Board Thread:Story Forum/@comment-26084195-20150522180128/@comment-26084195-20150626203824

 The Enderborn Canon: Chapter Two

 I clutched onto the ledge, trying desperately to keep from falling into the abyss below. Above me, the black armored figure slowly approached, walking along the small path to where I was clinging for dear life.

 “Join me,” he said in his obscured, robotic sounding voice, “and together we shall rule the galaxy!”

 The fool. He really thought that would work? “I will NEVER join you! You killed my father!”

 “No, Luke, I am your father.”

 He was lying. He had to be lying! And yet…

 “No. NO!!!” I wouldn’t listen to this anymore. With no other place to go, I let go of the ledge, and plummeted into the abyss.

 I hit the floor about ten feet below, and I couldn’t help but start laughing. Above, Vader started laughing too.

 “Hologram off!” I said between fits of laughter. The illusion around us dissipated to reveal Troy and I chuckling merrily.

 “Nice one, Troy. ‘I am your father.’ That’s what I call mad genius.”

 “ YOU’RE QUITE THE METHOD ACTOR YOURSELF. ”

 “Alright, alright, enough with the games, we’ve got some work to be done.” I teleported up to the doorway and walked out with Troy.

 “ NEXT TIME I GET TO BE THE GOOD GUY. ”

 “Alright deal. Black looks better on me anyway.” We laughed again and headed out into the camp.

 Rhea was walking by right then, unfortunately, and rolled her eyes at the two of us. “Ugh. You two are like a couple of school children. How you ever managed to become general of an army is utterly beyond me.”

 Troy and I watched her walk away. “ ME-OW. ”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Then it was my turn to roll my eyes. “Cut it out.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “ OH, COME ON. YOU COULD USE A NICE GIRL TO SETTLE DOWN WITH. ”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “OK, first of all, Rhea has a tongue sharper than a stabbing thorn bush. How is that ‘nice’? Second of all, Rhea is never going to settle down. Now stop trying to hook me up! I’m half robot.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “ THAT ONLY INCREASES YOUR APPEAL. I’M TELLING YOU, FLAUNT THE CHROME! CHICKS DIG THE CHROME! ”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Stop talking. Now.” Troy was my best friend, but he was a pain in the butt sometimes. “So, what’s on the agenda for today?”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “ NOTHING. WE HAVE A FREE DAY. WHAT DIMENSION SHOULD WE GO VISIT? ”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “I think I’m going to head on an adventure alone today. Maybe try a new dimension, chart it out. That is my job, after all. Hey Terrence, hey Phillip.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Hi, boss! Look, Phillip, it would be very easy to stop a moon from colliding with a planet! All you’d need to do is change the gravitational constant of the universe.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Morning, sir. Terrence, you’re a moron. No one can change the gravitational constant of the universe.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “You have no imagination, Phillip.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “And you have too much of it.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> I chuckled as I walked away. The only entertainment one needed in this base was to stop and listen to the two of them for a while. Of course, if you prefer crying to laughing, you could always try bartering with Rick. Speak of the devil…

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Hey Rick. Anything interesting for sale?”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> The Testificate took a look in his cart. “I have a lovely bottle of aged red wine from Tir Tairngire. Interested?”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Rick, if I wanted such a thing, I could teleport over to Tir Tairngire and get it without paying for your ridiculous import prices. Also, I can’t ingest fluids, remember?”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Oh well. Your loss. This is the good stuff, my friend.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “That must be why you have another bottle hidden under that seat cushion. You should know better than to drink your own merchandise.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Rick chuckled. “This stuff is worth it.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> I continued on. He always tried to sell me a liquid of some sort.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Suddenly, an image flashed up on my HUD. It was a call.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Hello, this is Eureka.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Eureka! Nice to hear your voice.” A female’s voice said through my dimensional commlink.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Who is this?”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Aww, Eureka, I’m hurt. Can’t you tell?”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> By that tone, it could only be one person. “Ms. Serendipitous-name?”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “You do remember!”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “How could I forget you? So why are you calling me? Going to try to lock me in a time cube again? Or have you come up with some other deliciously evil backstab?”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Hey, it’s not a backstab when you do it to the person’s face!”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Quite frankly, I can see why you’re a member of the Siren corps. I was shocked at what you tried to trick me into that cube.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “All in a day’s work.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Why are you calling?”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Maybe I just wanted to hear the sound of your voice.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “OK, bye.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “No, no, wait, I’m just messing with you.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Why don’t you actually get to the point?”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Because this is more fun. Anyway, the technicians that owe me a favor have been working on something for a few years now. They’ve been building a sort of… apology gift from me to you.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “What sort of apology gift? The sort that will have me trapped in a test tube for study?”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “The sort that will give you the advantage over that old foe of yours. What was his name again? Herobrine?”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Yeah… alright. I’ll come to see you. Heavily armed.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “As though that will make a difference against me. See you soon.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “ SO, WHO WAS THAT? ”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Sirena.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “ YOU MEAN THAT ONE CYBORG GIRL FROM THAT DIMENSION WHO WAS WORKING FOR THE SIREN CORPS. AND TRIED EVERY METHOD POSSIBLE TO GET YOU INTO A TIME CUBE FOR STUDY? ”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Yep. That’s the one.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “ ...GOING ON A SECOND DATE? ”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “TROY!!”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> I walked down into my basement workshop, just a floor above Troy’s experiment room (which was actually a torture room, that he uses on pigs. But he is technically experimenting, so I never argued). I turned on the lights, and there was plenty of machinery down there. But the thing I was interested in was the multiple enclosed chambers around the room. I opened the closest (which happened to be the largest and the only empty one) and stepped inside. The door shut, and I pulled a cable out from the side of my head. Plugging it into the wall, I transferred my person into the systems of the base. My physical body reduced in size and turned normal as my ender essence went with me.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> I went through my various forms, trying to decide which shell would be the best option for this particular mission. I decided to go with my heavy form. It was my physically strongest form, with the best armor and the most weapons. But it was slow.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> I passed along the cable and into the heavy shell. The moment I did, it rose in height and got skinnier, and half it’s skin went black. The Ender essence was with me, not just my body. So it followed me into whichever body I so choose.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> I opened the doors to the heavy’s storage unit. I ran a quick diagnostic on my systems, ensuring there were no bugs or problems in the system, before setting off. I walked to the top of the central tower, where my dimensional nodes are, and focused my mind on the dimension I wanted to go. I then poured my power into the nodes around me, and I could feel myself coming apart, becoming pure cosmic energy. I swirled about with the ebb and flow of the cosmic tides, which carried me towards the shores of the dimension I wanted to go. As the wave which carried my particles crashed upon this dimensional beach, I coalesced into my solid form in this new dimension.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> I looked about. I was standing in a beautiful, grassy field on the planet locally known as Utopia. The White City was somewhere nearby, and it was there I would want to head.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> It was a very long walk. Eventually I made it to the outside of the huge, one-way-mirror like bubble that surrounded the immense White City. Sirena was waiting for me by the gates. I transformed my right hand into a plasma gun, readied my rocket launchers, and allowed my left hand to drift nearer my hunting knife.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> She was unarmed, that’s the first thing I noticed. That made me even more nervous.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> She chuckled. “Come on in. I think you’re going to like this.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “That’s what you said last time we met. I nearly got trapped and experimented on.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Wow. You androids can certainly hold a grudge. Come on.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> She led him through the magnificent wonders of the White City, but didn’t stop at any of them. We made a line toward one of the robotics laboratories there. As she walked, I noticed the occasional flash of silver beneath her exposed skin, the only thing that showed off exactly how much of her beneath that silky skin was metal. And a lot of it was. But then, everyone in this society had cybernetics.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> She led him through the laboratory, eventually coming to a room that contained a lot of robot building equipment, but no robot. The scientist there ran up to shake my hand excitedly.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “You must be the fully independent A.I. that I’ve heard about. Very, very excited to meet you! I only wish I had the chance to study your programming.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Yeah, that’s not going to happen.” Sirena said from behind him. “He’s pathologically afraid of people innocently trying to learn more about him.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Now that was taking it too far. “OK, lady, you listen to me. There is a difference between trying to learn more and capturing to try and experiment on!”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Oh, don’t be a baby. Anyway, doctor, could you show paranoid here the surprise I had made for him?”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Ah, of course.” He rushed over, quite excited, to a portion of the wall, which then proceeded to open, to reveal… an android.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> It was plain steel, with no distinguishing features. Very flat. But it was obviously an android nonetheless.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Erm… what is this?” Eureka asked.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Show him, doc.” Sirena said with a smile.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> The doctor pressed a button, and suddenly, a big cloud of teeny tiny silver nanites came flowing from tiny pores in it’s form. They coalesced into one big silvery cloud above the android.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “A nanite controller! Here, watch this!” He pressed another button, and a small amount of nanites flowed down and surrounded the android. Then, it looked exactly like me. Then it changed to look like Sirena. Then the doctor. Then a hawk. Then a lizard. Then a tiger. Then an eviscerator beast. Then a razorworm.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “As you can see, the nanites allow it to take any form it wishes! But it never actually changes size, the nanites just make it look like it does.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> That was pretty cool, I had to admit. “What else can it do?”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Anything you want it to do! You can turn invisible with these, fly with these, repair things with these, hack things with these, kill things with these, destroy things with these! You can even link up with them to see what they see! And it is Sirena’s gift to you.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> I looked at her in surprise. “Really? What are the strings?”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> She smiled. “No strings, just an apology gift. And a possible favor in the future.”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> The favor part made me feel a little apprehensive, but this was too good to pass up. I made to pick it up.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Ah, wait! You can’t take it yet!” The doctor said. “It has to be set with a default appearance first!”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Sirena got an evil smile on her face. “I’ll do it!”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “NO, WAIT!” I ran to try and stop her, but she’s a member of the Siren corps., there was no way I could outrun her in my heavy form. She made it to the terminal long before me and plugged a finger jack into the terminal.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> I watched in dismay as the body turned into a tall woman with long, bright pink hair.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> Sirena smiled the most awful smile. “You’re going to look so pretty! Who knows, they might even let you into the Siren Corps. with this form!”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> If I could feel rage, I would be seething with it. “You… you little…”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> “Well, enjoy your new gift. Bye!” She skipped off. The doctor, desperately trying to hold off giggles, left with her.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"> I looked apprehensively at the new form. “Well… this’ll be new and fun…”

Thank you for reading the third installment in the Enderborn Canon! Next chapter: Middle Earth!