PreCursive

  I stared at the s in shock, instinctively uanding what this was. Somehow, I’d run into something that I had never expected to, here on Vereden.

  A funal puter.

  Sure, it seemed like it was way, way more advahan anything from bae, but this was familiar to me. The s projected on the wall across from me very obviously tained some kind of text prompt. Turning around wildly, I tried to see if the s was being projected somehow.

  Nothing.

  While I was in shock, my panions were examining what had appeared curiously. Both the s and the keyboard. Azarus had walked up to the proje and was waving his hand through it inquisitively, making ied noises as it rippled around his digits. Grey oking at the keyboard, fasated, while Sylvia peered over his shoulder. Both of them were delighted whenever a keystroke made characters appear in the box on the s. Venix though, was standing off to the side, arms crossed ailted while he observed. He must have caught sight of my shock because he spoke to me. “Hart,” He said ftly. “Is aught amiss?”

  The Antium’s words caused everyone in the room to look at me. “Nathan?” Grey asked with a raised eyebrow. “Are you alright?”

  I drew in a shuddering breath. “Y-yeah, just…I wasn’t expeg this. I reize this for what it is.”

  That caused Grey’s eyes to light up. “Do tell.” He said hungrily.

  I walked back up to the keyboard and y my hands over it. I paused, sidering something first. “Grey, or, well, anyone,” I said to the others. “ you actually make out what letters are on this keyb-I mean device?”

  My words caused Azarus to wander back over to our position and peer down at the keyboard alongside Grey and Sylvia. He studied it for a moment. “Nope,” He said finally. “Whatever that is, it ain’t being transted by Language Adaptation.”

  Grey hummed. “That is odd. I don’t often find nguages in my studies that remain untransted. In the past, I’ve only seen it with those nguages that are truly, decisively dead. However, sidering the apparent age of this facility, perhaps it isn’t too odd.”

  I shook my head at them slowly. “This nguage sure as hell isn’t dead. After all, bae, well over a billion people speak it. This is my birth nguage. English.”

  Azarus’s eyes bulged in their sockets, while Sylvia gasped. Venix remained silent, simply . Meanwhile, I saw a manic smile begin to steal across Grey’s face. “Is that so, Nathan? Well, well. Are you perhaps saying this facility could have been structed by Precursor’s?”

  “I don’t know,” I said to him. “What I do know, is that both the nguage, and this interface, are familiar to me. This is a kind of teology that I’m familiar with, if not blown away by how advanced and obviously magical it seems.”

  “Advanced?” Sylvia asked curiously.

  “Yeah,” I the Sculpted woman. “This is ast what we do bae. I mean, hard light? That’s theoretical, to the best of my knowledge. This is like…” I paused to think for a moment, before snapping my fingers. “This tech is like the equivalent of steel tools as pared to primitive stone ones.”

  “Fasating,” Grey breathed. “ you, perhaps…decipher what this all is for?”

  I took a deep breath before nodding. “I’ll give it a shot.”

  Letting my hands fall on the keyboard, I marveled at the sensation of a hard light struct. It was electrifying, almost literally. My fiips tingled slightly. I had to suppress a hysterical ugh when my index fingers felt familiar protrusions on the F and J keys, though.

  I pressed the backspace key rapidly to delete the nonsense characters in the brey’s chi peg, drawing ied noises from the peanut gallery. Ign them, I sidered the box for a moment. Where to start, where to start. This didn’t look like a login s, thankfully. I didn’t think it was likely that we would be able to break a password if it had been protected. It looked more like a and lio me. I may not be a software engineer, but I was at least a little puter-savvy.

  Oh, whatever. Let’s just go with the obvious.

  I typed ‘help’ into the box and pressed the enter key.

  On the s, words began to dispy beh the and line in white text.

  Avaible ands:

  System Diagnostic

  work

  Message

  Records

  lkasdfied

  …

  After those four, there was only wly corrupted text. I guess there might have been more ands, but this pce or the servers might be too degraded to provide them. Hell, I didn’t even know if the ands I had would work. I guess I’d find out, starting from the top.

  I typed System Diagnostito the blinki box and pressed enter.

  The word ‘error’ in big bold, red text fshed across the s, causing my panions to jump.

  “What happened?” Grey asked me, startled.

  “I tried to find out how damaged this pce was,” I said to him without turning my head. “I’m guessing it’s so messed up that it ’t even tell.”

  “I see,” Grey muttered, fused. I doubted that. Whatever, onto the one. I entered work.

  This time, something did pop up.

  A graphical map popped up, dispying a map that I had only grown aced to in the past few days.

  It of Vereden. On it, there were a bunch of dots. Nearly all of them were greyed out, but there were some red ohere must have been well over fifty of those dots spread out across the breadth of the ti. Of those, I think there were only three of them that were still red. I felt my breath hit my chest, as I uood what this was representing.

  I think Grey uood as well, just from the text. “My gods,” He breathed.

  “What?” Azarus asked, clueless. “What’s goin’ on?”

  “I ’t believe it,” Grey said, ign him. “This is the only example I’ve ever hear of, when it es to mysterious doors. Believe me, I’ve certainly checked. But…there are this many more facilities? Just like this one?” His words caused Azarus to do a double take and gape at the map.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, staring at the map myself. “I think this means that there were this many facilities, once upon a time. But,” I poi the red dots. “Now there are only these frey, I don’t think this was built by Precursor’s. If what you’ve told me about how rare we are is true, there’s no way we could have do. That’s not even ting the fact that this is too advanced for Earth tech.”

  “Perhaps so,” Grey whispered. He raised a fio point at the red dots. “If what this map is saying is true, theher facilities are in the western archipego,” He said, moving a fio point at a long of isnds off of the west coast. He then moved his fio point a dot at a mountain range in what seemed to be Principality nds. “Another seems to be in one of the old mountain Holds. I’m not familiar with this one, however. Azarus, you tell who owns this range?”

  Azarus stepped up to the sole and peered at the map more closely. After a moment, he grimaced. “Aye, I tell. That’s Dwergar nd. I ain’t surprised nobody knows about another door down there. Those are some shady bastards.”

  Grey furrowed his brow. “Dwergar…” He said to himself before frowning. He faced Azarus and made a knife hand with his right and dragged it down his left forearm in a shaving motion. “As in, those Dwergar?”

  Azarus nodded grimly.

  “Ah,” Grey said. “I see the problem. Hmm. Well, moving on, the st seems to be…up here.” He poio the st of the red dots on the map, located far to the north. It seemed to be in the area beyond a northern mountain range. “Beyond the northern mountains, in the frozen wastes. Perhaps the northern tribes know of it?”

  I couldn’t help a small ugh esg me, causing the others to look at me. I waved the attention off. “So there actually are northern tribes? I almost thought they were made up just for my old excuse.”

  Grey smiled slightly. “Ihey are real, and just as reclusive as implied. I don’t quite believe they don’t have Statuses, however.” He looked back up at the map sideringly. “I’m dearly tempted to look into this matter more, especially now that we know how to ehese facilities. However, that’s a matter for aime. tih your explorations, Nathan.”

  I him. Time for a new and. This time, Message. Who could it be Messaging? The other facilities? I guess we would find out. I entered Message into the box and hit enter.

  The prompt gged for a moment, before dispying some more text.

  ‘System Administrator unvaible. Messaging service offline.’

  System Administrator? As in, the Messaging SysAdmin, or…

  The admin of the System?

  Oh boy, that was a of worms. I shared what the text said with my panions.

  “System Administratrey asked, fused. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. Certainly, there’s some form of deaking baked into the System, as evidenced by the existence of System Judgements.” Grey me. “However, there is little evidence of a singur mind behind the System itself. How curious.”

  Yeah, I guess. It was just a guess anyway. We had no idea which kind of System it was even referring to. Seeing that nobody had any more questions for that one, I moved on to the st of the avaible options.

  I typed in Records and hit the enter key.

  This time was different, however. Another list of options opened up on the s. It retty short list, though.

  Records:

  Staff

  aedL@gd

  EMERGENCY SUBJECTS

  One of these was not like the others. That st option, Emergency Subjects, was in red, all bold text.

  Ominous.

  I started from the top. As expected, the Staff record was exactly that. A list of names, surprisingly long, opened up on the s in a vertical n. At the very top of the list, each of the names had a little designator that the person was ‘deceased’ along with a date of death. I couldn’t make sense of the date though, as it was in a format I wasn’t familiar with. The very first person on the list apparently died ‘1/4/6/3/2-3/27’. Going down the list, that time would go further out, but only the st part would ge. Scrolling all the way down the very long list with the arrow keys, I watched as the date ged from ‘1/4/6/3/2’ to ‘1/4/6/3/1401. That date was the very st one oaff list.

  Tilting my head, I tried to puzzle out what that meant. Was that st ging he year? Did…that mean there were people here, in this facility, for over a thousand years? But this pce looked a. It was falling apart around me, practically. How long ago had these people been down here?

  Without expining things to Grey, I opened up the very st option named ‘Emergency Subjects’.

  Another list of names opened up. This time, I could tell that it was much, much smaller. Where before the Staff list had thousands of names on it, this one had less than a hundred. Whoever these ‘Emergency Subjects’ were seemed to be getting a rough deal, as they were all marked as deceased as well. Strangely, none of these names had a date attached to them as the Staff names did. However, it was the st name on the shortlist that caused my blood to freeze in my veins. This name wasn’t marked as deceased, but rather ‘active’.

  It was mine.

  Spelled out in pin English on the s was the name ‘Nathaniel Eugene Hart’.