All Chapters of Getting a Technology System in Modern Day: Chapter 601 - Chapter 610
740 chapters
Anxiety Trumps Caffeine
{System checks complete, Commander,} the AI of the TES Farsight announced.Commander Takahashi Ayaka, the ship’s executive officer, was the one in charge of making sure the ship herself was functional. Her captain, Shannon Meare, may be mistress-after-God and nominally in charge of the crew and ship, but it was an executive officer’s task to ensure that the captain HAD a functioning crew and a working ship in the first place.“Excellent. Progress on the cargo loading?” Ayaka asked from her position in the captain’s chair on the bridge. Captain Meare had handed her the watch while she took care of all the last-minute paperwork that seemed, no matter how technologically advanced, any government produced in job lots. She and Ayaka often laughed about the sisyphean task of keeping current with paperwork, and how their jobs were 99 parts paperwork and 1 part ship handling.At least in the simulation, anyway; this was their first real-world experience at the helm of the Farsight. It struck
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The Difference Between Betas and Demos
Back on Earth.The broadcast of the diaspora was still ongoing, as the great colony ships carrying seeds of humanity—they were even named after different seeds, a PR masterstroke that was designed to offset the upset of the forced exodus—had scattered in every possible direction. They were still in the solar system, though, and the broadcast would continue until they reached Jupiter, where the live broadcast would cut off and switch to online streams, which people could still watch if they chose to.At .15c, that point would take just under four hours, but the streams wouldn’t be cut off until the colony ships reached the heliopause, roughly fifteen and a half months later. Each of the thousands of ships had their own stream already running concurrently with the broadcast so that those who had loved ones on them could follow their journey until the last possible moment. Their final destinations would be unreachable by the vast majority of people currently alive; even at warp speed (wh
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Stress and Excitement
Two days later.{Analysis complete, Admiral. No signs of advanced alien life detected in space,} the Proxima’s AI reported. It had spent a few hours repeatedly examining every pixel of the completed map and come to the conclusion that, if alien lifeforms existed in the Proxima Centauri system, they were either incapable of spaceflight or used a means too advanced for it to detect.“Signal the fleet: the fleet will prepare to launch after crossing Proxima Centauri’s heliopause. Once launched, the escorts will take up formation around the TSF Proxima. Exploration Fleet is to remain docked but move to Condition Yellow. They will launch once we’re ten AU inside the system,” Admiral of the Red Bianchi ordered.{Signal sent and acknowledged, Admiral,} the AI replied, then engaged the Proxima’s gravity drives. They were close enough to the star to get at least minimal acceleration out of them.“Proxima, all hands announcement.”{Recording, Admiral.}“All hands hear this. We have completed th
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Maybe They Were Just Imagining Things
As soon as the briefing was over, Joon-ho opened his eyes and climbed out of his pod. Throwing his arms over his head, he leaned back and stretched as far as his 163 centimeter body would allow him to and groaned in excitement. ‘This must be what sex feels like!’ he thought as he held the stretch for as long as possible. And given that he had received genetic enhancements, that would have been a long time indeed, but the feeling soon passed as his body adjusted itself. Thanks to those same enhancements, physical feelings of relief came on fast and left faster.“Mana,” he muttered under his breath. While the pods didn’t have any mana to draw on while the vessel they were on was inside a warp bubble, now that they were traveling at sublight speed, the pods could, and did, draw mana from their surroundings and concentrate it within the pods to provide awakeners with a higher density of mana in which to train.And he wasn’t the only person who felt like he currently did, either. Every si
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Preventing Piss-Poor Performance
An AR hologram of Proxima Centauri b was floating in the middle of the Farsight’s bridge, updated moment by moment thanks to hundreds of close-in survey satellites that the exploration squadron had released. Each of them were specialized satellites, some for weather, some for tectonic activity, some for mana detection, and so on. The information was collated and sent to the squadron flagship by a network of relay satellites so there was no delay in delivering information gathered on the opposite side of the planet from the ships.They were to be the first to set foot on a planet outside the Sol system, so before that historic event took place, they were determined to know everything they could about the planet in order to prevent as many possible mishaps as they could. Of course, nothing could prevent Murphy from sticking his own fingers into their meticulously prepared pie, but proper planning and preparation prevents piss-poor performance, and they were determined to at least do tha
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Glory vs. Anxiety
Eleven days later.With enough data about the planet—or its surface, at least—the crew of the Farsight had a prioritized list of possible landing areas. Each of them had points of interest that the ship’s AI had picked out and the researchers had filtered. They ranged from unique geographical formations, to clusters of vegetation that differed from the plants around it, to possible artificial structures that would require a more hands-on investigation. What none of them included, however, were signs of habitation, so the planet had been deemed safe enough for a single lander to be sent down.“What we know about the planet is that it’s currently a pangea. There is a single, mountainous supercontinent and the rest of the surface is scattered with archipelagos. A bit more than 88% of the surface is water, which our satellite scans were unable to penetrate beyond a certain depth.“Proxima Centauri itself serves the same gravitational purpose of a moon, which Proxima Centauri b lacks. Or a
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Parkering It
The entire landing was being broadcast, both through external cameras on the lander and helmet cameras from each crew member, for anyone in Task Force Proxima to watch. At least if they were off watch, anyway; people who were on duty were prohibited from watching the broadcast instead of doing their jobs. It drew every eye in the entire task force save only the most dedicated of researchers still on the cityship studying the gravitational tides between Proxima Centauri and the Alpha Centauri binary system.The altimeter continued ticking down as the lander crept toward the surface at an agonizingly slow speed. One hundred... fifty... thirty... twenty... ten.... The numbers finally stopped creeping down when it reached ten centimeters from the surface of “New Australia”. A collective stare state swept over the crew of the task force as everyone currently standing watch at their stations were suddenly given permission to watch the live broadcast. Fleet Admiral of the Red Bianchi had con
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Unassing the Area
The lander continued rising, though at a speed that wouldn’t overtax its inertial compensator. The pilot did, however, continue random walking to the point where someone that wasn’t aware of what was going on might think that he was drunk. The vessel sure was swaying and lurching about like he was, anyway.They stopped briefly at the fifty kilometer mark, since that was the flight ceiling for the unmanned collection drones that had been sent to collect samples from the ocean. Even with gravity drives, there was still a practical limit for machines that small.Two of the drones were caught by the whipping root tendrils, but the other eight managed to return safely to the lander and deposit their samples in the stasis fields prepared for them. And the pilot wasn’t willing to wait around, as it seemed the roots were growing at a speed visible to the naked eye, so he rocketed straight up toward the Karman Line in a maneuver that the marines who normally rode in landers called “unassing th
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SWAGs
Fleet Admiral Bianchi was the first to react. “What makes you say that?” he asked. He wasn’t surprised that they had found life—or rather, sentient life anyway; whether or not it was sapient was still in question. After all, liquid surface water was what made life possible in the first place, and if Proxima Centauri b had anything in spades, it was water.(Ed note: Sentience and sapience aren’t exactly the same thing. Sentient beings are capable of experiencing sensations and, perhaps, emotions. Sapient beings are capable of higher orders of rational thought. For example, dogs are sentient beings; they can experience physical sensations and emotions, but aren’t capable of rational thinking. Humans, on the other hand, are sapient. We’re capable of thinking beyond our urges.)“This,” Dr. Standing Bear replied, her eyes glazing over as she selected a file to play on the screen behind her. The recording showed the mana pulses detected by the Henry’s Eyes sensors moments before the “root”
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Limitation is the Midwife of Invention
“We should maintain our position and try not to provoke the being until we have an idea of how to communicate with it, Admiral,” Ayaka said. As the leader on the ground, Fleet Admiral Bianchi had looked to her to open the discussion. “After all, if you look at the situation from the being’s side, we’re the invaders that’re interrupting its life. So its reaction is... understandable, in that light, even if it is both sapient and purposefully hostile.”“Wherever we go, the law of nature still applies,” Captain Marinakis interjected. “The strong eat the weak, and mercy is a privilege of the strong. We have no idea if communication will even be possible, so I’d rather eat than be eaten, Sir.”Nobody else spoke, letting Fleet Admiral Bianchi weigh the two options presented to him. They were on opposite ends of the spectrum, which was rare for the command team of Ayaka and Dimitrios, who were normally rather synchronized in their approach to problem solving.The admiral, however, gave no si
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