The Star 20

"According to the doc, you should be able to hear me alright now. You're suffering from stasis sickness. Remarkable really. A very small percentage survive a stasis lasting longer than a few consecutive years in those kind of low end pods." Uno's voice said.

With effort, Sonny managed to ask how long it had been.

She replied, "Well, it hasn't been that long from our perspective. But from your carrier's perspective, it's been... much longer."

"How is everyone? What happened?" the young mage croaked as he ran some inner healing through the sluggish cells of his body.

She moaned in frustration. "We were kind of hoping you or your pod might be able to shine some light on the first part. The second part... We know how things went off the rails but not much past that. Our transport vessel passed over the track of another that was using an unauthorized and unlogged distortion drive. Since yours was following in our wake...

"It's all kinds of technical. The footnote is pretty simple though. All in a line, everything's fine. Second to cross the track, your body's on stack... Oh, 'on stack' means that you go into stasis not knowing how long you'll be there.

"That's where the mystery begins with your trip, though. It looks like you hit some kind of weak spot and shot to the Blue Zone. As bad as your experience was, there was one good thing to come out of it. Your vessel unintentionally opened the possibility of a huge shortcut from the edges of an Alliance territory group to a spot just beyond the Green Zone. Once it's cleared for use, Terra Capri is going to turn into a moderately buzzing transport hub."

Sonny inwardly cringed. He knew what caused the 'mystery' during their years 'on stack', at least. The opened path was real enough but it was caused by Grant establishing his domain, stepping into tier five. Cole following shortly afterwards was only a minor point that added to the strength of reality's response. Like everything else that didn't 'fit the program', they and the entire transport vessel they were on were shunted to the Blue Zone.

After getting filled in on his current surroundings and finer details, he figured that Grant course corrected for safety and maybe a little curiosity over the artifact in the caldera, or lack thereof if it wasn't actually there. How their transport vessel arrived relatively close to its originally planned destination and why his companions weren't with him was a continued mystery. But, the only place with possible answers wasn't hard for him to guess.

The last detail that confused the compulsory Alliance investigator what that only he and a few dead crew members were sent to station. To send the dead and himself back meant that the living had stayed. He'd be a lot more sure if Corvinus had came back too but he figured that the living were either made to stay by his companions or they didn't want to leave.

Whether whatever awaited them at the caldera was danger or opportunity, he was sent back out for some reason. There were too many unknowns to speculate further and he had to finish recovering before he could dig for answers himself. How he had reverted to the 'default skin' of somewhat androgynous older teen while keeping most of the superior internal benefits of the Corvinus granted form was where he started.

By some intuitive instinct, he could feel that the ex-Centerland soldier was still alive but dimensionally far beyond what he could follow, much like the realm of his spiritual center. The best guess that he could come up with was that subtle influence from his greater self's pressure and the estranged distance of the one who had granted his pattern had combined to create the scenario. There weren't any downsides that he couldn't live with.

In fact, he felt slightly more real and more strongly connected to his greater self. But other than that, nothing much else had changed. Not that surprising since all he had done was lay around like a pack of freeze dried peas. Before that pack of peas could get to the tasks he desired, he had to fulfill some minimum needs and obligations, however.

Thus began two of the most uninteresting 'active' years of his life. Lacking a crew, he was thrown into one with Uno and a rotating group of strangers. The only alleviation was a brief period of a convenience relationship with the savvy tech girl towards the end. As soon as she had enough chips to cash out for better job and relationship opportunities, they went their separate ways without looking back.

His casual and seemingly inexhaustible youth clashed with her desperate attempt to hold on to the last fading sunset of her own. Her desire for safety and security clashed with his secret agenda behind the somewhat lazy but undeniably hazardous job. Last of all was resentment.

On a mostly subconscious level, she blamed him for her current state. No company would trust a techie who went rogue and snitched on her employer, regardless of reason. She likely would have went down in flames if she hadn't but there was a moderate chance Glenn would have shielded her. A commercial transportation company gave her a way out of salvage but it wouldn't be anywhere near the same pay or prestige that Eclipse had offered.

He thought fondly of her but understood that deep rooted feelings weren't something a mountain of logic could move. It was sad that he never felt like he could trust her because of that. He could have offered her everything she wanted and more, otherwise. But in darker and more honest moments, he admitted that he wasn't in love with her. He only felt a sense of affection and an instinctual urge to provide for the one who provided him pleasure and comfort, nothing more or less.

He hadn't only been meditating and pursuing a lukewarm romance between assignments. During his time with the Salvage company, he had found out that Yessamin was the daughter of a CEO on the board of the salvage company. Though she expressed her gratitude and hoped her leg up for him had been enough to give him a good start in the wider Universe, she didn't want anything to do with him or the two other 'lucids'. Sonny could empathize that remembering her time in deep VR hadn't exactly been a positive thing for her.

Oliver DID express a lot of interest in meeting but his father was strict. Even though he cleared the psychological hurdle to be independent, there was no denying the very much childlike physical form he currently had or the needless waste of artificial aging. The loss of security, of being 'cut off', if he stepped out of his father's shadow was immense as well. He was a low end Alliance aristocrat until he left home, after all.

The 'little' sniper was an interesting puzzle. He had experienced more than just several years of deep VR. He had experienced a whole other life in another reality. He had lived, grew to a respectable old age filled with events and passed away before being snatched back in a rubber band effect through the young adept's Deathless Mound. Reading between the lines, Sonny got the impression that Nadir was still 'with' him.

The young adept and Oliver had looked into Wade but couldn't find anything. The pint sized black ops in training did reveal that Wade's choice to not follow Sonny in the dream wasn't the cowardice it had initially seemed. Somehow, the archer had realized he was stuck in deep VR but that hadn't automatically booted him as it should have. At the time, Oliver had thought the guy was nuts and was only running away from reality. Sometimes truth was stranger than fiction but Sonny thought that Wade's 'realization' had a lot to do with his poorly understood entanglement power and the Doc Agave that had drawn some 'real life' potency from its real life counterpart.

It surprised the young adept to know that deep VR was a known thing, an uncommon but well documented phenomenon. It was just incredibly rare for people to remember what they did there. Some people, particularly abusive over achiever parents, had tried to induce it on purpose for the gamble of possibly obtaining immense benefit in early maturity and surprising skills people could come back with. However, the only methods proven to work were so risky and laden with unwanted side effects that only the nearly suicidally desperate still tried from time to time.

For his own part, Sonny held a fear and distrust of immersive virtual reality. Deep, shallow or anything in between, he wanted nothing to do with it. Not that it mattered much. Induction was a one time deal for youths. The dangers of attempting to 'download' knowledge and life experience more than once was rife with problems and going into a suspended animation state just to play games or use virtual class rooms and such, simply didn't appeal.

***

On the return trip of his second to last run with the salvage company, a run of all new faces he only interacted personally with for a few minutes and a couple hours over speaker, Sonny received a message.

A young girl's voice projected to his mind, "Don't go on the last run. It's a tarp, er, trap! Use your personal craft and head back to where the dreaming archer died. The message a friend tried to leave you has appeared along with a chance to redeem more... friends, not messages. I'm not very good at this mysterious advice stuff yet."

A far more mature woman's voice added, "You're not to be speaking to outsiders at all. I understand your mild attachment but drop it before you cause yourself and this young man great harm... Sonny Desmond, I would suggest doing as our youngest sister here has instructed. But if you do, favoring the choice of compassion over desire and need will serve you better."

He was spooked by the understanding that powerful peeping toms were not only watching him but could see assets that he hadn't revealed. It helped a great deal that they seemed benign but he had grown accustomed to having his secrets.

Thinking back at them, he said, "Are you the ones behind the model in deep-"

"For your own safety as well as ours, never project such opinions out loud again. No, we are not the ones who built it... For your sake and hers, I ask you not to attempt contact with River. It jeopardizes both of your futures. The fate of the past is a poison that lingers within her. You'll understand once you have fully realized yourself," she said.

The name the woman dropped, sparked a shadowy memory within the depths of himself. The thought of doing anything that might harm her brought a welling of regret and sadness with little reference as to why but he chose to honor the feeling. An empathic echo of complex but affectionate feelings poured from the source of the little girl voice as the stern but generous hearted woman sent a concise sense of approval.

While he contemplated their advice, a broadcast message lit up the wall mounted monitor in his room. "Junior Chief Desmond, a vessel on distortion track six requests your presence for an excavation salvage in Blue Zone. Not only is it a cakewalk routine settlement equipment retrieval at Enigma Field site 12B, for interrupting your downtime, the board will clear your cut of the commission. Since its your last run, I'm sure you can appreciate the nice little going away present."

Without a second thought, Sonny replied, "I refuse."

"Why? You know these are the kind of assignments we live for. It's low risk, short travel with a 2K minimum chip payout! These kind of assignments can't be asked for!" the man on the other side said.

Sonny chuckled darkly and said, "A middle of the line performance record 'scab' on his way out the door is given a slot in a job usually reserved for a brown nose team assignment? It would seem like a going away present but it could also be a way to 'salvage' me. No thanks."

While the dispatcher exercised his overworked silver tongue to talk the young adept into filling the slot, Sonny checked company rolls to find the thing he would have missed if taken by surprise. The Timbol family that controlled majority shares had cashed out. Yessamin had decided to not inherit her father's position upon his retirement. That meant the company was due for a shakedown in the aftermath of a hostile battle for control between the remaining board members. Such battles were costly and they were more likely to take some shady or dangerous assignments and even falsify job report details.

A few minutes later, the dispatcher came back with an official order for him to take the assignment on contract. Sonny sneered and issued the pass token he'd earned for his previous year of completed service. It was the token Uno had tried to convince him to use for a vacation. His insistence to hold onto it had been the catalyst for their breakup.

With a depressed and anxious voice, the dispatcher returned ten minutes later with a new final assignment that possessed minimal changes but essentially was the same one he'd just refused. The young adept didn't bother responding. He just forwarded the receipts of conversation and the two nearly identical contracts to a law consultation group with a retainer fee, along with his suspicions of false assignment details.

After that, he didn't bother returning to his crap apartment. He tendered his resignation, handed in the time adjusted fine for early contract termination and went on 'vacation' to a sunny place with cheap entertainment. It took nearly all he had left but he purchased a voluntary unemployment period voucher to keep his citizenship status unthreatened while he pursued entrepreneurship.

A person with a vendetta against Yessamin might have targeted him but the salvage company's board of directors didn't care about him as a whole. To keep from having to reveal details, they withdrew the assignment and issued it to someone else. With a lukewarm threat, they settled out of court for a tenth of an amount the young adept could care less about if it was a hundred times more. Annoyance dealt with, he chilled in 'trash paradise' for long enough to shake suspicion and the tail the company paid to keep tabs on him.

A few months of black market medicine sales and free living later, his flying saucer had finally restored enough to use safely as long as his personal suit was active. Ironically, once it was in use, it's rate of recovery would increase exponentially. There was just too much his ability to 'mend' couldn't cover that it could accumulate itself. Once it was traveling through whatever extra dimensional space it could access for its version of 'faster than light' movement, the craft would reveal the ingenious nature of its design.

With a feeling of his meaningful life going off pause, he paid one last visit to some friends that lived in a party house to blow off some steam. He cut loose for a night that was remembered by some for years to come. If he slipped a little life quality improving supplements into their recreational refreshments, no one would know but him.

Their small sparks of warmth had made his self imposed loneliness comfortably bearable but they were far from trustworthy or even good people. They were very good at some things, however. Slightly tipping the karmic scale in his favor was how he decided to bury the hatchet on some mutual exploitation with the young adults wasting away their best years there.

It seemed to be a nice way to close the brief chapter of his life spent in shallow and self indulgent vanity. The bittersweet memories that helped him achieve some balance to his emotional maturity was just a bonus. The things he had learned about himself and the richer understanding of pleasure, vice, and its allure were invaluable treasures. The price of his tuition for those life lessons was cheap in comparison to what the rest of them would pay.

Without giving in to the urge for a final nostalgic tour of the seedy pleasure town, he flagged down a taxi and went for a drive out into the barren tundra beyond it. From a run down and dusty diner in the middle of nowhere, he trekked into the desert proper. Scanning his surrounding as thoroughly as he could, he whipped out the flying saucer and left the planet.

For a moment, he was torn in indecision. He wanted to go directly to the Blue Zone but he wanted to check in on his family. With the thought that time could equal complications with the first, he set off for the Blue Zone with a slight heaviness in his heart.