The Foundry | Part One | Chapter Four
the next chapter of my forthcoming novel
The Foundry
by Daphne Garrido
Part One | Thrice Bled Heart
Part Two | Rebuilt; Refound; Reclaimed
Part Three | Dominion
Chapter Four
Echo decided it pertinent to skip her orientation tour. She already knew the backrooms and corridors of The Foundry as well as anyone. She’d been most pleased to find Cameron willing to join her on this mission — a chance to see what would be coming for them quite soon.
No shame it had been to miss the presentation of such wonders as the cafeteria, showers, and initiate barracks. Especially to see what Echo would be showing her.
They’d carved a path through winding ways Cameron wouldn’t remember after this first trip, led in such haste by the excitement of her chosen companion, wondering more and more if there might have been some reason she’d been standing alone on the fringes, yet trusting it was because there was something quite special about her like she’d thought.
Echo couldn’t believe it; she was stunned to find him there at this time of the station’s cycle. She’d discovered more gratitude than she would have ever known to expect, just seeing Leopold’s smiling face again. He’d been her greatest ally through darkest times, a supportive force no matter the shades she’d shown, her guiding light out of the madness after her brutal failure running The Gauntlet alone.
It was here, in the simulation hall, within complete immersion of these devices bearing such powerful technology, where her life had almost come to an end. These simulations were real to the pilot inside them. Nothing within the body’s experience would be different from the real thing.
To be so deep within these most intricate systems of immersive becoming, bound to a ship you’ve designed from the ground up, itself harboring an intelligence raised to maturity alongside yourself, then befalling vicious realization of violent failure, proved most fatal to all but a chosen few.
If not through cardiac arrest in the moment of explosive absolution, through that nearly ensured loss of mind in the aftermath, or by grief from losing in whole their nurtured intelligence which would truly die within the simulation beside them.
Leopold had always been a most incorrigible fellow, it was one of the things Echo loved most about him. She’d always enjoyed getting what she wanted.
“Plug me in,” is what Echo demanded, walking towards her old favorite interface.
“Um. So.” Tumbled out of his mouth in tones of discouragement.
“Leo, shut up. Do it.”
Cameron seemed to be having a good time in witness of this all when Echo checked in with her. They’d given her a little squeeze on the arm, a bob of the neck, and a devious look implying she should follow.
There was a viewing portal which could be used to see inside the simulation, and Echo set Cameron up there before she’d told her.
“Watch this.”
Echo strapped into the interface’s hardseat. She’d known by that sense of purest and untainted excitement from Cameron they’d no idea how dangerous this was, let alone how much trouble they could both be getting into.
“Do you still have her?” She’d shouted to Leopold at his control desk, himself looking stricken with pre-emptive guilt for what he was about to let her do.
“They told me you were coming back.”
His worry seemed to melt away as he found great pleasure in some secretive gift of preparation he’d seen to ahead of her return.
“I got her ready for you.”
“What about Alice?” She’d asked, feeling foolish to even hear the question leave her lips, some part of her appreciating the sentiment regardless.
“You know she’s gone, hon.”
Leopold spun on his chair and made eye contact with Echo across the room.
“What are we doing here?”
Her shit-eating grin was so wide he had to have known before she said it.
“Leg one.”
Echo was going back to The Gauntlet at last.
There she was. "Oh god, yes!” Echo shouted uncontrollably at the sight of her; Scarlet, that was her girl.
Echo spent more time designing her warship than any other initiate in her class, knowing it would have most important effects on the outcome of her solitary journey through that brutal challenge she’d taken on.
Alice; that AI she’d raised through adolescence into peership, to then watched soar so far beyond her grasp into levels of intelligence beyond that of human comprehension, who’d been most dreadfully tied to her own psyche, was gone.
All was not lost, however. Scarlet lived, she would fly again, and one day in real. Echo would see to that, even if it happened to be the last thing she did.
Loading into leg one of The Gauntlet was like slipping into a warm bath.
She’d done this first part so many times. It had been something she could tame in her sleep, quite literally. Although, it had been a rare occasion to run this leg in simulation without Alice’s assistance, and the gravity of facing that challenge with such time spent away from any practice was perhaps lost on Echo in all of her excitement.
Before it even started, she’d called her shot, knowing every spoken word would be heard by both Leopold and Cameron watching on from their separate vantage points.
“Three minutes flat.”
“Babe.” She’d heard Leo pipe through.
“Don’t push yourself.”
Echo was smiling wider than she could ever remember, having too much fun. Being back here with this chance to live her dream again, while getting to show off for her new friend, felt awful nice.
“If you whine at me again Leo, I’m going to beat your ass when I get out of here.”
She’d laughed maniacally in that hardseat, realizing she was about to have the time of her life. Watching the tranquil loading screen; a scene from Atreya’s most beautiful shoreline — tainted by Chiron’s unacceptably large presence ever looming in the distance, almost ruining the vibe entirely — transformed into a sea of stars.
“Easy peasy,” she’d said, engaging Scarlet’s systems in full, then speaking directly to her craft so long missed.
“Hey baby.”
It was the lack of response leaving a knot in Echo’s gut, which she’d not expected upon speaking the phrase — Alice having always come right back with a ‘hey sweetheart’ — which woke her up to an important awareness.
Hearing that echo in her mind would always be a taunting notion to this woman. She was foolhardy, aggressive, excitable, but she wasn’t an idiot. This moment of uncovered hurt had been divine. It revealed in feeling just how much more preparation was truly needed to face this demon emotionally, especially in the wake of such an eventful waking cycle.
She’d really need to focus.
As Echo found herself charting course into slingshot around that first planet, remembering how specific a heading it took to get this all right, she was missing Alice quite thoroughly.
There had been thousands of passes completed on this leg alone. At first, riding along with the recorded experiences of successful pilots, all with Alice in cooperative training. Then with the AI herself in fullest control. Still, even then, it was a test of the work Echo had done in preparing that intelligence. Only the obsessiveness this woman found living within for perfecting this gauntlet of her own fate, that need to conquer it wholly, would drive her to have ever done this without Alice most entirely involved.
Still, every time, every pass, she’d studied. Echo had learned, and the numbers were burned into the very fabric of her being. The modes of success for this journey ahead would be remembered. Her success on this first orbit, the propulsion wrought from the perfected execution of her slingshot, and the continued excellence throughout the four more iterations around most varied planets to come. It would bring Echo quite fully back to herself.
When she’d finally finished, stepping from the hardseat in her favorite kind of stupor — heart racing, mind swirling, adrenaline pumping — the first thing she’d heard from Leopold’s mouth was exactly what she’d hoped to.
Echo thought she could tell he’d not believed it. Though, Cameron certainly had; she wasn’t confused at all. Almost giggling, he seemed to not want to tell her, perhaps worried it might get to her head. Still, he’d gotten around to it, and that had been the most pleasing number she’d ever heard.
“Two minutes and fifty-eight seconds.”
