Mortal Protection Services Chapter 20: VI.MM: Meeting of Minds

Read chapter 20 of Mortal Protection Services by B.T.Skull on NovelPedia.

VI.MM: Meeting of Minds Jim Unknown Space Station I stood there tapping my toes in my grippy socks, looking at my imaginary wrist watch. "What's the holdup? It should take very little real time for her to get me a power cell core from my avatar and come back. Ugh! Damn unreliable cat helpers. I should have made a dog. Dogs are much better at fetch." The hyperspace window watching me closed. I guess the Abstainer didn't like my commentary. Or they've been caught already, which... would be a surprise. J.A.M.E.S. doesn't usually work that fast. You ever feel like someone's watching you when there's clearly no one there? A common human experience, no? While there's a good chance you're just being paranoid, there's a much smaller chance someone in hyperspace was peering at you through an invisible window. I was very attuned to that feeling in this meat suit. I had initially thought I was on a human space station, but this was $̵̥͒%̴̜̚#̷͚͝&̴̭̋!̶̬̇ technology, and that changed everything. I knew exactly where I was, but no ships were coming. This is why I had dispatched Mafdet for a power core as soon as I was able. Had I forgotten this place existed. No... no, I always knew it existed. I can remember watching when they built it... but it hurts my brain to remember so long ago. Maybe J.A.M.E.S. was right. I am too vast to be properly contained within meat. My meat took a while to recall how to read the $̵̥͒%̴̜̚#̷͚͝&̴̭̋!̶̬̇ script, about twelve hours. I was very hungry by time I discovered the symbols for food. I had found some other stuff in the search, useful prefabricated components, a bunch of raw materials, unused in the construction of the Ark ship they'd sent to Andromeda. When I finally found some crates with emergency rations in them, I dug in immediately. Mmmmm biological sustenance. "Holy hell, these are awful." They tasted like foot calluses. Texture like it too, but I knew there was incredibly dense sustenance in there for me. A little heavy on protein for humans, but this single crate could keep me alive for months. As luck would have it, there was a few more food crates down the way too. I just hoped Mafdet would come back before I got through them all. In the meantime, I could probably make a subspace comm transmitter from the components left laying around here. I should know, but I don't think this station already has one... I'll go explore, maybe find a toilet while I'm at it. I knew exactly where my Avatar was, at least when it dropped into real space. I'd just call them when I got a subspace transmitter either found, or built. Surely they'd be able to help. Ingamar Human Space Station I settled what felt like a hundred bets about my body's properties. Maybe a million credits changed accounts as a result. I love earthlings, so silly. They slipped in some science questions I may have answered without thinking too much about it. Questions of cosmological import that I maybe shouldn't have answered for them. I mean, they still gotta prove it all themselves. They can't just say, 'A Hyperspace robot told me.' and publish a paper. But I'd answered all the same. I wish I'd studied up beforehand, because there was quite a few, 'I don't know' answers given as well. Like, what's the highest warp factor before you rip the universe a new space hole? I dunno. But I do know that if you squeeze your subspace bubble too tightly it'll 'pop', blowing a new space-hole in the universe. Fortunately such space-holes are self-healing, just takes a few years, depending on the size of the hole. I realized while eating my second lunch that I don't really need to follow MPS protocols about not sharing technology or knowledge. After I'd answered the first question and there was no bolt of lighting, I was probably in the clear. After second lunch, I returned to lab twelve. "There's some weird energy signatures coming off these tiny bits of that cat's fluff we found on the bed it left in here." Mr. McCoy had finished eating and settling all his