Unchosen Champion

Coop had formed a limited, clumsy understanding of how to interact with the Ark, but that was all it took to get them started on their quest to take control. When they set off on the highway built from hexagons, he was raring to go. A smidgen of progress was enough to trigger his competitive instincts and have him hyped to take action.

Once they found the command center, ship core, or whatever it was that Lyriel believed would grant the highest level of access, they would put a stop to the Eradication Protocol. At least, that was the plan. It seemed easy enough if he ignored countless little details that would naturally complicate his experience.

The first problem appeared quickly. Instead of a simple stroll to the next checkpoint, Coop had established what ended up feeling like an unending bridge to nowhere. The path of connected hexagonal tiles stretched to an unreasonable length, matching the scale of the gargantuan vessel. The smidgen of progress in building the road put them on a treadmill-like trap that stole his momentum.

The journey gradually sapped his enthusiasm, draining his eagerness while failing to match the urgency of the second apocalypse. Constructing the path established the first bit of progress, but it failed to establish further discovery, letting the initial spark of development fizzle into disappointment. For all of his trial and error, it didn’t feel like they were any closer to taking control of the ship at all.

The Ark was obviously not meant to be to be traversed on foot. Literally every hexagonal surface was designed to be an independent mobile platform, but Coop had only managed to produce a single-width road. The linear highway formed by a perfect alignment of adjacent platforms truly illustrated his extensive inadequacy. The slow realization weighed upon his psyche, making him wish he was someone that could have quickly grasped the nature of the vessel instead of fumbling his shot.

As they went, he scanned the disconnected hexagonal compartments that formed enormous shapes that curled over the road, never quite touching. They branched into jagged mazes that wrapped around the path before expanding beyond vision, always adhering to the hexagonal shapes as a base.

Thousand mile skyscrapers that were sometimes only a single compartment thick and other times a hundred compartments wide climbed past the highway while thick overpasses loomed over their journey. Other aggregations formed blocky clouds that floated in the sterile sky, building strange gray islands and entirely new frontiers.

Altogether, the compartments presented a strange alien landscape built from a single geometric shape. It was an entirely hexagonal world.

None of the formations seemed individually significant, but Coop couldn’t help but feel worried that any one of them might hold a single compartment with important information hidden inside. He could spend many lifetimes checking individual rooms, making sure that he didn’t miss anything in particular, but it would be like collecting the old world’s entire catalogue of microfiche and checking them without an index. It would be horribly inefficient and time consuming. The better method would involve successfully navigating the alien programs while utilizing his access, but he simply couldn’t accomplish much without spending significantly more time inefficiently studying alien patterns.

Lyriel didn’t complain even once, apparently comfortable spending as long as it took within the Ark, but Coop was growing more and more impatient to get back to Ghost Reef. Decoding timeless secrets was beyond his qualifications. His area of expertise was obvious. It involved his spear and a healthy supply of simple enemies. Not xenoarchaeology.

After spending hours without visibly closing the distance, he was ready to mistjump the rest of the way, regardless of the consequences. It might actually be easier to deal with any potential security systems than continue to physically cross the expansive ship. Whether or not his skills were adequate was up in the air, but remembering that the Eradication Protocol was active was like having an itch that he couldn’t reach. He was desperate to do something more productive than hiking along an alien track while admiring the anomalous formations.

Lyriel convinced him to ease up as he grew more and more tense. They could stop and he could continue to experiment with controlling the ship if he wanted, but the fact was that they were making progress. Compared to the thousands of years that she had repeatedly failed to meaningfully contribute to her goals, a stroll across an elevated highway was a feast of development. From that perspective, every tangible step was actually an enormous leap forward.