Agent047
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702 - Two weeks later
🕑 Added 2024-08-19 04:07:29 +0000 UTCTwo weeks later.
Aron stood calmly inside one of the physical labs on his ship, his eyes fixed on five medipods positioned before him. Holograms hovered over each pod, displaying streams of data being collected in real time.
Inside the pods, five bodies lay motionless, sustained by a constant supply of nutrients directly administered to their systems. The pods were designed to keep the bodies alive while preventing any activation of brain function, ensuring that consciousness remained completely dormant.
Although the bodies in the pods outwardly resembled the various races of the Proximians, the similarities ended there. Internally, their structure was much closer to Aron’s own physiology than to that of the Proximians or even humans.
{I think that’s enough observation. We should start the final etching,} Nova suggested, materializing beside him, ready to move on to the next critical step in their experiment.
"Sure, let’s do it," Aron said, stepping closer to the nearest pod. Immediately, runic sentences began to materialize in front of him. With each passing second, the complex runic script grew longer and more intricate, with hundreds of symbols and words flowing together seamlessly.
For two hours, Aron worked tirelessly, constructing an extraordinarily detailed runic sequence. When he finally finished, he opened his eyes and asked, "Are there any mistakes?"
{None,} Nova responded, having meticulously monitored and cross-referenced every symbol against the simulations they'd run beforehand.
"Good," Aron said, a smile forming on his face. The relief was evident; a single mistake would have meant starting over from scratch, wasting two hours of intense concentration. The satisfaction of knowing everything was flawless allowed him a brief moment of reprieve before moving on to the next crucial step.
He then began to gradually reduce the size of the runic script, scaling it down from occupying the entire room to fitting within the confines of the medipod in just a few seconds. But he didn’t stop there; he continued minimizing it further.
This final reduction took more time, about twenty minutes of concentrated effort, until the script was the size of a fist.
This was the smallest he could achieve, though it was still significantly larger than the runes within his runic heart, which were atom-sized.
With the fist-sized runic script prepared, Aron lowered it carefully into the medipod. Nova opened a precise slot on top of the pod, guiding the script through. She then revealed the chest of the body inside, exposing its beating heart.
Aron positioned the script so that it aligned perfectly with the heart and gently lowered it into place.
As the script made contact, it bonded with the heart, etching itself onto it. Once the bonding was complete, he relinquished control, allowing the heart to take over.
The heart immediately began to sustain the script’s activation by using the mana within the body's mana vessels.
{I will begin completing the process here, while you can proceed with the others,} Nova said as she activated the mana etching machines within the medipod. She began etching short runic sentences across various parts of the body to enhance the quality of the runic script.
Since the script was a mere copy of some of the active parts of his runic heart and only partially understood, they were employing different patches and fixes to achieve a fraction of the functionality of the original runes.
As Nova worked on the current medipod, Aron moved on to the next one and started repeating the process.
After a full day of meticulous work, Aron finally completed etching the runic script onto the bodies. The process had taken so long due to several mistakes along the way, requiring him to restart the process for a few bodies and take breaks to recover his mental energy.
“How long until you’re finished?” he asked, taking a seat to rest.
{It will be about a day before I complete the etching of the remaining runes, implement the subconscious security measures in the brain, and install the current generation of little protagonists,} Nova responded. The bodies remained active, with light flashing on and off hundreds of times per second.
“Alright, I’m going to rest. Let me know when everything is done,” Aron said as he started leaving the lab. Nova immediately locked the door behind him, securing the lab and preventing any disturbances during the final stages of the process.
…………
The three tree folks monitoring the room exchanged knowing glances.
Although their actions might be seen as spying, they were fully aware that the other side was well aware of their presence. They had previously made it clear that they could observe any location with mana within the star system. As a result, they came to the conclusion that the other side knew of their surveillance but chose not to interfere or show any concern.
They reached this conclusion because his personal room was entirely unobservable to them, indicating that he possessed technology capable of concealing his activities. However, he had chosen not to use it for what he was currently doing in the lab.
“They really went through all this trouble for a body he probably would have just given them if they had asked,” Birch said, shaking her head in disbelief.
“Well, we and they didn’t know that at the time, so it wasn’t something we could consider,” Cypress replied, acknowledging the gap in their knowledge.
“Anyway, does anyone understand what he was doing with the symbols he put on the heart?” Crabapple asked, shifting the focus back to the bodies being worked on. “I can’t even begin to replicate what he did or make sense of the symbols.”
“I think it has something to do with managing or monitoring the mana in the bodies he’s creating,” Cypress speculated. “Maybe it’s to control it or keep track of it in some way.”
The debate continued as Cypress and Crabapple exchanged points and counterpoints. After a few minutes of back-and-forth, Birch interjected, “Why not just ask him directly instead of wasting time debating?”
“We will ask him eventually,” Crabapple responded. “But part of the joy in research is discovering that your hypotheses were on the right track. It’s more satisfying when the answer aligns with your own reasoning,” Crabapple said as he rubbed his nonexistent beard.
