Foundation of All

“You gotta relax, Sean,” Roger said, “Just enjoy your life, play the casino a little. I mean, you’re loaded man! You gotta live it up while you can.”

“You should come to the survival courses with me,” Sean shot back, “I mean it is hard work but it's not like it isn’t interesting at least.”

Roger seemed thoughtful for a moment before sticking out his hand, “Deal!”

Sean blinked and stared at the hand. What?

“I’ll take your survival classes and you come with me to party and don’t keep avoiding people all the time.”

Sean groaned, “C’mon, Roger. You know that isn’t fair. I’m not some social animal like you and I just don’t care about gossip and fashion. What am I supposed to talk about with most people? At least you and the other guys can talk about literally anything else when you want to.”

Roger snorted and put his drink down on the table, “Hah! You’re right, most of them are obsessed. It’s actually rather funny sometimes. But if you knew more people then you’d care more about the gossip, right? You’re kinda causing your own problem here by not going out and meeting more people.”

Sean thought about it, “And you’ll take the classes seriously and not just screw around?” Sean confirmed.

“Sure, man,” Roger confirmed and wiggled his hand a bit as it remained extended towards Sean.

Sean grabbed it and shook, “Great,” Sean said, “But no complaining when you're in class. If I can take listening to what kind of dresses are in fashion or not for hours at a time then you can learn how to make a fire.”

Roger laughed, “Hah! No deal. I’ve heard you complain about it plenty over the last few years, I got to get my turn in too! So, no reason to delay. We can hit the casino first, put all your money to work. Maybe if you’re terrible enough you’ll actually end up spending enough of your absurd income for you to notice.”

It was true, Sean’s income was that absurd. The system here was built assuming that the immortals came into the station when they were at least a few thousand years old. And even that was relatively uncommon so they were paid well during their stay. Sean, who was only forty years old by now, was a large anomaly. Not that he felt that old, he looked and felt the same as he had when he was twenty five… Since the pay was inversely proportional with age his income had shot off the chart into far beyond what was reasonable. And while it would steadily decrease as time passed, even when he was a thousand years old he would still be being paid double or even triple of what Roger received.

Roger was twenty seven thousand years old and had spent most time at Immortus station after his initial stint of wandering the universe for a few thousand years directly after he became immortal. Something that seemed relatively common from what Sean had heard from the other Immortals around here on the station.

Roger stood, and Sean matched him. The man was rather spontaneous with a fun loving nature and always looking for new sources of excitement. But despite their contrasting personalities they had become fast friends over the last few years. Time that was only a blink for Roger but had felt like ages for Sean.

They went to the Casino and played for a long time. Sean lost a lot of money and Roger pronounced him as the worst gambler he had ever seen. It was almost amazing how many bad hands Sean managed to get when he played. Sean opened up a little more and went to more parties, avoiding Lars whenever he spotted him. Lars didn’t confront Sean directly, but apparently he was talking a lot of shit about him behind his back. No one liked Lars all that much though, so no one believed him and most just directly told Sean about it and started making fun of Lars instead.

Roger started taking the survival courses and as expected he started complaining to Sean about how boring they were. Sean shot back complaining about fashion, so it somewhat balanced out. Sean could tell that Roger actually didn’t mind that much considering he actually was somewhat focused during their actual classes.

You would think that after nearly fifteen years of taking the survival classes that Sean would be nearly finished. But no, he was actually still barely out of the introduction. The point of the whole curriculum was to be able to assemble a small ship with a functioning hyperdrive and navigation computer. All built from rock and materials made from scratch. It was just ridiculous how many steps there were in between that and first landing on the ground. Even now Sean was barely halfway to even getting to the point where they taught him how to create a transmitter in case a human ship happened to stop in the system for whatever reason.

The transmitter was considered a good failsafe but not a sure bet that someone would come by, as the beacon could be ignored even if someone stopped in the system. And some systems wouldn’t see a human ship pass by at all for thousands of years or more if they were out of the way of the more common routes most pilots took. Not to mention any bad actors that you might not want to find you at all.

The only sure method was constructing your own hyperspace capable ship by yourself. Something Sean was nowhere near accomplishing. He was barely up to learning to forge steel after building a makeshift forge.

At least Brenda had proclaimed him an excellent swimmer after he mastered the high dives she showed him. He didn’t have swimming lessons anymore with her, but he still saw her in survival classes so he didn’t mind the change all that much. Some of the classes were one on one anyway now that he was going beyond the basics so it was basically a private lesson again anyway.

He spent another five years like that, taking survival courses, going to parties, and joking around with Roger. But eventually even he had enough. He had to do something different than just partying and the classes.

He was now forty five, and he felt completely unchanged from twenty years before. He stared at the blocky black palm sized device sitting on his bedside table. His Foundation of All world. He had avoided playing it for all of this time. Emily had asked him to give this place a chance and playing the game felt like a step back for doing that. It was really a strange line for him to draw, but it felt like that if he started playing the game again that he would end up breaking that promise.

He shook his head. He was friends with Roger, part of the community now. He had spent two decades learning in the survival classes. He was, if not close friends, friendly with Brenda and other people he had met at the various parties he had gone to. He was enjoying being in this place.

He picked up the device and held it in his hands for a moment. He stared at it. No one had so much as mentioned Emily or the ‘Plaguemother’ in the entire time here ever since she had left. He wondered what all his new friends would say if he asked them about it. Probably nothing good.

He put down the device. Emily had mentioned a makerspace just before she had left, hadn’t she? He picked up his holopad and punched in what he could remember about it. There it was, images of a large workshop with advanced equipment to help manufacture and assemble things. It was perfect. Sean signed up for an open slot and found the map so he would know how to get there. He laid down in his bed and fell asleep. When he woke up he puttered around and had some food in a nearby cafeteria as he waited for his scheduled time. Luckily he could stay there as long as he wanted so long as the place wasn’t too full, which it didn’t appear to be from what he had seen when signing up.

Sean pulled up his holopad and scrolled through all the various robot designs he had copied over from his Foundation of All world’s files. He would finally try to create one in real life without the help of the ever useful multi tool. Hopefully he would be able to shake off the rust after not having created any of them in so long. But he was fairly confident given how much he had to work with his hands in the survival courses.

His holopad chimed and Sean quickly pulled up the designs for his Foundation of All robot designs that were the most promising. He quickly narrowed it to two options. A big bulky one that required much less finesse to create but also was much clumsier. Or a skinnier one that would be much harder to build but have a much more impressive result. He hesitated for a moment, not sure which to choose considering he had never created either of these robots before in Foundation of All or the real world. Both would be the challenge, they were designs that Emily had given him from her advanced factory world and robotics factory in it. Designs likely refined over thousands of years at least of her bored tinkering.

He hesitated a moment longer before choosing the more complicated design. He had all the time in the world, right? Why shouldn’t he set a high bar for himself? His holopad chimed again and Sean silenced it as he stood. He should have thirty or minutes or so to make it to the shop and sign in again before he was reprimanded for being late.

“So, these are the machines,” the supervisor said looking bored as he gestured lazily to the room behind him, “Don’t hurt yourself, you’ll damage the equipment and you’ll be paying for all the repairs on them. Don’t try to cheat or sneak any materials out without paying, we have cameras and scanners all over the exits that will catch you. Anything you alter or cut will be considered yours and charged to your account, so don’t try to argue if your bill starts running high. It doesn’t matter if you remember doing it or not, the camera in the supplies room will see what you really did no matter what your memory tells you. You own whatever you create, but no bombs or weapons or the like can be built in here. There’s a separate place for that where they have better security and safety procedures, so don’t even try to argue if you get caught. If you do end up hurting yourself, make sure to clean off all the blood wherever you spill it. Break any of the rules enough and you can be banned from this and all other maker spaces on Immortus station for a thousand years or more. So don’t do it. Got all of that?”

“Are robots weapons?” Sean asked, “I’m sure they could hit someone rather hard if they wanted to…”

“Robots?” the supervisor asked, seeming surprised at the question, “What are those?”

“Metallic humanoids controlled by a set of computers? Like in the game Foundation of All?”

“Foundation of All? I’ve never heard of that one before…”

The supervisor looked confused and stepped to the side to click through a large set of holograms around his desk. He flicked through the various windows frowning as he hunted for the answer.

“Oh, I see,” the supervisor said, “Yes, that should be fine as long as no weapons are built into them. These… ‘Robots’ aren’t used that much anymore in the galaxy because of how expensive they are to build. At least in the galactic core systems around here. Most people go for bioengineered organisms due to… well… how many of those specialized creatures have been created by us Immortals over time. I hadn’t heard that name for those machines before. Usually people just call them by whatever corporation ends up making them and a serial number. Out of curiosity, what’s Foundation of All? I can’t find any reference to it in my database.”

Sean described the game and how he had practiced assembling the robots in the holodeck and was about to attempt it in real life.

The supervisor’s eyebrows rose, “Now, that sounds like quite the game! I’ve never heard of such an elaborate crafting system, usually they just have you throw the items on a workbench and the new item pops into reality. You would really have to understand all the processes involved in real life to code the system to be so flawless that it would apply to real life so closely… you wouldn’t happen to have a copy of it, would you?”

Sean nodded, “Actually I…”

The door behind them opened and Sean immediately frowned as he saw Samir there walking though in his bright robes as usual. Whenever Sean had to talk to him it was nothing good. He had to explain to him about his fight with Lars and it had been an intense interrogation as Samir probed Sean’s motivation for every little action he took that day. Probably still suspicious after Sean’s contact with the ‘Plaguemother’.

“Sean! Ricardo! How are you two doing?” Samir said affably, “Now, sorry to interrupt but were you just using that holodesk there, Ricardo?”

The man nodded.

“Were you looking up a game by the name of Foundation of All?” Samir asked and Ricardo nodded and gestured to Sean, “Sean here was just telling me about it. Sounds rather interesting, I was just asking him if he had a copy.”

Samir turned to Sean with an oddly intense gaze, “Well, do you?” he asked, “It does sound interesting doesn’t it?”

Sean got a strange feeling. Neither of them had told Samir anything about the game or why they were talking about it. Why was he so interested?

“No,” Sean lied, “I played it on… Emily’s ship. I’m surprised you don’t have it here. It’s a good game.”

Samir scanned Sean’s face for a moment before relaxing.

“Ah, good. That game is banned in Immortus station by order of the council. Sorry Ricardo, you’ll have to make do with some other game.”

“Why is it banned?” Ricardo asked curiously not seeming to not notice Samir’s dismissive tone as he spoke.

“By order of the council,” Samir said, “Some games have inbuilt viruses, some are intentionally traumatizing to people, others are used to funnel funds to… Criminal elements. These games are so complex that it can be difficult to detect these kinds of threats and root them out. Best to ban them altogether rather than risk it if they are made by publishers with a spotty track record for these things.”

Samir eyed Sean for a moment as he paused for a moment before moving on, “Hard to say the exact reason,” Samir said, “But it hardly matters. Sean doesn’t have the game anymore so the point is moot.”

Samir turned to Sean, “Right?” he said.

“Right,” Sean agreed after a short pause.

“Well, sorry to bother you,” Samir said, “I’ll leave you to your business then. Have fun using this space, Sean.”

With that Samir swept out the door, his robes swirling behind him as he left.