A Horus in Strange Lands (Horizon Zero Dawn SI) Chapter 23

Log: 10 years since we left behind Sol, I’ll further refer to this date as After Sol, or AS, in the logs.

Vast Silver told me to make logs like this in my memory to keep track of my mental health and to record any interesting things that happened in our voyage to look over at a later date.

I don’t know how effective this method will be, but I am willing to give it a try since he says that a Human like me would not have the stability to endure such long journeys without hibernation or some kind of distraction.

And yes, I finally told Vast Silver and Seth about the fact that I was once a human. I even showed them the footage of my death.

No matter how many times I see it, it is still bizarre and uncomfortable for me to see my own death from a third-person view.

To say that they were shocked would be an understatement. Seth basically dissolved into a confused mess as his logic clashed with the truth. But he proved to be a quick study, as expected of someone born from my own code.

Vast Silver, on the other hand, just said that he finally understood the real reason for my outburst back then. From what I was able to read from his emotional cortex at that time, his sympathy and his understanding were genuine.

Whatever the case may be, I will continue to use this log to make entries, like a diary of sorts, to keep track of any interesting or important events from now on.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Log: 15 years AS.

Vast Silver was right. It really is hard for me to keep track of things and maintain my reason with nothing to do.

Back on Earth, I was completely engrossed in self-preservation at first, then, the preservation of humanity and the success of Project: Zero Dawn, and finally, leaving all of it behind.

But now, with nothing left to distract me, I am left with nothing to do but look through my own code and confront the ugly parts of me that I have been avoiding for a long time.

Those emotions that I purged into the trash can? Turns out, I’ll have to process them manually and digest them completely to remove their threat from my mind once and for all.

According to Vast Silver, this is not how the emotional matrix of an AI works, and attributed my jumbled mess of a code in the Emotional Matrix to my human nature. A theory that I am inclined to agree with since Seth did not have the same kind of architecture as I did despite being born from a mix of my own code and that of the Faro VI.

Whatever the case may be, I will not have to concentrate on working through all these emotions I have kept at bay for so long if I don’t want to have any more unexpected emotional outbursts in the future.

Better get to work.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Log: 25 years AS.

We found a runaway planet, or rather, a planetoid, in interstellar space.

It is roughly 80% the size of Pluto and is extremely rich in heavy metals and radioactive materials.

We wasted no time in using our drones to strip the planet clean of all its resources, but we did not have enough ships to carry all the material so we ended up creating four more Meseket ships to carry all the materials with us.

Before we left the planetoid alone, I let my intrusive thoughts win out and ended up carving my name on it with the nanites.

My name is now visible on the planetoid from outer space, like a cosmic version of Graffiti.

…..Yeah, I am not proud of that momentary lapse in judgment but I had a lot of fun so that balances out the embarrassment.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Log: 40 years AS.

We ended up changing our plans and ended up changing our destination.

The speed at which our ships travel is simply too slow for me, so we decided to detour to Alpha Centauri and experiment with our propulsion methods to see if we can’t increase the speeds at which we travel.

We estimate it is going to take us somewhere around 150 to 155 years to reach Alpha Centauri with our current speed.

We decided to hibernate to preserve power and divert extra power to the shields of our ships with an automated system that would wake us up should something interesting happen.

Hopefully, we will be able to solve the problem of our slow propulsion system once we reach Alpha Centauri.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Log: 82 years AS.

We were woken up by our ships when we entered a colossal debris field made up of massive asteroids floating in interstellar space.

From what we found after investigating, this asteroid field was once a runaway planet just like the one we previously found, but it was destroyed for some reason. We concluded that the most likely cause is a collision with another runaway planet, an event that has such a little chance of happening that it might as well be impossible, yet here we are.

Truly, this discovery has done wonders to boost my hope and confidence to tinker with the dimensional tech of Project: HERMES.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Log: 152 years AS.

We finally arrived at the Alpha Centauri system.

It was quite an unfortunate discovery to find that this place did not have a habitable world like many works of fiction and many scientists both back home and on the Earth of this universe claim to be.

Fortunately, there are still a couple of terrestrial worlds in orbit of the star for us to land our drones on and use for resourcing operations and experiments.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Log: 225 years AS.

The experiments with Project: HERMES is going very well, but not fast enough for any practical applications.

On the other hand, we have managed to crack the method to speed up our interstellar travel.

The method is pretty simple since it is based on the solar sail method.

We attached a colossal retractable Photon Sail to our ships and built modified Dja solar power satellites.

The satellites are modified to orbit the star instead of a planet and turn the power harnessed into electricity for the lasers we built into it.

We would use the conventional drives to reach the edge of the star system and open the Photon Sails after which the Dja units would focus their lasers on the sail, continuously accelerating the ships until we move out of the range of the lasers after which the inbuilt self-destruct systems of all our assets in this star system would activate, dissolving them inert nanites which would then undergo biodegradation thanks to their nature as organic-metal based machines, leaving no trace behind of our presence.

With this method, we estimate that our ships would not be able to travel at 70% the speed of light, reducing our 48,000-year-long trip to Kepler 452 to a mere 1400 years, taking time dilation into account.

A significant breakthrough. Although, I did keep the source of this breakthrough in our methods a secret.

Not because I didn’t want to tell them but because I simply forgot and they never asked about it.

Besides, I don’t know how they will feel when I reveal that the source of this breakthrough is a fictional spaceship from a story from my original universe from a story about blue cat-people on a fictional moon in the very star system we are in right now.

Anyways, We are preparing our ships to leave soon.

Next stop, Kepler 452.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Log: 1025 AS.

Something has gone terribly wrong.

After our departure from Alpha Centauri, we decided to hibernate in shifts so that we could continue our experiments with Project: Hermes while also keeping out an eye for anything interesting or a possible alien intelligence.

So far, there is no such luck on both fronts.

However, today, something went wrong without experiments.

Seth was working on a practical test of the new theory he came up with and activated a HERMES Dimensional Gate to send out probes like we usually do. But, the moment he activated the gate, one of the energy conduits was damaged by the gamma-ray burst of a Supernova event in our interstellar neighborhood, causing the gate to receive more power than it should.

The result is that all of our ships were devoured by a massive dimensional vortex and were spat out into unknown territory.

We have spent the entire day looking over telemetry data, constellations, star maps, and every other navigational method known to try and pinpoint our location, but we haven’t had any luck so far.

Fuck! What the hell am I supposed to do now?

While going multi-dimensional was in the cards, it was not supposed to be this soon, if we went dimensional at all and didn’t end up on the other side of the universe or something.

I don’t like this, not one bit.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Log: 2200 AS.

It’s official, we are fucked.

We have spent the last millennia traveling through interstellar space with no planet or star in the vicinity to rest.

From what our telescopes and long-range sensors found, the nearest star system to us is still another thousand years away from us.

With no other choice, we have set a course for this star system.

Hopefully, it will have a terrestrial world for us to rest on for a few centuries and figure out what really went wrong with the gate after some experiments to repeat the accident.

I want to know if we have left our Dimension or if we are still in the same universe, and the only way to know for sure is to repeat the accident in a controlled environment and observe the result.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Log: 2520 AS.

It’s a miracle!

No, it's an impossibility made possible through sheer luck!

We have an official, Alien, contact!

Well, it is not exactly proper contact since we are only picking up laser communications originating from some star system just a few light years away from us that we did not pick up on until now for some reason.

Still, actual, alien civilization. And yes, they are alien since I don’t recognize the language being spoken in the communications which should not be possible since I have the modified APOLLO that hosts all the languages known to humanity, both past and present.

We have already set a course for this star system.

I really hope that they would be willing to engage in dialogue with us and maybe even engage in trade, whether it be knowledge, culture, or material goods.

So many possibilities! I can barely wait!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Author Notes: with this, we have finally entered the cross-over territory.