Chapter 4 - The weight of treasure

I think that it's possible to calculate how much exactly 4GM there is in this thing through its gravitational pool, after all scientists know how much 4GM particles weigh, and how densely they may be organized. I think I even saw how many zeroes there were in that number once and said 'damn', before forgetting it. But I do remember it was presumed the lightest thing in existence, and considered almost weightless. 

I think they calculated it from condensing an object out of a certain volume and weighted it.

But the problem I see with this method right now is that when we use 4GM to construct something, we get an almost translucent object as if we built it from clear glass or transparent crystal. It may vary in color depending on the person using it. Something to do with the possession principle. All particles are the same, but your particles are your and someone else's particles are theirs, until you extract them or release them.

Anyway, color varies, but it has not been fully studied how that influences the object or the use of these particles in general. Or it may have been, but the truth was hidden from the general public. I would not be surprised.

Take a guess what color are mine?

If you did listen to my ramble then you heard that I had only a flashlight and the green light coming from the suit. The light in the horns can be omitted. They shine only when you give order to the particles. 

I did mention the horns we all carry, right? It's not like these particles come forward on their own asking to be useful. You need a special resonator/transmitter/receiver blah blah something. We people just refer to them as horns. Horns transmit our commands to the particles and allow us to sense them, which allows us to also use them as information carriers. After all, just like 3rd generation matter, they can travel through space faster than light. Something to do with bending space and time, similar to Neutrinos, if I remember right.

Damn I think I went off-topic once again. I know that I've been blabbering too much lately. But don't blame me, I've been here alone talking only to myself for… I am not gonna spoil it for you. You would have to hear my story to find out.

Anyway. Back to the issue I was talking about at the beginning. As you may have noticed I have not even once mentioned transparent or translucent walls in this ancient ruin. Because they are not. If they really are made of the 4GM as my buddy Keith and I suspect, then this means that hell of a lot more particles have been packed into these walls with some still unknown to us methods than we thought possible. Which would be a very logical explanation of its indestructibility.

Theoretically, 4th Generation Matter is so small that if you make a material purely out of it, then the distance between particles would be smaller than the smallest atom. Thus, not a single thing in the world with huge gaps between atoms would be anywhere close to this hardness. Well, this was explained to us in school when we were shown how easily a blade made of 4GM cuts through a diamond. And diamond is considered the hardest possible thing, because no matter how much you compress it, you would not get anything harder, until it changes into a new state of material.

What I try to say here is that it is entirely possible that this thing is not translucent and so hard that it is capable of withstanding any weapon that we have used to try to pry it open, because a lot more particles is pressed together into the same space than what we consider even possible, and thus if we try to calculate how much money there is here from its mass, it may be far from the correct answer. As in very devalued than its actual price. Damn. Never felt so rich to count money in its gravity. 

Not that it is mine. First I need to survive, or I'll be like that Simba or Sigma guy, whatever his name was, in that fairy tale, where he died in his treasure vault, after forgetting the password to the door.

And to survive I first need food.

"Finally." I said wheezing from strain. Going up so many stairs in my weakened, after days long starvation, state isn't a good idea. Let's hope my hunch was right and the place I was going to search through would be a lucky find. Because not many of them were left on my list already. I've been walking for hours now in search of something that the maintenance unit would point out to me as a device even distantly having something to do with food.

"Fucking Demons. Couldn't you build canteens on every floor if they are so high from each other? You can starve to death before reaching it." I grumbled while leaning on the wall, to take a break. Well not like the one who built it cared much about the comfort and convenience of the crew. After all, this whole thing was built out of particles that belong to one person. 

All of it just to a single guy. Everyone others were just his slaves. His working bees. And this big thing was his hive.

If you think about it in this key, it becomes apparent why this place is so haphazard inside, why there are so many wide open halls without seemingly any use to them. One person literally can't fucking think through and architect the thing of this size in his head even with the help of AI, not to mention oversee the particles to construct everything right. It would take him several lives worth of time just to oversee this damn thing's construction.

My best guess is that the guy slacked. Yep. Pure and simple. He must have built an outer shell and some core pillars to hold it all together, then left the rest of it to the guys with such maintenance units such as the one in my hands, that give fat more control over the rest of the particles than mine, but does not let the user steal them. After he let them do whatever they needed for themselves to live here he went back to his luxury suite, where hot babes were already waiting for him with Margen or something fancy. I never tried it, but there should be a reason it cost more than my life, right? Anyway, that's my explanation of how this structure went to be so fucked up.

Moral. You can't just leave it to slaves and hope it will somehow turn up well organized, structured and logical.

Pfft. You should have seen some ghetto space stations that we have. It's better to blast the hole through the hull and walk around than find your way inside of it. There's a high chance some people actually do, seeing how often I hear the news about some dilapidated space station blasted to dust. 

Can't help feeling grief every time I hear something like that. After all, I grew up on one of the stations just like that. Wonder if it's still out there or already burst apart killing everyone who lived there? 

I sighed loudly once again and straightened, ready to continue my travel, but first I should drink some water. Filling my belly with water is the only thing I can do to quench the sense of hunger.

As I drank in one go half the water supply my suit was able to stock, the green light produced by the small glass-like beads all over it intensified.

Yeah, my particles are green, or greenish. Greeny? They should be neon green if I construct an object with them, but I never had so many to make something perceivable, and I had several bad financial years on top of it. So now very dim dark green-colored light is all I am able to produce. Laughable. Not even a third of the suit's full power.

Ah, about that. It's one of the abilities of 4GM particles. They can perform efficient work. Basically we have compact energy generators built into almost everything we have today, including the astro-suits, battle armors and even casual clothes. Yeah, can you be trendy when you don't shine like a red district's top slut house? 

We all love to shine. Shining is cool…Nah. It's bullshit. We don't really have a choice. The particles start to emit light whenever they are excited and being forced to do work for us is very exciting. If we don't make these glassy light diffusers, the generators would very quickly overheat. 

Overheating is quite a big issue in civilization built around fighting and endless size comparisons between self-proclaimed alphas. I'd say males, but it would be sexism, because there are alpha bitches like Keith's dear wife, almost as much as males. If not more. After all, men tend to die quicker and in more stupid ways than women. Something to do with that size competition I mentioned earlier, I think.

Anyway, overheating is a problem. To some people at least. So as inherent to the civilization fixated on fighting and killing each other, we love to advance the methods to kill each other more efficiently. Generators belong to this category as well.

In the past, all people wore sophisticated dynamo machines producing power from the rotating action of the particles, so light diffusing parts were almost palm sized and generators were quite thick. But after a while we came up with solid state 4GM power generators that had no moving parts and were very thin. With these we could make suits less bulky, and more elegant, but best of all it did not cost anything to integrate them practically into anything. 

But…

And you would say: No way man. No way you wear the old school rotating power generator!

But yes. I do have one. The main one. It's on my suit's back under the coat. 

I have a reasonable explanation, guys. Hear me out. 

Efficiency ratio. SSG's are cool, compact, silent, and can make your suit look cool, but they are less efficient. Which means I would waste a lot more 4GM whenever I use them. And I was broke most of my life. I learned to be frugal…well before I got used to life on the Arena and went crazy with the idea I could perform wonders in fights betting when countless before me failed miserably.

So yeah, I have an old school wall clock-seized rotating generator with a wide circle tempered glass on my back, but in my defense, I'll say that many rich guys may be seen wearing them as a new trend lately. I just never left this trend, that's all, or maybe they stole the idea from me, which makes me a trend setter.

Besides, it's not like rotating generators have left the field entirely. Because of their better efficiency ratio, and in big ass space batalias this efficiency is more important than compact size, many battleships still have power weapons charging from rotating generators that are bigger versions of mine.

As I mentioned, we still do them, wars and space battles between each other, just on smaller scales and rarer than in the past. Only most problems between countries get solved on the Arena, not all.

"Well, someone else's problems are their problems, mine problems are mine." I said, sighing after I finished drinking. As I started to walk down the hall, I glanced to the side and something caught my attention. 

Among the deciphered descriptions that my ghost assistant has been projecting before my eyes every time I glance on things that resonate with the maintenance unit, one word was highlighted with bright red font, as I ordered my assistant to do.

"Hale-fucking-luyA!" I screamed as I saw the word food stand out among all others, and it was leading me exactly where I was going. Canteen. I've found it!