'Hey! Just want to let you know that quite some people in the research group would be going to an Escape Room complex after work today. You want to come?'
At the end of Zel's first week, he seemed to have already settled in completely. The boards are soon populated with different plots and graphs that Rydel haven't seen before and he has set up a complete mechanical workshop within his own office.
It is spacious alright, but putting a bunch of different machinery and products on a massive table in the middle of the room instantly squeeze every ounce of freedom out of the room.
Ever since Rydel briefly showed him around on his first day, he has been quite separated from the research group and working on his own. Before Rydel knocked on the door, he was just sitting there and talking to something while working on a piece of robotic limb augmentation, possibly for some sort of mining robots, or his own arm. He rolled up both of his sleeves, revealing a clearly augmented detachable right arm with multi-tool attachments.
With a single rotation at the shoulder he could easily switch around the tools and continue with his work. Rydel don't think he has seen anyone who's as peaceful and focused as Zel when it comes to his mechanical works. He is one that can't really sit down for more than a few hours without feeling extremely uncomfortable.
Rydel felt there is this distinct coldness and even hints of sadness coming from Zel that he simply uses his distance and politeness to cover up. And he seemed to be the most at peace when he is alone and undisturbed.
That's why Rydel kind of felt like he need to include Zel in some sort of social activities. He, of all people, know how lonely a journey academia can be when the best thing he could think of doing on a Sunday is even more work.
'Ah, don't worry about me. Thank you for the offer.' Zel formed a smile on his face and rejected the offer, 'I will go for a walk.'
'Well, if you want a nice route, I can point you the directions.'
'That would actually be lovely.'
In twenty minutes, the pair has exited the last stop of the bullet train which leaves them towards the outer edge of the terraformed regions. Here lies a young forest that flourished alongside the natural landscape of Vulcan 5.
'This place is a lot nicer than I imagined.' Zel couldn't help but marvel at the creation around them. Once men has harnessed the power of nature, knowing whether something's been here for decades or years becomes an impossible task. The institute has only existed for a short while, yet the height of the trees indicated something else.
'Yeah. It's one of the reason I wanted to come here.' Rydel agreed as he shoves both hands into the jacket pocket and looks around similarly, 'what's the reason you are here?'
'The instruments here. Best in the galaxy.'
'That, I can agree with.' Rydel nodded, 'any one in particular that you need?'
'It would be great to get my hands on the high energy stabilizer sometime.' Zel pondered around a tree that's covered in fungi and poked it gently with his metallic arm. Compared to the last time we saw him in the story, this current version of the arm is a lot more intricate and has a much smoother and slicker design. It's movement is incredibly fluid and precise and the fingertip just scratches the tip of the mushroom.
'Oh wow. Straight for the big dog.' Rydel laughed, 'what do you need it for, if it's not classified information?'
'Just a little classified.' Zel tilted his head slightly and smiled, 'but it's for dealing with high energy objects. The powerful kind.'
'As expected. I suppose you got some sweet sweet sponsorship going for you?' Rydel's curiosity is stirred slightly, but he also knows to let Zel decide what to tell him.
In typical research groups, the sources of funding could be uniform throughout a group if all were focusing on one project. However, it is not uncommon if coorperatiosn or organizations choose to sponsor one particular researcher out of the group and have one supervisor for it. It appears Zel's case is the latter.
'Well it is juicy enough.' Zel smiled slightly, 'do you have any plans after this project?'
'I am not sure.' Rydel pauses and thought about the question. Despite spending a couple years deep in Academia, he doesn't seem to want to leave immediately. He still loves researching, learning and a little bit of building and testing, 'I am still working on a little piece of technology but this really isn't my specialty.'
'Oh, what kind?' Zel raised his eyebrow slightly.
'A sort of brain-computer interface combined with projectile tracking and prediction?' Rydel tried to condense what he wanted his helmet to accomplish into one simple sentence and hope that Zel would know what he is talking about.
'I see. What stage of it are you on now?'
'I wanted to be able to do it while moving about, but the current system would capture too much noise to be useful. There are also quite a bit of noise from the brain-computer interface. I can't see being anymore than a traning aid in the long run though...' Rydel explained. He has been working on the tracking helmet on and off for a little while now but can't seem to get past the stage of stationary tracking.
'Uh, I thought this technology already exists and it's called egocentric spatial coordination?'
'What?'
Not long after they have stepped foot in the forest, Rydel and Zel both ended up in the lab together and started working on the helmet once again. The realization of someone else would have already done what you are trying to do certainly crushed Rydel slightly. With a few slick downloads, Zel has already configured the algorithm along with the helmet. Rydel put it on and quickly checked the distances from a few different items. It worked like magic, and Rydel's past efforts are merely a learning experience, to put it nicely.
At least he got some coding practice in.
'Damn. This is very annoying.'
After jogging around the corridor a few times and trying to focus on different objects as he is running. The whole thing worked seamlessly and much quicker than Rydel has imagined. That has simplied what Rydel needed to do hugely and he is actually quite grateful, despite now realizing how much smarter other people are.
'How the heck do you know about this?' Rydel came back into the room with a slightly sweaty forehead. He wiped it dry with his sleeve and asked.
'Well, I fiddle with this kind of things quite a bit.' Zel raises his right arm and waves it a little.
'That's really cool, what functions could you do with it?' Rydel stares at the carbon fiber layered arm and marveled at the technology, 'and I assume you have different ones for different scenarios?'
'Yes.' Zel droped his arm to the side and pulled out a box from underneath the workdesk. With his right arm, he easily lifted the one cubic meter boxes onto the desk by the handles and opened it right up.
Within the box lays four to five mechanical prosthetic limbs with drastically different designs, colours and even materials. The one currently attached to Zel's right shoulder is a dark brown colored general purpose arm that simply works like a normal one but also have some storage capacities along the body of it. There is one painted bright yellow which is the one full of machining attachments that he used to work on things just now and all the digits and fingers are replaced with various tools and gadgets. One painted bright blue is a minimalist version of the normal one that Zel uses for any sporting activities and the last one is a red one that features hooks, drills, cable, magnetic and hydraulic attachments. There are some minor dents on the surface and it also looked the most worn.
'That seemed to be an adventurous one.' Rydel pointed at the red arm, 'You an avid cave explorer or a soldier or something?'
'Not exactly.' Zel smiled and avoided the question, 'but it does work well in hostile and intense environments.'
Rydel and Zel chatted on about the arms for some time before the night claimed both of their energies and made them both leave the place. Rydel sees Zel off at the train stop for temporary accommodation and carried on towards the central accommodation area.
Suddenly, he received a message.
Hi! Sorry for the delayed reply, I have been quite busy lately. Are you free this weekend? I am actually quite close to Vulcan 5 and can get here by tomorrow at noon and stay for a few days if you don't mind?
Of course he doesn't mind.
So this is the reply that he has been waiting for a good while, but at least there seemed to be something concrete at this moment. He quickly brought up the weekend's schedule and checked on it. He wanted to work on controlling his artifact on Saturday, and this is almost quite a perfect time for Cellica to come and see the kind of progress Rydel has made.
He is also planning to perfect the egocentric spatial coordination and make it into an actually portable helmet that's realistic to run around in after Zel's help. It shouldn't be a lot of hard work so a few hours in the morning should do it.
Yes! Just get down to Vulcan 5's surface, and I can go pick you up from the port. But you should be able to see me anyway...
True. But seeing you is only a lot easier as you are activating or using your artifact, not just wherever or whenever. I
Guess I should try to summon a coffee for you then. You should be able to catch me red-handed, literally.
I prefer tea more.....
The next day, Rydel woke up nice and early to make his way to the lab, only to see Zel there bright and early as well. He seemed to only be there for a little while, as he changed into the red 'adventure' arm and left the lab with a small backpack soon after.
It didn't take Rydel long before putting everything together and going out for a test ride for his artifact either. He went aboard the quiet bullet train and headed towards the outside of the town. He has got some auto-return tennis balls that he bought from the downtown sports shop and this is what he is going to use to test the effectiveness of his new gear.
He arrived at the forest where Zel and himself went for a walk the day before. Among the almost endless woods, is a medium sized opening on the other side of the mountain that he stumbled across by accident one time. It's a seldom used camping site that's simply been left to its own devices, and Rydel think this would be the perfect place to practice his skills.
The opening is indeed empty as per usual, and Rydel arrived at the place at around ten in the morning. He has a good one hour and a half to work on his accuracy, and he reached into his backpack for a stack of target practices and laid them all on the ground seperately.
He took off the glove on his left hand and revealed the silver glove of summoning. The colors of the patterns along all of it is still purple, but it soon started to light up as Rydel started to focus.
POOFT
Within one swift closure of his hand, the first target on the left disappeared from the ground and reappeared on the tree branches up ahead at two o'clock and seventy degrees up from Rydel. He aimed for the gap carefully, and released his grasp. The target practice expanded out of a singularity and wedges right into the branches, snapping off the odd few and made them drop onto the ground, making a slight 'wooshing' sound.
'Not too bad.' Rydel went ahead and wedged all the remaining target practices into various places at multiple distances away from him, then he turned on his helmet and snatches a tennis ball from his backpack using his glove. He looked up at the closes target to him, and focuses.
Distance: 8 meters
Recommended Trajectory: calculated.
A small message box popped up next to the target and a suggested path was projected onto his visor. Rydel smiled slightly, turned and threw the ball.
The yellow tennis ball appeared out of nowhere in mid air and hit the target right in the center.
'Amazing.' Rydel grinned uncontrollably and started absolutely firing away the tennis balls.
By rotating his shoulder externally and pointed his palm towards his backpack and facing him, Rydel managed to get the tennis balls without even needing to actually see the things.
Maybe he will be able to summon objects as long as he know the exact locations of it.....that would be something to find out on another day. All fifteen tennis balls were gone in less then two minutes and most of them hit their target, or were extremely close. This helmet does not suddenly make Rydel the best pitcher in the galaxy, but the subtle visual cues are definitely a massive help for him.
After giving himself a satisfying short break, he pressed the recall button on the tennis container and waited for the tennis balls to reappear from behind trees and leaves and rolling around. It's kind of creepy in a way seeing the bright yellow balls crawling towards him, but Rydel didn't wait them all to get into the container as he times it just right and grabbed one that's on the move and caught it in his glove.
He then spun around, aimed at a target practice that's hidden on the other side of the tree, and released it. The tennis ball appeared in the middle of the target, and completely shattered it from the centre.
Training hard?
After a good while adapting to the helmet and adjusting to the augmented visions, Rydel has finally figured out how to incorporate the predicted projectiles with how and where he releases the tennis balls and at what velocity. It had appeared that there might be slightly too much information on the screen and all he really needed is like an estimated direction and some more practice.
But the more practice can wait until another day, as Cellica's message broke the silence in the woods.
Yes. Have you arrived yet?
I will be touching down in about thirty minutes.
See you then.
Seeing you now ;).
Rydel quickly packed everything up, grabbed all the target practices that were not broken and started to head back. The space port is just at the other end of the bullet train line, but an express train is being run every thirty minutes between the central part and the airport, so Rydel just have to catch that.
The space port at Galactic IST is rather minimalist as there really aren't that many traffic going around. The space elevator is run on a per come per serve basis and Cellica was actually one out of a few people that came. Rydel reached the arrivals terminal at about the same time Cellica did, and he almsot didn't notice her in her casual outfit.
She is wearing a bright yellow reflective fabric jacket with light blue jeans and her blonde hair tied together in a ponytail. In comparison, Rydel's pure black hoodie and dark trousers outfit just seemed stuck in the past.
'Hi!' Rydel waved his hand to get her attention, but she is already looking his way.
'Nice to see you again, Rydel.' Cellica paced towards him and gave him a hug, 'Has life been well?'
'Very very well.' Rydel smiled as he embraced her, 'I am almost through my research degree at this moment, so you have arrived at a very timely occasion.'
'So you must be extremely well versed in this area then? I haven't been anywhere near Vulcan 5 at all.'
'I should be...and why is that?'
'I am not sure, but I think it's just that I am never really a big scientific research and development girl, so I am never really around to see what is happening.'
'Well, it's really not that exciting around here.' Rydel said, pointing a finger to his head, 'all of the exciting things are happening here.'
'Quite the contrary actually. Another reason I am here is to do with an artifact.' Cellica suddenly lowered her voice and both of them started walking towards the exit, 'I am seeing another signature that's different from yours.'
'What do you mean? Are you saying there is another artifact on this planet?' Rydel's eyes widened slightly as he looked at Cellica right in the eye. The jaded pupils are spectacular as always.
'Yes, and he is on this very planet. I saw him activate his artifact some time in the past few days, and I am fairly certain that wasn't your doing. So I came.'
'I see...'Rydel felt slightly disappointed, but is still extremely intrigued by what she is saying, 'And can you always see when the artifacts are activated all around the galaxy? Why couldn't you use it to find the other groups of bearers then?'
'Yes. But the thing is, I can see things if I know which general directions to look at and what, but most of the time I just end up missing those details, rather than not being able to see it. But when I was looking at you, something else just caught my attention.'
'Oh.' Rydel was caught by a bit of surprise, and Cellica also realised what she has said and dropped her head down slightly and pretended nothing happened. Then she looked up again at Rydel.
'Well.' Rydel swallowed hard and tried to break this awkward silence, 'It's great that you are looking out for me. Ha, so do you reckon we can go find this bearer on this planet?'
'Not now, not until it's been activated again, at least.' Cellica shook her head, 'so right now, just show me around!'