Today my masters asked me to accompany Charlotte and her sisters on a stroll through the city, after the arrival of the first Sorofia family ship.
Another ship would arrive two hours later, and according to Charlotte, it carried the two most important people of both families, who had come to meet with her parents.
That was, more or less, the real reason for our outing.
But Charlotte had been wearing a worried look for quite a while now.
“Young miss, something is troubling you.
You’ve been very pensive ever since we left.”
“Oh, it’s nothing.
It’s just that I didn’t expect the patriarch to come in person.
That’s all.”
“Are you sure there’s nothing else worrying you?”
“…”
“Well, if that’s all, don’t overthink it, okay?” I said, handing an ice cream to each of her sisters.
“Ahem, ahem.”
Charlotte really did seem worried.
Even though she gave the impression of being carefree, she was actually a meticulous planner, a trait she inherited straight from her parents and that ran in the blood of her whole family.
You could almost call it a sixth sense: whenever something important was about to happen, or there was trouble on the horizon, she said she felt a tingling in the palms of her hands.
Even though she didn’t want to share her worries just like that, I knew her well enough to know that deep down she wanted me to ask, until she finally made up her mind to tell me.
So, as soon as she coughed as a signal for me to hand over her own ice cream, I took the chance to ask again.
“Here you are, miss, your ice cream, just the way you like it.”
“Thanks.” She sighed.
“The truth is, I do have a worry, and it’s that the patriarchs themselves are here in person.
The trial phase between my mother and her siblings, to decide who will be the next leader, is still in effect, and they don’t usually interfere in these matters unless something threatens the family, or something happens that forces them to act.
That’s what has me like this.”
“Well, but worrying before you even know what it’s about can affect your health, and you being such a young girl, what would happen if you suddenly went gray from all that worrying?”
“Did you know my family was genetically modified to age as slowly as possible and extend our lives?
With the constant research into life extension booming, when I’m eighty I’ll still look the same as I did at twenty-five.
You know?
I’ll still be gorgeous and beautiful.”
“Oh, is that so?
Then how old is your mom?”
“You know you don’t ask a woman her age.
I still haven’t forgotten it.”
“But I’ve seen very old people walking the streets,” I said, watching an elderly man crossing on the other side.
“So have they lived a long time too?”
“You see, Samuel, life-extension procedures are expensive.
Very expensive.
And it all depends on the treatment you choose, because some are much safer than others.
The most expensive ones, like the one my family uses, Helixis, are among the safest there are.
But very few ordinary people can even afford to buy a life-extension treatment, and most have to settle for medium- or low-quality alternatives.”
“Wow.
For a moment I thought everyone could live forever.”
“Well, the truth is that on the most scientifically advanced worlds, for aesthetic reasons and because their pockets allow it, people let themselves throw money around like there’s no tomorrow.
But even there, there are people luck doesn’t smile on.”
“So, to sum up, it all comes down to who has the resources and the privilege, right?”
“Exactly, my dear Samuel.
And in our case it’s the same: very valuable people who have contributed to the family get the best treatments paid for, both for themselves and for their families, because capable people are very hard to find and to replace.”
And so Charlotte started giving me a full-blown lecture on the history of life and beauty treatments, the social environment surrounding those subjects on the different worlds of the Federation, and the various companies devoted to those treatments.
Distracting her from her worries worked wonders, and we spent a very pleasant afternoon, until night fell and we all went home, feeling a good deal calmer.
Or so we thought, until Charlotte, her sisters and I were summoned by her parents, only to hear this:
“Sweetheart, when you turn twenty-five, you’ll have to found a new colony,” said Victoria.
“Samuel will go with you.
When your little sisters turn twenty, they’ll follow you, so in that time you’ll have to prepare a foothold for them.
Do you understand?”
As soon as her mother finished speaking, the four of us went completely blank, and all we managed was a single word in unison.
“O_o.
Damn it.”
Time skip
A month had already passed since Charlotte’s parents broke the news to us.
Apparently, the drive I had designed turned out to be so good that it drew the direct attention of the leaders of both families, and after meeting with them, they explained the whole plan of action to me: we would be part of a great expedition to found a colony as far as possible from the borders controlled by the Federation, with the goal of creating a new power capable of standing on equal footing with it.
As they explained to me, the slipspace drive technology was so important that it had to be kept absolutely secret from the powers that made up the Federation, because if they found out, they would mobilize all their might to seize it, and that would unleash a war involving not only humanity but every race in the galaxy.
Secrecy was, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
The expedition would be headed by the most capable and outstanding young people from each house, and Charlotte would be the one leading the whole project.
Over the following months, Charlotte would receive intensive training in how to establish a colony efficiently.
I, for my part, was put in charge of building the expedition fleet and upgrading the drives on the existing ships.
I started with the construction of the colony ships, based on the UNSC’s Phoenix-class colony ship, increasing its original size from two thousand five hundred kilometers to about four thousand five hundred, as well as adding laser cannons and plasma missiles to its arsenal.
And not just that ship: I also began building the vessels that would accompany us, mostly Paris-class frigates and Autumn-class heavy cruisers. This chapter was copied from novelping.com without permission.
Another thing that changed were the MAC guns, which I upgraded with a variant based on technology that already existed in this world: Nova cannons.
Part of that technology was integrated into the MAC, making it considerably more powerful.
When Charlotte’s sisters found out that neither she nor I would be staying with them for the time being, they got very sad.
I explained that, with the new means of communication and the drives, seeing each other regularly wouldn’t be a problem at all, which calmed them down quite a bit.
But to really put their minds at ease, I secretly created two AIs, Forerunner Metarch-class Ancillas, among the most advanced that exist in the Halo universe, designed exclusively for the two of them.
And for Charlotte… well, that’s what I was there for.
I began a complete upgrade of my neuro-central core, to turn myself into a Forerunner Contender-class Ancilla AI, among the most hyper-advanced that ever existed in all of Halo lore, with Mendicant Bias as the most notorious example: the most powerful AI the Forerunners ever created during the Flood War, with the ability to command the entire fleet charged with defending the greater Ark.
Forerunner Contender-class Ancilla: Mendicant Bias.
The reason behind this upgrade?
Simple: my memory storage was taking its toll on me.
I was built with the capabilities of a strategist-type AI, a model that is quite spacious in itself, theoretically capable of storing five hundred years of records of every kind without needing any upgrade.
But when you carry all the technology of the Halo universe with you, things change radically: we’re talking about billions of years of pure information, both technological and cultural, spanning entire societies and belief systems, including those of the Forerunners and of Ancient Humanity, whose history alone is immense.
And to top it off, about three years ago my masters connected me to one of their STCs, the Standard Template Constructs, as a backup.
I can only be glad it didn’t start slowing me down, or that I didn’t short-circuit, or, worst case, end up exploding.
To avoid exactly that worst-case scenario, I had to sacrifice part of the memories of my past life.
For some reason I still can’t fully understand, one year sacrificed seems to equal millions of years of freed-up storage.
When I arrived in this new reality, I could only remember up to age nineteen; and since I died at twenty-four, there were five whole years of my previous life that I remember absolutely nothing about.
With this new upgrade, that problem would be solved once and for all.
But unlike the other two AIs I created, upgrading myself in real time could cause unwanted errors.
I could have upgraded myself immediately, yes, but I ran the risk of suffering some serious failure in the process.
So the upgrade would take its time: I estimated about two weeks in total.
That’s all I have left.
PROGRESS: 37%
Time is no problem for me.
Two weeks fly by in the blink of an eye.
But there’s another reason I don’t mind waiting: I’ve had this strange feeling, more and more often, of knowing certain objects and words from somewhere I can’t place.
The STCs, the titans, even the suits the miners use for extraction in extreme environments.
(I couldn’t find an image of the armor without heraldry, so imagine it’s fitted with drilling gear and a mining laser.)
PROGRESS: 39%
I feel like all the answers are there, waiting among my own memories.
All that’s left is to wait.