked out a "malfunctioning" airlock."

Lupa laughed. "Serena, meet the ship's AI, Bea. Bea, this is our new security attaché."

"Charmed," said Bea. "I'll have you know that my husband and I put a lot of work into making sure we provide only the highest level of service to the University."

"Husband?" said Serena, a quizzical expression on her face, her inhibitions rapidly falling.

"Yeah, Thomas Dunn, captain of the Sleeping Giant," Lupa answered.

Serena's eye went wide, "What? They can do that?"

"As a sentient being I am entitled to equal protection under the law and that mean's I can form a mutual agreement with another sentient being to marry," stated Bea, clearly a veteran at having this sort of conversation.

"Well yeah, but why would you want to marry your captain? Don't most of those guys tend to have borderline unhealthy relationships with their ships to begin with? I mean that's where the term "shipping" came from."

"It's not unhealthy is the ship talks back you know," Bea winked. "Besides as his spouse our operation becomes classified as a family business which means I am no longer an employee and therefore am no longer subject to labor laws and regulations. That means that we don't have to deal with all bullshit involving mandatory personal time off, downtime, maintenance plans, the list goes on and on. If we followed every last law it would cut our operating profit by 25% for almost no real benefit to me, ostensibly the person the laws are trying to protect."

"Yeah, screw the government and their rue-els," snickered Serena, raising her glass one more time and draining the last of the blue glowing liquid.

"Alright, you've clearly had enough," said Lupa before she turned back to Bea. "It's probably a stealth way to project the jobs of single thread consciousness workers. I mean normally a ship like this would need a full time crew of what? 4? 5? You and your husband threw up some holo-emitters and achieve nines of service with just two. Thanks to those cost savings you're little ship here has been a godsend to my department and my research."

"So what do you think of the little Linker out there? Cute isn't she," said Serena, changing the topic.

"Cute? Hardly, she's creepy that's what she is," scoffed Bea, clearly unsettled about something.

Serena turned to Lupa. "Watch out Lupe, AI's griping about other architectures can get ugly."

"She's not an AI, she's a virus!" Bea stated with some emphasis.

"There was a little incident last week when Fiona came aboard," sighed Lupa.

"Incident?! She violated me!" said Bea, getting indignant.

"What happened?" asked Serena.

"Fiona uplinked into the Ship's data systems and accidently went through some of Bea's more personal areas." Lupa turned back to the hologram. "Bea, when Linked go places they load themselves into the available computing resource at the end of the journey. It was simply a cultural misunderstanding."

"I have to have a certain level of trust in people who have physical access to…" Bea waved her arms about, "…Me. Your little catgirl friend violated that trust and she violated my privacy."

"Bea I know you record everything that goes on in here. I mean everything. I'm going to cash that one in right now and we're going to call things even, ok?"

Bea suddenly blushed like she had been caught with her hand in the cookie jar and the hologram vanished. Lupa smiled at Serena. "Fiona told me that. Ships with glass hulls eh?"

"Drama drama everywhere eh? I feel bad for the Captain and Lars."

"They tend to lock themselves in the cockpit on the longer journeys."

"Speaking of which," said Serena getting up and wobbling a bit on her feet, "I'm going to need to have a talk with the captain about the mission profile. I guess I'll see you at dinner."

"Remember, three points of contact Serena."

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"Permission to enter the bridge Captain," said Serena as she stood on the new vertical stairway into the Giant's cockpit.

"Permission granted."

Serena continued up and squeezed herself into the second seat, her eyes making a quick scan of the controls for future reference. Almost all the ships systems were represented on large multi-function displays with analogue or single function controls only where required by law. Captain Dunn sat to the right in the helmsman's position checking a list of hand written numbers hastily scrawled on a notepad against that was listed on the screen. The Captain was tall and thin with a paleness typical of spacers who spent too much time under artificial light or no light at all. His face had about 2 or 3 days worth of stubble with a few streaks of grease on his cheeks and forehead. He wore an HMCS Hyperion baseball cap from his time in the Forces.

"Well it's an honor to meet you Colonel Hanford. After hearing so many stories about you from the professor, some more than once, it's good to be able to put a face to the holo."

"Well it's my pleasure to be here. You have a wonderful ship. In fact I met her earlier."

"It's hard not to," he chuckled. "I trust you learned of our arrangement?"

"What can I say," said Serena. "Love the one you're with."

"I like you already. So, you're here to protect us in case we unearth some sort of alien robot army?"

"If protect means hauling my ass back to the ship then sure. Any world associated with the Network stands an elevated risk of containing some very grumpy synthetics. I'm just here to keep everyone safe by shouting "Run!"."

There was a brief period of silence as the Captain completed his cross checking. Serena gazed out the thick view port at a seagull strutting about on the blast deflector positioned in front of them.

"So, you work for the Incident Response Team? That sounds like an exciting job."

"Intelligence and Response, comma, Team. They changed the name because some desk jockey thought the old one had a negative connotation. Yeah, you can say it's exciting, although we all wish it were less so. When your mission is to prevent all out war with highly advanced synthetic races the less "excitement" the better. Honestly, the excitement of discovering the ancient history of an Andromeda galaxy seems much more healthy to me."

"Remember I'm just the driver. You stay out there long enough it all starts looking the same. By the way, why did your Gryphon friend make me pull out the dimensional portal generator? The Dardick system's inside the frontier with a com grid and an anchor point. I was looking forward to a nice quick trip for once."

"Due to the nature of the threat and the small size of the survey team it was deemed that allowing a direct jump would present an unacceptable risk of the technology falling into hostile hands." Serena punched up a holo-diagram on the center console. "That's reminds me, why are you going in through the Dæhlie jump gate? Using the Gate at Monon would cut six hours off the round trip."

"SAR duties in Dardick are covered by the Norwegian Coast Guard in Dæhlie. I always like to check in with the local lifesaving station before taking the Giant out on her own. If they can put a face to the radio call I've found it gets you better service. Of course the other reason is that we plan to stop by Dæhlie on our way back for some skiing."

"Sounds like fun. Maybe I'll be able to join you."

"The more the merrier," said the Captain, putting his notepad away. "Anyway I need to go over the final preflight checks. We should have skids up in 30 minutes so tell those grad students back in the cargo bay that they'd better hurry up because I'm not going to miss our gate reservation."

Serena climbed out of the left hand seat and slid down the ladder back to the main desk where Fiona still sat at the mess table inspecting electronics. With nothing better to do Serena slid onto the bench seat next to the soft spoken hybrid feline and picked up one of the scanning devices.

"Hey there, need any help?" Serena offered.

"No thanks, I'm almost done anyway," replied Fiona, pulling her tail out from under Serena and then laying it back on the synthetic human's lap.

"So is this your first time out in the real world?" asked Serena as she began to gently stroke the fluffy black striped tail.

"First time no, but it's my first long duration experience away from the Link and so far I am finding it to be both enjoyable and rewarding. Even I used to believe that "real" reality was nothing special compared to the "reality" of the Link, but there is just something about the lack of control, real risk and real reward that gives this form of existence a spiciness that I have trouble putting into words."

"It's interesting hearing someone born and raised in a virtual sim to consider real life risk and reward to be exciting when so many in the core Federation are of the mind that the only excitement left to be found are in worlds of their own creation."

"I believe you’re saying is "grass is greener", but free thinking individuals tend to go where the opportunities are. In this case I can explore a fully detailed new world without having to wait for a bunch of developers to release an expansion pack."

Serena nodded. "Oh, before I forget I wanted to compliment you on your body. It is a truly remarkable piece of technology."

"Oh my construct? Thank you, it's a custom design I had fabbed special for my time with Dr. Whitepaw. I've been trying out the concept for about a century now in sim time and if you ask me I think it looks even better here in the physical space." Fiona turned to look at Serena, her tail twitching in the android's lap. "Your construct also very well designed. I can tell you take good care of it."

Serena began to laugh as something about their conversation amused her. "Just look at us talking about our bodies in terms of their tech or design. Hey Bea, I really love your bulkheads. Great…great design."

"Thank you Colonel, I work out," responded the voice from the PA speaker.

Serena turned back to Fiona. "Here, I'm going to try complimenting you like a person. Ahem, you look good Fiona. You're hot."

Fiona bashfully shrunk back a little, but managed a smile. "T-thanks."

"Now hopefully we can get out of here on time. Have you ever been out in space in a ship before Fiona?"

"I've been in a ship like Bea is in the ship, but I never considered being in a construct inside another construct so I guess this is my first time in that situation."

"Ah, I guess that explains the little mixup earlier."

"Link processing hardware is designed to support multi-tenancy. Stumbling into someone else's consciousness like that was equally embarrassing to both of us."

"Apology accepted," came Bea's voice from the PA speaker.

"Well I'm glad that's resolved," said Serena. "I don't know how riding in a ship could possibly compare with being a ship as an experience, but maybe you can treat it like some sort of like being in spooky amusement ride where you don't know where you are and it feels like you could crash at any time."

"Stop scaring her Serena!" said Lupa, emerging from the hatch and walking over to give the anthro feline a hug.

"I….I'm ok," said Fiona in her small, soft voice.

Serena couldn't quite understand why a lifeform composed of living data in a body that made hers looks downright Soviet in comparison could be apprehensive about riding in a ship "the old fashioned way", but she was roused from that line of thought as Lars and Sarah walked in, putting their personal gear in a rack against one wall.

"Everything is loaded professor," said Sarah.

"Bea, is everything loaded?"

"Everything is confirmed loaded, all preflight checks have been completed. The Captain would like everybody to take their seats…or their alternate arrangements."

Fiona moved to put all the devices away and fold down the table while Lars and Sarah sat down on the bench across the compartment and began to strap into four-point harnesses. Serena helped Fiona get into her straps before buckling herself in as all sorts of rumbles and vibrations began to flow in from the engineering spaces directly to the aft of the main deck. Serena turned her head back towards the door to the crew deck as a mature dire wolf padded into the compartment and flopped down in a form fitting no-harness restraint system up against one wall.

"Lupa still hasn't managed to beat the space sickness in her human form?" asked Serena.

"No," said Lars, shaking his head. "She's tried just about everything. What with side effects and all she's found this is the best solution."

The more utilitarian rumbling was soon overshadowed by the sound of the engines spooling up, drawing in air and converting part of it to pure energy in the reaction chamber. The cargo ramp clanged shut as Bea and the Captain made their final checks for hull integrity and engine stability.

"Welcome to the Yale University Contract Vessel Sleeping Giant, this is your ship's AI speaking. I just wanted to bring to your attention some of the safety features on board the Giant today. If the Captain gives the order to abandon ship escape pods can be found in the fore and aft docking bays as well as the lower service deck. If there is a sudden loss of cabin pressure, emergency EV packs can be found under the seats in the mess and in the yellow emergency equipment boxes located throughout the ship. In the unlikely event of a water landing please remember to retrieve my AI core before the ship sinks. Thank you for your cooperation and remember safety begins with you."

Serena felt a fuzzy hand poke her. "W-water landing? This ship lands on water?"

"No, it's just a safety announcement, just in case something happens. We're not going to land on water. The planet we're going to doesn't even have any water."

Serena reached up to give Fiona a soothing pat on the back. As the lift jets engaged the ship lurched up into the air, clearing the blast deflectors and transitioning into an upward trajectory towards the jump gate holding pattern. The sudden feeling of movement prompted Fiona to latch onto Serena's arm with an amount of force sufficient to cause the android discomfort, but not wanting to push the worried Linker away Serena choose to grin and bear it.

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[BD]

uhm... several "you're/your" mistakes here and there. Still wonder how it's possible for anyone to mistake the two, but basically the only times i found it correctly used were towards the end.

Also sheesh, work a bit on the infodumpy stuff. Basically everything i found here is heavy on the info and very light if not anything on something happening. I know when you work on stuff you feel the need to show your work, but really: "cut what you love" is a very sound practice.

Plus... ok on transumanism, but this chapter felt more like furry fiction than transumanist. Transumanists go for the weird, like people with 6 arms and no legs, or tetrahedrons with hard light holographic appendices. Or starships connected to galaxy-wide artificial intelligence, like a blood cell flowing through blood vessel/wormholes in a giant organism. Yeah, the occasional furry is ok, but half of the people in this chapter are neon griffins, werewolves with a telling name or weird coat cat people. And as far as i understood these will be the main "crew" of the actual story. With L'orn possibly coming back later i hope?

Sorry if it seems a downer, but yeah, it was a downer. Hope next chapters get better.

[Sthurmovik]

uhm... several "you're/your" mistakes here and there. Still wonder how it's possible for anyone to mistake the two, but basically the only times i found it correctly used were towards the end.

Also sheesh, work a bit on the infodumpy stuff. Basically everything i found here is heavy on the info and very light if not anything on something happening. I know when you work on stuff you feel the need to show your work, but really: "cut what you love" is a very sound practice.

Plus... ok on transumanism, but this chapter felt more like furry fiction than transumanist. Transumanists go for the weird, like people with 6 arms and no legs, or tetrahedrons with hard light holographic appendices. Or starships connected to galaxy-wide artificial intelligence, like a blood cell flowing through blood vessel/wormholes in a giant organism. Yeah, the occasional furry is ok, but half of the people in this chapter are neon griffins, werewolves with a telling name or weird coat cat people. And as far as i understood these will be the main "crew" of the actual story. With L'orn possibly coming back later i hope?

Sorry if it seems a downer, but yeah, it was a downer. Hope next chapters get better.

Thanks for the comments. I have trouble finding people to provide critical readthroughs and most of the people who try just say everything is great. Sorry about any exposition issues, but I will admit this story is doing triple duty as a setting intro, bot story and a transformation story. Rest assured that just because it has some "furry" characters does not mean that it goes into furry themes. At least I don't think it does. :-\ PM me if you'd want to chat more in detail about it.

Anyway if you line any of the ideas and would be interested in something a bit more focused next time let me know.

[BD]

Personally i don't care about furry theme, in fact it's a welcome variation. It's just that when i see something "marketed" as X i want to read X, not Y. You said this story was supposed to be transumanist, then i get cyborg neon furries. It's a different thing, transumanist stories tend to have "practical" animal-like bodies lying around for the characters to use, like octopusses, monkeys and stuff that is not on the furry top list but they have a better tridimensional navigations in space.

Also if you use a lot of space trying to describe said furries you end up with a story that it's less about what these people are doing and why and why this character is important or how, and more about "hey look, it's character X let me make a show out of it and look at all the cool descriptions i made of it". Basically what you get is a reference model sheet for the character. And a reference model sheet is not a story.

If you pass time describing a character that as a weird mane or a fluffy tail the law of conservation of detail wants that you then use what you described for something important. Otherwise it's wasted space.

You have to understand that while in an erotic fiction all that stuff is ok... well it is just because of fetishism. We come here to read X because we revel in it. The moment you want a story that you can publish... well... as i said: "Cut what you love", all the character descriptions have to go, all the infodumpy "this is an old blast zone with walls instead of shields" and stuff like that? Also has to go.

You don't go explaining that X is obsolete. You use the word "obsolete" and move on. You don't go explaining that X is rude, you say it's rude and move on. Remember: only waste time saying X if it is important for the story. Or if the point of view character has a fetish for X. Also remember that if the POV character has a fetish for X it must be because it's important for the story. Like X is an important plot point so the POV character "accidentally" has a fetish for it so that Y can happen later because of his/her obsession.

Whenever you describe something it has to get described in the shortest way possible and in the POV of the character. "Is the character obsessed with this thing?" then it gets described in detail. "Is the character used to this stuff?" Then almost zero description and even an adjective might be too much. "Is it something weird the character has never seen before?" describe in as much detail as needed for the law of conservation of detail.

Also keep in mind the m.i.c.e. focus of the story:
- "Milieu" you describe slice of life stuff. Something important can happen which destroys the normal life, but the characters start and end with a normal lifestyle and so it's the stuff in the middle (the turmoil) that gets described in detail, and even then only and always compared to the normal life of the POV character. In a milieu story you can waste time saying "the blast doors were ancient, they did not use hard light forcefields" because the character is used to only forcefields. But you don't start with it otherwise the reader feels like you want to dump on him all the info of the setting and that's bad. You start with forcefields that barely get mentioned and then when the character moves into backwater planets he might mention "oh they use blast walls instead of forcefields here" and even then only if it's useful for the story. That is, if the blast walls gets used for something. Though in "milieu" stories it's all about the fascination of the setting and its variation, so unnecessary description of details that do not get used are often considered ok because one supposes that the character is interested in the weirdness of the places he/she goes visiting.
- "Idea" you describe a particular concept and go on with it. You revel only in the weirdness of the concept and how everybody involved gets their lives torn by the concept. The concept is the basic motor of the entire story so everything revolves around it. Describing the concept in detail is both essential to the story but again mind the law of conservation of details. If you say that X has been rude because he/she entered the mindspace of the ship then either the mindspace of the ship is extremely important for the story and the motor of it. Then exploring the meaning and extent of what entails having a ship with a mindspace should be the entire focus of the story.
- "Characters" you describe one or more POV characters and what their lives are and how they evolve as characters due to what happens to the story. The focus of the story is evolution of the mindset or behaviour of the character. A madman/madwoman gets healed or drives himself/herself to self destruction, a normal man/woamn discovers something that's important to his/her life, X goes into the heart of darkness and comes out changed. You focus on how the events change the character deeply inside, so that even when he/she comes back to normal life it's not normal any more because that character has changed. It's generally considered rather ok to revel a bit in the life before describing stuff that normally the character does not pay a single thought about. But don't overdo it.
- "Event" something happens and everybody gets changed by it. It's usually a "reaction" to something. How the world or a small community or even just the point of view character get changed by something that happens. This one is the trickiest because it's easy to slip into "idea" or "character" or "milieu" depending on what is the importance of the event and what it does affect and effect. An event is all about the event happening and its consequences. It might be godzilla has attacked and the aftermath. if it were an "idea" we would be talking about godzilla, its biology and stuff, but this is an "event" so we focus on what happened during and after. If it were a "milieu" it would be about how life was before and how much it takes to return to normal and constantly comparing the before life with the anomaly, but this is an "event" so we talk about how life is now, how the people are adjusting with little comparisons to before. If it were a "character" one would talk about the mindset of the POVs and how they change, and this is the trickiest because "Event" can be very well like that, but it should be noted that it's the event itself the entire focus, so character arcs might well stay unresolved if the event ends before they could resolve. An "event" story has a bit of preparation, then THE EVENT then the aftermath. characters, milieu and ideas are unimportant and they can stay as sketched and unresolved as needed.

Finally keep in mind that you don't go hopping on the m.i.c.e. focus. You chose one and stick to it. If you hop between foci you never hit the right audience and you get easily forgotten. Period.

Just the same with POV characters: you chose one or a few and stick with them, you don't discard a POV character unless he/she dying or disappearing is an extremely important part of the story. If the character gets useless and you are not interested anymore in it you should not have introcuced him/her at all in the first place. Also you don't use a POV character then make it disappear and in the middle of the story you come up with a different POV character. If there are multiple POVs introduce them as quickly as possible and show their differences. Also keep them separate visibly, use different chapters for each one in rotation or stuff like that.

[Sthurmovik]

Personally i don't care about furry theme, in fact it's a welcome variation. It's just that when i see something "marketed" as X i want to read X, not Y. You said this story was supposed to be transumanist, then i get cyborg neon furries. It's a different thing, transumanist stories tend to have "practical" animal-like bodies lying around for the characters to use, like octopusses, monkeys and stuff that is not on the furry top list but they have a better tridimensional navigations in space.

Sorry about that, I was more thinking that the story addresses more in the themes of mental differences between human and AI and less body mods. Thanks for the feedback and I hope there is something you can enjoy in the rest of it.

[BD]

In any case it is a fairly average read though i had my hopes up in the intro (note: do not call a setting infodump the "intro" as in no case knowing the setting can be considered the intro to your work if you do, you are doing it wrong. At best it could be a "behind the scenes" appendix. Never the intro.) Also try to read people that do this stuff with minimalistic if not completely absent infodump. Something like quantum vibe or decrypting rita which are two fabulous things freely available to read on the net.

[Sthurmovik]

I have a more fembot related work I've been tossing around since Mirror Images in the same general setting as this. That may be more to your taste. Glad you at least found the setting promising.