And another chapter showing what has happened during that one month, this time featuring Dr. Marbles, Alex, Alex's Dad (surprise!), and Hardson's cohorts, Davidson and McKinsey, as well as Cyantis. I also leave a little cookie for future chapters. ;)
3.
Expedition
It had rapidly become Dr. Marbles favorite thing to do each day.
Walking briskly, he reached the bottom of a hill, and without stopping, proceeded to climb the hill. He didn't stop until he reached it's peak. Once there, he paused, took a deep, refreshing, breath, then turned around and looked back down the way he had come. And he savored the sight he saw.
Cyantis.
With Hacker finally defeated and Cyberspace safe once again, the cybersite's barriers, shields, and cloak could finally be lowered, and access to the fabled lost cybersite be granted to all. And no one hesitated to make use of it. Cyborgs from all over came to see the site and what was in it. It was rapidly becoming a popular tourist location, although the best was that entrance was free.
But for Marbles, it went much deeper than that. The moment the site was opened to everyone, scientists, historians, anthropologists, archeologists, virtually every scientist in Cyberspace, wanted to come and explore and study the site, as did Marbles himself. So, with Motherboard's authorization, Marbles organized the Cyantis Expedition, a group of united scientists from all over Cyberspace all working to learn as much as possible from the secrets the site withheld.
And they had already discovered a lot. And there was plenty more to discover. Marbles knew that they all had their work cut out for them. But for the moment, Marbles simply wished to stand there on the hill and look out at the Cyantis's skyline and savor the view.
"Dr. Marbles."
Marbles sighed, and turned to face the speaker, a fellow scientist cyborg. "Yes, Amy, what is it?" he asked.
"You're needed down in the data core." Amy said politely. "They claim they've made an important discovery down there, and they won't say anything about it until you come and see it first."
Marbles nodded. "All right." he said. "I'll be right there."
Amy nodded, and walked away. Marbles stopped long enough to savor the view a moment longer, and then started back down the hill, heading towards the location of the hidden underground data core, curious what surprises today had in store for him.
"It's a good thing the major isn't here for this." Davidson remarked as he dug. "We can work faster without her being around to complain about how boring this is."
"Personally, I think it's all kind of fascinating." McKinsey remarked as he helped to dig. "This site is said to be the origin of modern Cyberspace as we know it today, that the people who created it, the Founders of Cyberspace, were the most advanced cyborgs in history. Not only that, but the site's been lost for who knows how long and is really only now getting uncovered. It'd be like Atlantis back home."
"Except nobody's found Atlantis back in the Real World." Davidson remarked, his shovel accidently clanging against the side of the object they were trying to unbury.
"Be careful with that!" A tall man said, standing next to the device and was busy working with the circuitry within. Alex stood beside him, brushing dust off of the curious symbols that lined the device, which appeared to be some kind of column. "This thing is centuries old! It's very delicate! Bumping it like that could completely ruin it if you aren't careful!"
"Go easy on them, Dad!" Alex said. "They're military after all. They're used to blowing stuff up, not putting stuff back together."
"It's Major Hardson who likes to blow things up." Davidson said in his defense. "We just go along for the ride."
"Whatever the case, you need to be more careful!" Alex's dad scolded, and then went back to the circuitry he was working with. It was several years beyond him, but he still was enjoying trying to figure it out. "This is great, though." he said after a moment, shaking his head in amazement. "I'm so glad Dr. Marbles and Motherboard let me come to Cyantis to help study things."
"Yeah, I figured you'd love to get a chance to do this." Alex agreed, glad his dad was having such a great time. "So I put in a good word to both of them, and well, we all know the rest."
"Yes we do." Alex's father agreed. "I've been dying to have a chance to get into Cyberspace again, this time to just explore." he paused for a moment. "But while Cyantis is pretty cool, I kinda wish I could go and see other cybersites."
"Hmm, but the Grand Cyber Council is really hesitant about that." McKinsey remarked. "The CSEDS can hardly get permission for us, CS-1, to get to go where we go. These cyborgs here in Cyberspace are really hesitant about we from the Real World know about them."
"There's a reason for that, you know." Alex said. "They're worried that if too much information about Cyberspace is revealed to the Real World too soon, it could spark catastrophic events."
"Right, I know, I've read the report about Matt and Inez's little adventure to that parallel universe." McKinsey said. "Still, it gets frustrating."
"Well, at least CS-1 gets to go to more places than I do." Alex's father remarked. He paused for a moment. "How hard is it to become a team member on CS-1 anyway?" he asked suddenly.
Both Davidson and McKinsey seemed to have been caught off guard by the question.
"You know, I don't know." Davidson admitted. "We've never crossed that bridge yet."
"I suppose it wouldn't be unlike getting admittance to other teams in our program." McKinsey reasoned. "Just stuff like security checks, background checks, health checks..."
"So do you think I could get on the team?" Alex's father asked hopefully.
Again, Davdison and McKinsey seemed unsure.
"I dunno." Davidson said. "I suppose having a scientist like you around would be to our advantage, wouldn't it?"
"I don't know if the major would go for it, though." McKinsey pointed out. "She doesn't care for science, and therefore doesn't like scientists too much."
"Unless it involves life-threatening danger and blowing stuff up." Davidson pointed out.
"I can do all of that!" Alex's father said quickly. "I mean, true, I've never done it before, but I could learn!"
"Dad!" Alex bemoaned, slightly embarrassed. "Leave the nice military men to their digging! Besides, didn't you want to get this done before the day ended?"
"Oh, right." Alex's dad said, and he went back to the task at hand. "Sorry."
"Don't be." Davidson said. "It wouldn't hurt to ask around, anyway. It's just with Hardson, I don't see it happening."
Looking a little put out, Alex's dad resumed his work.
Cyantis, in addition to it's many and impressive structures, once housed what had to be beautiful parks, at least at one point. Since the time the Founders of Cyberspace left the cybersite, those parks eventually became overrun with weeds and became quite the opposite of beautiful. But when the Cyantis Expedition began, one of the many things that was done was refocus care and attention to those parks, and get them looking back to what they were like back in the day.
So now the parks were bright and green and pretty, and it was one of these such parks that Dr. Marbles found himself in now. He savored the sight for a moment, but he had other things he needed to do at the moment, and moved to a certain location in the park. There, located in the ground, was a cleverly hidden door, and was normally almost completely invisible from sight when closed.
But it wasn't closed. It was currently wide open so people could go in and out of it as needed, and as such, the open door left a large hole in the ground, leading into the hidden sub-level below it. Since the expedition had arrived here, they had found many of these sub-levels scattered all over the site, but it was only this one sub-level that probably held the best discovery about Cyantis to date.
Arriving at the open doorway, Marbles lowered himself into the sub-level and clambered on down the ladder and into the sub-level and into the hallway it was apart of. Since it's first discovery, it had been cleaned up significantly, the dust all cleared away, lit, and they had even managed to get some of the technology working.
But this was all relatively old news, and Marbles walked right past it to the end room at the end of the hallway. This room was the only room that had been perfectly preserved that had been found, and it contained the Cyantian data core, containing nearly all of the knowledge of the Founders of Cyberspace, which was a great deal, and thus a lot of information to sift through.
It was very busy in the room, filled with lit consoles and scientist gathered around all of them. No one seemed to notice Marbles entering the room, but Marbles didn't mind. It happened frequently enough, and he knew who to look for anyway. Working his way through the tangle of equipment and scientists hard at work, he went to a tall and lanky cyborg scientist dressed in a plain white button-up shirt and dark pants and cleared his throat.
"Dr. Quark, you called for me?" Marbles said politely.
Quark looked up from the screen he was watching. "Dr. Marbles!" he greeted happily. "Yes, I did call for you. I take it Amy told you we found something very important?"
"Yes she did." Marbles said. "And I'm admittedly curious about what it is."
"Well, first, you should sit down." Quark said, and patted the chair that stood next to the console. Marbles sat in it. Quark grabbed a clipboard and handed it to Marbles. "Now, you read this." he said. "This is the report the data core gave us regarding how much damage Cyantis on a whole has received. Note the percentages it indicates."
Marbles did, and read through the report. Then he blinked and read through them again. "There must be some mistake." he said. "These numbers can't be right."
"But they are." Quark said.
"But then, if that's true, and these numbers are right..."
"...then the damage estimates we had for Cyantis are well over than where they really are."
"Which means that the damage isn't anywhere near as bad as it looks."
"Which further means that given some time and a lot of hard work, we could eventually restore Cyantis to it's former glory."
Marbles looked at Quark with wide eyes. "This is great news!" he said. "Imagine, restoring Cyantis back to the way it looked originally..." he trailed off, looking excited, and stood up. "I'm going to go spread the news. Good work, Quark, very good work! Keep it up!"
He quickly ran out of the room. Chuckling to himself and shaking his head, Quark turned back to the screen he was working with for a moment. It was a deep space scanner of sorts, not unlike the kind Control Central had, but much more powerful. He was examining it's features when a little blip appeared on the screen, indicating an object was heading towards Cyantis itself. Quark glanced at it for a moment, then shooed it aside and moved on to other things. It wasn't uncommon for craft to come and go from Cyantis.
But if he had looked a little closer, he would've seen that this object had a peculiar energy signature to it, and that it was moving across Cyberspace much faster than it should....
