Unchosen Champion
Chapter 375: Playing with Blocks

Coop tentatively exited the hexagonal compartment, feeling as if crossing the threshold into the rest of the ship was akin to leaving a protective trench to enter no man’s land. The only reason he forced himself to move was that he didn’t want to waste more time while his companions dealt with the Eradication Protocol. Really, he felt like exploring an alien spaceship shouldn’t have been his responsibility at all.

After he was out in the open, it took several moments for the feeling of exposure to diminish, though it didn’t completely fade. He had an uncanny sense that this was the kind of place most would want to escape from rather than sneak into, but he knew better than let his feelings ruin an opportunity for Ghost Reef. In that sense, he had to press forward.

He slowly spun around once he rose to his feet, gazing into the distance. He was having a difficult time fully comprehending the internal space of the Ark, finding the size of the megastructure to be nothing short of bewildering. It was basically an entirely new frontier contained within what must have been an alien spaceship, greatly exceeding his imagination in terms of scope. The place was absolutely dizzying.

The air was unusually crisp, the temperature low enough to reveal his nervous breaths. He couldn’t tell if it was deliberately controlled or if the vessel was that insulated. He imagined that at its exterior peak, it would naturally be cold due to the altitude, but surely it would be hotter across the rest of its surface.

On his second revolution with his eyes wide and head tilted slightly as he sought to understand the confines of the ship, he wondered why he was the only human there. It seemed secure enough. It was so large and so empty, he could confidently say that every person would have comfortably fit, even before the assimilation decimated their population. There wasn’t a single enemy in sight, the mana was nice and calm, and every human could have even had their own personal hexagonal compartments.

Wasn’t that obviously the point of this so-called Ark? To survive the flood of mana? It made perfect sense to him based on the name the Exiles had provided.

With the thought ringing in his head, he bent to help Lyriel pull herself out of the compartment, then reached down to give Palisteon a chance to climb out. None of them were actively utilizing mana, subconsciously avoiding unnecessary actions after Coop had run down a list of imagined problems before they explored any further. Naturally, alien security systems were chief among his worries as they effectively trespassed on a spaceship, but Lyriel was less concerned given his possession of the key. Still, they all behaved as they explored further.

Coop was the first to cross the border between tiles, stepping onto the next cell, aiming vaguely toward the horizontal tube in the center. Really, it was the only notable feature they could identify, so the plan was to follow the direction of its internal mana current and hope that it led to the core, as Lyriel called it. Coop figured they were looking for the bridge of a ship, or some alien equivalent that would have a control panel for him to fiddle with, and somehow that was meant to save his island.

He had a thousand questions bouncing around in his head, but he doubted any of them could be easily answered. Who built the Ark? Where exactly did it come from? What was its actual purpose? Was it really for them?

Lyriel had been unable to confidently answer any of his questions except that she admitted there was one on every planet in the galactic community. Even that simple fact boggled his mind, considering that meant there were, at a minimum, hundreds of billions of these Arks. A handful of them might have exhausted every necessary material on planet Earth for its construction, so billions seemed incomprehensible.

Otherwise, Lyriel surmised that the system had provided the Arks for the Exiles as it continued its clash with mana itself. That may be what she believed, but Coop wasn’t so sure and he had argued as such before they continued. It stank of the same contradictions as the Avatar of the System being disconnected from the very thing she had claimed to represent, but if it meant protecting Ghost Reef, he didn’t really care how he accomplished his task. Lyriel promised that in this, their goals were absolutely aligned. She wanted nothing more than to protect every living being, now and in the future, from the oppression of mana. She had gambled her long life on the mere chance of achieving that goal, so he really didn’t doubt her sincerity. He just wondered about the chances that she was misguided at any point.

Just as he and the pair of aliens reached the surface of the neighboring hexagonal tile, having decided to trek across the interior on foot, the top of their original compartment slid back over the opening with a smooth whooshing sound before reconnecting in the exact center. The seal covered the singular gap in the tiled surface that fully encompassed the interior of the ship, creating a uniform veneer as far as the eye could see.

Before Coop had a chance to feel the dread of being trapped inside of an alien formation after losing their exit, the tile they stood on shifted, rising straight up into the air with an unnatural acceleration. The sudden acceleration was especially unwelcomed when it came from what should have been solid ground. The motion came way too fast, the velocity was too high to make it a safe elevator, and the complete lack of warning seemed like an obvious hazard.

Coop barely kept himself upright, extending his arms and bending his knees as the floor suddenly grew into a pillar, revealing other equally scaled hexagonal pieces connected beneath. Lyriel latched onto his shoulder as the top compartment carried them into the grayish sky.

Moments after they started moving, billions of other hexagon tiles also shifted on their own, rising, revealing that they were all equal pieces. They were creating stepped patterns and sealing off sections by forming walls with adjacent tiles in grand designs that extended beyond sight. Others sank from the distant ceiling or shot out of the faraway walls, exposing stacks of the hexagonal compartments. They interlocked into larger shapes such that every single tile appeared to represent a whole stack of cells rather than just the one on the surface.

They were inexplicably quiet, lacking the friction that should have come from the motions or any obvious propulsion, but the sound of air being pushed around by what were effectively pistons created a dynamic rumble that reverberated throughout the ship. The landscape rapidly changed as entire regions were constructed from hexagonal blocks.

Coop couldn’t help but let out a hesitant and concerned sound himself, not quite a scream, but close enough as they flew past other pillars, avoiding collisions by a single hexagon and still more entrapped theirs. He watched as different extensions crashed into each other, forcing the sections to separate and combine, like each hex piece was an interchangeable building block, forming floating islands and gigantic cantilevers, tunnels, chandeliers, and skyscrapers of interlocking individual pieces. They climbed higher than any skyscraper and still didn’t stop.

The sections ultimately halted on their own, including the one that they occupied, reshaping the entire empty space of the ship into a completely new compartmentalized design that erased the memory of wide open spaces. It was something like an alien city that had been constructed right before their eyes, featuring impossibly thin, hexagonal skyscrapers and floating foundations. The shapes climbed the far-off walls and extended from the ceiling, wrapping in on themselves so that individual structures met and combined into odd shapes that ruined the image of a folded skyline and made it truly alien.

What had been an unbelievably large interior had been cut off from them. Instead, their platform had been almost completely enclosed. Only one of the six walls had been left exposed, like they had entered a relatively comfortable room with a single, wide viewing window. Gazing out revealed a cityscape composed of the dark alien materials that formed the floors and walls, wrapped with the shining border lining. The contained mana flow was still visible in the distance, though it was partially obstructed by neighboring stacks, its light subtly reflecting off a billion different surfaces.

Coop was breathing as if he had been in a fight, with adrenaline pumping through his body. “We are completely out of our depth.” He whispered, as patiently as he could, desperately wishing there was another way to accomplish his goals.

“Stay calm, human.” Lyriel responded, though she was forced to lift a finger to carefully adjust her disheveled hair and was a bit slow to separate from Coop, experiencing her own version of internal panic. It was obvious she had also never borne witness to such alien tech.

Coop shook his head. “Seriously though, we could have been crushed or who knows what else, just like that.” He concluded with a snap of his fingers that was inadvertently much louder than either of their hushed voices.

Palisteon twisted back and forth on the floor near their legs, gazing at each of them as they spoke. It was as if he was internally undergoing the exact same debate.

“Nonsense.” Lyriel confidently declared, finally recovering her composure. “The Ark was recognizing your presence, I’m sure.”

“Why not yours? If the system made the Ark for the Exiles, why doesn’t it recognize you?” He questioned.

Lyriel had a moment where her expression reflected some nominal doubt, but it was gone as quickly as it came. “I am not one of the original Exiles. The rest of us simply inherited their legacy and maybe not their executive permissions.”

She pointed at the wall in front of them as it caught her eye, eager to move on from the topic, then stepped toward it as if it was proof of her original conjecture. Coop followed, recognizing that the flat surface had manipulated itself so that it exposed a subtle relief pattern that might have vaguely matched the exterior view if he gazed out of their window, though it lacked even a single hexagon.

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“What is that?” He wondered out loud, afraid to get too much closer.

“It is certain to be the system’s physical interface!” Lyriel excitedly concluded, once again clashing with Coop’s growing skepticism as she stepped up to it. At best, it seemed like an abstract artistic rendition of the current arrangement outside. He had no idea how she would have leapt to the idea that it was an interface, but he had to admit she started with a tiny bit more information than he did. Despite what he saw as constant leaps in logic and questionable reliance on blind faith in rumors of eras long past, Lyriel had been right about just about every single thing she shared with humanity.

Just when he tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, he gasped as she reached out and tried touching the shallow depressions in the wall. “What the hell? Don’t just touch things.” He scolded her in disbelief. “Are you crazy?”

She frowned, not at his reaction, but because the wall had no response to her effort. She turned to him, ensnaring his hand to pull him closer to the wall. “You try.” She encouraged him.

There was no way he would do such a thing, and he planted his feet in a refusal to move, but even just raising his hand closer to the symbols and shapes while thinking about what would happen caused something to happen. He was confronted with the knowledge that she was right. The mural-like relief was actually some kind of alien interface, and it was recognizing him as authorized personnel while Lyriel and Palisteon were merely visitors. It was more than conjecture, as the knowledge was just one step beyond what he would have ever guessed on his own, but he couldn’t explain why. The mural communicated with him in an alien way.

He didn’t need to touch the symbols directly, interacting with the wall in the same way that the system’s displays worked while they were undergoing the assimilation. There was a tactile sensation supplied as his mind brushed across the shapes.

The problem was that unlike the system, this thing was not bending itself to accommodate its human user. There wasn’t a simple set of menus for him to navigate, buttons to consult, nor a table of contents or user manual. It was designed for a specific group of beings that he was simply not a member of. Whatever logic they used to organize data and implement controls was not something he, or any human, was familiar with. A genius might have felt like the secrets of the universe were being revealed with math equations and chemistry formulas flying across his vision like he was blasting through a rendition of physical data storage, but a simple person like Coop only saw gibberish, question marks, and corrupted data.

Coop tore his attention away after several minutes of senseless meditation and spoke to Lyriel. “I don’t get it.” He stated in a flat voice, not even realizing how long he had been frozen in place.

“But you can transmit and receive information, right?” She asked, barely suppressing enough excitement for the both of them.

“I guess?” He answered. Something clearly reacted to his presence, anyway. He definitely understood how the Ark designated both himself and the pair of aliens, for instance.

“See if you can expose the core.” She suggested, like it was the simplest objective in the world.

“I have literally no idea how I would even start.” He pointed out.

“Just give it a try.” Lyriel insisted. “Now that we are inside the Ark and actually interfacing with it, we have all the time in the world to figure it out.”

Coop was immediately frustrated by her response, but because he specifically didn’t want to waste any time, he didn’t bother arguing. He returned his attention to the shapes on the wall, wondering if he could crack a code or otherwise decipher something from it. It seemed unlikely.

It only took him a second to realize it was futile, like translating an ancient language devised by beings that weren’t human at all. Instead, he just tried to force his will, demanding that it show him a map. He just repeated ‘map’ in his head over and over, imagining unfolding a chart with clearly delineated paths, a compass rose, and a basic legend describing the topography of the land. He squeezed his eyes shut and demanded the design of the ship while clumsily ‘pressing’ every button with his thoughts. Despite his intentions, he was nothing more than a toddler smashing knobs and dials while daydreaming of a globe to spin around.

Something did actually happen, with the side wall revealing a shelf, then drawing a thousand needle-thin towers from vaguely familiar pixelated energies. They combined into a slightly teardrop overall shape that separated from the shelf almost like he had purchased a new service building for the settlement from the system, though in miniature form. Lyriel approached the product, bending over to peer at the matte surface before she looked back at Coop.

“What is it?” She asked, genuinely confused for once.

“I dunno? I wanted a map.” Coop admitted, a bit exasperated already.

Lyriel picked it up and seemed to be giving it an honest assessment. “I suppose it is a miniature rendering of the Ark.” She genuinely smiled at him. “Nice job!”

Coop just sighed, her reaction a bit too much like an encouraging adult judging a child’s finger-painted masterpiece. He refocused on the relief display, absently wondering what to do.

“I am not the right guy for this.” He grumbled. “An expert like Jones or someone more curious like Charlie would have been way better. I should be swinging my weapons around, not unraveling ancient mysteries.”

Lyriel didn’t have any dispute with his observation. She probably would have kept the key for herself had she known Coop would form an official faction and give her a chance to enact her plan by her own volition. They were both forced to play the cards they had been dealt.

Coop started mentally toying with the different shapes, doing his best to get his footing in a more deliberate manner. She patiently watched him for a while, then paced the compartment, spending some time peering beyond their window, and eventually settled near Coop with Palisteon at her side, silently cheering him on. She sat down, stood up, peered over his shoulder, then went back to rest, repeating the ritual at random intervals over time.

Coop spent hours and hours with the interface, sometimes feeling like he was getting somewhere, then realizing he had no idea what was happening. He was a caveman trying to navigate a super computer with nothing but a club. It was frustrating, to say the least.

However, bits and pieces did start to come together thanks to his effort. Every once in a while, a shape would appear in the mental depiction of the wall that, if his mind brushed against it, somehow told him a story, or left him with a firm impression of an idea, or provided a tiny morsel of understanding.

Eventually, he concluded that he probably wouldn’t understand a map anyway as the entire ship was as variable as a sandbox, each compartment a grain. Instead, he just needed a simple destination that the Ark could point him to. The mana tube that Lyriel suggested could lead to the core came to mind as the only viable option. He wanted to go there.

Lyriel, true to her belief, never rushed him, and for his part, he treated it like another grind. He was persistent, stubbornly tenacious, and resolute in the exercise. He would let his thoughts surf down the channels in the mural, and if nothing came to him, he would try again and again and again, comparing the individual experiences with each and every option. He pounced on individual shapes, demanding that they reveal their purpose, and compared every mental impulse, repeating the process enough times to make a normal person go insane.

After some time, Coop had pieced together some simple patterns that might get them somewhere. Thankfully, his role in the interaction had been taught by his experience with the system during the assimilation. If he hadn’t already learned how to mentally communicate with prompts, observing notifications and receiving messages or choosing skills and applying points, he would never have had any baseline to start with.

The biggest revelation of all might have been that the system and the ship operated with the same basic fundamentals. They may have been two different programs, using different languages, but they both used the equivalent cerebral mouse and keyboard.

Lyriel jumped up when he finally stepped away from the wall, managing to avoid interrupting him until the last moment. “Do you have something?” She wondered, tilting her head to the side while doing her best to stifle her eagerness.

“Kinda?” Coop hedged.

It wasn’t like he cracked any particular code, but he had finally matched up the square block with the square hole and discovered that they fit. He walked over to the open window and stood for a moment, studying the bizarre honeycomb compartments that filled the skyline. Then, with the same mental prompting as he had practiced with the mural, he replicated its surface in the forefront of his mind, basically adopting a new heads-up display to replace the previous one provided by the system menus.

“For one, I think I can interact with the Ark from anywhere in here, but different locations will provide different levels of access.” He explained, feeling a little proud that he had made any progress at all. “Basically, you won’t find payroll in the janitorial closet, and right now, I think we’re standing in the parking garage.” He added, providing an explanation that only made sense to himself.

He just needed to think down the surface of the ‘rectangle curving inward, final circular spiral’ to initiate a prompt. It wasn’t a combination that gave him any specific information, but one that allowed him to submit something like a query instead. Admittedly, discovering the button that basically opened a receiver without knowing the language was not the most incredible accomplishment, especially after the amount of time Coop had spent to uncover that little bit, but it was something.

Lyriel nodded along, readily accepting any implication that the Ark was technologically advanced far beyond what the galactic community allowed. She actually had no idea what he was talking about when he brought up closets and garages, but she was doing her best to be encouraging.

“So, you can take us further.” She reasoned.

He shrugged, still needing to put the theory to action. “I can try.”

Coop manipulated the design in his mind, rearranging shapes while aiming for the mana tube in the middle. To his moderate surprise, the hexagonal compartments in front of them started to move. The timing made it impossible to be a coincidence.

Coop wasn’t actually doing anything crazy, simply following the most basic instincts that a child might have if presented with shaped building blocks, but the result was a long highway of hexagonal platforms, leading from their window toward the center of the ship and the lit current of mana in the middle.

“Huh.” He grunted as the platforms snapped together, leading far into the distance. “I guess that actually worked.”

“Excellent.” Lyriel gave him a modest cheer. “I knew you could do it, human. Well done.”

As far as they were concerned, the Ark was like a giant industrial complex with countless potential subdivisions. Lyriel and Palisteon were nothing more than temporary visitors and Coop was some random person with an all-access card.

Where did that actually get them? Coop’s initial answer would have simply been ‘lost,’ but it would be more accurate to recognize that he was in a position to ask for directions or otherwise discover posted signs that might lead them where they wanted to go. The fact that Coop could gain any information from the ship at all was already a major breakthrough. That it also responded was even better. He just needed to ask the right questions, the right ways, in the right places.

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