Post #2540403 in A Garden for Sinners, a roleplay on RPG

“The one thing I want to be able to do more than anything else is make it so today never happened. But that’s something beyond the likes of me to accomplish. Is that ironic?”

From the outside, the house—she assumed it must be a safehouse or something, didn’t look like much—really the only notable thing about it was that from this angle it didn’t seem to have a door. This was proven false as Stella was carried Violet—she still didn’t know his real name, and he hadn’t seemed bothered by her previous use of the false one, so she wasn’t going to bother changing it unless it seemed needful—around an oddly-structured wall. She supposed it was somewhat clever in its design, but she could barely be bothered to notice in this state, let alone appreciate it.

She did notice the way the security system seemed a step short of shooting something at her before she was authorized. Uno Summus? That must be Violet’s name—though it was really a pretty odd name. Then again, who named people Stella anymore, either? She was fairly certain the name had fallen out of use a hundred and fifty years ago, at least. Like Mildred, or Ethel or something. Of course, her middle name was even worse, so Stella it was. Actually, maybe her staunch refusal to use it was why it wasn’t in any official records anymore.

Brushing away the irrelevant thoughts, Stella entered the house, still toted along by Vi—Uno, she reminded herself—as though her weight were negligible. She supposed it kind of was, but she certainly wasn’t a sack of feathers that was to be sure. She was actually a little relieved when she was et down on the couch, and submitted willingly enough to a checkup, though she knew it would only add more evidence to the growing pile proving her strangeness. “I’d give all of it away to be normal,” she replied frankly, shaking her head. And it was true—if she were just some ordinary person, there would be no reason for the government to want her dead. She wasn’t sure why they wanted her dead now, even, but she could only assume it had something to do with her parents.

She sighed heavily when her host left the room, giving herself a few minutes to rest before pushing herself to her feet, toeing her way out of her shoes and setting them neatly in the doorway before she turned towards the kitchen. There was indeed food in the fridge, and she stood in front of the open door for a while, contemplating. In the end, she rummaged around until she found everything she needed for omelettes and rice, enough for both herself and another person. She tended to eat a fair deal more than the average woman, something she’d always attributed to an extraordinary metabolism. Considering how ravenous she was right now, it was probably connected, like everything else, to her genetic mutation.

She didn’t cook many things, but what she did, she cooked well. Her family had never been wealthy enough to afford even the most basic domestic android, so she’d learned to make due for herself at an early age. She supposed she should be grateful for that now. When the omelets were flipped and done, and the rice sticky and soft, she loaded two plates with the stuff, then paused for a moment. Really, what was she doing, making dinner for him? That was something you did for friends, or at least friendly acquaintances, not people who threatened to kill you and then almost got you killed by someone else. Still… she supposed she was a little bit grateful that he’d at least helped her out of that one, in the end.

So she padded in stocking feet over to the closed door she’d seen him go through, and knocked on it, a bit tentatively for someone of her demeanor. “Hey Violet—I mean, Uno. I accidentally made too much food, so there’s some there if you want it.” Technically a lie, but it wasn’t like she wanted to get caught out doing something nice. Stella wasn’t nice. She was sarcastic, and blunt, and probably far too mouthy for her own good. And it was much better for everyone involved if she stayed that way. Returning to the kitchen, she picked up her plate and searched through drawers until she found the silverware, plonking herself down at the counter, against which a few stools rested. With a sort of deliberate haste that stopped short of being outright rude, she started to eat. It wasn’t bad at all—but at the moment, she could hardly taste anything.

“What would you say, if I told you the world itself was dying?”

Darcia remained silent during the exchange between Crux and the Supreme General. It was certainly true that she knew very well who Dr. Engels was—but she knew next to nothing of his project. At the command to record everything, the android inclined her head obediently. “Affirmative. Engaging three-hundred and-sixty degree data capture.”

The office belonging to Dr. Engels was a fair distance from that owned by General Abernatty, on a different vertex of the triangular shape of the building, actually. The northward vertex was occupied by the Prime Minister’s office, of course, and Engels and the Science Division were in the east, which was where they headed now. Once they got there, Darcia took over, knocking briskly on the door, which then identified her and Crux with retinal scans before sliding briskly open with a mechanical, if still slightly feminine “Welcome to the Science Division, office of Engels, Dietrich.”

The man himself was at first faced away from them, but turned his chair to face the pair once they had both entered. For a moment, he gave Crux a measuring look—he was quite familiar with Darcia, but he had never met the Ghost in person before. The work of a scientist and the work of an assassin only very rarely overlapped, he supposed. In the end, he turned away from the younger man and made a terse waving gesture. Immediately, the glass panel set into one wall of the office lit up, displaying a large amount of data from several files. He stood to the left of it, gesturing for the other two to come close enough to see it properly as well, and stand beside him.

“I see little point in wasting breath on introductions,” he admitted, though not rudely. Clearly, he was a man who preferred to forgo the niceties in favor of doing things as efficiently as possible. “I know who you are, you know who I am, and we both know why you are here. You are to be informed of the need-to-know information on the EDEN project.” He waved a hand, and one of the files expanded, spilling several charts and statistical reports over the massive screen.

“To fully understand it, you have to understand the original purpose of the Network itself. It wasn’t a security system, not at first. It was meant only to collect, collate, and parse data into statistical models. Unknown to most, it extends even beyond the domes, out in the Exterior. It collects data on everything—demographics, resource consumption, births, deaths, the rate of illness in every sector, money changing hands, how many times your grandmother sneezed on the second-to-last Thursday of her life—everything. From the Exterior, it takes atmospheric readings, soil samples, plant chemical balances, meteorological and climate data, water composition… all through a complex system of sensors and probes, mobile and stationary.” It had, in fact, been designed and implemented by a massive team of scientists, about thirty years ago, but the algorithm for data interpretation was something Dietrich’s own mother had done.

“All of this data, when sorted properly and examined holistically, gives us massive predictive power—the closest thing to precognition human beings will ever know… and what it predicts is inevitable. On the current trajectory of human growth and planetary decay, the biomass will become unsustainable.” Another chart appeared, and Darcia studied it, knowing what it meant even though she had never seen it before.

“The Earth is dying.” Her tone was infused with a note of melancholy, and indeed, her eyes seemed to soften. Dietrich nodded.

“Yes. It will not die tomorrow, nor even in ten, twenty, fifty years from now. We may last as long as a hundred—assuming our models have projected change the right way. It may be less; things only get worse as technology allows for the proliferation of human life. But it is not human life alone that is the problem, else I’m sure you could guess at the solution.” His eyes found Crux, and he raised a brow slightly. That situation would call for a mass culling of human life, and they all knew that the government would not hesitate to order that if it were necessary. Perhaps, they all even would have agreed with the need to see it done. “In time, the ecosystem will begin to collapse, and the planet, almost like a living thing, will begin a cataclysm. A renewal, but at the cost of everything that is. Floods, famine, storms the like of which we have never seen—nothing on earth will stand a chance. Gaia and Tartarus will swallow all their children, if you prefer a particularly poignant metaphor.” His smile was sardonic, almost a grimace if anything.

“As the problem was discovered by our best science, it was hoped that the solution would be as well.” A sideways gesture moved away all of the charts, replacing them instead with a range of images and dossiers splashed across the screen. Most had large red x’s through the images. “Twenty years ago, Project EDEN was devised. A chance, it was thought, to allow humanity to survive beyond the advent of that cataclysm, and perhaps even flourish in its wake, like a return to the primordial garden of myth.” He studied the portraits for a moment. “The Earthen Defense and Enhancement Network. EDEN. In order to survive what would come, and safeguard as many of the world’s population and resources as possible, humanity needed—needs—to become better, faster, stronger, more intelligent… and more in tune with the forces of the natural world. The man and women you see before you were the Seeds, the initial specimens necessary to jumpstart the stagnated evolution of mankind. To make us better. Each was a person of extraordinary merit of some kind, a volunteer for genetic alteration of their stem cells, so that, with time, their entire genome would mutate, and they would pass this mutation on to their offspring. The Seeds would yield Flowers, and in that hundred years’ time, many of us would be strong enough to survive what would come.”

Dietrich magnified two of the photos, one of a lovely woman with dark purple hair and a warm smile, and another of a man, fair-haired but with eyes the color of a ruby, ringed in gold. “Iaret, Sebastian and Fiori, Ravenna. Sebastian was considered to be the most promising of all the seeds—for the alterations to his genetics caused in him the ability to manipulate the force of gravity to his will, to impose his consciousness upon he external world. Ravenna was likewise good news—because her ability was defensive. She could generate raw force, and use it to create translucent shields. I expect you noticed both of these properties in their daughter, Stella. That was unexpected—it had always been theorized that abilities would align in the manner of dominant and recessive alleles, but perhaps this combination allowed for both.” Dietrich actually shrugged. “If I had the Rose to study, I would be able to answer, but your task is not to take her alive, now is it?” His eyes flickered to Darcia.

“There was… another portion to the EDEN project, added only in its latest iteration, but about that, you have no need to know. I would tell you, but orders are orders, and I do tend to follow them. If you have queries, I will answer within the allowed parameters, but I have tried to be sufficiently thorough.”

Snippet #2540403

located in Earth || 3020, a part of A Garden for Sinners, one of the many universes on RPG.

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