Foundation of All

— — — 200 Years after Emily Stenson left Sean Turretson at Immortus Station — — —

Emily hummed to some music she had put on as she idly worked on her Foundation of All factory world. She had been feeling more inspired recently after showing it off to Sean. She felt a pang of loneliness in her gut as she thought about her empty ship, how he was the first to see it besides her. But she pushed it down, she couldn’t be selfish. It was the right decision to drop him off at Immortus Station so he could be independent, and get a fuller picture before he decided if he still wanted to be associated with her.

She had hoped… hoped so many times. But all of them eventually turned away from her, disgusted. All of them pulling away, too afraid of distancing themselves from the rest of Immortal society to be associated with her.

Only her girlfriend Asuta stayed at her side over these millions of years. But Asuta couldn’t stay still for long, too enthralled by the prospect of some new adventure she wanted to go on. So their relationship was on and off, only reigniting whenever Asuta was taking a break or feeling lonely herself and in need of Emily’s attention.

Even their times together were tinted with a little sadness as Emily always knew that Asuta would leave again, and that nothing Emily did or said would convince her to stay when Asuta got into the mood to go out and explore and battle again.

Emily didn’t enjoy combat, violence at all. She couldn’t go with her on her bloody journey. So when the time came for Asuta to leave again, Emily cried a little and they parted ways again. And then she was all alone on her ship. Again. Building these empty husks of worlds that no one but her would ever see or appreciate. That’s just the way that things were.

She wiped her face and was surprised when she found a tear there on the back of her hand. God, why was she getting so worked up over the opinion of someone not even a couple hundred years old now? Why did she get so invested every time? It just hurt more when they rejected her in the end. But she couldn’t resist. Her crushing loneliness couldn’t resist the urge.

And she had hopes, Sean had seemed understanding. And she had met him right in the beginning before the Plaguebringers or Immortal Council could taint his views of her. It- It had only been a few centuries at most. He was probably just still living it up at Immortus station still and would contact her later. He would. Definitely.

She angrily flicked away the diagram for the holographic robotic frame she had been working on with a gesture. She— She had to do something. A distraction. There– there. She looked through her files while still staying within Foundation of All. There must be— something…

She let out a sigh of relief as she found it. One of the major core worlds had rumblings of conspiracy in its government. Public works projects were suddenly underfunded, people had started disappearing in the night, the politicians were raging against the immigrants from other worlds. Increased military forces and aggressiveness towards their neighbors. Time to go help prevent another totalitarian regime.

She let out a shaky breath. Yes, that was something good for her to do. She could spend a few years fixing things with her hacking skills and exposing their schemes to the wider galaxy to the point that the neighboring worlds couldn’t ignore things in the name of reduced trade anymore. That was something unquestionably good that she could do.

It was never enough, but it always made her feel better when she was feeling down. She looked up and started the logout sequence. She finished the motions, and nothing happened. She frowned and did it again to no response yet again. Then she realized what was happening as her ears registered the suddenly perfect silence of the world around her.

She slowly turned and there it was. The Shadow with its bright orange eyes standing there less than ten feet away, not even caring that Foundation of All was supposed to be a simulation. It was technically standing inside of where the wall of her ship should be if they were in the real holodeck. The Shadow’s eyes were fixed on her as it stood there silently. Emily tensed as she saw it there.

“Wh– what is it this time, Shadow?” Emily said, hoping that it might actually answer this time.

The Shadow flickered and suddenly it was right in front of her, its orange eyes less than a foot away from her own. She flinched back slightly at the sudden change as it stared at her. It tilted its head to the side, and seemed to inspect her close up for a long moment before flickering back to where it had been before.

It looked around, and inspected the factory around them, its eyes leaving Emily for a while. Her brow furrowed. What was it doing? Usually it just showed up and inspected her for a while before flickering away again. Or at least it had done so the hundreds of times it had reappeared to her over her long life, a unique little quirk that no one else seemed to share with her. What was different this time? Was it that she was in Foundation of All? What had captured its attention?

The Shadow flickered and disappeared, vanishing. Emily waited, knowing that it was still nearby and that time was frozen around her. Everything was still too silent for it to be truly gone yet.

It reappeared floating in the air thirty feet away, its fingers splayed wide as it pointed its hand at the ‘ground’ of the simulated world.

Suddenly the silence was broken by incoherent whispers and Emily felt goosebumps cover her body and she shivered. The voices grew louder as the Shadow remained unmoving, floating in the air like a frozen silhouette with only its orange eyes pointed downwards breaking the inky darkness.

“Truth, Truth, Truth.”

The voices grew louder and louder until Emily couldn’t think about anything else but the words rattling around inside her head.

“Truth, truth, truth, TRUTH, TRUTH, TRUTH, TRUTH!”

The shouting voices went silent all at once and Emily braced for what came next.

“Truth.”

The Shadow’s gaze remained fixed on the ground as the world fizzled and popped around Emily, everything twisting and churning as its word boomed through reality.

The ripples grew so intense that Emily felt like the world was made of wet paint all bleeding into each other. She brought her arms to shield her face before suddenly the world turned white. Emily flinched but as she lowered her arms she realized that the holodeck had shut off, logging her out of Foundation of All. She could hear the faint creaking of the metallic ship around her, no longer frozen in time along with the rest of the universe from when the Shadow appeared.

Emily raised her arms to log back into Foundation of all, to discover what had happened. But then she hesitated. Should she go back? Who knew what the Shadow had done, she had never seen it act that way before. It had said another word before she had been logged out. What had it been? Tr- T- Tree? Tear? Tech? No, that couldn’t be it. None of them felt right…

Emily tried to think but no matter what she did, the memory of what the word the Shadow had said wouldn’t come to her. She lowered her arms and took a few quick steps back until she was safely out of the holodeck room. She eyed it suspiciously for a few moments, before turning and walking off after firmly shutting the door to the holodeck tight.

She had to think. She wouldn’t be going back in there until she was fully prepared for whatever was waiting for her inside. She would figure out what in the galaxy she was supposed to be preparing for sometime later.

Emily went to the main cockpit and started setting her course, it was always more comfortable to do things by hand without just having the AI do it for her. She was good enough that she was better than the AI ever could be without her massive wells of experience with hyperspace. It had been a few weeks and her initial panic at the encounter with the Shadow had faded away.

She still hadn’t gone back to the holodeck, but nothing else had gone wrong when she ignored it either. She still gave the room a suspicious look whenever she had to walk by, just in case something chose to leap out at her when her guard was down. With how powerful the Shadow was, who knew what might happen.

She was about to activate the hyperdrive when she spotted a strange reading on the display. Was that? She inspected it closer and immediately powered off her hyperdrive. Somehow hyperspace jammers were active somewhere nearby, completely locking down her hyperdrive unless she wanted her ship to spontaneously explode before she even entered hyperspace.

Before she knew what was happening, her sensors suddenly blared warnings all around her as more than a dozen ships materialized seemingly out of nothing around her. Invisibility fields large enough to cover a whole ship? That was some serious military hardware, this wasn’t just some random pirates.

Well, she had some military hardware of her own. There was a reason why that Plaguebringer a few centuries ago hadn’t even scratched her defenses before she escaped him.

“Ship, full thrust forward. Fire all weapons forward, only divert enough fire for intercepting fire from the back and sides.”

“Confirmed. Initiating maximum thrust.”

Emily sat down and her chair automatically strapped her in as her ship jerked into motion at full speed. She was at the edge of this solar system, so all she had to do was make it out of range of the hyperspace jammer and then she would be out.

Her ship poured out fire into the two vessels directly ahead that started venting gasses as Emily’s ship’s barrage of fire caught them by surprise. The both of them were quickly crippled with her ship’s quick strikes and overwhelming firepower. Emily was being pressed backwards full force into her seat as the ship kept moving forward full speed. The rest of the surrounding ships opened fire and chipped away at her ship as she blasted forward.

She kept looking at the display tapping her fingers and waiting for her to get past the hyperspace jammer. Usually they were highly power intensive and only covered relatively small areas of space. The weapons fire grew more intense and Emily cursed as they broke through her shields and began tearing into the heavy metal plates of the ship itself, especially to her back.

She gritted her teeth and kept drumming her fingers on the chair watching the display with intense focus waiting for the second, the instant, that the readings would change.

But they never did. The surrounding ships managed to land a critical hit on her ship’s engines and then it was all over. They circled around and pounded her ship with their weapons, destroying all of the weapons built into the exterior of the ship. After Emily’s ship was fully disabled and declawed, they stopped and just circled around for a moment.

After a few minutes, another ship appeared from nowhere as it deactivated its invisibility field, its size larger than any of the others. Emily could only stand and go towards the armory. It wouldn’t be much if a group of Immortals was attacking her, but it made her feel better to think she could at least blast them back if she got the urge.

The large ship approached her crippled vessel while the others were kept at a distance.

She took the weapon she had used for the infiltration mission on Enguli and turned its power to the max and ran to the exterior door according to the ship’s projections. She stood at the door with her weapon raised, willing to fight her hardest despite knowing how futile it would be.

There was a heavy clunk as the enemy ship docked with her own. There was a heavy pause, before with a hiss of air the door slid open. Her arms tensed as three men in heavy armor were revealed on the other side. She almost fired before seeing the face of the man in the center, who was frowning, looking disappointed. Her eyes widened as far as they could go. His deep brown eyes bored into her. His dark black hair contrasted his bronze skin, and he had a slight stubble of a beard growing on his jaw. Exactly how she remembered him. Her eyes widened as far as they could go.

The gun slipped from her hands in surprise.

“P-P-Peter? Is that you?” She stuttered as her gun hit the floor a second later.

“Yes, it's me Emily,” he said severely, “What sort of mess have you gotten in now?”

“What? What mess? You-you were supposed to be out of the galaxy. It’s- how long has it been? I don’t even remember anymore— How are you here?”

“I was sent a message. You are being accused of destroying a planet in the outer rim. Unfortunately the evidence was quite compelling. I want to get to the bottom of things as quickly as possible. If you did this, then things aren’t looking good for you. Most already don’t like how much I did to keep you out here and free from my government’s oversight as it is.”

“D-Destroyed? If? Peter, you know I wouldn’t do something like that. Wh-where is this coming from? We haven’t seen each other for- for- at least a million years and the first time I see you is like this? For some bullshit evidence that has to be fake?”

Emily started getting angry as she saw him maintain his frown and disappointed look,

“You just disappeared without a trace! Not even a message! What the hell, Peter?! For all I knew you were out of contact and flying out to some far flung galaxy like the others! Now I learn you could’ve been able to come back in barely fifty years for this whole time? Now you accuse me of shit that I didn’t even do as soon as you show back up out of the blue? What. The. Hell? Is wrong with you!”

The man to Peter’s right took an aggressive step forward, “Don’t speak to the great Peter in that way! He built Immortus Station from the ground up. He’s the leader of the Immortal Council. Show him his due respect!”

“Due respect? How about leaving a message before he fucks off to who knows where? How’s that for due respect?” Emily shot back, matching the look of what must be an Immortal Council Enforcer as he stared her down.

Peter waved his hand at the enforcer and the man took a step back with a grumble. Peter lowered his hands to his sides.

“I’ve been busy,” he said firmly, “And I did warn you that I would be going away for a time.”

“I thought you meant another one of your thousand year sightseeing trips around the galaxy. Not that it would last a million years without even a word from you! Or that you’ve apparently been in contact with people in the galaxy this whole time and didn’t even think of contacting me.”

Peter paused and then nodded fractionally to her in response, “That— that is fair I suppose. I should have sent you a message. My mistake. But we should focus on the matter at hand. We’re bringing you back to Immortus Station to clear all of this right up. I promise I’ll leave a message next time.”

Emily hesitated and hated herself for the tremor in her voice as she spoke, “You will? You’ll warn me next time?”

“I will,” Peter said with conviction, “I swear. But for now will you please come quietly with us?”

“And my ship?” Emily asked after taking a few seconds to control herself, “What was that for? What will happen to it?”

“We’ll tow it to the station and even repair it for you. I’ll make sure of it. The rest of the council insisted on doing it this way so you couldn’t escape,” Peter explained placatingly.

Emily glanced between the gun on the ground at her feet and back up to Peter several times. Then she sighed and nodded.

“Fine. But you’re telling me up what you were up to while you were up to while you were gone when we’ve sorted through this.”

Peter’s eyes sparkled with amusement for a few seconds and the corners of his lips twitched.

“I suppose I am. It’s good seeing you again, Emily.”

“You, too Peter,” she replied after a short pause, “It’s been too long.”

One of the enforcers took out the restraining bands like the ones Emily had used on Sean to stop him from following her on her mission to help get his revenge. Emily gave Peter a flat look as the bands started lighting up.

Peter waved off the other man, who looked displeased as he shut off the device and put it back on his belt.

“We don’t need those,” Peter said, “Come along, Emily. I’m sure we can catch up on the journey back to the galactic core.”

“Okay.”

Peter turned around, and Emily followed him as he started walking back onto his ship. The two Enforcers waited until she passed them and then trailed behind them and blocked her way back into her ship. The door closed behind them, but Emily ignored them looming behind her as her eyes remained fixed on Peter’s back. She couldn’t believe that after so long that he was finally back…

“That’s it?” Emily said in disappointment, “Helping to terraform planets in the closest galaxy? I thought it would be something more based on how secretive you were about it at the time. And don’t most of the rest of the universe hate us because of how horrible the Plaguebringers are? That couldn’t have been easy to convince them to let you hang around there.”

Peter coughed into his hand, “No it wasn’t. But we managed well enough. As for the secrecy, the leaders of Immortus Station and the Council were new back then. Had to lend them some legitimacy for a while at least when I was gone. My big trip was supposed to be a secret for everyone. Keep the Plaguebringers guessing so they never knew when I might come back.”

Emily grumbled, “Well,” she said, “The two hundred thousand years after you left were a mess. Plaguebringers attacking left and right, the Endless Flesh left to grow unchecked while no one was paying attention to them as the two groups fought— Even now that things are calmer, the Endless Flesh’s smallest colonies have barely been pushed back to the inner edge of the outer rim in some places.”

“Hmmm. I’ll have to ask the Council about that,” Peter said thoughtfully, “After this matter is done, I suppose I’ll have to investigate what’s changed while I’ve been gone.”

“A lot,” Emily said darkly, “Especially the Council. They can barely stand me now. You saw how that Enforcer of yours was acting. They’re all like that now. At least all of the ones I’ve met in a long time.”

She flinched as Peter’s hand came down on her shoulder.

“Emily,” he said, “I’ve always protected you in the past, haven’t I? Just trust me. I’m sure the experts will prove that those videos and messages are fake.”

“They better,” Emily huffed, “Doesn’t even sound like me. Whoever did them had me cursing by the Shadow of all things. Seems like something that would be obvious to whoever has actually met me. No one even knows what hell means anymore.”

“You’re right,” Peter said, “I believe you. They should clear things right up.”

“Right, cleared right up…” Emily echoed, trailing off a little at the end.

It was not cleared right up. Emily sat in the hallway outside the chambers, head in her hands after she was sentenced, pronounced guilty by all those unrepentantly lying bastards in the Immortal Council.

She looked up at the sound of the doors opening and saw Peter standing there, a complicated look on his face.

“Are you going to stop this? This mock trial? They made up their minds before I even went in there.” Emily said bitterly while already knowing the answer. He thought she was guilty.

“It’s okay,” Peter said, “I forgive you. We all make mistakes. I don’t know why you’ve done this, why you destroyed that planet, but I’ll still support you until the end. No matter what. We’ve all done bad things before. Especially back in the beginning.”

Emily looked up at him.

“Not me. Not. Me. Never. Nothing like this. You know that. How much I pushed against the things you all wanted to do.”

“Well, everyone has their limit. And that’s okay. It’s only imprisonment for a little while until I can convince them to let you go. For you it’ll be like no time’s passed at all.”

“I know,” Emily sighed, “I know. But it still hurts. That no matter what I do, none of them will ever appreciate how much I’ve helped, how much I— Everything we’ve done. Just all forgotten to time. They don’t even hate me for the right reasons anymore.”

“It was my fault, not yours,” Peter said calmly, “It was my responsibility to take care of it, once it left your hands so did your responsibility for what happened.”

“But I built it! Without me, none of it would have ever happened!”

“It was my responsibility,” Peter said again, unmoved by her outburst, “You know that deep down. Blame me too if you must, but only the ones who stole it were truly to blame for what happened. We’ve talked about this what must be a million times already. Probably more even.”

“Ugh. I know that. But I still feel like that anyway.”

Peter shifted in place, “Have you— worked on your genetics ag— “

“NO!” Emily coughed to cover up her violent reaction, “No,” she said more softly. “I haven’t beyond the very basics. I promised myself that I wouldn’t long ago. You know that.”

“I see. After a million years I would have thought that things would change, but I suppose not. I just thought that it might— Help you overcome your fears.”

“Well, I’m not doing it,” Emily said mulishly as she recalled all the times Peter had tried to convincing her otherwise over all these years. And he had failed every time.

“I respect your conviction,” Peter said simply in response, “I do. I’ll work my hardest to get you set free. Did you have any affairs to set in order, or should we go straight there?”

Emily thought of Sean. Would he be here on the station, hearing whispers of her presence through rumors and gossip? Was he happy, settled in? She wanted to leave a message to him, to explain what had happened. But it was impossible. Despite respecting Peter, he always made his own decisions without considering the feelings of other people. She wouldn’t want to unleash his interest on poor unsuspecting Sean more than it probably already was. Everyone else on the station explicitly hated her, so she couldn’t trust any message with them. And her ship was impounded so it wasn’t even like she could go and hide a digital one either.

“Yes, let’s go straight there,” Emily said after a long pause, “Get it over with.”

“Very well. I’ll take you there myself.”

They went, a squad of five Enforcers surrounding them and escorting them both to the prison deep within the center of the station. Emily was lead to the central cells, maximum security to ensure she wasn’t broken out.

She was led into a room dominated by massive stones with a perfect impression of her inside of it. She hesitated again, but at Peter’s steady gaze she took a deep breath and turned around and stepped backwards into the impression in the stone, putting both hands above her head.

She fit perfectly into the mold, the stone holding her tight like she was being pressed in on all sides. She put her palms on each other and wrested her wrist directly on top of her head and closed her eyes, knowing what came next as one of the Enforcers raised their pistol at her head. She heard a sizzle and heat wash over her face, and then there was only darkness.

Peter stepped forward after the Enforcer evaporated Emily’s head with a plasma blast. He grabbed her suddenly limp arms and applied force to her forearms so her hands would remain palm to palm. He lowered her hands slowly until they were sitting at the center of her regenerating skull. Her body was kept up by the stone mold she sat in, built specifically to her body so she could barely shift at all even if she were to regain consciousness eventually.

He put a hand on her collarbone and carefully pushed her further into the mold until she was fully flush with it, her head having regenerated with her hands inside of it. Such a waste of raw talent, her still refusing to work on any kind of advanced genetics…

The other piece of stone was levitating slightly off the ground and slowly began floating towards where Emily’s body sat half sticking out of the stone. After a few minutes, it pressed in on her and sealed with a mighty boom as the ten ton stone settled in place and finished the perfect seal around her whole body.

Peter left the room as the other defenses were put in place around her by the other Enforcers. Even this wouldn’t hold an Immortal forever. A twitch here, a shift of Emily’s hands there— Eventually she would wake up and start thrashing against her confinement out of nothing else if not pure boredom. And with an untiring Immortal at work, she would chip at the stone, molding a little air pocket around her one little flake of dust at a time. And from there— Well it was only a matter of time before she freed herself in truth. No matter how long it would take to do so.

But luckily Peter didn’t plan to wait quite that long this time before getting her out again. Just enough time that she would find it believable that the Immortal Council would accept it. This was the last gasp of his more reasonable options.

If this didn’t work, then he might have to resort to more… drastic measures. He could only hope that when the dust finally settled that she would see the truth and do the right thing. Yes, he truly hoped that this worked or things would start getting messy. She was like a daughter to him, and he didn't want to fight her if he didn't have to. It wouldn't come to that. He would make sure of it.