Starborn: Origin of the Stars

When Robin walked over to his workplace, he once again marveled at the sight of the huge industrial buildings left and right to the street. The office blocks and living complexes that reached high into the clouds, back in his district, were gone and made space for huge warehouse-like buildings, only five to ten stories tall, but up to 300 meters wide and some more than 1.000 meters in length.

At least that was what Jim always told him. Hard to guess how far some workshops and facilities reached, if you are not inside to take measure.

After 20 minutes Robin arrived at his destination and stood before a small, red building. Roughly 30 meters wide and not in the best condition, even for this district. Its logo, a single white wing in front of a starry black background, was engraved in a metal plating that hung loose and crooked to the side.

He waited in front of the closed workshop for a few moments, like an unwelcome uncle on holidays, but the door remained shut.

When nothing happened for some time, he sighed as he realized that the damn door was broken again.

“Why the hell doesn’t Jim get his shit together and replace this old thing?” Robin grumbled and closed his eyes. With a little bit of concentration, he tapped into his mutated genes and started to feel for the energy that pulsed through the door between the opening mechanism and the motion sensor.

“Yup, it’s the relay again.” He mumbled when a mental image of the door’s circuits began to form in his head with blue lines representing the energy flow. There was a black spot, where the energy should go through for the door to open. If he just could move some of the lingering electricity from the grid over there, it should activate the relay.

Keeping his eyes shut, Robin tried to grab some energy… nothing.

‘Maybe it’s better if I give it a gentle push…’ nothing.

‘Perhaps I have to pull from the other side of the black spot…’ nothing.

‘Or if I…’

A sudden, loud bang spooked the shit out of him.

With a start Robin opened his eyes and saw the door swinging inwards, still wobbling from the kick the woman next to him had given it.

Taking down her foot, Patience shook her head and scowled.

“Hey mate, why do you just stand there and look like a lost puppy, again?”

Throwing her hands in the air in exasperation, she entered the workshop and continued her rant.

“Just get Jim to buy us a new door. I don’t have time for this shit!”

“Good morning to you, too!” Robin said after he followed her inside and closed the mistreated door.

“Yeah, fuck you!” She answered, “You know, what you are trying there will never work, right? If you could manipulate energy to such an extent, you wouldn’t work here - your mutation would be graded Class B at least, maybe even A, and the government would put a leash on you - to prevent you from stumbling into one of their facilities without having a key.”

Robin ignored her remark and switched the topic “How was your weekend? Did you kick some ass?”

“I tried and failed gloriously” Patience went along, “I was matched with the guy, who later won the championship, in the preliminary round.”

“Did you at least give him a good beating, before he sent you packing?” Robin asked, glancing at the many scratches and the little red bump at her forehead.

“He was a Class D - Strengthened Muscles…”

“Ouhh… bad match up, sorry pal!” He realized that Patience’s last few days must have been pretty rough and decided to avoid the topic for now.

‘You don’t poke a sleeping Burlag with a stick!’

Together they walked over to the little office on the right side to get their assignments for today. Thinking about that blue-haired bomb with a way too short fuse, he suppressed a chuckle.

‘What were her parents thinking when they named her Patience? Was probably more like a wish than a statement.’

Putting his hand on one of the terminals, he checked in for the day and got all his jobs loaded into his Neuro-Chip.

Implanted directly under the bones of his skull and connected to the brain it worked as a second memory to store data. This data was cold, it wasn’t possible to imprint experiences with feelings and all that, only neutral data and information. However, this allowed almost every citizen of the UAS to save important stuff in no time, while also being able to directly exchange such stored data. Only the capacity was a limiting factor, as Neuro-Chips still have a quite small memory.

‘So, let’s see. What’s on the list today?’

Ruffling a little bit through the newly added todo list, Robin found three new assignments and one old, still standing request.

‘It seems like I’ll have to repair two CTVs and make an analysis of some broken device of an old Earth spaceship. Ah yeah, and then there is this stupid request for accompaniment in the Wuranger-Exhibition.’

The Wuranger were an old race that went extinct roughly 1500 years ago. Many people loved to see their quite beautiful crafts and technology, as they had been some kind of wood-aligned elemental-humanoids. It’s said that they had a lot of influence after the disappearance of the Starborn and defended their position for quite some time, before they ultimately fell under the combined attack of multiple other races.

The UAS had learned a lot from their remnants about the state of the universe in the time after the Starborn had disappeared.

For Robin, and most other technocrafters, Wuranger remains are really boring to analyze. Their technology was some crazy voodoo shit, completely based on natural materials and has long lost all traces of energy. It’s not reproducible, there is not much to learn for modern tech and, to be honest, if he wanted to see some pretty flowers, Robin could visit one of Seka’s many green areas and parks. There were lots of good replicas over there.