Book Five, Chapter 32: Dark Aura

Book Five, Chapter 32: Dark Aura

"IBECS, this is the Helio. Please confirm this transmission. We have no edible provisions on our ship. Mayday, this is an emergency; we are requesting aid on behalf of KRSL," I said.

That line required hours of planning, including removing all the food from our ship and throwing it out the airlock.

"This is the IBECS. I'm confirming with the Helio AI. It seems that you are out of food. That is troubling. My protocols allow me to permit temporary coupling to provide the Helio with an emergency supply of provisions."

We all started to cheer aboard the helm of the Helio. It had taken us forever to figure out how to get IBECS to let us connect our ship to theirs so that we could actually go into the IBECS and interact with the story. Everything was a puzzle, even things that weren't happening On-Screen.

It ended up being pretty simple.

It was Ramona who figured it out. IBECS would allow us to dock if there were an emergency. It wouldn't acknowledge its own emergency, at least not in so many words. So, Ramona figured, what if the Helio was the ship with the emergency?

IBECS had to help us if we were in trouble, and it was able to help. The one thing that we knew for sure was that the IBECS had lots of food. If we needed food, then IBECS should let us attach even if we didn’t have the proper approval since we were a fellow KRSL vessel.

Exhale. Back to the real problem.

We were already halfway through the storyline, and we still had a long way to go to get the Player Surrogates to the helm of the IBECS.

We weren't giving up, but reality was setting in. This wasn't easy.

"Captain," I said, "please connect us to that junction on the starboard side of the IBECS labeled 'Protein Lab' on the holo-frame."

"You got it," Rudy said.

He and the other NPCs had been silently rooting for us. I could see their joy when we finally figured out how to move forward. Now, if only they could have just told us what to do, we'd be on our way home already.

This was a big step. We couldn't be a part of the story— in fact, our ship wasn't even in the storyline itself—but if we could get on that ship, we could scout things out ahead and figure out solutions for the NPCs before they even found the problems. This was really convenient because the NPCs were slow and trudging, and they were having the worst days of their lives because of bedbugs.

They weren't getting sleep, and they were becoming paranoid. Now, they were lined up outside Bobby's door, trying their best to break through but failing miserably. They desperately wanted in because Bobby told them there were no bugs in there.

"You're telling me that there is fresh meat on the other side of that door, and yet I can't get this overgrown ATM machine just to open it?" Michael said, enraged, at the end of his rope. Michael was also planning to butcher one of Bobby's headless cows. He talked about it a lot after Bobby told him what he did for a living.

"The Protein Lab was supposed to be cordoned off from the rest of this ship," Andrew said. "It makes sense. Just be patient."

Andrew took everything in stride and explored it analytically. I wondered if that was Andrew's real personality or just a generic NPC trait.

For now, we celebrated because our ship was connecting to the outside of the large unit that Bobby was currently trapped in.

We would get to see Bobby, and most importantly, we would start making some real progress.

Within moments, we found ourselves staring at a door in the side of the large room that contained most everything inside our ship. The door was formed from white eggshell material with no seams, yet it easily attached to the outside of the IBECS and created an airtight seal.

We waited as the IBECS door unbolted, and with a hiss, the airlock on the outside of the older ship opened.V/\IssịT n0(v)eL/b(i)(n).co/m for the b/est novel reading experi/en/ce

There was Bobby, waiting for us. He had a wide grin on his face, happy not to be alone, happy that we were making progress, and ultimately overjoyed that he was no longer technically stuck on a ship rapidly running out of fuel.

As a bonus, behind him were huge tanks filled with decapitated animals, their limbs jogging in thin air to give us emotional support.

"Let's get to work," Antoine said.

Except, of course, the only person who needed to get to work was Dina because she had a trope called Savvy Safecracker, which was based on how movie thieves are so easily able to get through doors and locks. There was a big door between us and the rest of the ship.

Stepping into the IBECS was like stepping into another world. We had come from some optimistic future with technology that could aid our every need, and every discomfort was erased before we even knew we had it.

The IBECS was harsh and smelled funny. It didn't smell organic—no, it smelled like we were in a refinery.

They brought an aura with them—I could feel it. I could feel paranoia and anxiety. I could feel the effects of the bedbugs converted into a dark form of movie magic designed to ensure that anyone in this movie played their part.

I scratched the back of my neck, and as I looked around at Antoine, Kimberly, and Dina, I saw that I was not the only one.

To his credit, Bobby was doing great. His character was technically a science officer, so he was able to order IBECS to open the next couple of doors. That was a great relief to the NPCs and us. After that, it was a no-go.

"You have exceeded your permissible access coordinance," IBECS said as if those words made sense next to each other.

Bobby was also very reassuring. Since he had not spent his entire waking hours scratching himself, he was a voice of calm to them that even the analytical Andrew could not match.

However, we were facing a problem.

Second Blood was coming up soon.

We only had one, two, maybe three scenes before it appeared.

First Blood had been pretty bloodless, with the exception of the blood of the passengers, who all woke up screaming. No one had to die other than those who had already passed from allergies or infection.

But Second Blood promised that someone--or lots of someones--had to go. We only hoped it would be more passengers and not our surrogates.

We knew that there was another sleeping bay attached to the ship, a much smaller one that had all the same problems as the larger one—everyone was infected with bedbugs and being kept sedated.

If we could get the Player Surrogates there, we reasoned that Second Blood could involve some shocking scene from the second sleeping bay, and our little sheep, Andrew, Lila, and Michael, might be okay.

It was gruesome, but that was the best-case scenario. Our priority among the surrogates was rescuing Andrew—though we didn't want to lose any of them.

Obviously, we didn't want to lose Bobby. We could not let that happen.

We also had an unanswered question: Was it possible for my friends and I--who were not a part of the storyline--to die? Would Carousel try to do that? All of my reading from the Atlas had led me to believe that it wouldn't. Carousel wouldn't protect us if we put ourselves in danger, but because we were not really characters, it wouldn't go out of its way to kill us.

And we could tell ourselves that over and over again, but that did not remove the fear.

On to the next obstacle.

This one was relatively straightforward. Bobby was not qualified to unlock the door to something called the Cross-Ark Hall, which was designed to allow people to walk across the large mechanism where the anti-gravity machine was kept.

This was a significant problem because this one hallway divided the entire IBECS into two parts—there was no other way across, not a way designed for passengers, at least.

Even from the video footage, Dina could tell that it was not a door she could unlock, which meant it must have been scripted. We weren't supposed to pass through the safe hallway. We had to find another way forward.

The only way for them to pass by this section of the ship to get to the helm was by crossing something called a Phase Ballast, which was in the heart of the anti-gravity mechanism.

When we asked IBECS what a Phase Ballast was, he gave us this answer:

"Ah, yes, the Phase Ballast. In layman’s terms, the Phase Ballast is a critical component of the ship's gravimetric stabilization matrix. It's essentially a hyper-dynamic oscillatory beam that functions within the quantum flux array, suspended in a state of controlled magneto-inertial flux. This beam operates within a subspace envelope, where it modulates the gravitational phase variance in real time, ensuring that the ship's anti-gravitational field maintains a stable equilibrium across all sectors.

As you might assume, the Phase Ballast achieves this by oscillating at a frequency that harmonizes with the ship's phase modulation grid, thereby synchronizing the gravitational waveforms with the inertial compensators. This process mitigates the effects of external gravitational anomalies, which could otherwise destabilize the ship's trajectory or cause localized gravitational distortions.

In even simpler terms, the Phase Ballast is like the conductor of an orchestra, but instead of music, it's orchestrating the very forces of gravity itself. The magnetic suspension of the ballast within the gravitic null zone allows it to float freely, optimizing its phase variance correction without the interference of conventional gravitational forces. It's quite fascinating, really—a delicate dance of graviton particles and quantum fields, all governed by the elegant mathematics of hyperdimensional physics.

If you would like a more technical explanation, feel free to ask."

That was very enlightening.

I didn't know if Carousel had a mouth, but I swore I could hear it laughing.