Saint Pilots

Saint Pilots

Takes some explaining, I know.

I lost the news about the Horror Event in Sealine, by a week and few days. Entered in a inter-stellar Freighter for a travel of more than 5 thousand years. My personal reasons for that were, excused the redundance, personal. Perhaps less rational than what the word reason may suggest. The classification of this vessel may also be debated, some would call it a yacht, categories overlap a bit, and what the fabricant calls the thing not aways coincides with what the shit is. What is not open for interpretation is that: communication about the momentous events that took place in the year 22.000 of Expansion around Mystery System had not yet reached the Fringe Docks in the stellar system where I was.

Other Asgardians will remember, if they were travelling inter-stellar during those early 22.000, to 26.000 years. Many vessels, perhaps most of them, didn’t bothered to pass by Mail Stations to collect news drones and leave their own behind. Cost was considerable, and the general consensus was that any news could wait until the end of the travel. In destination we would have access to laser transmissions again.

Everybody knows there was no Emergency Net back them. It was only build thanks to techno-magic tools we got from Mystery System after it opened. And it opening was the Horror.

So, when we arrived in the Fringe Docs of Jade System, a mere 120 years away from Mystery System, we knew nothing. The information about the slaughter of everybody in Solar System by Demon Fleets of War vessels was almost 1 thousand years old up there. Humans who are not Asgardians only live 300 years, so, from their perspective that was a lot of time. Very old information.

People arriving in the same ship where I was didn’t even knew those Mechas existed. Or anything else related to Mystery System natives. The first contact with an alien civilization, or the discovery of magic.

We expected to be surprised by some news, of course. The fashion in Saturnian Orbit, sport teams extinct and born during our travel, developments in physics, new brands of subhumans, perhaps. Even new categories of them, possibly. The same sort of changes that had become natural to generations born during Expansion Age. In such intervals of time.

Even the AIs in our ship got a bit crazy for hours, digesting the amount of uncanny surprises.

Some people hide in churches in moments like that. Some people seek salvation in psychologist offices. I was, incidentally, in some pub.

Jade System, since it was build, goes for a very traditional Chinese/Joseonese architecture. The Fringes and nations in and around External Planets in particular have a Trade Union of sorts that has a constitution prescribing it. Medieval East-Asiatic Architecture, language and costumes. They follow it in a more or less stylized way, depending on the city, region and nation. And according to the taste of each generation. Nevertheless, stylized or not, they do follow it.

Aside the architecture, which had a lot of wood in it, and the clothes of some of the clients, this place had the looks and the atmosphere of a XX century pub in south England. English was the predominant language being spoken, and maybe that was the reason why my personal AI directed me here.

Dorfe knows I feel more comfortable surrounded by speakers of Latin languages when I am under emotional stress. She probably found no bar with a clientele know for speak Portuguese in comfortable reach. Or any other actual Latin Language, such as French or Italian.

Good enough, none of those languages still in use would sound familiar for us, who used to speak them on Earth. Before Baby Steps Age. Despite the considerable effect of conservation produced for having AIs as the main teachers and care takers of vast majority of people, languages change. And spoken language changes faster than the written variants.

Ideographic writing is almost eternal. Mind you, only almost, and by comparison with phonetic writing.

Anyway, between the help of AIs and personal experience of dozens of thousands of years all Asgardians by that point had sharpened their communication skills well enough to navigate conversations like that. With variated degrees of effort.

I was making that effort, and Dorfe, the virtual android lassie speaking directly to my brain receptors through a cyber implant, was trying to explain. However, this time she was not helping really. Fortunately between the early days of pre-sentient AIs and that moment AIs became very good in recognize when their good will is making things worse. She just shut up, before I ask for it.

I though this boy causing commotion was some sort of musician or another celebrity of the same kind. They were calling him a “sand”, what I assumed to be a slang. A little latter I asked some questions from a talkative and friendly fellow nearby, and his female friend assumed I was joking. How could I not know?

“I just arrived from a long trip. Interstellar.”

“Must have been a very long one!” she answered. And them laugh.

“Over 5K”

When they realized I wasn’t joking, their attention turned completely in my direction.

They told me that young man how just left was a saint. Not sand. Didn’t helped me much.

“So, he really don’t know. Any of that. Anything!”

“How could he?”

“But you know” the pause was serious, and painful. “You know about Solar System”.

“It was, destroyed. Taken by an enemy army. Rebelled High AIs, leading an army of robots. Yes, that was the first information we got. Once the ship’s computer integrated with local computer net. Thousand years ago, more or less. Hard to believe!”

“We have know that all our lives, and it is still hard to believe for us too! Although, really, none of us should feel that strongly about it. You are born in that ship, we are born in this System. None of us could ever see this Solar System, anyway. It is more than 1 thousand years away from here, and humans can only live up to 300. The Solar System maybe important as an idea, for all humanity, but that is all it could ever be for us. And it was already gone when our grandfathers came to life, even if you didn’t knew that until recently”

I didn’t had the spirit to tell him he was wrong. Happens a lot. Asgardians are so few, compared to the total human population alive, that is natural for people to forget we exist.

“So, those High AIs freed themselves by entering Giant Robots build with alien technology. Deshiar Robots, made to be piloted by humans. Who end up falling into subhuman category, tainted by the connection with those giant robots. However, no one call them “subhumans”, you understand, due to their huge importance for the war effort”.

It seemed plausible to me.

_How ‘giant’? _ I asked.

_Pretty big. They have some wild variations in side, people say. In Mystery System. However, in general, those fighting for Humanity are around 500 meters tall. Almost as large. Demon-Mechas are even larger.

I asked him what it had to do with saints, and what meant to say that fellow was a saint.

_He is a mecha-pilot. Not just that, but he is a very special kind of mecha-pilot.

His lady friend intervened.

_Mecha-Demons are different from Mechas. While a Mecha is controlled by a human pilot, and therefore needs to be humanoid in shape for the integration to work. Mecha-Demons are controlled by some High AI. You know they are used to think absurdly fast, and are far more flexible than us in their process of decision making and information processing. That allows Mecha-Demons to have a variety of exotic shapes, shapes determined by AI imagination and the necessities of combat only. They move with speed and precision impossible for biological minds to grasp. Even modified and post-human minds such as those of Mecha-Pilots.

_They are better._ I summarized.

_Normally, takes between 25 and 30 Mechas to brake a Mecha-Demon hard enough to **** its retreat. Some Pilots end up dead. Some Mechas may end up destroyed beyond repair too. Seldom the Mecha-Demon loses so much of its mass that it needs to leave it behind and escape as a core computer brain.

_Why they don’t simply upload to the net?

_No one knows. Whatever the reason is, when they are losing hard, they always send the brain away. And their forces make any sacrifice necessary to guarantee the computer core escapes.

_I still don’t see what it has to do with that boy.

Her companion answered.

_He is one of the rare Mecha-Pilots who have destroyed a Mecha-Demon in combat. Fighting alone! They are in another level entirely. That’s why they are called “saints”. What he did is a miracle. The way he moves that robot in fight, should be impossible for any mind forged in a brain shaped by DNA.

Later, in that same year, I saw for the first time those Mechas. The hundreds of meters tall robots, piloted by humans. Moving through the shallow ocean like people walking on a water mirror. From distance, they look like normal people walking. As if square-cube law did not apply to them. In practical sense, it does not.

The sad, cruel, fact about our universe is that. Everything from this universe brakes, if you accelerate it fast enough in one direction, then moves direction or stops too suddenly.

Everything from our universe. Not vampires, Deshiar, shadows, and the materials those robots are made of. Those are things essentially from a different universe. Subjected to laws beyond our comprehension.

I don’t agree that only a few Mecha pilots should be called “saints”. The very existence of those robots they pilot is nothing less than a miracle.