Scarlet Steel

The evolutionary history of the Mnemosyne is largely shrouded in mystery. The harsh conditions of their planet and the age of their species mean archeological discoveries are rare. Most of their history is recorded in memories, entire portions of which have vanished when the holders of those memories passed on. What we do know, however, is that they’re far older than humanity. They’ve been traveling the stars for thousands of years, an eternity compared to our scant 200. - An Intro to Mnemosyne Physiology

“This is your wakeup notification.” A strange voice rips me out of my sleep.

I flail for just a moment before getting control of my panic and realizing where I actually am. I’m onboard Juno’s ship. I’m used to waking up in weird places, I’m just used to those places being either under the open sky, or in a cramped cockpit.

I sit up and glance around. I’m on top of my sheets, in my day clothes, and with Dad’s frame sitting next to me. Oops. I wonder how much sleep I actually got, I certainly don’t feel like it’s enough. Whatever, it’s fine.

I get out of bed, toss yesterday’s clothes in the corner, and pull a new set out of my closet. I’m going to be working on Hoppy eventually, I just put on a white shirt, pull on one of my endless sets of overalls, and pull my curly hair back into a tight ponytail.

I poke my head out into the hallway and find it abandoned. It’s not until I head down the stares that I see any signs of life.

The living room is even less busy than it was before. Exa is relaxing on one of the couches, while Xenia and Janus are both standing in front of what used to be one of the windows. It’s been replaced by a set of hundreds of grids being slowly populated by x’s and o’s following some unknown set of rules. Juno, Elara, and Graff are entirely missing. Through the still-untouched windows, I can see only stars. I guess we’re moving, there’s no going back.

I make my way through the empty room and stop next to Exa.

“What are they doing?” I ask.

“Winning.” Janus answers instead.

“Not quite.” Xenia replies.

“Have you ever played tic-tac-toe?” Exa asks.

“Yeah, it sucks.”

“Agreed.” Janus says. “When expanded and layered over itself enough times, however, it’s an incredible strategy experience. Over a thousand individual games with each move influencing the next in ways that are incredibly taxing to follow through. Each of those games, even when completed, continue to have an impact on future moves. And most importantly, this specific game is unexplored. Each line we discover must be done so by ourselves.”

“It keeps both of us sharp.” Xenia agrees. “I’m a biological AI, by the way.”

“But how does the game actually work?” I ask, but neither of them respond.

“I’ll get the rules from them another day.” Exa says. “It’s lucky that you got an answer at all. Both of them tend to be non-responsive while wrapped in whichever game has their attention.”

“Uh-huh.” I barely even listen to her words, I’m too entranced by the game. The random moves slowly begin to make a little sense. Each move not only makes progress on its much smaller board, but also determines which board the other person is forced to play? There are, I’m sure, a lot of rules I’m missing, but the basics seem pretty simple. Soon enough I can even follow along, or at least know in which section of the wider board that they’re going to play in.

As the board fills up and the possible moves shrink, the two of them speed up exponentially. The final five percent of the board fills up in just a few seconds, far too quickly for me to keep track.

“Thank you for the game.” Janus says before turning to me. “Are you ready to begin work in the simulator?”

“I need-” I glance down and find the last remnant of a breakfast bar in my hand. When in the world did someone sneak this into my hand? When did I even eat it? I glance at Exa, who just smiles back. “I guess I’m ready?”

“Very good.” Janus starts to head towards the warehouse, and I hurry to catch up to him.

“So, Janus.”

“Yes?” He asks.

“How similar are you to Sieve and Numbers?”

“Would you like me to refer to you only in terms of how you are similar to or different from Niel or Lyra?”

“Shit, no, sorry. I didn’t think that through.”

“It’s fine. It’s just a question I have heard far too many times. It’s like you said yesterday, I am Janus, and you do not know me.”

“Right.”

“I took the liberty of reconfiguring our simulator to a copy of your dash, that is one part of mechs that is highly customized to the pilot’s preferences.”

“It’s not a preference, it’s just whatever parts I could find, wherever they would fit.”

“Still, I want to see what you can do with something you are familiar with, rather than learning a new setup.”

“Alright.”

Janus leads me into the ship I was picked up in. The room Juno and Elara piloted the ship from has completely changed. The table that dominated the center of the room is entirely missing, and walls have been installed, resulting in a familiar, cramped cockpit in the corner of the room.

“When did you do this?” I ask.

“The dropship is designed to be reconfigurable on demand, with unneeded parts retracting into the walls, floor, and ceiling. To reconstruct your cockpit, it was as simple as adjusting the walls and plugging in parts we already had in storage. Please, if you would climb inside.”

“Sure.” I crouch down and follow his request.

It’s so clean! No rust on each and every part, no cracks running through the casing of the dash, no wear and tear. And the suspension harness is an undamaged, official part! Not a cobbled together mess from scraps I’ve found!

“I could do so many upgrades with the stuff in here!” I yell back.

“Please refrain from grabbing tools and tearing apart my simulator.”

“I won’t, I was just saying.” My hands fly across the console, quickly bringing the simulated Hoppy to life. Battery on, and no errors to ignore? “If you want a real simulation, you’re missing the computer complaining about a few hundred things.”

“Are those errors necessary?” Janus asks.

“No, but they’re comforting, you know? It means my computers are working.”

Janus sighs loudly, and my dash shifts. The errors return, ready to be dismissed and ignored.

“Thank you!” I flip on both extra computers, and find my programs are already loaded onto them. I launch them, and the screens around me come to life, revealing an endless desert around my mech. I turn on the magnetic suspension field, and wait for it to warm up. “How deep does this simulation go? If I just flip on the cell, will I crack a tube casing again?”

“Again?” He asks. “Never mind. Yes, errors in operation will cause realistic effects.”

“Cool. And what about my broken parts? Do I need to get out and kickstart my left hip engine? Or are you not bothering to simulate that?”

“I- what?”

“One of the magnets is broken. It’s possible for it to stop in a deadzone, and needs a kick to get it started. That’s why I installed that hatch.”

“I assumed the door handle was just for maintenance.”

“Nope! It’s so I can operate it with my foot and give it a good kick!”

“No, I will not be simulating that.”

“Perfect.” I wait a whole minute before activating the antimatter cell.

I tell the simulated hopper to stand up, and it lurches quickly to its feet. I feel the gravity, the motion, much quicker and more forcefully than Hoppy.

“How in the world am I feeling it move?” I ask. “Gravity manipulation?”

“Yes.” Janus confirms. “The dropship has an engine built in that the simulator can tap into.”

“Very cool.” I push the accelerator forward, and this mech is far more responsive than mine. It accelerates quickly, and even approaches a Hopper’s maximum speed. “If you want to simulate Hoppy, reduce the output of every part by 25 to 30 percent, and disable the flywheel. I never could avoid that thing seizing up.”

The mech lurches as its specs get modified on the fly. It trips and slams into the ground. I barely get my hands out in front of me before I lurch forward from the impact, the harness barely stops me from slamming into the console. At least I’m not cracking my head open again.

I hit a few buttons, and the legs tuck in as compact as they can get, and a few parts of the chassis fold open, pushing the mech back onto its feet. Getting to its feet already feels closer to Hoppy in reality.

“Ok, yeah, that’s more what I expect. So how does training work?”

“I just want to see your movement.” From the sandy ground raises a collection of walls and obstacles. “Run the course.”

“Sure.”

The course is simple, mostly flat with wide turns. I take things slower than I have to, this mech has some differences I’m not used to with Hoppy. I have no idea what its limits are. Slowly I get a handle on the differences and begin to speed up. It’s not long before I’m jogging around the corners and pushing the mech a little on straight paths. Each lap of the course, I get a little faster.

“At least you seem to have figured out the basics.” Janus says.

“I’d feel more comfortable in my Hoppy. This simulation responds differently.”

“I apologize for any inaccuracies, my preconstructed simulation wasn’t exactly designed to simulate such a… unique mech. Especially when the internal condition of each individual part is a mystery to me.”

“Unique? Yeah that’s one way to describe her. I know she’s a pile of crap, but she’s my pile of crap.”

“People tend to react poorly when I insult their mechs.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. Also, I’m not super used to walking on flat ground. Give me a mountain and I’ll scale that thing.”

“Very well.”

The walls around me vanish in an instant, and I slow to a stop. In front of me a mountain rises. I take manual control of the mech’s legs and begin to climb. I place one foot on the slope, shift the mech’s weight on top of it before stepping up, and repeat endlessly. I scale the mountain quickly.

“Fairly impressive for missing your main form of stabilization.”

“I’ve had a lot of practice. I’ve fried eight or nine of them.”

“I am unsurprised. Flywheels require calibration unique to each one, the chances of a new one working without calibration is low. I’m certain Exa will assist in getting a new one set up.”

“That’s why they kept seizing up?” I yell. “Why the hell isn’t that in any documentation?”

“Because user calibration is somewhere between nearly impossible and actually impossible. The calibration information is hard programmed into the hardware, impossible to change.”

“Then why did my first one seize up?” I ask. “I took the whole construction out of another Hopper, hardware and all.”

“I couldn’t possibly know. My speculation, however, would be either pre-existing damage, or user error.”

“Yeah, I’d call it a 50-50 chance either way.” I shrug.

“I’d like to move on to our next test.” Janus says, and the world shifts once again.

The hours fly by with him. He doesn’t say much, just gives me challenges and watches as I run them. We focus exclusively on movement, not even mentioning the possibility of using weapons. Before I know it, we’re out of time.

“It’s time to break for lunch.” Janus announces.

“Got it.” I run the mech through an entire shutdown sequence before climbing out.

“I recorded good data today. I’ll formulate a training regiment tonight, and we can begin properly tomorrow.”

“How’d I do?” I ask.

“Better than I expected, but you have bad habits that need to be drilled out. Next time you’ll be piloting an at-spec Hopper, since your mech will be reaching that level eventually.”

That was fun. And now it’s time for the truly fun part of my day!