Foundation of All

Sean opened his eyes to the sensation of strangely soft and luxurious sheets draping over him. He saw the strangely white unfamiliar ceiling above him and stared at it in confusion for a moment. Then, the memories of what had happened washed over him as he fully came awake. He stood up from the bed naked and noticed that the wristband was still on his wrist. He fiddled with it for a bit before finding the button again and resummoning the clothes around him.

There was a closet to the side and Sean opened it up to find some basic pants and shirts in there like the kind he was used to. Although much higher quality than the ones he had owned before. He put them on over the silver material and noticed to his surprise that they were clearly male clothes. Had Emily prepared this much before he even arrived?

They were extremely baggy when Sean put the clothes on, but after a few seconds they slowly shrank until the pants and shirt were perfectly his size. Amazing.

He left the room and wandered the ship for a bit, unsure what exactly he should do. Half of it was cold metal and chilled and the other half was luxurious furnished and slightly warm rooms. He eventually settled on making his way back to the room Emiily had first brought him to when he arrived. There was a bookshelf in the corner and he browsed the titles of the books she had set up.

“Feeling better?” Emily said from behind him and Sean jumped in surprise. He turned to see her standing behind him in similar clothes as he was wearing currently, a long sleeved shirt and pants with the hint of the gray mesh visible poking around her neck and wrists where her skin would have been exposed, “Guess you really needed it,” she said, “You slept for three days straight!”

Sean turned his thoughts inward and realized that he was much calmer and felt more… rooted in the moment than he had been before. Still a little out of it, but nothing felt as distant as it had been before he slept.

“Emily, why am I so calm?” Sean asked suddenly, “I mean I fought those beetles for multiple days.” He unconsciously rubbed his wrist with his other hand, “My arm must have been ripped off by them hundreds of times. I was… I panicked so much, and then felt nothing at all for a while. So many times… Why am I not a gibbering mess right now?”

“Oh,” Emily replied before chuckling nervously, “Brains are part of you, you know. If your mind ever goes over the edge and you become nonfunctional it heals until you’re not that way anymore. Hence, no gibbering mess. Not to say you can’t go… strange. Or have things go wrong. But your regeneration stops the worst of the trauma a mortal would go through. You’re emotions and hormones and whatnot probably got completely reset when you wedged yourself inside that rock head first. That probably helped your brain figure out that it should calm down a little instead of spiraling and self reinforcing your panic so much. Ever heard of the Standard Brain Index?”

Sean frowned, “What, that test you take when you’re a baby to tell if you have any large neural deviations? Are you saying…”

“Yeah, that was created from studying us and our brains… Immortals I mean. Any changes that our brains choose to heal is abnormal and everything else left on its own is normal. People really put too much stock in that test, people aren’t stable just because their Standard Brain Index is fine. All it says is if people are functional, people outside the standard ranges usually have some kind of developmental disease or similar. Or someone totally detached from reality, or a ‘gibbering mess’ as you put it. But anyway, the point is that you’ll always be within those tolerances by definition, so traumatic events won’t hit you as hard as they used to. Like your battle with the flesh beetle swarm and your injuries, so there’s that at least. And you healed your body right after, so your brain tends to write it off as a dream and not hit you with that wonderful trauma as much either as time goes on. So you can look forward to any injuries bothering you less and less as you go.”

“I suppose…” Sean said, feeling his head as if he would be able to feel his brain and verify her claims somehow.

“Annnnyway…” Emily continued, “I’ve looked into your situation. I’m quite the hacker you know, so I was able to piece together some of what happened in your hometown. Want to come see? I have some footage and documents if you want to look.”

“Sure,” Sean said and followed as she led him to the corner where a black screened device sat on the corner sitting on top of a shelf. She turned it on and sat down as the black display shifted into color. She clicked through the icons, before with a quick glance at him went to the corner of the screen by moving a strange roundish device that she shifted on the table in front of her. As she clicked the icon, the screen flickered for a moment before little dots of light lit up around the surface of the desk and a series of holographic objects flickered into existence. A cup, some paperweights, and several large stacks of papers.

Emily reached out and picked up a few before making more papers vanish or reappear on the desk with some simple hand gestures or muttered commands. Occasionally she would put one of the papers to the side where they would be unaffected by her other commands. After a few minutes she finished up and placed one last holographic paper on the pile.

She twisted in her chair and scooped them up in her arms despite them being weightless. She held her hands over the big pile and pressed it in with a single gesture until it was a single sheet again. She turned and stood and held out the paper to Sean.

“There, that’s everything I could find,” Emily said as she passed it to him. Sean accepted the paper from her and was surprised to find that there was some real weight to it. Not much, but enough to almost trick him into thinking that he might really be gripping a real object.

“Do you want a quick summary of it?” She asked him as he familiarized himself with the commands to request and pull up the various files on the holographic page.

“Sure,” Sean said distractedly as he flicked through and tried to find the oldest file.

“Well, basically they wanted to join the Ruska state and get the protection and money for town infrastructure that comes along with that. There are a couple messages between the two negotiating what the deal would be. There was some kind of argument with your father, he cursed out one of the Ruska state negotiators I suppose when he came to meet the leaders of your town? The details weren’t clear on exactly what happened. But well… Ruska told them to take care of the problem or they would pull out of the deal. I think we both can guess what your leaders thought they meant by that…”

“Ruska…” Sean hissed as he flipped through the files on the holographic page, “Of course Intuli and the elders would want to sell out the village without telling anyone else about it. By the damn shadow! How could they!”

Emily let him stew in his anger as he kept flipping through and reading the messages between the representative and Intuli’s family.

“So, what do you want to do?” Emily asked after a while, “I have a few options depending on how far you want to go.”

Sean looked up, “What can you do?”

Emily hummed and turned back to the computer, “Well… Starting from the bottom… I could send all this evidence and share it with the people in your town. I’m sure they won’t be pleased when they hear what’s happening either.”

Sean shook his head, “They won’t like it but they’re too powerful. They won’t actually get punished when it comes down to it.”

Emily nodded, not seeming surprised, “I kinda got that impression too while I was reading things over. Second is more involved. But you wait and let the Ruska state take control of the town. I’ll pull some strings and the elders will be punished however you want under their rules.”

Sean shook his head harder, “No! I don’t want those… My parents died protesting them taking over. I want to stop it.”

“Okay. Those were the easiest ones though. Next, I can drain them of all their digital assets remotely. The problem is that they have a lot of physical materials and wealth on hand. I’d have to fly down there and sneak in to break their stuff to make sure they can’t recover their wealth. They would be poor and struggle from the hit and I doubt someone like this would last long in politics without his wealth to back him up. With them gone the negotiations would probably fall through with the Ruska. The problem is that I’d have to physically go down there where the government is currently hunting to find the Immortal causing a stir. That video of you regenerating from the beetle attacks was sent to the planetary government through some of their embedded spyware on the exterior cameras.”

Sean hesitated unsure. It didn’t feel like enough somehow, but he wasn’t sure what would be enough. Nothing he did would bring them back.

“And last, you could just kill them all.”

Sean’s head snapped to Emily who was still looking at the device. She noticed his surprise and looked back at him. She raised her hands defensively.

“Look, I really don’t want to do that. But it’s an option and you’re certainly justified in doing so here. I don’t want to lie to you about it and if it comes down to it I’ll still help you go through with that. But it just makes you feel dirty when it's over no matter how justified. But if the other options aren’t enough for you… you can do it.”

Sean imagined strangling Intuli until life left his beady eyes. Wiping that superior smirk off of his face once and for all… and then sighed. What would his parents think of him if he murdered someone in cold blood no matter the reason? His anger cooled slightly and he took another shaky breath.

“No…” he whispered, “I… my parents… they didn’t raise a murderer. Their money… How hard would that be?”

Emily nodded and smiled softly as she turned back to the computer.

“It will take me a few hours to infiltrate their bank and get full access to the right accounts. Going down there would be tricky, I’d have to plan that pretty carefully. Probably would take a few days at least.”

“Okay.” Sean said and Emily looked at him again.

“Okay?” she confirmed.

“Yeah. Let’s do it,” Sean agreed.

“Well, lots to do. You just rest up and keep recovering,” Emily said, “I’ll set everything up and handle it. Just holler if you need help with something.”

Sean turned and then hesitated.

“Emily?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks. For doing all of this… helping me… doing all this work. Just… thanks.”

Emily’s face flashed with a series of expressions before she settled on a slight frown, “It’s nothing, really and I wish I could do more. I’m sorry for your loss, Sean.”

“Thanks,” Sean said again softly before Emily turned back to the computer and kept typing. He wandered off and left her to it. He tapped a silvery button at the corner of a table and a holographic display popped up with various menus.

Sean hesitated for a second before he started exploring the interface. He found some engineering manuals and started reading. It wasn’t exactly the same as those turrets, but at least it was something to distract him. Distract him from thinking of the work he knew that Emily was probably doing right now…