Chapter 2 - Not entirely hopeless situation

"IT'S ALIVE!" I shouted, raising my hands to the ceiling.

Purple light streamed from underneath my feet and spread in a jagged vein-like pattern through floors to the walls and then ceiling, dimly lighting up the room with that eerie amethyst neon color. Once the pulsing lightning-like pattern spread through the room I was in, it flooded into the halls and continued to spread further with every pulse, that seemed to be in tact with my own heart beat.

I stood in silent anticipation for a few minutes, but nothing else happened. No sounds, no movements, no nothing other than slowly pulsing dim light.

"Cool. I can see now." I muttered aloud, lowering my hands.

It seems that the light did not spread very far, because the halls still remain pitch black from the furthest end and I can't really say it became light here now. Just lighter than before. Still far better than the dark greenish gloom barely enough to discern the things closely around me that my suit was able to produce with its glowing parts. 

I do have a flashlight, but it points only in one direction. We humans feel a lot calmer when we are surrounded by the bright light from all sides, not when we have to point the torch into the darkness to discern what kind of monster our mind imagined this time in the shadows.

Although, by now, I have become used to the shadowy tricks that my mind likes to play and feel total indifference to any imaginary threat hiding in these dark halls and rooms, I still feel slight relief from being able to see a lot further.

"Not that it's bright now though…" I sighed in disappointment. "But at least something. I can work with that, I guess." I said to no one in particular, while looking around me.

Yeah, I feel relieved not because my eyes can discern threats from a distance now. Nah. Had there been any, they would have killed me days ago. 

After all, I did walk out into the widest hall I've ever seen in my life and screamed with all my might if anyone was there. It was a few days ago and apparently no one's home. So fuck it. I am done with jumping from any strange shadow. There's too many of them here to jump from each and every one.

The biggest threat here so far are damn holes and bottomless abyss that I can fall into if I don't see well where I am going.

But my biggest relief came from the thought that I can finally see the things I am working on. You can't imagine how uncomfortable it is to repair some mechanism or wiring in total darkness with only a damn flashlight, that most of the time you need to hold between your teeth to have both hands available, until you try it. It was hell. My jaw must be squire now from all that strain.

Yeah, you all may be wondering by now 'what the hell dude? You just spoke about reviving the mega structure of absolute evil, and now you're telling us about how you're glad to work without a flashlight?'.

Well if you listened well, I already sighed in disappointment, what else do you want from me? You didn't think I'd press a switch and cosmic terror just fucking starts up like a new shuttle, didn't you? Well, I kinda hoped, but we all know shit doesn't work like that, the events I initially spoke about would happen years later, it's my story and I decide where to start it from. So bear with it. You're not the ones stuck in this piece of junk for days, with no way to get out and no one able to come save you. I am. And I decided to describe how I've gotten myself into that.

Anyways, I've been trying to repair this ancient piece of junk with only a flashlight for days without any hope at all. Having light is good.

Having light means this shit really can be repaired. It's not a fool's work. It means I can really do something about my situation and not die here in total solitude.

Speaking of solitude…

I looked at the questions piling up in the chat screen in the corner of my view and insta scrolled to the top to see what Keith had to say to all this.

"Holy fuck, dude, you really are in some kind of ancient maze. Wtf? Where is this place? I am flying there immediately!" Sounded Keith's voice, when I activated his message. There were a bunch of other questions that made me roll my eyes and facepalm.

"Wtf is my question exactly, man! Did you think I was joking with you this whole time?" I said and sent him the voice record.

Keith was my old buddy and the only male friend I actually ever had. My bro. Don't know why though, but we somehow clicked with each other, although we both were from totally different worlds.

He from a well off family. Me a rugrat orphan. 

He an extravert running after every skirt, with a two-meter-long list of names in his one night stands conquest chronicles. 

Me an introvert and… No, not bashful. I was never shy. When you grow up on the streets, embarrassment disappears naturally. Being shy as a rugrat orphan in our world is almost a certain death sentence. To survive as an orphan you need to be brave, cheeky and impudent. Shyness had no place in orphans' lives. It was equal to early death. 

So I was not really shy to talk with girls. I just knew my worth in their eyes, or more like worthlessness, and did not bother to even try. For me, one glance into a girl's eyes was enough to see what she truly saw in me, even if she smiled demurely at me in Keith's presence.

Well even without trying I still managed to score some, so fuck off, guys, I was not virgin on the path of celebat as you just thought.

There are some girls who see further than your wallet. And I was handsome. Yeah, be jealous. Because I could score quite a few even without trying. What about you?

Well, my relationship with girls was mostly short and rare though. Well at least a lot rarer than Keith's but a lot longer than his. I don't really remember a girl he fucked twice back then. I think the conquest offered him more joy than actual sex.

Anyways. Where was I? Ah, yes.

He had a good education as a spaceship engineer, and I was no education odd-jobber. But I was smart and a quick learner with a strong drive to survive in this shitty world, in which the weak get ground into feed for livestock, so I took lots of different odd-jobs and managed to hold my head above the water. Also, machines were always easy to understand for me. 

At some time I found myself as a skilled jack of all trades and a good acquaintance recommended me to the spaceship where his friend worked. That's where me and Keith met and for some inexplicable reason became friends.

After that we worked together on several ships. Keith always dragged me with him when he found a better place with better pay for both of us.

His golden tongue for which he was known among many girls, if you know what I mean, had another good use and landed us not a few good work offers that we may not have been even fully qualified for, but we both learned fast and made sure to show they did not make the wrong choice hiring us.

I am not sure where the golden tongue phrase originated from; it's just a saying, alright. I know gold or any base material does not actually cost shit, but I heard in ancient times they used it as a currency just as we do Crystalline now or in short Cry.

Who knows maybe in the future people would not know what Cry is and why we think it's good when it's not worth a shit… Yeah, you wish. Would I write here an essay on the shit we've gotten ourselves into with this cursed technology if it was possible? 

Time to change the topic. I am not in a mood to start new philosophical refinements on the worth of soul in our Era.

So Keith and I think of each other as true brothers and I think we would have easily gone through our entire life side by side, if not for his family. He never wanted to return home but could not really oppose his father.

His family circumstances were…difficult. Not very special in our Era, it's quite common even I'd say. Difficult as in not very pleasant.

Keith had no talent for battles unlike his step-brothers, so he was all but forgotten by his shitty dad from childhood. So, as soon as Keith stood on his feet, financially speaking, he packed up and walked away without bothering to say farewell.

But years later all his step-brothers dropped dead in an Arena one by one. Maybe they were not as talented as Keith's dad thought. Anyways the shitty father of his had no more heirs other than his 'useless son', so he forced Keith to return and breed a few brats from a thoroughbred bitch of his choosing, whom Keith never met until he got back home and as I know never managed to like either. 

Which is no surprise, because the girl has a stick up her arse so deep she can't bend, so she walks straight as ruler and looks only up to not notice us insignificant bugs. Not my words, Keith's. 

Well I heard many people who achieve anything of significance on the Arena naturally get this haughty and arrogant. Especially so for those high-bred families. And she really has some top shit achievement on the Arena behind her belt, that she has all the rights to be proud of… unlike Keith's dead brothers and dad who as I heard wasn't actually an overly strong fighter himself. So her character must have been extra unpleasant when she was similarly forced into marriage by her family with "talentless" guy of all things. 

Did I mention we recognize only one talent in our Era? The talent to be a fighter. All else is considered insignificant to be mentioned. Yeah, that's our world. You now know why I add shitty before word world all the time.

In short, you can imagine a life with a haughty talented girl who was forced to get pregnant from a guy she deems useless and not worthy to even mop the floors in her house. 

I bet life was not sweet for my bro. However, Keith adores his kids, so he tolerates the overly important bitch. We joked that he should have carried out the plan 'Seed and Skid' - bolting before even getting to know whether she got pregnant from his load dump. Technology would have made it 100% possible anyway. 

But I knew he would want to be a better father to his kids than his was to him. I can't blame him for deciding to stay and settle. To tell you the truth, I would have thought less of him had he abandoned his kids as his father did with him. And I think the insufferable alpha bitch has good sides to her too. Otherwise, would he breed her not once or twice but three times? 

Yeah, in the years he produced to this world three adorable angels by that Megaera, who's records he shows me at any opportunity. They are his treasure now.

Although we haven't seen each other face to face for ages, we still talk regularly, that's why I know so much. He is still the only guy I can honestly call a friend, and I am actually the only friend he has. He never managed to fit into the high-bred bunch he is forced to mingle with now. 

Shortly after Keith left for home, I've found myself a really sweet spot in the maintenance of The Arena itself. And for a time my life was really good. But living inside the greatest gambling spot in the galaxy and staying the only guy that does not gamble is unreal. Any pastime activity here, one way or another, involves gambling. And gambling can fuck up your life big time.

I won't explain for long, lest it sounds as if I make excuses again, and I am not. I am the only one at fault for my ruined life. I don't blame the system, the fighters I bet on or anything else, other than myself. 

But there is one thing you should keep in mind. When you live in The Arena, surrounded by its events. Know some behind the scenes curious facts about the teams, participants and their equipment, discuss with all your acquaintances every event, soon you start to perceive yourself as an expert in these things, and, wish you or not, at some point you start to think you can make money off of it. Somehow this place corrupts. It instills this thought into your head and slowly but surely chips away at your will to resist it.

You may think you would not be the guy to end up like that, well so did I when I saw countless guys losing their lives for their unlucky gamble, in my first years of living here. Then I made some money in my later years. Then I lost everything, successfully stepping into the same shit each and every one of them did before me, repeating their fate to the letter.

Everyone here gambles. 100%. Some just do it better than others. Well better than me at least.

Well enough of that. I have gone off-topic a lot already. What I wanted to say is that Keith is the only one I consider as my true friend and in this sticky situation he is the only one I shared my plight with. 

Of course, I was careful not to mention where exactly I ended up, lest the transmission be intercepted. I would of course know immediately about it, you know, the cool perks of quantum entanglement and all that shit, but it doesn't change the fact that someone might hear this and there is nothing I can do about it. 

So if I am really hoping of getting out of here some day, and I actually do, I better not mention anything about finding a way inside the indestructible shell of a most coveted, by literally everyone in this galaxy, vault of treasure. So far, anyone may only assume that I am inside any one of the millions of forgotten ruins of the previous Era.

To keep it that way I made sure to choose my words right when I told him of my plight, asking for his help with an engineer's expertise.

As I said, I am a jack of all trades and good at repairs and maintenance, but not an engineer. And reviving some of these ancient systems requires a mean shitload of knowledge and expertise that I or any other guy in this galaxy simply can't fit into his head with or without the ghost-assistant.

Ghost assistant is what we call the system installed into our head that helps us do shit in our mind, like send messages, record what I see, repeat some stuff from my memory or show me a memory of someone else like a super high-quality movie. You get the gist I guess. In short, a personal assistant inside my brain. It has other functions as well, but we will touch on that topic another time.

If you are wondering about the part about messaging each other…

Well, having live voice or video talk over half a galaxy is no big deal in this Era indeed. But you need to be somewhere in the close proximity of the 4GM retransmitter, which is not my case at the moment. So we have no other choice than to send these old school delayed messages designed for out of retransmitter reception cases such as mine. Although it's hard to imagine someone finding himself so far away from a retransmitter nowadays.

After all, by close proximity I mean to be somewhere on the same planet with it. As in a few fucking thousand kilometers away from it at least. And every ship, house and cooking ware has it. No, I am exaggerating, but every ship and planet having it is true.

But I am currently inside an ancient cosmic monolith structure the size of a GIANT planet. I don't really know how deep, but the fact that there are retransmitters all over its surface, yet none of them is close enough for me to have a quick connection, means I am at least one whole normal planet deep.

Yeah, crazy scale of measure but as I said, world terror shits come only in ultra big sizes.

Which also means that unless I find some means of travel capable of getting me out of here, I am fucked. There is no way anyone can travel such a distance with his own two legs.

The only logical solution was to make some of the dead for centuries machines of pure evil work for me.

So yeah, I asked my bro Keith for help. With both our brains combined, within a few days, I managed to bring light to these pitch black halls. Isn't this an achievement? It's a very, VERY, good sign guys.

How did I get myself in this sticky situation?

Well, that kind of thing may happen when you plunge into a dark hole knowing it may very well be a one way ticket. To tell you the truth I am more surprised by the fact that I survived, rather than by the fact that I managed to somehow get here. Yeah, had I known, I would have bought a two-way ticket, duuh.

No, it's not my hobby to jump into any pitch dark hole wide enough to welcome me, nor is urban exploration my hobby. It was just a hopeless situation. At that time, I could either make a leap of faith or be first beaten by several very big brutes, and then still die in the process of extraction, when they'd try to get back at least a few Crystalines from the amount I owed them. 

Not sure if I even had a few crystals worth of particles in me. All I knew I was not leaving that dead-end I unluckily ran into while fleeing from the said heavies. 

Why give them the joy of getting a few Cry from me if I was going to die from it anyway? So I flipped them a birdy and said 'Adios' to this shitty world before jumping into the darkness.

The last thing I remember before the hit is how long it took to the bottom of that hole. It took so long I actually managed to shit my pants from fear and order my suit to clean up long before smacking against the floor. Oh yeah, and there was some kind of strange flow of air current and I felt myself being dragged somewhere to the side before falling again. It may have been repeated a few times even. I am not sure. It was pitch black. 

When I woke up my body hurt as if those big guys followed me here, beat the shit out of me while I was unconscious and then went away, but surprisingly I survived. 

That was several days ago.

Now that I have light and at least some response from this presumed dead monstrosity, let's see what else I can do.