System Overclocked 3 -ch 16-

<Scene with Nunnkish. Cut for Patreon>

If he stuck around inside, he didn’t doubt for a moment that something else would probably happen. He needed to be on his way and quickly at the moment.

Once he got to the platform, he looked to the veil that the Tongsta Menders and the Eggs were hiding behind.

He had spotted them earlier and knew exactly where they were.

“Well? Are we ready to talk about it and what else you need?” he asked, putting his hands on his hips. “Because I’m spent. You’re lucky I’m at the peak of my genetics and stamina, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to perform that many times.”

“Uhm, yes?” said a voice, followed by a Tongsta moving out from behind the veil.

Wrench was fairly sure it was Bright One.

“That is, yes, we have everything we need. Sorry about that, Wrench,” Bright One said, sounding sincerely apologetic. “It was definitely an invasion of your privacy, and I’m sorry for that, but I assure you we learned a great deal. Many of our assumptions on what we could sense have been changed greatly today. It just took some very specific tools and diagnostics that we never thought to use before.”

“Great. Do I need to go to the sensory testing after this? If so, let’s get to it,” Wrench demanded. “I’d like to eat a lot of food and then sleep. Sooner we get that done the better.”

“Sure, not a problem, Wrench. We can do that,” agreed Bright One. “I put in a rest day for you tomorrow here in the testing facility for you to just fix things. I went and bought a bunch of second hand Hab machines and systems. Even a nearly ruined Hab that’ll fit on the platform for you to dig around through.”

“Bright One, you’re speaking my language!” Wrench said cheerfully. “You sure you didn’t miss your calling as one of Mom’s helpers?”

“I-I put in a resume for one of her lab managers. The ethical study of Hume and Grae will be paramount to understanding more,” blurted out Bright One. “We can still study, test, and work with Hume and Grae, we just have to do it in ways that benefit them and with their permission.

“Grand Lady Goodie’s vision for the future is-is-is… magnificent.”

“Yeah, mom’s kinda like that. She’s the main character, you know. We’re all just secondary plot lines to her,” Wrench said with a grin. “Alright. Off we go. More testing. Can I poke at the machines you use for the testing, too?”

“Of course, not a problem,” promised Bright One.

***

“Blue,” Wrench mumbled, slouched in the chair, and barely paying any attention to the screen. “Green. Yellow. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue? Blue. Still Blue.”

“Ah, Wrench, they really are all blue to you?” asked Bright One.

“Yeah. I take it they’re different?” Wrench asked.

“We don’t see color. At least not as you do. But I was curious to see what different things we see would look like to you. Honestly, the Tongsta that are named with a color by Hume has been a curiosity for us,” explained Bright One. “We’re aware of color and the like, it’s why we know Grae see more than you. It’s still interesting, though.”

“Really? That’s actually fascinating,” replied Wrench, considering it form a Mender’s point of view. To a Mender, every person was a different machine to figure out. “Do you think maybe—”

There was a loud clack that shot through the room like a gun going off.

Bright One made an odd noise and went still.

After several seconds, Wrench wondered what was going on, but didn’t want to say anything.

He had noticed that Bright One was so still, that even his Tongsta goop that he was made out of wasn’t even moving.

“Ah, we need to stop our testing. Grand Lady Goodie has requested you go to her private ship,” Bright One said, moving away from the odd Tongsta devices he was set up in the middle of. “Immediately.”

“Is everything okay?” Wrench asked, getting out of the chair and moving toward Bright One.

“The Grand Lady didn’t tell me what it was about, but she did advise me to tell you all was well, she just needs to talk to you. Immediately,” Bright One asserted.

He got the impression that Goodie hadn’t left any room at all for someone to argue with her.

In no time at all Wrench had been put into a carrier and whisked away.

As he was taken away, he saw that every single one of his partners he had just spent time with were all working with a Tongsta. All of them looking to be laying in a bed and quite comfortable.

It was odd to him that they were all laying in beds, but it seemed as if all was well.

Then Wrench was gone.

Quickly taken out of the area, onto a transport, and to Goodie’s ship.

Who met them at the airlock.

She dismissed the Tongsta who had brought him over, who Bright One had given Wrench to, then took Wrench deep into her own ship.

Straight into what he considered her office without even a word.

When she finally set the carrier down she opened it, collapsed into her chair, and laid there.

Unmoving, unspeaking.

“Is… everything okay, mom?” Wrench asked, moving to the airlock.

“I don’t know, dear,” Goodie whispered. “I don’t know. I don’t even know who to talk to about what I’ve just found out other than you. I can’t even tell if it’d be good to tell you, in fact, but since everything started with you… I can’t imagine not talking to you.

“You tease me about being the main character, Wrench my dear, but I feel like that without you, I wouldn’t be much of anything. What I’ve discovered leaves me feeling as if maybe I really am the main character, and you were my instigating event.”

“What happened? What’d you find out?” Wrench asked, braced himself against the wall of the carrier, and then flung himself at Goodie.

She gently plucked him out of the air and set him down upon herself. The thin tentacle wrapping around him and holding him gently to herself.

“A planet. A planet with nothing but Hume on it. Billions of Hume,” she murmured in a dazed kind of way. “Billions of Hume. All of them without any Tongsta.

“In truth, it might be in spite of Tongsta.

“Those Hume have been very careful with the transmissions coming out of their planet. As well as the type of tech they use.

“I noticed the planet a few Hume days ago. I didn’t think much of it and thought maybe it was just a trash heap. That a clan of Tongsta just offloaded generations of Hume cast-off items onto it.

“Old Habs and the like given the readings I found. A planet that all Tongsta would avoid, really.”

“I don’t understand, mom.”

“Sorry. I… okay. I started sweeping through everything. Using myself and all the Nav-cerers who work with me, we were looking for more of our kind. It’s a trick of using our tech in a new way that wouldn’t interest you, but we find Nav-cerers with it,” Goodie began. “We found a lot of Hume type tech on a planet in one of those sweeps. Thinking it a dump, we ignored it. It isn’t the first time something like that’s happened.

“Especially the fact that we were scanning things that no one ever bothers to do.

“The planet for all intents and purposes didn’t have anything of value that we could detect. It was just barren.

“But… I wanted to know more. To see if there’s anything down there that I could take up and repurpose. For my children. I always need more things for my children.”

Wrench could only grin at that.

He could easily see Goodie raiding a dumpster planet just to get anything and everything she might be able to re-purpose.

“So I put a small ship out. Very small. Just enough for a Nav-cerer and another,” Goodie continued. “They passed close enough to begin actively scanning it up close and… and… it’s Hume. Billions of Hume.

“Living on the planet, much in the way that the ruins looked like in the Games. Now I want to run down whoever found those ruins, and where they got them, to find out if that really was the only place.

“But that’s besides the point.

“There’s Hume. So many Hume.”

“Okay, and?” Wrench asked, patting Goodie’s tentacle.

“Errm, I… they’re Hume,” she said.

“Mm, I’m not so sure about that,” Wrench argued.

He knew that there were others out there, Edmund had mentioned it casually, but he’d called them Human at the time. Wrench had thought it’d been a mistake, now he knew it wasn’t a mistake at all.

There really was a race out there similar to his own that were called Human, not Hume, and Wrench had met them. Or at least, a version of them.

“They’re not Hume,” he stated with certainty. “I’m willing to wager, mom, that they’re similar to us, but also different. Different enough that they’re not really Hume, at least.

“For better or worse, the Hume have been changed by the Tongsta.

“Maybe we were what they are once upon a time, but we’re not anymore. Not now.”

“That’s… I… oh. I can see what you mean,” she murmured. “With all that said though, I still don’t know what to do. What we do about this strange Hume planet.”

“Do you think others will find it?” Wrench asked.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if others did,” admitted Goodie. “Now that other clans know that I can scoop up Nav-cerers without too much of an issue, they’ve been sending their own ships to anywhere I send my Tongsta to.

“To investigate, see what we were doing, and if there’s anything left over to pick up after. It’s odd, but I understand the behavior.”

“Right. Then, very soon, a clan is going to find out about this Hume planet and… and then who knows what’ll happen,” Wrench summarized. “I assume you already talked to Dad?”

“Yes. I briefly filled him in. His response was very direct. He wants to mine the entire solar system with anti-Tongsta weaponry. Prevent anyone from even getting close to the planet,” Goodie murmured, then chuckled. “He thinks that the first clan to arrive is going to take the entirety of the planet and turn it into a weapon.”

“He could be right. That could happen. I’m afraid I don’t really have an answer though, mom,” Wrench confessed. He didn’t want to admit it, didn’t want to say it, but he just didn’t have another response to give her. “If we don’t get involved, someone else will. If we do get involved, we’re now responsible for how it all plays out. That’s a heavy responsibility.

“All for a people, a race, that likely wants nothing to do with Tongsta. One that quite likely has been living on their planet and attempting to hide from the Tongsta.

“I mean, were there any indicators that they were there? Any at all? Did it seem like they were staying out of things that might alert Tongsta to their being there?”

“Yes. That’s-yes. They didn’t have any type of anything that might have clued us in to them being there,” Goodie confirmed. “From what we saw, they have the capability of space flight, but choose not to. They could easily put satellites into their orbit, yet haven’t done so.

“For all intents and purposes, they genuinely seem as if they are staying confined to their planet and keeping everything planet bound.”

Wrench nodded his head.

It made sense to him.

“If there had been more than one planet with Hume on it, back in time, and the Tongsta found one, there could have been some type of message sent,” Wrench mused. “A message that alerted other planets.

“Their response would be to hide. Go to ground and pretend like they were never there at all. Write off the other planet as a loss and just do what they could to survive on their own.

“As you said mom, you had to do things in a very abnormal way just to find a planet that looked like it was nothing more than a landfill.”

Goodie let out a low and soft rumbling noise that reminded him of a sigh.

“I think you’re right,” she whispered. “You’re right. They’re hiding and living in their natural habitat. Their own world and lives. It isn’t anyone’s place to take them out of that.

“That-that means that we need to be there first, doesn’t it. We need to be there, cordon off the solar system, and prevent anyone else from moving into this area.

“I just hope, wish really, that they didn’t notice the small ship I sent. I’m not sure of their technological level, but there is the distinct possibility they saw the ship.

“Or maybe I hope they did see it. Did see it and decided to keep to themselves. To remain ever quiet and out of harm’s way.”

Wrench scratched at his head and then gave it a shake.

“I take it you’re going to move your personal fleet over there then, Grand Lady Goodie?” Wrench asked teasingly, patting at her tentacle again.

“Oh my goodness don’t you dare call me that. It’s mom, mommy, mother, or Goodie to you, my sweet Wrenchie,” Goodie demanded, her voice followed up by a laugh. “All that nonsense is for the fools who wanted to tell me what to do with my precious babies. My Hume and Grae.

“I only did what I had to, to protect you all. They never would’ve listened to me if I didn’t put them all in boxes and shut them in.

“Best that they now understand the situation and not test me again.”

“Mom’s the best main character,” Wrench said with absolute conviction. “I’ll make sure it passes down in my personal generations. The legend of mom.

“Then they’ll just go ask you, since it sounds like you’ll long outlive me.”

Goodie laughed at that and pulled Wrench a little closer to herself.

“My sweet Wrenchie,” she cooed. “Well, it sounds like I need to go order my ships to take up a defensive position. As well as to put in a request to the Grand Clan to let me colonize this bit of space.

“It might be a great place to put down the Hume and Grae homeworlds, too. I might even be able to see about terraforming some of the planets in the system to make them more habitable in a hundred Hume generations or so. That’d be nice.

“I wouldn’t have to worry so much over my babies being bothered by other clans if the whole of the solar system becomes a no-Tongsta zone.”

“Other than you and Dad,” Wrench put in quickly.

“You and Dad have to keep watch over us,” Wrench stated firmly.

He absolutely believed that without Goodie and Captain Boyfriend, the Hume, as well as the Grae, would quite possibly in for a bad end.

“Should… should we try to make contact with them?” Wrench mused aloud. “As a Hume that is. Maybe-maybe show up in a ship and see what happens? What they’re willing to tell us?

“I doubt they have any terrestrial broadcasts or anything like that, which means we need to get down onto the planet to get an idea of what’s going on.”

“It’s possible, but that feels really risky dear,” worried Goodie.

“I mean, yeah, it definitely would be that. I think I could handle it though. Me especially,” mused Wrench, thinking about his time with the Humans of Edmund’s world.

He was suddenly quite thankful to the young man.

And wondered where he was.

Or maybe, given that Wrench now knew about The Pause, when Edmund was.

Because for all he knew, Edmund was in something similar to The Pause and lost somewhere in the depth and expanse of time.