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Chapter 9
Inner Workings
Free, with Foxx presumably in tow, walked to the Camper. A short walk made considerably longer by Free’s pondering, focused on his notepad. By the time he reached the Camper and went to open its door… Free realized Frost had forgotten to give him the keys.
“Great, now we have to go all the way back,” Free sighed, then an idea stuck him. “Hey, Foxx, how about I show you, purely in case of an emergency, how to break into car?”
Free waited for a reply and received only silence.
“Foxx?” Free turned around—Foxx was nowhere to be seen.
In the nine minutes he spent on this one-minute walk, he somehow had lost Foxx. Not for long however, Free quickly spotted a Foxx-colored glow behind the diner. Free wondered why Foxx was there, then shrugged and walked over to see with his own eye.
Free peered around the corner, Foxx was moving aside trash bags, looking for something.
“Somethin’ interestin’ in there?” Free walked over to Foxx.
Foxx nodded his head.
“Want some help?”
“Yes.”
With the help of Free, Foxx uncovered a cardboard box with most of its details worn off expect for a gold star stamp. Foxx opened it and took out a black plastic and silver lined synthesizer.
Free’s eye widened, “No way, what a find—good eye, Foxx! Hand it to me, if it’s what I think it is…” Foxx did so and Free excitedly examined it, “This may be some Universal tech, looks brand new too. Let’s see what it sounds like.”
Free pressed a key, but the synthesizer made no sound.
“Is it broken?” Foxx’s ears drooped.
“…No, just forgot we gotta plug it in first,” Free held the synthesizer under his arm. “Though can’t rule out there’s somethin’ wrong with it, why else would someone throw away a perfectly good piece? But eh, even if it is, I can fix it up no problem!”
“What are you two doing?” a voice said from behind them.
Free slowly turned around, it was Frost.
“Please, do not teach Foxx how to dumpster dive,” Frost said.
“It’s an important life skill, also I didn’t, he’s a natural,” Free said.”
“Whichever is the case, cease. Let us go to the Camper.”
“Fine, fine, not like we’re scavengers or anything.”
“This is a different context.”
“Because people could see us?”
“Because it is impolite. This is maintained, inhabited property, not abandoned—”
“Since people could see us, got it,” Free walked past Frost.
“Humph.”
Foxx and Frost followed Free back to the Camper.
***
Back in space and finished with chores, Foxx and Free sat down in the main room of the Camper, the synthesizer between them.
“Alright,” Free clapped his hands. “Pluggin’ it in, in fact, didn’t work. Must be an internal issue—Foxx, pass me the screwdriver.”
Foxx took out a screwdriver from Free’s toolbox and hovered it over to him.
Free unscrewed the synthesizer’s chassis then removed its upper half, revealing its insides as seemly pristine, practically shining. Although, to Foxx’s confusion, it looked to have multiple duplicate and redundant parts.
“Great—Why couldn’t’ve you been smashed, or missin’ parts, or anything other than this,” Free sighed.
“Why?” Foxx asked..
“’Cause now we gotta check everything one by one, can’t blame it on an obvious failure.” Free took out is notepad, “Also the chance of accidentally muckin’ up Universal tech sucks, but whatever, we’ll be careful.”
“You mentioned that before.”
“What?”
“Universal technology.”
“Yeah, and?”
“What is it?”
“Oh, uh, where to start… Aha!” Free pointed to a stack of voice chips, each of completely different makes, “You see how there’s all these extra pieces, like someone jammed a bunch of synths into one?”
Foxx nodded.
“The reason for this is because each Cluster has its own ‘twists’ on the laws of reality, this is called RM—Don’t know what it stands for yet, but everyone calls it that… Maybe no one knows—Anyway, RM determines what does and doesn’t work. From tech to ‘magic,’ everything in a Cluster relies on its RM to function as it should.”
Free took out a whiteboard and drew stick figures and celestial bodies onto it.
“Therefore, the farther away a device is from its Cluster of origin, the less likely it’ll work, possibly even doing the opposite of what it’s meant to. For example, if you use a piece of RM tech within the same Cluster Chain but in different Cluster than the one it came from, it’ll probably work. Any further than that though and you’ll run into trouble.”
Free wrote “addendum” in large text, “Complexity of tech also factors into this. No matter how wild the RM is, a wrench is always gonna work, since it’s just a shaped piece of metal. While something intricate, like a computer, is more likely to lose effectiveness, functions, or straight up fail.”
“There’s an exception though, can you guess what it is?” Free asked.
Foxx pondered, “Space?”
“Bingo!”Free smiled. “Yep, space acts as a free-for-all neutral ground where everything seems to work.”
Free erased the white board and drew various gadgets and gizmos onto it, “Anyway, now that you know the basics, back to the main question—Universal tech. It’s made to cover as many common twists as possible, allowin’ it to be used wherever without worryin’ about it breakin’. How this is achieved varies, but the synth does it by having multiple parts, automatically switching to whichever part works the best.”
“…Are we Universal, is life Universal?” Foxx asked.
“Uhhhhhhhhh… Yes! Maybe? I’ve thought about it before, but don’t have a good explanation, only the observation that livin’—or maybe more accurately sentient—things are unaffected by RM. Although, spaceships also ignore them, so there has to be a lot more to it than that.”
Free sighed, “This is pure spitballing, but maybe people and spaceships bring a ‘part’ of their home planet with them wherever they go? Allowing this exception.”
“Wow,” Foxx’s ears raised.
“It’s a bit scary to think about how dangerous space travel would be without this. Not that D.ALLs, Abstract machines, like me and Frost would have to worry about it. We don’t have any RM innate to our make ups, and Abstract tech completely ignores RM.”
“Abstract technology?” Foxx asked.
“A lesson for another day. Need to make some notes first, even then, I don’t think there’s much I could tell you,” Free put away the whiteboard. “Documentation on that stuff is rare, rarer than the tech itself. And the only Abstract tech I’ve worked on is, well, myself.”
“You repaired Frost.”
“That’s different, you don’t need to fully understand how something works to patch it up. On top of that, there’s no similarity between how we function. Meaning there’s not much I can gather from comparison beyond that Abstract tech is weird.”
“Ok.”
“Now that you’re up to speed on all matters space and stuff, pass me the multimeter—We’ve got a synth to fix!”
The rest of the day quickly passed, Foxx and Free attempted everything they could think of besides disassembling and reassembling the synthesizer. Each part seemed to function as it should, at least within what Free knew. So many of the parts were well outside what he had seen before, there was a nagging thought that he was missing something…
Free collapsed onto the floor, exhausted, mumbling to himself as he wrote on his notepad.
“Is it dead?” Foxx yawned.
“Not if we keep at it, I know we can fix it,” Free said.
“Both of you should rest, try again tomorrow,” Frost said from the driver’s seat.
“No, if we don’t fix it now—” Free jolted up, “You know what, you’re right! It’s about time we all get some rest, especially you.”
“I am fine, driving does not take much from me.”
“And I’ve been sittin’ on the floor. We’ve got less than a day till we reach Terarin, and you still need to heal—better to land with you in the best condition possible.”
“Hmm. Fine, I suppose that would be best,” Frost parked the Camper behind the cover of a few asteroids and put it into stand by.
“Foxx, same goes for you,” Free put his toolbox and the synthesizer into the laundry room. “Think about all the cool things you’ll see tomorrow, wouldn’t want to miss out just because you got sleepy.”
“Ok,” Foxx hovered into his burrow, burying himself in pillows and blankets.
***
It started with a faint glow underneath the laundry room door then evolved into flashes, pulsing in the pattern, Red-red-blue. While Foxx did not notice, Frost, who’s bed was the driver’s seat, was awoken by it.
Frost arose and walked to the laundry room, hearing the bellow of a heartbeat from within when they got close. Frost opened the door—
Free dangled from the ceiling by deep-blue strings, caught in them like a spider’s web. He was hoisted above ball jointed hands with the strings wrapped around their joints, manipulating them in the air. One hand at the center held an undulating mass made of Free’s shell which the other hands poked and pulled.
“Free?” Frost put their hand over their knife.
Free’s eye pinned when it met Frost’s gaze, then the hands, strings, and Free himself fell to the floor. The strings and hands dissolved in seconds, leaving no trace, and the undulating mass absorbed back into Free.
Frost went to help Free up—and Free smacked Frost’s hand and turned away from them. Free’s back was cut open, underneath his shell was a wooden frame and within that were gears and an iron clockwork heart that spun them.
“I am sorry for my intrusion. Are you hurt? What was that?” Frost asked.
“None of your business, go back to sleep,” Free said.
“If you are hurt, it is my business to—”
“Then tell me what happened back on Calmede,” Free glared at Frost.
“…”
“Go on, I’m waitin’, bet you got a good explanation on why you almost got us killed over someone else’s problem—someone who we don’t even know was the ‘good guy’ in that.” Free stood up, “Actually, you know what, better yet—what was with the singin ’? That ice fog thing you pulled out of nowhere and nearly killed you.”
“I thought eliminating Eight was the best course of action, I concluded if Silk did not defeat him, he may have pursued us afterwards.”
“And? The other thing?”
Frost looked away, “I cannot speak on it.”
“Convenient—well, same can apply to me then, ‘I cannot speak on it,’
leave.
” Free slumped onto the wall then to the floor, “You keep your secrets, I’ll keep mine—and I’d like to get back to work.”
“…That was for the synthesizer’s repair, was it not?”
“Amazing guess work,” Free rolled his eye. “Yeah, I know, it’s stupid doing all this for a useless toy that’d be better as scrap.”
“I did not think that, and I know you know that as well.”
“Sure.”
“I understand I may not be forthcoming, I have my reasons, I assure you—”
“Look, I know what I know, you know what you know—boom, cool, we’re done, good night.”
…
…
…
“I suppose,” Frost sighed and walked to the door. “I request once you finish, immediately go to charge. We leave in three hours and arrive to Terarin two hours after.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“…Good night,” Frost quietly closed the door as they left.
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