章節 14: 1
That was impossible. Not even getting into the fact that Earth had only one sun, the physics that would go into any planet having more than one sun would be mind numbing. The more likely scenario was that I was seeing one of those 'moon in the day time' phenomena that a lot of people saw in some parts of the world. They were all burning up high in the sky though which I at first attributed to being in such an arid climate that made me see things. The physics didn't actually work like that of course, but human beings have always been good at rationalising things that make no sense.
Regardless, I had to move. Crazy or not. I had to treat this seriously. I had to move or I would die. So I chose a direction mostly at random (multiple suns make it difficult to tell any of the cardinal directions), and started walking.
I walked and walked. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly as the sands I walked on changed into rock and then into sand again. I had my hoodie tied around my hips, a nervous habit I developed in primary school because I kept loosing jerseys- and had my shirt tied around my head to keep the sun out of my eyes.
Occasionally, after my walk had turned into a shuffle, I would see something shining in the sand which I would explore only to find a piece of scrap metal. As I continued my shuffle through the desert, I found more and more pieces just lying in the sand. They were all too small and indistinct to be of any use. There were no markings or serial numbers or anything I could use to get a clue of where I was but having so many pieces of metal just lying around in the desert did indicate to me that there was some kind of industry nearby and that gave me hope. Because where there was industry, there were people. So my shuffle became more urgent, and desperate.
Twice, as I travelled, I collapsed and twice I picked myself up again. Each time my body screaming at me to keep still. And each time, I denied it. The possibility of there being people just over the next dune forced me to go on. I had to move, or I would die. So I moved. Slowly, the terrain turned from sand and rock mixture with metal particulates into rock and then metal.
My hopes buoyed by this discover, I kept moving. Around mounds of sand and rock and through and over mountains of metal and plastic. Soon, I found myself standing at the top of one such mountain. It was the tallest one I could find and thus it was my greatest hope of finding people. I surveyed the terrain.
Initially I had thought that I had found myself in a desert. I was wrong; this whole place, wherever it was, was one immense junkyard. And I was on its' highest peak. All around me were pieces of metal and plastics in chunks no bigger than my fist. Each was useless and indistinct, scrap more than complete objects. No matter where I directed my vision, I only got increased confirmation of something I dreaded immensely.
There were no people.
If there ever was any, they had left a long time ago.
I finally let myself collapse. There was no hope. I was in pain, I was thirsty and I was confused. I was also clearly not on Earth either. No matter how much I denied it, there were two suns beating down on me and despite me having walked for what must have been hours, it was still midday. I couldn't deny it anymore. I was on some kind of alien planet or dimension or whatever. I closed my eyes. I would never get home and I would never see my friends or family again.
As soon as I had decided to give up, I heard the air above me scream.
With an immense effort, I opened my eyes. From my perspective, I could see a black dot in the sky slowly widen. Something was falling, and it was falling towards me. Before I could think about moving, the object hit the side of the mountain I had decided was my final resting place with a resounding thump.
I almost laughed. I had through no effort of my own survived what was likely a meteor. Despite having accepted my death literally seconds ago, I felt great relief. I was still alive. The metal around its landing started to creak and the mountain shook.
I was probably going to die.
Through truly herculean effort, I stood up and saw the world tilt sideways and before I could realise what was happening, I was falling down the mountain. I rolled myself into a ball to try and keep injuries to a minimum. I mostly succeeded. When everything stabilized, I stood up for the umpteenth time today despite my body screaming at me and found myself with a cut down my left arm. I grimaced. The cut wasn't deep but it didn't have to be to infect me with tetanus. This day was just getting better and better. I looked to where I estimated the meteor landed.
If I was going to die of dehydration or infection, I figured that I should at least die knowing what a meteor looked like in real life.
It took a bit of doing but after about half an hour of navigating the shards of metal and hard plastic that filled the area, I reached the object. Instead of a meteor, what I saw instead was a pod. It was a metal cylinder about as tall and wide as I was. On it, lay an inscription of a two headed eagle which itself was inscribed with the Roman numeral 'II'. The other side of the pod held a large red capital 'I' with a skull overlaid on top of it.
I circled the cylinder and found myself looking at a child. A baby, eyes closed and floating in some kind of fluid behind a thick pane of glass. Without a doubt, this was one of the strangest experiences I had ever had in my life. Because despite the suspicious nature of how it had arrived, this child was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
The child, a boy I realized as the murky liquid cleared up, was light skinned with features that reminded me of…everything. It was if someone had taken features that represented each and every nation on Earth, put them in a blender and made this child to look like the result. He had curly hair with locks that covered his ears, framing a face I could only describe as 'angelic'. His eyes were large and even as now had a fierceness to them. His nose was slightly pronounced and sat over thick lips and he had a slight cleft in his chin. All these features together suggested a mix of East Asian, Caucasian and North African heritage. All of these features all together would be awkward on the average person but somehow this kid made it all work.
I looked around as if seeing my surroundings for the first time. This was no place to raise a child.
It was strange, really. I had never really thought about being a father, not seriously at least. It had always seemed like an abstract concern, something that would happen in the nebulous future when I had enough time and money. Both always seemed to be in little supply so in all likelihood I would have never become a father. That is, had I not found myself here, right now, in this moment.
As I stared into this little boy's face through the glass, I knew I would be his father. Both because there was no one else to raise him if I chose not to and because I felt a deep responsibility to look after this boy. The feeling was so great as to make me weep. This child was perfect.
Silently, I prayed for him to forgive me. Because though he was perfect, I could never be the perfect father. I was only human, after all.
The glass holding the liquid in the pod opened and the liquid protecting him started to drain. I panicked. How could I give him shelter when I had none of my own? How could I feed him, when I couldn't feed myself? I felt a deep shame. I would have to be better, much better if both the boy and I were to survive.
The glass started to quicken in its opening and the fluid drained into the ground below in full force. The boy opened his eyes and they met mine. Immediately I felt a connection between me and him. Somehow I knew. This boy had just accepted me as his father.
As I processed this, I felt another connection hit me. It felt totally different to what I felt when the boy accepted me as his father. Instead of acceptance, I felt…
[Build.]
I collapsed. My head felt like it was held in a vice. I could barely think. I-
[Construct.]
The pressure got heavier and it felt like I had a hot poker stabbed into my brain. Desperate, I rolled across the rough terrain, trying to get away from the thing that had got a hold of me. For all my effort, all I got were more cuts for my trouble.
[Forge.]
The pressure left me and I exhaled in relief. The connection however, stayed. I was now connected to something unseen and powerful. It would never leave, and it would always be watching me. More than anything else I had ever encountered, it scared me. And I could never let go of me.
Distantly, I heard a scream. It took a moment of realization for me to figure out that it was the boy. He had seen me collapse and convulse in pain and he was scared.
Slowly, I picked myself up and moved the boy up out of the pod. As soon as I held him, he quieted.
"It's alright, I'm alright." I said. "That will never happen again."
Despite my general confusion on what the hell had happened, I knew that I had not lied. This thing, whatever it was, didn't want to hurt me.
It wanted me to create. It didn't matter what I built, or why I built it. And it would grant me whatever was needed to do so.
[Action: Meeting the Primarch of the II Legion.
Reward: Omnitool (Mass Effect Andromeda)]
That was a bit of a misleading statement. It would occasionally give me items and skills following a general theme of construction. There was a single caveat however. I had to earn them. Theoretically I could get everything that creature could grant me at once, but the general feeling I received from my link told me that it would be impossible to survive such a thing. The creature, which I had begun to call The Forge, was also not interested in giving me things for no reason.
Each gift would have to be earned. For each item, I would have to achieve a great task of some kind.
No such thing as a free lunch after all.
Surviving as long as I did and meeting this child had apparently counted as a great task, so I was given a gift. As soon as I realized what this item had gotten was, I thanked the Forge profusely. This thing would be the lynchpin to me and the boy surviving out here in these wastelands.
The item was called an omni-tool. It looked something like an iPhone with glowing orange circuitry surrounding it. An omni-tool was a piece of futuristic technology the size of a cell phone that acted both as an advanced computer with all that entails and a hyper advanced 3-D printer far above the kind currently available on Earth. It could fabricate anything, to a limit. In theory, it could fabricate anything. In practice, it was limited by what I designed in the design programs already installed and by the resources in the omni-tool itself.
Each omni-tool had a limited amount of 'omni-gel' to use as a base material for fabrication. This meant that I had to seriously think about what I would make before I used any of it.
Except, I didn't.
Omni-tools could recycle plastics and metals into omni-gel, and I was standing on a literal mountain of the things.
This was everything I needed and more. From a single item. The impression that I had received from the Forge, was that this was a minor item in a set of hundreds by its standards. If this was really a minor item, I shuddered to think about what a major one was.
I looked at the boy. I smiled as the boy giggled at my buoyed spirits. I swore to myself as I wrapped my jersey around the child to protect him from the wind;
I would give this child the world.
Notes:
1.1. Perk(s) earned in this chapter:
Domain: Toolkits: Mundane - Omnitool (Mass Effect Andromeda) (100): You get an omni-tool loaded up with programs and information that'd be best suited for unsupported colonization in a new galaxy. Because the Andromeda Initiative knew that they'd be going with a finite supply of ammo, medi-gel and power cells, each omni-tool can recover and repurpose appropriate resources to serve appropriate functions. For example, liquid coolant allows weapon heatsinks to be reused, and organic compounds can be refined into medi-gel. They can also convert consumable items into immediately usable forms. Finally, they do everything else regular omni-tools can: Communication, manufacturing fabricator, sensor analysis, and computer mainframe.
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