Is what I said, but there is actually only one function in this megastructure of doom that interests me at the moment. Canteen or whatever food processing device that can operate, even if it's some lab animal feed producer. Just give me something to eat please.
My suit can absorb moisture from the air, so drinking water is not as big of an issue as food.
As you understand, I didn't come here with my hands full of food, and this may be the only place in the galaxy where GC'burger hasn't reached, yet. So the last time I ate was more than a couple of days ago, and only because an old half-eaten nutritious bar that I didn't like the taste of, still wasn't thrown away by me. Oh, this time I liked the taste so much, I gobbled it like a starving beast, and even thanked the Gods for creating the man who has such poor taste buds to make this disgusting-tasting thing and actually try to sell it.
But finding food in centuries old ruins? Are you serious, dude? It would kill you quicker than starvation, you all might think, BUT…
Unlike you guys who only click a button on the food processor and get your desired food, whenever you travel on spaceships, I, as a maintenance guy, have actually had a few encounters with its inner workings, and held in my hands the bioprinter cartridge from which the food processor gets the material to print your meal. Out of interest, I've read the text on the back side of it and remember it mentioning that unopened, undamaged cartridges have a decades-long shelf life because they contain basic molecular materials that are deconstructed and reassembled by the food processor's AI to make the substances that your food consists of.
If you did not get it, then, in short, anything inside the cartridges, be it mold, bacteria, viruses, poison, or whatever other shit you can imagine, will be deconstructed into clean, lifeless soup and remade into safe, edible food. For all I know, they may have been filling the cartridges with city waste at the factory from the get-go. How would we know?
The only thing that might actually make the cartridge unusable are synthetic additions that may contaminate the biomass inside the cartridge. And in a well-sealed, undamaged cartridge, that may happen only if the cartridge body itself decays, and pieces of it get into the biomass, but that would require them to lay in the open, in the harshest environments for decades. After all, these things are even able to survive a spaceship explosion and the freezing cold, and the vacuum of outer space.
People even make jokes that space pirates don't buy cartridges; they gather them from space rubble.
So, I really hope that, as wicked as the demonic race was, they came up with something similar instead of dragging huge animal farms from another universe to feed their crews. If I find some containers with biomass and something capable of turning it into at least something edible, I can survive long enough to come up with a plan to get the hell out of here.
"Actually if you really find something akin to a food processor, and we manage to start it up, there's no reason we would not be able to crack its program and make it produce normal food instead of just some edible feed…I think. But I would not be sure until I see it." Sounded the record of Keith's voice as I played his latest message.
"You are making me tear up, man. If you make me a big burger, the first thing I do once I come out of here, is getting to your house and kissing you as your wife never kissed you." I said and sent him the message.
"Ugh! Nah man, keep eating feed, then." Said Keith in his next message.
Don't listen to him. He may sound like that, but he'll make sure I get a good burger if we find a food processor, I guarantee you that.
Well, it may sound unrealistic though after all this thing is several planets big. Where would you even start to search? But my bro Keith is an engineer, fellas, and according to him, there's no sense in making one canteen for the entire ship this big. It should be somewhere in a reachable distance for the crew.
So, there are several options. They either had it in every crew quarter and all I have to find is something similar to living rooms, or they had it in big rooms that may fit a lot of people and in that case I need to look for a room that would remind me of a canteen.
And by the luck of it I've already seen several rooms like that when I searched for spare parts for the maintenance unit. So I will start my search from there. Thanks to my ghost assistant, finding my way anywhere I've already been to isn't a problem even in total darkness, as it maps the place for me to the smallest of details.
Luckily now I don't really need to travel through the darkness with just a flashlight. I have this maintenance unit on my hand.
I picked up the spherical object, dimply shining with deep blue colors, that now had a few panels on its outer shell cracked open and stuck with multiple wires connecting it with a small connection unit on my arm. It was quite large, so I held it like a ball under my armpit as I walked through the halls.
With the maintenance unit resonating with the 4GM structures inside every wall nearby it, I did not need a flashlight now, because wherever I travel with this thing, the trapped souls of the dead glowed with eerie amethyst color, brightening my path and showing me the way through this darkness, or bringing me to damnation for disturbing their eternal rest.
Sorry, sorry. I started to instill mysticism once again. Could not help it. I mean it kinda fits the atmosphere and all. Sorry. I'll try not to do it so often.
What really happens here is that the 4GM particles of the maintenance system inside the wall structure resonate with signals transmitted from the maintenance unit in my hand and light up, if they are still functional, giving off enough light for me to see properly.
Marking my destination on the mini-map in my scope of view I walked through the halls that I had already mapped before, following the direction line pointing me toward my destination that is only visible to me. This time though, my assistant also maps all the still functioning systems that resonate with the maintenance unit and deciphers all the data they send.
Once it's done deciphering it I will have full descriptions of their functions, current state and connected systems that still work or stopped responding. Yep. With this, all the strange and alien things and their functions that I could even guess, will now have all their secrets revealed.
And what I can understand, I can make work for me.
So this shiny sphere is my only lifeline here now. No way in hell I am letting it out of my hands. I think I am going to sleep while still holding it.
Not that I did not find any more of them in the days I was here, but this one was in the best condition and could be activated with minimal repairs. The biggest trouble that I needed to solve with this one was to find something to connect it with my connection block and wire it right.
As you may guess, the sockets of centuries ago extinct alien civilization do not match well with the ones our civilization makes.
The others that I've found were in no condition to be operable without some good repair.
How did I even know to look for it though? Well, that's easy if you know what's going on here.
This structure, built based on the same tech that we use for centuries now. As shocking as it may be to anyone knowing what I talk about, this whole thing, the size of a mini star, is made mostly out of 4GM.
Well, for those who did not study the topic much, the short explanation would be that this ancient space rubble probably has more 4th Generation Matter particles than our entire civilization has managed to collect so far.
I will not go deep into quantum physics, but you all may have heard of the smallest fundamental particle at the bottom of the 3rd generation of matter called Neutrino. The thing is so small and short-lived you can barely catch its existence. And for a long period of time science considered it to be the bottom, discussing the 4th generation of matter as improbable or mythical. Until the Great Evil appearance that is. An eye-opener that ruined half the galaxy.
When you find incredible the abilities of 3rd Generation Matter particles: such as travel back in time, occurring from nothingness, weighs more alone than in a pair, exists in several states at the same time and so on; you'd be shocked with what you'll find at the 4th Generation Matter. Because that's where real fun begins….or at least so they say. I am not exactly a scientist as you understand. I know only basic knowledge of our time.
But I do know that in theory these particles can only be created in super heavy objects like the cores of Exotic stars or Hadron stars and are quite short-lived unless... And that's the evilest of things about them. …they are within the living being.
Yep, these particles are naturally attracted to things that have any semblance of power of will.
Of course, mining it from a star is unreal. However, extracting from the living is quite easily manageable, especially if you let people extract it from themselves on their own and allow then to exchange it for more useful stuff like… apples or a new skin for your ghost assistant, trendy boots, sword with vibrator in the handle. This kind of thing you can't imagine your life without, you know. Thus, the Cry currency.
Oh! And did I mention that not only 4GM collects inside the living being but also living beings for some reason die if there is no 4GM inside them? And what's more interesting is that as long as 4th generation matter still permeates your body, you can not die.
Which brings us to the biggest question of our time. What is Crystalline? And are they really particles comprising our very soul as our ancestors believed? Or are they just that, free money that our bodies learned to collect from surroundings.
Well, the fact that scientists and believers are still in heated debate about it, does not prevent us from implementing them all over the place and get the whole civilization hooked on its use.
There are other uses for these particles as well of course and one of them being a very exotic, very costly building material that literally obeys your will. You want a rifle? You have it. Pen? No problem. Spaceship? Sure.
There is just one small problem. It is a particle so small that even in your entire life you may not collect enough to construct a needle. So what are you going to do if you want a spaceship built out of this matter? Like really, REALLY want it. Would you find a nice densely populated planet and extract the Cry from its entire population, turning it into a lifeless piece of rock?
Some of our leaders, who by the way still live to this day, and maybe will live long since I die, decided that this was not such a bad business plan. And that's how the civilization that defeated the demonic race, has crumbled from its own actions, giving birth to ours.
The wonderful thing about Cry is that if we do not waste it, the 4GM may be collected throughout the times and makes it more and more accessible to everyone. Making it cheaper and cheaper. As in cheapening the lives of people who extract it from themselves. But only in the ideal situation. In reality, it is hogged by a small part of people, making them all powerful, while it devalues the lives of everyone else.
So, now that you have a bit clearer picture about it, tell me how awesome it is to build a fucking star entirely out of money?