Chapter 86

  Scaffolding

  (Misha Tulley)

  Misha’s mind was filled with parameters, schemas, and evolutionary flow charts.

  There was just one problem, she didn’t speak the language. Well, she spoke two of the three noted languages.

  The first and base language was what Misha now guessed was the streamline and user-friendly version of the Bakshee commands. This layer of programming allowed for nuanced control, blood flow rates, conditions for adrenaline, proper distribution of resources acquired, etcetera.

  This language was the most recognizable to Misha. First it had been the language of her organo-tech. Second it was the coding provided to her to reverse engineer parts for the ship, to help improve efficiency and designs.

  Honestly, the Bakshee were the most progressive of the species that the Psychers went against, and seeing their developments was always a fun part of her day.

  Of course, her work came with obligations, while she would be allowed to keep whatever she worked on, she would need to provide detailed reports on what she saw, how she penetrated the defensive measures, identify potential traps, and most importantly list her own areas for improvement.

  Thinking back, all those times she was given the scraps of previous battles to sift through made it so her current life was just that much easier. It had been years since she last received anything new to work with, which Misha had been offered to look at any new pieces of Bakshee technology.

  At the time, Misha came up with three probable courses for this, one the self-destruct sequences that Misha had identified had been perfected. The second possible outcome was that the Psychers were now losing more and more ground, making the ability to salvage pieces tougher and less of a priority. Or the third was that the Bakshee had failed to come up with anything new worthy of her time.

  There was of course the fourth option, the idea that Misha was not as good at dissecting Bakshee systems and that other more competent teams had taken on this role, allowing Misha to focus solely on her maintenance job, which by this time was her full-time fleet occupation. This meant that her spending hours or sometimes complete solar cycles to delve into and dissect Bakshee devices, while completely enjoyable, like a never-ending puzzle cube, were seen as extraneous to her.

  Further down the list of languages she now had to interact with, thanks to her upgrade was an older more antiquated version of Bakshee that often seemed superfluous, but still effective, if somewhat generic with capabilities. This language was basic, nowhere near as imaginative, or self-fixing as the newer version of Bakshee that she had come to expect.

  This second language gave her body’s ideal form and measurements: body size will be 195 centimeters tall, wingspan set to 203 centimeters long, leg length set to 107 centimeters tall, etcetera. Which was what her body was now set to, its ultimate and peak condition form.

  It took her a bit to get that much from the lines and lines of text. Redundancy was the standard for older Bakshee, as they made sure three strands of each line of code was presented, due to the idea that one or multiple lines of the code were broken, or otherwise damaged.

  This redundancy and lack of versatility is why the Bakshee were not taken as seriously by the Psychers. Once Misha broke down the language, and its processes, many higher ups concluded that Bakshee were millennia off the pace of catching up to them or becoming a real threat.

  The newest form of Bakshee only came about a few centuries ago, not much in the time of a living language, but that didn’t mean much to the Bakshee.

  As an engineer, learning the new variation of Bakshee was simple, as it was all formulaic and was easily testable and repeatable based on the components she was asked to inspect, along with other functions performed by the various devices.

  Some of the larger weapons did frighten Misha. This fear was heightened with the way her psychers provided the items to her, often not caring about cutting into or near power cells. A recipe waiting for disaster, particularly with most psychers not seeming to understand the basic changes that the Bakshee were making to their designs.

  Still there had been a clear and concise development, one that could easily go down from old Bakshee to new Bakshee, and back.

  This is where the third and final language that seemed to appear out of nowhere initially caught Misha off guard. Particularly with the way the layers that Misha had built upon to now were supposed to be the structured scaffolding that held this core concept bundled in one giant and intricate glyph of a language.

  In a way, the new language was like seeing hieroglyphics for the first time and trying to understand the language.

  The glyph itself was beautiful, a circular language that was made up of hundreds of tiny micro-glyphs that all formed together in one singular glyph. Had she not seen it with her own eyes, she would not have expected the Bakshee to have created such a language. It was so alien in both design and functionality from their current language model that it would have been nearly impossible to decipher.

  Only the fact that Misha had known the older form of Bakshee did the translation of what her newest upgrade was, become possible.

  It really didn’t help that she had unlocked the Tier X version of her power. Looking through the logs, it was clear that there was a weaker and more distorted version of this power that could have been available to her on Tier IX, or at least that is what her mind told her the two spots could be.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  Her current ranking was the third run, and completely filled out, ready to take on the fourth rung, but for whatever reason she had managed to bypass everything and select options that normally wouldn’t be possible at her level.

  Apparently, this should have killed her, but she had managed to maintain conscience long enough to send out a distress signal for her survival, which allowed her mind to focus on fixing what she broke.

  As an engineer, this was not the first time she broke something by experimenting and seeing what could happen if you did ‘X’.

  Though this time, there was no safety net. She would die, and likely have to go through life once more trying to avoid the same issues she had undergone this time. Though she was fairly certain that unless she somehow found her body and was able to access the organo-tech that had merged and evolved with her body, she would not get this chance to experiment with Bakshee tech.

  Engineering was often easier when you had a known and secure starting point, and an end point in sight. Everything else was up to the imagination, resources, and tenacity of the engineer to create the final solution.

  The solution in Misha’s case was simple, force organo-tech coding to open up and blossom with imperfect struts.

  Imperfect in this case meant that there were open pathways, with nothing connecting to them. Sort of like having multiple horizontal wall mounts, where one could insert and house future items, likely evolutionary upgrades, while not filling them in. Just having them there, waiting for a flag or other item, but knowing that it would be years before they would be utilized for their intended purposes.

  This was what Misha mentally referred to as the scaffolding phase of her operation. Because the design when constructed, went straight up, with multiple supporting and primary pillars that all supported and worked together to ultimately support the final glyph.

  The pillars were as follows:

  Primary Pillar: Harvester

  Twin Supporting Pillars: Speed and Accuracy Build

  Primary Focus: Double Growth Rate (Doubled)

  Those three pillars were what Misha forced open, and almost force copied each layer to have those direct pillars reaching up, until they finally reached up and ended with a standard connection to the final glyph.

  At least they were supposed to, and this was where her knowledge of ancient Bakshee paid off, for the triplicate coding made finding and creating supports easier, particularly as the extra layers of coding were then used to wrap around key areas to support the weight of the overall structure.

  Honestly, connecting the lines of code from old Bakshee to the final glyph was the easiest part of the whole process. For her three pillars reached up, no longer having ability to create or host empty mounts where her future expansions would be hosted. Instead, it seemed that this tenth and final stage would be the ultimate expansion.

  All three pillars ended in three slots for expansions that could either be looped down to reinforce an older accomplishment, or used to fully activate this final glyph.

  In a way, it was a good thing that Misha only had the one option, otherwise her mind would have at least forced her to contemplate what could have happened with infusing extra powers into Tier IX powers.

  Only after she made the first connection, connecting her primary pillar of being a Reaper class to the giant ovular glyph did Misha realize that she made a mistake.

  Well not a mistake, a mistake would have been going further and not realizing the true purpose of the extra-long old Bakshee coding that was made in triplicate. Coding that oddly reminded her of old 50 pin scsi cables that she had read about in textbooks and museums. The cables, or coding extenders for this last and final stage were somewhat flexible, allowing for some movement.

  This was also where Misha realized she lucked out, for the connection once made was inseverable. Meaning, had she had a Tier IX power she wished to test out, her testing would have forced her into a possibly untenable position.

  Yet, with the first cord attached, the glyph only barely sparkled with energy. It was clear that one strand, and likely two would not be enough to fully engage this glyph, meaning it was an all or nothing structure. With this realization, Misha realized she was now all but forced to complete connecting all three cords to this one glyph. For it was clearly meant as a great power, but currently she had no other options.

  First there were no other Tier IX powers to attempt to connect to, the cords were not long enough to reach the powers that she had already unlocked, meaning that this was it. Either attach all three cords and see what she could gain from this or hold off and wait for something that might never come.

  In the end, the answer was simple. Particularly as she wanted to know what this glyph was, for only once it was awake and activated would she be able to try to understand this oddly beautiful scripting language.

  It was also clear that there were multiple ways to connect and secure the final glyph into place. The easiest would be to attach the three cords to the underside of the glyph and be done with the whole process. As the Glyph did look like it could move and somehow fall off.

  This was when Misha realized her mistake, and the need for the longer cable, as the three cables, one from each of the three pillars, would be able to reach over top and around the glyph and hold it into place.

  Working with that design concept in place, Misha slowly turned the connected glyph upside down. Or at least down from the position she started thinking was the top. Then she proceeded to connect the second cord. As she expected, this too was not enough to fully activate the glyph. While a few processes began to come alive within the coding, this was all an internal to the glyph process. Almost as if the glyph had its own internal processing center, that would need to be charged and activated, to then read and process the code around it.

  Excitement.

  That was the only way to describe Misha’s feelings at this point, for this was a language at a level she had never seen nor tried to comprehend before. The fact that the Bakshee had created, or most likely stolen, somehow only caused more questions within her mind.

  How could they steal it? Where did they steal it? If they stole it, then did they assemble the original creators of this language? Are there any native speakers of this language still in the universe? These questions and more poured through her head, but they were all muted by what happened next.

  Click.

  There was an audible spark of connection within her mind, as the third and final cable snapped into place. The moment it did, all of the cords were first pulled tighter to the pillars, causing any remaining slack to be removed.

  Then with awe and wonderment, Misha saw how the cords themselves began to fuse with the surface of the glyph, causing more glyphs characters to appear.

  Working quickly, Misha remembered the Bakshee coding on the cords she used to connect to the glyph. They were essentially three lines that all stated the same exact thing, Reaper Connection Supply, Speed and Accuracy Build Supply, and finally Double Growth Rate Supply.

  As they fired up, the outer layer of the glyphs came to life, infused by the now constant stream of energy provided by all thee pillars, that’s when cascading waves of data began flowing down the entire structure.

  Like an overflowing fountain, the glyph at the top sparked to life and began pouring energy downward, throughout the entire structure of the makeshift scaffolding that Misha had just constructed within her body’s organo-tech designs.

  Sparking first with the primary center, and then cascading outward, Misha felt a pulse of power radiate from her core and reach out to her extremities and back.

  Her mind read the lines of text or at least tried to. Like trying to find one zebra in a running herd, it was tough, for there was no start or end to the data. Furthermore, each line of data was repeated three times, making following the logic trail difficult, but finally, her mind began to grasp that the final glyph was a concept.

  A concept that used all the data and input to perform one overall limited, but powerful function.

  That concept was Immortality.

  Then finally, the trickling down of data came from old Bakshee to finally modern Bakshee where she could easily read and understand the processes and nuances that were currently taking place within her body.

  Then Misha felt pain course through her body as it was being forcefully stretched and pressed to new positions and limits.

  Darkness.