Ch1 Another Life (2)

The cybersecurity teacher just nodded once and walked away. Hey I had been in her class the whole year, if she hadn't learned yet, that was on her. I brought back up the aug display and scrolled to the bottom of the group chat. "Guess you are making more friends, She-u."

Anrya was a smartass too, just not quite as smart. "Well, you knew what was going to happen, when you accepted the same class as me."

"Yes but I would rather deal with you in cybersecurity than have taken math with you again. Damn, I have to log off. See you after school." The teacher was squinting at Anrya who hadn't turned the page with everyone else.

"Why, dragon warriors, She-u?"

"You bring up the Swiss bombing reminded me of my father and a story he use to read me."

"Oh, sorry again. What was it called?"

Hero could be dense, and stuck in a time long gone, but he was nice. "I don't remember, I think he read it from an actual book. The only one I had seen before starting high school. I don't remember the cover now. It is probably all gone."

"Well you know most of the big data servers backed up offsite around the world. If you tell me what it was about, I might be able to find a digital copy."

"Basic fantasy. Purple, red, blue, green and yellow dragons. Creation, love, hate, destruction. There must be hundreds just like it, I wouldn't bother."

"And dragons warriors that promise to return when we need them. Got it. Don't worry, I won't waste all my time looking. Logging off."

With that I was alone on the line. Well might as well check the news before logging out myself. It had to be more interesting than class anyway. Hell I would probably think the weather report was more interesting than hearing the teacher repeat the same thing for the fifth time.

"Thank you for joining news team 9 the best source for news anytime, on your time. Which art- Breaking News. Unknown object moving through space destroyed Jupiter 5 colony. All hands believed lost, No responses to hails. This just minutes after Jupiter 3 and 8 went unresponsive. Breaking Alert. Images captured from the automated haul cameras are coming in now."

The whole class looked at me as I jumped to my feet with a yell. "Miss Swan, you will turn off that phone now or I will report you to the principal, again."

"Miss Davis, may I be dismissed, I feel sick."

"No, miss Swan, if you had stayed out of augment you wouldn't be sick. Now sit down."

"That isn't what is wrong! Jupiter 3, 5, and 8 are gone." And I heard a voice not my own and not the news when they had displayed the photo. Was I mad?

The students started to talk as the teacher opened her display. "They are unresponsive, it happens, the news is just going overboard. There isn't anything in the high res video they are showing."

"R-right. Sorry, miss Davis." I sat back down and the whispering got louder around me.

My heads up aug display flashed and I flicked my fingers to answer. "Are you ok, you don't look good?"

Anrya was looking at me from the corner where she sat. "I don't know, I feel strange." I split the display to show the chat and the news. The news was playing with the videos slowing them down and trying to find out what had caused the feed to cut out. They were going over the flight paths of the three stations. Nothing in nature could have taken them out and their communications shouldn't be blocked by any debris or other planets.

I flashed Hero and he got back on the line. "Check the news."

There was no response for much too long of a time. "I have a close cousin on Jupiter 8, She-u. They aren't responding either. I am trying to get a better copy of the footage the news has, damn the delay is so painful."

"Before the fed cuts out, do you hear something?"

"Hear something, it is space footage, we don't normally even bother putting mics in space there isn't anything to hear."

"I know that."

Find them.

"Who was that? Did someone hack our line?"

"Who was what, She-u?"

"You didn't hear, find them?"

"I am double checking the logs, one moment." The text stopped scrolling and I realized I had heard a voice but not seen the text to go with it. I normally left text to voice on because I liked the sound feedback but we were texting each other not talking. So I should have seen the text too.

"Find who?"

"Nope, there is no log of anyone else on our line, could it have been a private communication? What did you think you heard on the video?"

I brought up usage logs on my phone. Nope no communications registered, no failed calls or dropped packets even. No received packets that didn't get used or would have accounted for sounds. "I am not showing anything."

"You must just be rattled, Hero brought up bad memories and now stations aren't responding."

"It is her ancient royal blood, you know they all be crazy."

"You go back far enough and every human is royalty, time does that."

"And we all be crazy."

That brought a small smile to my face. Another station went black. This one in the asteroid belt, a mining station. It had more and better external cameras but they were privately owned so the news was having a harder time getting the footage. Near Earth object tracking satellites were coming online and bumping all sorts of data into the main line computers. Nothing was registering any red flags with the government AIs except that they weren't getting laser hits off the stations any more, and FLT trackers had some how un-synced.

FLT used synced partials to pulse very basic binary information. The particles should not be able to be un-synced. The AIs were having a hard time dealing with an event that theoretically could not happen. Yet that was the only possible conclusion from the data they were getting. The AI moved on to trying to parse the Light speed data.