Episode 149

A vast, pure white void. Floating within it were multi-colored Function Groups, glowing with a distinct blue hue. Countless versions of himself—yet not quite himself—swarmed the space, each busy with some inscrutable task. Teiro understood exactly what they were doing and what the results would be. After all, these me-but-not-me entities were, at their core, just him.

How nostalgic...

Teiro recognized this feeling. He had slipped into this exact state during the Enzio War while micromanaging a ridiculous amount of live-ammunition weaponry.

"It’s not like it was a lifetime ago, you dramatic bastard. Come on, let’s get moving."

One of the "himself" units standing nearby started marching toward a massive black blob in the distance.

"Yeah, yeah, I’m coming," Teiro replied to his other self, falling into step.

"You ready for this?"

"Please. I’m always ready."

"We’re really going to tackle that thing? Are we morons?"

"Zip it, me! Do it like your life depends on it!"

As they walked, more "Teiros" materialized out of nowhere, forming a small army. Teiro led the pack, though he didn't need to turn around to see the rear. If he wanted a back-view perspective, he just had to request the data. There were hundreds of him now.

"That thing is huge..."

"Seriously, no way."

"Looks like it’s still growing, too."

"...This is a mess."

Teiro and his literal self-help group stopped in front of the mass, feeling a collective sense of exhaustion. The data streaming in from the makeshift neural network was staggering; visualized, the information pile looked significantly larger than the Plum, despite the ship being a literal Cruiser.

"First, let’s establish the starting conditions. All in favor?"

"Aye!" "Aye!" "Nay—it's impossible!" "Aye!"

With over a thousand Teiros now shouting their opinions, the motion passed instantly. A specialized squad of "hims" marched toward the data mass, digging into the information like it was a "cable monster" from some 1990s PC nightmare.

"I’ve got high-precision data from the twelve-hour mark of the engagement," one of the Teiros announced, the info instantly zipping through the collective consciousness. It was a composite of scan results from the Warship and station sensors. Anything missing was filled in with creative guesswork from other datasets.

"That’s a 99.994% match. Garbage! Way too vague!"

"Scrape more data! Cross-reference the correlations for eight hours on either side of the mark!"

"Boost the precision! I want eleven nines, people! I want 99.999999999% accuracy or I’m going to lose it!"

The battlefield wasn't just ships; it was a chaotic soup of debris, gas, and Electromagnetic Waves. Most of it was junk, but plenty of it mattered. There were nearly a hundred thousand pieces of debris large enough to knock an Escape Pod off course, and that number was growing exponentially. Every time a ship popped, millions of new jagged bits joined the party.

"Got environmental logs from the station! Syncing now!"

"Match is 99.999999999282%. We have a winner!"

"We’ve hit the same precision for the eight-hour post-mark!"

"Alright, run the sim! Fast-forward!"

At the command of one of the Teiros, a simplified battlefield simulation flickered to life. It looked like an ultra-high-definition Tactical Screen that had decided to take over the entire sky.

"...Simulation complete for the eight-hour window. Commencing verification."

They compared the twelve-hour data with the twenty-hour data, crunching the numbers to see if reality matched their math. Any discrepancy meant their parameters were off, or there was a ghost in the machine they hadn't accounted for.

"Wait, something’s wrong. The Beam trajectory from WIND 366 is skewed."

"It should be further to the right... Is that radiation interference?"

"There’s a dozen more errors! Reset! Start over!!"

"Dammit! This is impossible!"

They threw every conceivable variable into the mix, adjusting the corrections on the fly. The simulator looped back and forth through the timeline, inching closer and closer to the truth.

"We need data for 170 hours post-engagement. At this rate, we’ll be dead before we find her!"

"We need more processing power. Wake up the slackers in the Biological Circuits!"

"We’ll blow the stability threshold! We have to drop the Safety!"

"Requesting Safety release! Vote now!"

"Nay!" "Aye!" "Nay!" "Nay!" "Nay!" "Absolutely not—no precedent!" "Nay!" "Too dangerous!" "Nay!" "Nay!"

The collective of hundreds immediately shot the idea down. Teiro looked at the rejection and roared at the top of his lungs.

"I’m the Archetype! I’m making this a priority! Finding Marl is the only thing that matters! Drop everything else by one priority level! RELEASE THE SAFETY!"

The words slid out of his mouth before he could think. Wait, what’s an Archetype? Teiro wondered briefly, but he knew deep down that he was right.

"...Release." "Release." "Fine, release." "Release it!" "Release it!"

Voices erupted around him as everyone looked upward. A message from the BISHOP system flickered into existence.

[SAFETY RELEASE REQUEST... ACCEPTED]

[NEURON OPTIMIZATION PREPARATION: INCOMPLETE]

[WARNING: CRITICAL ERROR PROBABILITY HIGH]

[NEURAL AMPLIFIER: FORCED CONNECTION INITIATED]

Cyberspace shuddered. An incorporeal shockwave ripped through the void, carrying a phantom wind that nearly knocked Teiro off his feet. The white sky turned a bruised, bloody red, and waves of pure data sparked against the ground like lightning.

[MULTI-CORE ACCELERATOR: ACTIVATED]

A hidden program executed, and a terrifying silence fell over the world. Teiro looked down at his hands—his entire body was glowing white. Normally, this would be the part where he started screaming, but in this state, it just seemed... efficient.

"Resume the simulation... All units, calculate."

Teiro watched as his radiant body began to turn translucent. A strange, floaty sensation took hold, and he felt his ego beginning to liquefy. Along with the new versions of himself spawned by the Safety release, four thousand Teiros turned into spheres of light and merged into a single, blinding consciousness.

One single desire remained in the center of his fading mind.

Calculate! Calculate! CALCULATE!

When the Plum suddenly lurched into a turn, Koume’s Quantum Circuit was practically screaming. Her Logic Circuit, Emotional Circuit, and even her Integrated Calculation Circuit were all outputting the same result: What the hell was that?

"Are you finished already, Mr. Teiro?"

Koume leaned over to check on Teiro in his seat, but he didn't move.

His face was a mess of dried blood. Koume wiped it away as best she could, but it was a losing battle. He looked like a corpse, honestly, save for his eyelids which were twitching with the speed of a hummingbird’s wings. His brain was clearly working overtime, but the blood leaking from his ears and nose was a bit concerning.

"............It is getting a bit loud out there, isn't it? I shall investigate the Engine Room. Miss Etta, please remain here."

Detecting an anomaly stretching from the engines to the Cargo Bay, Koume left the bridge. She left an Automatic Medical Device with Teiro, figuring he’d be fine as long as nothing exploded. He was already hooked up to a blood transfusion drip; the only real worry was him choking, and the medical bot could handle that.

"I cannot even begin to guess what is happening to his brain... Hmph. But what is this?"

Koume stared at the wreckage of the Cargo Bay, her expression fixed in its usual polite mask. The inner hull plating had been ripped away, exposing a nest of wiring and machinery. Everything had been systematically disassembled, with parts scattered across the floor like a giant’s Lego collection.

"Not an external breach... I assume this is Mr. Teiro’s handiwork?"

She picked up a neatly gutted component and tilted her head. Her Quantum Brain was top-of-the-line, but even she didn't have enough data to make sense of this madness.

"Oh?"

Her internal Motion Sensor pinged. Koume turned around to find a hideous, four-wheeled contraption—likely made from a repurposed transport cart—scuttling across the floor. It was using an arm made of braided wire to frantically scoop up spare parts.

"Fascinating. I do not recall us having such robots on board."

Koume followed the little scavenger. Usually, she’d just check the ship’s logs via BISHOP, but Teiro was currently hogging the entire Communication Band for his own personal math project.

"Are you a friend? I wonder if there is anything I can do to assist."

She followed the robot to Cargo 6. The room was crawling with dozens of the ugly machines, each performing a specific task. Some were peeling off more wall plating. Some were gathering scraps. Some were using the scraps to build something new. They were even upgrading themselves on the fly; one robot slapped a new arm onto its chassis and immediately started working twice as fast.

"............I see. He certainly has the technical knowledge, and this ship was originally designed for such 'creative' purposes. I thought I understood Mr. Teiro, but it appears I was being quite conceited."

Koume looked at the machine the robots were building and let out a deep, robotic sigh.

It was a jagged, hodgepodge monstrosity. A giant Capsule, a web of tubes, and a mountain of salvaged medical gear.

It looked exactly like a cold sleep device.