Starborn: Origin of the Stars

Sitting on the uncomfortable office chair, Robin picked up the next pyramid. His eyes were drooping through exhaustion and his head felt a little dull.

“The 8th one,” He sighed, “one more after this and it’s time for a break.” he took a glance at the big clock over the left window.

“One hour till midnight. If I don’t fool around after resting a little, I should be able to catch the train at three o’clock.”

Robin concentrated on the artifact in his hands again and activated his ability once more. Closing his eyes, he focused on the slowly forming picture in his mind and began to feel for the feedback his senses transferred directly into his brain.

‘Another failure, it’s like with all the others. I can see the black spot where the energy lines should form, if there was anything to detect.’

Concentrating even harder, he felt the headache coming back.

‘But comparing it to the dead plants from this afternoon, these ones feel off somehow. The darkness is the same, but when I checked the Wuranger’s plants, I could feel emptiness and not only see it. Now I’m looking into the deep darkness, while my senses are telling me that it isn’t empty. It feels like there should be energy lines all over - but… nothing.’

He opened his eyes and put the pyramid back in its slot on the table.

“Burn in plasma! I just don’t get it.” he took a deep breath, rubbing his weary eyes.

“But, well, ultimately it’s not my riddle to solve.”

Picking up the researcher’s datapad, he added some more details about these strange anomalies to his report.

“One more, ugh…” Robin moaned and took the next of the bizarre objects.

Suddenly, instead of closing his eyes, after tapping into his mutation, he opened them wide in shock. The moment he had started to feel for any remnant energies, some impulse hit his mind like a racing ship crashing into a wall.

“Daamnnnn…!” he groaned in pain and reflexively grabbed his head in agony. The artifact fell to the metal floor with a loud clatter, but Robin couldn’t perceive his surroundings any longer. His mind was curling up into a ball, just waiting for the beating to end.

‘...’

‘...we found them in the neighboring galaxy of…’

‘...the information we’ve got was right, they didn’t…’

‘...'

‘Entry OIXXC: We have been chasing after the fleeing ship for days now, the crew…’

‘...how could this be? All data indicates that they are … ∟⌂ Ξ … ¦ ı ‡ T ∩…’

‘...we have to get back and notify the command center…’

‘...’

‘...’

‘...they lied to all of us! This changes everything! - End of entry OICXC’

Minutes ticked by with Robin only sitting there in his chair and staring holes into the floor, while his mind was flooded with foreign memories.

‘Shit, what the fuck was that?’ he came back to his senses after the pain tuned down a little bit.

Looking for the syringes with Mind Refresh, he stumbled over to the table and used one of them. After sitting back down, he began to analyze what had happened as the stim began to do its work.

Carefully he focused on his mind after the raging storm had left.

At first Robin didn't feel anything unusual. Gone was the flickering of alien information and peace returned in his head. He tried to remember what he had heard but couldn’t piece together any straight memory.

‘Something of…a ship? ...and some report?’ Robin tried and failed to hold the last lingering thoughts together.

‘Well, that sucked. Felt like someone tried to fuck my Neuro-Chip, ignoring all protocols and…’, his eyes went wide again, ‘...overload it with a shitton of data! Fuck!’

In his attempt to reconstruct the situation, he poked his Neuro-Chip with his mind. While he could not visualize its stored data without the Interface, his brain still could tap into it and get a general idea of the contents. And it was telling him that the chip was completely filled with some foreign data, replacing all his personal files, the documents from flight school and everything else he had stored before.

‘What is all this new…’ he stopped, just before activating his Interface. Thinking about his situation, Robin remembered all the sensors and cameras monitoring him.

‘That’ll already be difficult to explain as it is, if I start my Interface now, I’ll hear no end of it later…’ he thought, ‘Better I think of a plausible excuse for the stunt I did earlier. I definitely don’t want them to rummage through my head…and who knows what they would find on my Neuro-Chip!’

Picking up the mind-slaying pyramid, he eyed it for a moment.

“I’ll give it another try after the drugs take effect and my head stops pulsing” he said out loud, placing the artifact back on the table.

‘Yeah, I’ll probably just go with a “Oh, I’ve suddenly got such a headache from overexertion, I even blanked out for some time!” - hopefully they buy it.’

***

Twenty minutes later, Robin continued his research with the remaining objects. He was a bit fearful of activating his skill at first, but no more non-consensual data intrusions did happen. The pyramid he had dropped before, was now as dead as all the others.

As he continued with the energy sensing, he suddenly got a better feel for the strange behavior within the objects.

‘It’s as I thought, there is something there in the darkness. It was just too faint for me to get a grasp on it before. There definitely are lines filled with remnant energy in the devices, pretty complex structures at that. Somehow the image in my mind is not filled with the bright blue lines normally representing the flow of energy, but with black ones. Why would that be? Is this a different kind of energy than what we are using today?’

Not coming to a conclusion at the moment, Robin put down the artifact in his hand. Surprised, he noticed that it was the last one.

‘Huh... I could do at least three more. My head still feels quite good. Did I become more used to my mutation or did my mind gain some resilience?’