Adrift in Space

"What are they doing with the nanos?"

"That's a key puzzle piece. Dunno. Yet. But someone's fucked with records. Since you took me you only send them down for low resolution spying because they don't last that long so always need to be refreshed and you refuse to send an assembler below to make them there. Probably smart. Whoever is sending these just adds a box or package in. You did those experiments on me, keep the official density of a swarm below that threshold for notice. It's crap, but good for audio but also quite short range so only good if a probe is nearby to record or relay. They've mucked the records for raw materials so they've made a whole lot more but I don't know HOW many more. But like I said, maybe ten, twenty cubic meters worth, packed in."

She made a low sound then nodded slightly for him to continue.

"But they've also changed the nanos. I think... well, you've done experiments to use them inside of bodies. Like the science fiction novels. For medicine."

"That's never worked out, yet. Still experimental. We have too few to focus on it here and back home... they have had other concerns."

"I will find out but I think... they may have made progress. Or they don't care and it's something... else."

The earbud's translation was out of sync with Anna's harsh speech and eventually said simply "son of a bitch." She turned and stared at the stars.

No Sylvan profanity directly translated to blasphemous speech because the aliens didn't have deities. He'd in fact been one source for some of the existing translations of profanity but he could only help with English and few of the translations were literal. He tapped his wristlet gently to save just the last minute of conversation. Maybe he'd disguise the voice and ask Brittany.

Brittany. His computer science wizard student. And fuck buddy. Who'd shown great skill at creating AI agents, like she'd wanted to learn. It was his turn to stare at the stars.

"What?"

"You are not listening to me."

"Oh, sorry. Just had a thought about this problem..."

"Good. Find them. Now," her tone had shifted with the last word, "why don't you ever bring this girlfriend of yours around?"

He nodded at the first then his mouth dropped open.

"Uh... well, with her name being Brittany I thought that might annoy you."

"I am not sho shallow the name bothers me. Shae is not... her. Shae is laikly embarrashed that shae hash fallen for the likesh of you," Anna's jocular tone slightly forced but she also smiled, "shae didn't come to your birthday party."

Anna and Ralph and the changelings still on board had given him a party back in mid-February with a big chocolate cake and ice cream and presents. They'd timed it to allow Anna Squared to do a surprise short live video hook in, as had Vicki. Even Ralph's wife Catanie linked in for their children to show him the stuffed T-Rexes they'd gotten for Christmas, his first 'live' interaction with Sylvan children. They were like... children. They were the equivalent of six or seven for human children and switched rapidly between English and Sylvan in their excitement until their seeming disappointment when he'd had to tell them he'd never seen a live T-Rex... salved when he'd promised to take them to see the skeletons at Dinosaur National Monument, a visit in his youth a rare pleasant childhood memory.

But. How the hell would he manage THAT?

At the party his tutoring of Brittany had already been public knowledge, one of many such arrangements like her brown-eyed roommate Julia's parallel practical in 'farming' in the hydroponics and protein-growing labs, but their more intimate assignations were not yet so. The blue-eyed alien had demurred attending, said she didn't want to distract him from spending time with his friends. With the surprise video hookups he'd been happy she hadn't attended. But Queen Anna had been aware and had quietly asked him but hadn't aired it more publicly and while she hadn't seemed enthusiastic she hadn't been angry about it.

In the time since he'd never been able to read the Queen's attitude toward the pairing, she'd never expressed anger or insisted it not happen. But he hadn't felt unalloyed approval either. Unlike Anna Squared Brittany hadn't seemed interested in more than odd weeknights at his place and regular weekends and he'd not encouraged more. Beyond that, he'd never gotten a good feeling of what that young female, born after the mass wakings of the survivors and at the tail end of the rushed efforts to recover really thought about the Queen and beyond her and Julia he had almost no experience with that generation beyond the changelings. He was used to honest respect from all of the Sylvans to the Queen, but he was on her command ship and everyone on it was here because they were involved with leadership. Vicki obviously shared that as did Catanie. But they too were tied to her with personal friendship beyond the professional roles. She toured the other ships but had never taken him along, Vicki's offhand comment that he'd never be allowed bubbled back into his mind but was it that? The Queen had told the whole party his promise to Ralph and Catanie's youngsters was a solemn one and he'd be expected to deliver and that meant actually taking them to Earth. Somehow.

There were public online discussion 'forums' and he'd found the usual grumbles expected where two or more sentient beings worked together. He'd also broken into a few more private forums and had found hints of some darker opinions. Again, nothing that truly worried him, what he'd found was milder than much he'd expect in a crowd of humans. But there were signs of direct communication happening, 'off grid' near-field usage, the kind of thing a group would use for downloaded group games in a common room to avoid network and server lag. These indications weren't that, those downloaded info and uploaded results. What concerned him was where someone had tried to air gap from the Ultranet but still needed to peek now and again. It would be hard to penetrate.

But even after the birthday party Brittany had always begged off any occasions where the two of them would have the direct attention of the Queen.

Could Brittany, Julia, other Sylvans have feelings AGAINST their de facto leader?

"You and Brittany maight bae the firsht shotgun wedding betwaeen our paeplesh."

"Huh... WHAT?" His reverie ended with a start. "That's not... that's not possible! Besides, we wear protection."

"Never say never. Tell me," back to the earbud, "have you mentioned to that innocent blue-eyed child that you and Vicki regularly trade rather, might I call them lewd and erotic, emails and stories? And the phone sex. No wonder you keep Brittany away most nights!"

"Uh, innocent? Not so sure... anyway, Vicki started those. Well, maybe some was my idea. No, didn't seem like something Brittany needed to know, any of it. But, hey, how do YOU know?"

"Vikrangia is my protégé, remember? Your tutoring with your blue-eyed minx goes to the end of July. Vicki will be here in just over a week for the start of that month and she has told me that she has plans for you and those do not involve sharing. I think it will be quite... humorous how everyone handles the overlap."

"But Sylvans are so... rational. We'll all just work out an arrangement, right?"

Anna's body shook with an unbridled mix of Sylvan coughing and human laughter, both meant the same. He was happy that Anna's mood had improved. He wasn't happy that it had been at the expense of his crashing.

"Did I, did I not give you THAT video?"

It took him a moment to realize which video she'd meant but then his mouth dropped open and he let out a slow series of exhaled half-laughs. Then he shook his head and Anna smiled broadly. They both drained their glasses and she held the decanter and waggled it.

"I think I have way too much to do today...," he set the empty glass on the little table hooked to his chair's armrest and stood, she poured herself a short shot then set the glass beside the decanter. For the first time she didn't counter his refusal of a drink as she nodded and her smile wasn't one of amusement. She offered her hands and he took them and she squeezed.

"Go."

After the meeting he'd dealt with his student but she'd seemed preoccupied and distant which hadn't slaked his suspicions of her. But she'd seemed satisfied with a couple of assignments related to software agent design that they could use to feed suggestions to Earth's emerging video game industry, games and porn the fastest adopters of new technology. She'd gone off to the rather spartan lab she shared with a handful of other students. But it did have its own coffee maker, an addition he'd insisted the 'grad students' deserved. And daily deliveries of the local equivalent of 'doughnuts.'

His suspicion of Brittany had been heightened when he'd realized he didn't need the personnel files, he could trawl through the travel logs for an expanding period around the night he'd seen that white-haired young human Cherry Powell and their security was much lower. Anna had told him she'd not told her opsec paeple about his endeavors, but he'd never broken into the deepest inner ring of systems.

December was heavy for transfers since that was a primary time for family reunion visits. The large stealthed shuttles, not the little four-seaters that brought him and Carole up, ran regularly among the three big satellites. These large ones rarely went to Earth, even stealthed the interference pattern he'd noticed was too obvious. Unfortunately there was no video log of the restaurant nor of most of the Sylvan area around it so he couldn't simply give the agent photos of his targets and let it find the most likely matches. The logs showed Cherry arrived directly at the command satellite on one of the little shuttles and she'd left the day after having dinner.

But with Brittany hopefully preoccupied and his regular agents monitoring Earth's growing online communications, he tasked his most capable one to poke at the personnel files, look but don't dig. Yet. He cloned it and sent it to investigate these mystery nanomachines.

That was when his thoughts darkened. The travel logs were... hidden. No, not hidden, but gone. Glitchy, plenty of file errors. Unheard of and systems checks showed no widespread issues. Their 'official' security protection was exactly as expected and many of the video records of arrivals and departures easily scanned once he'd convinced their not-too-smart sheepdogs to 'hey, look over THERE.'

But whoever had done this was... good. The obvious targets the days before, of and after that dinner were all easily scanned. And useless. All of the watermarks and checksums matched, they didn't appear altered but the data wasn't there. And despite his denial at their first, well, second, meeting, Brittany's statement about him being the best really wasn't far off base. But more than good. The fleeting ghosts here were... his. No, not his. Copies. Imitations.

Brittany.

The implication was that his targets were in these, coming and going, but together? Separate? Assuming the pair had come only once, even if they'd both come and gone separately on different days, there were many more files than that scrambled. No obvious or easy pattern, not every second, third of fifth. And only the couple of weeks around that Friday night two weeks before Christmas.

This implied that someone expected these logs to be inspected. No one ever looked at these. That they were captured was a combination of bureaucratic inertia and incredibly efficient data storage compression. And his girlfriend, fuck buddy, student, seemed to be involved.

Her claim to have to 'help Julia with something' on Friday night buttressed his thoughts. He chided himself when it caused him to half wonder if his upcoming quandary about Vicki's visit would take care of itself. He kicked himself about that thought but was he too close to the painting to see the picture?

His agent told him that the personnel files were protected by strong ciphers, the strongest the systems had. As expected. But nothing beyond these, stiff as they were. He set the agent to get him males between twenty and thirty. There was a clear generational split, those like Anna and Vicki already adults when they left their home world and those born after the final awakening, like Brittany and Julia. The two males had been about a decade older than those two females, about as old as the younger generations could be. There'd been no births while they'd crossed the Great Empty and the bulk of the crew slept in turns and contraception was diligently used.

The nanomachine files were, as he'd guessed, guarded by a different and seemingly unique security scheme. He tweaked the agent and sent it off again.

At least it seemed he had the weekend since he'd heard nothing from Brittany. And hadn't reached out himself.

It was the figurative crack of dawn Saturday when Brittany and her roommate Julia pounded on his door and repeatedly hit the door alarm. When he opened the door in a bleary-eyed daze he found they had Julia's Sylvan boyfriend with them. Rounding out the pack were male and female Sylvans.

"Ah, are you two--," Peter started to ask.

"We are NOT a couple," the female, 'Iris,' said, "why do I have to keep saying it?"

The male's expression was less convinced of that.

Her hair was so pale yellow to be white. Every Sylvan was pale but Iris was almost translucent. Her slate grey eyes seemed to float in space. Then he noticed her mouth just slightly opened and her tongue touched her 'lips.' It was red, not the deep red of many, but its contrast was deep.

Oh.

Their surprise for him was a group reservation in the full-immersion virtual reality tank for the first public run of the new 'Dinosaur Hunt' game. It could be set for a variety of times and locations during the Ages of Earth's Dinosaurs, this trip would the late Cretaceous on the western shores of that era's great North American inland sea.

"We're hunting T-Rexes?" The smiles and grins and mixed nods and head wags confirmed that. Goody.

He'd advised the programmers as they'd created the game over the past two years. He and Anna Squared had used the tanks regularly as did almost everyone but this new game was a significant step up in ambition.

"How the hell did you get the first weekend? I thought it was booked for weeks already?"

"Of course it is booked, but we pulled rank," Brittany slid her arms around him, "we told them YOU need to validate it. You are the only one with experience hunting these beasts! We need to go, we need to be down there by eight!"

"Experience? They're dinosaurs. Not fucking deer!"

"Here is your uniform, Paetor," Iris said, her accent similar to Brittany's excellent if stilted English. He wasn't too surprised, this generation had grown up with human languages commonly used. But even the worst accents of the older aliens were still better than his pathetic efforts at their language.

"Let me see if it will fit," she insisted on holding it against him, ran her hands across his shoulders and down his back before she grabbed the trousers and held them against his waist and her hands worked toward his crotch.

He hurriedly grabbed the clothes and dashed into the bedroom and closed the door loudly when he'd heard the start of Brittany's challenge, soft but imminently strident. A warning. 'Not now' had been his only thought. Followed by realization that his 'Vicki problem' wasn't likely to solve itself after all.

Sigh.

But they'd all had on field green trousers and shirts, both pieces with way too many pockets, and now so did he. They also had a pair of boots for him. All of it perfectly sized.

Amazingly, the boots had been so molded for his feet that they felt like he'd worn them for weeks. Antigravity and stealth were incredible, but this tech was life-affirming. A long hike in brand new boots was well beyond his interest in realism promised for the day.

On the way down the excitement of his companions and his own curiosity pushed most of his worries underground. He'd seen plenty of video extracts during development and had consulted on dinosaurs and geography, although he'd mentioned more than once that it wasn't like humans had video of actual dinosaurs and most movies were crap. Peter finally suggested they combine flightless birds for the bipedal dinosaurs and they ended up with T-Rexes that weren't vertical but held their bodies like chickens, their upper bodies just above horizontal forward and the tail at a similar angle to behind them, their legs a powerful fulcrum.

The other command decision had been sauropods nearby. The designers wanted them, he'd pointed out they weren't coresident with the T-Rexes. But he'd relented. They'd based them on elephants, rhinos, hippos, scaled up.

It wasn't a history book.

He goggled at the remodeled tank. He'd expected the usual two to three hour adventure, mysteries and shoot-em-ups were the majority of existing games although erotic adventures were common. The primary version of Dinosaur Hunt was just that, a pack of time travelers go on a safari to bag a T-Rex or Allosaurus or other beast, some randomly chosen mishap strips them of much of their equipment and armor and the party needed to both survive and get their trophy for maximum points until the time portal reopened.

But no. This adventure would be two whole days. The entire time spent in-world. Toilet facilities existed in the tank, the view would be as if you squatted behind a bush. In keeping with their similar diets and genitals both species had similar needs so no special provisions for his human body.

The full room was forty yards square. They'd keep their boots but their clothes would be replaced by a snug body stocking and VR suits that fit snugly over those. These had actuators and sensors that would apply pressure to their bodies based on happenings in the 'world.' He wondered what being chomped on by a Rex or gored by a triceratops might feel like. He hoped to not find out. Razor sharp ferns, insects the size of pigeons and a supporting cast of dinosaurs of every size were additional hazards. Every member had a lightweight helmet with a full face visor that they called 'augmented reality.' Looking at a team member they'd see that person's face and clothes, covered in blood, gore, cuts and bruises as appropriate. Heads up displays indicated health and the VR suits would simulate injuries by limiting movement, such as for sprained ankles or broken legs.

The floor had treadmills that could tilt to simulate hills. The suits had reserves of liquids for oozing on them to simulate trekking through swamps.

Lovely.

Their packs were real. As were the contents, which included all of the ammunition, food and water they'd have available.

And if they wanted food to eat, they'd have to carry it, although the game had provisions that if they were willing to do so, they could kill and butcher a dinosaur and 'food' would be supplied. Apparently the game designers had commissioned the labs to grow 'dinosaur meat.'

Their briefer ended his discourse with "... and it's edible by both humans and Sylvans."

"I'm training in the protein labs," Julia had asked, "what do dinosaurs taste like? Not something I've seen. I'll go talk to them!"

Peter recalled the designers had asked him the same question.

"Tastes like chicken," he'd said before and repeated it now, "birds evolved from dinosaurs."

Wide eyed stares from his companions, a sly smile from the briefer. This male wasn't someone Peter had met before.

"Not precisely," the male laughed, "some chicken. Some ostrich. Bit of crocodile. And, well, bit of dice roll on the genes."