Aftershocks (2)
Vontok System
Former Republic Stargate, Maintenance Access Four
Ring Dynamics Transition Team
“I don’t like it.”
“It’s going well so far. The interface layer reconfigured cleanly to accept standard blue-box protocol.”
“That’s why I don’t like it.”
“Because it reconfigured cleanly?”
“Because it reconfigured too easily. This thing was ripped out of a dead god’s brain with stone axes. That shouldn’t make it user-friendly.”
“Maybe it was built for them.”
“Okay, then, how do you explain the computronium stacks? Big and clunky this isn’t; it’s just got far more parcycles and dataspace than the stargate manager needs. What are they for – and don’t say nothing, and before you answer, remember dead god’s brain.”
“…that’s paranoid.”
“But am I wrong?”
“No, I can’t say that. What are you proposing?”
“I’m proposing we get this meme-gapped and rig the best emergency-destruct package we can that won’t risk kernel integrity, then call in a Probable Technologies forensic eschatology team. And that we shut down all our probes and mapping operations. It’s one thing if the gate goes diagnostic on us; it’s quite another if our pokin’ around wakes up a poison angel or triggers a prompt intellect excursion, and worse yet if it’s a strongly connected one.”