1 Chapter 1: The Glove

Not everyone is willing to spend a lovely Sunday afternoon at one of the most barren places on old Earth, but Rydel Daera had to be here. In order to complete his research project at the Galactic Institute of science and technology and then graduate to become a well-known researcher in the field of planetary geoengineering, he had come back to the origin of human life in the galaxy, where it all began. Here, days are still measured with 1 rotation of earth and today has always traditionally been a day of rest.

He only had a few days here, and the collection of rock samples that forms within the dark cave right in front of him is crucial. There was an option of robotic data collection, but like many others in the research community, Rydel preferred to get hands on. Ironically, the scientific field that's constantly evolving and progressing also contained some of the more traditionalist people still around.

The wind blows harshly into the cave and the lighting gets ever dimmer with each step taken. Rydel puts on his goggles and lets it acclimatize to the darkness of the cave before heading in. He aimed to take some scans of rock formation at various stages. He had similar data collection experiences on other rocky planets with or without water and the various mechanisms are something truly puzzling to him. As an engineer in the making, he always seem to steer towards topics of no immediate engineering interests. But as time has proven again and again, theoretical science always charges ahead of practical science and the knowledge base driven by curiosity will eventually find their place.

As he gets deeper into the cave, some of the monstrous formation began to come into sight. They are all the standard speleothems that hand from the ceiling like icicles and those that rise up above the floor like mushrooms. These are ancient knowledge already and he had read about these on the first day of the research project. He has reached the edge of a cliff, as the goggles fails to detect any actual formations down there, Rydel reached for a probe drone in his back pack and gently tossed it over the edge. The rapid acceleration awakens the machine and jets of air ejects out of the spherical body to slow the descend. As the probe drone scans the environment and feeds back the scenery down there, Rydel activated the cable descent mechanism and started lowering along the face of the cliff slowly.

It wasn't a big drop, but certainly a respectable distance. The Galactic IST makes sure all the research students are equipped with the best items as well as and equipment when it comes to expedition and it definitely allows Rydel to go somewhere regular tourists have never been before. Here, the rock formations are more unhinged. He reconvened with the probe drone and has it set to quickly map out the local area. The image fed back into his goggles and he finally gets a view of the surroundings. The drone beeped as it flies deeper into the unknown sections and Rydel turned on the scanning function within his goggles and started searching for rock formations aged in the range that he is looking for.

It didn't take long before he started filling in the blank spots within his research. Trying to find the impact of factors like planetary gravity, air composition and others on rock formation isn't as easy as it seems, but the technique of using non-dimensionality in research is so ancient that the subject of science research nowadays had been relegated to filling in blanks and feeding all the data into pre-written softwares. Despite the tedious nature of this, Rydel really enjoyed the freedom and flexibility and sometimes solitude his job offers. Despite the ability to travel across the cosmos at a whim, the world seemed to be a bit more crowded.

'Oh look at this beautiful boy...' Right there, Rydel has spotted an absolutely perfectly formed column. He hadn't noted down the measurements just yet, but the smoothness, the roundness and , dare he say it, juiciness of that thing made it the absolute perfect one to gather data on. He quickly scanned the column and BOOM! The number matches up perfectly. A big fat 150 kg piece of data right in front of him.

As the age of multi-civilization reached it's fiftieth anniversary in Earth years, thirty five in Aquarian years and sixty in Rock years, all three galactic level civilizations began to merge with each other after first contacts and cultural exchanges became common place when all three were actually civil enough to treat each other with respect. The smooth-skinned squid-like Aquarians are great in realm of biological and chemical engineering due to the planets aquatic environments and they are way ahead of anything the humans could do. The Rockies, short hairy humanoids from a rock planet quite a bit drier than Earth but still sits nicely in the habitable zone, are master mechanics. Their use of AI technology rivals that of humans and they also share a shockingly similar social structure. Regardless of language barriers, the nature of the universe and logic simply has to be consistent. This allowed for the intelligent machines to quickly crack the language barrier and communications are established soon after.

Rydel really felt like someone that belonged in the ages before. Everything moves way too fast for his liking nowadays and he just wants to take a moment and enjoy the present before it slips away in the time stream and disappears forever. Just as he starts to drift deep into thought, the probe drone bumped into something and an impact signal was shown on his goggles. Five hundred meters to his eleven o'clock.

'Weird.' Rydel's forehead creased slightly. He knew full well that the probe drones were programmed to avoid any obstacles both to preserve itself and avoid damaging any possible discoveries, 'I thought it's for all of the light spectrum...?' There should be no way it can't pick up what's in the way.

That leaves another solution. Maybe the probe drone was attacked by something and it simply couldn't react in time. Rydel's hand glide towards the shield activation button on his belt as a force shield forms around his body, he then released a few floating light globes around him to provide decent visibility. In order to get some easy money and spend a few years travelling around after graduating his basic education, he had trained in the explorer sector of the space fleet for a few years and that's why he dares going on these single person expeditions. The earth's creatures were once tough and cruel, but it's nothing trained humans couldn't handle in the modern age. He took out the multi-purpose hand gun and sets it to stun.

No matter what planet he's on, five hundred meters is still a long way to walk cautiously. The floating globes offers decent visibility and the goggles help with the rest. There is no other sound in this part of the cave except for his own footsteps. As he approached the location he just saw the probe drone on the floor. It's slightly deformed to the point that the surrounding materials have closed up the gas exhausts the drone used to power itself and fly around. Rydel scanned for around but there is absolutely nothing else in this tunnel. It just looked like the drone did something it's not supposed to do and bumped into something. No matter how advanced artificial intelligence and machines get, bugs will always be bugs. Humans had always been on the losing side in the 300 year battle to rid codes of bugs, but reality begs to differ.

Rydel put the drone back into his pocket and started looking around. The cave opening here is rather bizarre compared to the rest of cave. It's looking like someone forcibly opened it up, with clear marks left from some sort of mechanical excavation. What's strange is that he is now some kilometers deep and there is no way any sort of excavation vehicles will make it this far. His hands floats alongside the side of the roughed wall, until he felt it passing through something. It felt like an extremely thin membrane of pure static electricity and the buzzing sensation coming from the fingertips resembles sticking cold hands in warm water and the force fields around him just vanished and the generator went offline. He pulled the hand back and the feeling dissipates. He checked the generator and found it to be as dead as the drone, but it went on once he rebooted.

It seemed to be the thing the drone experienced, but Rydel felt no resistance from this membrane like substance. He started feeling for the membrane in various places right in front of him, ignoring the shield generator getting shut off once again. This field seems to be quite unfriendly towards anything electronic, that's just racist towards the Sentients (small group of conscientious artificial intelligents). This must have been a remnant from the uncivilized ages. Rydel recalled the light globes and shuts off the goggles. The basic infrared mode allows some limited vision so that's what he is going to go with. Luckily, he had some chemical based lighters and he quickly snapped one that will last about 20 minute and stuck it through the barrier. Nothing happened.

Just as he thought. Rydel smiled a little and stepped forward. The buzzing sensation passed through his body and the whole view changed the moment he moves forward. What was a tunnel is now a chamber. He stepped back to the other side of the membrane and it returned to being just an ordinary tunnel. He went back and forth a few times and actually sat down right on the barrier and started doubting whether he accidentally took some 'happy pills' that day by accident. Why would he be seeing this?

After making sure that he saved the happy pills until the last day of his multi-planet expedition, Rydel finally accepted the fact that something fishy is going on. He swung his arms as the lights shine through the whole chamber. It's all smooth except for a strange central pillar that acts as a small platform to house something. He approached the platform slowly and watching for his steps. The whole chamber seemed as if it's been set up this way to store something, but it could also be a trap that a supreme species of hunter uses to catch its prey?

Damn, I don't want to get eaten. Rydel swallowed, looked around again before continuing. The room is obviously still quiet as always and quite dimly lit. He now sees an item of sort on the platform. It's got a metallic outer layer that not only reflects the red light coming off the lighter, but also gives of some purple light of its own. As Rydel gets ever closer, the piece of metal sitting on top of the column becomes clearer. It's shaped like a pyramid with it's tip cut off and about the size of his head. The purple light glows ever brighter with each step Rydel takes and this is feeling more like a trap by the second.

The object looked golden under this particular lighting, symbols that resembles old English cursive with sharp curves and tips were written all over its surface in an extremely tidy way, Lines connect segments of writing and maps out areas on the object. The purple are actually just the fluorescent light coming off the words.

Rydel pulled out his gun and poked it gently. Nothing sets off. But it could just be that the trap is not set off by movements. He waited a bit for some poison gas or laser guns popping out, but nothing happened. It just seems like something that's put on the column. Rydel studied the object closely, but absolutely nothing came to mind. This might be something the archaeology department will be interested in, perhaps I can use this excuse to chat up that cute girl in the lab? Rydel dreamed of the endless possibilities and reached out to grab it.

The moment his finger made contact, the purple light within the lines dissipates. Rydel immediately wanted to withdraw his hands, only to find that it's been stuck to the object and now it's off the platform. Yellow light then shines through the lines and the object began to vibrate.

'...this is end, isn't it?' Rydel rolled his eyes as he tried shaking his hands to get it off, but it's glued to his hands like a part of his skin. Suddenly the cold hard object began to deform and started creeping along his fingers, hair by hair and digit by digit, it swallowed his left hand in no time, but it didn't advance. The object stopped its movement and it just looks like Rydel had the strangest hand infection in galactic history for a moment.

When there is movement again, Rydel almost turned away and try not to look. He tried doing what every human ever does when getting something stuck to their fingers: rubbing on their pants. It didn't work its magic like all the times before, and Rydel wasn't really that surprised in all honesty.

The thing began to shrink in size gradually, all the mass seemingly disappearing into thin air as it gets lighter and lighter, before revealing Rydel's hand once again. But it's definitely not his hand. Rydel is pretty certain it wasn't silver at the beginning of the day. But it seems to be the case now.

It looked like there is a silver metal casing around his whole left hand with the strangely elegant writing all over it up until his wrist. It certainly doesn't feel like metal, but much more an expensive silk glove. He moved around his fingers and it felt just like that with an added sensation of smoothness and cool.

Maybe this is what it feels like to be rich? Rydel thought off the images of upper class citizens wearing white gloves everywhere they go to avoid getting the filth of the world on their hands, then proceed to wipe their butt after taking their gloves off. He rubbed both hands together and the left just felt softer and smoother than a baby's butt cheek, not that he would know what that feels like.

'So I just get a free glove?' This was the only thing Rydel can make of the current situation, this technology is definitely beyond what he knew. It wasn't something that resembles technology of the other two races either, maybe except some bio-morphing technology from the Aquarians. He tried feeling for the edge of the glove, but the soft metal just merged with his skin right pass the wrist joint and became a part of him seamlessly.

'I guess I have to leave this on until I get back to base...' Rydel murmured to himself as he starts to look for the exit to the chamber, 'at least I wasn't eaten or killed.'

Speaking of which, the ground around him started shaking and the sound of cracking rocks echoes in the chamber. Ryder quickly scanned for any sign of the chamber collapsing around him, but it seems like it was the column that used to house the glove that's making the noise. The outer layers had cracks forming all over and the segments peeled off one by one and drifting to the floor. What's revealed beneath was a perfect cylinder made of the same type of metal that forms the glove. The cylinder sat still for a while, as if it's checking out Rydel.

It doesn't matter what's going on, but it might be best for me to leave now. Rydel kept his eye on the cylinder for any movements and slowly moved backwards. The moment he moves, the cylinder moved too. Despite the cool temperature of the cave, the cylinder reforms itself into the shape of a humanoid like how melted iron fills a mold. These kind of fluidic metal belonged in science fiction, yet he is seeing it with his own two eyes. The height and width of that humanoid closely matches that of Rydel's and an uneasy feeling creeps up along his back.

Fight. Using the artifact. FIGHT!

A voice erupted within Rydel's head made pushed him back a step. Fight? The artifact? What is going on? Where is the voice coming from?

As if the metal humanoid is reading his mind, it charges forward and swung right at Rydel with a blazing burst of speed. Rydel pivots around his left leg to avoid the close attack and prepares to strike the side the humanoid. Right as he pulled out the gun for a quick shot, an arm extruded from the side of its body and knocked the gun away.

Rydel quickly hopped back and kept some distance between him and it. That thing has no facial features, which means it doesn't use visual to detect movements. This is more akin to combat robots that the space fleet used to train the combat troops. Rydel wasn't particularly keen when it comes to combat training, but now he just have to suck it up and stand his ground. The gun is 3 meters away and it will take him a generous 2 second to reach it. From what he just saw, that's plenty of time for that humanoid to react and cut him short. He took out the knife that's tucked away in his belt and grasped it firmly in his palms.

'Come on!' Rydel taunted.

Use the artifact!

That same voice exploded in his head once again. At this moment, this strange voice is just yet another distraction from his current opponent. Rydel shook his head and ignored it. He doubt the knife will do anything to the humanoid, but it's still better than cracking all the bones in his hand. He swung the knife a few times in front of him like a sort of warning signal. The humanoid remained emotionless.

Then, all of a sudden, it attacked. With a swift strike of its arms extending right across the distance between them two, the knife was clearly knocked out of his hand. Then another strike accurately hits the knife exactly as it lands and sends it spinning away from Rydel. Now it seems quite clear what it wants Rydel to do.

Fight, using the artifact. which he could only assume is the neat silver glove he just collected.'Alright, finds how do I use this thing?' Rydel points his left palm towards the humanoid and nothing happens.

So it doesn't work like Ironman's projections.

Before Rydel had any time to try anything else, the humanoid lunges forward, barely missing a side stepping Rydel and slashed the side of his right arm. An accute pain ran through his body and Rydel cursed. The momentum of the humanoid carried it forward passed him once again and he swiped at the humanoid with his left. The left hand made contact, but there wasn't any actual damage. Rydel's heart sank as he turned around the face the humanoid once again, now with an injured arm.

There is no way he can do anything to it with the kind of hits he is dealing out. He needs something a bit more powerful. He really needs his guns. Until now, the humanoid only seems interested in ridding him of weapons, almost forcing him to use the unfamiliar artifact that he couldn't take off. He flashes back to that time when he first started using an exoskeleton. It made him much better at moving through tough terrains despite the steep learning curve. He still remember what the instructor shouted at his ears:'Just shut up and use the damn thing. Fool!'

This must be some kind of weapon. Rydel looked at his left hand and thought. There would be no other way why there is a humanoid for him to fight and the sound in his head telling him to use it. The task at hand is figuring out how to use the artifact. He brought his left hand closer to try to read the writings on it, but just as he blinks, the humanoid that was in front of him is no longer there.

He didn't even have any time to regret before something hooked on his leg and brought him down. Within a moment of panic, he reached for the gun lying a few meters away, and grabbed something.

The feedback coming from his hands completely opposes that from his eyes. There were nothing near him, yet he is definitely holding onto something. The gloves glowed yellow as he held on the thing. Rydel twisted around and threw that thing right at the humanoid!

BANG!

A clear sound of impact indicates a clean hit, and his gun bounced off the head of the humanoid. It was knocked back slightly and finally loosens its grasp, allowing Rydel to free himself and get up. He looked at the gun that's now lying on the floor in the other end of the room and scratched his head.

That was the first response he has received from the glove, and somehow the gun that he was reaching for was teleported? Rydel concentrated and reached for it yet again, it felt real and solid, but there is really nothing in his palm. He looked again at where the gun was and it was no longer there.

The humanoid wasn't going to just let Rydel figure everything out, but now he seems to understand the sequences of movements that the humanoid is going through and easy moves around yet another charge. He knelled down and opened his hand, when the gun blinked into existence suddenly.

So it seems like the glove allows some sort of object teleportation. What if he goes for something bigger? Rydel smiled excitedly and lunge forward, his left hand reaching for the humanoid, and he closes it into a fist.

He definitely held onto something. It's actually quite hard to tell what it is since the sensation coming from the hand indicates a much smaller object that something his size. The glove glows yellow and then gold when contact is made, and the space around the humanoid bends and twists before swallowing it as a whole.

'Hot damn.' Maybe this is what being a god feels like?

Now holding the threat on his life within his palms, Rydel aimed at the wall of the chamber and threw the humanoid right at it. The space around the walls twisted once again and the silver humanoid appeared right in the middle of the wall. As a result, the wall cracked gravely and rubbles rains down onto the surface. The humanoid was stuck in the walls however and couldn't move anymore.

Assessment complete.

The voice that was making him fight came through once again with a sense of finality and satisfaction. And with that, the humanoid ceased all movements.

'Who is there? What is actually going on?' Rydel shouted as he finally started looking for the sources of the voice when the main threat right in front of him is neutralized. But the only replies he's got are that of the echo.

Suddenly, the glove started vibrating and it flashes purple a few times before going silent. But at this point Rydel had seen enough crazy things that this doesn't even bother him anymore.Seeing as nothing else is going to happen in a short while, he picked up the gun and the knife and left the chamber. The illusion of normal channels is still on at this point, perhaps the being that set all these up wants to keep this a secret. But from what he knew, this glove contain some unusual power, and perhaps an extremely dangerous one. Maybe that's why there was the killer metal robot and the so-called assessment.

Rydel returned to the shuttle parked outside of the cave and got treatment on his wounds. It looks like he is gonna be out for while since any measure of cave exploration work needs him to be at full health. Maybe he should consider getting someone else to do the data collection for him.

But, somehow, he felt like that's not gonna be what he should worry about. The glove he has on carries so much mystery, he felt like he must resolve it as soon as possible. What if this alien technology is slowly eating away his energy? Or causing him some unknown diseases. There seemed to be a need to visit the archaeology department really soon.

Regardless of what he will do next, Rydel thinks he needs to take a nap now. The fighting before and the wound treatment he received will send him to deep sleep soon enough, and he felt like he deserved it.

The glove is really comfortable.

And it is a Sunday afternoon after all.