“Look, they’re aliens, they’re bound to be weird. I get that. I just didn’t expect them to be so god damn clingy. We work in porn for god’s sake. When I heard I got a whole bunch of fresh, bright-eyed Cambiar, ready to get their cherries popped on camera, I was fuckin’ over the moon. But you wanna know how many stuck around after their first shoot? Go on, guess. Not one. Not a single goddamn one. They come here, all the way across the galaxy, for a job with the sole purpose of fuckin’ and suckin’ dick, and they get all romantic the second they get pumped by a human. It wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t take their new fuck rod of a boyfriend with them when they left. I miss Jumbo John Johnson.” – Roger McCleary, Pornography Director and Staff Organiser, 2260. Retrieved from ‘Behind the Camera – Why ‘Amateur Interspecies’ is the fastest growing tag on the Inter-Sys’.

  “Careful, careful! It’s not as if we’re messing with, y’know, completely dangerous science beyond our understanding,” Elias said sarcastically.

  “I know what I’m doing, idiot,” Chel-Lin chided. “Just keep those monkey paws steady.”

  Despite Elias’ humour, he did feel slightly uncomfortable slowly pushing an already experimental block of reality-bending metal towards a highly concentrated Schr?dinger-Field, not a hundred percent sure of the result. The plan was to move the Exhilium Shaft that they had successfully removed from the now dismantled S-Drive, its case sitting like a cracked egg on the worktop, into its own S-Field.

  What could go wrong?

  “I am, however, starting to feel that this was a terrible idea,” Chel-Lin said.

  “It’s a wonderful idea!” Madison cried.

  A few days prior to the potentially deadly experiment, Elias had followed the excitable woman back to her own lab, though it closer resembled a factory. Needing to climb through a mass of wires and tubing, Elias found himself at a slightly less cramped part of the mass of the metallic hulk. Now that prototype production systems were ready, the area was thrumming with power – a beast preparing to leave hibernation. He sat at a table, barely an inch of its surface not covered with documents, digital tablets, and strange mechanical components that clearly needed work before they would fit together, as Madison explained her proposal.

  “What could go wrong?” she said.

  “For one, immediate destabilisation of the surrounding few kilometres, teleporting everything and everyone randomly, killing tens of thousands, shit, maybe millions if Urestior gets caught?” Elias remained unconvinced.

  “Not if it goes right!” Madison held up a single finger as if her argument was all-convincing.

  Gods almighty. Elias was beginning to think that perhaps Barald did exist, but not as some deity of justice and virtue, but merely as some amused onlooker watching the shitshow that had ramped in insanity since he stepped foot on Kral-Thul. Wait, wasn’t that was the Echorist Great Observer was all about? Never mind, there were bigger issues at hand than hypothetical gods.

  “That’s a big if, Madison,” Elias said.

  “But I know it can work. You know that too, right?”

  Before he could stop her, she scrambled over to another table, half buried in half-formed sheets of syraline and pulled out stack of documents labelled ‘smartass’. She thrusted a dogeared study into his lap.

  “Hey, wait, this is one of mine!” Elias said. Now the label made sense. Ouch.

  “Uh huh! And you remember when you said-“

  “Yeah, yeah. In theory it would work. The process was simple – push an already delicate piece of exotic matter capable of all the bullshit S-Fields entail into one of its own to further compound its subatomic matrix and capabilities. I know the concept like the back of my hand. What I don’t understand is why you need it, and furthermore why should I want to try this?”

  Madison tilted her head. “I mean, don’t you want to be the first person to make a CHALICE shaft?” She pointed to the nickname Elias given offhandedly she practically pressed the study into his face.

  Gods, he had really gone with that stupid acronym back then, hadn’t he? Elias had wanted to tie his own work back into the original Project Grail that first led to the Schr?dinger-Drive’s creation over century before. Now it could’ve been that Elias had a chip on his shoulder about living up to the most important invention in human history, or, just maybe, he preferred his new findings not being over twenty syllables long. Honestly, he wasn’t sure which factor drove him more when he had put pen to paper for that one.

  “Look,” Elias rubbed his nose in concentration. “Being the first man to make a Compressed Halcyon-subquark Amplifying Lattice of Ion-scattering Catalysing Exotic-matter would be nice, but at what cost? Losing Nucleus in a freak accident? Losing the whole of Kral-Thul?”

  “It doesn’t have to be that risky. If you keep the power low…”

  “Yeah, and still maybe risk telefragging myself into the nearest wall. Look, why do you want this so bad? Isn’t everything here working just fine as is?”

  Elias vaguely guestered around the maze of thumping machines around them. Madison sighed, shook her head, and slumped against her blackboard. It seemed Elias wasn’t the only fan of old school lab equipment over fancy digital displays.

  “Ok, maybe things aren’t going as smooth as I had hoped. For one-off instances of using the new process to make syraline, it works fine. But, turns out, the level of precision I need for mass production can only be achieved by a stronger, more condensed S-Field. Otherwise, there will be too many wasted precursor agents.”

  “You aren’t worried about what effect increasing the strength of the S-Field might have? Just… in general? I’ve spent my whole life working around them, but even I don’t know the theory behind what could happen when S-Fields go beyond the Maxwell point. I could look into trying to create a containment field, in case things go badly, but that would take some time.”

  Madison shrugged, “Why contain it? ‘S cool. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

  “Right…” Elias said, unconvinced. And yet, he didn’t have the time to waste on such a safety precaution, nor would Lucian overlook such a thing. “And you really need a CHALICE Shaft for your new production method?”

  “Yep! That, and I am really interested in seeing what you and Dr Daksira can get up to with it.”

  “Whoa, hold on.” Elias held up his hands. “Who said Dr Daksira was a part of this?”

  “Come on, Elias. Whatever mad science experiment you’re cooking up wouldn’t fly if she was unaware. Besides, how else would you work on the S-Drive without her noticing?”

  “That’s a fair point.” Elias made a show of thinking about a decision he had long since decided on before running a hand through his hair. “Ok, fine. I might give it a try if I think it could help your work. And mine. Maybe.”

  Madison strode hug and gave him a firm hug. Gods, she was a fan of hugs. “Thanks Elias! You’re the best! You know, if you told me that the same Elias who arrived here all hunched over and assholey would help me out like this, I wouldn’t have believed you.”

  “Uh, thanks?”

  “Nothing to thank me for – you’re the one who’s changed. Besides,” Madison gave an excited grin. “We only need the Exhilium enhancement to go right once. Using the new CHALICE, we can make all other units with way less effort, thanks to the added strength and precision.”

  “Yeah, and it’ll only take it going wrong once to splatter us over the walls or to send us to the next star system over,” Elias muttered as he prepared his long excursion from Madison’s metal jungle.

  Elias stood, his first prototype of his multi-species harness clicked around his chest. It was clearly unfinished, with exposed wires and its neural connection pad running along his back a bit itchy, but would do the job for now. It was secured by a double band of metal running twice around his chest, and featured four sprouting limbs, each with between four and seven joints.

  His latest prototype was being put to good work by seizing the Exhilium shaft, a twisted rod of midnight black exotic matter, in place as Chel-Lin slowly adjusted the electrical current running through it. Millimetre by millimetre, she used her own private Tylas harness and its spindly mechanical appendages to twist the resistor setup they had delicately put together. Such a process required more delicacy than human muscle or Tylas tendrils could possibly muster. If the current sustaining the S-Field was out by a matter of a single nano-ampere, or was adjusted too roughly, things would likely go horribly wrong.

  Only for them, of course. Following Madison’s advice, power had been set low enough that an accident would affect the surrounding few meters around the mass of reality bending material. Elias was willing to put himself at risk to get ahead at times but he would normally never dare put any others at harm by their taboo experiments. Chel-Lin, however, had stubbornly insisted on helping him, much to his annoyance. Despite his reluctance, her help was turning out to be very needed.

  “There!” Chel-Lin whispered with excitement. “Got the current stabilized. Now… Steady, Elias. Steady.”

  With a deep breath, sent a prepared set of instructions his mechanical armatures to begin inserting the material, its immense weight a harsh contrast between its delicate, almost snowflake like texture across its surface. The Shaft was less than a forearm’s length, yet weighed nearly 300 kilograms. At first, the harness’s movement was so slow that nothing seemed to be happening. Then, all at once, the far surface of the Exhilium made contact with the invisible S-Field it projected.

  The light around the shaft bent and collapsed inwards, concentrating on the edge of the field and dancing like miniature shooting stars zipping across an event horizon. Little by little, tiny specks of gold built up across the round surface of the miniature S-Field, forming as tiny pinpricks of aurous light before dispersing as quickly as they appeared. With the aid of mechanical precision, the Exhilium slowly but steadily disappeared into the star-scattered ball of broken reality until, at last, the harness thrust the last of its fractal surface into the darkness.

  Elias pulled back his harness’s mechanical arms. From where his armature had extended into the S-Field, nothing was left – just the smooth edge of an atomically shredded limb. Neither of them said a word for a second, admiring the forces beyond their direct control working at the material. When an Exhilium shaft was first formed using normal materials such as layered silicon, carbon nanotubes and artificial diamonds, it was the addition of the first exotic material created by humanity, Malkuthite, was what turned it into something special.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Little by little, everything that was made of matter within the Shaft’s internal matrix shifted into something both not-real and very real at the same time. It refused to snap out of existence, but couldn’t stand to let waveforms function properly around it. And so, when paired with electronics to create the S-Drive, it allowed the selective observation and waveform collapse to effectively produce the act of teleportation.

  Project Grail allowed Schr?dinger to finally see if the cat was alive or dead for every little, atom sized box around them. Turns out, Schr?dinger could choose his feline’s fate by the whim of science.

  But now, that effect of resisting against the laws of physics, of denying the existence of the universe, would be magnified to an unbelievable degree. To see if it had actually worked, and if they had finally created a true chalice worthy of the original Project Grail, there was only one thing left to do.

  Elias nodded to Chel-Lin, and moved to the side of where the S-Field sat. Its lightshow had ceased and the transformation of Exhilium into something else was done. The only sign that there was any anomaly in the air above where he positioned his remaining mechanical arms was the mild distortion of light. It was almost as if he were looking at a swimming pool a minute after a splash had subsided.

  Another heavy breath taken, Elias turned to Chel-Lin, “Now, reduce the current… slowly.”

  The voltage dropped. The light bent back into place. From within the prison of Schr?dinger’s box, a prism of royal gilt embedded in jade green dropped out of the air and into his other armatures’ grasp. Where its previous iteration was intricate, with fractal patterns dancing across its surface, a perfect Fibonacci sequence, the new material was smooth, as if it had been formed from the erosion of sea winds against a cliff’s stone. It was smaller than the Exhilium shaft had been, but its new weight clearly pushed the strength of the armatures to their limits. With the servos emitting a harsh whine, Elias gently placed the CHALICE shaft on the nearby table next to the disassembled S-Drive. It was only once it was safely secured on a solid surface that he spoke.

  “Huh. That was easy.”

  Chel-Lin delivered as harsh a blow as she could with her gentle tendrils to his shoulder.

  “Don’t you even dare say things like that! That was so tense I thought I was about to pass out! And I don’t even have lungs.” She took a shaky sigh, not out of biological need, but seemingly as a reflex of all the tension draining from her. She glided about as she inspected the new component, looking from every possible angle.

  “It’s… smaller than I predicted,” Chel-Lin said.

  “Heh, that’s what she sai- I mean, yes I thought it would be bigger as well,” Elias said

  Chel-Lin paused to look at him. She squinted. Reluctantly, she sighed as she said what needed to be said. “That’s also what she said. Hardy har. Elias, we’re potentially looking at the greatest achievement of our lives. Can’t you be a bit more serious about all of this?”

  “Why should I?” Elias smiled. “It’s what we’re going to do with this thing that will get our name in the history books permanently. But, if you’d like, I can try to put on a nice, pensive scowl if it makes me seem more academic. But only after we put it back together.”

  Chel-Lin turned and let out a sigh when she realised he was right. Slowly, she lifted the first bolt and began slotting the parts of the S-Drive back together. Thankfully, it seemed the designers back at GaltCorp headquarters had made the engine far easier to slot together than to take apart – perhaps to stop what the duo were trying in the first place. Either that, or Elias was getting better with a screwdriver. New CHALICE shaft was slotted into the exo-harmonic resonator, the resonator into the baryonic plate weight dispersal system, baryonic wei- yada, yada. Even Elias, for all his love of physics, zoned out as he slotted circuit boards and wires back into their proper places.

  Attaching the Bubble Field Manipulator was still some time away; there were plenty of readings to be taken from the upgraded S-Drive before they could consider combing the two fields into one. At least Elias would be able to spend the rest of the day looking through the code for the FTL device. EXCAL, for all his foibles and love of wasting his time on a dead MMORPG, was a damned genius when it came to computers. He had fully given Elias access to every bit of software the S-Drive contained. Chel-Lin, seeing the time for tension had passed, decided to relax by bouncing a few of the QIS stabilizing orbs she had developed as part of her cover project against the wall as if they were squash balls.

  With a crack of his knuckles, Elias pulled up a laptop and plugged it into the S-Drive. Though it was meant to be a time to relax, there was a certain feeling of unease creeping up his spine as he started looking over the software built into the machine. He had only read through the code relating to S-Drives before as an exported database by technicians back at GaltCorp HQ or on site, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was different this time. All the other times Elias had worked using S-Fields or the S-Drive, he had never needed to be there in person. In some ways, for all his previous studies and projects it practically felt like Project Grail had produced a toolbox for all the issues a 23rd century handyman would want to fix, but less than half the tools had even been looked at. With each paper, it was less like he was using an old technology for a new purpose; he had been pulling out a previously unseen hammer each time to a surprised crowd of tradesman.

  Part of the unease came from a new section of code, spat out by the standard diagnostics program used for monitoring Schr?dinger-Drive components. It had popped up in a new window, the font and style different than the other codebase, and using different syntax. What on earth? Where had that come from? Scanning through the first lines of the software, it appeared that some sort of check had been made and completed the first time Elias had turned it on since replacing the Exhilium Shaft. Some sort of company insurance protection checking for warranty? Christ on a fucking bicycle, if he had bricked the machine after all that hard work, Chel-Lin would never let him hear the end of it.

  But… no. The new codeblock instead had loaded some incredibly old libraries, some basic and some that had been grandfathered into other common CCH coding languages. Then, it looked for some sort of reading from the hardware within the S-Drive. Hovering over the variable revealed it was looking for a Müller spectrum reading, the sort used to measure for S-Fields. What was odd, however, was the field measured was not in the typical range. Instead, some sort of alternative S-Field being produced. But that very idea was ridiculous, he hadn’t even turned on the S-Drive, there was no way it should have been emitting any frequency.

  The almost minute hum of a S-Field monitor, a far softer sound than that of an old Geiger counter for radiation, was being emitted from the far corner of the room. The backup monitor, an assurance Elias had set up to warn against any incoming S-Jumps produced by a potential accident was measuring a clear S-Field. For a moment Elias moved in a scramble to disarm the S-Drive, having thought he must have accidently set it off. Quickly scanning over the program, he moved with quick keystrokes to see the status of the S-Drive. Whilst it was emitting an S-Field of sorts, the internal engine passively from the ambient current running through it, it was clear that the S-Drive was not discharging, that much was certain. He could see no signs of activation from the original program, and the tiny gauges for common-frequency band S-Fields on the Drive’s shell didn’t move an inch from zero.

  And yet, an S-Field of some sort was being released, that much was for sure. It wasn’t an ‘active’ one, the sort that would be part of the first step in initialising an S-Jump. Indeed, the monitor’s sound was not that of the typical haunting drone that was often affiliated with Keepers as they prepared for their role. No, it was a gentle sound. Waves crashing onto a lonely beach. Sand washed away and disseminated into a void. Droplets of rain flowing down a window on a cold night. The swaying of pine branches in the wind. It was many things, pictures and feelings Elias felt in the base of his mammal brain. None of them gave him a sense of danger. He considered cutting power to the Drive but the oddity itched at the right part of his brain, urging him to dig deeper into whatever he had uncovered. If curiosity killed the cat, probably one of Schr?dinger’s, then Elias was about see if he had nine lives.

  “You tensed up,” Chel-Lin said, looking up from her ball bouncing and seeing the cold sweat on Elias’ forehead. “What happened?”

  “I’m… not sure. I’ll try to figure it out.”

  Rubbing his clammy palms together, he once more looked over the new code. Indeed, an internal check from the S-Drive itself saw this new S-Field being produced and that had somehow allowed this new codebase to be accessed. The new spectrum of Müller frequencies were actually two bands, one low and one high, combined by interference to act as if they were in the usual range. How bizarre. Scanning over the initialisation revealed that the new code actually checked for some administration privileges as an alternative means for accessing the new parameters. Had Keepers in the past been privy to this sort of information? Perhaps someone with enough skill could bypass the limitations surrounding the code to get at it without the correct permissions.

  Many things in the code didn’t make sense; phrases and broken English strewn about haphazardly. ‘QIS Pattern Coefficient’, ‘timeframe adjustment scale’, ‘null-field training conditions’, an author tag by the name of ‘Icarus’ – all random and unexplained. Elias was well versed in using random, bullshit terms to cover up the actual nature of his work out of the higher ups common fear of data leaks, but something about the terms used, and their frequency throughout the code made him think that these labels was potentially accurate terms for whatever the database was meant to do.

  Accurate or not, he couldn’t make heads or tails of it. The terms were not familiar to Elias, and most comments appeared to be encrypted in a cipher. It was as if the work was not meant to be read by someone without using a manual or special knowledge. Based on some of the readable comments, it appeared that some sort of timer was paired to the codebase. Without a certain date being reached, this codeblock would never appear, regardless of other criteria being met. Even then, it appeared that the detection of the alternative spectrum of S-Fields being detected, or perhaps jury-rigging of the original code were requirements. Then, and only then, was this new code to meant to appear.

  What was going on? Maybe this was all some joke from the coders who gave the S-Drives to Madison. After all, they had probably expected this unit to be one of the many she had slagged so far in her project. Who knew what they found fun – half of them likely got off on pretending to be super hackers playing with S-Fields and scaring the rest of the diagnostics team back home.

  That could be the case, however unlikely, had the date of the code not stuck out like a sore thumb. Grabbing a sheet of loose paper, he began converting the date format in the code to something more usable. Discarding the pen, he held up the two dates

  “Elias, this code… The dates…” Chel-Lin trailed off.

  “Yeah, I see them.”

  The day the current version of the code had been installed was in clear formatting – July 3rd, 2113. The rough timing of Project Grail, from which the S-Drive was born. And the date for unlocking the hidden code?

  August 12th, 2257.

  The start of the New Horizons Incident.

  Goosebumps stood up all along Elias’ arms. For a moment, he considered if it was a lack of sleep playing tricks on him, as his recent ‘joint research ventures’ with Chel-Lin had left him rather tired. But the code was as it was written. The date was right. He rechecked his conversion over and over. The possibility of the timer being added long after Project Grail did occur to him, but the readable comments, still written with the same signatures and initials of the original developers, made it clear that the date had been coded long, long ago. Shit, one of the comments made a joke about it being the 48th anniversary of the assassination of Poo Poo the bear, greatest presidential candidate in history. It was one thing for the machine and its programing to act odd when jamming in an unexpected component in place of the usual core; it was another thing altogether to see that scientists over a century before had randomly placed a countdown for humanity’s first contact with alien life, well before anyone could gave even predicted such things. Jesus, even the Great Awakening, as Rannos had experienced, hadn’t happened by the time the code had been written.

  “Well, that’s freaky,” Elias murmured.

  “How odd,” Chel-Lin mused. “And potentially dangerous. I’m not sure what that all means, but maybe we should move the S-Drive to more secure storage. Do we have some way of restricting its ability to affect the others?”

  Elias shrugged, “Hmm. Considering how weird this is, I’d like to, but I’m not sure we have the time or space to build a proper container. Even then, I doubt whatever we could make could deal with whoever wrote… that. If it starts giving us messages from the future, then I’ll panic. For now, let’s pat ourselves on the back - being the first to create a CHALICE Shaft is enough of an achievement for now, but there’s more to come. We can save figuring out some archaic secret code another day.”

  “Just a pat on the back?” Chel-Lin giggled. “I can think of another way to reward each other…”

  “Oh? Is that so? I think I like the sound of that.” Elias winked.

  She planted a hot, tingling kiss against his cheek as she left the lab to retrieve some drinks and to inform Madison of their success.

  He turned his gaze back onto the software, still showing the code in black and white on his computer screen. One way or another, he would unravel whatever he had stumbled upon. Just not that day.

  Elias approached the screen. His mind too tired to accept anymore information in detail, and was far more preoccupied with what was to come with his alien girlfriend. He reached towards the switch for the S-Drive to shut it down. Without power, even the enhanced machine would be unable to produce even an ambient S-Field until it was restored. At least, Elias hoped that was the case. It would be rather hard to explain a random S-Field in his lab to Lucian. Finger on the plastic button, his eyes were fixed on one last note the code. A single name, the only one just made of initials, was referenced repeatedly in the code through comments. A name he had never seen before.

  ‘Dr Schulyer.’

  Elias switched the power off.