Aerith AI: 2018

[Errant.Venture]

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Story Arc: Unexplored Space: Spring – 821 A.S. – Location: On the Edge of Oblivion
Chapter 3: What doesn’t kill you makes you…glow?

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Seriously…Tereus was multi-tasking…and mentally flipping out. As he listened to the Chief Medical Officer on board The Errant Venture the intelligent, yet unfortunately long winded Alpha Captain Lucius Deveraux, he was also mentally envisioning himself torturing and beating Edward A. Murphy to death, while simultaneously taunting the poor mental ghost over his creation of Murphy’s Law.

Really…who had the time in the ancient culture of their genetic ancestors to just sit around and think about archaic philosophical ideas, and then coin them into pestering nuances like, “Whatever can happen will happen, oh by the way, when it does, you’re beyond screwed…”

“So as you can see Colonel, the side effects are merely a miraculous fluke of the collected and filtered water that we recovered from the ice shard that Major Zurie and Daughtery were able to recover. It really is quite fascinating. Again, I want to assure you that the side effects are merely a thrilling reaction to our specific genetic engineering responding to the minimal levels of radiation in the reclaimed water..” Captain Deveraux prattled on.

Not so surprisingly there were many in service Alphas that shared varying forms of the original Deveraux’s genetic material. Also not surprising in the least to Tereus is that everyone of them had the inherent ability to be brilliant, and annoying as fuck at the same time. He’d had enough, as he snatched poor Edward Murphy’s spine by way of his throat in his mind, he simultaneously placed his armored hand on Captain Deveraux’s shoulder.

“Doc, seriously, as exciting as I find this, I don’t find it nearly as fascinating as you, and I don’t have the time at the moment to continue listening to your educational lecture.”

Seriously Lucius…you need to get laid. Tereus thought to himself.

“Ah yes…yes… I do forget myself at times. It’s just so fascinating that something so readily available in the universe could cause such…”

Tereus sighed, and just walked off, leaving Lucius to his dictation. Undoubtedly anyone walking towards the medical bay would be able to hear Lucius incessantly talking to the air, and to anyone willing to stand around for the next three hours.

As he sauntered down the corridor towards the turbo lift which would take him to the port hangar bay, still in shambles from the explosive adventure they had when FTLing into the metreon gas cloud, he inadvertently shivered at the thought that if he had been conceived five cycles prior, he too could be a prattling twit. He inadvertently cringed again as the turbo lift doors slammed shut, and he began his decent to the port hangar.

The positive side to this entire endeavor…no…adventure was that Battle Group Wrath was in process of refueling all ships with the hydrogen provided as a byproduct from the ice shard processing. That meant that the hydroponic facilities would once again begin mass production of food, with the first batches already rolling off the production line. Then there was the fact that this raw material harvesting gave everyone a much needed respite, morale boost, and refresh.

The weird side to this entire scenario was that everyone who ate the fresh batch of rations were starting to glow…like…an eerie green glow that you’d imagine toxic sludge would emanate…or MOX…yeah…a MOXY glow. Several crew members had begun to show signs of this creepy side effect about half an hour after eating, or showering. Daugherty and Zurie were working in conjunction with Lucius to correct the issue, hopefully by filtering out more of the genetic modifying radioactive isotopes still bonded in the most minuscule amount in the water.

This task however was currently stagnant however as Zurie had become irritated with Daughtery’s inability to not find their glowing bodies purely comedic as well as Lucius’ constant rambling about things only he found fascinating. This culminated into Zurie discharging her side arm...well rather…emptying her side arm into one of the multi-spectral analyzers…and well the rest was unimportant.

She was currently lounging in the officer’s mess taking some girl time. Tereus had restricted Daughtery to his quarters for the time being…mainly because Daughtery kept inspecting certain parts of his now glowing body, and saying things like this is so cool or Hey Doc, can you make our cells pulse like strobe lights? Needless to say Zurie was completely within her right to...discharge her firearm as a means of stress relief.

Tereus approached the port hangar bay, dodging motorized skid loaders and flight deck crews still attempting to put the place back together eighteen hours after their explosive entry into this sector.

Man…this place is trashed. Tereus thought to himself as he took in the fiasco that was in front of him.

It was going to take at least another forty-eight hours for the crew on both The Errant Venture and The Repentance to get things sorted.

Tereus let out another sigh…and began mentally kicking Murphy’s lifeless body. In their ancestral culture in the Sol system there had been a derogatory term known as a “Troll”. The translation was lost, but the basic meaning as far as anyone in the current time period could surmise was quite literally: a person or entity that gains pleasure from the demise of others. Apparently, Mr. Murphy was the epitome of a troll.

Tereus just shook his head, mentally discharged his firearm into Murphy’s lifeless carcass, and then proceeded towards his quarters. He needed a drink. Lucky for him there was a bottle of vintage Texas Crown Royale in his personal stash. A gift from one of The Cartel members after an engagement in Houston with the Liberty Navy, a couple Junkers, and oddly enough some crazy guy with an LPI IFF / ID that thought he could “police” The Badlands in a dreadnaught..

Tereus let out an audible laugh. Now that he thought about it out of all the houses in Sirius, Liberty had to be the weirdest place. It was like…a trip through your mind…after a cardamine binger…or after partying with The Order on Toledo before it got smoked…Man The Order…

Tereus shivered at the thought of how many Nomad’s Bane’s he’d drunk while out on an expeditionary trip to Toledo. It wasn’t really the thought of how much liquor he’d consumed with Murdock, Marshall, Golanski, and Tovig Kelt, but more the fact that no one offered to tell him it was dead Nomad essence they’d been sending into their gut with the liquor. Nomads in general were just…creepy…like heeby jeeby creepy. How any sentient species could evolve into ultimate form, as a quasi-energy, parasitic, glob of purple glowing jelly was beyond Tereus, even with his genetically enhanced reasoning and intelligence.

Tereus rounded the final bend and keyed in the code to his quarters. Before the door even hissed shut behind him, he had downed a chaser of perfectly chilled Texas Crown Royale. As he poured himself another tall one, he started to clamber out of his power armor. While it was true that he was rarely seen without it, he felt disgusting, and needed a stint in the refresher. Sliding out of the nano-mesh weave compression suit, he kicked it into the laundry next to the refresher and climbed in, Texas Crown Royale in one hand, and his other palm down on the refresher walls, enjoying the warm refreshing water rain down on him…

Shit Tereus thought, the irradiated reclaimed water was cycling through the refresher systems. Tereus let out a sigh, grabbed his towel, and dried off. Before he was even finished he had already started to glow. The Texas Crown had already begin to metabolize in his system, and he went to relive himself at the head. As he relieved himself he couldn’t help but look down.

Hmm…Daughtery was right…this is cool...at least I won’t miss the hole when I stumble out of bed at odd hours of the night. Tereus just grinned at this last thought and couldn’t wait to finish up and crawl into bed.

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Aerith AI 2018 - SGM| Database

The reports of my trying to imitate the revered Michal Golanski are greatly exaggerated...my avatar should prove this.

[4:17:08 PM] Michał Golański: I knew you have some prehistoric backing to kick them in the nuts.