If someone were close enough, they would be able to see a golden glow in Rina’s eyes. At least if they were looking at her from the front, anyway; she still had yet to develop literal eyes in the back of her head. The golden glow was coming from magic circles surrounding her pupils that acted like mana lenses, and they were currently zooming in on the runic construct that Aron was carving.Ever since receiving her blessing, she had been putting at least five hours, Earth time, into studying it and practicing its usage. And with the time dilation factor in Aron’s private “sandbox” in the simulation, that equated to five HUNDRED hours each and every day. So, in effect, she had spent more than a decade within the simulation doing nothing but learning from Aron and various virtual instructors, having the theory of magic pounded—sometimes quite literally—into her.She had long since begun putting the theory into practice, and following that, begun developing new theories of her own and eve
Once the shield was online, Aron and Rina took a shuttle back to the surface of Mars. Both of them were exhausted after such a marathon mana manipulation session and, after a brief rest, they planned to officially begin touring the facilities on, and in, the planet. There were already a few million soldiers stationed there on their three-month duty rotations, but those rotations would gradually lengthen until the Mars base was staffed with permanent residents. The only reason it hadn’t already been a permanent duty station was because not all of the R&R facilities were complete yet.And while there was perhaps nothing more dangerous than a bored soldier, stressed soldiers were at least a close second.The tour would thus only briefly visit the areas of the base that would, once they were fully online, be designated as official rest and relaxation areas. Most of the week-long tour would be spent inspecting the vast automated factories that were nothing more than kilometers-long and kil
As the colony ships carrying the first diaspora were beginning their journey, another journey was coming to an end. The TSF Proxima was coming out of its final stretch of warp travel just a few AU outside the heliopause of Proxima Centauri.(Ed note: AU stands for “Astronomical Unit”. It’s the average distance between Earth and the Sun at any given point, as Earth also has an aphelion (the furthest distance from the Sun) and a perihelion (the closest approach to the Sun). All of the planets orbiting the Sun are on elliptical orbits. One AU is about 149.6 million kilometers and change. For normal purposes, since I doubt any of us—Agent and myself included—are either astronomers or astrogators, it can be rounded off to 150 million kilometers.)The inside of the Proxima was choreographed chaos as people who had chosen to spend the entire journey either in stasis or in their personal VR spaces woke and rushed to their assigned ships. The only people who had remained fully awake for the en
“Ugh... I might literally die of anticipation,” the tech snarked in an attempt to dissipate his impatience.“Do you really think so?” his neighbor cheerily chirped, sarcasm dripping from her voice.“I know, I know, it’s just that...” he sighed, but realized that the distraction of talking with his neighbor was an effective cure for his impatience. Well, that plus the continually arriving new data, that is. It might not be complete, but there was something satisfying and cathartic in watching the display slowly grow on his screen.As the two continued discussing the map and their plans for the very near future, another team of researchers were having heart attacks and existential crises of their own as the results of their scans were coming in.“Well, soo... yeah, that’s a thing,” one of them announced, listening to bits of a radio broadcast that, to the best of their knowledge, was a mere five years old.The TSF Proxima had multiple sensors studding her exterior, and of course some of
{System checks complete, Commander,} the AI of the TES Farsight announced.Commander Takahashi Ayaka, the ship’s executive officer, was the one in charge of making sure the ship herself was functional. Her captain, Shannon Meare, may be mistress-after-God and nominally in charge of the crew and ship, but it was an executive officer’s task to ensure that the captain HAD a functioning crew and a working ship in the first place.“Excellent. Progress on the cargo loading?” Ayaka asked from her position in the captain’s chair on the bridge. Captain Meare had handed her the watch while she took care of all the last-minute paperwork that seemed, no matter how technologically advanced, any government produced in job lots. She and Ayaka often laughed about the sisyphean task of keeping current with paperwork, and how their jobs were 99 parts paperwork and 1 part ship handling.At least in the simulation, anyway; this was their first real-world experience at the helm of the Farsight. It struck
Back on Earth.The broadcast of the diaspora was still ongoing, as the great colony ships carrying seeds of humanity—they were even named after different seeds, a PR masterstroke that was designed to offset the upset of the forced exodus—had scattered in every possible direction. They were still in the solar system, though, and the broadcast would continue until they reached Jupiter, where the live broadcast would cut off and switch to online streams, which people could still watch if they chose to.At .15c, that point would take just under four hours, but the streams wouldn’t be cut off until the colony ships reached the heliopause, roughly fifteen and a half months later. Each of the thousands of ships had their own stream already running concurrently with the broadcast so that those who had loved ones on them could follow their journey until the last possible moment. Their final destinations would be unreachable by the vast majority of people currently alive; even at warp speed (wh
Two days later.{Analysis complete, Admiral. No signs of advanced alien life detected in space,} the Proxima’s AI reported. It had spent a few hours repeatedly examining every pixel of the completed map and come to the conclusion that, if alien lifeforms existed in the Proxima Centauri system, they were either incapable of spaceflight or used a means too advanced for it to detect.“Signal the fleet: the fleet will prepare to launch after crossing Proxima Centauri’s heliopause. Once launched, the escorts will take up formation around the TSF Proxima. Exploration Fleet is to remain docked but move to Condition Yellow. They will launch once we’re ten AU inside the system,” Admiral of the Red Bianchi ordered.{Signal sent and acknowledged, Admiral,} the AI replied, then engaged the Proxima’s gravity drives. They were close enough to the star to get at least minimal acceleration out of them.“Proxima, all hands announcement.”{Recording, Admiral.}“All hands hear this. We have completed th
As soon as the briefing was over, Joon-ho opened his eyes and climbed out of his pod. Throwing his arms over his head, he leaned back and stretched as far as his 163 centimeter body would allow him to and groaned in excitement. ‘This must be what sex feels like!’ he thought as he held the stretch for as long as possible. And given that he had received genetic enhancements, that would have been a long time indeed, but the feeling soon passed as his body adjusted itself. Thanks to those same enhancements, physical feelings of relief came on fast and left faster.“Mana,” he muttered under his breath. While the pods didn’t have any mana to draw on while the vessel they were on was inside a warp bubble, now that they were traveling at sublight speed, the pods could, and did, draw mana from their surroundings and concentrate it within the pods to provide awakeners with a higher density of mana in which to train.And he wasn’t the only person who felt like he currently did, either. Every si