Joon-ho had taken to sleep as a way of measuring time in the timeless meadow. Although he never knew how long he slept, or when he fell asleep or woke up, for that matter, at least he could count “days” by tracking his sleep schedule. Currently, his count was at seven hundred and sixty-three.He had no way of knowing how accurate it was, but at least the practice kept him sane. Time had proven a difficult concept to communicate to the trees, who seemingly lived forever and saw no point whatsoever in dividing days into hours, minutes, and seconds, or years into months and weeks. The only thing the trees cared about were seasons; there was a season to sleep and a season to grow. Everything else was superfluous to them.Currently, he was laying on the soft grass, trying and failing to fall asleep. Not only was he excited by his impending rebirth, but the role he had played in the creation of new life had his thoughts in a tizzy. Though the trees had done all of the work of birthing the n
Proxima Centauri b, one month later.At the former site of Research Base New New South Wales, a single tree grew. Unlike any of the other newly created vegetation, it was alone in the center of a vast clearing and was of no particular species of tree. And on that tree was a single fruit, pulsing with a rhythmic red light.Motes of shining mana were flowing into the fruit, causing it to sway from side to side. As more and more motes struck the fruit and passed through its skin, the swaying sped up with each passing second until cracks spread on the fruit’s surface. They continued spreading and widening until the fruit fragmented much like an eggshell, dropping a slim, hairless human figure to the ground, covered in a clear, slick goo. The man, for man he obviously was, given the equipment between his legs, stood and wiped the goo from his eyes.“Fuck me!” he cursed as a wave of dizziness swept over him and he nearly fell to the ground. “I think I forgot how to walk. Do I have to grow u
TFS Proxima, mobile fleet hospital quarantine ward.Joon-ho was lying unconscious in a medical pod undergoing scan after scan at a blistering pace. In a side room, separated by a thick plate of armorglass, doctors were scurrying back and forth from screen to screen, tracking the real-time data coming from the medical pod.All of them were mystified at his miraculous survival. Sure, he had lost weight, but he’d survived for months on the surface of a planet with hostile life forms, yet showed no sign of the hypotrophy they expected from someone who hadn’t had a bite to eat in all that time. They weren’t alone in their surprise, either. Every single crew member aboard the Proxima, naval, marine, and scientific staff alike, were curious as to how Joon-ho had survived. Anyone who wasn’t currently standing watch was focused on the public security feed, tapping into it with their implants and staring at Joon-ho’s medical pod, searching for the slightest sign that he was about to be release
“And how is the special interview proceeding?” Ayaka asked, though she knew the process had likely been finished in seconds, or perhaps minutes. Comparing things didn’t take long, after all; not for quantum computers, anyway. The only limiting factor was that there were a lot of items to compare, which would take at least a little bit of time due to the quantity, if nothing else.{Due to the way Warrant Officer Lee was discovered and some anomalies in his scans, the interview will take extra time as the interviewer implements psychological testing measures to detect and prevent inaccuracies in the process or dishonesty on the part of the Warrant Officer,} the AI faithfully replied. The scope of the empire’s brain and memory scanning technologies had been hidden from it on a classified, encrypted server that it was unable to access in the normal course of things, so it naturally referred to the process as a “special interview”.“If you use all available computing resources in the Proxi
Everyone at the conference table seemed to be focused on a different part of what they had seen in the reconstruction of events. Their concerns were, for the most part, what one would expect from their fields of expertise.General Frances Robespierre, the commander of Task Force Proxima’s marine contingent, was stunned by the trees’ ability to create life, and on such a grand scale. Though there were only five new species—high elves, dark elves, fae, hill giants, and dwarves—multiple billions of each had been birthed and brought to full maturity in a much shorter time than any human could even give birth to full term infants. ‘Four months.... Four months!’ he thought. ‘It only took them four months to outnumber the entire human population, and that’s just their adults!’The thought of facing a potential enemy with that kind of ability to raise troops in that quantity was frightening, to say the least.Commander Bryce Harrison, the admiral’s personal awakener-cum-bodyguard was sitting
Ayaka was the first in the conference room to react to Joon-ho’s sudden collapse. “Proxima, dispatch RES-QR response to my location immediately!”Her words shook the rest of the attendees out of their stupor and a low hum of activity picked up in the background. Dr. Standing Bear muscled her way through the gawking civilians around her and rushed to the fallen awakener’s side. She pulled an instrument from the pocket of her traditional white coat and ran it over Joon-ho from head to toe.“I... what... how!?” she stuttered.“How what?” Ayaka practically snarled.“He’s suffering from mana deprivation. I don’t understand how that could be! We simply aren’t made to store mana—it flows through and enhances us, it isn’t something we require to function...” the petite Native American woman muttered, shock still clear on her features. Then her gaze sharpened and she continued, “The trees. The trees, Commander! They must’ve done something and I think I know what the source of the anomalies we
Elsewhere....Ayaka found herself standing in a bright white nothingness. If she didn’t feel a hard surface under her feet, she would have been incapable of telling up from down. But even with that as a reference point, she could see absolutely nothing anywhere around her.She looked down to see what she was standing on and a part of her mind absently noted that she was naked. For some reason, though, her nakedness didn’t bother her in the slightest. Her rational mind knew that it SHOULD be bothered, but for some reason she simply couldn’t muster up any fear, nervousness, or anxiety at all, despite everything that had happened over the past few days giving her plenty of reasons for those negative feelings to have latched on to and taken root in her psyche.Looking past the obvious, it soon became apparent that whatever it was she was standing on was so perfectly camouflaged with the glowing white mist that blocked her view in every other direction that she could see nothing. But the m
“Hello, Marco,” whatever was inhabiting Ayaka said in its distant, echoing voice.Fleet Admiral Bianchi simply stared back, irritation written across his face. “And who, or what, are you?” he said in an overly calm tone.“I am....” the being wearing Ayaka tilted her head as if listening to a distant sound. “He wakes.” She floated, still cross-legged in the air, to Joon-ho’s side.Joon-ho’s eyes fluttered, then snapped open and he sat up with a gasp. He looked around for a moment in wide-eyed panic, then, upon realizing where he was, visibly calmed himself. “So I’m not dead yet, am I?”“No, child. You’re still very much alive,” Ayaka’s passenger said, stroking Joon-ho’s hair. “And I am... glad, that you are.”Joon-ho looked at Ayaka for the first time since waking up—really looked—and out of all expectations, merely said, “I’m dreaming, aren’t I. Very funny, Proxima. I didn’t know you had it in you.”{Had what in me, Warrant Officer Lee?} the AI interjected.“Wait... this isn’t a dream