Chapter 13: The Cosmic Truck Stop

  I sailed on an easy stream of fluid physics, floating through the colors of eternity.

  I floated on my back, drifting through a tunnel of turquoise light that stretched into infinity. There was no air, but I didn't feel a need to breathe. Strange. Not a hint of gravity, but why did I feel a force, insistently pushing me forward. Again strange, like everything after that data-haven incident.

  The Aethelgard"s roar had thinned out into a high-pitched whine, a tinnitus needle piercing my teeth and that sounded like the capacitor of an old CRT TV just before it bursts.

  I shut my eyes and left the Astrolabe to drive. I really wanted a bagel

  In the center of my internal Schema, near the constellations of my stats, a small, empty socket pulsed.It was the place my Charge of Stillness had been; the one I had burned to keep Mr. Peepers off in the woods.

  As I drifted, I watched a mote of silver light coalesce from the tunnel walls. It was diluted peace, the metaphysical still by-product of being nowhere and nowhen. It drifted down to my Star, and fitted into the ring with a pleasant click.

  [Charge of Stillness: 1/1]

  "Reloaded," I said to the void. "Let's try not to spend this one on the first turn."

  The ride seemed to be an hour, or perhaps a week. Time was mush here. But at length the turquoise stream spread, and threw me out into a very large, tumultuous bay of starshine.

  I struck the ground; a floating block of granite, as large as a football field, with a stumble. I looked up, and my jaw unhinged.

  I was standing on the rim of The Gilded Gyre.

  If you took a dozen cities, pulverized them in a mortar, and hastily rebuilt them using gravity-glue and bad intentions, you would have the Gyre. It was a architectural car crash. I spotted a Gothic cathedral welded, badly, to the side of a neon-drenched hab-block, the two connected by rusting chains that looked like they hadn't passed a safety inspection in a millennium. It was beautiful, just as a grease-stained diner is beautiful at 2 AM. Pure, functional anarchy.

  It was a mess and It was a beautiful mess. The space version of a diner truck stop at 2 AM... And for the first time since I left Earth, the crushing burden of a world trying to swallow me was gone.

  [Location: Convergence Delta-9 "The Gilded Gyre"]

  [Status: Neutral Ground]

  I headed towards the central group of buildings. Here, the masks were off. I saw a being that looked like a walking suit of samurai armor made of blue ice. I saw furry creatures playing cards. The Veils were gone, leaving only the truth of raw biology of the locals.

  My stomach growled. Loudly.

  I came to a food booth where a multi-armed cook was roasting purple skewers.

  "How much?" I asked in the Trade Tongue embedded inside my brain, thanks to the Astrolabe.

  The chef pointed to a glowing slate. "Three Faint Shards. Or one Lucent for the meal."

  "Shards?"

  The chef rolled his eyes. "Lumen-Shards. Crystal light. Money. You new?"

  I checked my Astrolabe. I had no cash, but I was full of energy. "I have Lumen inside me," I reasoned. "Can't I just... squeeze one out? Mint my own?"

  The chef laughed with a croaking wood sound. "Sure. If you hate efficiency. It takes a hundred points of internal pressure to poop out a rock worth thirty."

  I paused. "A hundred to get thirty?"

  "Entropy takes a cut" he grinned, flipping a skewer. "You'd burn more energy printing the money than you'd get from the kebab."

  I walked away, hungry and broke. I needed cash.

  I found a building that looked like a library cross-bred with a pawn shop: THE MNEMOSYNE MARKET.

  Behind a counter, inside, was seated a creature resembling a man-sized barn owl, with a monocle.

  "Greetings, Wayfarer," the owl hooted mentally. "Buying or selling?"

  Selling', I answered, going up to the counter. "I'm new. Low on liquidity. High on trauma."

  The owl blinked slowly.It turned its head nearly 180 degrees and gazed at me with the other eye. "Trauma is a commodity. The multiverse learns from pain. It entertains itself with it. What do you have?"

  "I have a combat log," I said. "Tier 3 World. Corruption event. First-person perspective of a Magnitude 42 entity engaging a Shepherd-class Node."

  The owl froze. It bent forward, its huge eyes sweeping over my skimpy Magnitude 38 soul. The scrutiny felt like cold water running down my spine.

  "You survived a Magnitude 42 entity?" it asked dryly, its mental voice laced with skepticism. "Did it choke on you?"

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  "I threw a rock at it" I said honestly.

  "A rock," the Owl repeated. "Fascinating. Very well. Let us see the merchandise."

  I lifted my hand to place it on the counter, then paused. "How exactly...?"

  The Owl sighed, a ruffling of feathers that sounded like a deck of cards being shuffled. "New. Very new. You have the memory, yes? The Astrolabe records everything automatically. It is in your Buffer."

  I focused inward. Indeed, under a sub-menu of the Arc of Remembrance, raw feed of my recent experiences could be found.

  "To sell it," the Owl instructed, his voice taking on a bored, professorial tone, "you must crystallize it. You are not giving me the memory; you are keeping the experience but selling the record. Focus on the event. The start and the end. Now, channel your Lumen into it. Push it out through your hand, as if you are exhaling the memory into the glass."

  "Wait," I hesitated. "Channel Lumen? I'm running on empty here. Does it cost much?"

  "To mint a raw Echo? Minimal," the Owl assured me. "you are just dumping raw data onto a hard drive. A sliver of energy is sufficient."

  I nodded. I shut my eyes and concentrated on the fight. The heat of the reservoir. The scream of the Parasite. The moment I tossed the rock. The explosion.

  I pushed.

  A small portion of my remaining Lumen was lost. I felt like pressure was coming out of my ears, as though after a flight.

  Thrum.

  On the counter, a small, jagged crystal materialized. Hm, this must be similarly how a lumen shard is minted, probably. it was rough, glowing with a frantic, angry red light not like the ones on shelf that were all smooth and soft looking.

  The Owl picked it up with a talon, inspecting it through his monocle. He hummed a puh…puh…puh sound.

  "Raw. Messy. But... high fidelity. The sheer audacity of the solution... yes. This will sell. Young Wayfarers love stories about 'cheating' the system." the Owl critiqued, turning the crystal over. "But... educational. The sheer audacity. And the resolution on the Shepherd's intervention is surprisingly crisp."

  He reached under the counter. Clinking glass sound followed. He poured out three finger-sized crystals glowing with constant light: Lucent Shards and a few smaller and duller pebbles: Faint Shards."Three Lucent, ten Faint," said the owl. "Standard rate for a combat log with high educational value but poor composition."

  My Astrolabe identified them immediately.

  [Item: Lucent Shard]

  [Description: Stabilized Lumen. Trade Value: Standard.]

  [Utility: Can be cracked to restore 20-30 Lumen.]

  "They're batteries," I realized, picking one up. It felt hot, slightly vibrating.

  They are life, the owl corrected. The only truth is energy in the nothingness. You use them to purchase, You Break them to survive. The Merchant's Dilemma. Do not waste them all on ale, little gnat. You may have to eat one to live through your next bad choice.

  then, he paused. he looked at my torn coat, my scuffed boots, and the general aura of 'barely-survived-the-tutorial' clinging to me. It went under the counter once more and drew out a dull grey belt with a sheathed knife on it.

  And take this, the owl said, and push it over the wood. A Wayfarer's Sash and an ordinary Void-Knife.

  I blinked. "That wasn't part of the deal."

  "Call it a... promotional offer," the owl said smoothly, though its mental tone dripped with pity. "You are strolling the universe with loose rocks in your pockets and no weapon. You are virtually shouting to the Universe that you are free XP. Take the belt. I would prefer to keep my suppliers alive until they can bring me a second memory."

  I took the belt. I wanted to be offended, to haggle for dignity, but he was right. I was a toddler going through a war zone.

  "Thanks," I muttered. "Pleasure doing business."

  Ten minutes after I was sitting on a box outside the food booth, gnashing a purple skewer. Tasted like spicy chicken glazed in electrified honey. It was the best thing I had ever eaten.

  The sash was around my waist, the knife heavy on my hip. I felt... established.

  "Sticky door guy," a voice grunted.

  I looked up. the stony Wayfarer from the rooftop, was leaning against a pillar. Without his Veil, he looked like a gargoyle bodybuilder.

  "Vent guy," I replied. "Small universe."

  He sat on a crate opposite me. "You got guts, little flesh-thing. Hacking a Root-Door with a leaf. Stupid. But effective. I saw the Owl gave you the 'Don't Die Immediately' starter pack."

  "He called it a promotional offer," I said around a mouthful of meat.

  He laughed, a sound like grinding boulders. "He felt sorry for you. You leak 'rookie' like a sieve. But you survived Aethelgard, so you're not hopeless."

  "I'm Kaelen," I said, wiping my mouth.

  "Vrex. You look like a Tier 1 native. Hollow World?"

  "Earth," I nodded. "We have internet, anxiety, and zero magic."

  "Hollow Worlders," Vrex mused. "Always looking for the exploit because you can't just brute force reality."

  He leaned in. "You looking for work, Kaelen? I picked a distress signal on the Stream. A Tier 1 world in the Cygnus Sector went dark. The Grid crashed."

  My ears perked up. "A Tech-World?"

  Vrex corrected: A Machina-Forge. "High tech. No magic. Just cold steel and logic. The AI core barred the locals even in their own city-core. It's a software lockdown."

  I paused, the skewer halfway to my mouth. I looked at the giant, magical rock-monster.

  "You know what 'software' is?" The question slipped out before I could check my bias.

  Vrex stopped chewing. The grinding sound of tectonic plates shifting deep in his throat filled the silence. He tapped his stony temple. Sparks flew. "Kid, I was debugging kernels on Alpha-Centauri when your ancestors were still figuring out which end of the spear was the pointy one. Silicon is a delicacy to me."

  "Sorry," I said, grinning. "My bad. Stereotyping."

  "The point is," Vrex continued, "It's a retrieval op. The signal is coming from the Core. An automated distress beacon on a frequency only the Astrolabe picks up. Whoever fixes the Grid gets access to the vault before the locals even know it's open. The loot potential is high grade."

  "Sounds like my kind of party," I said. "You appear to have your way about a server. Why do you need me?"

  Vrex grimaced, a scraping sound. "It's a Tier 1 Hollow World. The atmosphere is metaphysically lifeless. To a guy like me; my biology is ambient mana and it is as though you have entered a vacuum chamber. I will begin to freeze in an hour or so."

  He reached into a pouch on his belt and pulled out a heavy, brass collar etched with glowing runes. He clicked it around his thick stone neck. It hummed to life, emitting a faint, blue aura around his head.

  He fished a heavy brass collar from his pouch and clicked it around his throat. The runes etched into the metal flared to life, humming with a blue, pressurized aura. "Mana-Lung," he grunted, tapping the device. "Burns Lucent Shards to keep a personal atmosphere around my head. Without it, I fossilize. With it, I'm slow, expensive and alive."

  " I need a partner who breathes vacuum. I can't handle the finesse work if the atmosphere is trying to kill me."

  He pointed a stony finger at me. "You smell like Null-Iron. You'd thrive there. I bring the muscle and the gear; you bring the exploit."

  I grinned. A world without wizards? A world where the threat was not a demon, but a firewall? A world where I was the apex predator of logic?

  "A server crash," I said, standing up and checking my new Void-Knife. "Sounds like a Tuesday."

  I looked at Vrex. "I'm in. How do we get there?"

  Vrex stood up, towering over me, the brass collar humming against his stone skin. He jerked his thumb toward a massive chain leading off the edge of the platform, disappearing into the swirling nebula below

  "We walk, little glitch. We walk."