Sci-fi Cultivator Thing: Chapter 3

People seemed to want more of this, so here's a fresh chapter. I'm going to title this thing any day now. Enjoy! ~Eric

***

Jason was both surprised and a little relieved that Alex wasn’t waiting outside the Patriarch’s throne room. Not that his brother’s absence was actually a good sign. It presumably meant that he was waiting for Jason somewhere else, like his room. There were security measures in place that supposedly kept people out of each other’s rooms, but he had his doubts that those measures were much of a safeguard against the sect’s “young master.” Even if Alex couldn’t circumvent that security, nothing prevented him from simply waiting in the hall or having someone else do it. No, the best option was simply to be somewhere they didn’t expect him to be. As he entered the transit pod, he made up his mind.

“Floor seven,” he announced.

The transit pod began it’s hasty decent. There were dozens of libraries in the sect. One of the least useful of those libraries was found on the seventh floor. It was meant for the qi-condensing cultivators who had only just begun their cultivation journey. The manuals and scrolls located there were fundamentally useless to someone like Alex, who had long since moved into the next stage of cultivation. In other words, it would be the very last location a search for him would go.

But even the sect had bent beneath the inevitable weight on progress. There were access terminals in every library that connected with the Imperial Archives and, to a lesser extent, to the Imperial Network. It was the Network that most people were interested in, since it carried everything from news to entertainment, gossip, and dubious cultivation practices. Jason had never had much use for those things. It wasn’t that he didn’t like to be entertained. He liked it as much as anyone else. It was more that he found a vast gap between the things most people considered entertaining and what entertained him. It had been one more wall that had separated him from everyone else.

Fortunately, it wasn’t the Imperial Network that he primarily cared about today. He was after the Archives. When it came to reliable information, the Imperial Archives were everything that the Network was not. Everything found on there was rigorously vetted. That meant that the information was often out of date when it came to current affairs, but it was eminently accurate when it came to things like general facts and energy composition of a world. Things that were suddenly very important to his immediate future. He’d often meant to do this research, but the curse of cultivation was that anything outside of cultivation tended to lose its immediacy.

The frontier worlds would always be there, so there was never a need to look into them right now. He wished he’d found the impetus to do the research sooner. Determining the exact right world for his cultivation was out of the question now. It would have taken weeks, if not months of research to establish that with certainty. Time he’d always assumed he would have. He hadn’t imagined taking this step for several more decades. Now, he’d have to rely on intuition and surface level analyses of the worlds to guide his choice. Still, the die had been cast, and all he could do was try to make the best of the situation with the time and resources he had available.

He stepped into the library and was surprised to find that there were still some bleary-eyed juniors present even at this late hour. Not that the majority looked to be doing any learning. Most of them seemed to be spending their energy on staring morosely at manuals and scrolls. They were no doubt hoping to eke out a last-minute inspiration before they were compelled to return the documents. He felt a pang of sympathy for them. He did most of his morose staring at inscrutable manuals in the privacy of his room, but he did that staring all the same.

It had been one of the rare instances where his background had afforded a welcome privilege. No one believed that the Patriarch’s son would steal from the sect. So, he had been permitted to take the documents out of the library. The privilege had ended there, though. He was only granted as much time with the documents as he could afford with the sect points he’d earned, the same as everyone else. That privacy had allowed him to shamelessly write out copies of those documents. Something that would have appalled his father, the elders, the librarians, and probably everyone else in the sect if they ever learned of it.

The copied versions weren’t as good as the originals and he’d long since outgrown them, but they had saved him a great many sect points over the years. Those manuals, and the much more recently copied and useful foundation formation manuals were safely tucked in his storage treasure. A place where prying hands and eyes couldn’t accidentally stumble over them. One of the qi-condensing cultivators, a startled looking girl, clearly recognized him. That’s not ideal, he thought. I’ll have to work fast before word spreads. She started to rise only to have him wave her off. No one else seemed to have noticed him, except for the exceptionally bored-looking librarian’s assistant who had drawn the short-straw and been assigned to monitor the library overnight.

Jason walked over to the assistant and said, “I’d like terminal access, please.”

“Of course, young master,” said the assistant, his eyes a little wide.

The sect might have been willing to allow members to use The Archives and the Imperial Network, but they were in no way willing to allow uncontrolled research. By limiting access to the terminals, the Sect was able to partially curtail the exploration of certain topics. Sect members could go elsewhere in the city for unfettered access, but they would have to pay for it out in the city. Most people just learned to work within the limits rather than spend their limited funds. He’d chosen that route. There had been other uses for that money.

Jason worked under even more stringent restrictions, but nothing he wanted to see today was going to bump against any of those frustrating limitations. The assistant took him to one of the relatively ancient terminals that had been custom-built and state of the art when first installed. While the software had been regularly updated, or so he’d been told, the actual hardware probably belonged in a mortal museum. Unfortunately, like so much other technology, Jason understood very little about the internal components of the terminal. That won’t be a problem much longer, he assured himself. I’ll be able to learn about any damned thing I want the minute I’m free of the sect and its expectations.

The assistant fled almost the instant the terminal was ready. He probably worried that more interaction with the Patriarch’s family than absolutely necessary was not good for his long-term prospects. Jason sighed. The man was probably right. If Jason was anyone else, he wouldn’t want the stink of his mediocrity to rub off. Pushing that thought aside the way he’d learned to push aside so many other distractions, he focused on the interface. He allowed his primitive AI to interface with the terminal so he wouldn’t have to speak aloud or have anything display directly on the screen. The information could probably be recalled by someone who knew what they were doing, but he didn’t see a good reason to make it easy on anyone who walked in to see what he was doing.

It only took a few moments before he’d accessed the Archives’ search function.

Query: Number of human-habitable frontier worlds?

453

Jason frowned at that less-than-helpful response. He’d known there were a lot, but that was far too many to dig through. Jason considered how to rephrase the question.

Query: Number of frontier worlds known to support cultivation?

119

Query: Number of frontier worlds known to support water cultivation?

39

Query: Number of frontier worlds known to support water cultivation with secondary wood affinity?

22

Query: Of those 22 worlds, number that support water cultivation with second wood affinity with easily accessible cultivation zones?

11

Query: Of those eleven worlds, number with a population exceeding 2 million?

0

Query: Of those eleven worlds, number with a population exceeding 1 million?

3

Query: Of those three worlds, do any have a capital city with a population exceeding 500,000?

None

Query: Of those three worlds, do any have a capital city with a population exceeding 250,000?

2

Query: Please provide summary profiles of those two worlds.

There was a more pronounced pause as the Archives accessed what he was certain had to be endless pages of surveys, political reports, historical records, demographic data, business reports, and reliable news media archives regrading the two worlds. He loathed being so succinct with his questioning. There were endless questions he could have asked about the type and prevalence of spirit beasts, natural treasures, and alchemical plants and resources. That was to say nothing about qi density, natural cycles, and about a hundred other things that could make cultivation easier or harder, but his intuition was telling him that he needed to be elsewhere and soon.

He knew some cultivators tried to be dismissive of their intuition and treat cultivation more like a logical process. Their success rate was demonstrably lower. That told him that there was something intrinsic and fundamental to cultivation that couldn’t simply be reasoned through. It also meant that he was far more willing to trust his instincts and risk being wrong. The Archives provided summaries that he had sent directly to his message program. He rose from the terminal, signaling it to end his session, and proceeded out of the library. Jason pretended not to notice the assistant looking frustrated and guilty.

Jason walked briskly down the hall before he opened a closet, stepped inside, and dampened his presence. It wasn’t enough to fool an expert, but it wouldn’t be a true expert looking for him. He didn’t know that Alex was on the way, but Jason wasn’t ready to bet his physical condition on it. Technically speaking, the closet probably shouldn’t have opened for him. He didn’t have any business with the cleaning supplies stored inside of it. Then again, there also wasn’t any reason to forbid him access to those supplies. It was the sort of loophole that people who didn’t spend decades avoiding a petty tyrant never thought of.

He left the door cracked open enough that he could listen. Less than a minute later, he the transit pod arrive. So, I would have had enough time to get to a different pod, he thought. Oh well. He waited patiently. It didn’t take long before there was muted shouting from inside the library. A moment later, he heard Alex’s voice carrying down the hall.

“I don’t care what it takes. Find that insolent bastard. I want him beaten within an inch of his life. He’ll learn not to disrespect me, even if I have to have every bone in his body broken. Twice! Start with his room.”

Well, that’s going to make the next few hours less convenient, thought Jason.

“What if he’s left the compound?” asked whatever lackey his brother had brought along.

Jason shook his head. That question had been a mistake. In truth, any question when Alex was feeling especially inferior was a mistake. The sound of a blow landing on flesh and a startled cry of pain proved that point.

“Just find him!” shouted Alex.

Jason waited until he heard the transit pod doors cycle open and closed twice before he nudged the closet door. It secured itself with a gentle click. Having been forced to evade Alex’s wrath more than once, he was prepared. A small stool appeared from his storage ring, and he sat down on it. A sandwich came next. As he chewed, he accessed his messages. It seemed he had some time on his hands. He might as well learn a bit about his potential new homes.