From Petra's diary
Dear diary, It's been a while since I've had the time to even reopen these pages, as you can imagine the situation has become rather chaotic after the tornado destroyed all the overground structures of our house and those nearby.
For a while we stayed at Mike's place, he lives far enough away from us to have avoided this other disaster. But we couldn't stay there forever, nor could we give up our jobs and move to my siblings' place in Henford.
So we rolled up our sleeves. At least the basement was spared, apart from a few new cracks and leaks, while for the upper floors we had to make do with what we had available.
Hope: What are you preparing for tonight?
Emma: We have some vegetables that your uncles sent us from Henford, and also some eggs too. I was thinking of making some egg rolls.
Hope: Do you need a hand?
Emma: Why not? C'mon, I'll show you how to close them.
Petra: How is the situation at school?
Hope: They just reopened the classrooms in the east wing, they finally replaced all the broken windows!
Emma: Oh, that's great!
Emma: And here are the egg rolls! What do you think?
Hope: They're yummy!
Petra: Yes, they're great!
I think it goes without saying that Hope was very scared the night of the tornado, even in the basement the walls were shaking so much… Sometimes she still wakes up at night because of nightmares, but as time goes by, this happens less and less often.
We also unanimously decided that in the event of new weather warnings like that one, we will rush teleporting to my brothers' house for as long as necessary. Whatever happens, we are motivated to never repeat a night like that again.
And, even more than before, we're motivated to work even harder than before to restore the life we were used to.
Techna: Do you really need to stare me like that when I'm working, Nacho?
Nacho: Mew.
Nacho: Mew.
Techna: You really are a weird cat...
Petra: You see, with the new filter we are able to remove 99% of CO2 in 100 m3 of air, it takes about 15 minutes. And, at the lab, we're also testing much larger stationary structures.
Techna: And then what do you plan to do with the saturated filters?
Petra: That's exactly the problem, to regenerate them you need to heat them up to 80°C under vacuum. In short, we would need to use more energy, which in turn would cause a non-negligible collateral production of CO2. It's a really annoying vicious circle, if you ask me.
Emma: So, what do you have in mind to do?
So, it was time. Things have been hectic at work yesterday, that message we received was really crazy, but could also be our last chance to change something. It wasn't only about me, I had to explain it to them too.
Petra: (cautiously) We received a weird message yesterday, at work. It came straight from the New Sixam government offices.
Emma: What? The government?
Petra: So it seems. They say they received an even weirder message from the robots on Sixam.
Emma and Techna: What!?
I can't blame them for looking so shocked, robots trying to contact New Sixam on their own initiative after so much time of complete isolation is so unexpected. And risky as well, can we really trust them?
Techna: ... this is indeed very unexpected. What was the content of that message, if I may ask?
Petra: Well, it was actually very coherent with all the things you told us. It said that they're facing a period of dangerous scarcity of elemental carbon on Sixam, and that they'd be open to considering an exchange of resources with us to face it.
Techna: ...
Petra: At that point, of course, everyone in my lab went crazy! I mean, CO2 is 27% carbon by mass, what if we convinced them to take our excess CO2? They would get their carbon, and we would drop our amount of greenhouse gases, everyone would win, right?
Techna: ... This doesn't sound like the kind of proposition they would make. The very fact that they contacted you first seems so fishy. Have you checked in detail the origin of that message?
Petra: It was all encrypted many times, it's was impossible to reconstruct the whole path the message had taken before we received it... What's for sure is that it passed through the servers on the Moon mining place, didn't that place used to be a typical intermediate location for communications coming from Sixam?
Techna: ... Let me guess, someone is supposed to go on Sixam to complete the agreement.
Petra: Well, yes, that's true.
Techna: (resigned) Don't tell me you were asked to do it...
Petra: My colleagues may have asked me to, yes. But-
Techna: And did you answer yes?
I've been thinking about the CO2 problem for years, no matter how much I think about it, it always seems like all our ideas would create too much new pollution to be feasible. A few times, I was so exasperated to think that it would be all so much easier, if only we could access large amounts of resources and energy from a whole other planet... And what other planet could have that role, if not Sixam?
Petra: I mean, I know the situation on Sixam much better than any of my colleagues. They don't know about the Great Network, to say one. Rationally, who else could do it?
Techna: I remain of my idea, contacting you by email in that way isn't their usual way of acting. Why not continue the diplomatic agreement on remote, for instance?
Petra: Well, we wondered about it too. But the message was also very clear. Also, who else could have written it?
Techna: Any foreign nation, just to slow down New Sixam, to say one.
Petra: Yet, that message contained information about Sixam we only heard from you before! I couldn't share it with my colleagues, but I think it has to be authentic!
Emma: (worried) I see, but still... Why you? What if anything went wrong?
Petra: I know, I know... But I think someone has to try, and who else could do it?
Techna: There is no need to stare at me in that way, I won't take such a reckless choice without a complete probability evaluation.
Petra: That's... understandable. Probably this information won't be useful to your calculation, yet... Well, be aware that I would feel much safer, if you decided to come with me.
Reading Techna's expressions is never easy, but I swear that their last buzz was remarkably reminiscent of the sound of a sigh. They were uncertain about what to do, that's what.
Petra: Well, I have a ton of preparations to do. I'll leave you to your simulations.
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For now, we preferred not to tell Hope about this crazy mission. Emy is already very worried about me, even though she shares the considerations that led me to this choice, but it would really be impossible to explain certain things even to the little one.
Hope: Ah, so it's for work that you have to wear that strange suit so often now, mom Petra?
Petra: Yes, we have to do a new experiment. If it works, maybe we could really solve the climate crisis this time.
Hope: I see...
So, little by little, I began the preparations.
There hasn't been an official teleportation link between New Sixam and Sixam for many decades now, so the quickest way to establish a new one was to use a very old family heirloom. Techna said it was originally used to reach Sixam, and indeed the right space coordinates were still correctly stored.
We had to wait for a very windy day to have enough electricity to run it properly, but here we are. Time to go.
I had already taken a deep breath before throwing myself into the vortex of that prehistoric teleportation machine, when Techna came up beside me and said:
Techna: Wait, I'm coming too.
I couldn't read their motives from their tone, but I didn't care. Despite all the brave words I said, the journey was scaring me more than a little, and having a friend by my side was just what I needed.
So, without wasting any more time, we crossed the portal together, towards Sixam.
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???: Beep beep.
? ?: Unusual activity in quadrant 101010.
Petra: I know that's not what we're here for, but wow! So this is Sixam?
Techna: That suit can provide you with some extra shielding, but not enough to lower your guard this much.
Well, at that point we just had to find someone. If what Techna was saying was true and all these robots were connected to the Great Network, then any robot should be fine, right?
Petra: Which way should we g-
???: Intruders, identify yourselves!
Well, at least it didn't take long. Two robots had come up behind us, keeping an eye on us from a distance.
They were totally different robots than Techna, without the LED screen that mimicked the expressions of a human face, they were completely expressionless. Figuring out what they were thinking was quite a feat, but we couldn't hesitate.
Petra: (stiffly) We're from Earth, we're here to answer to the proposition you sent us last week.
???: Bip. Unexpected input. Bip.
Petra: In the message, you mentioned difficulties in supplying elemental carbon. About that, we would have quite of the opposite problem, becaus-
I had not even finished my sentence, when the second robot, the one that had been silent until that moment, had reactivated to say:
? ?: Bip. The one on the right is 01010100 01100101 01100011 01101000 01101110 01100001, they proved incompatible with the Great Network when it was turned on and then fled the planet. The other one is not in our database, however.
???: Bip. My visual receptors are better than yours. The frame isn't metal, according to the old records it looks like-
Things were getting very bad very quickly, as in Techna's worst predictions. For some reason those robots didn't seem to know about the message we received nor the agreement they proposed, and I didn't know what I could say to get out of such a situation.
That's when a third robot suddenly appeared behind us. Unlike the other two, it looked much more like Techna's construction model, and it looked quite mad too. Was it time to teleport back?
???: *Defense Matrix Activation*
I was still thinking about any possible way to salvage the situation, I admit this situation more than any before really made me aware of how awfully slow my reflexes are in comparison with the robots'. Because that's when the base's alarm sirens started blaring, so loud it was impossible to tell if anyone was saying anything, then someone grabbed me firmly by the elbow. After that, everything went dark.
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In the meanwhile...
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§HermioneSims§ corner
Ta dan, and now? What's going on? Who knows, I can't tell yet...
What I want to tell, however, is that this chapter was a mess to make pictures-wise. I'm not using poses in this story, and when there are so many sims involved it's just impossible to keep everyone in line. The "no cheats allowed" rule of a legacy was also very limiting this time. How frustrating, this is for sure one of those chapters who made me decide to test poses and use a lot of cheats for my next story!
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