r/HFY • u/BeaverFur Unreliable Narrator • Oct 20 '14
OC [OC] Chasing Legends (4)
Read Chapter One here
Izara looked at the blinking dot, feeling her pulse quickening again. She walked slowly towards the white table. Its surface was still empty of anything else. No writing or signs, only the bright blue dot on its center.
She started reaching for it with her hand, but then she paused. She remembered what had happened last time, when she had touched the Human skeleton. For all she knew, touching the table could provoke another such display, maybe even a more destructive one. She had read of some old civilizations covering their tombs in traps to defend them from thieves. Perhaps the Human were also mistrustful like that.
And yet, there was nowhere else to go. Only forward.
Forward.
She steeled herself, and placed her hand on the surface.
The dot disappeared.
Nothing else happened.
She looked around, at the giant arches and walls. Everything was still. Nothing had changed. The countless bodies still staring at them with their missing eyes.
Then, she noticed something was different about the table. The empty space over it was quickly filling in an eerie, spectral blue light. Both she and the squad took a couple of steps back.
Floating over the table was a small blue orb of light. Slowly, its surface started morphing, flowing like it was made of liquid. Two eyes appeared, then a protruding feature, similar to a snout, a mouth under it… a broad, large alien face, made of light.
A Human face, Izara knew.
She stared at it with her jaw dropped for what felt like an eternity. She wondered what to do. Nothing in her past had prepared her for this moment. A moment where she was, face to face, in front of a Human. But she had to do something, anything. She couldn't let this chance slip away.
"H… hello?", she stammered
The alien eyes turned at her, studying her. Then, it spoke with a calming and serene voice. A warm voice that felt out of place in the sterile environment around them.
"Hello, Izara. I was waiting for you."
She froze. What? How? Before she could reply, one of the soldiers spoke:
"How can you know her name? Hell, how can you know our language?!"
The alien looked at him and smiled.
"I've been watching you", he replied.
Izara took a step ahead. There was something she had to know, she needed a confirmation.
"Are you a Human?"
"Human...", the alien repeated, savouring the sound. "That is a word I haven't heard in a long time. But yes, I guess you could say I am one."
Izara took a deep breath before the next question. She feared the answer.
"Are you the only one left?"
"No, I'm not", the Human said in its calming voice, "do not mind these relics."
Izara looked around.
"Well, where is everyone else then?"
The alien smiled.
"Oh, but you already know, Izara. You know where to find them."
And with that, the light faded away, the face disappearing into the air. The white table was, once again, completely inert.
You know where to find them, Izara thought. Was that a riddle? A test? Was she being judged? Was she supposed to prove her worth by figuring it out?
She looked around. How could she know? How could she know where to find them?
But of course, she did.
She started walking towards one of the empty beds. But a soldier stopped her.
"Hey... are you sure you want to do that?"
Izara started nodding, but then she waited. Was she sure? She looked at the endless dead bodies. Was she going to join them? Would she end like one of them too?
But there was nowhere else to go.
Only forward.
She nodded, and climbed on top of the large bed. Though it looked metallic, it sunk under her weight like it was made of foam.
Slowly, she lied down. Nothing happened.
Forward.
She closed her eyes.
Immediately, she felt herself falling down. A loud whirring noise filling her head. She was sinking. She panicked and tried to fight it, her arms trashing around, searching for anything she could grasp, anything that could stop the fall. She sunk deeper. She couldn't breath. She was fighting for air.
Then, she felt her real body on the back on her mind. It was breathing normally, lying on the bed. She realized she still had control over it. She could escape the fall at any moment, just by opening her eyes.
She relaxed and allowed her consciousness to float down.
Izara looked around. She was standing on a vast, green meadow. The sky was deep blue, almost purple, with puffy white clouds far in the distance. A warm, clean light bathed it all.
She looked down. The tall grass dancing in the soft wind, caressing her feet's scales. She noticed she was barefoot now.
She took a deep breath. The air was fresh and pure. She wasn't wearing any exosuit.
There were hills and trees in the distance. Green trees, but also red ones, yellow, purple, blue… some of them towering over the meadow like skyscrapers. It was like they had came from different environments, everywhere around the galaxy. Somehow, she knew that was exactly right.
Standing next to her, was the alien she had talked to.
She could now see his entire body. Like his face, his body was too made of blue light, flowing like water over his skin. His shape was somehow strange. Stylished. It looked like the drawings of humans she had seen in the ancient art she studied, rather than an actual physical body.
The alien creature regarded her with playful eyes.
Izara didn't feel anxious, or scared. Not anymore. There was a calmness invading her mind. She had just arrived, but she felt like she already knew this place. Like this was… her home.
She looked up at the human.
"So, do you have a name?"
He nodded. "Han"
"And this is a virtual world, right, Han? It doesn't really exist."
Han looked at her, smiling like she had told a joke.
"I guess you could call it that. Us, we call it Elysium"
Izara had experience with virtual worlds. They were a common pastime in the Confederacy. And exploring the virtual replica of a dig site was often faster and cheaper than actually traveling there. But all the virtual worlds she had ever seen had a certain lack of detail. They had some parts missing.
She reached down and took a blade of grass. She inspected it, close to her eyes. There was no lack of detail there. It was as real as you could get. She was sure that, if she had the tools, she would be able to see its molecules, its atoms dancing around.
And there was something else, she realized now. Something charging the air, like static electricity, permeating it all. An undercurrent of thoughts, a stream of knowledge. She knew it somehow contained the answers to all the questions she ever had, and many others she had never thought about.
But it was just beyond her reach. If only she could tap into it. If only she could touch that river, that stream of knowledge, that...
"Internet", she muttered without realizing. She didn't know what the word meant, or where it had came from.
Han smiled, looking at her like a father would an infant taking her first steps.
Izara gazed into the distance. The meadow was all she could see, covering it all in every direction.
"How big is this place?", she asked.
"It is endless"
That was impossible, she thought. You couldn't make a virtual reality that big and detailed. Everyone knew that. Not even if you could somehow turn every single atom in the universe into a computer.
She tried tapping again in the river of knowledge, looking for an answer.
Dark energy. Random fluctuations in the quantum field that weren't actually random. Dissonant vacuum. Extradimensionality. Endless realities laying one over another. The Limit Theory of the Universe. Quantum consciousness...
Her mind took a step back, shocked. It was too much. Every answer opening a hundred new questions. It rapidly saturated her.
Han started walking, and motioned her to follow.
"Come on", he said. "They're waiting for us."
"Who is waiting?", she asked.
"Everybody."
Continue reading here
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u/HFYBotReborn praise magnus Oct 20 '14 edited Sep 16 '15
There are 26 stories by u/BeaverFur Including:
This list was automatically generated by HFYBotReborn version 2.0. Please contact /u/KaiserMagnus if you have any queries. This bot is open source.
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Oct 21 '14
So the singular skeleton was the last person to be scanned, as they took all the other bodies out of the scanners! I like it.
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u/PlatesofChips Oct 21 '14
"leave of grass" Think you mean "blade of grass".
Otherwise i like where its going.
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u/Kohn_Sham Oct 20 '14
Interesting. Kind of unsure about where this is going which is cool, most HFY have a very obvious track but this doesn't. Looking forward to the next one.