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Luuvoo walked into the room himself, moving up to the table and sitting down on the stool. He put two of his arms on the table and folded the two arms 'behind' him across his body, holding onto the opposite shoulders.
"Doesn't that hurt?" the Subject, the Forerunner known as 'Carter', asked. "Sitting on your mouth like that? Doesn't it bruise your lips?"
Luuvoo rattled his fronds in the negative. "No. Our lips are designed for it."
There was silence a mont, during which Carter reached down to touch the head of the Companion as if to reassure herself it was there.
"What did you want to talk about?" Carter asked.
Luuvoo rustled his fronds with amusent. "Many things. The big one is, however, is that our governnt wishes to send you ho," he said.
"Really?" Carter seed surprised.
"We are a species who needs others of our kind around. We wilt and die in isolation. Many in the governnt, and many civilians, feel that your health and well being is at risk keeping you here," Luuvoo stated.
Carter nodded slowly. She still harbored so resentnt over how she had been treated at first. No, not 'so' resentnt, but quite a bit.
Nobody likes being experinted on against their will.
Luuvoo put his hands on the table, blinking the eyes facing Carter. "There is one problem."
"Where the Confederacy is located," Carter said.
Luuvoo waved his fronds in agreent. "Yes. Without knowing at least partially where we are going, we cannot return you ho," he stated. He paused a mont. "There is another fact to consider."
"The ti I was adrift," Carter said. She reached back and rubbed the back of her neck. "Almost thirty-five thousand years. You worry the Confederacy no longer exists."
Luuvoo signified agreent. "Yes. In just over three thousand years of exploration, nearly a thousand light years from our genesis system, we have never encountered anyone else but the Companions and you."
"Can you generate a star map at this table and show , roughly, where I am?" Carter asked.
Luuvoo was prepared for that. He set down a holodisc and activated it, bringing up a map of the galaxy. He tapped the bridge between two spiral arms and it zood it. He tapped it several more tis until a large area of over two hundred light years was the focus.
"This is the Fweeleeloo Dominion," Luuvoo said. "Thirty habitable systems. Many others we claim and mine for resources," he paused for a second. "We have found ruins, relics, archeological sites, but never anything more advanced that small vertebrates and a few reptiles and mammals that are not even sentient."
Carter blinked several tis. "You're way down on the spur, in the middle of what we called 'The Long Dark'."
"You knew of this region?" Luuvoo asked.
Carter nodded. "Can you show how to operate this?"
Luuvoo suspected that the Forerunner had already figured it out from watching him, but he gave careful instructions anyway.
Carter pulled out to show the whole "Star Bridge" between the two Galactic Arms.
"This region," she said, indicating over two thirds of the middle. "Was called the Long Dark. It had been ravaged by a war over a hundred twenty five million years ago. A war between a species known as The Mantid, a hive mind, the Lanaktallan, a herd species with group mind capabilities, and soone else we never identified."
She rubbed her short hair with one hand. "You're lucky you never ran into any Precursor Autonomous War Machines."
"What are those?" Luuvoo asked.
The description, given in plain and simple terms, horrified Luuvoo.
"Down here is the Unified Civilized Council Territory, run by the Lanaktallan and using high tech peonage to enslave about three dozen races," Carter said, indicating a large area near the base of the Star Bridge. "They fled there when they lost the war against the Precursor Autonomous War Machines."
She leaned back and stroked the top of the Companion's head, who had put her head on Carter's leg.
"We encountered them, oh, a year or so before I went into cryo," she said.
"How did that happen?" Luuvoo asked.
"I was a soldier, on a troop transport headed for a contested region where the PAWM," she said.
"PAWM?"
"Precursor Autonomous War Machines. Anyway, where the PAWM were busy 'harvesting' a system with a native population," she said. She closed her eyes. "The Unified Council's intelligence was wrong. We expected only three of the big ones."
She clenched her fist.
"There was nearly a hundred. Task Force Dancing Matron jumped into an ambush," she sighed and looked down. "The Country Gravy Train took multiple near-C velocity cannon hits and started to break up. The Captain gave the order to abandon ship and I got in one of the hyperdrive pods. The pod got damaged, but I managed to get to light speed. Not for long. I dropped out in between the stars. I activated the beacon, waited for so ti, then set up the cryo system and the stasis field."
"Why both?" Luuvoo asked.
"The stasis field in case the pod hit sothing big or, well, what happened. When the proximity went off, the stasis field went from encompassing the majority of the interior of the pod to just ," she said. She reached down and petted the top of the Companion's head for a long mont.
She finally looked up. "If you've been safe here, even though your on the edges of the Long Dark, then my people won the war against the PAWM."
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
"What makes you say that?" Luuvoo asked.
"The majority of the PAWM were dormant. The Council stirred them up, my people's ability to fight them made them rouse older ones who had fallen deep into slumber, forced the PAWM to activate factories to make more of themselves," she gave a bitter laugh. "Which is sothing we wanted."
"Why?"
"To force them to reveal the factories. If worse ca to worse, we'd planet crack the factories and call it good," Carter said.
Luuvoo nodded slowly.
"A PAWM is pretty big. The size of a subcontinent. The effects on a planetary body are significant. We theorized that the majority of the sections were built in orbit, or at so kind of superstructure, possibly a gastructure, and assembled off planet," Carter said. "They would be noticeable from several light years out from the stellar mass, just based on gravity observations."
Luuvoo tapped his notes carefully, then looked up. "The logic isn't sound, but it is firm. The PAWM programming would make them ensure their borders were secure even further than they previously have. The fact we've had radio for over thirty-thousand years ans that they would have detected our signals and exterminated us."
Carter nodded. "Their programming would not let them take the chance after the beating we were giving them."
Luuvoo rustled his fronds.
"All right. So you know where we were. Where would you need to be returned to?" he asked.
She closed her eyes, then opened them and moved the image. Roughly a little more than halfway down the Star Bridge, in the area the Luxru called the "Bright Sea" which was full stars and in between two "Shadow Rifts" in the night sky and toward the middle.
"There. That's the core of the Terran Worlds," she said.
"A significant distance," Luuvoo stated. "Six, maybe seven months by fast Transit."
Carter nodded. "A bit too far to walk."
-----
The ship to travel to the Bright Sea, thousands of light years from the Luxru Singing Bright Cluster Dominion, captured the public's imagination. Children and adults took virtual tours of the berth in the shipyard where the ship was being built. They watched interviews with the Forerunner Carter. They argued over whether or not the radiation in the Bright Sea was even survivable for the Luxru no matter how well shielded the vessel.
After all, Carter was amazingly resilient, a creature built to survive extrely hazardous conditions to the point that she enjoyed extre weather that would force a Luxru into hibernation.
The competition to accompany the vessel was hot and fierce, and several tis whistling duels were publicly held between two competitors. Luxru put their possessions, their social standing, and most of all, their very lives to try to be part of the expedition.
It was in the third month that another Forerunner was made known to the public.
-----
Luuvoo sat down at the table, adjusting and waiting.
Carter ca in, moving slowly.
She looks tired today, Luuvoo thought to himself.
She sat down, petted the top of the Companion, now nad Lucy-Lou, and shifted uncomfortably for a mont.
"I'm... not alone," she finally said.
"The virtual intelligence?" Luuvoo said. "A simple weighted difference engine, a machine learning program devised to be very adaptable."
She nodded. "Yeah," she paused. "About that..."
Luuvoo frowned. The virtual intelligence had been sitting in the database for quite so ti, mostly taking in data and putting little out.
"He's more than that," Carter said. She heaved a sigh. "It's actually an enhanced virtual intelligence, one step below a digital sentience," she stared at Luuvoo for a long mont. "The only other survivor of the Country Gravy Train."
"How sentient is it?" Luuvoo asked.
She looked a bit uncomfortable. "Many would consider it sapient."
Luuvoo rustled his fronds in agitation. For the last year the virtual intelligence had been popular with politicians, the rich, the powerful, even scientists and researchers.
It was thought that it had been copied repeatedly when it had gotten loose.
"Let guess, it looks like there's copies of it all over your network, talking to all kinds of people, communicating with the central database it built for itself," Carter said.
Luuvoo rustled his fronds again.
"Yeah. Um," Carter got the look that Luuvoo knew was embarrassnt. "Not quite," she looked down, petted Lucy's head, then looked back up. "The 'copies' are interface programs. The big database is actually Luke himself."
"Luke?" Luuvoo asked.
"Luke. Well, Luminous-Code AKA Luke," Carter said. She tapped the top of the table with one finger, making the whole thing shiver. "He agreed to behave himself and only interact with your people, not go scorched earth on you," she looked away and then back. "I told him it was ti to reveal himself. We disagreed a bit, but I outrank him, so he has to do what I say."
"Why reveal him?" Luuvoo asked, trying to stay calm.
The idea of a free roaming digital intelligence was disturbing, to say the least.
"I'm convinced that you intend on returning to my people," Carter said. She looked away, then back again. "I suspected, for quite so ti, that it was an elaborate trick of so sort."
Luuvoo shook his head. "No."
There were so that feared that Carter's people were already on their way with a host of battlewagons and felt that returning Carter to her people before her people ca asking about her with big guns was the best option the Luxru people could hope for.
"I will let the appropriate people in governnt know about this," Luuvoo stated.
-----
The revelation, leaked to the public before Luuvoo had even left the Grand Leader's office, had an unexpected effect upon the public.
Rather than riots in the streets and mass panic, the Luxru people flocked to their terminals and began asking so many questions that "Luke" had to allow everyone only a handful of questions each. For months questions stread in, even once the public got past the "what's it like to be a computer program?" stage and then through "what is your favorite song?" and into "Can you help with my howork?"
A cottage industry of "Luke Interaction Thes/Interfaces" sprang up, allowing the Luxru to tailor their interactive nus.
When asked, Luke said he didn't really mind being depicted as a Luxru of streaming code or sothing like that.
Luuvoo found it interesting that "Luke" seed just as interested and appreciative of the two Companion species as Carter.
He sotis wondered if it was preprogramd, perhaps unconsciously, or if it had sohow developed on its own.
-----
The ship was finished, crewed, staffed, and even had its maiden voyage. It returned after a three month 'cruise' to heavy fanfare.
The Luxru gathered in groups to watch as Carter, a host of the two types of companions, and the big robotics fra containing "Luke" all boarded the ship. It made the slow journey to the edge of the Resonance Zone, flashed twice...
...and was gone.
-----
Luuvoo stood on the bridge, with Carter next to him.
It had been a long journey. Twelve tis they had exited Transit Space to make sure they were oriented correctly.
Now they had arrived at what Carter was sure was the system closest to the Dominion.
"Exiting Transit Space," the navigator said.
Luuvoo gripped his own shoulders tightly.
There was the strange ripple, of colors that didn't exist, and the viewscreen went from flat gray to a shining star field with a yellow stellar mass in the middle of the screen.
"Incoming communications! Consistent with the rescue pod systems," a technician called out.
"Put it on the central holotank and on bridge speaker," the Captain ordered.
Carter was standing up, Lucy beside her.
There was a popping, crackling sound, quite pleasing to Luuvoo's ears.
A hologram of a large insect head appeared. Its mandibles opened and closed as the speech was translated.
"You have entered an area claid by the Confederacy of Aligned Systems," the insect head stated. "If this was a mistake, reverse course and leave now. If this was purposeful, welco to Naktaktiklok-7623," the insect seed to look grave. "Entrance beyond the eleventh planet is forbidden. Automated stations are available for repair. A representative from the Confederacy will be with you shortly."
The insect head spun around in a circle then focused on the Captain again.
"Trespassers beyond the 11th planet, or any who attempt any landing upon any planetary bodies, will be rcilessly destroyed without fanfare or additional warning. Your waiting ti for a Confederate Representative is: Eighty-two hours. Confird. You are Number One in the queue," it said, then vanished.
"Are there any other signals?" Carter asked.
The Captain looked at the communications technician, which signaled negative.
"No," the Captain relayed.
Carter seed to wilt slightly.
"We will wait for the Confederacy Representative," Luuvoo said.
He had expended great favor and fought several duels to remain the primary person in charge of Carter's fate.
The Captain nodded.
"There was nine billion people here," Carter said softly. She reached down and touched Lucy's shaggy head. "Nine billion."
Luuvoo moved up next to Carter.
"I'm sure the Confederacy will tell you what happened," he said.
She turned and looked at him, and for a mont the fear of pain to co almost overwheld Luuvoo.
He understood.
She didn't fear not knowing.
She feared knowing.
He reached up slightly and touched her wrist with two of his long, knobby fingers.
"The Luxru people are with you, Forerunner," he said.
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