As I entered the claustrophobic amphitheater where the capsule was located, I saw a few workers praying despite the dead of night. They were disheveled and worn out. Their hands were spread open, praying towards Old Jack's capsule.
"Move along, folks!" I shouted, pushing and shoving them. "It's Old Jack's maintenance time. I order you, as an engineer. Vacate this area."
The old man was inside a metal capsule, painted like alien technology. As I got closer to the foggy glass, I could see the old man sleeping in the liquid. I glanced at the tubes in his mouth. The communication must have been cut somewhere. It didn't take me long to find it. An electronic circuit that muted the sound coming from the old man's vocal cords had been placed in his oxygen tube. Since removing that filter would take a long time, I just shattered it. Then I returned to the old man. I tapped the glass twice.
As air bubbles formed in the old man's life fluid, rising to the ceiling and vanishing, the old man opened his eyes.
I waved my hand at the other side of the glass, removing the cap from my head. "How's it going, old man... Don't worry, you can talk now."
As the mask over the old man's mouth shifted, we finally heard his true voice. "The silence of years slipped away slowly, like a dewdrop sliding from a leaf, with a small add-on made by a stranger."
"It's obvious you're trying to confuse me, old man, with convoluted and irrelevant sentences. But I won't fall for these games."
"I apologize... I haven't spoken for too long. Words are knotted in my throat. It's been so long since I spent my breath on speaking... The burden of breath each word leaves on my body is undeniably painful."
"Yes... I'm sure it is."
"Why... why did you bring me out of endless silence?"
"Because I have a question, Jack."
"I have questions too." His eyes narrowed. "Why did you lie?"
"Lie?"
"The lie about being a pirate. You're a Republic man, aren't you?"
"How did you know?"
With the old man's slight chuckle, air bubbles formed and disappeared once more. "My children... or rather, the children of my children's children, they don't know much about the outside. They don't know what dangers the universe holds. Nor what the Republic looks like... It's quite obvious from your posture that you are an enhanced. The oxygen here..." he said, raising his hands and gesturing around. "The oxygen here is scarce. You aren't struggling to breathe when you speak. You show no indication of being bothered by the low oxygen. Your respiration is slow, which I can clearly tell from the movement in my chest. There's no dilation in your pupils... You probably use even a small amount of oxygen very efficiently thanks to your internal enhancements."
"I'm surprised, truly," I said, clapping.
"Then why did you lie to us?"
"How about this? You tell me how you know Marcin Grom and why you were silenced. I'll tell you whatever you want."
"Marcin Grom? Since you know that name, you must be that SWR officer. The resource collector... Hmm... Not just an SWR citizen, but an SWR officer, huh..."
"You haven't answered any of my questions, old man."
"You sound like you don't know what the name Marcin Grom means," the Old Man said. He squirmed in the metal restraints holding him. "I would expect a Corporation Inspector to know that name well. But a lot has changed in 400 years, hasn't it?"
He closed his eyelids for a moment, catching his breath. "My name is Jack Lorre... I was a mine-owning businessman in one of the END colonies. This was about 400 years ago. Even before the Interstellar War between the Colony and the Republic... Ah... it was so obvious that war would break out."
"I was a young boy when the Supreme World Union transformed into the Republic. I was born on the planet Ross128. Earth, our original planet, was just a myth to us. Sometimes a story from Earth would be told over drinks with friends for a cautionary tale. Sometimes those Earth stories—with linguistic and cultural analysis—would be processed with simple historical data in our school lessons so we wouldn't forget our essence. Even in schools, they tried not to mention the evils of the world. We focused on the trio of Homo Sapiens, Jesus, and the establishment of the Supreme World Union. That was all Earth was to us. Nothing more."
"Don't interrupt him, Aldoux," Ilya said in my earpiece. "Let the old man talk. Maybe we'll catch some important details."
"It took about 32 years for the news of the Republic's establishment to reach us. But let me tell you something funnier. Just a few days after the signals carrying the news of the Republic's establishment arrived, two inspectors from the Space Colonies Oversight Agency came to visit us. 'What's so funny about that?' you'll ask, I know.
The inspectors set off 20 years after the news of the Republic's founding was sent to us. Yet, both arrived almost at the same time. Technology had advanced so much in those twenty years that the Supreme World Union couldn't even compare technological progress anymore. The Supreme World Republic (SWR), after its formation, was experiencing an unstoppable and incomprehensible growth by investing all its strength in technology."
"These two Oversight Inspectors made a list of the necessary improvements for our colony. There was no condition to refuse these enhancements. At first, things like a cleaner air filter, a better communication satellite, and many other improvements pleased us greatly. The inspectors sold us all these developments, and the money the SWR wanted for these things wasn't too much. But later, the SWR started demanding a say in our colony.
From the plants we cultivated to the education we provided... from the language we spoke to the curses we used, the SWR wanted to monitor everything. Ross128 had a pretty small colony when I was around 35. By the time I reached 70, this modest planet had turned into a techno-swamp of colossal bars, hotels, and brothels. Whatever the SWR planned for a colony, the colony had to comply. This was a necessary condition for the SWR's Great Colony Planning. If colonies wanted to object to these plans, massive media sanctions were applied to them for disrupting the 'great plan'."
"So, thinking I couldn't recognize my own planet anymore, I abandoned it. But before leaving, I sold the land I owned for a hefty sum. While thinking about what to do with this large amount of money in the Supreme World Capital, I came across a holographic advertisement over the city's massive hotels. In the advertisement, a huge family stood embracing each other on an empty planet where construction was underway. A happy family portrait... but they had all worked, their clothes were messy and dirty. Yet, despite the dirt, the woman's makeup hadn't vanished, and the father's curly mustache hadn't even drooped... That was advertising. 'A colony entirely your own. Build-Operate, and with a small payment, it's yours. For a colony entirely yours, Endarken! Payments taken annually.'"
"Endarken was a research company. They traversed the galaxy, classifying every single planet. In return for their efforts, the Republic granted them the right to manage the planets they discovered. Since Endarken couldn't colonize all these planets by itself, it started renting those planets to other colonists in its name. My parents had passed away. I had never married, but there was a prostitute in my hometown of Ross128 whom I was in love with. Her record was bad because she had stabbed her husband in her previous life before escaping to our planet as a prostitute, so it was highly unlikely for her to go to any colony from the back alleys of Ross128. But if the colony I was running away to was my own, I could easily smuggle her."
At that moment, I touched my earpiece and whispered. "Are you still sure you don't want me to interrupt him, Ilya?"
"Let him talk," Ilya said. "I'm curious if the novels I read are true."
"The land I sold on Ross128 was enough, and more, as collateral for Endarken. The Colony I acquired was END307. A simple colony suitable for excavation. I would be able to excavate with a few mining robots I took with me because most of the mines were already erupting out of the ground. I would earn money, build on that money, and gradually expand my facility. Everything was running smoothly. In fact, we managed to become a considerably large mining colony. We even stopped taking oxygen from outside and started producing it ourselves."
"Then what happened?"
"Time flowed a bit slower on the planet I was on. I had reached the body age of 164. I had aged quite a bit... I was living connected to a life unit on my floating chair. Thanks to my wealth in those days, I had managed to convince a few hospitals to make me an enhanced one." He pointed at me with his hand. "Not everyone could be an enhanced one like you back then. The resources needed to become an enhanced one were quite expensive, and the Supreme World Union was reluctant to share them easily. At least, the SWR was trying to prioritize its own senior executives..."
"Now they spit on the face of anyone who isn't cybernetic. Very interesting... What changed this situation?" I asked. Actually, my question was for Ilya, but the old man answered.
"I don't know, young man..."
"Don't you know about the event historically known as the Discovery of Immortality?" Ilya said. "Quartez 2685 managed to establish a facility on the OLQ-21 planet that could generate incredibly high levels of energy. With the factories opened on this planet, the production of machine organs accelerated and became cheaper. In short, another industrial revolution took place. It wasn't something unexpected or miraculous, but it was surprising that it happened so early and by a company like Quartez. It was something that even Evoke Systems, which was granted the management of Energy Control and Cyber Security Agency in the SWR and co-chaired by Supreme World Republic President Tiberion Solegard, failed to achieve..."
"What happened next?" When the old man made a gesture like he was about to speak, I used one hand to cover my earpiece and the other to signal him to stop.
"Do you know Quartez?"
"Not really."
"Because you lack history knowledge, you fool! Quartez is a company that currently works under Evoke Systems. Even if it has its own managers, the ones making the real decisions are people from Evoke Systems... Evoke Systems bought Quartez. And it's been a while since they did."
"Very interesting... But I don't understand much about this situation."
"If you're done talking to the person in your ear, may I continue?" the old man asked.
"Of course, old man, keep talking."
"Where were we... Ah, yes... The colonies were earning well. Everything was joyful and cheerful unless you were in one of the exploitation colonies. While birth rates and death rates decreased, and income per capita decreased, everything became cheaper; health problems vanished, and people's lives were extended. Then they came... The Incompatibles."
"You saw The Incompatibles?" I asked.
The man chuckled slightly. "You're asking if I saw them? You truly are a very funny young man. Who could have seen The Incompatibles for me to have seen them? It's not even possible to perceive them! They said they arrived in spaceships, but who could say they were ships? Some said there were thousands, and others said there were no more than a handful. In the colonies where The Incompatibles arrived, people were evacuating to avoid losing their sanity while trying to perceive them. How many planets were they seen on? Let me think... I heard of their presence in at least 12 major colonies. I didn't know how much was gossip and how much was real. Anyway... What was I saying."
"With the arrival of The Incompatibles and the majority of the large colonies becoming dysfunctional, the space dream suddenly turned into a nightmare. Even the rich who thought they couldn't spend all their money were panicking, turning their backs on their relatives and fleeing to protect themselves. Due to the influx of refugees to colonies not invaded by The Incompatibles, communities and colonies living almost at the oxygen limit began to form. In a few colonies, the intellectual regression caused by oxygen deficiency was even tried to be resolved by health organizations as a red alert. Colonists who didn't want to share their colony's oxygen and food directly confronted the refugees with weapons. I don't want to tell you at length about the struggles and tragedies of those times, but I would like to say that it was the second greatest crisis humanity has ever experienced."
"And then what happened?"
"Mankind, facing economic, sociological, and many other problems, one day woke up to a huge shock. While the SWR quarantined the colonies and planets where The Incompatibles were located, the public was largely unaware of what was happening. Therefore, the sudden disappearance of The Incompatibles created a huge shock."
"No one knows why The Incompatibles disappeared," I added. "Not even my scientist friend at the Mars Colonies University knew."
"Yes... Even scientists don't know. But there was always a rumor that the Space Archaeology and Heritage Preservation Agency knew something."
"What does all this have to do with the name Marcin Grom?" I asked.
"I'm getting there. Please be patient. We thought the departure of The Incompatibles would be a relief for everyone, but... But because the SWR had been dealing with The Incompatibles for so long, the colonies had been acting however they pleased for too long. CLAUIDS colonies, the Villian Colony, and many other dictatorship colonies began to emerge during this time. The SWR started playing games across the galaxy to both protect its companies and regain its power. It started overcoming the colonies with politics, wars, genocides, and many other things."
"At that time, the innocent suffered alongside the guilty. The SWR didn't much care which side a colony was on. Although Tiberion Solegard spoke of the importance of rights, law, and justice, the corrupt officials under his protection didn't care about any of this. Those officials wanted to exploit the colonies, forcibly taking the power from the colonists' hands. That's why the colonies waged war against the SWR. "
"You still haven't said how you know the name Marcin Grom."
"The power of the colonies was undeniably great. The SWR also needed a great power to counter the colonies. A massive fortress living in space, capable of confronting any danger, terrifying its enemies..."
"Hyperion," I finished the man's sentence.
"Yes, young man... The Hyperion spaceship... The weapon of choice for Weapon Security, the subject of poems and plays. That weapon was produced on Titan. It took its name from Titan's moon, Hyperion. According to legend..."
"According to legend, they waited for the Hyperion moon to move out of the launch trajectory when the ship first took off," I finished the old man's sentence. Most of the stories the old man told had been recounted many times at the dinner table in my family. But I always thought these stories were secrets exclusive to our family. The Hyperion ship was a Republic secret. No one was allowed to talk about it much. At least, that's how it is nowadays... So, it seems most old people had a lot of information about the Hyperion ship.
"The Hyperion ship reportedly cost four colonies," the old man continued. "It was a spaceship the size of a small continent, with its own ecosystem, built to control large colonies."
"What does all this have to do with anything, old man!" I finally burst out, shouting. "What's the connection between the Hyperion ship and all this?"
"How impatient you are."
"Of course, I'll be impatient. You almost put me, who has an enhanced body, to sleep."
"Alright then. I'll get to the point. The Hyperion ship was a ship that also came to my END307 colony. Under normal circumstances, I was ready to offer my colony's service to the SWR. But my damn children opposed the SWR, as if conflicting with the SWR were a joke. They shot one of the inspectors and raised the flag of rebellion. While we expected a fleet, we found the Hyperion ship facing us. The SWR chose my planet to take the Hyperion ship off the shelf and present it to the public. Why? Because my damn colony was hardly a threat. The Hyperion ship looked quite majestic compared to my not-so-large colony."
"Very interesting..." I muttered. Because when the Hyperion ship was mentioned in family lessons, nothing before the Interstellar War was ever discussed. "...then what happened?"
"Faced with the power before us, my entire family and the 120,000 people who had taken refuge and agreed to work in my colony were frozen. My sons thought that the massive spaceship above us was just a piece of metal and that we could defeat it."
I let out a small laugh. "Just a piece of metal? Even the flame from that spaceship's engines could have destroyed your small colony."
"But I couldn't explain that to them. Because my children didn't believe that such power could be real. If the SWR had such a weapon, showing that power for a simple colony like END307 would have been ridiculous. Neither the logistical costs nor the media costs were worth it. I, bound to the chair..." He swallowed. "...secretly went to talk with the Hyperion ship. I was going to beg them to at least spare me. Under normal circumstances, the signal I sent from my satellite at home shouldn't even have reached that ship in space. Even if it did, it shouldn't have been opened due to security measures. But the communication was answered. I found a face opposite me. A trustworthy face..."
"That's a breach of procedure," I said.
"Yes... it was a breach of procedure. The person who answered the communication did so without the knowledge of Weapon Security or the SWR. According to him, he had his ear to the communication network because he pitied us, and he would do whatever he could to save someone if possible. He added that he showed his face because he wasn't just a piece of software and wanted to instill trust, giving his word as a soldier. This person... this person never told me his real name. That night, I arranged a spaceship for myself. My children were mocking me. They thought I couldn't escape anywhere while the mighty Hyperion ship was above us. I took a few of my children with me. That night, we set off into space. The beams struck my ship but missed. I don't know if the media captured this, but that miss was intentional by the man who spoke to me. And then, we only made it as far as here with that half-wrecked spaceship."
"You still haven't explained Marcin Grom..."
"Marcin Grom is the man who helped, you fool!" Ilya shouted.
"You mean? Marcin Grom was the Hyperion ship's captain?" I said with great astonishment. "Holy shit!"