Year 3001, Sunday 22 days until classes start. Workshop.
Athena walked over to us with two bananas and hopped around the scattered metal parts that we had strewn across the floor like Legos in a child’s bedroom.
“Hungry?”
We snatched the snacks. David tossed his wrench onto the little foam pad he was kneeling on, “Thanks for the snack Ms. Snow.”
I took a bite out of my banana, “Uh. Thanks.”
Athena gave a surprised look to David, “You know me?”
David shook his head, “I overheard from Kaiser.”
Athena frowned, “Well I guess we gotta do some introductions or something.”
She turned around and yelled, “Hey! Come say hi to my student.”
The man lumbered over and squatted down as Athena found a foam pad to sit on. He extended his hand out, “I am from house Monday”
I grasped his rough dry hands, “Kaiser Fritz.”
His mouth curled in an amused smile, “Fritz. Huh. I haven’t seen one of these kids in a while.”
Athena laughed, “He’s the only one this decade.”
“Huh, well that’s gotta be stressful for the shadows.”
Athena shrugged, “Not as stressful as you think.”
The man grinned, “Well, yeah. I guess he is part of the Fritz family.”
Athena leaned forward slightly to put a hand on the man’s shoulder, “This big guy is one of the best spacecraft architects in the Republic.”
I took one last bite of my banana, “Really? What did you design?”
The man sighed, “Everything. “
“Everything?”
“Yeah. I designed the ether generator.”
I stood up, “The Dr. Monday?”
“Well, yeah. After a century they did give me an honorary doctorate so I wouldn’t say I did anything.”
“But… you made an entire field!”
The man shook his head, “I dropped out of college to join the military during the third war.”
David scrunched his eyebrows in scrutiny, “But our house wasn’t establish until the fourth war.”
The man nodded, “Counciler Grace bestowed an honorary title on me so I joined the Monday family from my achievements in the fourth war.”
I was curious, “If you don’t mind, what’d you do in the fourth war?”
The man made a wistful smile, “I was a machine gunner in those beginning years of the commonwealth. Number fifty-eight. My wife was number fifty-seven and was probably the best lunar tank driver in our corp.”
“A machine gunner? So how’d you get into ship building?”
He frowned, “After both of us nearly died to an apostle in the final year of the war we decided to transfer back to the Chicago base. My wife had been studying in our downtime and got a degree and somehow convinced me to apply my hobby of rocketry to something even though I was crippled.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
I glanced down at his body. It seemed fine.
The man noticed me look, “Counciler Grace helped regenerate my legs a few centuries ago when the technology stabilized.”
Whoa. Regenerating limbs was incredibly painful and could lead to many side effects if done incorrectly. I looked behind me at the engine we had half disassembled, “Does that mean you designed this engine?”
The man let out a small chuckle, “Ether mechanics has progressed so much in the past few centuries. It’s not even close to what I was doing.”
“Really? What’s the difference?”
The man sighed, “Well, we used to do most of the precision with mechanical parts and only used ether to amplify demanding energy sinks like VTOL, main thrust, and weapons. I hear from Athena that you’re looking for exactly this kind of design.”
I looked at Athena, “Wait what?”
Athena thought for a second, “Since your issue is fine ether control it would be far easier for you to fly a ship that does all the fine adjustments using mechanical means.”
The man grinned, “In the old days no materials we had could restrict ether so we just had to let it all rush out.”
“So… that means I could fly.”
Athena paused, “Yes but no. You’ll need to learn to fly a spaceship the hard way. The way that uses your hands and feet. Not your mind.”
I was confused, “How am I supposed to make the ship an extension of my body without an ether connection?”
Athena frowned, “Well, it takes a lot of mistakes.”
“What do you mean?”
“A lot of crashed spaceships.”
I shivered, “Isn’t that dangerous? Wouldn’t I get hurt?”
She started laughing as the man held in laughter, “Of course I wouldn’t throw you into an expensive spaceship. We got something better for you to crash.”
Athena stood up and motioned for us to stand up.
I held up my banana peel, “What do I do-”
“Give me.”
We handed her our banana peels and she proceeded to vaporize them leaving a faint banana smell in the air, “Follow me. Let me show you the simulator.”
I glanced at David. The same question seemed to run through our mind. Simulator? The simulator? Like, the Oracle?
She led us into a room with twelve stasis pods and multiple giant tanks of some clear liquid. She turned around, “This will be your personal simulator.”
She glanced at Dr. Monday, “There are very few of these so we will oversee everything you do with this simulator.”
I stared at the stasis chambers. These were clearly better than the chambers in the ether testing facility. I pointed to the tank of liquid, “Is this… a full simulator?”
Athena nodded, “It’s a failed model of the Oracle project.”
I stared at the massive computer in the center of the room. Clear pipes slowly flowed in and out of the computer as a low hum filled the room.
Athena handed each of us a pair of earpieces, “Put these in, you’ll need them later.”
After putting them into my ear the humming seemed to disappear, “That’s neat. It uses the opposite wave to cancel out the sound?”
She nodded, “It’ll make it easier to talk once we turn the simulator on.”
Dr. Monday lumbered over to a control panel, “We ready? This stuff is not cheap.”
I glanced at the big tank of stasis fluid. Not cheap? I had never heard about stasis fluid being expensive. I pointed at the tank, “How hard is it to make stasis fluid?”
Athena frowned, “It’s… Hmm. The republic only produces a finite amount of it every year. This tank is probably a month worth of fluid from one ether vein.”
“This fluid comes from ether extraction?”
She nodded, “And that’s why you’re gonna have to do the missions I selected. All of them offer stasis fluid as a reward.”
“But why does stasis fluid come from extraction?”
Dr. Monday was tapping a bunch of buttons on the control panel of the simulator but turned his head to answer my question. “It’s the water and other residue that cannot coagulate into a solid form.”
“Huh?”
He shook his head, “Just ask someone at an extraction site how it works. They’ll show it to you.”
With a flick of his wrist a series of lights lit up on the three closest stasis chambers. Athena pointed towards a series of small rooms attached to the simulation room, “All of you change into a jumpsuit for the stasis chambers.”
-----
I laid down inside the stasis chamber and saw as Dr. Monday leaned over with his hand on the handle. He peered at my face, “Good?”
“Yup.”
Clank
The rolling glass hatch sealed below my feet. I heard some taps through my earpiece, “Tap Tap, Testing. Is this good?”
Athena’s voice rang through my head, “Seems fine.”
“David? Kaiser? Make a sound.”
“All good Sir.”
“Yeah. Same.”
I felt something wet touch my toes and looked down as the liquid began to pool at my feet. The pod was slightly tilted to fill from feet to head.
Dr. Monday suddenly made a sound of alarm, “Oh! I forgot to ask if any of you have aquaphobia. Scream now if you do.”
The earpiece fell silent.
A sigh of relief came through the earpiece, “Well. Whew. I’m filling it up.”
A low hum echoed into my skull through the stasis chamber as a thick liquid flooded the chamber quickly coming up to my waist.
I looked down at the liquid, this was new. All the other stasis chambers I had been in made me sleep right when the liquid touched my body. What was happening? The liquid came up to my shoulders.
Something was wrong. Very wrong. I was still fully conscious. What was happening? Was I going to drown? What if this was water? It felt like thick water. It didn’t smell like anything. It didn’t taste like anything. Taste? Wait what.
How was I tasting it. I looked down and saw the liquid come over my nose. Wait what. No. I tried to tug my arm to move but my arm was limp. Wait what was happening. What. My legs numb, my arms numb, everything numb. Was I going to drown? What’s happening? Am I drowning? What was this liquid? Drown? Wait wha? Drowwnnnn? Ugh.
I closed my eyes.
Consciousness Transferring
Yo. I forgot to type something in the note yesterday. Today the shout is a neat litrpg from a much bigger story than mine. It's also scifi with some interesting elements from stuff that I personally enjoy even though I don't write litrpg. Do check it out if it looks interesting.
Featured Web Serial
LITRPGPortal Fantasy / IsekaiFantasySci FiMagicAdventure
One chance at winning. One fatal crash. No turning back.
My name is Clay, and my last moments on Earth were street racing. I lost control, hit the lead racer, and then a young woman in a minivan. In extreme slow motion, the crash sent us hurtling towards the river.
In freezing cold water, and with the mother screaming at me to save her kids. I did my best, and with no strength left, the water took me. Now, standing before Judge Aster, permanent death seemed like the punishment I deserved. But that mom and the God of Second Chances intervened. Now I had that second chance: the Justice Train, a mythical engine that carries the dead through seven stations, seven trials.
First trial: save a dragon nest. Too late. Only a cracked egg left. I took it anyway. Now I'm stuck with a two-headed familiar acting like my consciousness.
What to expect
- Ghosts of the past
- Redemption through consequence
- A LitRPG with moral weight
- Found family
- Enemies-to-lovers
Starring
- Clay — Chases pain to feel real
- Natasha — Will not let others make her soft
- Ash & Morrow — Loyalty and Rage
Litrpg ? Fantasy ? Sci Fi ? Writathon challengeTwo-Headed Dragon
Steel, sin, and second chances. If justice has a fare, they’ve already paid in blood.
Okay. So like. Stuff is about to get weird. Like a little more sane than Wyrm In The Brain, but like... similar weird. If you read that story you know what I'm talking about. We're about to slip in and out of reality. Not gonna lie, this is kind of me picking the parts of Wyrm In The Brain that I liked and putting it here. I really liked Prophesy in Wyrm In The Brain. Out of all the ideas that I dove deep into Prophesy was probably at the top of the list of "good ideas". So yeah. We're diving into Prophesy. And um. You know how Prophesy caused some wacky crap? Well. Yeah. The next chapter might be a bit confusing.
Since we're nearing the end of the launch window, I'm gonna start putting the chapter titles of the next chapter. So, look forward to Chapter 13 - Shock tomorrow. There will be a small bit of implied blood and some small bit of implied death. There will be a warning at the top of the chapter. But like... you've stuck around enough chapters that you gotta love the blood and death. Right? I sure love it.