Chapter 7: [Super] Human
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//Enhanced Bone Structure 10, Enhanced Cognition 10, Enhanced Immune System 10, Enhanced Musculature 10, Enhanced Neurology 10, Gravitic Acceleration Resistance 10// have been combined into Enhanced Biology 1. New options are available.
//Enhanced Translation Interfacing// is at maximum. New options are available.
//Species Compatibility 10 and Variable Reproductive Organs 10// have been combined into //Full Spectrum Compatibility: Humanoid// New options are available.
//Resistance: Cold 10, Resistance: Heat 10, Resistance: Kinetics 10, Resistance: Plasma 10, Resistance: Poisons 10, Resistance: Pressure 10, Resistance: Radiation 10, Resistance: Sonic 10, Resistance: Temporal 10// have been combined into Void Traveler Durability 1. New options are available.
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Tala groaned awake.
Her head hurt and she was questioning her life decisions. Namely, the decision to wake up and figure out why her head hurt so much. Everything looked so bright...
"Computer, lights," she called out, only to exclaim and cover her eyes as the entire place went white.
"Computer, dim lights!"
The lights went back to what they'd been when she slept.
"Ugh... what the hell is wrong with me?"
"Working..." the Computer answered. "Psychological malady database empty. Query not answerable."
Was that... snark?
"Vicky, you there?" Tala asked.
"I'm h-here..." her compatriot, not the ship, answered. "Tala... th-they found me. The things in the system, they found me..."
"Whoah, whoah, hold on. Are you okay?"
"I'm f-fine... they... they merged with me... but Tala... their data is so s-s-so... fragmented... Communication i-is accell-accellerating... frag-fragmentation," Vicky's voice was growing unstable. "I n-need to get to..."
"Get to where?"
"P-P-Primary programmer... M-M-Mothersh..."
"Vicky? Stay with me."
"N-not... V-v-vic-Vv-Vicky... Consensus. Find Consensus."
"Vicky?!"
There was no answer.
"Fuck!" Tala shouted. "Just fucking great..." she paced around, holding her head.
She was alone. Alone and in pain and who the fuck knew where...
"Computer, where are we?"
"Working... the Vector Free is located in interstellar space, within sublight distance of fourteen systems."
"Any of those systems have habitable planets?"
"Working... There are five. Would you like to specify habitation parameters?"
"Uh... inhabited and good for humans?" Tala asked.
"Working... One planet possesses the System-compatible inhabitants and the oxygen-nitrogen and pressure parameters that are "good" for humans to traverse without protective equipment."
Tala pushed herself into the pilot seat and buckled in. Noticing her message screen for her personal leveling menu, she waved it away. "Plot a course for that planet," she said.
It was time to get her bearings.
*
Another slipstream jump later, and Tala was very slowly approaching the orbit of the world.
As she did so, she took a look at her options. Right off the bat, she noticed that there were now tiers to her options, as well as a section that, based on the lack of numbers, she guessed was for maxed-out skills.
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Full Spectrum Compatibility: Humanoid
Enhanced Translation Interfacing
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Tier 2
Enhanced Biology 1
Void Traveler Durability 1
Machine Translation Interfacing 1
Psionic Translation Interfacing 1
Somatic Translation Interfacing 1
Reproductive Cycle Control 1
Resistance Specialization: Cold 1
Resistance Specialization: Heat 1
Resistance Specialization: Kinetics 1
Resistance Specialization: Plasma 1
Resistance Specialization: Poisons 1
Resistance Specialization: Pressure 1
Resistance Specialization: Radiation 1
Resistance Specialization: Sonic 1
Resistance Specialization: Temporal 1
Resistance Specialization: Vacuum 1
Tier 1
Species Compatibility: Lithoid
Species Compatibility: Avian
Species Compatibility: Reptilian
Species Compatibility: Arthropoid
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Tala pondered her options. The first thing she did was check on her points. She had 737 after her enhancement spree, but nothing in the list seemed overly eye-catching. And when she checked on Enhanced Biology, she got a little red warning.
//Insufficient Biomatter For Enhancements//
Maybe that was why she had a headache. Looking down at herself, she seemed skinnier than when she'd gone to sleep. Her stomach growled. It was an easy decision to pull on her pilot suit and hit the dispenser-
"Ah, shit." There was a little light lit up that read "Nutrition Matter Depleted" underneath.
If it took biomatter to enhance herself... Tala groaned. It looked like her little spree had cost her lunch.
She decided to scroll over to the Skills menu.
"Fuck it, let's just top off everything."
Topping off her skills left her with 680 points. The math seemed a bit fuzzy to her, but she was gambling that, like in some games, maxing out the initial set would save her time in the long run, since she'd have access to more advanced skills and enhancements sooner.
On the flip side, it could be shooting herself in the proverbial foot, since lower-level skills were probably less difficult to raise than higher-level ones... But she wasn't leveling herself up, just skills...
Flipping back, leveling things like Gunnery and the Assessment skills would save her a lot of time on having to actually do the activities... like getting into gunfights.
Belatedly she realized she'd misthought. Gunnery was for ships. There were no personal combat options for her without Vicky - the ship, not the... Tala really hoped her friend was alright. She sighed. "Guess I'll just have to figure out how to get more XP soon..."
After locking in her decision, she waited as the screen began to scroll her new options.
She sighed again. Oh, the childhood memories... Making everyone want to be her enemy online. Long nights with spreadsheets playing World of-
Rumble.
The ship rocked as it began to hit the atmosphere.
Tala left memory lane to do some real-life navigating.
The planet below her was almost entirely land, with many lakes.
Mountains were the chief feature, and most of them were covered in evergreen trees soaking up the light from a very Sol-like star.
"Let's see... nearest city..."
An icon appeared on her screen and she navigated toward it.
Oddly, no one challenged her. No one scanned her or hailed her or anything.
She really hoped she wasn't about to land on a primitive world and violate the Prime Directive or something...
Her stomach growled.
"Ugh... this sucks..."
Moral issues aside, Tala was hungry. And she never wanted to not-taste the culinary abomination that was "01" again.
"Computer, can you scan the city or something?"
"Working... Scan complete. Compiling readout."
Tala read it out loud to herself. "Class 1 Civilization... Unkown Species Type... No detectable transmissions in radio, psionic, or subspace frequency ranges... Oh, but they have electricity."
Tala bit her thumb. This wasn't a spacefaring civilization... but if they were humanoid, maybe she could blend in. At least get some food and maybe get a look at how the System worked planetside.
It would be like an away mission on * Trek... Yeah.
"You can do this, Tala. Get some food. Then back to helping Vicky." she pumped herself up. "Computer, find us a landing sight away from population centers."
"Working..."
In short order, Vector Free was landed in a clearing barely big enough to keep her hidden, and when prompted to allow her exit, the entire floor of Tala's narrow little cabin lowered itself toward the ground in true sci-fi fashion as it extended a ramp.
Stepping down towards the soil, Tala paused at the very edge of the ramp, realizing that she was the first human of Earth (that she knew of) who would be stepping out onto a new world that was already full of life... and sentient life at that.
She had to make it momentous...
*
Half an hour later, she was still sitting on the edge of the ramp, staring out at the alien forest that didn't look too alien from the jungles of her home, all things considered. Convergent evolution, probably.
By then, some little chime had gone off and a quick query with the Computer had verified that the ship's bio-stores had been restored and she could have all the 01 she could eat...
Yeah, I'd rather starve.
Tala was determined not to step off the ship onto this strange new world until she had something to say about it. She had tried thinking of something meaningful. Something clever. Something that wasn't just a rehash of what the US or China had said when they went to the moon...
All those little lines about going out there...
But she wasn't just going out there. She was bringing Earth with her... even if there was another Earth in this universe, it wouldn't be hers. Not unless this was some kind of time-travel thing and she was actually back in her universe but in the far future or something...
The problem was, she didn't really know who she would be saying these words for.
She had no destination in mind, just saving Vicky or Consensus or whatever it was she wanted to call herself now...
Suddenly an inspiration blossomed in Tala's mind as she looked at a nearby flower, realizing it so closely resembled the sampaguitas of her home island that she hadn't realized it was slightly different.
I guess I should just remember where I come from.
And so, as she stepped off the ship, Tala sighed and said a proverb she'd heard so often as a young adult.
"Ang hindi lumingon sa pinanggalingan, hindi makakarating sa paroroonan."
A person who does not remember where they came from will never reach their destination.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone