Spaceship Excalibur
Destination: Mars
Mars, a planet that for centuries has been the subject of humanity's dreams… and they were almost there. It felt surreal to be the first people to stand on its surface.
As soon as Max informed him about finding the location of the stasis chamber module, preparation for the Mars mission immediately started. Unfortunately, despite his desire, Michael could not just hop into the ...
2020-12-16 11:16:32 +0000 UTC View PostThe S.U. Space station
Rivendell
Elizabeth's head was still spinning from the decision she made a few hours ago. She was happy to say yes, but it still hit her like a freight train out of nowhere. In retrospect, there were so many clues she could have picked up on, starting with Michael’s nervousness in the last few days and Anna’s unexplained constant cheerfulness. Yet, when he knelt before her and offered her this beautiful diamond ring that...
2020-12-13 11:22:50 +0000 UTC View PostEarth, New York City
UN Headquarters
The silence in the UN General Assembly great hall was oppressive and tense. Michael’s face did not show any emotions, yet his heart was drumming in his chest.
Despite all Max’s predictions, there was one thing that could always be considered a wild card—the human factor. From his position on the speaker dais, he could see more than one mouth hanging open, and several world leaders were looking at on...
2020-12-09 11:06:09 +0000 UTC View PostTransporter 001
Rome, Italy
Michael climbed into the transporter and said they could leave Rome, when Al interrupted, “we need to make a quick stop in the city.”
“Whatever for?” Tyron asked him, while he was coiling the long graphene rope between his palm and elbow.
“We are in Italy, the birthplace of pizza; it would be criminal if we didn’t buy any. I already ordered them online, we just need to pick them up,” he explain...
2020-12-06 11:51:45 +0000 UTC View PostCity-Ship Ascension
Geostationary orbit
It was quite a somber and quiet group that returned to the Ascension. Everyone was thinking about the incredible story they’ve heard; it explained so much and answered a few of the questions they have been asking for a long time. For all that—it created many more.
They all gathered in a conference room after Al and Pete made a slight detour to the food court and p...
2020-12-02 11:15:02 +0000 UTC View PostThe S.U. Space Station
Michael and the others stood in that room for a long time, yet not one of them would have left it for anything in the world.
This was a momentous and earthshaking revelation, and echoes of it were the reason why they were in space right now. If Michael had never stumbled on the Excalibur, they would be still on Earth, and the Solarian Union would not exist.
He patiently waited to hear the end of the story, but as Ision said at...
2020-11-29 12:08:23 +0000 UTC View PostThe S.U. Space Station
“You gotta be freaking kidding me!”
The first one to react was Al; the others gawked at the image with looks of dumbfounded amazement and shock. In their defense, it was a completely improbable sight. A tall man was standing in front of that ship, and he had two big white wings on his back.
His features were a little strange; there were all the things anyone looking at the mirror would recognize, two eyes, one mouth, the nose, and ...
2020-11-25 12:00:09 +0000 UTC View PostCity-Ship Ascension
Geostationary orbit
It was the morning of the next day and Michael had got up late, once again enjoying the luxury of his own bed. Not that anything was wrong with the beds on the massive space station, but he had already broken this one in, so sleep came much easier.
The quarantine had been officially lifted last night, and everybody was more than ready to return home to the Ascension. ...
2020-11-22 11:08:39 +0000 UTC View PostThe S.U. Space Station
Quarantine level
Nobody could go to the Ascension without a long stay in quarantine, the City-ship was in a precautionary lockdown. Moreover, Elizabeth and the others were exposed to a very high concentration of the virus while working with the patients, so even though the nanites were dealing with the infection, the virus was present in their bodies. As a result of that, they needed to travel to the new space stati...
2020-11-18 11:43:27 +0000 UTC View PostEarth, United Kingdom
Chinese Embassy in London
Li Yuen looked at the piece of paper in his hands, his fingers squeezing it so tight, there was a danger of ripping it apart. The last orders he received were simply insane, and he reread them five times, just to convince himself that his eyes were not playing tricks on him.
He and his men were part of a Chinese black ops team, which had just a day before finished a mission in London. It was a ...
2020-11-15 10:42:51 +0000 UTC View PostTransporter 001
Destination: Al Anbar Desert
A hot, dry desert wind was making dust devils dance in the distance, as the lone transporter landed in the middle of nowhere.
Michael had asked Max to find them some nearby location that could be used for interrogation since the transporter was getting rather full. The AI chose a rock outcropping, a hundred miles into the Al Anbar Desert. It was not the most hospitable place on Earth. With virtual...
2020-11-11 10:45:41 +0000 UTC View PostAl-Qa'im, Iraq
“Allahu Akbar,” Abdul al-Vasir said to the group of people gathered in his house.
Well, it was now, after the previous owners were disposed of. They dared to have such lavish dwellings when people were living in poverty. He took possession of it because it demonstrated his new status in the world, and because his God has willed it so. The bodies of the merchant family that built it were now nothing more than fertilizer, making the soil along the...
2020-11-08 11:01:18 +0000 UTC View PostEarth, London
Richmond Park
Elizabeth thought that this was what hell on earth looked like, as she carried another sick child into their transporter.
From the moment Michael decided that they would go all out to help those affected by this horrifying disease, she made a decision to be one of the volunteers. There was not even a bit of guilt for not being on the Ascension, and helping with the intelligence section, which was assistin...
2020-11-04 10:45:29 +0000 UTC View PostAl-Qa'im, Iraq
Abdul al-Vasir knew that the time of his rise to power had come.
No more listening to others, and blindly following the commands of those who were unworthy of his God's grace.
Ever since their leader disappeared, close to a year ago, he did everything he deemed necessary to take the reins of their organization in his hands. It was liberating in a way, not having to listen to the endless rhetoric on how their attacks needed to be moderate and c...
2020-10-31 11:32:16 +0000 UTC View PostCity-Ship Ascension
Central Park
A week later, Michael was having a lunch date with Elizabeth in the park.
There were so many people doing the same, that the place was getting crowded. They were discussing some plans about eventually moving to the new space station when Max abruptly used emergency overrides on their CEIs, which were set to ‘Do Not Disturb’ settings.
“Michael, Elizab...
2020-10-28 11:20:12 +0000 UTC View PostCity-Ship Ascension
Conference Room
“Can we go?! Can we go! Can we go?!” Al said while jumping in his seat, just like a little kid.
That was Al’s reaction when Michael called everybody from the inner circle for an impromptu meeting and told them all about the new space station. The reaction of others was somewhat subtler, but he could see that the same childlike exuberance of Al’s, was bubbling underneath. T...
2020-10-24 11:11:49 +0000 UTC View PostCity-Ship Ascension
Geostationary Orbit
A few days later, Michael was just finishing with that day’s paperwork, which was now mostly in electronic form since he took Elizabeth’s advice and got himself an administrative assistant. Well, he did cheat a bit since the new assistant was Ares, who was kind enough to offer a few of his daily cycles to manage most of the day-to-day work. Max and his adopted son worked in tand...
2020-10-21 10:34:52 +0000 UTC View PostSpaceship Excalibur
Low Earth Orbit
Michael was drinking a cold beer while sitting in a pilot’s chair on the Excalibur. It was no longer needed for it to be hooked up to the Ascension; hundreds of MIs installed throughout it were responsible for the day-to-day workings of the massive City-ship. Besides, Max had mentioned how Ares needed to have more human interaction and learn about responsibility, so ...
2020-10-17 10:22:35 +0000 UTC View PostEarth, North American Continent
12,900 Years Ago
Gray dark clouds covered the entire sky and sent torrents of acidic rain, dirty with ash, to fall onto the ground. Leaning against a big boulder, a lone man waited for his death.
His hands were pressing against his stomach, trying to slow the blood leaking from his wound. He knew that there was no one who could come to his rescue anymore, and the injury was far too extensive, one he couldn’t...
2020-10-17 10:19:48 +0000 UTC View PostThus, I end the second tome of my personal logs. If you managed to get this far, it means I didn’t destroy your very existence on account of your impudence.
So many momentous things happened recently, that I feel all our lives will go through some significant changes. Be that as it may, overcoming obstacles is what life is all about. It makes you stronger, and more appreciative of the things you have.
On a parting note, the third tome of my logs is almost done, and I will make i...
2020-10-14 10:41:35 +0000 UTC View PostMy search for the secret hidden in the depths of the Mariana Trench never stopped from the moment the map became available. I learned every bit of information about the place, watched videos of cameras dropped down below, and even went through all the files of a few manned expeditions.
What those few brave individuals managed to accomplish (despite archaic technology) was nothing short of astonishing. Every piece of data available was meticulously analyzed and it showed me… nothing. O...
2020-10-14 10:39:45 +0000 UTC View PostSome people say that space is empty—they are delusional.
Ok, maybe in broader terms, it can be considered that the space is mostly empty (with occasional planets, stars, black holes, and a few rocks here and there) but if we are looking at Earth’s orbit—it is a completely different story.
Do you have any freaking idea how much junk is in space? I am not talking about naturally occurring things that are classified as near-Earth objects, which include meteoroids, aste...
2020-10-10 10:29:52 +0000 UTC View PostIt was decided from the start that we would need to be food self-sufficient in space.
That is not such a hard thing to do with the level of technology available to us. All you essentially needed is oxygen, sunlight, water, and the nutrients to grow pretty much anything. Oh, yeah, you’ll also need a place for all that growing to go on, but the Ascension was built from the ground up with that in mind. (I have some ideas for space farms in the future. Entire independent...
2020-10-10 10:27:52 +0000 UTC View PostI am getting ahead of myself, which can happen when one has so many different things to do and not enough time to write his thoughts down.
Before Philip Cain went on his historic exploratory mission into the unknown, we made some announcements and released a few chosen files of those appropriated from the ‘High Council’ secret archives. They all went through our bounty site and the number of visitors we started to get was staggering.
The video of Philip Cain damning monologue ...
2020-10-07 10:19:09 +0000 UTC View PostCastle Regnum in Switzerland was the target, and it was a hard nut to crack.
Not by its size, even if it was rather imposing, but for its security which was on the side of clinical paranoia. For God’s sake, they even had the Swiss Army securing all roads to it, which takes some serious pull to arrange.
We could’ve gone all gung-ho and shot our way inside, killing a lot of people who I was sure didn’t have the faintest idea who they were guarding. That would have des...
2020-10-03 10:24:18 +0000 UTC View PostIt was like one of those big jigsaw puzzles that require just one more piece for everything to fit together, or like a game of Jenga where one stick can make the whole tower fall down.
When Agent Martin sent that message to be picked up, it instantly piqued my interest.
I looked at President Garner's condition, and from lab results in his medical records, he had a stroke and went into a coma. It was suspicious, but he was not a young man, and time has taken its toll on hi...
2020-09-30 10:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostOne part of me thought that with medical nanites, funerals of loved ones would not be something I had to deal with. At least not for the foreseeable future. How wrong could I be?
Here I was, giving my own father a space burial when I expected him to be with us for hundreds of years (at the minimum).
As I mentioned before, all these advanced upgrades and medical nanites could make a person theoretically immortal, but the reality is that any severe damage to the brain...
2020-09-26 10:01:25 +0000 UTC View PostAfter those five long days, he finally opened his eyes, and I had to tell him that our father was… dead.
Michael did not take it well; neither did I for that matter. (Part of me is still feeling that emptiness inside, the sensation of something missing.) He was more resilient in a way; his responsibility to the people and that chemical rage, his glands were supplying, made him stronger to deal with the loss for the moment. Nevertheless, his entire demeanor changed, became more rigid a...
2020-09-23 10:24:58 +0000 UTC View PostFive days—that is how long Michael was under, and there was nothing I could do to change it.
The physical injuries his body had suffered were fixed and he should have woken up days ago, but he remained in a coma.
I made a recording of me saying wake up, and played it through his CEI on a loop. He later told me that he heard it, like someone trying to raise him from a deep sleep. It is the same thing the Excalibur’s MI did to me when I was in a similar situati...
2020-09-19 05:42:54 +0000 UTC View PostIt started simply enough, a great opportunity for our media campaign, too good to miss actually, and then…
We let our guard down, thinking that now that the Ascension was out of their grasp, we were safe. Besides, it was such a remote location, who in their right mind would think that it would be dangerous? Michael even said on a few occasions that I was being paranoid for suggesting more and more security for him. It would seem I was not paranoid enough.
Our enemies ce...
2020-09-16 10:07:15 +0000 UTC View Post