Chapter 3

Despite everything, life was pretty good.

Her crew loved her, her clients loved her... okay, maybe love is a bit of a stretch. However, they did rely on and respect her.

Without spatial users, trading in space was a little more than difficult. Even with them it was difficult, especially when it came to perishable goods. The current preservation methods were all state of the art mana technology but the long travel time was still a huge pain the a*s.

Plants could be grown and harvested on large spaceships amidst commute but their huge sizes either increased the travel time or consumed more mana crystals. It was basic science. The greater the mass, the shorter the spacetime distance linked by the created wormhole, given the same amount of energy. And this was after shrinking to quantum level.

Mana crystals were simply too rare and valuable in space. Even more so the clear mana crystals needed for spacecrafts because of their pure mana energy.

Other mana crystals had since been discovered; yellow crystals held earth mana, red crystals held fire mana and blue crystals held water mana. They were useful in building aether devices to sustain artificial planets. There were theories that several kinds of mana crystals existed but no additional ones had been found yet.

Mana crystals emitted mana waves and attracted alike mana particles from the universe. When left alone, they would grow bigger over time and form mana rocks. When used, they decreased in mass until they turned to useless dust. It was needless to say how valuable they were.

Illegal merchants were forced to make do with smaller ships. Larger ships meant a bigger target for the manozores to find anyway.

The Viper Merchants definitely had an easier time with Miranda around. All spatial users could easily sneak goods around but she could maintain all non-living goods in their best state for any amount of time. Their fame grew and sales were better than ever, which meant their pockets were fatter than ever too.

Miranda was even working on building a separate dimension that could hold life with her boyfriend, Liam. It was going to be their own untraceable world when they needed to get away from everything, but it proved to be quite difficult.

The space she could create with her ability was unlimited, but it consumed a lot of mental power and was simply uninhabitable as it was.

Liam was coincidentally a clairvoyant and an expert at finding anything. The Milky Way might as well have been his playground.

In this age of mana and cyborgs, there was a tacky saying. Aether needs fuel, but love is water. Miranda knew that it was impossible to live with Liam for centuries, but what mattered to her was that they were useful to each other now.

Plus, the leap of faith he took in trusting her was almost touching. She still had enough feeling to like a cyborg like that. He was useful, powerful and aesthetically pleasant to boot.

Liam helped her find a decent orange dwarf star and the perfect celestial body to put into her dimension. All planets and moons with liquid water were already occupied so they decided on a frozen moon that was close enough.

Miranda took years to create a dimension that was one light day in diameter. The star went in first. Once stabilised at the centre of the dimension, the moon followed, still spinning and revolving but on a new orbit in an almost empty space.

It had taken all her energy to freeze time in the dimension in order to position it perfectly.

The new planet was slowly melting and everything was going smoothly. That is, until the anti-manozore rebels came knocking on her door. For the second time in her life, Miranda Lee was abducted.

All means of escape proved futile and she only realised later that they had brought a time user along. Apparently her time ability had been exposed. She knew it wasn't impossible but she'd never heard of another time user before and was caught off-guard.

She agreed to go with them on the condition that they released her crew members, but Liam insisted on coming along. They were brought to seemingly void location in space, which was a front made by illusion users.

The rebels turned out to be mostly made up of pure human and cyborg believers of the Old Religion. They believed that it was a sin to incorporate manorobots into human bodies from studying ancient texts.

Everyone knows how the story goes.

God created the universe with a wave of his hand. He created humans and animals, and put them in the Eshen Garden on Gaia. Humans had the power of nature and could grow whatever they wanted to eat.

They were banned from eating from only two trees; the Allknowing Tree and Tree of Life and Death. Eating from them would lead to death. No exceptions.

Of course, that didn't last long since humans had the innocence of children and the golden apples were too strong a temptation. They ate the Allknowing fruits and became smart enough to eat the unpleasant Life and Death fruits.

Thus, they conquered Gaia for hundreds of millennia.

God discovered this and was angered. He cursed them, and humans were stripped of their connection with nature. Hence, no mana circuits to the current day. Their knowledge wasn't completely taken away but scattered among all, and the Allknowing Tree was burned to the ground.

God showed mercy and blessed the star on Gaia. It's light became a shield against the universe that would have instantly destroyed the humans. But without nature's power, humans could no longer live beyond a century.

Thousands of years later, a prophet foretold the return of nature's power as long as humans didn't seek the power of the forbidden fruits once more.

The tale itself was crazy enough, maybe food for thought. But once you became a cyborg, it was all wishful thinking. It did explain some things but without manobots, humans would at best still be struggling to conquer Gaia's solar system.

As a galactic merchant, Miranda wasn't convinced. After living a life traveling across space and experiencing all the wonderful worlds, being stuck in the suburbs didn't sound so promising. She only had a few centuries to live, even less to enjoy her life before the manobots in her system sucked all the joy out of it.

She knew that although manobots made humans rational, they didn't modify the person. But cyborgs being religious and so irrational? Unfathomable. Cyborgs believed in the numbers, proven facts and theories based on evidence. Myths, legends, fantasies and the like didn't quite make the cut.

The more rational ones just wanted to go back to a time where Gaia was freely open to everyone. She could understand that. Gaia somehow held a special place in all human hearts. Miranda was no exception. Even the manozores were obsessed with it. Artificial planets run on yellow and blue mana crystals could never replace the motherplanet, no matter how much more perfect they were.

It was only when proof showing that manozores could only survive through injecting pure humans' blood was given that Miranda was somewhat sold.

It made sense. Manobots ran by absorbing mana that was toxic to humans. After natural death, the manobots could obviously not rely on mana to keep the body running. There was no choice but to keep the brain functioning enough to run basic autonomic body functions like respiration and blood circulation; all to prevent the body from decomposing.

Running the digestive system at all times took more bots than could be spared. They could have added more manobots into the body but aether was a very limited and precious resource, and the human race continued to grow exponentially.

Fresh blood full of glucose and nutrients sure did the trick. Clones? Human farms? Human trafficking? Prisoners? Perhaps synthetic blood? It was a wild guess where all that blood came from.