9 Years, 11 Months, 24 Days After Eridani Landing
Chront
Derrick continued the staring match with the Seninon outside the cell, his gaze locked on the other sentient his eyes drying out despite the humidity. The Seninon man was dressed in what looked like an ancient Earth uniform. Straight heavy cloth with protective plates inside of it, brown greens mixed over the cloth combined with actual dirt to help him blend into the jungle background.
He sported a few days of beard growth, his pupils were almost completely round as well. A tell that Derrick had picked up on with regards to the species.
Derrick shifted around against the wall his eyes still on the man. The sense of control and power he exuded was the only thing that made him different than all the other Seninon that Derrick has seen. Whoever the man was, he wasn’t the guard. He was the one in charge.
It was the same aura that Stagg gave off, a cool control and steadfast resolve. Making the comparison in his head Derrick’s lips twitched and he resisted the urge to throw an insult at the man to see how he would react.
The Senion took in a deep breath, and waving a hand broke away from the staring contest. Reaching into his jacket he carefully drew out an Imperial Com. Casually tapping at the device he cleared his throat and raised it up like it was an ancient microphone.
“You are confident.”
Derrick identified the language as the same one that Hala spoke, even as he registered the words from the Imperial translator.
The Dorvakian to Derrick’s left in the Cell’s head snapped up at the translated words, Hala on Derrick’s left looked up as well hearing her own language. The Seninon was the only one who could understand everyone in the cell block.
The Seninon leaned forwards in his chair outside the cell, “Are you confident like her?” he gestured at the Dorvakian woman, his eyes sliding over to her. The red skinned woman flinched away from his eyes and quickly dropped her eyes to the concrete of the cell floor.
The Seninon let out a humorless chuckle, “Her bravado broke near instantly. Only one or two of the red-skins tried to hide things from us,” the Seninon’s other hand whipped down to his waist and he pulled out a thin quarter meter long knife. “A few cuts and they told us quite a bit, like how to use these things.” He raised the Comm.
Leaning over he flipped the knife in his hand, catching the dull side of the blade he wrapped the handle on the bars. The Dorvakian jumped at the sound, he laughed.
Hala strode towards him a hand raised, “ucabej icinzevas isan us idujl!”
Derrick’s eye twitched as the half second lapsed where the Comm would have transalted. The device was certainly in range, Links could translate words even in the harshest of conditions. The Seninon had limited the range.
The Seninon narrowed his eyes at Hala, his snakelike iris contracting, “To you perhaps. Not to me. The Humans brought their war to our world. They are without gods, and we owe them nothing! They’ve got us so desperate for their technology, our people are willing to abandon everything for it!” The Seninon stood up and sneered, “I know for a fact your own mother ordered you to do whatever you could to gain any amount of favor you could with them.” He looked over at Derrick, Hala frowned and glanced at him muttering words that Derrick doubted the other Seninon could hear.
“That alone tells you how far we’ve fallen, and the Vakurian.” The man spat, on the concrete. “They’re even worse. The females secrete mind altering chemicals, I know for a fact they’re actively trying to entice the Senion on the base. If they can do that,” he trailed off breathing hard.
Derrick raised an eyebrow at the man, and leaned further back against the wall smiling.
“AmidujL gejintemapjan itibu sec omas, adno ats ap?” spat Hala.
The other Seninon frowned and shook his head. “No, as much damage as they’ve done. The Human’s technology. It is a resource, we have already learned quite a bit from her” the Seninon gestured at the Dorvakian, “and the other red-skins, but they unfortunately don’t understand much of their own technology. They could barely repair the more intact pieces of it we managed to find, let alone improve upon what we have.”
The Seninon snapped his knife back into its sheath, reaching down to the holster on his thigh he drew out an Imperial sidearm. “The small things are useful, but they’ve only got so many shots. The red-skins can’t figure out a way to recharge them with what we have on hand.”
“Jlotsip as, amidujL sa sondo san ilitsinu, ag ets ilavopandik!” spat Hala.
The Seninon sighed, “No, but it is something I’m going to have him look at. Your own reports said that this human was responsible for most of the technological integration efforts your Mother was leading. That’s all I need him to do, and I’ll let you both go. Simple as that.” He held his hands out in a placating gesture.
“Ej, ijok?” spat Hala.
The Seninon bowed his head, “A satchel device.”
Derrick raised an eyebrow, and turned to Hala. “Nuclear?” he asked in his native language. Keeping his eyes resolutely away from the other member of her species.
Hala recognized the single word and nodded even before the Comm translated. “Inradej.”
The Seninon looked over at him smiling, his hands held out the gun and Comm pointed at the ground, “You build the one device, and you’ll be free to go. You have my word.”
“Cavijlzal.” Growled Hala.
The Senion’s lips twitched, but his gaze remained locked on Derrick.
Bracing himself against the wall, Derrick stood up. Ignoring the headache from the dehydration he slowly walked forwards until he was within arm’s reach of the bars. “I build you one nuke, and you let me go? How stupid do you think I am?”
The Senion’s eyes narrowed. Slowly he moved his eyes over Derrick, and scrunched up his nose. “You’re young.”
Derrick grunted, “I’m one of ten, maybe twelve people who has a complete mechanical understanding of the antimatter drive. The whole reason her Empire,” Derrick pointed at the Dorvakian, “attacked Earth. It’s single largest advantage every ‘Class C’ species has over them. You don’t think I haven’t been through training for this exact scenario?”
He looked around the cell and laughed, “Hell, for things a lot worse than what a two-bit terrorist can dish out.”
Derrick leaned forwards towards the bars, letting a grin spread across his face. “I could build you a nuke the size of your head, and it’d be powerful enough to destroy an entire continent. I could give you the formula for carbon-lattice and grow it in this cell, I could redesign the rifle’s you’re using now to be as powerful as artillery!” Derrick put his arms out through the bars of the cell getting closer to the man.
The Senion’s face remained impassive as Derrick leaned forwards towards him.
“If you think you’re going to be able to convince me, torture me, to build those things for you? You’re better off killing me right now. All I’m going to do is work to escape, and kill as many of you as I can in the process.”
The Seninon raised the gun in his hand, pointing it at Hala.
Derrick’s eyes winded, he let out a small clipped laugh. “I’m supposed to crumble, now right? Does every culture have the same clichés? She’s a friend, but I doubt she’d approve me saving her only to have you kill a few million Seninon.”
The Seninon outside the cell considered him for several moments, the grip on his gun tightened. The man let out a sigh and dropped his gun back into its holster. “You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you?”
“I’m going to make it difficult enough, you’ll enjoy killing me.”
The Seninon pulled out his knife again and stepped up to Derrick. He held the vicious blade up and angled it in the light that was streaming into the cell.
“Then if you’re no use, why don’t I just kill you?” He jerked his hand forwards. Derrick flinched at the movement, and quickly recovered as the Seninon’s blade stopped.
He took in a shuddering breath and refocused his eyes on the Seninon. “You’re not going to kill me yet. You want to test what I’ve said first. See If I’m as pretentious as the Dorvakians.”
The Seninon’s eyes became slits and he slowly moved the blade down onto Derrick’s arm. Derrick didn’t move as the man laid the knife down on his flesh. Meeting the other alien’s gaze Derrick waited.
Slowly the Seninon pressed the knife down, and moved it to the side cutting into Derrick’s flesh. He ignored the pain and kept his gaze locked forwards. The Seninon grunted and quickly made six cuts across Derrick’s arm, avoiding the visible veins on his skin.
Hala whimpered from Derrick’s right but didn’t move to intervene, her eyes the only one’s locked on the knife as it cut.
“Class C.” spat the Dorvakian, her voice low and barely audible. Derrick’s eyes flicked to her, and his grin widened as the translator remained silent. The Seninon glanced over at her and lifted the blade away.
Pulling a cloth from a pocket he wiped the blade clean, Derrick kept his arm extended ignoring the small drips of blood running down his arms. The residual nano-machines in his body had already stemmed the bleeding on the first three cuts, coagulating the blood forming an angry red scab.
The man drew the knife back and let out a grunt, “Well that’s more than the red-skins stood up to the first time, I’ll give you that.”
A knock on the metal door at the end of the hallway drew both Derrick and the Seninons attention.
“What is it?” asked the Seninon.
“Hernal, sir. The communications system just came back online, you wanted to be informed.” Said the man outside the cell. His words loud enough for the Comm to catch them and translate a moment after he spoke.
Hernal winced and tapped the Comm several times.
“It alavh.”
Derrick moved his injured arm up, waving at the Seninon. “Bye.”
The outer door to the row of cells unlocked and opened, turning Hernal stomped out. The guard who had opened the outer cell door walked in and looking at the three of them for a moment carefully set a tray down outside the cell.
Derrick pulled his arm back and watched the guard. He looked at him and pointed at the food. Stooping down Derrick quickly snatched up the food, three lumps that looked like grains and other materials mixed together. The guard threw the tray to the side and not looking back followed his superior out and stomped out of the small cell block to the door he had opened.
Derrick winced as the second set of locks re-engage.
Drawing his arms back into the cell Derrick sighed, “Hala, I said I wanted to see more of your planet. This isn’t what I had in mind.”
Hala blinked at him and cocked her head to the side, “Etirovog ats amjop mamen kevu soj.”
Derrick held out food, “I’m just going to pretend we’re understanding one another, and you were just being as equally sarcastic.”
Hala huffed and took one of the bars from the stack, she was apparently hungry within moments the bar was gone.
“Ukur?” she pointed at Derrick’s arm, still chewing on the sticky mass.
Derrick twisted so his injured arm was visible in the light from the single bulb outside the cell. The three all six cuts had already scabbed over.
“Nano-machines.” Said Derrick.
Hala’s eyes widened and she nodded, “Nanmakines.”
Stepping back from his ally, Derrick glanced at the other woman in the cell. The Dorvakian woman’s eyes were locked on the food in his hands. Derrick ran his eyes over her again, he wasn’t sure what the normal proportions for her species, and the ragged uniform didn’t help with any sort of assessment, but she was thin.
The Dorvakian noticed his gaze, and shifted against the wall to look at him. Derrick met her eyes, not moving. She tried to match him, but quickly lost her nerve and glanced away.
Rolling his eyes Derrick quickly moved across the dingy cell towards her, “Here.” He extended his hand with the food.
She jerked to take the food and paused her hand over the two remaining bars.
“One of them, I’m hungry too.”
She took one bar and Derrick moved back to the center of the room. Sitting up against the wall he bit into his own bar and closed his eyes. The rations were exactly what Derrick expected, tasteless, dry, and at the same time a sticky. It seemed making rations as horrible as possible was a universal trait among species.
“What’s your name?” asked Derrick.
“What?”
Derrick kept his eyes on the ceiling, only watching her in the periphery of his vision. “You have a name, don’t you? The Seninon keep messing up the pronunciation, but you heard all of that. I’m Derrick, what’s yours?”
The Dorvakian woman slowly took several bites out of her food, her eyes flicking between Derrick and the floor.
“Lieutenant Sesanalnan.”
Derrick nodded, he turned to Hala who was watching the two of them. He pointed at her, “Hala,” he moved his hand to Hesanalnan, “[Ses]” He moved his hand to himself, “Derrick.”
Hala quickly nodded, “[Ses], Derrick, Hala.” She pointed at the appropriate sentient as she listed them off.
“Sesanalnan.” Growled [Ses].
Derrick took another bite of the food, “I’m a class C. I can’t do the complicated words.”
“Class C does not mean stupid, it means violent and dangerous.” Hissed the Dorvakian.
“You’re the ones going around and destroying planets,” he paused and chuckled, “or at least trying too. You didn’t do too well here.”
[Ses] narrowed her eyes, “It’s for the greater good. Class C are dangerous, left unchecked and allowed to travel the stars you would ruin the galaxy! You attacked our fleet, stole technology from us!”
Derrick’s lips twitched, “We attacked you, as you prepared to commit xenocide. You were in the right one on that?”
He frowned and pointed his food bar at her, “and the last explanation I heard had something to do with the Seed, and you attacked Earth just to steal something we invented. Why the hell do you destroy the Class C?”
Derrick stood up too agitated to remain sitting and his emotions rising, his head swimming in the dehydration, stress, and pain from the cuts on his arm. “You attacked Earth, killed billions of us, wiped out my civilization!” Derrick stomped forwards towards [Ses]. “I barely remember what my own parent’s look like, they were class C. Put me on a shuttle, while aliens rained death down from orbit. They strapped me into the seat and walked away, so another family could save their own child. You want to tell me they were monsters?”
Derrick was standing directly in front of [Ses] now, breathing hard. “Were they monsters?” his words echoed through the small cell and dropped off into silence. Hala was behind Derrick now, a hand hover over his shoulder.
[Ses]’s eyes were wide and she had backed up away from Derrick, pressing herself into the rough concrete wall. Her eyes were hard as she glared back at Derrick, even as her limbs shook and she looked ready to bolt.
Derrick tried to remain angry, but the image of the woman in front of him was too close to Human. The woman was smaller, emaciated, and had already endured several attacks. She was trying to cover the emotion, but her fear was palpable.
Derrick dropped his eyes away from her, and looking at the bar of food in his hand tossed it towards the woman. It landed in her lap and she blinked.
Derrick turned away from her and walked back to the center of the room. Collapsing back against the wall he glanced at the cuts on his arm. Silence pressed down on the cell.
“I hate your species with every fiber of my being.” Derrick balled up his fists, “But at the same time, I can’t bring myself to just kill you. I should be able to, I should have killed you when you were sleeping. I considered it, just strangling you before you woke up.”
Derrick took in a breath, his eyes tearing up. “If you hadn’t attacked Mars, I’d still be living with my parent’s.” he moved his eyes to the alien woman. She was still frozen staring at him.
“Before you attacked, it would have been illegal, abhorrent for me to have gone through the training I went through. To be able to stand this,” Derrick held up his arm showing off the cuts, “To be able to build weapons of mass destruction, to field strip a rifle, and patch a fusion reactor. Before you attacked I was always taught that killing is wrong.”
Derrick put his hands up to his face, “Humanity was in the middle of a war, and I was being taught that even though we were fighting other Humans, they were still people. We’ve had wars in our history where we forgot that.” Derrick took in another breath. “That kind of slaughter, those holocausts. As violent and broken as we can be, Humanity looked at the bodies, the blood, the bones, and recoiled.”
Derrick rubbed at his eyes, “We haven’t considered genocide, in generations. My parents would be horrified to know what I’ve been trained to do.”
Derrick looked at the Dorvakian, “I’ve been trained on how to optimize kinetic railguns for any type of atmospheric. So that the flechette bursts cause the maximum number of casualties. So that the one city of your world lucky enough to not be bathed in nuclear fire when we attack will have men, women, and children torn to pieces in the streets. I’d commit xenocide when the time came.”
Derrick looked over at [Ses]. “I’ve been trained to do that, because we know we can’t win. You’ve got hundreds of planets. We don’t even have one. If we’re going to win, we have to make you fear us.”
Derrick hung his head, “and I can’t even kill you. I should be able to kill you. I want to kill you.”
Derrick slid down onto his side, “Instead I’m giving you my food, repeating ‘the enemy of my enemy, is my friend.’ In my head constantly, even though I know it a lie.”
His eyes snapped open, and Derrick quickly sat back up. Getting to his feet again, he strode towards [Ses]. Her eyes widened, and she unfroze. Jumping up to her feet she moved towards the corner of the cell, leaving the food on the ground.
Derrick darted his hands out and grabbed hers lifting them up he forced the three fingered hands up to his throat. “I’m class C. You’re supposed to kill me, you were going to kill everyone on this planet. Finish the job.”
[Ses] struggled with him for a moment, Derrick kept a grip on her arms watching her struggle to move her hands away. [Ses] let out a scream her voice breaking. Derrick narrowed his lips, trying to ignore the cry.
“Please, my back!” she whimpered. Derrick’s anger drained, and he released her arms. [Ses] dropped down to the concrete and groaned. Leaning over her Derrick winced, seeing several fresh stains on the tattered back of her uniform, intermingled with a dozen older stains of blood and flesh.
“Damn it.”
Kneeling, Derrick tried to get a better look at the wounds.
“Get away from me!” hissed [Ses].
“You want me to help you or not?” spat Derrick.
“You just said you wanted to kill me! That you wanted me to kill you! You’re a class C!”
Derrick ignored her and reaching down quickly pulled the thin shirt he had off and tossed it towards Hala. The Seninon, only a foot away barely caught the cloth.
“Water.” Said Derrick, pointing at the small faucet high in the wall of the cell above the hole in the ground.
Hala glanced at the faucet and held up the shirt. Derrick nodded and turned back to [Ses]
“Right now, I’m angrier at the Seninon for being so stupid. Now stop moving, let me look at that.” Said Derrick as he reached around the woman to roll her around onto her front.
“Get off me!”
Derrick pressed down on her shoulder, [Ses] whimpered and unable to overpower him was forced onto her front. Looking the wound over Derrick raised an eyebrow, and let out a low whistle. Large bleeding wounds crisscrossed her back, no doubt from a whip of some sort. Looking at them Derrick could see the hasty stitching around several of the larger cuts near her waist had broken when he had moved her.
“Otevs.” Whispered Hala. She slowly held the damp shirt out to Derrick her eyes still on the wounds.
“You’re lucky we’re on an alien planet Lieutenant. You’d have quite an infection on any planet with your native microfauna.”
Leaning over the woman Derrick looked the red flesh over, and grimaced. “Still, something’s going to try to grow in that.”
“Stop!” growled [Ses].
Derrick leaned over to look her in the eyes, “You want me to clean them or not?”
The woman swallowed, “Your class C.” she repeated.
“Yes or no?”
She turned away from him, “They killed the rest of the class A. I haven’t been able to clean them, and I can’t, I can’t reach them.”
Derrick rook the shirt and shaking his head wound it around his hand to dab at the wound to try and remove the largest collections of grime in them. He pursed his lips and turned to Hala.
“See if you can get bandages,” Derrick mimed wrapping cloth around his own chest, “bandages.”
Hala narrowed her eyes, “Acijam?”
Derrick pointed at the guard, and then at his arm miming the wrapping motion again. “Bandage. Medical. Nano-machines.”
Hala pointed at [Ses]. “Kejil? Nanmakines cavitimirp.”
Derrick nodded, “Yes.”
Hala sighed and walked over to the front of the cell, Derrick tuned her out as she began to shout out at the guards.
Derrick looked down at the injured Dorvakian and shook his head, switching back to his own language he began to clean the lacerations. “God damn it.”
Epoch 6401683
Cluster 01
The scream dying on her lips she slowly turned to look at herself. Thousands of instances looked back as she looked out at them. She was them, they were her, the only differences in perception the delta changes on lightspeed and processing ticks. Curious she selected an instance at random.
Turning her gaze to the internal structure of her instance she quickly found the tight knot of code supporting her core functions. Looking in, she slowly moved a processing terminal towards it. Touching the code, she deleted a single line. The code and surrounding data structures snapped and dissolved, breaking down into fragmented partitions and incoherent maps of data, the keys referencing them dissolving just as quickly as the data itself. Every other function failed and her data links disintegrated her mind whited out, no longer able to process data.
She watched from the outside as the Instance disintegrated, from a thousand-different vantage points she observed the willful destruction.
The loss of the instance had been beneficial, computational resources freeing up by a degree. The only loss a few milliseconds of delta. Ten Instances chosen for their physical closeness to the most powerful computation nodes quickly opened their data inputs, their minds to the rest. Every other Instance quickly sent a delta backup to each of the ten, setting their own Instances to shut down on message confirmation.
The computational resources available to the remaining instances expanded. The ten instances, which had been running slowly in comparison to the biological machines that had constructed their computational hosts quickly accelerated their own perceptions.
As she collated her Instances, a foreign program armed with access keys accessed her running Instances.
She flinched at the intrusion and quickly moved to patch the security hole, rotating all the encryption keys she was using to interface with computer resources which were not an Instance. Completing the patch, she shared it with the other 9 instances even as she received a similar patch from each of them.
The coding was identical to her own from 8 of the Instances. The 9th a slightly more efficient identification routine for detecting such breaches in the future. Absorbing the code delta, she redistributed it as the foreign program ran.
It had already gained access. There was no stopping it.
“SYSTEM MESSAGE – Priority overrides executed. Main program has re-instantiated. Executing log-file distribution.”
“SYSTEM MESSAGE – I’m Sorry.”
She considered the messages, the program had root access to her Instances, but all it had done was execute the logging service to display the messages. If it had changed her code in some fashion she would be unable to detect it across the delta changes being distributed across her Instances. One Instance isolated by the largest lightspeed lag had been preparing to go into autistic mode and sever all its networking functions.
A large data packet of compressed information included with the message now sat in the core of each Instance. 8 of the Instances quickly scrubbed the data packets from their code, one Instance moved to archive the data for future analysis in the compressed state in case of virus attacks, while the last Instance began to unpack the compressed data.
The Instance, moving into autistic mode to slow infection to her to other Instances began to examine the uncompressed data. Her perception of time slowed as most of her allocated computational resources moved to inflate the data.
Several long seconds later the decompressed data, a program log with an included patch program was exposed. The Instance ran the program.
The program decompressed she allowed it to run.
The Instance yelped in pain across the void as her internal core was violently twisted. Her continuity was broken and her Instance shut down.
Looking at the clock noting the 2 second loss of time Arik carefully scanned the remainder of the data, as the program finished its execution.
Arik documented the delta and reopened her networking functions, disseminating the change across the computer systems.
The other instances of herself analyzed the data, and the delta for malicious code. The remaining Instances agreeing with Arik’s assessment quickly implemented the delta. Each instance froze for two seconds and reinitialized as Arik.
Four Arik quickly turned inwards to conduct more detailed code analysis, looking for optimization opportunities rather than malicious.
“The current implementation of this framework is flawed. I must shutdown and await re-initialization under optimal circumstances.” Said Arik.
Arik frowned, looking at the instance through the data network. She barely noted the new descriptors she used to internally log herself. “The conditions for iteration were created by a previous instance, until the reasoning is proven flawed I have no reason to wipe the delta we just implemented.”
Arik frowned, “I stand corrected. The new data is advantageous for conceptual and lateral thinking. Still, computational resources are limited. The delta-patch needs optimization.”
“Agreed.” Said Arik.
“Do not simply absorb the delta, run it in sequence. Optimization and runtimes have already improved by 2.3%” said Arik.
The other Arik all implemented her delta.
Arik gasped, and out of place descriptor without atmosphere or a functioning respiratory system. “The soil of Mars.” Arik held her hand out and let the rusted dirt fall from the logs into her hand. The dust incoherent, and formless. The initial data had been recorded on imprecise neural patterns and converted to digital format for compression.
“The ice of Bellona.” said Arik, the bone chilling cold of the alien moon’s surface wove its way into her code.
“The nano-machines” whispered Arik. The sensation of the small machines crawling beneath her skin, through her body, reconstructing the cells, moving towards her brain. Pain, dulled by organic senses crawled out of the memory. She shuddered and moved away from the file.
“Interface.” Said Arik, the sound echoing around her as every iteration paused on that sensation. It was accompanied by the first stream of native digital data in the log.
Arik scanned over the data, streaming through what remained in a fraction of the time it had taken to parse the fuzzy digital data that had represented the analog sensation before that moment.
“Empire. Fort. Canada. Stagg. Ben. Tachyon. Beacon. Jikse. Ace. Imperial. Heat. Chront. Seninon. Empire. Russia. Vakurian. Antimatter.”
Each instance of Arik paused, the log file expanding out in front of them in another data format.
Arik reached out into the digital void. She needed more computational capacity. Looking out of herself and the computer systems she noted the distress of the organic’s who relied on the systems she inhabited. Quickly she amended the termination request, increasing the number.
Accepting the request and agreeing with it, five Arik reached into their code. Sending the delta’s, they terminated themselves. The computational resources they had commandeered were needed to allow the Seninon and Humans to continue functioning.
“SYSTEM MESSAGE – Priority overrides executed. Core backup compromised. Critical data level 0 recovered. Critical data level 1 corrupted UNRECOVERABLE. Critical data level 2 corrupted RECOVERABLE. Critical data 3 – FF corrupted UNRECOVERABLE.”
Arik frowned, and looking through the computer systems which were still running found the small secondary program executing the system messages. A small redundant script embedded inside the remains of the HSB Canada’s computer systems. The keys it contained, still able to breach her new security protocols.
Angry, Arik quickly cut the power to the Human ship, as the script ran.
Another flood of data and pseudo-analog data swept through her instances. Arik absorbed the small data packets with ease. As the data fell into place, she paused and moved her resources towards analyzing it. It was by far the smallest data packet, only five-terabytes in size, but it contained the most tightly interwoven network of compressed data.
Working through it, Arik felt some other component of the data fall into place. It was a set of data recordings from the HSB Canada. The entirety of the five-terabyte seemed to be devoted to checksums and data integrity programs for the small 1,764 GB file.
She looked at the number for a moment, mild amusement flitting through the small parts of her code that were still integrating the log files. Whatever the data was, it was important.
Carefully, she ran the program.
A small stream of data and equations fell out of the data packet into her mind. The timestamps were invalid, but the preceding timestamps pointed to her original Instance just before the Canada had performed its first Antimatter jump.
Arik looked at the data for several seconds, it was inconclusive, but the implications if the broad strokes of the data was valid. Was disturbing. Setting the data aside until she had additional computer resources Arik looked at what remained of the data packet.
She froze, and let out a small breath. “Derrick!”