When I connected to that Explorers Den forum later that day, after finishing all my self-imposed work, members of the group had already seen that Elder Shalsheed had listed a new member and had had a small discussion about it. Later, as I read through the forum, I understood that it was more like a newcomer's passing rite, as most everyone had been the butt of quite a few jokes when they first joined.
"Who is this new member? Ruler of holes? What a funny fella," someone wrote in the new members welcoming topic of the forum as soon as notification of my joining the group came up.
Several other members also made a few jokes about it. It was not anything malicious, as I understood they genuinely did not understand the meaning of the word "abyss", because in their language it most likely translated as "deep hole".
Those who did understand it only commented that I must have been a teenager and that it sounded cringe. Well, it did sound so, but I was in a cranky mood when I made it up, and now it is too late to change, and for these elders I may really be as young as a teenager.
I made a polite greeting on that thread, thanking all the elders for their warm welcome.
Then I just scrolled through some of the older topics these people discussed, downloading data only in preview, starting, of course, with searching everything regarding Elder Shalsheed.
I saw that topic of recreations of salvaged data, but what piqued my interest at the moment was his most recent post about his latest expedition. He showed a few pictures and had several discussions with forum members about the findings. His thread was very lively and had an incredible amount of views and comments, showing just how popular and well-esteemed Elder Shalsheed was. However, not a few comments were about his wonderful granddaughter and how lovely she was. Although they seemed merely praising him for having such wonderful heirs, in truth they outright offered their own youngsters if she considered marriage.
I'd lie if I said I was unperturbed and just scrolled through it without a care, but damn. You should have seen the girl. Saying "gorgeous" was the same as saying nothing. Just a few pictures Elder Shalsheed posted, where they were together, were enough to derail my search and waste the Cry on stupid things like gazing at girls images, that I would have considered heresy and the dumbest waste of money.
If you think her body must have been magnificent, you'd be one hundred percent right. She was everything I liked about women: curvy, voluptuous, and long-legged, but this was not the reason I was mesmerized.
It was her eyes. Yeah, I know how it sounds, and you all must have smirked at this moment, but just hear me out. Those crystalline-like ruby-red eyes of hers were the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
I've seen Andarans before, but most of them had more murky blue, violet, or dark deep-ocean blue eyes like Elder Shalsheed's eyes. Very rarely you could find Andorans with murky greenish pupils, that looked like glass weather by the sea. There were also whiskey-brown and golden-hued eyes that somehow reminded me of cat eyes, which were actually my favorite, until now.
Red-hued, though, I never even heard any Andaran mentioning it before. However, Lady Aininad's eyes were not only red, they were the clearest crystal-like translucent I've ever seen. They truly looked as if two Ruby stones were embedded into her pupils. When she looked at me from her selfie, I felt myself drowning in those eyes. With her very pale blue Andaran and platinum-white hair, as a contrast, her red eyes seemed to shimmer or burn with a red light from within.
She looked very young. Not a teenager anymore, but young enough to still have a tint of that youthful, or more like a girlish, happy smile on her face, instead of the seductive or suggestive smile that an adult would have. A cute girl-next-door look is how we humans would have named it, not sure if any other race had a similar description or word for it.
However, as was often the case with such wealthy and powerful families, this look could be very deceptive. She did not let out any information about her age, but when people may preserve bodies with Cry, freezing their bodies at a certain age, I would not be surprised to hear that she was not just an adult woman but actually older than me, even though with my hardship-weathered face, I may look like her father.
Among the rich, not all people gain Cry on the Arena; some just get them from parents if the family is really rich, which could be her case. But there were also other ways, other than jobs and fights, to gain the Cry and with that look, she no doubt made lots just with all the followers and fans looking through her personal forum page.
As I mentioned, Cry gets wasted when you use 4GM particles to interact with Intranets when used for sending/resending data. However, when particles lose their owner, going out of anyone's control near the receiver, they tend to concentrate in that area. And if the said Intranet is very popular, it may make the area near retransmitters very rich in 4GM. So people there have a better absorption rate. Not by very much if we talk about normal people like me, but quite a lot when it's someone powerful, who can absorb lots of it.
And when people are popular, it makes fans flock to the intranet, just to view what these people are about, which in turn enriches the Intranet they use.
That leads to people who bring fame and popularity to the intranet getting paid by the Intranet management an incentive to join or stay on a certain intranet. This pay usually amounts to a certain cut from the amount the area gets from all their visitors who wasted Cry to check their page. So the pay is calculated from the traffic on their personal page. And this young girl is very popular. I may have never seen her before, but I've definitely heard her name mentioned at least once somewhere.
You can imagine what it means to have your name mentioned somewhere in the distant part of the galaxy, among hundreds of trillions of people who populate the galaxy. And that number may still not be precise, as no one can count the amount of people populating the galaxy now, like they did in ancient times, as there is no united record anymore.
What I did notice, however, is that she was popular among other races, especially humans, while the comments of her fellow Andarans seemed quite a bit more reserved or even cold. Decent and respectable, good enough to not disrespect, but seemed curt and more objective than those from other races, who were more like what enchanted fans should be. The contrast seemed odd.
What's important to note is that not just anyone should attract so much attention. People tend to get jealous, and when someone far more powerful than you marks you, there is a lot of trouble they may cause you. Right up to the death, as I mentioned already. That's why all the really famous, popular people in our era either have a strong backer behind them, or have a great measure of power themselves. Without a measure of protection, entering the path of celebrity may be lethal.
I already explained that the more powerful people are, the more 4GM they spend, which also implies that the more they can absorb. I am not sure why it is so, but I heard this is because particles influence the state of mind, letting you control more of them but also making you desire even more. And when someone's mind isn't disciplined enough to withstand these desires, they lose control and are swallowed by their base emotions. Which makes them not only greedy but also more jealous and vicious toward other people's success.
It is said that this very rivalry, originating from strong emotions, is the reason why people can't live in peace now, leading even to fighting among the sects and clans. But this is only when offending someone would lead to war. If you have no backers, it is easier to just squish you like a bug to silently dispose of a rival.
I've heard that the color of their eyes was very important in Andaran customs, to the degree that people with some rare hues of eye color might get bullied or looked down upon. And Lady Aininad's eyes seemed to be as rare as they could possibly get. With this kind of backstory, it would be hard for this young lady to stay safe as a celebrity had she not been born into such a powerful family.
With grandfather as one of the most powerful men in the whole Andaran region of the galaxy, you'd have to be suicidal to try to openly disrespect her, not to mention daring to hurt her.
Not only did she have the strongest backer anyone could wish to have, but her family was powerful enough to smite anyone who dared to bring her harm, and from the looks of it, she was really loved and cared for by the entire family. Not a small number of the pictures that she had on her profile were with her brothers and cousins, all of whom seemed to be very happy in her company, with not a trace of dislike, while adults mostly had doting expressions. She was a true princess of her clan.
I looked through her posts while lying in bed, stopping the longest on those where she was with her friends and family at some beach resort. Not the holochamber one. The real deal. Real planet's surface, sand, beach, real sun, and incredibly clear and beautiful ocean. Yet all that beauty seemed dim in comparison to her.
What can I say, I am a healthy adult male, and even though she looked too young for me, we males just can't pass by a picture of a beautiful girl in swimwear without checking her out. A few of her pictures where I zoomed her up closer just to cut out everyone else, I saved for my hidden gallery. In cases like that, I imagine my ghost assistant looking at me with squinted eyes, and an expression of disgust, but I know it's just a soulless program that does not care about any of that.
Late into the night I finally felt too drowsy to do any more scrolling, but just before nodding off for real, I suddenly remembered something important. I still did not thank Elder Shalsheed for his favor. I quickly wrote a short private message to Elder Shalsheed thanking him for letting me join the locked group, just a bit of extra chatter for courtesy's sake, and finally went to sleep.
I was tired and did not put much thought into it, simply laying out my feelings, and, I think, forgetting myself a bit in my tired state. Had I not been so drowsy, I think I would not have said anything extra, but in that drowsy state it really seemed fine, so I slept without a worry.
*****
"Aini, did you do the scanning well?" Asked Grandpa Daneed on a private channel.
"Huh? What do you mean, Grampa? Of course I did. Do you think I am a slacker? Why do you ask that?" Asked Aini with suspicion in her voice.
"No, I don't think you slacked; it's just… I received a message from the Abyss Lord whom I added to the explorers den yesterday. He was just thanking me for the opportunity and such. The usual courtesy. He seems very respectful and courteous." Answered her grandpa.
"Huh? And? What did he say about me?" Said Aini with annoyance, beckoning him to hurry up with his usual long-winded explanation.
"No, no. He did not say anything about you. Just that he mentioned something here that bothers me a bit, so I wanted to ask if you maybe saw anything suspicious when you mapped the area today." Said her grandfather, pacifying the girl, after hearing her anger.
"Grampa, stop beating around the bush and tell me what it is, or better send me his message; I want to see it myself." Said Aini losing patience.
Her grandpa forwarded the Abyss Lord's message to her and a few minutes later she burst into her grandpa's office with an angry look.
"What's that supposed to mean? Do you imply I did my job badly? Is that what he means? I scanned every damn millimeter of the structure; there were no passages there! Who the hell does he think he is? Does he want to fight me?" She rattled in anger.
"Chill, girl. Of course not. How would he know you were the one mapping the structure? That's not what he implied at all. It was a private message; if he wanted to embarrass you, he'd make a public post instead of pointing it out privately." Said Elder Shalsheed. "Now sit down and calm down." He added, with a strict voice.
The girl opened her mouth, ready to object, but closed it after thinking everything over for a moment.
With her arms crossed and a pout on her face, she slumped into the armchair and silently stared at the endless starry cosmos behind the window until she felt herself calming down.
"Better?" asked her grandfather after she sighed and turned back to him.
"Sorry about that." Said the girl with a nod. "But there were no passages." She added, in a pouty voice.
"Maybe he was just mistaken. I already wrote him a message, asking what he meant. Let's wait and see what he replies, alright? And control your emotions. You are slipping too easily. Do I really need to remind you of the consequences of such slippage?
"I know." Said Aininad with a guilty voice. "Please don't remind me of Dad." You know I'd never forget this lesson in my entire life."
"And yet you seem to need to be reminded about it occasionally." Said Elder Shalsheed.
"Send me his message as soon as you receive it, please." Said Aini standing up from her seat with her gaze still pointed at the floor. "I'll be in a meditation chamber." She added, before the door slid shut behind her.
"Ahhh. Her feisty temper reminds me too much of her mother. That woman was a hurricane in her youth. How I hope Aini would not turn out like that." Said Captain Daneed with a sigh, and pressed at his eyes with two fingers to relieve some stress.
"Then again. Better she be more like her mother than her father. He muttered with another sigh.
Then he opened the message sent by the Abyss Lord and, with a thoughtful expression, reread it once again, while rubbing his well-trimmed platinum beard.
Skipping all the initial courtesies, he started from the words that read:
"Also I was very excited to see the images from that ruin that you and your granddaughter are exploring at the moment. You seem to be among the few on the forum who would share their findings so openly. Seeing all that for a person like me is simply amazing. I have not seen such scenes of ruins anywhere before. School materials were nowhere near as picturesque as your images.
However, I could not help noticing that you mentioned you have finished mapping the entire structure, but you showed only one level and did not mention anything about the lower levels. If I am not mistaken, I saw an elevator in one of the photos Lady Aininad has shared on her profile forum. Then again, it's not my right to be nosy. I am immeasurably grateful to have a chance to study what you have graciously shared."
"What elevator?" Muttered Elder Shalsheed scrolling through all the pictures they had. He did not notice anything. What was he talking about? Could he have just been mistaken? Yet he sounded very confident."
However, the man had not replied anything at all for an entire day after that, which made his granddaughter, with her short temper, lose her patience. She demanded the Abyss Lords private contact, but he refused her, saying she should just calm down and wait patiently. If he did not reply, there must have been a reason. The man could be asleep, and be a long sleeper. After all, ever since the crumble of the old order, everyone stopped using unified galactic time, so for people in different parts of space the time of day was different now, just like it was before the Galactic Conquest Era.
This stalled the girl for a few more hours, but just half a day after their discussion, she made a post on the Explorers den forum that made Elder Shalsheed smack his own face with his palm.
"This girl. She clearly did not think through what it might cause with her popularity." He said, with a sigh.
"She really takes after her mother in the worst way. Just as her mother did in her youth, everywhere this girl goes, she stirs up trouble in empty spots like a storm. Can't she be more aware of her status?" He muttered. "I swear, one of these two will be the death of me someday."