Monroe

Chapter Two Hundred and Ninety-Six. To Infinity and Beyond!

"Madam President, you have a phone call from Robert Whitman."

Elania sighed and picked up the handset. "Mr. Whitman," she said.

"Ms. President," Bob began, "I just wanted to let you know that I was stopping by with a few friends, and that, uh, we're going shopping real quick."

Elania closed her eyes and leaned back into her chair. "What, exactly, are you shopping for?" she asked slowly.

"Two dozen servers and a couple of racks," Bob replied.

"I take it you're planning to save the retailer some time by simply picking them up yourself, and leaving payment on the counter?" Elania rubbed her temples. This was a minor event, and in all honesty Bob liberating a few servers wasn't even the top thousand of issues she needed to worry about.

"Yep," Bob said cheerfully. "The other, more important, reason for my call is that if you happen to notice a foreign object orbiting above a remote region of China, that's us, and we'd appreciate it if you didn't fire any weapons at us. Also, if you could let China know that, that would be great."

"You're in orbit?" she asked.

"We are," Bob replied.

"I know the answer to how is magic, and why isn't likely to receive an answer, but I'd like to ask what exactly is in orbit? Because you've said we, which means you have some people with you, which I suspect means you've somehow built a spaceship," Elania opened her eyes, and looked at the clock. The time difference between Beijing and Washington was an issue often commiserated between the diplomats assigned to those embassies.

"Well, yes," Bob admitted. "We need the servers because the computers we're currently using don't have enough processing power for the sensor arrays."

Elania mouthed the words 'sensor arrays' to herself, shaking her head. "I'll pass word to our embassy in China," she sighed. "Luckily, the skeletal nature of the government staff remaining means someone in a position to advise their space agency and missle forces will receive the message much more quickly than would otherwise be the case."

"Thanks, I don't think there is anything down there that could hurt us, but we're not looking to test the shields out," Bob replied. "We'll only be half an hour or so, then we will be out of your hair."

"The United States Government would be quite interested in the design of your ship," Elania said carefully, "if you'd be willing to sell the information to us."

"Huh, Jack was right," Bob said. "We're going to be back after the update once everything has settled down, and by then we'll have tested all the systems and figured out what does and doesn't work. At that point, Jack had planned to subcontract out the construction and sell the ships to any group who could afford to pay for them, of which I hope the United States Government remains as one of them."

"What price would you be willing to accept for schematics of your fully functional ship as it stands?" Elania asked.

NASA had been working around the clock to develop a ship, but what they'd come up with so far as barely an improvement on the shuttle. They simply didn't have the experience with magic to know what was and wasn't feasible.

"Madam President, honestly I don't think you'd want this ship. It's ruinously expensive to run. I'm talking around seven thousand mana crystals a day. And it only holds a dozen of us, although if you converted the individual rooms...." Bob trailed off.

Elania waited. She'd seen him do this before, and he didn't tend to space out for long. "Call it between fifty and a hundred, depending on how comfortable you wanted to be," Bob finished his thought.

"How long would it take to reach Mars in that ship?" She asked.

"Three months?" Bob replied. "Maybe a bit less, the thrusters ended up being a lot more effective than we'd planned on, so assuming you spent half the time accelerating and the other half decelerating at full thrust, I can see three months, maybe two, but you'd be burning through almost fifty five thousand crystals a day like that, so you're talking like five million crystals for a one way trip."

"That is rather expensive," Elania acknowledged. "Still, if the price isn't too dear, having the schematics for a functional ship might help our engineers refine their own plans."

She could hear Bob sigh. "To be honest, I'd rather not give them to you. While trust you, I don't necessarily trust the entirety of the United States Government. Providing the schematics of the ship would by tantamount to inviting the people amongst your government that I don't trust to devise a way to break through our sheilds, or bypass our sensors, or something even more nefarious. I'm afraid I can't sell you the schematics, regardless of the price. What I can promise is that you'll be my first call the next time I visit," Bob said. "Also, you'll need people casting the rituals at a minimum of level thirty, using level thirty crystals. We aren't talking about seven thousand level one mana crystals a day, we're talking about seven thousand level forty plus crystals," he finished.

"While I'm not pleased, I do understand your reticence, and I appreciate your relaying the requirements for the resources." Elania replied. "I'll send word to our embassies regarding your ship."

"Thank you, and goodbye Madam President."

"Goodbye Mr. Whitman, and God speed."

Dave and Amanda had returned with twice the number of computers they'd left to retrieve.

"Honestly, I don't know how much damage the monster tide is going to cause, but it would be a shame to leave these little beauties down there to get trampled on," Amanda explained, affectionately patting the 1u server tucked under her arm.

"We'll get these bad boys racked up and running," Dave added, "if you want to pop us back over to Thayland's universe to test the sails."

Bob nodded, and tried lowering the masts at an even slower speed, allowing for a full two minutes. That seemed to do the trick, as the sails settling gently into their brackets was almost unnoticable. He opened a portal, turned on the rear thrusters for a moment, and the Freedom slid through it, arriving back in Thayland's universe.

He raised the masts at the same speed, noting that the effects were the same as lowering them, then tapped his armband for a moment. "I'm going to raise the sails, everyone standby."

With that, he pressed the command to unfurl a single sail. It was the top sail on the middle mast, the smallest one, and he hoped that if something went wrong, it's small size would mean that any damage would be minor.

He glanced at the image of the ship floating above his armband. The sensors were providing an image of the mana flowing around the Freedom, and it was beautiful. An ocean of subtly tinted silver hues glowed from the display, and as he watched, the topsail unfurled, and snapped taught, billowing out as the mana built up behind it. The ship twitched ever so slightly, and then started to move. It wasn't moving quickly, but the sail was full, and the force of the mana pushing against was moving the Freedom.

"Looks like it works," Jessica said quietly, surprising him. He hadn't heard her approach, but as he turned, he saw that Jack, Mike, Harv, and Elli were all there as well.

"Try a full set on one mast," Jack suggested.

Bob sent the command, and a moment later two more sails unfurled, each larger the than the previous one. They caught the same mana flow and the ship began to move more quickly. It was still moving quite slowly, but the improvement was there.

"The other two masts on that side now," Bob murmured, and the other two masts deployed their sails as well. The ships speed increased.

"We're fully submerged in this mana flow, yeah?" Jessica asked.

"Yep," Bob replied, squinting down at a readout from the repair enchantments on the masts. It wasn't reporting any usage yet.

"Let's hang out the laundry and see what she's got," Jessica grinned.

"Hang out the laundry?" Bob asked.

"The sheets? You know, raise all the sails?"

"I'm not sure that sailors say that," Bob muttered, but tapped a series of menus.

The image shifted, pulling back as it displayed four images, one in each corner, showing a set of masts, while the central image showed a slowly spinning image of the Freedom as all forty-eight sails deployed and caught the mana flowing over the ship. Each sail fluttered for a moment, then pulled taught. The ship lurched as it accelerated, and Bob fell back against the wall. He could feel the acceleration as the sails strained to bring the ship up to match the speed of the mana flowing around it.

It took almost ten minutes for the ship's speed to level off. The sails ended up pulling the ship along at a relatively sedate five thousand miles an hour.

"Well, it'll get us around the solar system, just not that quickly," Bob explained to Harv and Elli, both of whom had expressed their surprise that moving so incredibly fast somehow failed to measure up. "If we were really trying to get somewhere fast, we'd have all of our rear thrusters going at full power, and we'd have to endure the stress of constant acceleration, then constant deceleration, but we'd reach speeds exponentially higher than a mere five thousand miles an hour. Honestly, unless we're in a big hurry for some reason, we don't need to subject ourselves to that; we can just accelerate up to a decent rate, then continue at that speed until we need to start slowing down."

"Well, we're underway," Amanda said as she entered the cabin. "We should probably test the sails for a few hours, then bring them down and switch over to the new servers. We'll test them out with no propulsion first."

"Hard to believe we're in space, especially in here," Mike muttered, gesturing the admittedly rustic cabin.

"Strewth, I'd always thought if I went to space I'd be something that looked like it came out of Star Trek," Jessica agreed.

"Well, we've spent quite a few hours testing the ship over the last few days, which has eaten into our crystal reserves," Bob grinned. "It's time to get at least one group delving."

Time until System Integration: 3 Days, 21 Hours, 7 Minutes, 55 seconds.

"Alright, we've proven that the sails work, and that if we find a thick enough current, we can set them and forget them for a day or two," Bob began. "Our shields are working perfectly, the new computers are keeping up with the data, giving us a much fuller picture of the universe around us, and we've yet to find any problems with out systems. It's time to try portaling to an unknown universe."

"We're sure we can get back, right?" Eddi asked.

"Assuming we don't somehow portal into a planet, yeah," Bob replied.

"Could that happen?" Eddi asked.

"No, it couldn't," Bob said wryly. "What we are doing is opening a portal to the same place we're at now, which would normally fail, as the System won't allow an object to portal to a place that is already occupied. We are altering the ritual slightly, adding the component of a the mana flows the system uses when you open a portal between Thayland and Earth, but without using the pattern that defines the universe you are portaling to. It's actually fascinating to see how the System defines a universe based on a mana pattern."

Bob paused as he took in the glossy look in both Eddi and Mike's eyes. "Right, so, we're going to be portaling to a random universe, however because we are leaving the destination to be determined by the System, it will be a universe that has the same revision of the System as the one we are in. So, the question is, are we ready?"

His friends sounded off one by one, indicated that they were prepared.

He nodded, and took a deep breath before weaving the ritual. It had taken him a while to get used to advantages he had gained with his decision that Earth's pinnacles would be more talented with mana manipulation. The difference was palpable, and he had on several occasions winced when he saw his former rituals in action as he delved his Arcane Depths. He was able to manipulate not only a greater number of threads, but he could work with finer threads, which had allowed him a degree of control over his rituals that he'd only dreamed of before.

The addition of the system-less components meant that the ritual took longer than one hundred seconds. In an emergency, they'd jump to a place they knew, which wouldn't require any system-less casting, but their explatory jumps would require it, unless the update offered "Portal to a random universe" as a spell option. Which he wouldn't take, as he couldn't see a use for it that wouldn't be better served by just adjusting his portal spell manually.

He finished the ritual, and for the breifest of moments, the display showed a blue-black portal swallowed the ship. That was only visible because he'd cast the ritual inside the envelope of the ships shield.

The transition through the portal was seamless. Everyone was looking at one another, but it was Jack who asked the question. "Are we there yet?"

"Let's raise the masts and find out," Bob replied, tapping the command on his screen to do exactly that.

The masts moved slowly as the rose and locked into position, but the sensors had started working immediately. The display was jumbled as the computers struggled to handle the data while also compensating for the fact that the sensors were moving in more than one direction. It cleared quickly, and they began to see area around the ship.

Well, they could see the mana flowing around the ship.

Everyone eagerly watched the display as the sensors gathered more data, and the view of the ship slowly zoomed out, until the ship was no longer visible at all, not even as a speck.

"Well, we knew that the vast emptiness of space is, as advertised, both vast and empty," Dave finally said after a few minutes.

"No luck on this jump," Amanda added.

"Jump?" Bob asked.

"Yeah, I figured we've pretty well turned 'Portal' into a verb that we all understand, but moving between dimensions like this ought to have its own terminology," she grinned.

"I like it," Bob smiled. "Is everyone ready to make another jump?"

"The IIDS Freedom stands ready to jump, Captain Bob," Jack threw him a lazy salute.

"Here we go," Bob said, his smile widening as he began to weave the ritual that would jump their starship between universes.

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