"Burger here I come!" I shouted as I walked toward the room in a hurry. I've not been in that room before, but I walked around this floor and from the location of the rooms on this floor, AI suggested, that there must be a huge space here, which I very hope was a canteen.
I walked into a hall full of enthusiasm and braked to a stop at the edge of a chasm that I almost fell to, luckily my flapping of the hands was effective to push my body backward, to let me fall on my ass instead of head first into darkness.
"Fuck. That was close." I muttered, pressing my hand to my chest while taking a heavy breath, feeling my heart beat like crazy. As I said, holes are the worst enemy out here.
I stood up dusting my ass and turned my flashlight on, pointing it at the hole. Which was not a hole at all. This whole room had no floor. Well it had, but more than ten meters below I stood. And pointing my flashlight to the side showed me that I stood on something like an edging that went all over the room's perimeter.
"What the heeell?" I muttered. This sure did not look like any canteen I've been in. More like a…
"Sanctuary?" I said rubbing my chin. Maybe it was too soon to be disappointed. If it was some enclosure habited by a beast it might not be entirely a miss. Zoo animals have to be fed, right? Meaning there may still be some solution to my pressing food problem.
I carefully looked around the room, studying it with the flashlight from corner to corner, and looked over the edging and walls. Twice. I know I told you all that I was done being jumpy from the scares my mind made up, but that room gave me the creeps.
Making sure everything was fine and as dead as I liked it to be, I went around the edging following the hints from the highlighted word food until I reached something that looked like a control room to this enclosure.
Scanning the leftover devices and rubble gave me very bad news. It was busted, but it had some last breath in it at least. Most of the functions did not resonate with the maintenance device at all, and those that did, simply showed me that they are there.
At least through these still 'breathing' functions I could see some interconnected functionality that should have been there but was now dead. Unluckily the one that pointed at the word food was among those that did not 'breathe'. But at least I know it really was here.
Sighing, I went out back to the edging and studied the room below. If food is mentioned there should be a food delivery system. No way they would carry it here in hands or on trolleys. Look at this place. Whatever was held there was massive and needed to be fed a lot.
If I can find the feeder device itself, then I might make it work independently even if the central control was busted, the problem was that I did not see it up here. So…
"Could it be somewhere down there?" I muttered with an uncomfortable feeling. I am no coward, but there is something primal in us people that says getting into the huge animal cell is not a good idea, even if it's long since empty. Very empty.
So empty it's practically clean as new. And that did not feel right. Everywhere I shined with my flashlight, the floor seemed to be shiny and clean. No dust at all.
I walked around the perimeter shining my flashlight all over the place but have not seen anything strange other than the cleanliness of the floor. No movement, no sound, no proof of something still being there. Not even a plant or mold.
"Maybe it was empty and nothing lived here from the get-go?" I thought aloud.
"Like they built it for something but did not get to put it here before they were destroyed? Or maybe this isn't any animal sanctuary at all, but some aquarium with water long since dried out and all the inhabitants dead. Yeah, and leaving no corpses or even dirt inside? Swimming pool them? More than five storey building deep and no visible piping to fill or drain it. Ok, maybe it's just a dumpster where they incinerate trash. Who knows right?" I kept talking to myself aloud as if reassuring myself that there was nothing to fear there.
My resolve to get down into the cell aside, there was also the question of how to get there. So far I have not found any stairs. There should have been at least something left showing it was there if it just rotten away and collapsed. But by the time I made a complete circle, walking all around the huge room and returning to the control room, I've found no indication of it ever being there.
I returned to the control room and looked over all the systems that my ghost assistant could decipher in hope to find some clues.
And I did.
After several minutes of random search I saw some function that assigned linear movement to certain blocks of structure. And an idea came to my mind. I highlighted this function, while dimming everything else in my scope of view and followed it's connected sub systems. One of them, as I guessed, went to the edging of the enclosure.
I walked out of the room and followed the line until it ended right at the corner of the edging.
"Bingo." I muttered, crouching down and studying the surface of the wall going down directly under me.
If I am right, then there was no stair here from the get-go, because they were hidden in the wall.
I did not think about it at first, because so far the whole interior of Star Devourer seemed as one solid monolith-like block made out of a single slab. Wherever I went there were no seams in walls, floor or ceiling. Simply one room gradually spilled into another without any visible connection, seam or difference in color. Every surface I saw was completely smooth and solid.
But this place is different. A few centimeters below me there is a very thin seam. As if two blocks were very precisely fit together or as if a huge chunk of this indestructible structure was cut out by a thin thread from all sides and left there inside the wall.
If I am right then the seam must have been filled with none solid 4GM in the past and when the control system gave signals the block of solid structure would slide out, creating steps of the staircase. But when this thing was shut down, the loose 4GM particles dispersed, leaving only the solid blocks.
This actually explains a lot.
Now some of the pathless roads that I saw, which end abruptly with a smooth wall dropping down into a bottomless pit-like chasm and no sign of any bridge ever being there, make sense.
They used normal 4GM just as we do, but unlike us thrifty humans, the Demonic race could allow itself to use it in their everyday life on a far grander scale than we do. For me, it may sound crazy to have 4GM particles, worth more than a stadium full of people could produce in their entire life, to be used as a mere bridge. But for this civilization, it was a daily norm.
If you think of it this way, then the solid indestructible body of this megastructure must have served as a mere foundation to everything, but many side paths were created with either normal transparent 4GM or levitating solid blocks held by normal 4GM. However, when everything de-energized, these paths and structures held by loose 4GM, collapsed or dispersed.
But if it's right… it could only be imagined how this place looked in its glory days. The vivid colors and shiny translucent shapes all over the place. It must have looked incredibly beautiful, I'd even say divine-like. Normal shiny 4GM must have breathed life into everything around. Without it though, all that's left is just a skeleton or a mummy. The husk of a dead body. No wonder it looks so ugly now.
Anyway, if it's movable with normal 4GM, I can forcefully slide it out of the wall even without the central control and maintenance unit's help. This action requires pure physical labor of 4GM particles.
But I wonder why they didn't make the stair entirely out of 4GM here. Though if they did, I would have no choice but to give up going down. Without central control, such a system would not work, and I have nowhere near enough in me to make a stair myself, obviously. If I did, would I even bother searching for stairs? I'd just make a levitating platform and lower myself down.
Commanding my 4GM particles to seep through the seams and circle around the block, I mapped the inner structure of the mechanism and my AI confirmed that pushing the block slightly out, just enough for me to fit on it, was doable with my amount of particles.
Why not push it out entirely? If I did, it would take forever to get to the bottom with my current amount of particles.
Remember I said that the 4GM particles start to shine brightly when they perform some work? That's the problem. When they do the job, they get excited and exude some light. The thing is that when they are fully excited they stop doing any job or obey any new command until the light they exude fully disperses. If you force them over that border, they will do just a bit more, but then you'll lose control over them and they'll disperse.
So if you don't have enough to make a full job in one go, you have to use them in batches where new particles continue the job until those fully excited from the previous batch fully rest. Once they are rested, they can be put to work again.
That's why this technology is conquering the world so easily. As long as you have these particles, you don't need power sources, fuel, batteries, solar cells, wind turbines, wave generators. All the things people came up with to produce power in order to breathe life into all their technology, can be thrown to the trash bin if you have enough particles.
Theoretically, it's totally possible to build a perpetual power generator from them, as long as you have enough particles to work and rest in shifts. But only in theory. The problem would be that someone has to control them with his power of will. Without someone to own and command the particles in close distance, they would not do anything and will simply disperse. Just as it happened in this whole structure.
But it is possible to lend the particles and build a system with someone at the helm at all times. This Star Devoured must have operated in big part in such a system, which is why such maintenance units, as the one currently in my hand, exist. And as it goes, another good example would be some of our space battleships with huge 4GM power generators that I mentioned before. The 4GM particles within them are owned by somebody, but the captain of the ship and its crew are simply using them. Keeping it as a lent asset.
The only limiting factor in such a power generating machine is the amount of particles. And I did mention the source of it, right?
That's why I did not list nuclear power, when I said some power sources may be discarded. The sheer amount of power produced by nuclear fusion is still unreachable for any nowadays kingdom, country, sect or whatever they go calling themselves.
Not because they lack enough particles to produce so much power for the sake of general use by people, but because it's a waste of their treasured 4GM, that belongs to them.
I don't mean it as actual waste. No, particles aren't going to disappear from work as I said, but why would they rent it to someone even risking it being stolen for the well-being of some commoner? People are a waste to be cared about. No one's worthy beside you when you have power. In this civilization you only gobble more and more, but don't give it to anyone. It's yours. All yours. Your prrreciousssss.
Am I rambling again? I think I'm just stalling for time to not go down there. The place gives me the creeps. Something telling me to just forget it and go look for another way. But it may be that usual fear of darkness. If I listened to it all the time I'd just curl up in the corner and wait for my death without daring to walk these halls at all. Besides, there is no way something survived down there, if there even was anything ever there at all, right?
Anyway, I don't have enough particles to push out all the blocks and will have to let my particles calm down from time to time. So if I push this block out entirely the particles will get excited very quickly, and I would have to wait for them to rest after every few steps, making this descend unnecessarily long.
Why not push it out just a slight bit before pulling the rest of it with my own strength? I forgot to mention that for some strange reasons steps are quite uncomfortably far apart from each other. So I would not be able to reach it and pull it out without falling down.
I don't understand what was the reason to make it this far from each other, unless the demonic race had almost twice the human step length, and I don't remember any mentions of them being so big.
It's quite possible that there was supposed to be a middle step in between two blocks made by normal 4GM, that when activated would make it a staircase of alternating solid black and transparent shining steps. Which is the most feasible explanation.
But I'll only be able to tell for sure once I pull one of the blocks out and check it.
There should be something to emit the particles into place between the stairs and as I don't see any on the smooth surface of the wall, the only place left for them to be is the side of the retractable solid block.
The first block would be the best choice to confirm it as it was quite close to the surface of the edging and I probably could push it out entirely.
I gave an order to my particles, gradually adding more and more to see how much work exactly they needed to do to finish the job. After that AI would make corrections and be able to accurately calculate how much I need, to build the optimized plan of action, with the least time spent resting.
Somehow standing on the short ledge with a pit below me, while waiting for the particles to calm, sounded like not fun.
At some point the block started to tremble barely perceptibly and finally slid out of the wall just a little.
I lay down on the floor, grabbed the smooth surface as best I could and pushed it out with my own strength. It wasn't that heavy. A lot lighter than it looks at least, proving that it's made purely out of solidified 4GM particles.
At least it did not sound like a hollow object when I knocked on it. Then again, how can I tell? No one ever cracked them open to see what's inside. It may be that they sound as solid simply from the toughness of their structure. The perk you of the indestructible material, you know?
Once the block was out sufficiently, I stood up and tried stepping on it with one leg. I know it should be firmer than anything I can imagine, but still, no harm in being cautious.
Making sure there were no surprises I fully stepped on the protruding from the wall block and sat down on my knees looking over the side.
"Yep. I was right." I said after confirming that there was a line of incisions in the middle of the block's side, distantly reminding me of the particle emitters that our civilization developed…or stole from the Demonic race together with 4GM tech.
So it really is a magical staircase of shining steps like in a fairy tale. At least it was, in a distant past.
Once all my curiosity was satisfied I controlled my particles to push out the next stepping block bellow me, before I thought a bit and decided to slide the next two after that as well.
My descend was going to look like I am stepping over one step, so if I made a mistake I'd have a few steps in front to help me stop my fall. I'd move out more of them, but I could not see any blocks beyond that and the wall surface did not resonate with the maintenance unit and did not glow, so it was totally dark.
Either there was not anything to resonate from the beginning or all the systems inside it were busted. I think it was the first. Kind of hard to believe that things inside the monolith block as if contained by an airless sarcophagus decayed. If it could, the maintenance unit would not be able to resonate with any of the systems in this structure at all.
So far, everything that was confined into these impenetrable walls kept functioning, except for the periphery that was built outside, bearing the force of corrosion and decay.
The descent luckily went without any surprises and, most important, any of my mishaps. I was overly cautious and to not make any mistakes, repeated the same actions over and over almost like a machine, following the list that ghost assistant composed for me as if silently saying 'don't fuck up'.
Well, it optimized my actions to the degree where it only took me one rest, with all particles needing to calm down, so I'll forgive its rudeness.
Once I stepped off the final step, landing both my feet on the solid surface, I felt my legs start to tremble in the deferred actions of adrenaline. It was a fear-inducing walk, even without any additional excitement like missed steps or stumbling.
I will swear very loudly if it was all for nothing.
After taking some time to calm my nerves enough for my knees to stop shaking, I started to walk around the room, carefully studying every wall.
"Please be here. Please be here." I prayed in my head the entire walk. But Gods and their divine intervention were as none existent as ever. Or maybe they hated me and erased all traces of any feeder being here to spite me.
By the time I completed the circle inside this giant pool, I've found no trace of any device at all. Walls and floor were equally empty of anything that would say there was anything inside them in the past or hidden behind any contraption. The last place was the center of this stadium-sized empty cuboid of wasted space, time, and my strength.
I sighed, turning toward the center and came face to face with the first living creature that I met in my days here. Turns out, something could survive here for centuries. And it looked me right in the face.