“Good morning Doctor Ramayan. The current local time is 10:30 am, current Standard Galactic Time is 06:30.”
“Erjerndr?” Serah grumbled through her pillow.
A wireframe figure of a man faded into being atop her bedside table, dimly illuminating the bedroom. “Sorry ma’am, I couldn’t quite understand that?”
Serah rolled over and cleared her throat. “What, is, on, my a-gen-da?”
“Nothing save your usual work schedule. You’re due at the lab in one hour.”
“Lights.” Her apartment grew from darkness to a low-light glow. Serah sat up, rubbed her eyes and scooped up her U-Link. It was a thin silver model, and quite powerful. “Did the results from last night finish?”
“Yes Ma’am.”
“Summarize.”
“One moment please.”
Serah didn’t mind the delay, even for an intelligence construct like hers it was a very complicated request. But he could do it, and that’s why she’d bought him. She tucked her Link into her waistband and went to make breakfast. Once her eyes had adjusted she opened the curtains to look out on Bagreiath, capital city of Athenia. For every mile high building there was a patch of equally tall trees, sometimes beside it, sometimes growing right through the middle of the structure.
Her link made a sound. Serah pulled out the device and held it up. The wireframe man reappeared. “End result, out of 1,000 isolated test environments, 891 registered your predicted cascade response.” Serah suddenly felt weak at the knees; she almost dropped the U-Link.
“Did…did you say eight hundred…891?”
“That is correct.”
Serah’s heart kicked out a mad drum beat. She took several deep breaths, told herself to calm down, there were dozens of reasons why she could have gotten a result like that. “Did you check all of the sources of error I told you? Breaches in each environment? Exposure to outside elements? Premature decay of…”
“Yes doctor. Four test environments show signs of possible error, all others check out in all listed ways.”
Serah took a shaky seat on her couch and ran her fingers through her hair. “Hoookayokayokay…uhm…I need to see this for myself. Get me a capsule, put the kettle on and make me something I can eat on the road, anything from my usual list will do.”
“At once.”
Serah took what could have passed for a shower, put on fresh clothes and collected her notes from around the apartment. She heard the soft hum of a capsule pull up outside her door and looked to the kitchen. There was a large roll in the oven, the timer said it would be done in less than a minute. The kettle made a loud hiss as it finished its brewing cycle and infused its ingredients. Serah tapped her foot impatiently; she’d sprung for this kitchen suite to save time but it felt like she could have done this all faster herself.
There was a quick hiss of air as her breakfast was cooled to an edible temperature, then a musical chime as the machines dispensed it. Serah scooped both up and sampled them on her way to the door. “The roll is better, tea still needs work. Let it steep five seconds longer next time.”
Every building on Athenia was an aesthetic architectural marvel. Towers of stone and metal of all varieties, all melded effortlessly with the mega-flora. The trees here were older than either Alliance race, it had seemed only fair that their settlements disturbed them as little as possible. Serah’s capsule joined with a train of others headed all over Bagreith. Tourists in some cars looked out in awe at the city, turning every which way to see as many of the towers as they could. Some cars were larger and held up to twenty people, they were headed for the most common public stops. Others were single rider, going either to private or restricted locations.
Serah Ramayan kept her head buried in her notes throughout the ride, she’d seen the view far too many times to find it more interesting than the results of her experiment. She hadn’t been expecting to see a reaction on this scale so early on in testing. There were a dozen reasons it could have happened she reminded herself. She needed a larger sample size, her experiment had to be replicable and repeatable. Assuming of course that the positive tests weren’t the result of some mistake made during set up. She tapped her foot and fidgeted with her U-Link. Why couldn’t this damn capsule go any faster? It was too early to get excited, but if it hadn’t been a mistake, if she really could repeat the test and get the same results she could be on to something incredible.
“You know what’s going to happen though, don’t you?” Rakul said once Serah had finished gushing about her experiment.
Serah rolled her eyes, she hated rhetorical questions like that. “No. Enlighten me.”
“If you’re right, the military is going to ‘appropriate’ this project before you can blink.”
“Aaaand what? Give me mountains of credits? Help me create a new kind of gravity drive? I’m not seeing the problem here.” She lead the way into her lab space and sat down at her desk. “Synchronize,” she said to her U-Link. The wireframe man emerged and started connecting with her workstation.
“So naive,” Rakul muttered. “They’re going to weaponize it, Serah. A compact device of that size that can release that much energy on command?”
“Right. Compact.” Serah spun around in her chair and flipped a switch on the wall. The protective shield behind her raised itself out of the way, giving them a clear view of one of her prototypes. It was 80 meters tall and half as wide. Serah raised her arms as if presenting it to a potential buyer. “Oh yeah, this thing will fit anywhere.”
“Relatively speaking, Ramayan.”
“That’s ‘Doctor Ramayan.’ I still don’t even know if this works on principle. That thing is a big empty metal tube right now.” She spun back to her desk, turning her back on Rakul. He opened his mouth to say something else but Serah cut him off. “Besides, every major innovation on Earth got started because a military force got interested and contributed resources. If the price of a machine that can power an entire planet’s infrastructure is the Starforce uses the leftovers to make a big damn gun for their endless war at the edge of the galaxy, that’s a price I’ll be glad to pay.” Rakul closed his mouth, tried to come up with something else to say and couldn’t. He left Serah’s lab, mumbling half-formed things under his breath.
Rakul could be as bitter as he wanted. If everyone thought the way he did the Alliance would never have been formed. Humans and the Bast never would have left their homeworlds. Even if the military made a larger scale weapon from her work, it would actually be too powerful to be practical. Serah chuckled, she’d have to do the math later. When Rakul finally rubbed his two functioning brain cells together long enough to come up with another argument she’d be ready. This was all assuming the thing even worked. Her Link finished synchronizing with her workstation and Serah summoned her test results. One thing at a time.
“Test environment 0001.”
The Wings of Atlantis 