Run, Part 5: Ash

Please select destination.

Where to go? Do more work? Gamble some of that money she didn't have anywhere to spend now? Forget dimension jumping and go back and work on something else, like that new surveillance system she'd had an idea for? No...none of them had any appeal.

After ten seconds or so, Sine began putting in coordinates randomly. Once she was finished, she locked in the destination and activated a safety scan.

COORDINATES HAVE NO SAFE LOCATION. PLEASE REWORK.

Sine punched in new numbers and letters.
 


COORDINATES HAVE NO SAFE LOCATION. PLEASE REWORK.

Sine had a vague recollection of some old device one could hook up to a video game, and via inputting number and letter codes, hack into the game's programs and twist stuff around. However, just putting in random numbers and letters would usually just cause the game to crash, erase save files, cause glitches, and so on. You needed to know exactly what to plug in, or you'd get nowhere. In the case of her Sifter, you could end up in a lot of worse places than nowhere. Sine, more to see if she could find a working combination at random than any real interest to go there.
 

COORDINATES HAVE NO SAFE LOCATION. PLEASE REWORK.

COORDINATES HAVE NO SAFE LOCATION. PLEASE REWORK.

COORDINATES HAVE NO SAFE LOCATION. PLEASE REWORK.

COORDINATES HAVE NO SAFE LOCATION. PLEASE REWORK.

COORDINATES ACCEPTED. PERFORM FURTHER SCANS?


"Hmmmm." Sine said, as she plugged in the usual safety parameters. Was the gravity and radiation present within acceptable, if not safe parameters? Was there breathable air? If not, would she require an air supply or a fully vacuum sealed suit? Was there stable ground? If no, how unstable was it? Was there life around? What kind? And of course, details like making sure she didn't warp into a planet's core or a black hole or something.

The warning signs she got back was a lack of breathable air and a requirement for a vacuum sealed suit. Sine got her helmet on and adjusted her armor to perfectly connect with it before she procured an air canister and inserted it into her helm. Adjusting her boots and slipping on gloves, Sine sealed every crevice in her outfit and then expelled the air from it, her helmet sealing itself and inserting a breathing apparatus into her mouth.

COORDINATES SET.

VROP.

-----

It was like the Sifter knew how she was feeling.

Sine wasn't wholly sure just what she was standing on. It was too small to be a planet, heck it was too small to be a moon, but it was too unnaturally designed to be an asteroid. It had, at least once, the smooth carved edges of something constructed, and its color had been too perfect a white, though age had caused it to fade to a sickly grey. Something had made this place, carved by thinking hands, hands that were long gone and unlikely to return. What had this place been? A small palace, floating through the vo...

Stars.

There were virtually no stars.

"...Computer, measure the stability of this universe. Level of the fundamental interactions, entropy, the works." Sine said, as she looked around. "Scan for life forms too, as far as you can in a minute...just in case."

While her systems did their jobs, Sine began poking her way across the faded remnants of whatever this floating structure had been. The fact that she didn't just float off the small object despite no efforts from her own self to stay on it, now that she thought about it, was damn disturbing. It was doubtful this little speck in the universe could naturally generate its own gravity, and any artificial means would have likely long ceased to work with how worn and ancient the place seemed. Yet she was able to step on and off the rock like she was taking a stroll on...well, not Earth. The gravity was weaker than there. The moon, perhaps? But still...what could imbue something so small with its own gravitational pull? One that persisted even now?

Then she stepped on it, feeling the dry, dusty pressure give way beneath her boot, and she had a new question. She knew what she'd just stepped on. She'd put her foot through a ribcage more than once.

Just what it was a ribcage OF, Sine didn't know. The bones were crumbling into a cloud of dust as she looked down, the dead grey mist painting itself on her boots and lower legs. Sine knelt down, trying to find any remaining pieces, but it seemed like her touch had been all that was needed to reduce whatever she had stepped on to the dust of the ages.

Which was even more wrong than the gravity. Space was a vacuum; without protection, the bacteria in an organic body that led to decomposition would die long before they finished their work, and barring outside factors like space debris or the heat of a star, bodies could last in a more or less preserved state for millions of years. Sine didn't see any impact craters, and as she'd already noted, there was virtually no stars left. She should have stepped on a corpse so fresh she could have identified facial features, not bones so worn by age that they crumbled apart. Unless...

"Computer, scan this dust. It IS osseous, right?" Sine said. She was given an answer in the affirmative. "And my other requests?"

No life forms detected. Remaining stars primarily white dwarf type. Fundamental interactions...disrupted.

"Disrupted?" Sine said. How the hell did you 'disrupt' the four fundamental forces of the universe and still have something resembling a universe?
 

Entropy also...disrupted. Exact classification unknown at this time.

"Am I in danger?" Sine said, standing back up.

Remaining in current location for extended periods of time unadvised. Momentary period, however, likely safe.

"Says you." Sine said, looking around. A white battered rock that once wasn't, with gravity, with corpses that had rotted in a vacuum, admist a sky of dying stars and disrupted aspects of basic existence. She'd found herself a universe of ash.
 

Hell of a place for a vacation. Sine mused. Well, if she wanted to sit around and sulk, she could find better places to do it than here...

White. Dark. Among it all, she barely noticed the brief hint of another color. For a few moments, Sine debated leaving things well enough alone, but curiosity killed the cat, and satisfaction brought him back, as the saying went. Sine slowly and carefully walked towards when she'd seen the color, taking some time to make her way up a crumbling incline that might have once been some stairs. She did not step on any more inexplicable corpses, though her eyes glimpsed a few more, skeletons left in repose so long they virtually blended into the dull greyish stone. That was a mystery to solve later, though, as she approached the trace of color, partially concealed beneath a crumbling wave of stone. Her scans detected no danger, and her touch of the item, whatever it was, provoked no response. After more consideration, Sine gripped her fingers on the golden-brown item and tugged.

She wasn't sure what she expected to find, but a large glove was not it. Sine slowly stood back up, holding the folded bit of clothing in both her hands. This made no sense. Whatever had been built here, whatever had caused these corpses to become what they'd become...how had some GLOVE survived all that? Survived it and sat here, for who knows how long? What made it so special?

"Computer, run the scans again." Sine said. She got back the same results. As far as her systems could tell, it was a glove. Sine turned it over in her hand. However it had survived, it was clearly made for someone larger than her...

Why would that be a consideration? Why would she want to put it on? It was just...a glove...

"Helmet, enable synapse routers." Sine said. She'd had some experience with mind control before, and she wasn't going to just leave her brain open so another maleficent force could walk in and turn her reputation to even greater shit. Now, if something tried to control her brain or nervous system, it'd get re-routed for a few seconds, just long enough to take the glove off...

Hopefully...

It slipped over her left hand. Despite its larger size, it did not feel loose.

It also promptly did...nothing. Sine turned her hand over, wondering if there was some missing piece of the puzzle she didn't have. She had a feeling that if that was the case, she wouldn't be finding it here. Well, if all this universe had to offer her was an inexplicable glove...

Sine put her right hand on top of it, trying to draw it off. She vaguely felt the impressions beneath her palm.

She did not exactly SEE what happened next, so much as KNOW. Sine's eyes jerked wide open, her pupils dilating to a pinprick, her helmet's psychic defenses not even registering a threat. When it was over, Sine's breath exploded from her lungs so fiercely she almost spat out her miniturized breathing apparatus.

The glove remained on her hand. Sine turned her arm over again, looking at it.

"...that would be something to do."